The Ben Shapiro Show - Dear King Charles, STFU

00:00:00.000 At first, it was all very dapper.

00:00:02.000 The tea and the crumpets and the fanfare, they were all good and fine.

00:00:05.000 But then the King of England, King Charles, decided to use his royal prerogative and lecture us on how to run our country, on how America ought to lead the world. 0.98

00:00:14.000 Kingo, shut the hell up. 0.93

00:00:17.000 See, here's the thing. 0.98

00:00:18.000 There are lots of lessons to be learned from Great Britain over the past century.

00:00:21.000 The biggest one is this don't do what they did.

00:00:26.000 King Charles is currently repping a civilization that no longer exists.

00:00:30.000 He's an empty crown sitting atop a civilization that gave up the ghost a long time ago.

00:00:34.000 There is only one takeaway Americans should have from the king's visit that if Britain has zigged, we ought to zag.

00:00:40.000 Britain is a cautionary tale.

00:00:42.000 If we follow their path, we collapse the way that they have.

00:00:46.000 Meanwhile, the Democrats tripped over a literal king after shouting no kings for months.

00:00:49.000 The latest on Iran and James Comey is back in the dock.

00:00:52.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:01:00.000 So, King Charles III made his first visit to the United States, and it was all very lovely.

00:01:04.000 It began with revolutionary soldiers welcoming the king in the rose garden, which I have to say was somewhat ironic.

00:01:11.000 The last king who experienced revolutionary soldiers would not have been welcomed in quite this way, I would assume.

00:01:17.000 Here is what that looked like.

00:01:32.000 You could say that's a friendly welcome, but I would kind of think that's actually a bit of an unfriendly welcome if you're the Brits, because the last time they had to face down soldiers who looked like that, they lost an empire, actually.

00:01:42.000 But President Trump had some very nice words for King Charles talking about America's cultural inheritance from England. 0.74

00:01:48.000 And of course, as a student of American history and as a devotee of British philosophers ranging from John Locke to Edmund Burke, I love the fact that the United States is rooted in Anglican history and English history and British history.

00:02:03.000 It's great.

00:02:03.000 I love it.

00:02:04.000 Here's the president talking about it.

00:02:07.000 Here in the shadows of monuments to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, honoring the British king, might seem an ironic beginning to our celebration of 250 years of American independence, but in fact, no tribute could be more appropriate.

00:02:27.000 Long before Americans had a nation or a constitution, we first had a culture, a character, and a creed.

00:02:35.000 Before we ever proclaimed our independence, Americans carried within us The rarest of gifts, moral courage, and it came from a small but mighty kingdom from across the sea.

00:02:50.000 And that, of course, is true.

00:02:51.000 All of the founders originally thought of themselves as Englishmen and thought of themselves as defending the rights of Englishmen. 0.54

00:02:56.000 Those rights of Englishmen were passed down generation to generation across the Magna Carta, through the Glorious Revolution, and all the rest.

00:03:04.000 The president also said that his mom had a crush on Charles, which must have made Charles feel pretty old, actually.

00:03:11.000 My mother, I just see it so clearly.

00:03:16.000 She loved, and I told the king this, she loved the royal family.

00:03:22.000 And she loved the queen.

00:03:25.000 And anytime the queen was involved in a ceremony or anything, my mother would be glued to the television and she'd say, Look, Donald, look how beautiful that is.

00:03:39.000 She really did love the family.

00:03:42.000 I also remember her saying very clearly, Charles, look, young Charles, he's so cute.

00:03:53.000 It's my mother.

00:03:55.000 My mother had a crush on Charles.

00:03:57.000 Can you believe it?

00:04:00.000 Amazing how I wonder what she's thinking right now.

00:04:03.000 I mean, I would say that my mom also has a bit of an obsession with the British royals.

00:04:08.000 She's very, very into all of the drama around the royals.

00:04:11.000 Well, King Charles then went to Congress where he received a bipartisan salute.

00:04:15.000 So it's very funny.

00:04:16.000 That the Democrats five seconds ago were all chanting no kings, and then they literally stood and cheered for an actual, honest to God king.

00:04:24.000 Now, a lot of King Charles' speech was delightful, truly.

00:04:28.000 For example, he spoke about the bond between the United States and the UK as priceless and eternal.

00:04:33.000 Here's what he had to say The special ingredient in our relationship.

00:04:39.000 As President Trump himself observed during his state visit to Britain last autumn, the bond of kinship and identity between America and the United Kingdom. Is priceless and eternal.

00:04:52.000 It is irreplaceable and unbreakable.

00:04:56.000 And the best part of King Charles' speech is when he gave the sort of long history of rights springing from Great Britain that made their way across the sea.

00:05:07.000 These roots run deep and they are still vital.

00:05:12.000 Our Declaration of Rights of 1689 was not only the foundation of our constitutional monarchy, but also provided the source of so many.

00:05:23.000 Of the principles reiterated, often verbatim, in the American Bill of Rights of 1791.

00:05:32.000 And those roots go even further back in history.

00:05:35.000 The U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society has calculated that Magna Carta is cited in at least 160 Supreme Court cases since 1789, not least as the foundation of the principle.

00:05:53.000 That executive power is subject to checks and balances.

00:05:57.000 This is the reason why there stands a stone by the River Thames at Runnymede, where Magna Carta was signed in the year 1215.

00:06:08.000 And of course, all of that's wonderful and all of that is true.

00:06:11.000 And listen, he made some lighthearted jokes as well.

00:06:13.000 This was not before Congress, this was a little bit later on.

00:06:16.000 He joked about the idea that if it were not for Great Britain, we would be speaking French.

00:06:20.000 That was a response to President Trump saying that if it were not for us, the British would be speaking German.

00:06:24.000 I assume this is a reference to the French and Indian War.

00:06:27.000 I have to say, historically, it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense because, let's be real, if the French had won the French and Indian War, it is very likely that the settlers, many of them, would have returned to England.

00:06:36.000 In any case, here he was making the joke.

00:06:40.000 Indeed, you recently commented, Mr. President, that if it were not for the United States, European countries would be speaking German.

00:06:48.000 Dare I say that if it wasn't for us, you'd be speaking French?

00:06:51.000 All righty, so all of that's very nice.

00:06:58.000 And then King Charles had some words on Christianity and interfaith relationships and climate change and a lot of other stuff.

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00:08:09.000 So it began with him talking about Christianity.

00:08:13.000 The original line here, where he talks about the importance of Christianity, is correct, but he doesn't stop talking.

00:08:19.000 And that's when things get awkward.

00:08:21.000 So here was King Charles talking about Christianity as a firm anchor and a daily inspiration, but then he continues.

00:08:31.000 And, Mr. Speaker, for many here, and for myself, the Christian faith is a firm anchor and daily inspiration that guides us not only personally.

00:08:59.000 That's great.

00:08:59.000 I'm not sure our Democrats are clapping since they've not been super in favor.

00:09:02.000 Guides us not only personally but together as members of our community.

00:09:07.000 Having devoted a large part of my life to interfaith relationships and greater understanding, it is that faith in the triumph of light over darkness, which I have found confirmed countless times.

00:09:28.000 Through it, I am inspired by the profound respect.

00:09:32.000 That develops as people of different faiths grow in their understanding of each other.

00:09:39.000 Ah, there we go.

00:09:41.000 There we go.

00:09:42.000 This all, by the way, was all going to lead up to a bit of a lecture about America's foreign policy.

00:09:46.000 So, again, the idea is Christianity is great, but interfaith relations, those are the things.

