The Ben Shapiro Show - December 11, 2024


Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole


Episode Stats


Length

53 minutes

Words per minute

192.28984

Word count

10,217

Sentence count

709

Harmful content

Misogyny

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

11

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Luigi Mangione has been charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and is being held in Pennsylvania pending extradition to New York City. He is also alleged to have written a manifesto that details his grievances with the company.

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 .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Alrighty, folks.
00:00:00.000 Well, yesterday, Luigi Mangione, who is the alleged of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, he had been arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and he was brought into the courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, where he immediately began shouting at the press, It's not totally clear what he is saying here, but here is video of him emerging from a police car and being ushered into the jailhouse where he is being held pending his possible extradition to New York.
00:00:27.000 He apparently is fighting that extradition.
00:00:29.000 Here's what it sounded like yesterday.
00:00:33.000 So what he appears to be shouting there is it's an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience.
00:00:46.000 It's not exactly clear what he is talking about right there.
00:00:51.000 What is the insult that you've been arrested when the evidence is pretty clear that you were the person who shot to death Brian Thompson as UnitedHealth executive?
00:01:02.000 What exactly is the insult to the lived experience?
00:01:04.000 Is the idea that if you've had a bad experience with a health insurance company, this means that you now get to murder the head of the health insurance company?
00:01:10.000 By the way, not even clear in this particular case that the alleged shooter's health conditions had anything to do with UnitedHealth.
00:01:19.000 Like, nothing.
00:01:21.000 In fact, it is unclear by whom he was insured.
00:01:23.000 What we know, as we discussed yesterday on the program, is that this particular person...
00:01:28.000 Mangione, he had had some sort of surfing accident where he had a really bad back injury that apparently left him in crippling pain.
00:01:35.000 And he had a surgery that is very often unsuccessful that implanted a series of pins in his spine.
00:01:42.000 And he presumably was having some sort of fights with some health insurance company, but that is totally unclear.
00:01:47.000 And he did leave a manifesto.
00:01:50.000 His manifesto is very short.
00:01:51.000 It's 262 words.
00:01:53.000 And it is worth exploring because it is a window into the mind of people who tend to believe that because the world is filled with problems, this means you get to shoot people.
00:02:01.000 Which is unfortunately a growing sentiment on the left and even some parts of the right.
00:02:07.000 So here is what the alleged shooter actually wrote.
00:02:10.000 Quote, to the feds, I'll keep this short because I do respect what you do for our country.
00:02:13.000 To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone.
00:02:16.000 This was fairly trivial.
00:02:18.000 Some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience.
00:02:21.000 The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and to-do lists that illuminate the gist of it.
00:02:25.000 My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering, so probably not much info there.
00:02:29.000 I do apologize for any strife of traumas, but it had to be done.
00:02:32.000 Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.
00:02:35.000 A reminder, the U.S. has the number one most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly number 42 in life expectancy.
00:02:42.000 United is the, and then it's handwritten, so indecipherable, largest company in the U.S. by market cap behind only Apple, Google, Walmart.
00:02:50.000 It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy?
00:02:52.000 No, the reality is these blank have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.
00:03:01.000 Obviously, the problem is more complex, but I do not have the space, and frankly, I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument.
00:03:07.000 But many have illuminated the corruption and greed decades ago, and the problem simply remains.
00:03:11.000 It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play.
00:03:13.000 Evidently, I'm the first to face it with such brutal honesty.
00:03:16.000 There are a couple of key lines here that are quite amazing in this manifesto.
00:03:19.000 One is...
00:03:20.000 Obviously, the problem is more complex, but I do not have the space and frankly do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument.
00:03:27.000 In other words, he didn't have a solution for any of the health insurance problems in the country.
00:03:31.000 And those problems are quite real because the United States has a very heavily subsidized and regulated health care system.
00:03:38.000 Insurance is not actually insurance.
00:03:39.000 It's actually just health coverage.
00:03:41.000 Insurance, as we mentioned yesterday on the show, would imply that you are making a bet with the insurance company that something bad might happen to you and the insurance company is betting that it will not happen to you.
00:03:51.000 That is obviously not how healthcare works in the United States.
00:03:53.000 Because no company in their right mind would bet that, for example, you won't need a checkup next week.
00:03:58.000 That would be a stupid bet.
00:03:59.000 So this isn't insurance at all.
00:04:01.000 It's health coverage that is provided at discount based on government subsidy and also based on collective risk pooling.
00:04:10.000 That's actually how the system works, and the system doesn't work particularly well in a lot of ways.
00:04:13.000 It works better than many of the other systems, including nationalized health care.
00:04:16.000 But the point there is that the alleged shooter himself He's angry at a system that he says he does not fully understand and he has no proper solutions for.
00:04:25.000 And by the way, he happens to be wrong on the merits.
00:04:27.000 So when he says that the United States has the most expensive healthcare system in the world, but we rank roughly number 42 in life expectancy, there's an excellent thread from a person named Jeremy Kaufman laying out some of the statistics with regard to the United States healthcare system.
00:04:41.000 And the point that he makes is that healthcare spending in all countries tracks income.
00:04:44.000 In other words, the more people get rich, the more they spend on healthcare.
00:04:47.000 And this is true across countries.
00:04:50.000 Here, for example, is HR of health spending increasing rapidly with real income.
00:04:54.000 So if, for example, you live in Hungary and you have a significantly lower income, you're going to spend less on your healthcare.
00:05:02.000 And as your income rises, you're going to spend more on your healthcare.
00:05:05.000 That is true everywhere.
00:05:06.000 It is true in Canada.
00:05:06.000 It is true in Norway.
00:05:08.000 It is true in Italy. 0.71
