The Ben Shapiro Show - Are The Republicans Going To Blow 2022? | Ep. 1548

00:00:00.000 Republicans could lose the Senate despite getting serious electoral ground across the country.

00:00:04.000 Rifts reportedly break out between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Joe Biden, and Democrats declare monkeypox a public health emergency.

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:11.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

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00:00:26.000 We'll get to all the news in just one moment.

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00:01:31.000 Alrighty, so we have a bunch of results from Republican primaries across the country, and what they are showing is sort of a mixed record of candidate selection from Republicans.

00:01:40.000 This has not been a sort of major surprise, given the fact that Republicans very often nominate candidates in what are supposed to be wave years, who are kind of sketch.

00:01:50.000 You remember this in 2010, there were a bunch of Republican candidates in what should have been Lean are races who seemed out of the box and then ended up losing very winnable races.

00:01:59.000 Republicans have an unfortunate tendency in primaries to select the people who they think are the most passionate, the most potentially game-changing, and then those people would go on to lose the general election.

00:02:11.000 Famously, William F. Buckley suggested that the art of politics when it comes to primary voting is to select the rightmost candidate who can win.

00:02:17.000 And very often Republican voters forget that last part of the sentence, who can win, and they just select the rightmost candidate.

00:02:22.000 An understandable mistake.

00:02:23.000 This is complicated by cross currents from President Trump, because so much of American politics has now become a litmus test on loyalty.

00:02:30.000 And so when President Trump attacks a candidate, very often people resonate to the candidate that Trump endorses, even if the candidate that Trump endorses isn't exactly a person who is likely to win a general election, simply because they feel the person that Trump is ripping on is not sufficiently loyal to the cause.

00:02:46.000 There are all these varying sort of eddies in American politics.

00:02:49.000 And what this is amounting to is Republicans blowing the chance, perhaps, to actually win back the Senate or win a broader majority in the House of Representatives.

00:02:58.000 Yesterday, Nate Silver's 538 switched its projection to forecast for the first time that Democrats will actually keep the United States Senate.

00:03:04.000 That is a direct result of candidate selection by Republicans in primaries ranging from places like Georgia to places like Pennsylvania.

00:03:11.000 Nate Silver wrote on Twitter, it seems clear there's something happening here and movement toward Democrats in recent polls isn't just statistical noise.

00:03:17.000 He says that something is probably in part or indeed mostly Dobbs, meaning the Supreme Court decision to overrule Roe versus Wade.

00:03:23.000 But there are quite a few factors that have come to look better for Democrats over the past few weeks, including their legislative agenda.

00:03:29.000 Silver's forecasts are based on the deluxe version of his model, which simulates the election 40,000 times to see who wins most often.

00:03:35.000 This sample of 100 outcomes gives you an idea of the range of scenarios the model considers possible, according to Mediaite.

00:03:40.000 In that model, Democrats now win the U.S.

00:03:41.000 Senate majority 56 out of 100 times.

00:03:44.000 The GOP wins the remaining 44 out of 100 times.

00:03:47.000 Now, the reality is that it's possible to overread the political trend lines to sort of green-light Democratic proposals in a way that is inaccurate.

00:03:54.000 The reason that Republicans are on the brink right now is because, again, they've selected a bunch of extraordinarily weak candidates for the general election.

00:04:01.000 Right now, Mehmet Oz is losing to John Fetterman, a person who has openly suggested restricting fracking in a heavy natural gas-producing state, a person who Basically could not be on the campaign trail for a couple of months here because he had a stroke.

00:04:15.000 A person who has taken radical positions on nearly every topic up to and including men participating in women's sports.

00:04:21.000 Oz is losing to Federman specifically because Oz is widely considered in Pennsylvania to be sort of a carpetbagger.

00:04:27.000 Meanwhile, down in Georgia, Herschel Walker, who is a popular figure because of his football past but has no political experience, makes gaffes fairly frequently on the campaign trail.

00:04:37.000 And unfortunately, in the middle of the campaign had a bunch of children that nobody knew about, sort of crop up.

00:04:42.000 That is a weak candidacy.

00:04:44.000 So those are both winnable races that Republicans right now are in a position to lose.

00:04:48.000 If you look at the situation in Ohio, J.D.

00:04:50.000 Vance should win that Senate seat, considering that Ohio has moved pretty solidly red.

00:04:54.000 The problem is that J.D.

00:04:55.000 Vance, running in his first elected campaign, he is not gathering enough money right now to fight against Tim Ryan, who's a very skilled campaigner from the Democratic side of the aisle in the House of Representatives.

00:05:07.000 There are a bunch of seats that Republicans really should win and that they are on the verge of losing.

00:05:11.000 And a lot of that has to do with candidate selection.

00:05:13.000 So this, it is possible to misread the sort of, where the buoy is on top of the waves for the tide.

00:05:22.000 And they very often say with regard to climate change, that weather is not the same as climate change, right?

00:05:25.000 Climate change is the broad change of the climate over the course of a hundred years.

00:05:28.000 Weather is what's happening outside right now.

00:05:30.000 It's very easy in politics to misread the weather for climate change.

00:05:33.000 So instead of looking at the fact that there's a rainstorm and that rainstorm is being caused by bad candidate selection on the right side of the aisle, it's easy instead to say, well, that must be because there's a significant climate change toward Democrats overall in the United States right now.

00:05:46.000 And that I'm not seeing a lot of evidence for.

00:05:49.000 Because the fact is that the long-term trends for the Republican Party seem good.

00:05:53.000 It's the short-term choices that seem pretty weak right now.

00:05:56.000 To take an example, MSNBC's Steve Kornacki, who's a data analyst, he is pointing out that Hispanics are now voting Democrat by a margin of about 13 points.

00:06:04.000 That is down from 38 points.

00:06:05.000 Here was Kornacki last night.

00:06:07.000 One of the major stories to emerge from the 2020 election was the shift we saw in the Hispanic vote.

00:06:13.000 Democrats still won the Hispanic vote in 2020, you can see, by 21 points.

00:06:18.000 But that was down 17 points from 2016.

00:06:21.000 Hillary Clinton won the Hispanic vote by 38, Joe Biden by just 21.

00:06:26.000 And you know what?

00:06:27.000 The trend seems to be continuing in 2022.

00:06:30.000 What you're looking at here, this is the average of every poll we've got out there that's been taken over the last three months that looks at the Hispanic vote.

