The Ben Shapiro Show - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

00:00:00.000 All righty, folks.

00:00:00.000 As you can see, I'm not broadcasting from the studio right now.

00:00:03.000 I'm actually in a room in the presidential complex in Budapest, Hungary.

00:00:08.000 I just finished interviewing Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

00:00:11.000 That interview is going to be available in very, very short order.

00:00:14.000 Plus, tomorrow's show is going to be a speech that I'm giving here in Hungary in just a few hours, complete with Q&A and all the rest.

00:00:21.000 Just a quick warning, we have lots of content that will emerge next Monday, Tuesday.

00:00:29.000 That is the one where the Jews received the Torah on Mount Sinai.

00:00:32.000 But as to the actual news of the day, I didn't want to leave you hanging.

00:00:36.000 We have a bunch of news that we recorded just before we left for the airport yesterday, but also a bunch of news broke while we were on the plane.

00:00:43.000 So here is the big news of the day.

00:00:45.000 The big news of the day is that the Court of International Trade, which is a court that nobody has ever heard of, blocked President Trump's tariffs.

00:00:52.000 In a sweeping ruling, according to Reuters, that found the president overstepped his authority by imposing across-the-board duties on imports from U.S. trading partners, the court essentially suggested that the law under which the president of the United States was declaring these tariffs was not, in fact, capable of carrying those tariffs.

00:01:09.000 Because, essentially, the president used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, the IEEPA.

00:01:17.000 It gives the president the power to regulate imports during certain emergency situations, according to CBS News.

00:01:23.000 But those emergency situations do not actually extend to things like, you know, a trade deficit.

00:01:28.000 Big trade deficits do not amount to a national emergency, and that's what the court found.

00:01:31.000 And the court isn't wrong here.

00:01:32.000 If the president actually wants to do tariffs, there are other legal mechanisms, presumably, that he will pursue.

00:01:39.000 But this should be in the purview of Congress.

00:01:41.000 It always should have been in the purview of Congress.

00:01:43.000 You don't want any president being able to unilaterally.

00:01:46.000 Simply decide that there are massive tariffs across the board on all of America's trading partners.

00:01:50.000 You just don't want that.

00:01:52.000 That is not the balance of powers that was envisioned by the Constitution, by the founders, by the framers.

00:01:56.000 That is not what they wanted.

00:01:57.000 It's not something that I want either.

00:01:59.000 Whether you like the tariffs or you don't like the tariffs is actually sort of irrelevant.

00:02:03.000 To the question of whether the president ought to have the unilateral ability to do as President Trump did on Liberation Day and simply declare a 46% tariff on Vietnam or 145% tariff on China, like the Congress should have to sign in at some point.

00:02:17.000 Now, does this mean that all the tariffs are going to go away permanently?

00:02:20.000 No.

00:02:21.000 The markets spiked on the news of all of this.

00:02:24.000 The Dow Jones Industrial Average Futures Market immediately jumped significantly.

00:02:30.000 It then came back down to earth a little bit as the markets realized, oh, wait a second, it may be, in fact, that President Trump is still going to be able to do some of these tariffs.

00:02:37.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the administration has already said it will appeal the ruling.

00:02:41.000 Trade experts and lawyers say it has a variety of other legal avenues to prosecute the trade war that are unaffected by Wednesday's decision.

00:02:47.000 Deborah Elms, who's head of trade policy at the Singapore-based Henrik Foundation, says this is just one more bump in the tariff road that we're going to be on for as long as President Trump remains in office.

00:02:55.000 He loves tariffs.

00:02:56.000 He loves the idea of being able to impose them at will.

00:02:58.000 I don't think he's going to give that up particularly easily.

00:03:01.000 Now, the judgment undermines the legal basis for the reciprocal tariffs that are the centerpiece of President Trump's effort to rein in the trade deficit.

00:03:09.000 The court also shot down special levies of 20% that were imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China, supposedly based on national emergency rooted in the fentanyl crisis.

00:03:18.000 Now, theoretically, you can make the case that we should put tariffs on Mexico and declare a national emergency on the basis of fentanyl.

00:03:24.000 You could at least make a colorable case for that.

00:03:26.000 You could never make a colorable case that that was the case with Canada.

00:03:30.000 The United States last year, in terms of fentanyl, seized something like 50 pounds of fentanyl the entire year at the border.

00:03:35.000 So the idea there was a national emergency that merited a 20% tariff on Canada originally, that, of course, was far exceeding the scope of authority originally presented to the President of the United States by that act in 1977.

00:03:50.000 Now, there's still a bunch of other tariffs.

00:03:53.000 That are going to be on the books.

00:03:55.000 So the court's decision does not impact 25% levies that have been placed on steel, aluminum, and cars because those levies were imposed using alternative legal avenues, not the national emergency situation.

00:04:07.000 Those are conventional avenues.

00:04:09.000 Those are known as Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs.

00:04:12.000 The president does have the ability to actually do tariffs under that sort of power, but they're usually used for specific sectors.

00:04:18.000 It's not blanket across the board, giant tariffs on entire countries.