00:05:09.000 It is true in Spain. 0.92
00:05:10.000 It is true everywhere.
00:05:10.000 It is almost a straight line, arithmetic correlation here.
00:05:15.000 That as you make more money, you spend more money on your healthcare, which of course makes sense because you care very deeply about your healthcare.
00:05:20.000 That is not a giant shock.
00:05:23.000 As it turns out, If you actually correlate healthcare costs with income, what you see is that income rises, so does healthcare costs.
00:05:33.000 Again, not a giant shock.
00:05:34.000 In rich country, labor costs more.
00:05:36.000 Inputs cost more.
00:05:37.000 The real price of healthcare increases actually slower than incomes in cross-sectional analysis.
00:05:43.000 So as income in the United States increases, so does healthcare price, but slower than income increases in the United States.
00:05:50.000 Not only that, You can see in surgical prices that there is correlation between income and the price of surgery, for example.
00:05:58.000 Because again, as people make more money, they also demand more money as the inputs on labor.
00:06:03.000 If you are a surgeon in the United States and the average income is $80,000 a year, you're going to make more money than in a country where the average income is $40,000 a year.
00:06:12.000 That is not a shock.
00:06:13.000 Straight line correlation.
00:06:15.000 Cesarean sections are more expensive in Norway, where the income is higher, than in Israel, where the income is lower.
00:06:21.000 Appendectomies are more expensive in Australia, where the income is higher, than Korea, where the income is lower.
00:06:27.000 And none of this is a giant shock.
00:06:28.000 In other words, the market mechanisms continue to function in the sense that as people make more money and as they spend more money, the costs go up.
00:06:37.000 Most importantly, the idea that profits are radically high in health services is not true.
00:06:44.000 Profits in health services are actually lower than in many other areas of the American economy.
00:06:51.000 So if you look at hospitals and nursing and residential care facilities, the profits are somewhere in the neighborhood of 2% to 5%, somewhere in that neighborhood.
00:07:02.000 If you look at construction, they're way higher than that.
00:07:06.000 Profits are really, really high in manufacturing, for example, but they're not particularly high in the healthcare industry, again, because of regulation and subsidization.
00:07:15.000 So why exactly is it that we spend so much money, but we get so little input in terms of our health expectancy rising, our life expectancy rising?
00:07:22.000 Well, number one, there is in fact a law of diminishing returns when it comes to healthcare spending.
00:07:28.000 It's true across countries.
00:07:30.000 At a certain point, A massive increase in healthcare spending only leads to a marginal increase in life expectancy.
00:07:37.000 And this is not just true of the United States.
00:07:38.000 It's true literally everywhere.
00:07:40.000 So, for example, the cross-sectional relationship in terms of how much you spend on care and the outcome is totally flat.
00:07:48.000 So, the life expectancy in, for example, Israel and Luxembourg is totally the same, but the health expenditure per capita Is wildly different.
00:07:59.000 Israel is spending about $2,500 health expenditure per capita.
00:08:05.000 And the life expectancy in Israel is about 82 and a half years.
00:08:08.000 Same exact life expectancy in Luxembourg, except they're spending $6,500 per capita.
00:08:13.000 Because it turns out, no matter what you do with medicine, you simply can't prolong life beyond a certain point on average.
00:08:19.000 So what's the big problem in the United States?
00:08:21.000 Why does the United States have a lower life expectancy?
00:08:23.000 Well, there are a bunch of reasons.
00:08:24.000 But the biggest reasons are, we do a lot of drugs, we're really fat, and we drive badly.
00:08:29.000 Those would be the big reasons.
00:08:32.000 We lose in the United States... 0.83
00:08:35.000 About a year and a half in life expectancy on average through drugs, car accidents, and violence.
00:08:41.000 And we happen to be really fat.
00:08:44.000 We have a huge diet metabolic problem in the United States.
00:08:49.000 In fact, it has almost a six-year decrease in life expectancy in the United States thanks to diet and metabolic because we're real fat in the United States.
00:08:58.000 Okay, so none of this is to ignore the problems in the healthcare system.
00:09:01.000 It is to point out that whenever anyone suggests that there are easy solutions and they are only barred by the evil of greedy health insurance companies, they are lying.
00:09:08.000 It is not true.
00:09:10.000 It is overtly false.
00:09:11.000 Okay, that's true whether the shooter is saying it while murdering somebody.
00:09:14.000 The alleged shooter is saying that while murdering somebody.
00:09:16.000 It is also true whether you are a comedian or a political commentator.
00:09:21.000 So, this brings us to Bill Burr.
00:09:23.000 So, I have to say, Bill Burr is an a**hole.
00:09:26.000 So, Bill Burr, I used to really enjoy his work.
00:09:30.000 I mean, on occasion, I still enjoy his work.
00:09:32.000 He's a comedian, which means he's very hit or miss.
00:09:33.000 His Red Rock special, for example, hilarious.
00:09:36.000 I used to be, I'm such a Bill Burr fan that I actually bought a ticket for me and my wife and two of our friends to go see Bill Burr at the Hard Rock Casino down here in Hollywood, Florida.
00:09:45.000 And I have to say it was one of the worst shows I ever saw in my life because he got up there and Bill Burr has become woked.
00:09:51.000 He has become woked, I assume, because his wife is very much on the left.
00:09:55.000 Over time, I think he became embarrassed that many people on the right thought he was very funny.
00:09:59.000 And so he decided that he was going to start woking it up.
00:10:02.000 Well, Bill Burr is a disappointment, sort of like incognito mode on your computer, because they keep telling you that everything you do in incognito mode is incognito.
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00:10:35.000 With some basic equipment that's readily available, even young teenagers could potentially intercept your data.
00:10:39.000 Once stolen, this information is incredibly valuable.
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00:12:20.000 Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. So this entire show that he did in Hollywood, Florida, it was so bad that he got frustrated with the audience.
00:12:27.000 The audience was not laughing at his jokes because his jokes were basically about how Floridians were a bunch of anti-gay racists.
00:12:34.000 And Floridians were like, that's not true.
00:12:37.000 There are a lot of gay people who live down here and a lot of Hispanics and black people who live down here.
00:12:40.000 And in fact, the room is filled with Jews.
00:12:43.000 And so he actually got so frustrated, he ended up cutting his show early and walking off the stage.
00:12:49.000 And the reason was he was totally disconnected from the audience.
00:12:51.000 Well, that disconnect has continued.
00:12:54.000 You'll remember that he appeared on Bill Maher's show where he declared solidarity with the Pro Hamas students on campus.
