The Ben Shapiro Show - June 16, 2026


Breaking Down the Newsom Investigations and the Latest Midterm Projections

Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Gavin Newsom Donald Trump Mary Margaret Olihan Zoran Mamdani Hassan Piker Zoran John Mamdanyan Valdez Graham Plattner Mahmoud Khalil Claire Valdez Hunter Biden Harry Ensign Dean Mashed
Jimmy Kimmel, MSNBC, and the Total Meltdown Over White House UFC JD Vance Press Tour

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

181.95

Word count

1,586

Sentence count

135

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Gavin Newsom is running for president, and he is running with a red pen and a microphone. He will say anything to anyone at any time, and it will be heard by the American people. This is exactly why he should not be running for President.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So here's the thing about Governor Newsom.
00:00:00.000 All right.
00:00:02.000 Governor Newsom desperately, desperately, desperately wants to be president.
00:00:04.000 Obviously, it is his thing.
00:00:06.000 It is the reason why he invited me on his podcast.
00:00:08.000 He's trying to reach out to new audiences, but then he'll have on Hunter Biden and say precisely the opposite sort of stuff.
00:00:12.000 Gavin Newsom will say anything to anyone at any time.
00:00:15.000 This is why when Gavin Newsom talks about lack of character in the Oval, you're like, I don't know, man.
00:00:20.000 It's a little weird, but it's just all derivative and it feels derivative.
00:00:24.000 He is just taking Donald Trump's campaign, he is taking a red pen, marking Democrat for Republican, and marking his own name for Trump.
00:00:33.000 And then believing he can just run that to daylight, that that's going to be the way that he becomes president of the United States.
00:00:37.000 I don't think it's going to work that well.
00:00:39.000 I just don't.
00:00:40.000 Well, now he is trying to Mar a Lago himself.
00:00:43.000 So he recognizes that one of the things that got the right to love Trump is when the Biden DOJ decided to raid Mar a Lago.
00:00:49.000 And so now he's going to claim that the Trump DOJ is coming after him.
00:00:54.000 According to the New York Times, federal agents have questioned friends and associates of Governor Newsom and his wife.
00:00:59.000 Mr. Newsom said on Monday in a video in which he accused President Trump of using the DOJ to punish a political enemy.
00:01:06.000 Here was Gavin Newsom pretending that he is now being victimized by the DOJ.
00:01:11.000 In recent days, federal agents have knocked on the doors of family, friends, and former employees.
00:01:17.000 Not because they found a crime, because they're simply trying to find one.
00:01:22.000 They're abusing the grand jury process, digging through years and years of random documents.
00:01:22.000 They're demanding records.
00:01:29.000 Donald Trump isn't just coming after me because of my mean tweets, he's coming after me because I'm considering running for president.
00:01:37.000 Because he hates that I've consistently called him out over and over again for his lies and deceit. 0.98
00:01:44.000 Donald Trump is simply the most corrupt president in American history. 0.94
00:01:51.000 That same corruption our founders warned us against.
00:01:55.000 As we move to celebrate our 250th anniversary, I'm going to keep reminding Americans of what they warned would happen if a man with no character ever held the office of presidency.
00:02:09.000 So let me say it again.
00:02:10.000 Mr. President, come after me.
00:02:12.000 I'm not going anywhere.
00:02:14.000 And the country is watching.
00:02:16.000 And so, again, this is his routine.
00:02:19.000 The routine is going to be he's just like, remember when the Biden DOJ went after Trump?
00:02:23.000 It's just like that.
00:02:24.000 Now, Gavin Newsom's the victim.
00:02:25.000 Well, there's only one problem.
00:02:27.000 Turns out the investigation has nothing to do with Gavin Newsom.
00:02:30.000 The Daily Warrior's Mary Margaret Olihan reports that none of the investigations are into Newsom himself.
00:02:34.000 One investigation, which began in 2025, is related to his wife and her taxes.
00:02:40.000 A separate DOJ investigation, which began under the Biden DOJ, involved Newsom's chief of staff.
00:02:46.000 That investigation involves multiple Newsom staff, according to Mary Margaret.
00:02:49.000 So he's trying to turn an investigation into his wife's nonprofit into President Trump is trying to get him.
00:02:58.000 He is the victim.
00:03:01.000 I do not think that this is likely to work particularly well for Gavin Newsom.
00:03:04.000 He's going to need to rally around the flag effect.
00:03:05.000 I don't think he's going to get one.
00:03:07.000 Well, one of the things that's very weird is that the president right now is not in high order with the American people.
00:03:11.000 The polling numbers for Republicans are not very good.
00:03:14.000 With that said, the Democrats.
00:03:16.000 And their midterm lead is significantly lower than 2006 and 2018, according to Harry Ensign.
00:03:21.000 Those were the big Democratic waves of the last 20 years or so.
00:03:26.000 Democrats have an edge, but compared to what we see historically, it's really not that big of a lead.
00:03:32.000 I mean, just take a look here.
00:03:33.000 Okay, this is Congress National June polls, Dem leads, and this is NBC News, midterm years with the GOP press.
00:03:40.000 Look at this.
00:03:41.000 They're up by five points, but that's half the lead they had back in 2018 when it was 10 points.
00:03:47.000 And less than half the lead they had back in 2006 with 11 points when Democrats took back the House in both of those years.