00:09:51.000 Now, again, I'm speaking as a person who is not Christian.

00:09:55.000 So that means that I have tremendous admiration for Christianity and what it has done in the world.

00:10:00.000 I encourage people to go to church all the time.

00:10:02.000 And it turns out, That if you want a robust Christianity, that Christianity cannot, in fact, be based on vague principles.

00:10:09.000 It has to be based in faith.

00:10:11.000 And so when you hear the Brits lecturing the United States, a much more religious country, on Christianity and interfaith relations, this is where I start to go a little bit wonky.

00:10:21.000 Because let's be real about this Britain has taken religion and trod it through the mud.

00:10:28.000 The statistics don't lie here.

00:10:29.000 According to the UK's 2022 census, 51% of people in the UK identify as having no religion.

00:10:37.000 According to a 2024 British Social Attitude Survey, 9% of the population attends a religious service once a week or more.

00:10:47.000 And as far as Anglican identity, it doesn't exist anymore.

00:10:49.000 The Church of England, 2.6% of people aged 16 to 34 identify with the Church of England.

00:10:58.000 Meanwhile, the radical increase in radical Islam in the kingdom has been overwhelming.

00:11:04.000 15% of London minimum at this point is Muslim.

00:11:08.000 A huge percentage of those people are radicalized.

00:11:10.000 According to one survey conducted in 2016 by the polling exchange, 4% of British Muslims say that 9 11 was created by Al Qaeda.

00:11:23.000 7% say the Jews.

00:11:26.000 31% say the American government.

00:11:28.000 Britain imported millions of people who believe this.

00:11:32.000 Millions of people. 1.00

00:11:33.000 This is where your interfaith nonsense has gotten you. 1.00

00:11:38.000 This is. 0.51

00:11:40.000 Being lectured on Christianity and interfaith attitudes by the Brits?

00:11:43.000 The answer there is no.

00:11:45.000 You know where interfaith is going in Britain? 0.83

00:11:47.000 Interfaith is going to tolerance for radical Islam, which is why today, the day after King Charles visited the United States, there was an attack in Golders Green, which is a very heavily Jewish part of London, in which a radical Muslim took out a kitchen knife and just started stabbing people who were wearing Jewish garb. 0.56

00:12:06.000 Here is some of the horrendous video. 0.82

00:12:12.000 You can see here is a radical Muslim.

00:12:13.000 He's walking down the street, takes out a knife, and literally just attacks a man wearing a yarmulke on the street.

00:12:19.000 He ended up stabbing two people on the street before he was taken down by guards in Golders Green.

00:12:24.000 According to UK government data, there were 15,859 total reported incidents of knife crime in London in 2025 alone. 0.89

00:12:33.000 And of course, we know that Great Britain's interfaith tolerance allowed for gigantic grooming gangs to basically run the place. 0.75

00:12:42.000 For years on end, out of fear that there might be a backlash to open immigration. 0.89

00:12:47.000 King Charles also took the opportunity, while he was in the United States, to lecture us on climate change.

00:12:54.000 We should mention that the UK has destroyed its own economy on the basis of this nonsense.

00:13:00.000 Our generation must decide how to address the collapse of critical natural systems, which threatens far more than the harmony and essential diversity of nature.

00:13:13.000 We ignore at our peril the fact that these natural systems, in other words, nature's own economy, provide the foundation for our prosperity and our national security.

00:13:29.000 Again, listening to the Brits lecture us on energy production is ridiculous.

00:13:33.000 Roughly 78% of UK's energy still comes from hydrocarbons.

00:13:37.000 That would be like oil and natural gas.

00:13:40.000 And the UK is constantly on the economic edge because of their extraordinary regulations and low domestic gas storage capacity.

00:13:48.000 According to an article in the American Spectator, there is a 78% tax rate on North Sea gas production and a nuclear program that's not going to deliver energy for a decade.

00:13:59.000 The energy programs in the UK have driven them into the dirt, economically speaking.

00:14:04.000 All of this culminated in King Charles lecturing the United States on how to beat plowshares into swords rather than plowshares into swords.

00:14:13.000 He wants to be a moderating influence on our global hegemony.

00:14:19.000 Working together and with our international partners, we can stem the beating of plowshares into swords.

00:14:26.000 I am mindful that we are still.

00:14:30.000 In the season of Easter, the season that most strengthens my hope, it is why I believe with all my heart that the essence of our two nations is a generosity of spirit and a duty to foster compassion, to promote peace, to deepen mutual understanding, and to value all people of all faiths and of none.

00:14:53.000 Okay, now again, listening to this from the same government, I understand King Charles is the monarchy.

00:14:59.000 Curist Armour's government is an appeasement oriented.

00:15:03.000 Left wing pacifist government.

00:15:06.000 And so, in order to understand my ire here, I think you have to understand having the British crown come to the United States and tell us all about the old style civilization that Britain basically surrendered in favor of welfare statism is highly irritating.

00:15:20.000 Listen to this person lecture the United States, the world's great hegemon, on what we ought to do from a country that decided to defenestrate itself over the course of the last century is pretty galling.

00:15:35.000 And we know what went wrong for Great Britain.

00:15:37.000 We know what went wrong.

00:15:39.000 Even after World War I, where they had suffered extraordinary losses and where financial leadership had largely been ceded to the United States because the United States was the borrowing center for the British.

00:15:53.000 Even after that, the global empire really was not America's yet.

00:15:57.000 The global empire was still Great Britain's.

00:15:59.000 And then they decided between World Wars I and II that they were going to become pacifists.

00:16:05.000 That they were going to move away from defending themselves, their civilization.

00:16:11.000 Famously, in 1933, there was a resolution at Oxford University, at their debate club, the so called King and Country Resolution, in which the students voted, quote, that this house will under no circumstances fight for its king and country.

00:16:25.000 And this was reflective of British sentiments.

00:16:27.000 There's an attempt in the aftermath of the cost of World War I to recede from global leadership.

00:16:31.000 And you know what ended up happening?

00:16:32.000 It was a self fulfilling prophecy.

00:16:34.000 I was recently rereading Winston Churchill's Gathering Storm, which has Of course, a classic.

00:16:40.000 It is the first volume of his Second World War series.

00:16:43.000 And one of the things that Churchill writes, right near the top of the book, he says that his purpose in writing this book, which he was writing again right after World War II, as the rise of the Soviet Union was creating the conditions for the Cold War, he said that he was writing to demonstrate, quote, how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous, how the structure and habits of democratic states, unless they are welded into larger organisms, lack those elements of persistence and conviction which can alone give security to humble masses.

00:17:12.000 How, even in matters of self preservation, no policy is pursued for even 10 or 15 years at a time.

00:17:18.000 We shall see how the councils of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of moral danger, how the middle course adopted from desires for safety and a quiet life may be found to lead direct to the bullseye of disaster.

00:17:29.000 And he says, We shall see how absolute is the need of a broad path of international action pursued by many states in common across the years, irrespective of the ebb and flow of national politics.

00:17:39.000 Meanwhile, Britain is telling the United States that we ought not do what we are doing in Iran.

00:17:44.000 They're doing absolutely nothing to help us in the Strait of Hormuz. 0.76

00:17:47.000 They're perfectly willing to allow China to maximize its global influence. 0.53

00:17:52.000 Only in the case of Ukraine has Britain taken a leading role in any sort of way.

00:17:57.000 And even there, it's basically to beg us for money and armaments.

00:18:02.000 Britain's recession, receding from its world leading position between World Wars I and II in the 1930s, actually ended with that catastrophic World War II, which basically decided that Britain was no longer a global power.