00:13:00.000 And now...
00:13:01.000 He is proclaiming that he is very happy that CEOs are walking around in fear for their lives.
00:13:08.000 Now, you do get some extra points for being a comedian in today's day and age, meaning that we will tend to give you some more leeway to say edgy things because you're trying to be funny.
00:13:18.000 And it's not clear to me here that Bill Burr is attempting to be funny.
00:13:21.000 This is just his actual political opinion.
00:13:22.000 He's not saying anything funny or insightful here.
00:13:24.000 Here is Bill Burr yesterday explaining that he is perfectly fine with CEOs having to live with full-time security because they fear they might be shot because, after all, they're murderers, too.
00:13:35.000 I don't believe that Bill Burr holds the same standard for comedians.
00:13:38.000 There's an argument that's been made by the left.
00:13:40.000 It is a crap argument when made about comedians, and it's a crap argument when made about CEOs.
00:13:44.000 The argument goes something like this on the left.
00:13:46.000 People like Bill Burr mock the vulnerable.
00:13:49.000 They mock the marginalized, and thus they are a danger to the vulnerable and the marginalized. 0.98
00:13:54.000 So presumably, Bill Burr should have to live in fear of making a joke.
00:13:58.000 Bill Burr should have to live in fear because he doesn't know who he's damaging.
00:14:01.000 In any case, here is Bill Burr openly cheering The murder of a UnitedHealth executive because he says CEOs should live in fear if they don't act in the way that he would have them act in a system that he has no fixes for, by the way.
00:14:18.000 You know what's annoying me about this kid who killed this CEO is none of these news programs are talking about the incredible lack of empathy from the general public about this because of how these insurance companies treat people when they are at their most vulnerable.
00:14:35.000 After we've all given them our money every month and now we finally need you and all you do is deny us.
00:14:41.000 And then these...
00:14:43.000 And all of these things are taking the pictures of their CEOs off their websites.
00:14:47.000 You know, I gotta be honest with you, okay?
00:14:49.000 I love that CEOs are afraid right now.
00:14:53.000 You should be.
00:14:55.000 By and large, you're all a bunch of selfish, greedy pieces of shit.
00:14:59.000 And a lot of you are mass murderers.
00:15:03.000 You just don't pull the trigger.
00:15:06.000 That's why it looks clean.
00:15:07.000 That's why these people look, oh my god, oh, he was just...
00:15:11.000 You know, walking into a hotel.
00:15:13.000 It's like, okay, but what was his job?
00:15:15.000 What did he do?
00:15:16.000 What was the results of it?
00:15:19.000 Okay, Bill Burr is an a**hole and a piece of a**hole.
00:15:22.000 What he's saying here is truly evil.
00:15:24.000 He's truly evil.
00:15:25.000 He's saying you should live in fear if you're the CEO of a company and that company does things that Bill Burr deems to be bad, to be bad things.
00:15:33.000 Now, we have laws on the books, for example, that prevent things like fraud.
00:15:37.000 We have laws on the books that prevent things like embezzlement.
00:15:40.000 We have laws on the books that punish criminal activity.
00:15:43.000 If you don't like the system, and many people don't, the proper response to that system would be legislation.
00:15:49.000 In a democratic republic, the way that you fix problems is you have open discussions of the details of those problems, and then you try to craft regulatory or legal fixes.
00:15:57.000 You do not say that it is a good thing that CEOs should live in fear of their lives because Bill Burr deems them morally inferior.
00:16:04.000 Bill Burr doing his blue-collar class routine act is a bunch of horseshit.
00:16:08.000 Bill Burr is worth $14 million, and he makes his money making crap movies for Netflix at this point.
00:16:14.000 Again, this basic idea, if we're going to have a functioning country, you can't justify the murder of people who run their businesses legally in ways with which you disagree.
00:16:24.000 It is one thing to disagree with them.
00:16:25.000 You can call them whatever you want.
00:16:26.000 When you start justifying them living in fear or suggesting maybe they should be murdered, I'm just wondering what the limiting principle here is.
00:16:33.000 I'm wondering what it is.
00:16:34.000 The alleged shooter in this case was echoing Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
00:16:38.000 The Unabomber suggested that if you were, for example, an oil executive, maybe you should be murdered.
00:16:43.000 Because after all, there were externalities to the oil industry.
00:16:48.000 Why not the banking industry?
00:16:50.000 Why not?
00:16:50.000 Maybe Bill Burr doesn't like the banks after all.
00:16:52.000 That bank denied grandma her loan. 1.00
00:16:54.000 So maybe Jamie Dimon should be tracked down and murdered.
00:16:58.000 This kind of stuff is full stop evil.
00:17:02.000 It is evil.
00:17:03.000 I don't care what complaints you have with the health insurance company.
00:17:06.000 The notion that the solution to those complaints is the murder of the executives.
00:17:12.000 If you're living in a tyrannical society where you didn't have any legal correctives to any of this, and you had no alternatives in terms of Medicaid, which does exist, and you had no alternatives in terms of other health insurance programs, then you can make the argument in a full-scale monarchic tyranny that assassination is a proper response to this.
00:17:30.000 But that's not the system in which we live.
00:17:32.000 And promulgating that lie leads to greater violence.
00:17:34.000 It leads to justification of all violence.
00:17:37.000 Unfortunately, it's not just Bill Burr.
00:17:39.000 It is so many members of the elite of our society.
00:17:43.000 People who are fine living with private security as they make millions of dollars saying things on TV. It's not just Bill Burr here.
00:17:50.000 It is also Jimmy Kimmel.
00:17:53.000 So Jimmy Kimmel last night decided that he would do an entire segment celebrating the good looks of the alleged shooter.
00:17:59.000 Here he was last night, gleefully chortling over how good-looking the alleged shooter is.
00:18:04.000 I'm old enough to remember when there was widespread national outrage over Rolling Stone running on its cover a picture of the Boston Marathon bomber that made him look particularly handsome or something.
00:18:14.000 And people were like, that's sick.
00:18:15.000 You shouldn't do that.
00:18:16.000 He's a murderer.
00:18:16.000 Here's Jimmy Kimmel just doing it.
00:18:18.000 So many women and so many men are going nuts over how good looking this killer is.
00:18:26.000 And there's a huge wave of horny washing over us right now.
00:18:31.000 It's like when one of the guys you work with says, I had a dream about you last night.
00:18:36.000 When it's the FedEx guy with the big muscles and the rolled up sleeves, you're like, oh.
00:18:39.000 But if it's the bald IT guy wearing Crocs with black socks, you're on the phone with HR.
00:18:46.000 It's kind of-- That same dynamic.
00:18:48.000 Our staff today, I have never experienced anything like this.
