The Ben Shapiro Show - July 02, 2026


America Is Too Important to Hand Over To Idiots

Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Tucker Carlson Trump Clarence Thomas Nicolas Maduro Vladimir Putin Jesse Ventura Pat Buchanan Ross Perot Zoram Amdani Marjorie Taylor Greene Friedrich Hayek Graham Plattner James Tallarico Sebastian Gorka Teddy Roosevelt John Fetterman Mahmoud Khalil Susan Collins Thomas Massey Zoran Mamdani and 7 more
The Socialist Sweep Continues Iran Threatened My Life. Here's My Response

Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

201.59

Word count

3,810

Sentence count

272

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

14

sentences flagged

Hate speech

11

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Democratic Socialists of America are eating the Democratic Party wholesale, and they are coming together to form a Third Party. What would happen if the DSA were to take control of the Senate? And what would Tucker Carlson do if the Democrats were to lose the midterms?

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Well, folks, as you can see, I'm recording from home today.
00:00:02.000 My voice is basically gone, but I wanted to sign into chat because I'm getting a lot of questions today, a lot of texts, a lot of disturbed phone calls about Tucker Carlson's announcement that he wants to start a third party.
00:00:15.000 And I just want to point out that there are, in fact, as we approach the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country, there are, in fact, two forces that wish to wreck America, stern to stem, that seek to destroy it the DSA left and the woke right, and they are coming together.
00:00:30.000 I'll explain in just a moment.
00:00:31.000 This is the Ben Shapiro show.
00:00:39.000 So here's where we are as we close in on our 250th anniversary as a country.
00:00:44.000 The things that matter most to the United States, to Americans, are under assault.
00:00:48.000 Core principles, things like freedom of speech and freedom of religion and private property, these things are under assault.
00:00:54.000 The very idea of America being an amazing place, a place that is good and great, the idea of American peace through strength, all of these things are currently under assault.
00:01:04.000 On the left, of course, The DSA, the Democrat Socialists of America, are eating the Democratic Party wholesale.
00:01:09.000 These are not kind of normal Democrats who are just worried about tax rates or entitlement programs.
00:01:14.000 They truly despise the country, and they are full-scale socialists.
00:01:17.000 Here is Zoram Amdani just yesterday talking about the magic of Marxist economics.
00:01:22.000 And we raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers instead of taking more from those with the least.
00:01:27.000 Throughout this process, I have been reminded of the words of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek.
00:01:32.000 If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialists.
00:01:35.000 If these past months have shown us anything, it is that socialists not only understand economics just as well as the capitalists who came before, but that we can solve their years of mismanagement through an embrace of our principles.
00:01:46.000 And of course, Zarim Amdani, he loves the idea of the collective warmth, warmth of collectivism.
00:01:52.000 So much so, by the way, that he is now calling on people to set their thermostat at 78 degrees in New York City.
00:01:58.000 You know, got to turn this place into Paris as fast as humanly possible.
00:02:01.000 The smell of trash must waft through the city streets.
00:02:05.000 And to every business owner, please set your thermostats to 78 degrees to alleviate the stress on our power grid.
00:02:12.000 Every worker in New York City has the right to a safe workplace, and that includes safety in extreme heat.
00:02:18.000 But here's the thing this whole discussion about the DSA and what they've been doing in big cities and now in Colorado and all the rest, it's not just fun and games.
00:02:26.000 It actually has consequences.
00:02:27.000 The Democratic Party is, in fact, on the verge of taking over not just the House in the midterm elections, but also the Senate.
00:02:33.000 So, real clear politics has consequences.
00:02:35.000 A rundown on the polling averages in the crucial Senate races.
00:02:39.000 These are all seats that are currently held by Republicans that could go to Democrats.
00:02:44.000 In North Carolina, Democrats are up.
00:02:47.000 In Ohio, dead heat.
00:02:48.000 In Maine, that is Graham Plattner, the Nazi tattoo guy versus Susan Collins, dead heat. 0.58
00:02:53.000 In Texas, James Tallarico, Sunday school, howdy duty with the LGBTQ flag.
00:02:58.000 That dude is in a dead heat with Ken Paxton.
00:03:01.000 In Iowa, dead heat.
00:03:03.000 In Alaska, dead heat.
00:03:04.000 That's six seats. 0.99
00:03:05.000 If Democrats were to win four, they would take control of the Senate.