00:18:14.000 And then after the war, Britain decided that they were going to give up global leadership.

00:18:19.000 In favor of irrelevance and socialism.

00:18:21.000 In 1942, there was something called the Beverage Report in the middle of World War II.

00:18:25.000 And it was a report arguing essentially for large scale socialism in Great Britain.

00:18:31.000 This is where the phrase cradle to grave welfare state comes from.

00:18:33.000 It comes from the Beverage Report.

00:18:37.000 And after World War II, Britain embraced that in full.

00:18:40.000 And what that meant was basically blowing out global leadership in favor of domestic spending and destruction of their domestic economy.

00:18:48.000 At the beginning of the 20th century, for example, government.

00:18:50.000 In Britain, we spent about 0.5% of GDP on health.

00:18:54.000 As of April 2026, that number is 11.4% of GDP.

00:18:59.000 At the beginning of the 20th century, the British government spent about 0.7% of GDP on social protection.

00:19:06.000 Today, UK welfare spending is almost 11% of GDP.

00:19:11.000 In total, as of early this year, the UK's government expenditures are approximately 44% to 45% of their entire GDP annually.

00:19:20.000 By way of contrast, the United States, we spend a lot of money here in the United States.

00:19:23.000 It's like 22%.

00:19:25.000 Britain gave up the ghost.

00:19:27.000 They gave up global leadership.

00:19:28.000 So, having the king come here and lecture us on climate change or lecture us on foreign policy or lecture us on what we ought to do for global leadership, no country has done such damage to itself as Great Britain through pacifism and socialism and redistributionism and open borders.

00:19:47.000 And one of my favorite poems is a poem by the poet Philip Larkin, a British poet who's writing in around 1960.

00:19:56.000 And he wrote a poem called Homage to a Government.

00:20:00.000 And it ends this way.

00:20:01.000 Next year, we shall be living in a country that brought its soldiers home for lack of money.

00:20:05.000 The statues will still be standing in the same tree muffled squares and look nearly the same.

00:20:09.000 Our children will not know it's a different country.

00:20:11.000 All we can hope to leave them now is money.

00:20:13.000 And he was lamenting the demise of the British Empire in favor of, again, domestic redistributionism.

00:20:18.000 And as it turns out, the Brits can't even leave their kids money. 0.95

00:20:21.000 Because when you give up global leadership, and when you give up the free markets, and when you give up private property, and when you skew in favor of socialist idiocy, And global weakness, you become irrelevant. 0.71

00:20:34.000 So you don't get to come here and lecture us about that. 0.88

00:20:37.000 Those are the lessons.

00:20:38.000 Don't give up global leadership when you have it.

00:20:42.000 Don't go wobbly.

00:20:43.000 Don't give up your economic might in favor of specious nonsense like global redistributionism in the name of global warming.

00:20:51.000 And hell, don't open your borders to mass migration that helps facilitate all of that.

00:20:55.000 And then don't lecture us.

00:20:57.000 Don't lecture your successors who have been paying your bills for the last 80 years in terms of defense.

00:21:04.000 Don't do that.

00:21:05.000 By the way, it is not just Great Britain, of course.

00:21:07.000 All righty, coming up, we will get to the Europeans lecturing us on foreign policy.

00:21:11.000 Really, really, guys, this is what we're doing now.

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00:22:32.000 Listening to the Germans lecture the United States as we attempt to take down a truly Nazi esque power in Iran is pretty rich. 0.86

00:22:43.000 It's pretty rich. 0.79

00:22:44.000 And I weep for the Germans that their energy prices went up.

00:22:48.000 Oh, that's sad. 0.86

00:22:50.000 Maybe you guys shouldn't have completely destroyed your own energy supplies via Green Revolution nonsense. 0.81

00:22:59.000 Maybe it turns out that your facilitation of the Russian bear led to the invasion of Ukraine because you made yourself dependent on Russian oil for years. 0.85

00:23:10.000 Being lectured because you're having a rough economic time in Germany. 0.69

00:23:13.000 Oh, that's sad.

00:23:14.000 That's sad.

00:23:15.000 Here's my tiniest violin.

00:23:16.000 Here's Friedrich Merz.

00:23:19.000 Often the Americans clearly have no strategy, and the problem is conflicts like This is always that you don't have just to go in, you also have to get out again.

00:23:29.000 We saw that all too painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years.

00:23:35.000 We saw it in Iraq. 0.52

00:23:38.000 So, this whole affair is, as I said, ill considered to say the least.

00:23:42.000 At the moment, I cannot see what strategic exit the Americans are now opting for.

00:23:50.000 Okay, a little bit later on, we'll get into President Trump's actual strategy.

00:23:53.000 By the way, comparing.

00:23:55.000 Afghanistan, where he had literally tens of thousands of boots on the ground, and Iraq, where he had hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground, to Iran, where he had zero boots on the ground.

00:24:04.000 And basically, we are just stopping shipping coming out of Iran at this point.

00:24:08.000 That is really, truly silly. 0.96

00:24:10.000 Truly, truly silly. 0.97

00:24:11.000 The president put out a statement. 0.96

00:24:12.000 The chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, thinks it's okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

00:24:16.000 He doesn't know what he's talking about.

00:24:17.000 If Iran had a nuclear weapon, the whole world would be held hostage. 0.70

00:24:20.000 I'm doing something with Iran right now that other nations or presidents should have done long ago. 0.65

00:24:24.000 No wonder Germany is doing so poorly, both economically and otherwise.

00:24:27.000 President Trump.

00:24:28.000 He ain't wrong. 0.56

00:24:29.000 Okay, we'll get back to the president's Iran strategy, which actually is quite a good strategy in just a second.

00:24:34.000 It turns out that the blockade is having a massive impact on Iran.

00:24:39.000 The Iranian regime is in serious, serious trouble.

00:24:41.000 We'll get to that in a bit.

00:24:43.000 First, we have to talk about this assassination attempt and new details emerging about the would be shooter Cole Allen.

00:24:53.000 There's something weird happening here.

00:24:54.000 The thing that's weird that's happening is that the assassination mindset is not relegated at this point to the far left.

00:25:02.000 It turns out that there is such a thing apparently as a moderate liberal assassin.

00:25:06.000 So NPR went and interviewed a person named Aliza Turlinden, who went to Caltech with Allen when they were in a Christian fellowship group a couple of years ago.

00:25:15.000 And NPR asked, did he seem to have a sort of grip on reality in the sense that this notion that I'm the only one who can do this?

00:25:23.000 And Turlendon answered, I never saw evidence of mental instability.

00:25:28.000 Even reading this manifesto, it struck me that it was relatively analytical and organized, the things that he was doing to try to minimize any harm to innocent people.

00:25:35.000 I got the impression that he was looking at it like an engineering problem he was solving under constraints.

00:25:40.000 He saw this most likely as his duty as a Christian and as an American.

00:25:43.000 Any rhetoric that he was being anti Christian is simply inaccurate.

00:25:46.000 I'm sad he took this step, but I believe in his mind. 1.00

00:25:48.000 He felt he didn't have any other choice.

00:25:51.000 Again, and if you read his manifesto, his manifesto is the same kind of stuff that people in mainstream Democratic circles say.