00:18:51.000 These are screen grabs of actual exchanges between our members of our staff and their friends, relatives, whatever.
00:18:58.000 I've changed the names to protect the guilty, but let's see.
00:19:02.000 Lorraine C. asks, do you guys think the United Healthcare CEO killer is hot?
00:19:07.000 Friend replies, yes.
00:19:09.000 I love Luigi.
00:19:10.000 I think he's gay, though.
00:19:11.000 And it's not just women. 0.96
00:19:12.000 This is from the husband of one of our staffers.
00:19:14.000 Did you see the assassin?
00:19:16.000 Yes, I'm so upset.
00:19:19.000 Like, excuse me, LOL. I'm about to be a jailhouse bride. 0.93
00:19:25.000 Because damn shorty is so fine.
00:19:29.000 I'm dead or willing to be.
00:19:31.000 And one more from a young woman in our segment department texting all my friends in New York that I hope they get called to jury duty.
00:19:38.000 God, I want to do jury duty so bad.
00:19:44.000 Hilarious.
00:19:45.000 Hilarious stuff.
00:19:46.000 Glorifying the alleged murderer of the UnitedHealth CEO. What a delight these people are.
00:19:52.000 It's also in academia, of course.
00:19:54.000 Here is a University of Pennsylvania professor who should, in fact, lose her job. 0.62
00:19:59.000 You should not be teaching students if your attitude toward murder is that it is a net good because you don't like the healthcare system as it currently stands.
00:20:08.000 By the way, I'm just wondering to what extent we get to extend this logic when it comes to government-run systems.
00:20:13.000 So how would people feel about people just assassinating the heads of the National Health Service in Great Britain, for example?
00:20:18.000 I have a feeling these same people would be a little upset about it.
00:20:20.000 Here is the University of Pennsylvania professor dancing on TikTok to the murder of the United Health Executive.
00:20:27.000 Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of anger?
00:20:33.000 Says, I've never been prouder to be a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
00:20:35.000 Well, well, not rocking her head to Les Mis.
00:20:43.000 Who will not be slaves again.
00:20:45.000 Just absolute imbecility.
00:20:46.000 But moral imbecility as well.
00:20:48.000 Apparently the McDonald's, where the police caught the alleged shooter, has now been flooded with negative Yelp reviews because the basic idea is that you should not report murderous criminals if you spot them in public.
00:20:59.000 Meanwhile, some TikTokers are threatening to beat up McDonald's workers. 1.00
00:21:03.000 Here's one trans TikToker threatening to beat up a McDonald's worker. 0.75
00:21:07.000 They caught the guy that killed the UHC CEO. For such a professional hit, it's kind of weird that the gunman didn't leave the US. The guy that reported it was a McDonald's worker.
00:21:18.000 I would never advocate for violence on my page.
00:21:23.000 But, it would be pretty funny if we beat the shit out of him, and then when he went to the hospital, that if he was out of network and had to pay a huge bill, I think that would be funny.
00:21:33.000 I'm not advocating for it, but...
00:21:37.000 It would bring a smile to my face.
00:21:40.000 Oh, well, then you're not advocating for it, obviously.
00:21:43.000 Over in New York, signs have been appearing with pictures, wanted pictures, of CEOs.
00:21:48.000 With Brian Thompson's face crossed out because, of course, he has been murdered.
00:21:52.000 Here is some footage of wanted posters of various members of the healthcare industry.
00:21:59.000 Again, wanted posters with their faces on them, presumably to be murdered.
00:22:03.000 This is all insane, especially considering that when it comes to health care, that is a complex problem requiring a complex solution.
00:22:21.000 Well, there are a lot of such problems in your life.
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00:23:24.000 Also, you know what the radical left doesn't understand?
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00:24:25.000 Okay, now, how widespread is this sentiment?
00:24:29.000 Well, I mean, it's widespread enough that it has made its way over into the political segment of the body politic, the overtly political.
00:24:36.000 You have the cultural commentators who are sort of tangentially interested in the issue to the extent that they don't know enough about it to say.
00:24:42.000 And then you have people whose actual profession is to supposedly understand the issues, being gleeful about the murder.
00:24:48.000 Joy Reid, again, the least joyful person ever to be named Joy, and that includes Joy Behar.
00:24:53.000 She is gleeful that people are supporting the UnitedHealth CEO's alleged shooter.
00:25:00.000 Something a bit unexpected has happened following the murder.
00:25:04.000 A reaction not of universal horror that a 50-year-old father of two and husband was shot dead in public, but rather of, and I don't want to call it glee, but let's just say not unhappiness.
00:25:15.000 Especially online, where the Internet sleuths who often dedicate themselves to tracking down people accused of racist behavior in public places, criminals, including January 6th fugitives, and more, have been actively refusing to help.
00:25:31.000 Donald Trump Jr., son of our incoming ruler, went on his ex-Twitter page and did the patented Internet Do Your Thing post.
00:25:37.000 And the reaction was mostly, yeah, no.
00:25:41.000 Other popular conservatives like Ben Shapiro and anti-woman zealot Matt Walsh saw their mentions go up in flames when they tried to attack quote-unquote evil liberals for celebrating the murder of a CEO, with some of their supporters replying that they had gotten it wrong.
00:25:57.000 Indeed, instead of universal condemnation, what we have seen and many of us have heard both on and offline has been a barrage of stories of Americans' awful experiences with insurance companies.
00:26:09.000 Stories of claims denied, of people who've gotten sicker or even died because insurance companies like United refuse to pay claims.
00:26:17.000 Let's just be clear, there's a real hatred for these companies that is unfurling on social media right now and also in real life too.
00:26:26.000 Okay, and part of the reason for that hatred is because you have suggested no proper solutions.
00:26:29.000 By the way, Obamacare was supposed to solve all this, remember?
00:26:33.000 Lefties, come get your boy. 1.00
00:26:34.000 Barack Obama, that guy was supposed to have fixed health care, you recall, and it got worse because of the subsidization and over-regulation.
00:26:42.000 Meanwhile, the White House refuses to answer if the Biden administration disagrees with the alleged shooter's reported manifesto regarding quote-unquote profit over people, which again has been a talking point of the left for a very long time.
00:26:52.000 The suggestion that the profit margin is really the problem in the health care industry.
00:26:56.000 As we went through with regard to the charts, There are a wide variety of healthcare systems.
00:26:59.000 When it comes to spending per capita, the bottom line is that as income goes up, so does healthcare spending.
00:27:05.000 It's just a reality.
00:27:08.000 But the White House, again, has been playing this ugly game.
00:27:12.000 Democrats have been playing this ugly game as long as I'm alive. 0.68