00:06:39.000 And you put them all together, Hispanics are now voting Democratic by just 13 points.

00:06:44.000 So from 38 to 21, now down in the 2022 midterm polling to a Democratic advantage of just 13 points.

00:06:53.000 Okay, that is very bad news long-term for the Democrats who have relied very heavily on the Hispanic vote, breaking extraordinarily largely in their favor in, for example, senatorial, gubernatorial, and presidential elections.

00:07:03.000 So the long-term trend lines with regard to Republican politics here are actually really, really good.

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00:08:18.000 Meanwhile, in formerly battleground states like Florida, you're starting to see significant movement away from the Democratic Party.

00:08:24.000 If you look at, for example, the Miami-Dade voter registration numbers, what you are seeing is bad news for the Democrats.

00:08:31.000 Between July 1st and August 1st of this year, for example, in Miami-Dade County, total registration Republicans picked up something like 3,200 votes.

00:08:39.000 Democrats picked up 124 votes in that same period.

00:08:43.000 So you're seeing Republican voter registration outpacing Democratic voter registration in terms of gains in very significant ways in Miami-Dade, which is a very Democratic county in Florida.

00:08:54.000 If you start to see those margins coming down in places like Miami-Dade, then basically you can take Florida off the board as a potential purple or blue state for Democrats.

00:09:01.000 And in fact, Amy Walter, again over at FiveThirtyEight, she's pointing out that if you look at the Electoral College right now, The Electoral College increasingly is favoring Republicans, because a lot of the states that have a lot of electoral votes are moving from purple to red.

00:09:13.000 And so, theoretically, you could have a Republican candidate lose by three percentage points in the popular vote, and the Democrats still win only about 218 electoral votes.

00:09:21.000 So there's some long-term trends for the Republican Party that are very good here.

00:09:25.000 One of the other long-term trends here is that you're starting to see the Republican Party come back together around candidates who are well-known by their constituencies.

00:09:32.000 So, for example, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an entire piece today dedicated to the proposition that the GOP civil war in Georgia is basically over.

00:09:40.000 Remember, there's a massive civil war in Georgia over Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger, and this was largely based on the fact that Donald Trump was very ticked off over the fact that Georgia certified the election on behalf of Joe Biden because, frankly, there was no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to overturn the electoral results in Georgia, despite all of the fulminating by President Trump, who never actually provided the evidence in court or anywhere else.

00:10:01.000 that Georgia had had gamed the election in a way that was provable in any way.

00:10:06.000 Now the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is saying that Governor Brian Kemp's biggest political challenge might have hinged on whether he could win over the fractious Republican base amid an onslaught of insults from former President Donald Trump.

00:10:17.000 Now the bigger question might be whether he'll earn more votes from Republicans than any other candidate on the ballot.

00:10:23.000 Meaning Brian Kemp is pretty popular in the state of Georgia.

00:10:26.000 He overcame David Perdue by a margin of 71 to 29.

00:10:29.000 That was Donald Trump's preferred candidate.

00:10:31.000 And what this again suggests that when Republicans make decisions with their head instead of sort of the knee-jerk reactionary What do I think of a candidate I've never heard of based on something that President Trump says?

00:10:41.000 Because I know the media hates Trump, so if Trump likes somebody, that must mean that the person is good.

00:10:44.000 Or if Trump attacks somebody, that means that the person is bad.

00:10:47.000 When voters actually know the candidate that you're talking about, very often, that candidate does better than would be suggested by Trump endorsing or not endorsing in a race.

00:10:54.000 So last night, for example, you had a bunch of mixed results in primaries around the country.

00:10:58.000 I mean, really, really mixed results in primaries around the country.

00:11:03.000 And the point I want to make here is that when you talk about whether Republicans lose the 2022 cycle or they don't perform as well as they should or whether they underperform, a lot of that is going to be misread by the media as reflecting broader trends in American politics that simply are not there.

00:11:17.000 So, for example, last night in Missouri, Eric Reitens, who had run an extraordinary Trumpy campaign, he had cut an ad in which he literally said he was rhino hunting while carrying around a shotgun, pretending he was breaking into the home with SWAT officers of one of his political opponents.

00:11:33.000 Eric Reitens went down to flaming defeat in that primary.

00:11:36.000 He finished like a distant third in that primary to Eric Schmidt, who ended up winning that primary and will probably go on to win The Senate seat in Missouri without Republicans having to expend tens of millions of dollars to hold that Senate seat.

00:11:48.000 So that's some good news.

00:11:49.000 So Trump had sort of backed Eric Greitens.

00:11:51.000 Greitens went down a flaming defeat.

00:11:53.000 On the other hand, in Arizona, Carrie Lake looks like she is going to pull out a very narrow victory over Karen Robson. 1.00

00:11:59.000 Robson was endorsed by Mike Pence.

00:12:00.000 Carrie Lake was endorsed by Trump.

00:12:01.000 This was very heavily focused on by Trump.

00:12:04.000 Again, I think one of the problems here is that nobody actually knew the person that Carrie Lake was running against on a broad national level.

00:12:09.000 This is not a particularly famous person.

00:12:12.000 And so when Trump is able to intervene in close races, he's still able to tip the balance.

00:12:17.000 But the notion that Trump has sort of overweening power to simply endorse And that person inevitably wins?

00:12:23.000 I don't think that that's correct.

00:12:24.000 It's more of a mixed bag here for Republicans in terms of how they pick their candidates.

00:12:27.000 The rule of Trump when it comes to Trump's engagement in these primary races is if he engages in a race in which either the candidate who's being attacked is perceived as insufficiently loyal to the Republican Party or where no one knows the candidates, he has outsized weight.

00:12:42.000 In races where people know the candidates and are not perceived as being loyal to the Democratic Party or as lackeys for the media, then Trump doesn't have nearly as much weight, which may hold some lessons for 2024.

00:12:52.000 If Donald Trump attacks somebody who's widely liked by the Republican base, those attacks may not have the same effect as they would on a candidate who is a relative unknown, for example.

00:13:03.000 Where Trump did have an effect is in potentially losing some seats that were quite winnable, right?

00:13:09.000 For example, there is a race that was happening in Michigan, the third district, and that race was between Peter Mayer, who voted in favor of impeaching Trump, and a guy named John Gibbs, who's a Trump-endorsed challenger.