00:26:01.000 It really is. 0.93

00:26:02.000 If you stripped out the assassination part of it, it reads like any other Facebook post from your slightly crazed white liberal aunt. 0.71

00:26:08.000 I mean, here's James Carville saying the same kind of stuff yesterday. 0.87

00:26:14.000 Many times people have criticized me because I've called Trump. 1.00

00:26:18.000 The MF word, and I've called him worse than that, and I've called him a sack of shit. 0.99

00:26:24.000 Rod, who is Vance's spiritual mentor, and Tucker Carlson, who is a person of some substance in the Republican Party, have both called Trump the Antichrist. 0.99

00:26:37.000 Well, even I haven't gotten there.

00:26:40.000 So please, all of the people that faint in the street about my name calling, understand this.

00:26:48.000 I have not yet referred to Donald John Trump as the Antichrist.

00:26:54.000 All right, because I think the Antichrist would be smarter than him.

00:27:00.000 Okay, wonderful stuff there from James Carville.

00:27:02.000 And by the way, as I pointed out, there are people like Tucker Carlson who have been saying some pretty awful things about the president.

00:27:06.000 Representative Rokhana, the fact that this guy is considered a mainstream liberal is insane to me.

00:27:12.000 The California congressman who wants to run for president, he was asked on Fox about his relationship with Hassan Piker, who we've talked extensively about this streamer who is openly violent in his rhetoric.

00:27:22.000 Openly, I mean, associates with terrorism.

00:27:25.000 Promotes terrorism, promotes actual honest to God violence, spilling of blood and guts, and all the rest of it. 0.80

00:27:30.000 And Kana's answer was simple Hassan Piker is popular.

00:27:34.000 And that means, you know, of course he's not going to dissociate in any real way.

00:27:39.000 Millions of people follow Hassan Piker.

00:27:41.000 Why?

00:27:41.000 Because he's speaking about some of the frustrations.

00:27:43.000 He's speaking about the lack of people on healthcare in America.

00:27:47.000 Well, there are a lot of people on the podcast world, et cetera, who say things that are outrageous or sensationalist.

00:27:53.000 And I push back when you do that.

00:27:55.000 But we have to understand the anger in this country of people who feel they can't buy a house, they can't afford gas, they can't have health care.

00:28:04.000 What does that have to do with supporting a person and standing in solidarity with a person who legitimately supports murder, terrorism, violence, theft?

00:28:16.000 The number of people on the rational left is radically decreasing.

00:28:18.000 One of them is Van Jones.

00:28:20.000 It's amazing that this has become controversial in left wing circles.

00:28:22.000 Van Jones, again, I'm friends with Van.

00:28:24.000 I think Van is great.

00:28:25.000 He and I disagree on a wide variety of policies.

00:28:27.000 But he lives in the rational world.

00:28:29.000 Here is Van Jones saying a thing that many Democrats won't, which is that Hamas is quite terrible. 0.57

00:28:33.000 Remember, Hassan Piker literally told Pod Save America last week that Hamas is wonderful, that they're a thousand times better than Israel.

00:28:40.000 Here's Van Jones. 0.57

00:28:42.000 And so, even in armed struggle, there are rules.

00:28:45.000 Even in armed struggle, there are principles.

00:28:48.000 And the principles of no women, no children, no rapes, no kidnapping, these are moral principles that any liberation struggle has to uphold.

00:28:59.000 There is a way to judge an organization and decide is it worthy of my support?

00:29:06.000 You ask the question what are the ends of the organization?

00:29:10.000 What are their goals?

00:29:11.000 And what are their means?

00:29:13.000 How are they getting there?

00:29:15.000 In my tradition, the ends have to be more freedom, more dignity, more democracy for more people.

00:29:23.000 Those are the freedom fighting organizations in our community that we stand with and we uphold.

00:29:29.000 Hamas is not that kind of organization.

00:29:32.000 Hamas is not fighting for more freedom for Palestinians, it's actually fighting for less.

00:29:37.000 They are an organization that wants a theocracy, not a democracy.

00:29:42.000 They want Islamic fundamentalism, Islamo-fascist principles to govern their people.

00:29:50.000 This is the thing that has become unpopular on the left.

00:29:52.000 That's how insane the left has become at this point.

00:29:54.000 So, what do we do about it?

00:29:56.000 What do we do about it?

00:29:57.000 So, I think there are a few answers: there is social ostracism of people like the Hassan Pikers, and then there is prosecution of people who actually make threats.

00:30:07.000 He finds himself in the legal crosshairs again.

00:30:09.000 But is this really like a good idea?

00:30:10.000 Listen, James Comey gets whatever he deserves in terms of the harassment and the annoyance because he has it coming.

00:30:15.000 But is it like a great idea?

00:30:16.000 We'll get to that in a moment.

00:30:17.000 First, here's the thing.

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00:31:24.000 You have to be very careful with prosecution.

00:31:24.000 Prosecution.

00:31:26.000 Why?

00:31:27.000 Because the purpose of law enforcement is to effectuate the enforcement of the law.

00:31:31.000 I understand that the left has used law enforcement as a weapon to make people's lives miserable.

00:31:36.000 This happened to President Trump.

00:31:37.000 It happened to his entire family.

00:31:39.000 There's no question that specious charges were routinely filed and investigations that had no basis were routinely done against President Trump.

00:31:47.000 Initiated by people like James Comey, the former FBI director.

00:31:50.000 That is absolutely true.

00:31:51.000 And that was wrong.

00:31:53.000 And by the way, when people say that because James Comey did that now, you know, the Republicans should do the same, how do we ever win if we?

00:32:01.000 The answer is the way you win is by winning elections.

00:32:06.000 Like, let's be real about this.

00:32:08.000 When it comes to the winning of elections, alienating the people in the middle is the wrong way to do it.

00:32:13.000 And the reality is that Russiagate did not have, in the long run, a particularly beneficial effect for Democrats.

00:32:19.000 It's one of the reasons why President Trump is president again.

00:32:22.000 If the Democrats had not initiated an entirely new round of investigations into President Trump in 2023, would he be president today?

00:32:33.000 I don't know the answer to that.

00:32:35.000 So that means that if you're going to prosecute, prosecute cases that actually have real basis to them.

00:32:39.000 And when it comes to social ostracization, that should in fact be utilized in large scale. 0.89

00:32:45.000 We should be forcing the feet of people like Arokhana to the fire on Hassan Piker. 0.84

00:32:49.000 Should you be associating with Hassan Piker?

00:32:51.000 Should you be associating with people who engage in violent rhetoric?

00:32:53.000 Are you willing to condemn actual terrorist groups like Hamas or Hezbollah?

00:32:58.000 Are you willing to move away from democratic socialists of America who justify the violence of people like Luigi Mangia?

00:33:04.000 Like, what are you willing to do?

00:33:05.000 And we can answer at the ballot box and we can answer in terms of social ostracization.

00:33:09.000 When it comes to prosecution, we should quite carefully tailor that, the power of the federal government, to cases you're going to win.

00:33:15.000 Otherwise, you end up with a backlash.

00:33:17.000 I mention this because yesterday it was announced that a federal grand jury had indicted former FBI director and giant weirdo James Comey again.

00:33:23.000 Now, listen again.

00:33:24.000 James Comey being harassed by law enforcement on a sort of Scheudenfreude level, I ain't losing sleep.

00:33:29.000 James Comey helped initiate the Russiagate investigation that spun up a bajillion conspiracy theories and ruined people's lives, destroyed their finances, and all the rest. 0.98

00:33:37.000 And he did it based on absolute trash that he knew at the time was trash.

00:33:42.000 However, are these counts that are being filed against Comey likely to succeed in court? 0.94

00:33:47.000 I mean, we'll find out, I assume. 0.95

00:33:50.000 I would hope that there is more to this case than he put out a dumb Instagram post. 0.89

00:33:55.000 And maybe they came up with some supporting information that suggested that he actually wanted to inflict bodily harm on the president.

