The Ben Shapiro Show - November 12, 2026


Chris Rufo's BOMBSHELL Investigation Into Gavin Newsom

Is America Headed for Civil War? | Brian Kilmeade

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

209.64

Word count

2,313

Sentence count

151


Transcript

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00:00:00 Well, joining me on the line is Chris Rufo.
00:00:02 Chris is a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute, and very few people in America are doing more to uncover actual corruption, actual abuse of power than Chris.
00:00:09 Chris, thanks so much for taking the time.
00:00:10 Really appreciate it.
00:00:11 It's great to be with you.
00:00:12 So, you have yet another devastating story for Gavin Newsome, and an endless series of devastating stories for Gavin Newsome.
00:00:19 The good news for you, Chris, is that you seem to have found the richest vein to mine here in Gavin Newsome as a human being and as a governor.
00:00:26 So, why don't you tell us a little bit about your latest scoop here?
00:00:28 Yeah.
00:00:29 So, the latest story is we sent our reporting team out to Napa Valley.
00:00:33 And we spent a number of weeks investigating Gavin Newsom's wine empire.
00:00:37 And we discovered through both the reporting, court documents, contextual information that the Newsom operation was really being, uh, uh, making money by employing illegal labor.
00:00:49 And after spending a number of nights out in the fields in the Newsom vineyard, we actually obtained a whistleblower, someone who's worked for the vineyard management company for 10 years, himself an illegal alien, who really gave us that smoking gun and said about 80% of the people who pick Gavin Newsom's grapes Are illegal aliens working against the law.
00:01:10 And they pick these graves for wine that Gavin Newsom then sells for up to $7,000 a bottle.
00:01:16 This is the kind of scheme that he's running.
00:01:18 He's doing it brazenly as the governor of one of the most powerful states in the country.
00:01:24 So, Chris, I do have to ask how much do you think this sort of thing will actually damage Gavin Newsom among Democrats, right?
00:01:29 The thing he's looking for here is a Democratic nomination for the presidency in 2028, given the pretty egregiously bad results in the midterm elections.
00:01:36 That nomination on the Democratic side is going to be hotly contested.
00:01:39 It's extraordinarily valuable right now.
00:01:41 The prediction markets for what they're worth, and they were pretty accurate last time, are saying the Democrats have about a two to one shot to take the presidency in 2028.
00:01:48 Does it really hurt Democrats in a primary to be employing illegal immigrants at scale?
00:01:52 I mean, it's really an interesting thing because if you go back to the 80s, 90s, even early 2000s, these were career ending scandals.
00:01:52 Yeah.
00:01:59 And for someone like Gavin Newsom, as you're suggesting, it's really just another Wednesday.
00:02:03 And in fact, it might help boost his popularity with Democrats who seem to want to bring in everyone from every corner of the earth.
00:02:11 But here's the twist.
00:02:13 Uh, if he makes it through that primary, these kind of stories, I think, are going to really damage him in that general election.
00:02:19 And the wild card is that Trump administration, I hear the story is circulating through the highest levels of the White House, the highest levels of DHS.
00:02:27 And so the Trump administration could open an investigation.
00:02:30 It could lead to legal trouble for Newsom himself.
00:02:33 And he's already embroiled in a number of federal investigations.
00:02:36 So, uh, I think time will tell.
00:02:38 But what we know for sure, uh, is that Gavin Newsom is doing something that in the past, again, would be career ending.
00:02:45 And I think most Americans agree that it's wrong.
00:02:47 Yeah.
00:02:48 So, Chris, I mean, this does bring us to sort of broader questions about the American electorate and the coalition for Republicans going forward.
00:02:53 So, there's been a lot of focus.
00:02:55 You've talked about it.
00:02:55 I've talked about it about the young male vote moving away from President Trump in 2024 and toward the Democrats in 2026.
00:03:02 But one of the big, big moves that actually happened here was a reversion back toward the mean in terms of the Hispanic vote.
00:03:07 President Trump won something like 48% of the Hispanic vote in 2024.
00:03:11 Republicans got absolutely hammered with Hispanic voters in this last election cycle.
00:03:16 How much of that do you think is connected to immigration policy?