00:27:14.000 The reason health care is bad in the United States or worse than it should be in the United States is because of those greedy health care executives. 0.80
00:27:20.000 It is amazing, by the way, that this logic is never, ever applied to literally any other area of human life.
00:27:26.000 Nobody ever says, you know, the NBA could be even better if they paid LeBron James less.
00:27:30.000 Nobody ever says that.
00:27:32.000 It's only with regard to healthcare and other areas that the left cares about that suddenly the profit margin becomes bad.
00:27:39.000 Nobody ever suggests that Bill Burr should make less money in his comedy because obviously the profit margin in his comedy is what is driving, it's making his comedy worse.
00:27:47.000 Here is Karine Jean-Pierre refusing to condemn the idea that the UnitedHealthcare CEO, the reason UnitedHealthcare denies too many claims is because of their profit margins.
00:28:01.000 What would you say to Americans who might sympathize with Luigi Mangione's purported manifesto indicating that insurance companies ultimately care more about their profits than the health of their customers?
00:28:14.000 So let me just...
00:28:14.000 I'm sorry.
00:28:17.000 Is that premise accurate in any way?
00:28:19.000 So let me just say at the top, offer up certainly our condolences to the victims and his loved ones.
00:28:26.000 We are certainly tracking the latest regarding this deadly shooting.
00:28:31.000 So I'd be avoiding the question, obviously.
00:28:34.000 By the way, it's not just Kareem Jean-Pierre and the White House.
00:28:36.000 It's also Elizabeth Warren.
00:28:37.000 Elizabeth Warren is such a disappointment of a human being. 0.99
00:28:40.000 So I knew Elizabeth Warren back when she was a torts professor at Harvard Law. 0.91
00:28:43.000 She was there at the same time that I was.
00:28:44.000 She was a teacher, obviously, and I was a student.
00:28:46.000 And Elizabeth Warren was not a nutjob at that point, but she clearly has had too much of the Bernie Sanders Kool-Aid. 1.00
00:28:51.000 She said, quote, This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change.
00:28:57.000 Violence is never the answer.
00:28:59.000 But...
00:29:00.000 People can be pushed only so far.
00:29:02.000 But I have a question.
00:29:03.000 You're a sitting senator from Massachusetts.
00:29:05.000 You're a sitting senator from Massachusetts.
00:29:08.000 It seems like you might have something to do with this a little bit.
00:29:11.000 So I have a question.
00:29:12.000 If they're frustrated with the system, are they allowed to assassinate you?
00:29:15.000 The answer, of course, is no.
00:29:16.000 Nor should it be yes.
00:29:17.000 And nobody should be making a but about that point.
00:29:20.000 But when it comes to the left, they make that point all the damn time.
00:29:24.000 There's a piece over at Politico trying to explain what exactly is going on over here.
00:29:28.000 Joshua Zeitz is a Politico magazine contributing writer.
00:29:31.000 And he has a piece talking about a particular theory called social banditry.
00:29:37.000 He traces that to the Marxist scholar Eric Hobswam in 1959. He suggested that social bandits were sometimes fictional, sometimes real figures who operated outside of the law and were widely revered for their efforts to mete out justice in an unjust world, like Robin Hood, for example.
00:29:51.000 Hobbeswam's theory, which historians continue to debate, rested on a fairly specific Marxian analysis of power and economic relationships in agrarian societies.
00:29:58.000 But such characters transcended different geographies and times, ranging from the fictional Robin Hood in 14th century England to brutally violent real life outlaws like Jesse James and Billy the Kid in the post-Civil War era United States to Pancho Villa in the early 20th century Mexico.
00:30:11.000 So what exactly is the theory?
00:30:14.000 Well, the theory basically suggests...
00:30:17.000 That social banditry attracts popular attention and support in rural environments where the state is weak, where peasants' long-standing prerogatives were eroding in the face of economic change and where inequality was rampant.
00:30:29.000 So that means that if you then commit individual acts of violence, you are rebelling against some sort of evil system.
00:30:35.000 The problem, of course, is that that is not how the United States works.
00:30:39.000 The reality is that while people might be large-scale upset with insurance companies, and I think for some good reasons because of the regulatory environment, the basic Marxian idea, which is that violence is now justified in a democratic republic because you don't like how a company is doing its business, that is, in fact, as most Marxist materialism is, wrong and also morally wrong.
00:31:05.000 The argument here is that we don't have effective government with regard to this stuff, and that's why things aren't changing.
00:31:10.000 Well, we have more regulation on the healthcare industry than virtually any other industry in the United States.
00:31:15.000 We have more subsidization of the healthcare industry than literally any industry in the United States.
00:31:19.000 Bar none, Medicare and Medicaid comprise a huge chunk of our budget every single year in the United States.
00:31:25.000 And that's leaving aside state costs.
00:31:28.000 But this, again, this basic idea, and it does tear apart the country, is the idea the system is so broken that murder, individual murder, is the solution to the system.
00:31:37.000 You shouldn't tolerate that particular argument when it comes to the supposed racial injustice of the United States.
00:31:42.000 You should not tolerate that argument when it comes to the economic system of the United States.
00:31:45.000 And you shouldn't tolerate that argument when it comes to the health system of the United States either.
00:31:51.000 Again, no one is denying people's bad feelings about health insurance companies, many of which, again, I think are fully understandable.
00:31:59.000 But the extension of that to I now have sympathy with the murder of the CEO is a step beyond and has no limiting principle at all.
00:32:10.000 It's truly ugly.
00:32:11.000 Okay, meanwhile, the Daniel Penny trial is now over.
00:32:14.000 The fallout, of course, is not.
00:32:16.000 The left is super upset over Daniel Penny's acquittal.
00:32:19.000 So, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez had the dumbest take of the day, predictably, since she's not a particularly smart human being.
00:32:25.000 She suggested that people who ride subways should fear Daniel Penny, Which is a hell of a statement considering that he literally saved subway riders from a highly drug-addled, deeply mentally ill, violent, threatening homeless person.
00:32:40.000 Here's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez finding the stupidest possible take. 1.00
00:32:44.000 She said that he would do it again, if necessary, if there was a present threat.
00:32:49.000 What do you make of the comments?
00:32:51.000 Well, you know, doesn't that...
00:32:52.000 I just feel like that tells us everything.
00:32:56.000 If we do not want violence on our subways, and the point of our justice system is a level of accountability to prevent a person who does not have remorse about taking another person's life.
00:33:10.000 I mean, even people...