00:04:22.000 For example, so again, the markets were pretty happy about that, immediately speaking.

00:04:28.000 Does this mean the end of President Trump's trade war?

00:04:30.000 No.

00:04:31.000 It does mean that the president, again, does not have the unilateral ability by declaring a national emergency simply to impose gigantic tariff regimes across the board.

00:04:40.000 And that actually is a good thing.

00:04:42.000 I mean, listen, as a person who believes that we should be drawing closer trade relations with our allies and that the shot across the bow, if it was meant to get them to the table, that still exists.

00:04:51.000 The fact is that the economic damage and the uncertainty wrought by the tariff war on our allies, again, I fully believe that we should be gradually ramping up tariffs on China, reshoring manufacturing away from China, making closer trade alliances with countries that are more aligned with us, ranging from Vietnam to India, for example.

00:05:09.000 All of that would be good.

00:05:11.000 I don't like the tariff policy, but that is actually a side point here.

00:05:14.000 It turns out that whether you are a fan of the president or not a fan of the current president, Balance of power that was drawn in the Constitution should be something that we like.

00:05:24.000 That is something that we want.

00:05:25.000 Because I promise you that the next time a Democrat takes office, that same exact national emergency power will be used for something that you don't like.

00:05:34.000 That is the way this typically works.

00:05:37.000 And so, you know, again, I'm not going to say that the court was wrong here.

00:05:40.000 I don't think the court was wrong here.

00:05:41.000 President Trump will appeal it.

00:05:42.000 He will find other ways to pursue a trade policy that is more legal.

00:05:48.000 Meanwhile, the other big news of the day, after we stopped covering the news yesterday, was that Elon Musk has now officially left the Trump administration after what the Washington Post calls a contentious tenure.

00:05:59.000 But this is unfair to Elon, okay?

00:06:00.000 Let's just put it out there that what Elon did here is actually politically heroic, like actually really heroic.

00:06:06.000 This is the richest man on Earth who took time away from his gigantic companies ranging from XAI to Tesla to SpaceX simply to come in and try to cut waste, fraud and abuse at the governmental level for no pay.

00:06:20.000 And at massive financial cost to him because many people got very angry at him and started targeting his companies.

00:06:25.000 He did not get richer over the course.

00:06:45.000 of the last several months.

00:06:47.000 He got markedly poorer over the course of the last several months if you count his stock holdings The stocks have not been kind to Elon Musk's companies.

00:07:01.000 He really took the hit here.

00:07:03.000 President Trump thanked Elon Musk for it.

00:07:06.000 Elon Musk wrote on his social media platform that his scheduled time as a special government employee had come to an end.

00:07:13.000 He's not permitted to work more than 130 days in a 365-day period.

00:07:17.000 It prevents him from having to do financial disclosure and conflict of interest rules.

00:07:21.000 In the Post, Musk thanked Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending and said Doge's mission will only strengthen over time.

00:07:29.000 Now again, we will see how much it is strengthened over time.

00:07:32.000 In order for that really to effectuate, the President of the United States does have to send a rescission letter requesting that all of the cuts that the executive branch is currently making under Doge become permanent.

00:07:42.000 At the congressional level, President Trump hasn't done that yet.

00:07:44.000 Presumably, he will do that sometime soon.

00:07:48.000 So, again, Elon Musk, he's taken an enormous amount of crap, but the reality is that what he did here was a rare act of political altruism.

00:07:58.000 He wasn't running for office here.

00:08:00.000 He didn't get anything out of this.

00:08:01.000 He received nothing but downside, and he took the hit.

00:08:04.000 So good for Elon Musk.

00:08:05.000 Really, thanks to Elon Musk.

00:08:06.000 Okay, now, there was other news yesterday, but we covered it yesterday, so I'm going to be in a different outfit.

00:08:11.000 In the studio, if you can see it visually, here's the rest of the show.

00:08:15.000 Folks, we have a ton coming up on today's show.

00:08:18.000 We'll get into WNBA controversy over racism. 0.96

00:08:21.000 Yeah, I know.

00:08:22.000 We're going to actually talk about the WNBA.

00:08:24.000 Plus, we're going to break down the latest on the economy with a Harvard conservative professor and Megyn Kelly stops by to talk Diddy Watch. 0.60

00:08:31.000 But first, this Friday night, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, we fire up the cameras, dim the lights, and make at least three people in legal very nervous.

00:08:38.000 Adam Carolla is here to help me weaponize negativity.

00:08:40.000 Jordan Peterson drops a recommendation that briefly unhinges the entire production team.

00:08:44.000 And Savvy electrocutes me in the name of entertainment.

00:08:46.000 There's mailbag mayhem, unvetted content, and enough off-the-rails production choices to qualify as a cry for help.

00:08:51.000 If that sounds like a mistake, that's because it most certainly is.

00:08:54.000 Ben After Dark, episode three, only on DW +, only for members.

00:08:59.000 Well, folks, the left has a real problem in the United States.

00:09:01.000 They've spent the last several decades talking about how racism is an endemic problem in American life.