00:34:01.000 But there are two counts that an Eastern North Carolina grand jury indicted on.

00:34:05.000 Count one is that James Comey, the former FBI director, quote, knowingly and willfully made a threat to take the life of and to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States.

00:34:14.000 Now, what was that?

00:34:14.000 You will remember that back on May 15th of last year, he put up an image on his Instagram of seashells that said 8647, 8647.

00:34:26.000 Now, the prosecutors say a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret this as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the president of the United States.

00:34:35.000 And count two is basically the same thing.

00:34:37.000 They say that Comey consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communication would be viewed as threatening violence and knowingly transmitted a communication in interstate commerce that contained a threat to injure the person of another.

00:34:49.000 So, Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, said that a year of resources were.

00:34:53.000 I'm not sure.

00:34:54.000 I mean, I'll be curious to see what the effect of that is.

00:34:56.000 I feel like that case is exactly what the case is.

00:34:59.000 He put out.

00:35:00.000 A photo that's hit 8647.

00:35:02.000 86 can mean kill, like 86, or it can mean just get rid of.

00:35:05.000 Meaning, like, if you want an 86 a customer, kick the customer out.

00:35:08.000 Or if you want an 86 a dish, you can just take the dish off the menu, for example.

00:35:13.000 But if all we've got here, if all the evidence that they end up with after a year is basically what we see right now, that case ain't going nowhere and it's going to backfire because it'll look as though the mechanisms of law enforcement are being used for political gain, which is never a good look.

00:35:26.000 And again, it's not a good look on the left either.

00:35:28.000 Donald Trump's president again.

00:35:30.000 Here is Kash Patel.

00:35:32.000 As the U.S. Attorney indicated, James Comey will be afforded every matter of due process under the United States Constitution.

00:35:39.000 And as the Attorney General indicated, this has been a case that's been investigated over the past 9, 10, 11 months.

00:35:45.000 These cases take time.

00:35:47.000 Our investigators work methodically.

00:35:49.000 They are career agents, career prosecutors who work these matters.

00:35:53.000 They call the balls and strikes in the field as they see fit, pursuant to the facts of the case and the law.

00:35:58.000 They took that information and made a presentment to a grand jury, a jury of peers in the district in which the alleged crime took place.

00:36:05.000 And that grand jury spoke, and that grand jury returned a two count indictment against James Comey.

00:36:12.000 James Comey allegedly threatened the life of the President of the United States.

00:36:18.000 Now, here was James Comey telling this story with Stephen Colbert last year, because you'll remember that there was another attempted prosecution of James Comey on this particular matter.

00:36:28.000 You were walking down the beach.

00:36:30.000 You were walking down the beach and you saw this on the beach?

00:36:30.000 What happened?

00:36:33.000 Yeah, my wife and I, Patrice, were walking down the beach and saw those numbers in shells on the beach.

00:36:38.000 You didn't do this.

00:36:38.000 Somebody else did this.

00:36:39.000 Yeah, somebody else did it.

00:36:40.000 We were on a walk preparing for this week to roll out of my book.

00:36:44.000 She looked at it and said, Why'd someone put their address in the sand?

00:36:47.000 All right.

00:36:48.000 And then we stood at it, looked at it, trying to figure out what it was.

00:36:51.000 And she'd long been a server in restaurants.

00:36:53.000 And she said, You know what I think it is?

00:36:55.000 Yeah.

00:36:55.000 I think it's a reference to restaurants when you would 86 something in a restaurant.

00:36:59.000 Right.

00:36:59.000 Yeah.

00:36:59.000 It's off the menu.

00:37:00.000 I said, I remember when I was a kid, you'd say 86 to get out of a place.

00:37:04.000 This place stinks, let's 86 it.

00:37:05.000 I was a bartender. 0.92

00:37:06.000 You would 86 a customer if they were getting drunk.

00:37:08.000 Like, let's 86 them.

00:37:09.000 Like, give them a low proof alcohol or something like that.

00:37:12.000 Yeah.

00:37:13.000 And so I said, I think it's a clever political message.

00:37:16.000 And she said, You should take a picture of it.

00:37:18.000 I said, sure.

00:37:19.000 And then she said, you should Instagram that.

00:37:20.000 And boom. 0.99

00:37:24.000 Listen, he's a giant weirdo who Instagrams a bunch of random crap, including himself wandering in the forest. 0.99

00:37:29.000 The fact this guy was ever FBI director is, it truly explains that politics is veep. 0.98

00:37:33.000 It is never house of cards. 1.00

00:37:35.000 Politics is filled with idiots doing idiot things. 1.00

00:37:37.000 And James Comey is one of those idiots. 1.00

00:37:39.000 But turning him into a sort of free speech martyr, I think, is bad politics. 1.00

00:37:44.000 Here's James Comey.

00:37:45.000 By the way, no one is enjoying this as much as James Comey.

00:37:47.000 This dude loves being the center of attention more than Kim Kardashian.

00:37:51.000 It's astonishing.

00:37:53.000 It is a shock he has not created an OnlyFans at this point.

00:37:56.000 Now, here is James Comey maintaining his innocence, trying to turn himself into a hero.

00:38:00.000 Now, they're back.

00:38:02.000 This time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago.

00:38:08.000 And this won't be the end of it.

00:38:11.000 But nothing has changed with me.

00:38:12.000 I'm still innocent.

00:38:14.000 I'm still not afraid.

00:38:16.000 And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.

00:38:19.000 So let's go.

00:38:21.000 But it's really important that all of us remember.

00:38:25.000 This is not who we are as a country.

00:38:26.000 This is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be.

00:38:30.000 And the good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values.

00:38:36.000 Keep the faith.

00:38:36.000 I mean, listen, if irritating, annoying, self congratulatory were a crime, put this guy in jail for life.

00:38:43.000 He is so wildly annoying.

00:38:46.000 He totally destroyed the credibility of his own department. 0.98

00:38:51.000 He ran us through years of just absolute garbage with regard to the Russiagate stuff. 0.90

00:38:57.000 And now he gets to.

00:38:59.000 This is why I don't like the move.

00:39:01.000 I don't love it.

00:39:03.000 Because, again, giving this guy what he wants, which is attention, is just a bad strategy.

00:39:08.000 Meanwhile, the FCC is going after ABC over Jimmy Kimmel again.

00:39:14.000 Apparently, according to the FCC's filing, eight Disney owned ABC affiliates will now have to prove to the FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, they've been operating in the public interest.

00:39:22.000 The licenses are not up for renewal for several years.

00:39:24.000 The FCC accelerated their renewal process on the heels of Kimmel's expectant widow joke, which we talked about yesterday on the show.

00:39:30.000 Again.

00:39:31.000 Using the government in this manner seems to me ill advised.

00:39:36.000 And listen, I get the turnabout is fair play of all of this, but I will just say that there is such a thing as political backlash to governmental overreach.

00:39:45.000 And if it looks as though you are utilizing the mechanisms of government to go after Jimmy Kimmel, not because he committed a crime, but because you don't like what he is saying, that is not going to redound to the benefit of Republicans electorally.

00:39:55.000 And there are solutions to what's going on.

00:39:57.000 Social ostracization is right, the use of government is wrong here.

00:40:01.000 This is not the proper use of government.

00:40:03.000 If you want to go after the ABC affiliates on a market level and say, listen, we're going to drive your ratings into the ground because Jimmy Kimmel's terrible, all for it.

00:40:12.000 If advertisers want to pull, all for that.