00:33:14.000 Who have engaged in manslaughter or have taken a life accidentally express remorse.
00:33:21.000 And so the fact that a person may express no remorse indicates that there's a risk that it may happen again.
00:33:27.000 And if we do not want to unleash that level of violence, then we should exert a level of accountability to prevent that from happening again.
00:33:37.000 So apparently, he should have been remorseful for attempting to stop a guy who was shouting that he was going to kill everyone on the subway.
00:33:44.000 He should express remorse for that.
00:33:46.000 Whoopi Goldberg doing the same routine.
00:33:48.000 Here she was yesterday from her very rich and privileged station in American life, suggesting it made her uncomfortable that after his trial, after his acquittal, Daniel Penny went to a bar.
00:33:58.000 Apparently, he's supposed to, what, go live in sackcloth and ashes in a monastery somewhere?
00:34:02.000 Well, what exactly is he supposed to do after being unfairly targeted and prosecuted for an act of heroism on the New York subway?
00:34:10.000 I don't know that seeing them celebrating in a bar...
00:34:16.000 Made me comfortable.
00:34:17.000 You know?
00:34:18.000 I mean, you killed a guy.
00:34:20.000 The man is dead.
00:34:22.000 And maybe you just, you take the celebration home, you don't do it outside.
00:34:26.000 But that's just me.
00:34:27.000 Don't listen to anything I say.
00:34:31.000 Okay, I mean, I promise you, I won't.
00:34:33.000 Jamal Bowman could predictably be counted on to have the AOC-like take.
00:34:36.000 He wrote an open letter to white people.
00:34:39.000 We'll get to that in just one second.
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00:36:17.000 Okay, meanwhile, Democrats continue to militate against the acquittal of Daniel Penny in the Subway case with Jordan Ely.
00:36:26.000 Representative Jamal Bowman, who, thank God, was primaried out in New York.
00:36:31.000 He has an entire letter dedicated to white people.
00:36:33.000 Here we go.
00:36:34.000 Ready?
00:36:35.000 Dear White People. 0.82
00:36:36.000 Capital W. Capital P. White People. 0.67
00:36:38.000 I don't know why I feel the need to keep talking to you.
00:36:40.000 I don't know why part of me still has hope for you and for us.
00:36:42.000 Some of you are too far gone.
00:36:44.000 Maybe enough of you aren't and will join us in fighting to end white supremacy.
00:36:48.000 I just want to call out the hypocrisy and evil of it all and just continue to hope I won't rely completely on you because I know what's most important is to work with my community and other like-minded allies in the fight for justice.
00:36:57.000 But I guess I'll just offer this.
00:36:59.000 I'm 48 years old and I've seen countless incidents of police, brutal violence and killings in my lifetime.
00:37:04.000 The first black man I saw violently attacked on camera was Rodney King.
00:37:07.000 Those officers were acquitted.
00:37:08.000 So actually two of the four officers were convicted and did time in jail.
00:37:13.000 Next, says Jamal Bowman, was Eric Garner's murder and his cries of, I can't breathe.
00:37:17.000 All he was doing was trying to sell a few cigarettes to survive an economy that failed him, and he was jumped and killed by police.
00:37:21.000 Actually, he was refusing to comply with police orders, Eric Garner, and he was wildly overweight, and that is what caused his death.
00:37:27.000 He had a heart attack, effectively speaking.
00:37:29.000 The next video burns my memories.
00:37:30.000 The murder of Philando Castile, shot and bled to death by police on the live stream.
00:37:34.000 Okay, that was indeed a terrible case in which Philando Castile reached for his ID and the cop panicked.
00:37:43.000 And a wrongful death settlement was brought against the city, settled for about $4 million.
00:37:51.000 Okay, so, again, Jamal Bowman just goes on.
00:37:55.000 The world saw George Floyd murdered.
00:37:56.000 His murderer knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
00:37:58.000 I cried and couldn't stop crying.
00:38:00.000 I saw five black Memphis police officers beating a black man to death on camera.
00:38:03.000 White supremacy is not skin color.
00:38:04.000 It's a state of mind, which, of course, is an easy way to get out of the fact that none of these cases were actual white supremacy.
00:38:09.000 Jordan Neely is the latest.
00:38:11.000 He was sick.
00:38:11.000 He was not a threat.
00:38:13.000 Um, he was.
00:38:14.000 He was shouting at everyone on the subway.
00:38:16.000 Testified in the trial they were scared of Jordan Ely.
00:38:18.000 He was subdued.
00:38:19.000 Still not a threat.
00:38:20.000 Daniel Penny choked him for six minutes and killed him.
00:38:22.000 We all watched it on camera and he was still acquitted.
00:38:25.000 I wish I didn't have to live with all this trauma deep in my bones, says Jamal Bowman.
00:38:28.000 I wish I could just be free to be me.
00:38:30.000 I marvel at the beauty and greatness of my people in spite of white supremacy.
00:38:33.000 It's extraordinary.
00:38:34.000 That is what I will continue to lean on.
00:38:36.000 RIP Jordan Neely, the justice system failed you.
00:38:39.000 Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny are free.
00:38:40.000 You're gone.
00:38:41.000 We must still fight.
00:38:42.000 So first of all, Kyle Rittenhouse shot some white Antifa members, and he did so in self-defense.
00:38:48.000 Daniel Penny was defending fellow subway riders from Jordan Neely.
00:38:53.000 And the attempt to turn everything into a racial issue, I think that day is over, by the way.
00:38:56.000 I think Americans are tired of it.
00:38:57.000 They are sick of it and they don't care about it anymore.
00:38:59.000 But Democrats keep doubling down on it.
00:39:01.000 Here were Democrats in front of the House of Representatives yesterday suggesting the full-scale commutation of all death row sentences because of race or something.
00:39:09.000 We should note at this point that the people on death row are literally the worst people on planet Earth.
00:39:13.000 The worst people who exist.
00:39:15.000 We're talking about child and murderers, for example.
00:39:18.000 But here are Democrats.
00:39:19.000 It's pretty clear with whom they side.
00:39:22.000 Today, on Human Rights Day, we call on President Biden to do the right thing, to use his clemency authority to commute the death sentences of the 40 individuals on death row, to re-sentence them to a prison term, and to save lives.
00:39:43.000 State-sanctioned murder is not justice.
00:39:47.000 And the death penalty is a cruel, racist, and fundamentally flawed punishment that has no place in our society.
00:39:55.000 It is deeply discriminatory and has disproportionately been weaponized against black, brown, and low-income families for far too long.
00:40:03.000 It is long past time for President Biden to make good on his campaign promise to address the federal death penalty.
00:40:13.000 With 40 days left in his presidency, we must move with urgency and ensure that history never repeats itself.
00:40:22.000 Why the hell not?
00:40:23.000 Why the hell not?
00:40:24.000 Again, what a joke.
00:40:26.000 The Democrats are.
00:40:27.000 Daniel Penny, for his part, he's been speaking out.
00:40:29.000 He says, listen, it's pretty obvious that these sort of left-wing policies have not worked.