00:09:07.000 And there's a problem with that problem, which is.

00:09:11.000 They require instances of racism in order to support the idea that every maldistribution of outcome is, in fact, rooted in racism and white supremacy.

00:09:22.000 And so they're constantly looking for their latest racial conflagration.

00:09:25.000 It has to be a white-on-black racial conflagration, obviously, because white supremacy and white privilege and all the rest. 0.77

00:09:31.000 latest iteration of this comes courtesy of the WNBA. 0.98

00:09:34.000 So it is amazing to be discussing the WNBA, like seriously at the top of the show, because I will say that based on some of her late comments, I'm not sure that we got the better end of that particular deal.

00:10:00.000 In any case, the WNBA entered into an investigation over the course of the past couple of weeks.

00:10:07.000 Because there were allegations that fans were being racist during a game between the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever.

00:10:15.000 And yes, I should get points for knowing the names of both of those teams.

00:10:18.000 The Indiana Fever is, of course, the team of Caitlin Clark, who's the only player in the WNBA who seems to matter right now.

00:10:24.000 And the Chicago Sky are the team of Angel Rees, who is sort of her arch nemesis and has been since her college days.

00:10:31.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

00:10:33.000 First, a lot of good work is being done by the administration on the economy trying to get regulations in order.

00:10:38.000 But there's a ton of instability.

00:10:40.000 And while the Trump administration tries to stabilize the country's economy, it is difficult for them to consider everybody's individual personal finances.

00:10:46.000 In the past 12 months, the value of gold has increased by 40%, and with central banks buying gold in record quantities, demand does not appear to be subsiding.

00:11:01.000 Any time soon.

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00:12:37.000 So the allegations arose after there was a foul by Caitlin Clark on Angel Reese. 0.91

00:12:45.000 It was called the flagrant.

00:12:46.000 If you watch the video, it's pretty clearly not a flagrant foul just by any basketball standard.

00:12:49.000 Basically, Angel Reese goes up for a layup and Caitlin Clark doesn't clothesline or anything, kind of grabs her and Angel Reese falls over. 0.80

00:12:56.000 And there were allegations that people in the stands were then being racist.

00:13:00.000 So the league immediately launched an investigation into these alleged racist comments.

00:13:06.000 And the WNBA had responded with a statement confirming the investigation.

00:13:10.000 Quote, the WNBA strongly condemns racism, hate and discrimination in all forms.

00:13:13.000 They have no place in our league or in society.

00:13:15.000 We are aware of the allegations and are looking into the matter.

00:13:18.000 Now, there was no evidence at the time that any of this was true.

00:13:20.000 And given the fact that cell phones are ubiquitous and that everybody now tapes everybody else saying anything racist, the chances that this actually happened in real life were extremely, extremely low, especially at like a WNBA game.

00:13:32.000 Who are the white supremacists showing up at a WNBA game? 0.99

00:13:37.000 Seriously.

00:13:38.000 The white privileged folks who are like, you know what?

00:13:40.000 We don't like black people. 1.00

00:13:42.000 And we're super white nationalist, so we're going to a WNBA game.

00:13:48.000 What is the crossover between those two circles?

00:13:50.000 There's like no crossover in that Venn diagram.

00:13:53.000 It didn't matter.

00:13:54.000 Caitlin Clark was then forced to go out there and make a statement. 1.00

00:13:58.000 And every time Caitlin Clark makes one of these statements, blink if you need help, Caitlin.

00:14:03.000 Here she was, after the game, saying that there's no place for racism in the game.

00:14:09.000 There's no place for that in our game.

00:14:10.000 There's no place for that in society.

00:14:12.000 And certainly we want every person that comes into our arena, whether player, whether fan, to have a great experience.

00:14:17.000 So I appreciate the league doing that.

00:14:19.000 I appreciate the Fever organization has been at the forefront of that since really day one and what they're doing.

00:14:25.000 So hopefully the investigation will leave that up to them to find anything and take the proper action if so.

00:14:33.000 Well, I mean, she needed to say that because if she hadn't said that, then you would have thought that the WNBA was just filled with deep and abiding racism, obviously. 1.00

00:14:41.000 And of course, this is not the first time that Caitlin Clark has been forced to go to the camera and then speak the words, say the thing.

00:14:48.000 So not all that long ago, 2024, December, she came out and she had to acknowledge her own white privilege.

00:14:54.000 Now, can we be clear about this?

00:14:56.000 If Caitlin Clark were not in the WNBA, we would not be talking about the WNBA.

00:14:59.000 She is the only ticket draw in the WNBA. 1.00

00:15:02.000 A large percentage of all tickets sold in the WNBA are so people can watch Caitlin Clark play basketball. 0.91

00:15:08.000 No one cares about Angel Reese.

00:15:10.000 She'd be drawing flies if she were playing not against Caitlin Clark on the court right now.

00:15:15.000 Angel Reese has basically become the Bill Lamebeer to Caitlin Clark's Larry Bird, essentially.

00:15:22.000 That is where we now are.

00:15:23.000 Well, here was Caitlin Clark back in December.