00:40:15.000 But if the idea here is that the government should be kind of the point of the spear here, I think that is a strategy that is likely to be unsuccessful.

00:40:22.000 Okay, meanwhile, back on Iran.

00:40:25.000 So, as we spoke about a little bit earlier, the German government is claiming that the president has no strategy.

00:40:30.000 Well, that's weird because it turns out that Iran's rial is trading at an all time low.

00:40:34.000 We are talking about 1.8 to 1.9 million per dollar.

00:40:37.000 Their economy is basically dead.

00:40:40.000 Operation Economic Fury, there's a case to be made, has been more damaging by far.

00:40:44.000 Than actual operation, whatever it was called, Fury.

00:40:54.000 The original name of the operation, I can remember Economic Fury versus Epic Fury.

00:40:59.000 Thank you.

00:41:01.000 I had even forgotten about it because it's been a while since Epic Fury.

00:41:03.000 In any case, Epic Fury has been, in some cases, it's been effective for sure.

00:41:08.000 In some cases, even less effective than Economic Fury, which is the thing continuing.

00:41:11.000 And the president is loving it.

00:41:12.000 There are reports out today that the blockade on Iran's government may remain in place for weeks to come.

00:41:18.000 Which is fairly easy for the United States, right?

00:41:19.000 We're not dropping a lot of bombs.

00:41:21.000 We're not flying a lot of sorties.

00:41:22.000 We've got ships that are stopping other ships and turning them back.

00:41:25.000 And we are also going after their shadow banking facilitators.

00:41:29.000 According to the Treasury Department, as part of economic theory, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated 35 entities and individuals that oversee Iran's shadow banking architecture, facilitating the movement of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars tied to sanctions, evasion, and Iran's sponsorship of terrorism.

00:41:49.000 And those networks allow the IRGC to access the international financial system.

00:41:54.000 This is a picture, a chart of Iran's shadow banking network.

00:41:57.000 As you can see, they use a bunch of cutouts.

00:41:59.000 And so now we are sanctioning those as well.

00:42:02.000 Meanwhile, U.S. Marines are boarding and searching vessels to enforce the blockade.

00:42:07.000 Here is some video of that.

00:42:14.000 You can see here is the United States launching helicopters to go and blockade vessels, dropping Marines down onto the shore, onto the ships themselves.

00:42:25.000 And the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that the president has told his aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran.

00:42:33.000 He has continued to squeeze Iran's economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports.

00:42:39.000 He says that his other options right now, like resume bombing or walk away from the conflict, carry more risk than maintaining the blockade.

00:42:47.000 So he is not wrong about this.

00:42:49.000 The Iranian government is on its last legs.

00:42:52.000 Because they've already started to propagandize about the civilian suffering in Iran.

00:42:52.000 How do you know?

00:42:57.000 This is always the last vestige of a dying regime, is that they start to talk about the suffering.

00:43:02.000 You don't know to end the suffering right now.

00:43:03.000 You give up your nuclear weapons.

00:43:04.000 The suffering ends right now.

00:43:05.000 Give up your nuclear weapons.

00:43:06.000 Stop developing long range ballistic missiles.

00:43:09.000 Stop funding terrorist groups.

00:43:10.000 It's really simple, actually.

00:43:13.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, war has imposed a heavy cost on Iran's economy, more than a million people out of work, soaring food prices, a prolonged internet shutdown that has slammed online business.

00:43:22.000 The question is how much more pain Iran's leaders are willing to tolerate as they try to negotiate a favorable end. to the war.

00:43:28.000 American officials are betting Iran will soon crack because of the deepening economic crisis.

00:43:32.000 Iran is betting the U.S. will crack first.

00:43:34.000 Well, here's the thing.

00:43:35.000 The, this is very short-term stuff for Iran.

00:43:37.000 Iran cannot continue this for months and months and months and months.

00:43:40.000 They cannot.

00:43:42.000 And the reality is that the poll numbers for the president are basically stagnant at this point.

00:43:49.000 His approval rating is stuck in the mid-30s.

00:43:52.000 The congressional ballot, by the way, continues to be not as bad as you might think.

00:43:57.000 Democrats certainly have an advantage On the generic congressional ballot right now.

00:44:03.000 With that said, the generic ballot is not heavily in favor of Democrats in kind of the way you might expect at this point in time.

00:44:12.000 Democrats are up by an average about 5.5, 5.2 in the generic ballot.

00:44:18.000 Democrats have not been able to take advantage of this.

00:44:21.000 So, can the Iranian economy last for another four, five, six months with nothing coming in and nothing going out?

00:44:29.000 That would be the main question here.

00:44:32.000 At the same time, The situation in Lebanon continues to percolate.

00:44:37.000 The Israelis and the Lebanese government are on exactly the same side.

00:44:40.000 It's Hezbollah that opposes both.

00:44:42.000 This is a point being made by the Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

00:44:45.000 I think if you ask the Israelis, they would tell you the perfect outcome is a strong Lebanese government with a strong Lebanese armed forces who is able to dismantle Hezbollah to prevent them from these attacks and ultimately to make sure that they don't exist anymore as a military unit. 0.73

00:44:58.000 That's the ideal outcome that the Israelis want. 0.73

00:45:02.000 That is the negotiation that's currently taking place as well.

00:45:04.000 And Israel continues to take action against Hezbollah.

00:45:07.000 Here is some footage of them blowing up a gigantic Hezbollah tunnel.

00:45:11.000 This tunnel was two kilometers long and 10 kilometers wide in terms of the coverage area. 0.92

00:45:19.000 Just massive.

00:45:21.000 It had spread out in several different directions under numerous villages in the area. 0.90

00:45:25.000 You see the size of these tunnels that Hezbollah had built.

00:45:28.000 So Israel blew it up. 0.75

00:45:29.000 I love the exercise equipment tent.

00:45:30.000 They got to make sure you're staying in shape while you're in a tunnel buried 10 meters under the ground in order to pursue terrorism.

00:45:38.000 What wonderful people, the people at Hezbollah.

00:45:41.000 Just, just joys they are.

00:45:43.000 By the way, in oil news, this is actually major oil news that is being underplayed, I think.

00:45:47.000 The United Arab Emirates, which is the third biggest country in OPEC, is now going to exit OPEC.

00:45:53.000 CNBC calls this a major blow to the cartel that coordinates production among the world's largest oil producers, particularly those in the Middle East.

00:46:01.000 Why is this happening?

00:46:02.000 Because UAE and Saudi have been in a bit of a scuffle internationally because Saudi doesn't really like that UAE is forming its own future.

00:46:13.000 That it has joined the Abraham Accords, that it is strengthening its own economy, its own connections with the United States.

00:46:19.000 They see their leadership role being ceded in some cases by UAE.

00:46:22.000 And UAE is saying, listen, we're not going to coordinate production with you anymore.

00:46:27.000 What does that mean for Americans?

00:46:28.000 Well, it probably means lower oil prices.

00:46:30.000 The entire design of OPEC is to artificially ratchet down supply in order to take advantage of demand or to play politics.

00:46:40.000 Undercutting OPEC by leaving OPEC means more freedom for the United States and lower oil prices.

00:46:44.000 That's what it means.

00:46:47.000 The UAE apparently has the ambition to achieve 5 million barrels per day of capacity by 2027, and they want more freedom of action to pursue that goal.

00:46:54.000 This is very good for the United States.

00:46:55.000 It's very good for the world.

00:46:57.000 OPEC has been a blight.

00:46:59.000 The free market competition between these countries in terms of their oil development and production is a very, very good thing.