00:13:21.000 And Trump had put Outside focus on this race because he hates anybody who voted in favor of his impeachment.

00:13:26.000 Now understand that this district is a Biden plus a district is a heavy Biden district.

00:13:31.000 Mayor was holding that district as a quote unquote moderate Republican who had voted in favor of impeachment.

00:13:36.000 John Gibbs won that race, but the reason that he won that race is not just because Trump endorsed in that race.

00:13:41.000 It's because the Democrats literally spent millions of dollars promoting John Gibbs.

00:13:46.000 By suggesting in ads that he was, quote-unquote, too extreme for the state, which was a way of getting Republicans to go out and vote for him.

00:13:54.000 In fact, Peter Mayer wrote an entire piece over at commonsense.news talking about this.

00:14:00.000 this.

00:14:01.000 He said, Tomorrow I'm facing off against John Gibbs in the Republican primary for Michigan's third congressional district.

00:14:05.000 The race is closed.

00:14:06.000 Internal polling has us within single digits of one another, but Gibbs and I couldn't be more different.

00:14:10.000 I'm a staunch defender of the Constitution and the rule of law.

00:14:12.000 Accordingly, I became the first incoming freshman to recognize former VP Biden's presidential Then, three days after I was sworn into office in January 2021, I was in the House chamber when rioters overran the Capitol.

00:14:23.000 A week later, I joined nine other Republicans, including Liz Cheney, to impeach then-President Trump with a heavy but resolute conscience.

00:14:28.000 I'm the only freshman in history to impeach a president of his own party.

00:14:31.000 Gibbs, a former political appointee in the Trump administration, denies the results of the 2020 presidential election.

00:14:36.000 He's accused Obama officials of taking part in bizarre satanic rituals. 0.94

00:14:39.000 He has defended anti-Semites on his now-locked Twitter account and has tweeted that Democrats are the party of Islam, gender-bending, anti-police, you racist. 0.57

00:14:46.000 Since the election of Donald Trump, Democrats have claimed democracy is under grave threat.

00:14:50.000 So why exactly are they funding Gibbs?

00:14:52.000 They launched a $435,000 ad buy to promote Gibbs in the final days leading up to the primary.

00:14:59.000 So Democrats are injecting themselves in these races to try and boost candidates who they think are going to lose on the Republican side of the aisle.

00:15:07.000 And some Republicans, predictably enough, are going along with it based on their sense that if, for example, you voted in favor of impeachment, this means that they would rather lose the seat, presumably, than allow you to continue to sit in the seat, right?

00:15:18.000 This is not a Liz Cheney situation where Liz Cheney is going to go down to flaming defeat in her primary and she's probably going to lose to another Republican who's going to go on to represent that district. 1.00

00:15:26.000 You're talking here about a swing district in which a Republican holds a Biden district.

00:15:31.000 That seat is likely to go for the Democrats at this point.

00:15:37.000 It's very easy, as I say, to misread the sort of trend lines by focusing in on these individual controversial political points.

00:15:45.000 The trend lines are still in favor of Republicans in the mid to long term.

00:15:48.000 But Republicans can indeed blow short term elections through making mistakes.

00:15:52.000 So it's easy to look at the Gibbs story and think, OK, well, Republicans, they They're facing a bunch of headwinds.

00:15:57.000 Well, no, maybe they're just not picking great candidates, and that's sort of a problem.

00:16:01.000 And that's why Democrats are promoting those candidates. 0.95

00:16:03.000 There's more on that in a second.

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00:17:06.000 And be sure to write Shapiro in there, how did you hear about us box?

00:17:08.000 So they know that I sent you.

00:17:10.000 I'll give you an example of misreading the long-term trend.

00:17:12.000 You can see the media is going to do this a lot today.

00:17:13.000 So the media are very into the story from Kansas.

00:17:16.000 So there was an amendment that was put on the ballot In Kansas, that essentially would have amended the constitution of the state of Kansas to get rid of the codification Roe versus Wade in the state of Kansas, right?

00:17:30.000 In the state of Kansas, the quote-unquote right to abortion is protected by the state constitution.

00:17:36.000 This amendment would have gotten rid of that in the state constitution and then it would have moved that back to the legislature. 0.96

00:17:42.000 So the yes vote would have essentially removed this from the purview of the of the courts and moved it back into the realm of the legislature.

00:17:50.000 Now, I will say that the way that this thing was phrased on the ballot is extremely confusing.

00:17:54.000 It is not a particularly clear amendment.

00:17:56.000 And the way that you write these amendments, everyone knows this, right, left, and center, when you write referenda for the ballot, the way that those referenda are written has a major impact on how people actually vote.

00:18:05.000 But you can't overcome the simple fact that in this particular election, 60% of people of Kansas said they did not want this thing removed from the Constitution and moved back into the realm of the legislature.

00:18:17.000 So this, of course, led Democrats and members of the media, but I repeat myself, To suggest that this is going to lead to a broad wave of Democratic elections across the board.

00:18:25.000 That this just demonstrates the ire against the overturning of Roe vs. Wade.

00:18:29.000 This is going to drive Democrats to the polls.

00:18:30.000 It's going to get them all excited.

00:18:31.000 That is not what this election is.

00:18:33.000 You have to dramatically misread the data to come up with that particular conclusion.

00:18:37.000 The reason you have to misread that data is because if you look at the actual voter turnout in Kansas, which was up pretty much across the board, what you see is that Republican voter turnout, because it was a primary day, was way higher than Democratic voter turnout.

00:18:50.000 In the Republican primary, for example, for governor, what you see is that approximately 264,000 Democrats showed up to vote in the Democratic primary.

00:19:01.000 A whopping 420,000 Republicans showed up to vote in the Republican primary, which is not a close primary.

00:19:08.000 Which means 420,000 compared to 264-265,000.

00:19:12.000 You're talking about, like, easily 30% more Republicans showed up to vote.

00:19:19.000 20-30% more Republicans showed up to vote than Democrats, and yet the attempt to decodify Roe in the Kansas state constitution went down to flaming defeat by a margin of about 60-40.

00:19:30.000 And even in areas that Trump won, Many Republicans voted in favor of retaining the quote-unquote right to abortion in the Kansas state constitution.

00:19:42.000 So there are some Kansas counties that Trump won.

00:19:45.000 For example, Leavenworth County.