00:15:26.000 Acknowledging her white privilege because there are so many players in the WNBA who are getting angry that people are out watching Caitlin Clark.

00:15:32.000 Really, this is a thing inside the WNBA. 1.00

00:15:33.000 There are a bunch of players in the WNBA who are angry that Caitlin Clark is bringing notoriety to their sport. 0.77

00:15:39.000 Their idea is, why didn't people watch the WNBA before?

00:15:42.000 The answer is because Caitlin Clark is uniquely talented and, yes, uniquely appealing. 0.52

00:15:47.000 And is some of that based on race?

00:15:50.000 Well, I mean, there are other white players in the WNBA who don't have remotely this kind of following. 0.65

00:15:53.000 So I really don't, She was a wildly popular player when she was in college.

00:16:01.000 Was that also based on her race or based on the fact that she was hitting threes like an NBA player?

00:16:07.000 Well, back in December, she actually had to issue a statement in which she suggested that there's an element of white privilege in her stardom. 1.00

00:16:17.000 I feel like I've earned every single thing that's happened to me over the course of my career, but I also grew up a fan of this league from a very young age.

00:16:23.000 She said, She said, She said,

00:16:46.000 She said, The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it's very important.

00:17:01.000 I have to try to continue to change that, she added.

00:17:03.000 The more we can elevate black women, that's going to be a beautiful thing. 1.00

00:17:06.000 Now, hilariously enough, her presence in the league is elevating many of the black players around her who nobody knew about until five minutes ago.

00:17:13.000 But she's been the one who has been targeted by so many people in the WNBA. 0.80

00:17:20.000 And in fact, there are entire compilations of people Basically laying hard fouls on Caitlin Clark last season.

00:17:26.000 Now putting her in danger of actually getting hurt.

00:17:30.000 In fact, she recently was hurt and it turns out that a bunch of fans are very unhappy about it and have decided that they are interested in essentially boycotting the entire WNBA over it.

00:17:42.000 According to Total Pro Sports, there are a bunch of fans.

00:17:47.000 Who are suggesting that the WNBA's failure to protect Clark, specifically because Clark is white and many of the players fouling her are black, that that is in and of itself a problem and racist.

00:17:58.000 So, you know, again, there actually is some racism in the WNBA, but it's directed the opposite way. 0.99

00:18:04.000 And that's the stuff you're not allowed to talk about.

00:18:06.000 So I mentioned that we would speak about Brittany Griner.

00:18:09.000 Brittany Griner is caught on tape during a game with the Indiana Fever, dropping racial slurs against Caitlin Clark and pretty obviously doing so. 0.99

00:18:18.000 Thank you.

00:18:23.000 And it doesn't take a lot of genius to lip-read Brittany Reiner, whose voice, by the way, is about as low as mine is, calling her trash and an effing white girl. 0.87

00:18:35.000 Now, of course, if Caitlin Clark had ever suggested the same in reverse using black as opposed to white in that sentence, that'd be the end of her WNBA career. 0.98

00:18:45.000 But Brittany Griner is going strong.

00:18:47.000 It's totally fine.

00:18:48.000 Meanwhile, a former WNBA champ has actually come out and suggested that it's racism to talk about people hard fouling Caitlin Clark.

00:19:03.000 I just showed you my tooth getting knocked out.

00:19:05.000 Like, that's been a part of the game.

00:19:07.000 The game has always been physical.

00:19:08.000 I can tell you the amount of times I was left with bloody lips.

00:19:12.000 I have bruises all over my body, even from the game last night.

00:19:16.000 You can see bruises on my elbow from last night.

00:19:18.000 Like, this is a part of the game.

00:19:20.000 So, like, if I'm just going to be frank, like, it's all.

00:19:27.000 Oh, so that's racism now.

00:19:28.000 So the way that it works is if no racism happens in the stands, the WNBA does a full investigation. 0.99

00:19:33.000 If there are hard fouls on Caitlin Clark every night, and Brittany Reiner is using slurs, like, pretty openly against Caitlin Clark. 1.00

00:19:40.000 Then it's racism to even pay attention to any of that.

00:19:43.000 You see?

00:19:44.000 Everything has to end in racism.

00:19:46.000 If you were to create a flowchart, what it would look like is something racist didn't happen, therefore investigate racism.

00:19:54.000 Or something maybe racist happened but was against a white person.

00:19:58.000 You mentioning this is also probably racism against black people.

00:20:02.000 If you want to get people never to watch the WNBA, this is an amazing way to do it.

00:20:06.000 Truly an amazing way to do it.

00:20:20.000 Truly, truly idiocy.

00:20:22.000 Now, the reason this is important is because it's part of a broader rubric, the whole kind of diversity, equity, inclusion rubric that the left has embraced that, of course, is part and parcel of a broader worldview that suggests that all inequality and outcome is due to inequality in the system.

00:20:38.000 That the system itself is racist?

00:20:41.000 There's a kind of shocking story that has emerged via NewsNation about the Biden administration pointing out that NewsNation has spoken with a whistleblower from the U.S. Department of Agriculture about loan forgiveness policies under the Biden administration.