00:03:10.000 If they win six, they're at 53 seats.
00:03:12.000 Nate Silver, the statistician, he says that there's about an 80 to 90% shot Democrats take the House, and there's a 40% shot they take the Senate.
00:03:20.000 And remember, increasingly, these are not establishment Democrats.
00:03:23.000 These are not John Fetterman moderate Democrats.
00:03:25.000 These are Democrats who are in thrall to the DSA.
00:03:28.000 They understand which way the winds are blowing, and they're moving in the direction of those winds.
00:03:33.000 So what would happen if the Democrats win?
00:03:35.000 And we should keep this in mind, because this is the backdrop to Tucker Carlson announcing that he wants to start a third party.
00:03:40.000 Which, by the way, is nonsense.
00:03:41.000 I'll explain that he's lying in a second.
00:03:43.000 But what would happen if Democrats were to win?
00:03:45.000 You need to understand the stakes to understand the game that Tucker is playing, which is a very dangerous game.
00:03:50.000 Well, first off, judicial nominees.
00:03:52.000 So, Justice Clarence Thomas, you may have noticed the Supreme Court is pretty important, right?
00:03:56.000 That the Supreme Court makes decisions that affect all of us on a wide level.
00:04:00.000 And you can either have people in positions of power who are going to do things like strike down Roe versus Wade, or curb the administrative state, or ensure the checks and balances of the Constitution, or you can have a bunch of leftists who green light every left wing policy.
00:04:14.000 Well, Justice Thomas is currently 78.
00:04:17.000 Justice Samuel Alito is 76.
00:04:19.000 Unless either one of them or both retire in the next couple of months, if Democrats win the Senate, you are likely to see them replaced at some point by a left leaning member of the Supreme Court.
00:04:30.000 If you had two justices who shift from right to left or from originalist to the living Constitution crew, you end up with a majority on the Supreme Court in favor of every radical social and fiscal and foreign policy that the Democrats could ever imagine.
00:04:47.000 Full scale disaster area.
00:04:48.000 So, yes, the Senate matters an awful lot.
00:04:51.000 Democrats, of course, will start stacking up the district courts as well. 1.00
00:04:56.000 They're going to start moving those district courts in the direction of left wing social policy.
00:05:02.000 If they were to gain control of the Senate, they would move to impeach President Trump.
00:05:05.000 There's an outside shot.
00:05:06.000 They could even get a conviction in a Senate split between a Democratic majority and maybe some rogue Democratic senators.
00:05:13.000 They, of course, will stymie any effort to refund our military, to restock FADs, Patriot missiles, to build the new kind of military we need to actually challenge our enemies in the world.
00:05:25.000 And again, there is, as I say, the possibility that President Trump gets impeached in the House and then even convicted in the Senate.
00:05:31.000 That's all what happens if the Democrats win the Senate.
00:05:34.000 There's like very, very serious stuff.
00:05:35.000 And that sets it up for 2028.
00:05:36.000 Because if Democrats control the Senate in 26 and the House in 26, then they are one step away from having trifecta in 28.
00:05:44.000 Now, listen Republicans have an uphill battle in 26.
00:05:46.000 We all know this.
00:05:47.000 It's an off year election.
00:05:48.000 This is normal.
00:05:50.000 What's exacerbating that, other than the obvious fact of the president's unpopularity, but what's truly exacerbating that is a group of people purportedly on the right who are openly saying they want the Republicans to lose.
00:06:01.000 Tucker Carlson is doing this.
00:06:02.000 This is Tucker's entire game.
00:06:04.000 And Tucker Carlson wants the Republicans to lose because what he wants is a party that takes the place of the Republican Party, that mirrors all the presumptions of the woke left, except for trans, basically.
00:06:18.000 Tucker Carlson truly dislikes the country.
00:06:21.000 There's no way to consistently watch his show and believe otherwise.
00:06:24.000 He literally had on an arms dealer from Russia named Victor Bout the other day to talk about the evils of America.
00:06:30.000 Tucker Carlson thinks that America is a tool of evil, capitalist, globalist, and all that kind of stuff. 0.90
00:06:36.000 Of course, Many of them are Jewish. 0.99
00:06:38.000 It's just a coincidence when he says that kind of stuff, when he pushes this crap, when he has on every anti Semite he can on his show. 0.99
00:06:44.000 It's all a coincidence. 0.95
00:06:46.000 It's just strange that it works out that way.
00:06:48.000 But his view is that America is a tool of evil capitalist globalists who want to cram down their version of America on the poor common man.
00:06:56.000 And here is a rando to talk about the evils of the Old Testament in order to show you.