00:03:54.000 And now the Democratic lead is on a single hand.
00:03:56.000 One, two, three, four, five points.
00:03:59.000 And it's this type of lead where you say, you know what, Democrats are ahead, but don't count your chickens just quite yet.
00:04:06.000 Okay, so why are Democrats having a tough time?
00:04:10.000 Well, the answer remains the same. 0.99
00:04:12.000 They keep being crazy. 0.95
00:04:14.000 That's all they had to do is not be crazy, and they can't stop themselves. 0.87
00:04:16.000 They continue to back the main Democratic Senate candidate, Graham Platner, as more and more and more of his horrible social media posts surface.
00:04:24.000 So, Apparently, some years back, he mocked a teen's suicide in a newly resurfaced Reddit post.
00:04:32.000 The May 2012 Reddit thread begins with a photo of a teenage girl hanging out of an upper story window with a young man gripping her arms in an apparent attempt to save her.
00:04:40.000 The post caption says, A girl at my old high school tried jumping from a window because her cousin died the day before.
00:04:45.000 The student saved her.
00:04:46.000 I have hope.
00:04:48.000 He then apparently replied, Someone isn't trying hard enough.
00:04:53.000 So, great job.
00:04:55.000 Great job, Democrats.
00:04:56.000 You're doing great.
00:04:57.000 Hassan Piker. Is out there saying that by the end of the midterms, Zorhan Mamdani will seem unremarkable because the entire Democratic Party will just have moved that far left.
00:05:08.000 I hope that although Zoran was the first in New York City, by the end of these midterms, Zoran will seem unremarkable.
00:05:24.000 Because by then, we will have elected so many brilliant fighters into legislative offices throughout the New York City and the state.
00:05:35.000 So, I'm just going to point out that if Democrats keep doing this, it's not going to end great for them.
00:05:40.000 Fatherhood changes everything.
00:05:41.000 Whether it happened exactly when you planned it or not, most dads remember that moment when the reality finally set in.
00:05:46.000 Somebody depends on you now.
00:05:47.000 It's exciting, it can also be terrifying.
00:05:50.000 Again, when you realize you're going to be a dad, it just changes your life forever.
00:05:53.000 You become a different human.
00:05:55.000 So, this is why John's story resonates with a lot of people.
00:05:57.000 When he found out he was going to be a dad, he wasn't sure he was ready.
00:06:00.000 He and his partner connected with preborn, they received support, they saw their baby through a free ultrasound.
00:06:05.000 John said that that was the moment everything changed for him, the moment he realized we can do this.
00:06:09.000 This Father's Day, you can help create that moment for another family.
00:06:12.000 For just 28 bucks, you can sponsor an ultrasound through preborn.
00:06:15.000 To donate, dial pound 250, say baby.
00:06:18.000 That's pound 250, baby, or visit preborn.comslash Shapiro.
00:06:22.000 Again, there are a lot of women who are considering what to do about their unborn child, and their life changes because of the support they receive through preborn, including that ultrasound. 0.99
00:06:31.000 Ultrasounds are just technological magic.
00:06:33.000 It's incredible.
00:06:34.000 You meet your baby long before it's born.
00:06:36.000 Let women, let men do that today. 0.98
00:06:38.000 Donate by dialing pound two fifty and saying keyword baby or visit preborn.comslash Shapiro. 0.57
00:06:43.000 Some of the candidates endorsed by Zorhan Mamdani include one Claire Valdez, a candidate for the New York Seventh.
00:06:49.000 Here she is explaining her centralizing principles.
00:06:54.000 So, are we ready to free Palestine?
00:06:59.000 Are we ready to abolish ICE?
00:07:04.000 Are we ready to win Medicare for all, housing for all, and unions for all?
00:07:10.000 Okay, Democrats.
00:07:11.000 I guess this is the thing that you want.
00:07:13.000 By the way, here is Mamdanyan Valdez viewing a portrait of Mahmoud Khalil.
00:07:17.000 You know, they have to look upon the portraits of the people they consider to be the greatest Americans, including people who are not American, who just come here in order to protest America and suggest that America is terrible and Israel is terrible and all the rest.
00:07:30.000 Hey, yes, Dean Mashed.
00:07:32.000 She's, you know, from Astoria.
00:07:35.000 Yes.
00:07:35.000 And a Palestinian American.
00:07:39.000 Wow.
00:07:40.000 They're viewing.
00:07:41.000 Oh, it's gorgeous.
00:07:42.000 Yeah.
00:07:43.000 It's so gorgeous. 1.00
00:07:45.000 I mean, it is gorgeous when foreigners come here and take advantage of our systems. 1.00
00:07:48.000 It is just the best. 1.00
00:07:50.000 It is just the best. 1.00
00:07:52.000 And we just keep importing people. 0.98
00:07:54.000 And we keep sending them to our best universities.
00:07:56.000 It's going great.
00:07:58.000 By the way, Hassan Piker told the Democratic Socialists of America to donate to foreign communists at the New York City rally.
00:08:05.000 Now, what is this organizing?
00:08:07.000 It's more than just elections, it's work like organizing tenant unions, it's work like international solidarity movements, whether that's donating funds to comrades in poor countries or participating in actual solidarity missions.
00:08:23.000 To Palestine or to Cuba and so on. 0.71
00:08:26.000 Yes, we definitely must visit third world hellholes and give them our money. 1.00
00:08:30.000 Democrats keep doing this, it's going to work out great for you. 0.97
00:08:33.000 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:08:35.000 Wasn't that amazing?
00:08:36.000 Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.