00:20:55.000 This whistleblower discussed the passage of the American Rescue Act and how there's a section of that act that provided loan relief specifically for socially disadvantaged farmers.

00:21:06.000 It was supposed to be Based on social disadvantage would be based on economics, presumably.

00:21:12.000 And the American Rescue Act, which passed by a Democratic majority in Congress, allowed the Secretary of Agriculture to, quote, provide payment in an amount up to 120% of the outstanding indebtedness of each socially disadvantaged farmer.

00:21:28.000 The socially disadvantaged farmer was defined by the act on a racial basis, which I have no idea how that's even legal.

00:21:34.000 So farmers then sued, and they said, this is race-based.

00:21:37.000 And violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

00:21:42.000 And then the judge found that this was an actual constitutional harm and it didn't matter.

00:21:46.000 In the end, the Biden administration just went ahead and did the affirmative action anyway.

00:21:51.000 Here's the whistleblower discussing.

00:21:53.000 It was to pay off anyone who wasn't a white male, Sloan.

00:22:00.000 That was the only qualification for this loan forgiveness.

00:22:04.000 And what was the reaction?

00:22:06.000 So it was really silent.

00:22:10.000 They were trying to keep this hushed because of the obvious implications of race-based loan forgiveness.

00:22:19.000 Again, if you're wondering why Trump, this would be the reason why Trump.

00:22:23.000 This is the reason why Trump.

00:22:25.000 Because people in America innately understand that it is wrong to give people loans specifically based on their race.

00:22:33.000 And it's illegal to do that.

00:22:34.000 And they also understand that these sort of As long as the left keeps operating beneath this broader philosophy, they are going to lose.

00:22:48.000 They are going to continue to lose.

00:22:50.000 Pretty clearly.

00:22:51.000 We'll get to more on this in a moment.

00:22:52.000 First, folks, we are seeing something truly disturbing.

00:22:55.000 Anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world and sadly right here in the United States.

00:22:59.000 Jewish schools are being targeted.

00:23:00.000 Synagogues threaten families living in fear. 1.00

00:23:02.000 It's something that many of us hope we wouldn't see again in our lifetime.

00:23:05.000 And let me say, Silence is not really a great option here.

00:23:08.000 It's a good moment to take a stand.

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00:23:52.000 Also, when we started Daily Wire, it felt like we had to figure everything out with minimal help.

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00:25:01.000 So, meanwhile, speaking of idiots, Gavin Newsom on Tuesday welcomed a decision by school athletics groups to expand the number of high school athletes eligible to compete in a track and field meet.

00:25:12.000 That came after a strong showing by a transgender student, which drew anger and a threat of funding cuts from President Trump.

00:25:17.000 So there were new rules that have now been set out by the California Interscholastic Federation.

00:25:22.000 Athletes who were identified at birth as female and fell one spot short of making the cut for the upcoming statewide championship at qualifying meets around the state will now be allowed.

00:25:30.000 So basically, they're changing.

00:25:32.000 They're still allowing the boys to run against the girls.

00:25:34.000 They're just allowing one more girl to also race. 1.00

00:25:37.000 That does not solve the problem.

00:25:39.000 That does not solve the problem.

00:25:40.000 And the fact that Gavin Newsom appears to think that it solves the problem is totally crazy, of course.

00:25:45.000 It shouldn't require some sort of insane pilot program to get a slot that you should have earned in the first place.

00:25:52.000 So, you know, the fact, again, that Gavin Newsom and the left There is no circle to square here.

00:26:02.000 You can't do this.

00:26:03.000 Boys should not be racing against girls, obviously.

00:26:06.000 But the left cannot let go of this.

00:26:07.000 They cannot let go of this.

00:26:09.000 And it's one of the reasons why they continue to be wildly unpopular and make everything they touch unpopular as well.

00:26:14.000 Meanwhile, controversy continues over the so-called big, beautiful bill.

00:26:17.000 It has now passed the House, obviously, by a very slim margin.

00:26:20.000 It has moved on to the Senate.

00:26:22.000 Some senators, we discussed with Senator Ron Johnson, for example, why he is opposed to the House version of the big, beautiful bill.

00:26:28.000 He says that's because we should be going back to 2019 spending levels.

00:26:31.000 Why in the world are we maintaining Biden spending levels in the middle of all?

00:26:35.000 Again, like Senator Scott, I support President Trump.

00:26:41.000 You know, we want to see him succeed.

00:26:42.000 We want to see America succeed.

00:26:44.000 But I ran in 2010 as part of the Tea Party movement because we were mortgaging our children's future back then We experienced our first Justice in excess of a trillion dollars under Obama, but we were 14 trillion dollars in debt now.

00:26:58.000 We're approaching 37 trillion dollars in debt.

00:27:01.000 Ms. Senator Scott said over the next 10 One of the other critics of the bill is Elon Musk.

00:27:13.000 So Elon has basically removed himself from the federal government at this point.

00:27:16.000 He's no longer overseeing Doge.