00:07:01.000 Tucker does not actually like any of the things that classically have made America awesome.
00:07:05.000 So Tucker Carlson, for example, does not like free markets.
00:07:08.000 You'll recall him praising feudalism.
00:07:10.000 Over free markets, feudalism.
00:07:13.000 Feudalism is so much better than what we have now because, at least in feudalism, the leader is vested in the prosperity of the people he rules.
00:07:20.000 Right.
00:07:20.000 You know, if all your serfs die, you starve.
00:07:23.000 There is not an enemy of America that he does not adore.
00:07:26.000 He was praising Nicolas Maduro before the Trump administration ousted Maduro.
00:07:30.000 Nicolas Maduro and his government are very left wing on economics, not on social policy, by the way, which is kind of interesting.
00:07:37.000 In Venezuela, gay marriage is banned, abortion is banned. 0.52
00:07:42.000 Sex changes for transgenderism are banned.
00:07:45.000 It's one of the very few countries in the entire hemisphere with those policies.
00:07:49.000 It is on social policy, not defending the regime, just saying.
00:07:54.000 One of the most conservative countries in North or South or Central America.
00:08:01.000 Only El Salvador really comes close.
00:08:03.000 He has praised pretty much every jihadi group he can imagine or pretended they don't exist.
00:08:10.000 Hamas, it turns out, is a political group, actually.
00:08:13.000 He doesn't know much about these places.
00:08:16.000 And it turns out that Muslims have been victimized by the Western world, not the other way around. 0.97
00:08:21.000 And you notice, like in ISIS or Al Qaeda, like the Muslim extremists, They're all from like collapsed, pathetic societies dominated by colonial powers. 0.98
00:08:33.000 They've been degraded. 1.00
00:08:35.000 And that's why they're so angry. 0.95
00:08:38.000 Tucker, of course, has said that Iran is actually the wondrous force in the region.
00:08:44.000 And Tucker's unending, lavish praise for Vladimir Putin is laughable at this point.
00:08:48.000 So now here's the actual story of the day Tucker is discussing launching a third party.
00:08:54.000 This is the shtick.
00:08:56.000 Now, you see why he's doing this.
00:08:58.000 His friends are getting kicked out of the government, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Joe Kent or Thomas Massey.
00:09:03.000 And so he says he's going to start something new.
00:09:05.000 So he did an interview at the Columbia Journalism Review this week.
00:09:08.000 And here's what he said, quote, I do know what really matters is war and finance.
00:09:12.000 Where does the money come from?
00:09:14.000 Where does it go?
00:09:14.000 And who gets killed?
00:09:16.000 And on those questions, the parties are in lockstep solidarity with each other.
00:09:19.000 Now, again, that is a lie.
00:09:21.000 It is not true.
00:09:22.000 If you think that there is no distinction between Democrats and Republicans on how taxing works, where the money comes from, how markets work, How foreign policy ought to work. 1.00
00:09:33.000 If you think that they're the same, it's because you're stupid. 1.00
00:09:35.000 Or because you're lying. 1.00
00:09:36.000 And I don't think Tucker is stupid. 1.00
00:09:37.000 I think he's lying. 1.00
00:09:38.000 He says that's not a democracy.
00:09:39.000 That's a one party state posing as a democracy, and it needs to be broken.
00:09:43.000 And there's going to be a third party, and I'm going to do everything I can to bring that about.
00:09:46.000 And that's the lesson of the last two and a half months to me.
00:09:48.000 If you vote for Trump and you still wind up in a regime change war, then we need options.
00:09:52.000 Or else let's just give up and be ruled by the most unscrupulous people.
00:09:56.000 And I'm just too young to accept that.
00:09:58.000 We need a third party.
00:09:59.000 I'm going to help build a third party, he says.
00:10:01.000 There should be a good faith effort to figure out what benefits the country.
00:10:04.000 And then he goes into his nationalist socialist spiel.
00:10:08.000 I mean, if you make $60,000 a year, you're degraded.
00:10:10.000 Your life expectancy has gone down, and the promise of your children's lives is likely gone.
00:10:14.000 That is not true.
00:10:15.000 That is not true.
00:10:16.000 Upward mobility in the United States remains.
00:10:18.000 And then he says, No one seems to care, which is, of course, Tucker's constant refrain, is that all the people who oppose his bizarre and unsavory policy prescriptions just don't care.
00:10:28.000 They're not caring enough.
00:10:29.000 Very feminized left wing language from Tucker Carlson on a consistent basis. 0.51
00:10:33.000 What about Hamas?
00:10:34.000 He says, I officially don't care about Hamas.
00:10:35.000 Well, that's weird because the dude talks about the Middle East more than literally anyone.
00:10:39.000 Who does a broadcast, Tucker Carlson?
00:10:41.000 He cannot stop talking about the Middle East.