00:40:32.000 They've made people less safe.
00:40:33.000 That's the reason why I had to stand up in the first place.
00:40:38.000 But how does it serve them to hurt you?
00:40:40.000 Just political gain.
00:40:42.000 I mean, these are their policies that are...
00:40:44.000 And I don't mean to get political.
00:40:46.000 I don't really want to make any enemies, really.
00:40:51.000 Although I guess I have already.
00:40:55.000 But I mean, these are their policies that have clearly not worked, that the people, the general population, are not in support of, yet their egos are too big just to admit that they're wrong.
00:41:10.000 Meanwhile, Penny also said, he was asked, you know, would you have gone through this again, knowing that you'd get prosecuted, that you'd have to stand trial?
00:41:16.000 Here was his answer.
00:41:19.000 The guilt I would have felt If someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself.
00:41:30.000 And I'll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed.
00:41:48.000 Well, that seems like the kind of person you want more of on the street.
00:41:51.000 Democrats, of course, want apparently more Jordan Neelys on the street and fewer Daniel Pennys on the street.
00:41:56.000 And that is not a call for people to die, obviously.
00:41:59.000 That is a call for people to be kept safe from people who have serious mental illness, schizophrenia, massive drug problems.
00:42:05.000 Liberals have decided to leave on the streets.
00:42:07.000 Now, speaking of terrible policy, the Federal Trade Commission under the execrable Lena Khan has now decided that they are going to nix the merger between Kroger and Albertsons.
00:42:18.000 The idea being that Kroger and Albertsons are competing with each other and that's what's keeping prices low.
00:42:23.000 Well, there's only one problem.
00:42:24.000 Their market share as a general percentage of the supermarket industry has dropped radically over the years.
00:42:29.000 Why?
00:42:29.000 Because there are places like Target and, for example, Walmart that now sell groceries.
00:42:33.000 And so consolidation is a way of competing.
00:42:37.000 to lower costs.
00:42:39.000 Alina Khan, who is an anti-market radical, appeared with Hassan Piker, who has now apparently been deemed worthy of decent conversation by the left.
00:42:50.000 I mean, he was on Pod Save America the other day.
00:42:51.000 It's amazing who they will elevate.
00:42:53.000 Truly amazing.
00:42:54.000 And Lena Kahn, the current FTC head, she says that they are going to go after this merger and cancel the merger between Albertans and Kroger.
00:43:03.000 Why?
00:43:04.000 In order to increase labor costs artificially.
00:43:07.000 Because the idea is if they're a merger, then you can't play the two sides off against one another in attempting to get labor.
00:43:14.000 That is not why or how you block mergers.
00:43:18.000 That is not what the FTC is designed to do.
00:43:21.000 The FTZ is not a unionization project.
00:43:23.000 The Federal Trade Commission is meant to prevent monopoly that damages consumers.
00:43:27.000 And here they are basically saying, we don't care if it damages consumers to block the merger.
00:43:31.000 It's all about us pleasing our union base.
00:43:36.000 This decision being blocked, what kind of labor protections does that offer to people that are working at these corporations?
00:43:47.000 One thing that our lawsuit alleged was that if this merger goes through, it's going to mean higher grocery prices for shoppers, but it's also going to be worse for the workers.
00:43:58.000 And this is the first time that the FTC has ever sought to block a merger, not just because it's going to be bad for consumers, But also because it's going to be bad for workers.
00:44:08.000 And especially in recent decades, antitrust enforcers had not really been focused on the worker harms as much, and that's something we've really looked to change.
00:44:19.000 So the complaint lays out how previously, when there has been competition between Kroger and Albertsons, that the workers at each store were able to use that competition as leverage when they were trying to bargain.
00:44:35.000 And that if you allow these two companies to merge, that leverage that comes from having a potential alternative employer or an alternative store where customers can go if there's a strike, that eliminating that leverage point and bargaining leverage would ultimately be bad for workers.
00:44:53.000 That is not the job of the Federal Trade Commission.
00:44:55.000 That is a psychotic perspective on economics.
00:44:57.000 It is markedly worse for consumers.
00:44:59.000 You're artificially increasing the price of labor by preventing a perfectly market-efficient merger from happening because you want to increase the price of labor.
00:45:08.000 That's what she is talking about right there.
00:45:10.000 Well, good news.
00:45:10.000 She's going to be gone.
00:45:11.000 Trump's going to get rid of her.
00:45:12.000 President-elect Trump on Tuesday announced Andrew Ferguson was going to lead the FTC. He is currently already a member of the agency.
00:45:19.000 That's great.
00:45:20.000 He's a veteran congressional aide.
00:45:21.000 He's a former Supreme Court clerk.
00:45:23.000 He doesn't need to be confirmed because he's already on the FTC. Ferguson is all for economic efficiency.
00:45:29.000 He has vowed to extend his regulatory scope to target social media sites that police conservative voices as well.
00:45:35.000 Andrew Ferguson will be an excellent change to the idiocy of Lena Kahn, who is indeed a deeply radical human being.
00:45:41.000 By the way, Donald Trump is ready to open up this economy to a boom.
00:45:44.000 So yesterday, he promised, via Truth Social, that any person or company investing a billion dollars or more in the United States, quote, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all environmental approvals.
00:45:56.000 Good.
00:45:57.000 Good.
00:45:58.000 Okay, that is a pro-investment idea.
00:46:03.000 Streamlining the process of investment.
00:46:05.000 I mean, it should be done for everybody.
00:46:06.000 I would hope that it happens for everybody.
00:46:08.000 But if you're about to sink a billion dollars into the American economy, it seems to me that we should probably rush your approval process.
00:46:14.000 Good for President Trump.
00:46:15.000 This is the thing about Trump.
00:46:17.000 Regardless of his ideology, the man's a pragmatist, and he would like to see a booming American economy.
00:46:20.000 That is for damn sure.
00:46:22.000 Okay, meanwhile, breaking news.
00:46:24.000 The UK government has now announced they are indefinitely banning puberty blockers.
00:46:28.000 Remember that time that puberty blockers were considered mandatory medicine?
00:46:32.000 It was the only way to prevent your girl from c***ing herself if she wanted to become a boy? 0.98
00:46:37.000 Well, now the National Health Service, the vaunted National Health Service that we keep hearing so much about from the left, they have decided that puberty blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria and gender incongruence in under-18s were banned temporarily in May 2024 after the Cass review found there was insufficient evidence to show they were safe.