00:27:18.000 And he did an interview with CBS Sunday Morning talking about this.

00:27:22.000 Ripping into the big, beautiful bill, saying, this thing just spends too much money, which, of course, it does.

00:27:27.000 It spends less money than Democrats would have.

00:27:29.000 It doesn't mean that it's actually making enough cuts, obviously.

00:27:34.000 You know, I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and unreminds the work that the Doge team is doing.

00:27:47.000 I actually thought that when this big, beautiful bill came along.

00:27:54.000 I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful.

00:27:59.000 But I don't know if it could be both.

00:28:01.000 My personal opinion.

00:28:04.000 Okay, and I don't think that Elon is wrong on any of this.

00:28:06.000 I mean, the reality is that the bill may be the best that you can do in the moment, given the extraordinarily fractious caucus that Republicans have.

00:28:12.000 But to pretend that we are in any significant way bending the cost curve in any sort of real way, that we are solving the national debt.

00:28:20.000 Obviously, that's not the case.

00:28:21.000 Now, to be fair to the proponents of the big, beautiful bill, the sort of explanation that we are radically increasing the debt by maintaining current tax levels and then making some future cuts to Biden programs, again, it all depends on where you're using the basis of comparison.

00:28:37.000 So if you say that this quote-unquote explodes the debt, what you mean is that in the absence of this bill, tax rates would increase.

00:28:43.000 And so if tax rates increased, Then you would get additional revenues into the government.

00:28:47.000 So even if you maintain Biden levels of spending, there would be more revenue into the government.

00:28:51.000 Okay, more of your money being taken.

00:28:54.000 If you are measuring this against the possibility of the tax base basically staying the same, the tax rates stay the same, then it cuts from where we normally would be under Biden.

00:29:04.000 So it sort of depends on what you're using as your baseline.

00:29:06.000 There's a point that's been made by Stephen Miller, that if you use the latter as the baseline, namely you're assuming the tax cuts are permanent, then it actually...

00:29:16.000 It cuts from where Biden's spending actually would be otherwise.

00:29:20.000 But regardless, does it solve our debt crisis?

00:29:22.000 Does it get us toward solving the debt crisis?

00:29:24.000 Not really.

00:29:26.000 And Musk also has complaints about how Doge was handled inside the White House, by the way.

00:29:29.000 He sort of suggests that every time a bad thing happened, Doge got blamed for it.

00:29:33.000 And again, I don't think he's wrong about this.

00:29:34.000 I don't think it's coming from inside the White House.

00:29:36.000 I don't think that's President Trump's fault.

00:29:37.000 President Trump was a big fan of Doge, obviously.

00:29:40.000 If President Trump wants the cuts that Doge made to actually become permanent, he needs to actually submit a rescission letter to Congress asking them to make those cuts permanent.

00:29:47.000 He suggested in an interview with the Washington Post, Doge is just becoming the whipping boy for everything.

00:29:52.000 So if something bad would happen anywhere, we would get blamed for it, even if we had nothing to do with it.

00:29:56.000 And again, I don't think that that's wrong.

00:29:59.000 He said that people were burning Teslas, going after him personally.

00:30:02.000 That obviously is true.

00:30:03.000 And so to that extent, I mean, he literally put his own net wealth on the line in order to try and do things that he thought were very important.

00:30:14.000 And he did the best that he could, given the constraints that he was provided.

00:30:20.000 Again, you're not going to find trillions in waste, fraud, and abuse inside the federal government, but he certainly found tens of billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse.

00:30:26.000 He deserves enormous credit for all of that.

00:30:29.000 Now, where exactly does that put us, economically speaking, just on a generalized level?

00:30:33.000 Joining us on the line to discuss is a conservative, a rare conservative professor at Harvard University, Kenneth Rogoff, who also has a brand new book out titled Our Dollar, Your Problem, an insider's view of seven turbulent decades of global finance and the road ahead.

00:30:46.000 Professor, thanks so much for joining the show.

00:30:48.000 Really appreciate it.

00:30:49.000 Thanks for having me.

00:30:50.000 I'm delighted to be here.

00:30:51.000 Yeah.

00:30:52.000 Thank you.

00:30:53.000 So, there's a lot to talk about, obviously, in the markets and in the world of finance right now.

00:30:58.000 Why don't we start with the so-called Big Beautiful Bill?

00:31:01.000 There's been a lot of talk on the right side of the aisle about the necessity of maintaining current tax rates, not allowing those to rise.

00:31:07.000 There's a lot of heartburn on the right side of the aisle as well about the amount of spending that is in the bill, the unwillingness of Republicans or Democrats to go back to 2019 levels of spending.

00:31:16.000 How big a problem should we perceive the American debt and deficit to be and how urgent is that problem?

00:31:24.000 I think it's a problem people have been talking about for decades.

00:31:29.000 But we're in a different moment now.

00:31:31.000 The debt has risen a lot.

00:31:33.000 It was 30% of income in 1980, 60% in 2005, more than 120% now.

00:31:41.000 And interest rates have gone up.