00:03:19 How much of it is just connected to broader cost of living concerns?
00:03:22 What do you see as a way for Republicans to make inroads?
00:03:24 I know there's some people who are saying, just abandon it, let it go.
00:03:27 That seems like a foolish strategy given the way Texas just went.
00:03:30 Yeah, look, I think most of it was the cost of living, the economy, feeling a sense of stakes in the American dream.
00:03:36 But even on immigration, I think there's a wrinkle that we have to really tease apart here.
00:03:41 Latinos in 2024, especially, supported President Trump to shut down the border, to limit the flow of illegal aliens, to re migrate.
00:03:49 a number of people, especially those criminal illegal aliens.
00:03:52 But Latinos, like many other groups, they want to see it done quietly, silently, subtly.
00:04:00 And what happened is that the Trump administration, Christy Nome, Greg Bovino, sent in these militarized units into these blue cities, causing chaos.
00:04:08 And I think there's a better way.
00:04:10 You actually have to use the financial system, banking, taxing remittances, creating the incentives for people to self deport who just came over here in the last couple of years, rather than going in with the trench coats and the goons riding on military vehicles.
00:04:26 That's not going to work.
00:04:27 People want something done.
00:04:29 They don't want to see how it's done.
00:04:31 And so I think this was mostly an implementation problem, not a problem with the policy as a whole.
00:04:37 Now, Chris, I think that's true for nearly everything the Trump administration has done.
00:04:40 I said on the show the day after the election that I probably agree with 80% of the policies of the Trump administration.
00:04:45 And I probably disagree with 90% of the implementation of Trump's policy.
00:04:49 And that holds true for me on everything from his policing of illegal immigration to the Iran war, where I actually agree with the original motivation of the Iran war.
00:04:56 And the original action in the Iran war, and then you get an eight month delay, and we're still here, and the prices are up.
00:05:02 And I think that's true with regard to tariffs, where if the president had approached tariffs in a more targeted way, as opposed to what if I go up here with a poster board and then tax penguins in the Solomon Islands, there's a lot of that.
00:05:14 Do you see any move by the Trump administration toward a more moderated version of the implementation of their executive policy, which is all they're left with here?
00:05:22 I mean, there will be no legislative policy for the next two years.
00:05:24 That is gone.
00:05:25 Democrats will prevent it.
00:05:26 Do you think that the administration?
00:05:29 Again, under Stephen Miller now, will be more effective in how it rolls out policy, or is it going to be kind of more of the government by chaos we've seen for the past couple of years?
00:05:37 Look, I mean, Trump has been on the national scene for 10 years.
00:05:40 It's government by chaos.
00:05:41 It's baked into his deepest personality.
00:05:44 He's now an octogenarian.
00:05:45 And so I think we're going to get more of the same from Trump.
00:05:47 But the more interesting question is what happens next?
00:05:50 And I talked to a lot of people from donors to activists to rank and file voters this past week.
00:05:57 And people seem to be hungering for the return of the statesman, someone who can lay out a positive vision.
00:06:03 And someone who can manage the institutions with a feeling of competence, authority and responsibility.
00:06:09 And so I think there's room for a statesman like figure to emerge.
00:06:13 And look, Trump opened up the debate.
00:06:16 He revealed a lot of rot in the country and even in the party.
00:06:20 Uh, but I think from this point forward, we really have to look to that next, uh, leader.
00:06:24 I don't know who that might be.
00:06:25 There's a lot of, uh, maneuvering, but, uh, I think voters are looking for something better and, and competent administration, uh, is not only a winner politically, but I think would, Have solved a lot of these issues that we've seen in the past year.
00:06:39 We get some more on this in just a moment.
00:06:40 First, let's talk about your health.
00:06:41 So, this has been an extraordinarily tiring week.
00:06:44 I mean, there's a lot going on out here.
00:06:46 We released a movie.
00:06:47 There was an election last week, a lot going on.
00:06:49 Not getting the sleep I should.
00:06:50 Well, that means that I need to be healthy.
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00:06:56 I like their whole health system.