00:19:47.000 Trump won that county by 21 percent.

00:19:49.000 61 to 39 people voted in favor of keeping the amendment in the state constitution that codifies Roe.

00:19:58.000 So in other words, what this actually shows, so Democrats are going to say what this shows is tremendous upsurge in anger over Roe v. Wade.

00:20:05.000 That is not what this shows.

00:20:06.000 What this shows is that people are congenitally predisposed to maintaining the status quo in nearly every area of life, particularly controversial social issues.

00:20:14.000 It also shows, you know, people are saying this is going to be transferable, this sort of passion is going to be transferable to federal levels.

00:20:19.000 I don't see how that happens.

00:20:20.000 People are saying, well, this just demonstrates that Roe never should have been overturned.

00:20:23.000 Weird, because it seems like this is a state vote to do what the state wants to do.

00:20:27.000 So actually, it undercuts the idea that this is going to be a national election issue for Democrats, because it'll get sent back to the states, which is what happens when you overturn Roe, and then the states are going to get to decide.

00:20:38.000 So Kansas is going to have very different laws than, say, Oklahoma.

00:20:41.000 And that's sort of what the court suggested.

00:20:43.000 So it's possible to overread these trends and you're going to see a lot of political commentators overread these trends in an attempt to prop up the Democratic Party long term.

00:20:52.000 They can do this.

00:20:53.000 I don't think it's going to work particularly well for them.

00:20:56.000 This is why you're hearing all these narratives about revitalized Democratic strength on the ballot.

00:21:02.000 Democrats are going to surge here.

00:21:04.000 I don't think they're going to surge.

00:21:05.000 I think what you're going to see is basically what the polls say right now is where the polls are going to be all the way up through the election.

00:21:09.000 You're going to see some candidates on the Republican side lose because they shouldn't have been nominated.

00:21:13.000 You're going to see some Republicans who are kind of weak win because it's a bad year for Democrats.

00:21:19.000 But what you're going to see is the media trying to convince themselves desperately that Democrats have come up with a new formula for winning by looking at particular instances of weather and then misinterpreting that as political climate.

00:21:31.000 This is their pitch, after all.

00:21:33.000 This is why Pete Buttigieg is out there on national TV talking about how when we're getting infrastructures on, this is going to change our electoral fate.

00:21:38.000 Again, I think that that is whistling past the graveyard here for Democrats.

00:21:41.000 Here's Pete Buttigieg trying to do it.

00:21:43.000 Last week we announced a use of part of the money in order to make more transit stations accessible.

00:21:48.000 A couple weeks before that we put out the first wave of airport terminal grants.

00:21:52.000 We're improving 84 airport terminals around the country.

00:21:55.000 It's everything that we've wanted for a long time in American infrastructure after years and years, years and years of talk.

00:22:02.000 The last president talked a good game about this.

00:22:04.000 Now we're actually getting it done.

00:22:07.000 And the Washington Post is pushing the same notion, right?

00:22:09.000 The Washington Post is trying to push Senator Kyrsten Sinema, for example, to ram through this $433 billion environmental climate change boondoggle bill.

00:22:17.000 And they say that they need to do this because, after all, this will demonstrate that they can deliver on their promises.

00:22:23.000 The Washington Post editorial board says Ms.

00:22:24.000 Sinema shouldn't sink this bill, most of whose contents she has indicated in the past she supports.

00:22:28.000 She shouldn't sink it because she opposes closing the carried interest loophole.

00:22:32.000 That provision unambiguously aids those who need most at the expense only of those who need it, not at all.

00:22:36.000 But again, the Washington Post is under the belief that if Democrats do more democratic policy, this will make them more popular.

00:22:42.000 And I think that they are trying to string together a series of questionable data points to come to that particular conclusion.

00:22:49.000 So in other words, could Republicans blow 2022?

00:22:51.000 Sure.

00:22:52.000 Republicans can always blow things.

00:22:54.000 You can always count on the Republicans to miss every opportunity.

00:22:56.000 This is a thing that Republicans routinely do.

00:22:59.000 But if you are using this to try and chart trend lines on behalf of the Democratic Party, I think that you are going to be sadly mistaken.

00:23:07.000 Over the course of the next few years.

00:23:09.000 Because again, the Democratic Party has moved too far left for the mainstream of America right now.

00:23:14.000 And bad and arrogant Republican primary selections of people who are unlikely to win in the general because they get overconfident and so they nominate AOC candidates in Peter Mayer areas.

00:23:26.000 Doing kind of what Democrats have done in some areas where they nominate extreme candidates to fill moderate seats.

00:23:33.000 Again, bad candidate selection does not make up for the broad trend lines in American politics, which are cutting against the Democrats.

00:23:38.000 So don't misread the tea leaves if you're watching this thing and determine that Democrats are therefore likely to achieve parity.

00:23:44.000 Republicans, again, as I said before, Republicans can not regain the Senate.

00:23:49.000 They can regain the House by, say, 15 or 20 seats as opposed to 40 seats.

00:23:54.000 And all of that can be because of mistakes in how they pick their candidates.

00:23:58.000 The trend lines are still the trend lines.

00:24:00.000 So don't make the mistake of thinking that just because Republicans are selecting bad candidates, this spells doom for Republicans down the line.

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00:25:18.000 Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi has now arrived in Taiwan.

00:25:21.000 To her credit, Nancy Pelosi has always been very pro-Taiwan going back decades.

00:25:24.000 According to the Washington Post, Nancy Pelosi's adversarial relationship with China was thrust back into the spotlight on Tuesday as she touched down in Taiwan as part of a congressional trip through Asia. 0.71

00:25:33.000 Her visit to the self-governed island China claims as its own came in the face of threats from Beijing, as well as pushback within her own party.

00:25:38.000 Her visit is a significant signal of American foreign policy from the politician second in line to the presidency.

00:25:44.000 It's the first trip to Taiwan by a House speaker since Newt Gingrich did it in 1997.

00:25:48.000 Beijing has sent warnings of retaliation ahead of her visit.

00:25:51.000 Pelosi was undeterred.

00:25:52.000 She wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, in the face of the Chinese Communist Party's accelerating aggression, our congressional delegation's visit should be seen as an unequivocal statement that America stands with Taiwan, our democratic partner, as it defends itself and its freedom.