00:47:06.000 Joining us on the line is Representative Elise Stefanik.

00:47:08.000 She represents New York's 21st district.

00:47:10.000 She is currently the chairwoman of House leadership, Republican leadership.

00:47:14.000 She has a new book out called Poison to Ivies.

00:47:15.000 It's the inside account of the academic and moral rot at America's elite universities.

00:47:20.000 Representative, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:47:22.000 Really appreciate it.

00:47:23.000 Great to be with you, Ben, on this important subject and this best selling book, the number one best selling nonfiction hardcover book in America.

00:47:32.000 So, there's a reason that the book is selling so well.

00:47:34.000 Obviously, a huge number of Americans are fully aware at this point of the rot at the Ivies and how deep it goes.

00:47:39.000 But there are a bunch of points in the book that I think people don't know about.

00:47:42.000 And one of those is the nature of foreign funding of America's top universities.

00:47:47.000 Maybe you can talk a little bit about how that has changed the orientation of those universities.

00:47:51.000 How deep does that rot go?

00:47:54.000 Absolutely.

00:47:54.000 So the book poisoned IVs, my book does a deep dive on what went wrong at so many of our most elite universities that were once considered elite and prestigious.

00:48:04.000 If you look at the billions of dollars of foreign funding that's flowing into institutions like Harvard, like Penn, like MIT, it is deeply concerning.

00:48:13.000 And we've been working in Congress to make sure that there is full transparency.

00:48:17.000 And frankly, we need to do more to block foreign funding that is sowing anti-Americanism on these campuses.

00:48:23.000 For example, Ben, The billions of dollars coming from Qatar flowing into many of these universities is propping up Middle Eastern studies departments, which is inherently pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic.

00:48:37.000 In addition, Communist China is the second largest foreign funder into our higher education system.

00:48:42.000 We've taken action from Congress to block what are called Confucius Institutes, which essentially is a front for the Chinese Communist Party, but China is still circumventing that.

00:48:52.000 And it begs the question, these American universities, which in many cases were founded prior to the founding of our country, They have multi billion dollar endowments.

00:49:00.000 Why are we allowing foreign dollars to sow discord on these campuses?

00:49:05.000 That's one of the many reasons why we've seen this academic and moral route at these institutions.

00:49:11.000 Now, Congresswoman, it also begs the question as to why these universities are taking that sort of money.

00:49:16.000 I understand that they want to enrich themselves and they want to increase their bottom line.

00:49:20.000 But as you say, they have multi billion dollar endowments.

00:49:22.000 It is not as though Harvard is short on cash.

00:49:24.000 They don't need to be taking money from Qatar or China.

00:49:27.000 What do you think is the rationale for them going along with this?

00:49:31.000 You know, I talk about the shift in these universities.

00:49:33.000 These universities were founded as American institutions.

00:49:37.000 And the leadership, which is rotten at many of these universities, they now view themselves as global institutions, really pulling away from those America first values.

00:49:47.000 And my book, Poisoned Ivies, it goes into the founding missions, which were incredible, of these universities.

00:49:53.000 If you take Harvard, it was founded in 1636, it was part of the principles and fervor that led to the Revolutionary War.

00:50:00.000 You take Penn, one of the visionaries that.

00:50:03.000 Modeled Penn was Benjamin Franklin.

00:50:05.000 You take Columbia.

00:50:06.000 Alexander Hamilton was one of the original founders and board members of Columbia.

00:50:11.000 And yet these institutions now have shifted so far away from their founding mission.

00:50:16.000 The other aspect of the foreign dollars, Ben, is the percentage of foreign students.

00:50:20.000 Columbia, for example, I think it's a surprise to many Americans that 40% of the student body at Columbia is foreign.

00:50:28.000 So they're no longer prioritizing American students.

00:50:31.000 And what do these foreign dollars do?

00:50:33.000 It creates strings attached to the curricula that's taught and the type of professors who are hired.

00:50:39.000 That's deeply concerning, and it goes hand in hand with the moral rot that we saw in the aftermath of the October 7th Hamas attacks against Israel and this skyrocketing of anti Semitism and anti American at these universities.

00:50:51.000 You know, Congresswoman, obviously, you had this very famous tete a tete with a bunch of Ivy League presidents who refused to condemn anti Semitic slogans that were being chanted, genocidal anti Semitic slogans that were being chanted at their universities.

00:51:04.000 What is the sort of fundamental guiding philosophy at these universities now?

00:51:08.000 As you say, they used to be rooted in at Harvard, it was Veritas, right?

00:51:12.000 That was my alma mater for law school.

00:51:13.000 But it certainly has not been that way for many decades at this point.

00:51:17.000 What is the guiding philosophy that really is sort of infusing their action here?

00:51:23.000 Well, it's political indoctrination rather than academic excellence.

00:51:27.000 And in the case of Harvard, we are both alumni, you of the Harvard Law School, I went to Harvard undergrad, and the motto is Veritas, which means truth.

00:51:35.000 But the original founding motto in the 1600s was, Veritas e Cristo et Ecclesiae, truth in Christ and the Church.

00:51:43.000 I view that as a moral truth.

00:51:45.000 And Harvard shifted so far away from that founding mission.

00:51:49.000 Right now, their prioritization, unfortunately, has been monoculture and a radical lurch to the left.

00:51:56.000 When I was an undergraduate 20 years ago, we had a handful of conservative professors.

00:52:00.000 But if you look at how much that has shifted in the past decade, it is now a self-selection process of increasingly further and further to the left to the point where some of these departments, if they even have a conservative leading professor, The ratios are 88 to 1 in some of the humanities departments.

00:52:17.000 That's not reflective of the American people.

00:52:20.000 That's not reflective of the founding missions of these institutions.

00:52:23.000 So the book does a deep dive of Harvard, of Penn, of some of the poisoned ivies.

00:52:28.000 But importantly, it points out the schools that are getting it right.

00:52:31.000 Places like where you just spoke and I will be at soon.

00:52:34.000 UTX, which was started in 2021.

00:52:37.000 I also point out University of Florida under the leadership of Ben Sass when he was head of that university system.

00:52:42.000 Vanderbilt, which is continuing to grow and lead And frankly, its admissions and matriculation have skyrocketed because of what's been happening, the poisoning of these Ivy League schools.

00:52:53.000 And they still don't get it, Ben, as they dig deeper and deeper and try to push back on any effort to reform.

00:53:02.000 Yeah, Congressman, I want to ask about that.

00:53:03.000 So the Trump administration has been very publicly active in going after a lot of these Ivy League schools.

00:53:08.000 They've reached settlements with some of them.

00:53:09.000 They've been using the Civil Rights Act and the violation thereof to push policy changes.

00:53:14.000 And my expectation, being cynical, is that the minute that a Democrat takes office as president, The Ivy Leagues will revert back to what they were, that they already are finding workarounds to try and avoid the consequences of the settlements that they've reached with the federal government.

00:53:27.000 Are these places poisoned beyond the possibility of repair?

00:53:30.000 Should we basically just surrender the Ivy, say, listen, they're done, send our kids elsewhere, and just let them rot?

00:53:35.000 Or do you think that there's the possibility of recovery?

00:53:39.000 Well, number one, we know they're not going to reform themselves.

00:53:41.000 So what's interesting to me is that hearing heard around the world with the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT.

00:53:46.000 Two of those presidents were forced to resign as a result of that hearing.

00:53:49.000 And my questions.

00:53:50.000 They had a year of the Biden administration where they could have fixed themselves and the Biden administration could have taken any action.