00:06:57 It brings together fruits, veggies, fiber, spices in a way that's incredibly easy to incorporate into my day.
00:07:02 I don't have to rethink my entire routine.
00:07:04 It's just a part of it.
00:07:04 And frankly, When you have five kids and a demanding schedule and you're releasing a film you wrote and like a thousand things happening, simplicity is worth a lot.
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00:07:23 Again, there is a simplicity to Balance of Nature.
00:07:26 It's one of the reasons you should use it because let's be real you'll go to the grocery, you'll pick up a bunch of fruits and veggies, you'll tell yourself you're going to make yourself a smoothie every day.
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00:07:43 Now, to flip back to the other side of the aisle, obviously, you've been investigating Newsom.
00:07:47 Newsom was at one point the front runner for the nomination.
00:07:49 He now seems to have dropped down somewhere in the pack, largely probably because of all of the things you've been investigating, but also because of the fact that he has a Clintonian affect to him.
00:07:58 He seems to take any different policy on any given day.
00:08:02 When you look at how the Democrats are likely to move in 2028, I will give them credit for cleverness.
00:08:07 I don't think they're actually going to run somebody like AOC.
00:08:10 I think there's a reason they're throwing John Ossoff out there right now.
00:08:13 I wouldn't be surprised if they give a second look at somebody like a Wes Moore.
00:08:17 What do you think the Democrats are going to do in 2028?
00:08:19 Because it seems to me that given the dynamics and given the fact that right now, if the Democrats Yeah, I think of our politics right now as, as kind of a large scale version of the old marshmallow test in psychology experiments, where the only person that is going to win in the end is the person that has a sufficient amount of self control and doesn't lean into the idiotic, uh, memes,
00:08:48 the idiotic policies, the kind of temper tantrums.
00:08:51 And so we have this problem on, on both sides, to be fair.
00:08:55 And so I think the party that has the self-discipline mess on messaging on policy on implementation is going to be the party that people gravitate towards.
00:09:05 And if our economy, you know, goes into a recession, if the war, uh, we becomes a longer-term entanglement, um, people are going to feel a sense of frustration and the person who can successfully channel that frustration in a positive direction, give people a sense of stability again.
00:09:22 I think they'll win.
00:09:23 So I don't know if it's Gavin Newsom.
00:09:25 I don't know if it's Rubio or Vance or DeSantis.
00:09:28 But that seems to be where the contest is lying.
00:09:31 And whoever doesn't pick the marshmallow off the plate ultimately wins.
00:09:35 Now, it's Chris Ruffo over at Manhattan Institute.
00:09:37 He's doing amazing investigative work with his team as well.
00:09:40 Chris, thanks so much for the time.
00:09:41 Really appreciate it.
00:09:42 Thanks, Ben.
00:09:44 The Daily Wire has an extraordinary report about an illegal immigrant who tried to hijack allegedly a United Airlines flight this week.
00:09:52 Apparently, he was allowed to stay in the United States after two deportations by claiming to be transgender.
00:09:59 This is how Democrats run the country.
00:10:02 According to the Daily Wire, Honduran man Rony Alexander Gomez Alberto said he had a bomb when he tried to storm the cockpit of United Flight 2174, which departed from Newark to New Orleans on Monday night.
00:10:13 It was later revealed he crossed the southern border illegally once in 2011 and again in 2014.
00:10:18 He was removed from the U.S. each time.
00:10:20 And then he made a third successful attempt to enter the country.
00:10:24 On his third attempt to enter, which occurred at the port of entry in San Isidro, California in 2019, he claimed to have a fear of returning to his home country and was allowed to argue his case before a judge.
00:10:34 That case centered around his claim of being transgender.
00:10:37 He was granted asylum in 2020 based on his claim of being persecuted for being transgender.
00:10:41 Whoever was the person who allowed that to happen should be summarily fired by the administration.
00:10:46 I mean, my goodness.
00:10:47 But don't worry, that'll be de rigueur policy as it was under Joe Biden again.
00:10:51 We'll be right back there.
00:10:53 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:10:55 Wasn't that amazing?
00:10:56 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.