00:26:03.000 The trip marks the culmination of a 35-year career spent as an outspoken critic of China, even when domestic issues overshadowed her foreign policy work.

00:26:10.000 This week's trip to Taiwan marked a surprising bipartisan moment as Republicans joined congressional Democrats in encouraging Pelosi's travel, a notable about-face for a party that staunchly categorizes Democrats as weak on the communist country.

00:26:22.000 Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and 25 other GOP senators released a statement moments after Pelosi landed in Taiwan, lauding her defiance of China.

00:26:31.000 So again, on sort of an ideological level, there is No serious question that the Speaker of the House should be able to visit Taiwan, nor is there a serious question that Taiwan should be viewed as an independent country, that right now it is only the prospect of war with China that prevents Taiwan from being openly acknowledged as an independent country.

00:26:50.000 China, for its part, is ratcheting up its military drills.

00:26:53.000 So there's talk that they would shoot down Pelosi's plane.

00:26:54.000 That, of course, was never going to happen.

00:26:56.000 But according to Bloomberg, China will conduct large-scale military drills and missile tests around Taiwan in a defiant show of force after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the highest-ranking U.S.

00:27:04.000 politician to land on the island in a quarter century.

00:27:06.000 Beijing announced six exclusion zones encircling Taiwan to facilitate live-fire military drills from Thursday to Sunday.

00:27:12.000 with some of the areas crossing into the island's territorial waters. The size and scope of the areas could set the stage for China's most provocative actions near Taiwan in decades.

00:27:19.000 Separately, the PLA, the People's Liberation Army of China, said exercises could start as soon as Tuesday, leaving open the possibility of military activities around Taiwan while Pelosi was still on the island. The operations include long-range live firing in the Taiwan Strait and regular guided fire testing in the eastern waters off Taiwan from Tuesday evening, according to the PLA. Xi Yi, a spokesperson for the East So, two things can be true at once.

00:27:38.000 quote, this action is targeted at the U.S.'s shocking recent major escalation on the Taiwan issue and serves as a serious warning to Taiwanese independence forces or those who are seeking independence.

00:27:47.000 Meanwhile, the White House is trying to figure out exactly what Nancy Pelosi is even doing there.

00:27:53.000 So two things can be true at once.

00:27:55.000 One, it should not be verboten for the Speaker of the House to visit Taiwan.

00:27:58.000 Two, the Speaker of the House should have some sort of cognizable rationale for visiting Taiwan at this time if you are actually attempting to achieve something.

00:28:06.000 Like, every action should be an attempt to achieve a certain effect.

00:28:09.000 I'm not sure what this action is intended to achieve other than solidarity.

00:28:13.000 I'm in favor of the solidarity.

00:28:14.000 The question is whether the expression of solidarity was necessary in order to Yes, state where the United States is on Taiwan, or as I suggested yesterday, whether Pelosi has essentially set up the United States for a fall here by making pledges that the United States is not willing to actually fulfill, which is a habit, unfortunately, for the United States government under bipartisan administrations.

00:28:35.000 They make commitments to places and then they proceed to run away from those places when actual hard power is demonstrated by America's enemies.

00:28:41.000 And the most recent example of this, of course, is Afghanistan, which we'll get to in just a minute.

00:28:45.000 According To the Washington Post, the White House worked urgently to de-escalate tensions with China, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Wednesday with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and other officials during a high-profile visit to the self-governing island against the administration's wishes, hoping to head off a geopolitical crisis amid threats and military maneuvers by Beijing.

00:29:03.000 White House officials warned that China is preparing itself for possible aggressive actions in response to Pelosi's visit beyond this week.

00:29:09.000 They reiterated forcefully that the Chinese Communist Party should not use the visit as a pretext To increase military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait.

00:29:15.000 But of course, that's exactly what China is going to do. 0.79

00:29:17.000 White House spokesman John Kirby, who is the National Security Council spokesperson, he said, we've seen a number of announcements from the PRC in just the last several hours that are unfortunately right in line with what we had anticipated.

00:29:28.000 China has positioned itself to take further steps. We expect it will continue to react over a longer term horizon. Pelosi said, quote, we will not abandon our commitments to Taiwan.

00:29:37.000 We are proud of our enduring friendship.

00:29:39.000 Tsai presented Pelosi with a medal, the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon for her work promoting US-Taiwan ties.

00:29:46.000 Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor, spoke with his Chinese counterpart to defend Pelosi's right to visit, but even so did not think the trip was a good idea, according to the White House.

00:29:53.000 Sullivan expressed concerns about Pelosi's trip to multiple administration officials and asked for suggestions on how to dissuade her from traveling to Taiwan.

00:30:01.000 And now the White House's perspective on all of this?

00:30:04.000 is reflected in a piece by Thomas Friedman, the egregiously bad columnist for the New York Times.

00:30:08.000 But Friedman is basically a lackey for the Biden administration.

00:30:11.000 You remember that he recently wrote a piece in which he went to the White House and he sat down with Joe Biden and he talked about how Joe Biden and he were basically best friends.

00:30:18.000 So what that means is that Thomas Friedman, the foreign policy columnist for the New York Times, who can be bought for a cheap meal at a third-rate hotel in a third-world country.

00:30:27.000 That really is how Thomas Friedman writes his columns.

00:30:28.000 He goes to a third-world country You get him a cheap meal and then he talks about the wonders of your country.

00:30:33.000 It's a cheap date.

00:30:34.000 But his column today is a rather fascinating window into what must be the thinking over at the White House.

00:30:39.000 And it has some sort of buried leads about the relationship between what's going on in Ukraine and what's currently going on with regard to Taiwan and China.

00:30:46.000 He has a piece today called Why Pelosi's Visit to Taiwan is Utterly Reckless.

00:30:49.000 And here's what he says.

00:30:49.000 He says, quote, I have a lot of respect for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but if she does go ahead with the visit to Taiwan this week against President Biden's wishes, she'll be doing something that is utterly reckless, dangerous, dangerous and irresponsible, which is very strong language.

00:31:01.000 Nothing good will come of it.

00:31:02.000 Taiwan will not be more secure or more prosperous as a result of this purely symbolic visit.

00:31:06.000 And a lot of bad things could happen.

00:31:08.000 These include a Chinese military response that could result in the US being plunged into direct or indirect conflict with a nuclear armed Russia and a nuclear armed China at the same time.