00:10:43.000 He is obsessed with it. 1.00
00:10:45.000 He says the U.S. government should have as its first priority the welfare of its own people, which, of course, I agree with.
00:10:50.000 Then he says, I don't want to be a candidate. 0.66
00:10:53.000 And then he says, I was tempted to say to the New York Times, I'm running on a pro patriarchy ticket just to make sure I gain no new fans.
00:10:59.000 This is always Tucker shtick.
00:11:00.000 He says a bunch of left wing stuff, and then he throws out sort of a right wing red meat, red herring.
00:11:07.000 And then he goes on his merry way.
00:11:09.000 By the way, in this interview, he says that he would deport Sebastian Gorka, a Foreign policy advisor to the president, but that he would not deport Mahmoud Khalil, the Hamas supporter.
00:11:18.000 So that's who Tucker Carlson is.
00:11:19.000 So here's the thing Tucker has no intention of starting a third party.
00:11:23.000 That is not his actual game.
00:11:25.000 He's not going to do that.
00:11:26.000 He's too lazy.
00:11:26.000 He has another game that he has in mind.
00:11:29.000 I'll explain that game in just one second.
00:11:31.000 You might think that because I'm at home, my internet service is protected, that I don't need to use ExpressVPN.
00:11:36.000 I use ExpressVPN even when I'm at home because my internet activity, my data is my own.
00:11:41.000 It's much worse when you travel, by the way.
00:11:42.000 Legitimately, the second you connect to a public Wi Fi, You're basically trusting complete strangers with your internet traffic, and that's why I always turn on ExpressVPN.
00:11:51.000 A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet so the people running the Wi Fi and anyone trying to snoop on the network can't actually see what you are doing online.
00:11:58.000 It's simple.
00:11:59.000 You open that app, you hit the button, and now you're done.
00:12:02.000 It's an easy habit.
00:12:03.000 You can do it in one second.
00:12:05.000 You don't think about that much once you're doing it because it's already taken care of.
00:12:08.000 And there are lots of other perks too.
00:12:09.000 So, for example, ExpressVPN can let you change your location so you can access content that's available in other countries when you're traveling.
00:12:15.000 It's very irritating if you have to go to Canada and you can't watch something on your phone because now you're in Canada.
00:12:20.000 ExpressVPN solves that problem.
00:12:22.000 Find out how you can get up to four extra months by scanning that QR code on screen, clicking the link in the description box below, or by heading on over to expressvpn.comslash Ben Shapiro Show.
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00:12:34.000 Okay, so back to Tucker.
00:12:36.000 He's not launching a third party.
00:12:36.000 What is Tucker doing here?
00:12:37.000 Okay, Tucker is not stupid. 1.00
00:12:40.000 He is ideologically vile, but he is not stupid. 1.00
00:12:43.000 He's not going to run a third party because third parties fail. 0.98
00:12:47.000 So to take the most obvious comp here, they're a form party, right?
00:12:51.000 They're a form party started off.
00:12:53.000 As an afterthought by Ross Perot.
00:12:56.000 So, Ross Perot ran as an independent candidate in 1992, and he was focused largely on the evils of NAFTA and the idea that global economics was bad and all the rest of this.
00:13:07.000 And then he withdrew in July, and then he jumped back in in October, and he ended up with 19% of the popular vote, which was the highest percentage for a third party since Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party in 1912.
00:13:18.000 Well, in 1995, he launched the actual Reform Party, and this was a giant dud.
00:13:22.000 It was an attempt to build out an actual party infrastructure.
00:13:25.000 Now, this is very hard.
00:13:26.000 The United States is built for a two party system because to build a national infrastructure is extremely costly.
00:13:32.000 It is very difficult.
00:13:34.000 Perot ended up winning about 8% of the national popular vote in 1996.
00:13:39.000 And then you saw kind of sporadic reform candidates who would occasionally win.
00:13:42.000 So in 1998, Jesse Ventura, the wrestler, was elected governor of Minnesota on the reform ticket.
00:13:49.000 But by 2000, there was a big split in the reform party, and Pat Buchanan was the nominee.
00:13:53.000 He had left the Republican Party in ire after running and losing in the primaries in 1992.
00:13:58.000 Jesse Ventura then left the party, denouncing it as dysfunctional.
00:14:03.000 And by the time Buchanan ran in 2000, he won 0.5% of the popular vote.
00:14:11.000 And many of the Reform Party voters basically merged back into the GOP.
00:14:15.000 So here's the thing I hope Tucker launches a third party.
00:14:17.000 Why?
00:14:18.000 Because it'll get crushed.
00:14:19.000 Third parties get crushed.
00:14:20.000 I would love to see a clean referendum on Tucker's perverse views, but he's not going to do that.