00:31:43.000 And when you're a big debtor, and the US government is the world's biggest debtor, and interest rates go up, you have a problem.

00:31:51.000 I mean, our interest bills have been really piling up.

00:31:53.000 I think we've hit this moment that was coming.

00:31:56.000 You know, I can't tell you when things are going to go off the rails, but they're certainly getting there.

00:32:03.000 And the most disappointing thing in the big, beautiful bill is that it's so big.

00:32:08.000 I never thought anyone would beat out Biden's deficits in peacetime.

00:32:13.000 I just hadn't imagined it.

00:32:15.000 And here we are.

00:32:16.000 We're still in peacetime.

00:32:19.000 The deficit's going to be even bigger than the records he said.

00:32:22.000 At least, you know, that's the forecast I'm seeing.

00:32:25.000 So when we look at what that means for the future of America's economy, obviously, we are watching as people rush away from American bonds.

00:32:34.000 They're not trusting that we're going to pay back our debt outside of inflating the currency in some way.

00:32:39.000 And the reality is that at some point here, there are only a few choices.

00:32:42.000 One is inflate the currency.

00:32:43.000 The other is radically increased taxes.

00:32:44.000 And the third is serious austerity measures with regard to many of the social programs that nobody actually wants to touch.

00:32:50.000 It seems to me that just politically, the most likely outcome is going to be some form of inflation because people don't like high taxes and they don't like austerity.

00:32:57.000 What do you make of that?

00:32:59.000 Totally.

00:33:00.000 I don't see the American people being willing to accept an adjustment until we've been through another round of inflation as bigger, bigger than the last one.

00:33:12.000 There are other options to kind of try to temporize by forcing the insurance companies, the pension funds, the banks to hold debt.

00:33:21.000 Japan has stuffed government debt into every orifice of its financial sector.

00:33:26.000 The Europeans have done that. 0.92

00:33:28.000 But believe me, that's not good for growth.

00:33:30.000 You don't have money for innovation.

00:33:32.000 So there aren't a lot of pleasant alternatives.

00:33:35.000 I mean, there's some things like raising the retirement age.

00:33:38.000 I think we're the only big country besides France not to do that, which would help. 0.71

00:33:47.000 When we look at what that means for the ability of America to raise debt out into the future, there's been a lot of talk about the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

00:33:55.000 And you talk about this at length in your book, Our Dollar, Your Problem.

00:33:57.000 The dollar, of course, is basically the thing that allows us to raise this extraordinary amount of debt and sell our debt at these really low rates, just historically speaking, to finance all of this.

00:34:09.000 I've had a lot of concern about the reality of the dollar as sort of wavering in terms of the world currency.

00:34:15.000 It used to be 80% of the global foreign exchange reserves.

00:34:18.000 Now it's down to about 60% of the global foreign exchange reserves.

00:34:20.000 You talk about in your book the fact that there isn't really like an amazing replacement for the dollar right now, including the Chinese currency.

00:34:27.000 You make some points with regard to China that I think are quite fascinating.

00:34:30.000 Do you see China as a rising power capable of replacing the United States in this? 0.76

00:34:35.000 Particular moment.

00:34:36.000 Well, what are the big threats to the dollar as the world's reserve currency?

00:34:39.000 Well, I don't see China replacing the United States as a power.

00:34:43.000 But the U.S. dollar had sort of colonized the whole world as the communist countries became free and integrated into the global economy, Africa, Asia.

00:34:55.000 The dollar took over.

00:34:57.000 We never took back Europe, which we had after World War II, the dollar, and they have their own currency now.

00:35:03.000 But now that's somewhat in retreat.

00:35:05.000 The Chinese see what we did to Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 0.88

00:35:11.000 They see the sanctions.

00:35:13.000 They see that we took the Russian central bank's money.

00:35:15.000 We don't call it a default, but let's be serious here.

00:35:19.000 And they have, the Russians had $300 to $350 billion.

00:35:24.000 They have, by my count, $2 trillion.

00:35:26.000 They're thinking about it.

00:35:27.000 So are other countries.

00:35:29.000 So it isn't so much that we're going to use the renminbi, that's the Chinese currency in New York, or even the euro.

00:35:35.000 But they might not be using the dollars as much in street markets in Africa and, you know, using it for trade the rest of the world.

00:35:43.000 So that'll push up our interest rates because it lowers the demand.

00:35:48.000 That will weaken our ability to put on sanctions such as it is.

00:35:53.000 That will lessen our ability to see into what other countries are doing, which right now our dominance in finance, everything goes for the dollar, gives our NSA and our CIA this information that's just fantastic.

00:36:08.000 That'll diminish.

00:36:10.000 You know, and when we look at the possibility of all that happening, that stuff is exacerbated by the fact that we are now in giant trade wars with pretty much everybody.

00:36:18.000 Because one of the things that facilitates the use of the dollar in commerce is the United States being involved in commerce.

00:36:23.000 And as we withdraw from being the sort of global hegemon militarily, as we move.

00:36:43.000 Yeah, I mean, I do teach at Harvard, but I'm one of the 3% of faculty, maybe it's 6% who identify as conservative.