00:31:16.000 If you think our European allies, who are facing an existential war with Russia over Ukraine, will join us if there is U.S.

00:31:21.000 conflict with China over Taiwan, triggered by this unnecessary visit, you are badly misreading the world.

00:31:26.000 Let's start with the indirect conflict with Russia and how Pelosi's visit to Taiwan now looms over it.

00:31:31.000 says Thomas Friedman, quote, there are moments in international relations when you need to keep your eyes on the prize. Today, that prize is crystal clear.

00:31:37.000 We must ensure that Ukraine is able at a minimum to blunt and at a maximum reverse Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion, which if it succeeds will pose a direct threat to the stability of the whole European Union.

00:31:46.000 To help create the greatest possibility of Ukraine reversing Putin's invasion, Biden and his national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, held a series of very tough meetings with China's leadership, imploring Beijing not to enter the Ukraine conflict by providing military assistance to Russia. And particularly now when Putin's arsenal has been been diminished by five months of grinding war.

00:32:02.000 Biden, according to a senior U.S.

00:32:03.000 official, personally told President Xi Jinping that if China entered the war in Ukraine on Russia's side, Beijing would be risking access to its two most important export markets, the United States and the European Union.

00:32:13.000 China is one of the best countries in the world at manufacturing drones, which are precisely what Putin's troops need most right now.

00:32:18.000 By all indications, U.S.

00:32:19.000 officials tell me, China has responded by not providing military aid to Putin at a time when the U.S.

00:32:23.000 and NATO have been giving Ukraine intelligence support and a significant number of advanced weapons that have done serious damage to the military of Russia, China's ostensible ally.

00:32:30.000 So in other words, the Biden administration reached out to China, and under the table, they basically said to them, we need you to stop funding Russia.

00:32:36.000 And China, wishing to stay out of this thing, basically said, okay, we'll stay out of this thing for the moment.

00:32:41.000 So, says Thomas Friedman, given all of that, why in the world would the Speaker of the House choose to visit Taiwan and deliberately provoke China now, becoming the most senior U.S.

00:32:47.000 official to visit Taiwan since Newt Gingrich in 1997, when China was far weaker economically and militarily?

00:32:53.000 The timing could not be worse.

00:32:54.000 Dear reader, the Ukraine war is not over.

00:32:56.000 Privately, U.S.

00:32:57.000 officials are a lot more concerned about Ukraine's leadership than they are letting on.

00:33:00.000 There is deep mistrust between the White House and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine considerably more than has been reported.

00:33:06.000 Okay, well, what Friedman is doing here is actually sort of fascinating because what it really means, I've said this for a while, when it comes to American foreign policy, of course there's always going to be a moral component to American foreign policy because we are advancing our interests.

00:33:18.000 But advancing our interests is the morality.

00:33:20.000 In other words, there's a difference between saying, as neoliberals and neocons have said for a very long time, that advancing morality in the world It's really neoliberals who have said this.

00:33:31.000 The reading of neocons is a little bit strained, but neoliberals have said for a very long time, the Woodrow Wilson ideal, we spread democracy all over the world, okay?

00:33:37.000 The reality is that we spread America's interests over the world, and those coincide very often with democracy, but not always with democracy.

00:33:44.000 Those coincide with human rights, but unfortunately, not always with human rights, because sometimes you have to pick the best of two bad options.

00:33:51.000 Real politik, which is the generalized understanding that power matters in international relations, underscores all of this.

00:33:57.000 And so one of the things that Thomas Friedman says in this column is that the reason we're supporting Ukraine is not just because autocracy versus democracy or anything like that.

00:34:06.000 It's because we are trying to bloody Russia's nose to prevent China from looking at this and then invading Taiwan, for example. 0.57

00:34:13.000 We are trying to prevent sovereign countries from being invaded because we wish to retain the balance of power in Europe.

00:34:19.000 We should retain the deterrence on NATO's borders.

00:34:22.000 These are all very good real politic reasons for defending Ukraine.

00:34:25.000 But the way the Ukraine war was pitched to the United States public was that we were defending a nascent democracy in Ukraine against the predations of the Russians.

00:34:32.000 There's truth to that, but there are also some falsities to that.

00:34:35.000 Namely, that Ukraine remains an extraordinarily corrupt place. 1.00

00:34:37.000 I mean, we all used to talk about this.

00:34:38.000 Joe Biden used to talk about this.

00:34:39.000 He used to talk about how he threatened to withhold a billion dollars in foreign aid from Ukraine unless they fired particular prosecutors that the Obama-Biden administration thought were corrupt.

00:34:50.000 So, there are now riffs opening up between Vladimir Zelensky and, for example...

00:34:54.000 And for example, Joe Biden.

00:34:56.000 So says Thomas Friedman.

00:34:58.000 There is funny business going on in Kiev.

00:34:59.000 On July 17, Zelensky fired his country's prosecutor general and the leader of its domestic intelligence agency, the most significant shakeup in his government since the Russian invasion in February.

00:35:08.000 It would be the equivalent of Joe Biden firing Merrick Garland and Bill Burns on the same day.

00:35:12.000 But I've not seen any reporting that convincingly explains what that was all about.

00:35:15.000 It's as if we don't want to look too closely under the hood in Kiev for fear of what corruption or antics we might see when we have invested so much there.

00:35:22.000 More on the dangers of that another day.

00:35:23.000 But again, the dangers of that are a pretty significant danger, are they not?

00:35:29.000 In short, says Thomas Friedman, this Ukraine war is so not over, so not stable, so not without dangerous surprises that can pop out on any given day.

00:35:35.000 In the middle of all this, we're going to risk a conflict with China over Taiwan, provoked by an arbitrary and frivolous visit by the Speaker of the House?

00:35:41.000 It's geopolitics 101.

00:35:42.000 You don't court a two-front war with the other two superpowers at the same time.

00:35:47.000 And then he says that this could trigger some sort of indirect conflict with China.

00:35:52.000 Nancy Pelosi's visit.

00:35:55.000 He says, to be sure, there's an argument that Biden should just call Xi's bluff, back Pelosi to the hilt, and tell Xi that if he threatens Taiwan in any way, it's China that will get burned. That might work. It might feel good for a day. It might also start World War III.

00:36:05.000 In my view, Taiwan should have just asked Pelosi not to come at this time. I admire Taiwan and the economy and democracy that it has built since the end of World War II. I visited Taiwan numerous times over the past 30 years, and I've personally witnessed how much that has changed in Taiwan in that time. But there's one thing that has not changed.