00:14:24.000 That's not actually the game.
00:14:26.000 Here's the game Tucker knows, Tucker sees that Republicans are probably going to have a bad 26.
00:14:32.000 What he wants is to say that the reason that Republicans had a bad 26 is because they alienated key people like him.
00:14:40.000 And thus, if you wish to win in 28, you need to shift the entire policymaking direction of the party back in Tucker Carlson's direction.
00:14:48.000 Tucker is not launching the Reform Party.
00:14:50.000 Tucker is launching the DSA or the TSA, the Tucker Socialists of America.
00:14:57.000 His goal is for Republicans to lose in 2026.
00:15:00.000 He wants, I mean, he's not hiding the ball here.
00:15:02.000 He has said he's not voting Republican.
00:15:04.000 He wants Republicans to lose.
00:15:06.000 He is here to demoralize conservatives prior to 2026.
00:15:09.000 The worse Republicans do, the more Tucker can then try and pretend that the reason Republicans lost is because they disappointed voters like Tucker Carlson.
00:15:09.000 That is the goal.
00:15:18.000 Now, again, the reality is that if Republicans lose in 26, there will be a lot of factors.
00:15:22.000 It's an off year election.
00:15:23.000 Trump is unpopular and has been unpopular for legitimately a year at this point.
00:15:28.000 But if Republicans don't do well in 2026, it's not because Tucker and his five friends didn't vote for Republicans, but that's the entire game.
00:15:35.000 The entire game is to say, I'm launching a third party because there's so much anger, there is so much upset.
00:15:40.000 That my third party is a legitimate force in American politics, but he's not going to do that because that would actually test the proposition.
00:15:45.000 He's not going to do that.
00:15:46.000 That is the goal.
00:15:47.000 Don't you see?
00:15:48.000 Don't you get it?
00:15:49.000 You need us, Republican Party.
00:15:51.000 You must shift all of your policy prescriptions over toward the pro Putin, pro Iran, pro China, anti America side.
00:15:59.000 You have to do that.
00:16:00.000 What Tucker is doing here is not launching some sort of rival to the Republican Party.
00:16:05.000 He's standing outside the Republican Party and then saying that because they didn't hand it to him, that's why we lost.
00:16:12.000 That's the goal.
00:16:13.000 And that is just yet another reason why we actually have to fight because people who care about the country, people who deeply care about those fundamental principles of America, the stuff we're going to be celebrating this weekend, We actually have to fight two forces.
00:16:25.000 One is the left, along with the DSA, and the other is the force of their twisted allies on the woke right who are holding hands with them, who are hugging them.
00:16:34.000 There is a reason why Tucker Carlson and Chank Weaker are hugging buddies now.
00:16:38.000 Our principles matter.
00:16:40.000 Some of us have had the same principles for our entire political careers.
00:16:43.000 Some of us have never moved, not one iota.
00:16:46.000 Some of us have always defended private property and free markets.
00:16:49.000 Some of us have always defended peace through strength.
00:16:51.000 Some of us have always defended traditional virtue and traditional values.
00:16:55.000 Some of us have not moved.
00:16:56.000 We've been here the entire time.
00:16:59.000 That is why the Daily Wire exists.
00:17:00.000 It's why it was founded, not just as some sort of generalized anti left brand, but because we actually care about fundamental principles that undergird the foundation of the country.
00:17:11.000 So, yeah, as we celebrate July 4th this weekend, and obviously we should because America is the greatest place in the history of planet Earth, and the greatest privilege you have, other than being born into a solid family, is being born in America.
00:17:21.000 We obviously should celebrate, and my family will be.
00:17:23.000 Hey, we're hoping for a July 4th baby.
00:17:26.000 But we all have to keep in mind there's an immense responsibility.
00:17:29.000 That we all bear in these very perilous and difficult times politically.
00:17:33.000 We need to make sure that America makes it from anniversary 250 to 251 and then to 300 and then to 500.
00:17:39.000 And that only happens if we keep standing for the principles that matter.
00:17:43.000 If you don't surrender to the lies of people like Tucker Carlson on the right or Zoran Momdani on the left, who again are hugging now, you don't kowtow to communism and Marxism and socialism masquerading as some sort of common good conservatism, that you don't toe the line for America's enemies, that you don't go to Russia and sniff the bread.
00:18:04.000 The 4th of July is coming.
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00:18:28.000 It's a guide on how to maintain conservative values, that series, not just a celebration of the founding fathers.
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