00:53:57.000 Nothing was done.

00:53:58.000 The leaders of these schools put their heads in the sand and they dug deeper and deeper.

00:54:03.000 It was only on day one of the Trump administration and my office worked directly to craft these executive orders that President Trump signed in on his first day in office to hold these schools accountable.

00:54:13.000 We also know that the only way these schools are going to listen is when you withhold taxpayer funds.

00:54:18.000 They're not entitled to U.S. taxpayer dollars if they are not complying with the law.

00:54:23.000 And it's not reflective of our American principles.

00:54:26.000 So that withholding has been an important tool.

00:54:29.000 My fear long term, as you said, is as administrations shift back and forth, these schools are going to try to wait it out.

00:54:36.000 We need to, as policymakers, ensure that doesn't happen.

00:54:39.000 How do we do that?

00:54:40.000 We have to codify all these executive orders.

00:54:43.000 We have to reform aspects of the Higher Education Act.

00:54:47.000 Um, and we have to piecemeal address these issues.

00:54:50.000 The reason why I argue it's important not to completely give up on these Ivy League schools is We know they're not going to fix themselves.

00:54:57.000 We have to force this upon them.

00:55:00.000 One bright spotlight, and we'll have to see what action they take, is the Yale report that just came out.

00:55:05.000 And I'm very skeptical because while it's, you know, a statement and a report that was put out in the last two weeks, basically, with this institution understanding that they have created this fundamental lack of faith in our higher ed institutions, and many of the decisions they've made have caused this, let's see if they take action as a result.

00:55:26.000 The other aspect of many of these settlements is holding the school's feet to the fire to make sure they don't try to circumvent the settlements, like we've seen, unfortunately, in the case of Columbia.

00:55:35.000 The other piece of this that's important as well is these DOJ lawsuits are incredibly important because in my book, I give example after example where the universities were not protecting the civil rights of American Jewish students on these campuses who were facing unbelievable acts of anti Semitism, physical assault, drawing of swastikas on the door, and Making sure that the DOJ holds these schools accountable, that's been incredibly important for the Trump administration.

00:56:03.000 So I'm of the argument that we have to do both.

00:56:05.000 We have to build new institutions.

00:56:07.000 We have to continue to support those institutions that are getting it right the Vandies of the world, University of Florida, UTX, as an example.

00:56:15.000 We have to focus on some of these centers like the Hoover Institution to provide that ideological balance.

00:56:20.000 But we need to continue to hold the Ivy Leagues accountable to force change. 1.00

00:56:24.000 Well, that's Congresswoman Elise Stefanik. 1.00

00:56:27.000 Go check out her brand new book, Poisoned Ivies. 1.00

00:56:29.000 Congrats on the book, Congresswoman.

00:56:31.000 Thank you so much, Ben, and thank you for your leadership on this issue as well.

00:56:36.000 All righty, folks, now it's time for our mailbag segment sponsored by our friends over at Pure Talk.

00:56:40.000 Eddie from Florida has a question.

00:56:45.000 Hey, Ben, Eddie here, longtime fan.

00:56:48.000 Wanted to ask a quick question about Lord of the Rings.

00:56:50.000 Obviously, we know that it's a masterpiece, but my wife doesn't seem to agree.

00:56:54.000 I've been trying to get her to just sit down and watch the movies with me, not even the extended versions.

00:56:59.000 And you can see during some scenes that a malaise falls over her eyes.

00:57:04.000 Just looking for.

00:57:05.000 Any pointers. 0.99

00:57:06.000 I've used maps, charts, and graphs, and you know, all of it just bores her more.

00:57:11.000 But wanted to know what you did.

00:57:12.000 Thanks.

00:57:14.000 So, first of all, you have to tell her that it's a little slow to start.

00:57:18.000 That is the biggest thing.

00:57:19.000 It takes a little while to get into the Lord of the Rings sort of mood.

00:57:24.000 And you also have to not start that movie at nine o'clock at night.

00:57:27.000 I think you really have to start that movie like Sunday night at six.

00:57:30.000 So, you really have to pick your time because it's a long movie and it really starts to pick up momentum after they leave Hobbiton.

00:57:30.000 That is the best time to do it.

00:57:38.000 So, after they get away from the Shire, it really starts to pick up momentum.

00:57:42.000 And, you know, then, you know, that's the best shot you have.

00:57:45.000 You may never get there.

00:57:46.000 You may never get there, but that is the best shot that you have.

00:57:48.000 My wife has become a big Lord of the Rings fan.

00:57:50.000 Also, when the kids get into it, then your wife is sort of forced to get into it, which is the way I did it also.

00:57:55.000 My wife liked it, and then my kids really got into it.

00:57:57.000 And then we were dressing up as the characters from Lord of the Rings.

00:58:00.000 Yes, including the actual swords from the movie for small children for Porim.

00:58:05.000 That's right.

00:58:05.000 My six year old owns the Arwen sword, which is significantly taller than she is.

00:58:11.000 Zach from New York has a question.

00:58:15.000 Hey, Ben, question for you.

00:58:17.000 Why do you think Jews keep losing the PR battle?

00:58:20.000 There's so much goodness to the Jewish people and to the religion and to the state of Israel.

00:58:27.000 And it seems like all that goodness has very firmly gotten lost in the US and also abroad.

00:58:33.000 Why do you think this is, and what could we do about it?

00:58:36.000 Thanks.

00:58:38.000 So I think there are two reasons. 0.73

00:58:40.000 One is the fault of sort of how Israel has addressed the world, and one is the fault of underlying trends. 0.70

00:58:47.000 The first is that Israel spent years and years and years and years saying that its geopolitical opponents were reasonable and rational and they could make a deal with them.

00:58:55.000 If you keep saying over and over that actual terrorist groups are reasonable and rational and you can make a deal with them, which is the predicate for Oslo, then it makes it very difficult to tell the truth later, which is that they are terrorist groups who want to kill you.

00:59:07.000 Oslo is a disaster area.

00:59:09.000 It took until basically October 7th to put a final nail in the coffin of the Oslo agreements.

00:59:14.000 So that's part one.

00:59:15.000 As far as the sort of overarching trends, the grievance culture that has now spread throughout the West, one symptom of that is anti Israel belief.

00:59:25.000 It is basically a mapping of domestic economic concerns onto foreign policy.

00:59:31.000 So the idea is anyone who is successful is an exploiter, any country that is powerful is an exploiter. 0.62

00:59:38.000 The West is innately guilty for the failure of non Western cultures. 0.66

00:59:44.000 And when you extend that to the Middle East, then you look. 0.94

00:59:46.000 There and there's only one westernized country, there's only one truly successful country, and it's Israel.

00:59:52.000 And so, this is why you will see people like Tanahasi Coates claiming that Israel is the white oppressor in the Middle East. 0.84

00:59:57.000 Never mind the fact that half of Israel is brown, meaning Mizrahi Jews, right?

01:00:02.000 Jews from Arabic countries. 0.92

01:00:04.000 But that is the basic model. 0.94

01:00:06.000 In the same way that people are angry at the successful in their societies because they feel the successful have set up the system for their own benefit, for that same reason, They have now decided in conspiratorial fashion that at the top of that apex predator heap are the Jews who must be defenestrated from the top of that pile. 0.83

01:00:26.000 All righty, folks, coming up, we're going to get into the latest on the economy, the economic numbers.

01:00:30.000 We're going to get into why Americans are so upset about the economy and what President Trump can do about it.

01:00:35.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:00:37.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - April 29, 2026

Dear King Charles, STFU

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