00:36:19.000 It's geography.

00:36:20.000 Taiwan is still a tiny island now with 23 million people roughly 100 miles off the coast of a giant mainland China with 1.4 billion people who claim Taiwan as part of the Chinese motherland.

00:36:28.000 Places that forget their geography get in trouble.

00:36:31.000 He says, if we're going to get into a conflict with Beijing, at least let it be on our timing and our issues.

00:36:38.000 There are a bunch of buried leads here.

00:36:40.000 One of the buried leads is that we ought to start treating foreign policy with the seriousness it deserves instead of the sort of bizarre sloganeering that suggests that the reason to fight Russia in Ukraine is to preserve the possibility of gay rights in Ukraine, or the possibility of democracy in Ukraine, or because Ukraine is not corrupt.

00:36:56.000 And you can't mention the fact that, for example, the Azov Brigade, which is very active in the fight against Russia, was two years ago being reported as sort of a breeding ground for neo-Nazism, right?

00:37:05.000 You're supposed to ignore all of that.

00:37:08.000 And the reason you're supposed to ignore all of that is, of course, because President Biden is president.

00:37:11.000 If Donald Trump were president, then we would presumably be covering that in enormous ways.

00:37:15.000 But what this really spells out when it comes to Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan is that the United States has to get more serious about its foreign policy.

00:37:22.000 I keep saying this over and over.

00:37:23.000 Strong economy means strong military.

00:37:25.000 Strong military means the possibility of deterring aggressive action by America's enemies.

00:37:29.000 Posturing, instead of doing those things, is actively dangerous.

00:37:33.000 That's true whether you are posturing about Ukraine.

00:37:35.000 It's true whether you are posturing about Taiwan.

00:37:37.000 You gotta be able to back things.

00:37:40.000 There has to be a fist of steel inside the velvet glove.

00:37:43.000 If you're going to bloviate, you better be able to back up the bloviation. 1.00

00:37:46.000 I'm not sure that what Nancy Pelosi is doing here actually backs up the bloviation. 0.96

00:37:51.000 And so, Thomas Friedman happens to be kind of correct here.

00:37:56.000 And in the Biden administration's view of Nancy Pelosi's visit, happens to be, I think, rather correct.

00:38:02.000 And I'm a big backer of Taiwanese independence, straight up.

00:38:05.000 But there's what you back and there's what you can actually achieve.

00:38:08.000 And right now that's not something that is actually widely achievable.

00:38:12.000 Again, I think that it's fascinating to watch, for example.

00:38:16.000 That rift breakout between Zelensky and Joe Biden.

00:38:18.000 What needs to happen, by the way, in Ukraine is that Joe Biden actually needs to do the thing that any politician with stones would do.

00:38:23.000 He needs to say to Vladimir Zelensky, we are going to give you enough material to make a big push before the winter, and then you're making a settlement.

00:38:29.000 And I will take the blame if you can't.

00:38:31.000 I understand that 80% of your public wants to keep fighting.

00:38:33.000 I can't let you do that.

00:38:34.000 The reason I can't let you do that is because we have other interests on the globe aside from what is happening alone in Ukraine.

00:38:40.000 So, sort of a fascinating breakdown of what's going on in terms of foreign policy, where a lot of chaos is breaking out.

00:38:47.000 The United States has to stop its habit of big talk.

00:38:50.000 It's the opposite of Teddy Roosevelt, right?

00:38:52.000 Speak softly and carry a big stick, it's the opposite.

00:38:53.000 We now speak loudly and carry a very, very small stick, as it turns out, all too often.

00:38:58.000 And that leads to miscommunications.

00:39:00.000 So as it turns out, the habit of American foreign policy is to make big promises and then not fulfill them.

00:39:05.000 Well, I'll tell you who's not going to make you a big promise and not fulfill it.

00:39:08.000 People who are going to be credible with you.

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00:40:14.000 All right, folks, this summer we launched Daily Wire Plus.

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00:40:47.000 That's DailyWirePlus.com right now.

00:40:50.000 Speaking of American foreign policy, in which we spoke loudly and carried too small a stick, Afghanistan is the first case in point. 0.92

00:40:56.000 So, there was a lot of triumphalism yesterday from the Biden administration about the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri.

00:41:01.000 That was an attempt to cover for the fact that Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in the middle of Kabul, which is the capital.

00:41:07.000 of Afghanistan, which until five minutes ago was controlled by American allied forces.

00:41:12.000 And now thanks to Joe Biden is controlled by the Taliban.

00:41:14.000 Not only was Zawahiri killed in the middle of Kabul, he was actually killed while standing on the balcony of a house that was apparently owned by a New York Times op-ed contributor.

00:41:24.000 There's a guy named Sirahuddin Haqqani, who's the deputy leader of the Taliban.

00:41:28.000 The house that al-Zawahiri was killed in was owned by Sirahuddin Haqqani, who was a member of the Haqqani Network.

00:41:36.000 These were supposed to be our friends and our allies, according to the Biden administration.

00:41:40.000 They were going to help facilitate the fight against ISIS-K.

00:41:44.000 He actually wrote a piece in the New York Times, amazing, the New York Times, which fired an opinion editor for having run a piece by Tom Cotton about the possibility of actually using the National Guard to quell riots in the United States, a widely popular position.

00:41:55.000 He was not fired and nobody at the New York Times was fired for actually running an op-ed from one of the leaders of the Taliban who actively promotes Al Qaeda members and leaders living in his house.

00:42:07.000 That piece was a masterwork of misdirection and lies.

00:42:12.000 He said in this piece, by the way.

00:42:14.000 It's worth reading some of it.

00:42:15.000 Haqqani. 0.95

00:42:15.000 He said, quote, we did not choose our war with the foreign coalition led by the United States. 0.95

00:42:19.000 We were forced to defend ourselves. The withdrawal of foreign forces has been our first and foremost demand that we today stand at the threshold of a peace agreement with the United States is no small milestone. We are aware of the concerns and questions in and outside of Afghanistan about the kind of government we would have after the foreign troops withdraw. My response to such concerns is that it will depend on a consensus among Afghans.

00:42:36.000 We should not let our worries get in the way of a process of genuine discussion and deliberation free for the first time from from foreign domination and interference.