00:46:52.000 Legislation will be updated to make the order indefinite and will be reviewed in 2027. So basically the entire transgender medicine con is now over.
00:47:03.000 It's falling apart as well as it should be.
00:47:06.000 That is excellent news.
00:47:07.000 And again, goes to the heart of an entirely stupid debate that we've been having in the country over the course of the last 10 years, and it is 10 years, in which the left maintained that human beings were such interchangeable widgets, that we were all such blank slates, that a boy could be a girl and a girl could be a boy, and that the true obstacle to happiness was shooting girls filled with testosterone and then chopping off their healthy body parts.
00:47:29.000 Amazing stuff.
00:47:30.000 So, good on the NHS. The United States is lagging behind on this.
00:47:33.000 They shouldn't be.
00:47:35.000 All of this should be banned immediately in all 50 states.
00:47:38.000 That should be a priority, by the way, for the federal government under the brand new Health and Human Services Administration of RFK Jr. This should absolutely be ruled under the HHS mandate as non-usable for under 18. I'd make the case it should be non-usable for everyone because it is bad medicine.
00:47:55.000 It has nothing to do with actually solving the underlying problem any more than an ice pick to the frontal cortex solves seizures.
00:48:04.000 In any case, the Trump administration is now going to have to look pretty deeply into the DOJ again.
00:48:10.000 Just before Trump takes office, it is now being revealed that the Justice Department secretly obtained phone records from two members of Congress and 43 staffers, including Kash Patel, the new Trump pick to lead the FBI, during sweeping leak investigations during Trump's first term, according to a Watchdog report released on Tuesday.
00:48:27.000 The new report from the DOJ inspector general raises concerns about how the department tried to root out reporters' sources from a sprawling and bipartisan list of federal employees who had access to classified information because of their job.
00:48:37.000 Patel and the two members of Congress are not named in the report, but two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN Patel was targeted, so was Adam Schiff, so was Eric Swalwell.
00:48:46.000 Patel was the staffer for the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee at the time.
00:48:50.000 Here, yesterday, was the Republican chairman of the Oversight Committee, Mike Turner, slamming the Trump DOJ for spying on the congressmen and staff, including Kash Patel.
00:49:01.000 When we say the Trump DOJ, we mean the DOJ as led by Trump appointees.
00:49:05.000 But much of this was done at the lower levels of the DOJ. You'll recall it was the same DOJ that was targeting Trump at the time.
00:49:12.000 It really shows that he understands the weaponization that has happened of the FBI, the Department of Justice against Americans, and really against our own government.
00:49:23.000 I mean, here you have the executive branch, in effect, spying on Congress.
00:49:28.000 That weaponization goes right to the heart of really what we expect of the oversight processes.
00:49:33.000 I mean, here Congress is doing its oversight, and they access the email records, the phone records of members of Congress and their staff merely because they had access to classified information.
00:49:44.000 They were doing their jobs here at Congress.
00:49:47.000 That can't be, but we need to have statutes in place that both protect members of Congress and hold these people accountable so this doesn't happen again.
00:49:56.000 I mean, if you're wondering why it is that the Trump administration is nominating so many people who are victims of these particular agencies to then lead the agencies, this would be the reason.
00:50:04.000 Because sometimes it takes the person who is motivated to actually clean out the deadwood from these institutions.
00:50:10.000 Speaking of deadwood inside the institutions, what the hell does our Department of Defense do exactly?
00:50:15.000 What would they say they do now?
00:50:16.000 It's a serious question under Lloyd Austin.
00:50:18.000 So apparently there have been drones floating near a bunch of military sites.
00:50:24.000 According to Fox News, a top FBI leader revealed the agency knows concerningly little about mysterious drones that have been seen hovering over New Jersey.
00:50:31.000 Dozens of drones have been spotted flying near sensitive sites like a military research facility in recent weeks.
00:50:36.000 There's also reports that this was happening over in Virginia as well over the course of the last few weeks.
00:50:42.000 Some drones as large as SUVs have been spotted hovering in the Garden State skies, as well as smaller, more rapidly maneuverable drones, resembling what's referred to as drone motherships that have been deployed in Ukraine, Russia, and China, according to Fox News contributor Brett Velisovich.
00:50:55.000 Here is Representative Chris Smith, Republican of New Jersey, saying that one police officer saw as many as 50 drones hovering around.
00:51:02.000 So last night I was on the beach in Island State Park in Ocean County with the sheriff.
00:51:11.000 He has been working it every single night.
00:51:14.000 He's got his own tethered drones chronicling.
00:51:17.000 One of his officers two nights ago saw 50 drones come in off the ocean right there.
00:51:22.000 So we thought maybe they'll replicate it.
00:51:24.000 They didn't, but we thought it was a possibility.
00:51:27.000 Then, last night, we had a number of other people there, including a commanding officer from the Coast Guard, who said that one of their 47-foot motor lifeboats was followed by between 12 and 30 of these drones as they went through the water.
00:51:46.000 Followed, right behind them.
00:51:50.000 Meanwhile, the FBI itself is saying they have no idea who is operating these drones.
00:51:54.000 So what would you do?
00:51:55.000 What do you guys do here?
00:51:56.000 Seriously, what do you do?
00:51:57.000 This is like the most obvious thing in the world.
00:51:58.000 You have giant drones that are hovering like motherships with smaller drones that are around them near American military bases.
00:52:04.000 And the FBI is like, oh, apparently FAA regulations prevent them from just shooting down or even blocking these drones, which is totally crazy.
00:52:13.000 And the power of your federal government, able to raid your house for an IRS regulatory violation, unable to do anything about swarms of drones hovering around our military bases in the United States.
00:52:23.000 Genius level stuff.
00:52:24.000 Here's senior FBI official Robert Wheeler saying the FBI has no idea what's happening here.
00:52:30.000 attribute that to an individual or a group yet we're investigating but i don't have an answer of who's responsible for that of one or more people that are responsible for those drone flights but we're actively invest investigating well i'm glad you're actively investigating Your investigations have been so great thus far over at the FBI, and Kash Patel can't get in there fast enough.
00:52:56.000 All right, folks, in just one second, we'll bring you the latest from Syria, as well as an insane take from Caitlin Clark on her role in the WNBA. If you're not a member, become a member.
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