00:42:44.000 And of course, he didn't mention the word terror anywhere in that piece, right?

00:42:49.000 Like, these are just subjects that never came up.

00:42:52.000 We were all supposed to just surrender Afghanistan in the hope that they would be really, really nice. 1.00

00:42:55.000 And that is precisely what Joe Biden did.

00:42:57.000 Well, this led to a rather awkward exchange yesterday between Peter Doocy of Fox News and John Kirby, who is the spokesperson for the National Security Council, in which Peter Doocy was like, you know, you're championing the killing of al-Zawahiri, but I noticed that you gave the entire country to terrorists.

00:43:12.000 So, we know that the Taliban was harboring the world's most wanted terrorist.

00:43:19.000 You guys gave a whole country to a bunch of people that are on the FBI most wanted list.

00:43:23.000 What did you think was going to happen?

00:43:24.000 I don't take issue with the premise that we gave a whole country to terrorist groups.

00:43:29.000 I mean, again, I'd encourage you to ask... The Taliban was harboring the world's number one terrorist.

00:43:34.000 How is that not giving a country to a terrorist? 0.84

00:43:38.000 A terrorist sympathizing group, if not giving them permission to have terrorists just sit on a balcony.

00:43:47.000 The question, I mean, Peter, the way you asked that, it makes it sound like we owned Afghanistan a year ago.

00:43:53.000 It wasn't our country.

00:43:58.000 That's kind of awkward, because we sort of did.

00:44:00.000 I mean, with our military support, the Afghan allies were still holding Kabul, and then you did hand it over to the Taliban.

00:44:07.000 But this administration did hand over the country to terrorists.

00:44:11.000 The amazing delusions under which we perform our foreign policy, the big talk is really astonishing.

00:44:15.000 And then it turns out that when hard power is brought to bear, and this is, I think, the point when it comes to American foreign policy generally, hard power is the name of the game.

00:44:23.000 Economic power, military power, these things matter.

00:44:26.000 If you're shaping a foreign policy that is designed around the idea of American ideals, you best be able to back it up.

00:44:31.000 You know what's not going to do it?

00:44:32.000 Antony Blinken trotting out there yesterday and saying that the Taliban grossly violated the Doha Agreement by hosting and sheltering Al Qaeda's top leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

00:44:41.000 I'm sorry, that ain't gonna do it.

00:44:42.000 He said, quote, this is a statement, from the Secretary of State of the United States, quote, in the face of the Taliban's unwillingness or inability to abide by their commitments, we will continue to support the Afghan people with robust humanitarian assistance and to advocate for the protection of their human rights, especially of women and girls.

00:44:57.000 Oh, will you?

00:44:58.000 Or will you turn over the entire country to a bunch of 8th century barbarians who keep women in basements, force them to wear giant sacks that reveal only their eyes, and beat them if they go to school? 0.90

00:45:08.000 Which one?

00:45:09.000 I feel like you're not being honest, Secretary of State Blinken.

00:45:11.000 I feel like the Biden administration is not being honest.

00:45:13.000 And the occasional drone killing of a high-ranking terrorist who's in the middle of a large country that the United States attacked in 2001 as a direct result of 9-11, I feel like that's a failure on your part.

00:45:28.000 When people say that Afghanistan had no major impact on American foreign policy, Afghanistan had a massive impact on American foreign policy.

00:45:34.000 America now has to reestablish its credibility in the world.

00:45:36.000 It's done some of that in Ukraine.

00:45:38.000 But the problem is that reestablishing credibility, this is something I think that people need to understand from both a domestic and a foreign policy perspective.

00:45:45.000 Establishing credibility means you do what you say you are going to do.

00:45:49.000 It does not mean that you make big promises and then you don't fulfill them.

00:45:52.000 That doesn't establish credibility.

00:45:53.000 You're better off making small promises you can fulfill than big promises that you cannot fulfill.

00:45:58.000 Credibility is all about whether you're willing to back it up.

00:46:00.000 In Afghanistan, we were not willing to back it up.

00:46:03.000 When it comes to Ukraine, we're willing to back it up for only so long, and we'd be better off, instead of saying, this is a fight for democracy against autocracy, and that's what this is really all about, we'd be better off saying, listen, it's in America's national interest, which is good for the world, because we're the world's strongest economy, and we do stand for the spread of democracy where available, and the spread of human rights where available.

00:46:23.000 I add where available there, because it's not always available.

00:46:26.000 Otherwise, you end up in this weird box where you are having to move back and forth with the Saudis while simultaneously negotiating with the Iranians. 0.78

00:46:33.000 And something Henry Kissinger has suggested before is that you have to be very realistic about the way that you approach foreign policy.

00:46:39.000 And when you don't, you end up in rhetorical boxes of your own making, in which on the one hand, you're talking about preserving democracy in Ukraine while Vladimir Zelensky is firing all of the oversight officials in his own government, right?

00:46:50.000 This is the point that Thomas Friedman is making.

00:46:52.000 Or you could just say what's true.

00:46:54.000 America has an interest.

00:46:55.000 That interest is in stymying Russia's ability to walk all over Eastern Europe. 0.69

00:46:59.000 That interest is in denying Russia the ability to carve Ukraine in half and take all of its oil-rich resources.

00:47:06.000 America's national interest should be enough for Americans, and I think most Americans believe that it is.

00:47:12.000 But don't, do not make promises that you are not willing to fulfill.

00:47:15.000 That's exactly what happened over in Afghanistan.

00:47:18.000 Alrighty, folks, we have a lot more news to cover, but I'm out of time here on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and the like.

00:47:23.000 So, if you want to enjoy the rest of the show, become a Daily Wire Plus member right now.

00:47:26.000 Head on over to dailywire.com slash Ben and become a member today.

00:47:31.000 Alrighty, so meanwhile, the monkeypox catastrophe is upon us.

00:47:36.000 I'm not making light of monkeypox.

00:47:38.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Bradford Carrington, executive producer Jeremy Boren, supervising producer Mathis Glover, production manager Pavel Lydowsky, associate producer Savannah Dominguez-Morris, editor Adam Sajevitz, audio mixer Mike Coromina, hair and makeup artist in wardrobe Fabiola Cristina, production coordinator Jessica Kranz.

00:48:03.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 03, 2022

Are The Republicans Going To Blow 2022? | Ep. 1548

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