00:36:52.000 I by no means think that everything Donald Trump does is wrong.

00:36:55.000 The tariff policy, I just don't understand it.

00:36:59.000 It seems to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, the uncertainty, the chaos.

00:37:05.000 And the market seemed like, oh, it's just going to go away.

00:37:10.000 He's going to calm down.

00:37:11.000 Is he?

00:37:12.000 I mean, even if he says, "Okay, just kidding, in a year, I think that policy has been incomprehensible and I think undermining his presidency.

00:37:27.000 One of the things that many people in sort of the Trump arena are talking a lot about these days is crypto as a possibility as sort of a hedge against the erosion of the dollar, the possibility of crypto being a safer store of value, sort of like digital gold.

00:37:42.000 One of the points that you make in your book.

00:37:54.000 And governments all over the world are not going to allow there to be a separate safe store of value that could actually be used in actual commerce on a regular basis.

00:38:04.000 No, that's exactly right.

00:38:05.000 It is used and will be used in the underground economy.

00:38:09.000 Tax evasion, arms dealing, human trafficking, drug trade.

00:38:14.000 We're not able to stop that now.

00:38:15.000 We're not going to be able to stop it.

00:38:17.000 But we're not going to let it be used in place of the dollar in the legal economy.

00:38:23.000 That would have catastrophic effects on government finances and lots of other things.

00:38:28.000 There are people in the crypto world who says you can't touch us.

00:38:31.000 It's resistant.

00:38:31.000 It's immune.

00:38:33.000 That's naive because, yes, Bitcoin, let's just say you can't touch Bitcoin itself.

00:38:38.000 There's this whole infrastructure around it, these so-called exchanges.

00:38:43.000 Coinbase is a famous example.

00:38:45.000 They're just banks.

00:38:46.000 You put Bitcoin in an exchange like Coinbase the way you put dollars in a bank.

00:38:52.000 And the government could, if it wanted, regulate it.

00:38:56.000 It puzzles me that the Trump administration said, let's not.

00:39:01.000 Let's deregulate this.

00:39:02.000 Let's not do anything.

00:39:04.000 And of course, that's going to lead to a crisis just like it does in other banking systems.

00:39:08.000 And because we're having pension funds hold it and ordinary people hold it, this time, when we have a crisis, it could be a lot bigger thing affecting the whole economy and not just contained in the crypto world.

00:39:23.000 I mean, there are people inside sort of the crypto worlds who are looking for rational regulation.

00:39:28.000 I think one of the great dangers to crypto, and again, I'm a fan of crypto.

00:39:31.000 I own some Bitcoin.

00:39:32.000 I own some Ethereum.

00:39:33.000 I invest in a crypto trading firm.

00:39:36.000 I like crypto, but one of the things that I'm actually quite fearful of is the fact that there are so many people in the crypto space who are so warm with the Trump administration in a deregulatory environment that if the economy were to take a tumble, that the reaction to this would be to basically wipe.

00:39:51.000 As much out of crypto as humanly possible in sort of a political reversion.

00:39:55.000 No, that's absolutely right.

00:39:57.000 What's going to happen after a big crisis where there wasn't enough regulation?

00:40:00.000 Just like what happened after the global financial crisis, they over-regulated.

00:40:05.000 They're going to over-regulate crypto in response to this.

00:40:08.000 And, you know, there are ways it can go forward.

00:40:11.000 We could get into stablecoins, for example, I think, you know, have a future.

00:40:15.000 And I'm saying Bitcoin doesn't.

00:40:17.000 But you need some guardrails of this whole thing.

00:40:21.000 There needs to be much more, not less.

00:40:24.000 We'll get to more on this in a moment.

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00:41:25.000 So one of the big questions all of this actually bears is...

00:41:33.000 So there's been a lot of talk about the idea that basically we're now a slow-growth economy, that we may be a slow-growth economy out into the future.

00:41:38.000 And then there are people who have this sort of deus ex machina view of what AI is going to do to productivity growth in the United States.

00:41:45.000 My own view of that is that AI is unbelievable, but the adoption of AI in sort of everybody's regular life and its adoption in industry, it takes a little bit longer for the adoption of new technology to actually adhere than people tend to think.

00:41:58.000 The internet was working by the mid-90s.

00:42:01.000 It probably took until the mid-2000s at a minimum for the internet to really start making a massive difference in everybody's economic life.

00:42:07.000 So what does that mean for American productivity?

00:42:09.000 Should we be expecting 2% increased GDP year on year?

00:42:13.000 Do you think AI is transformative?

00:42:15.000 What do you think comes next?

00:42:18.000 Well, I'm with you that it's transformative, but the pace of it's much slower.

00:42:23.000 I'd also throw in there that the social disruption could make globalization seem like nothing, so we don't really know where it's going.

00:42:32.000 This is maybe hyperbolic, but I worry a little bit that we're going to be so dependent on AI to produce growth, to pay our debt, that we won't regulate AI to try to provide guardrails there too, because we need it to grow so fast.

00:42:49.000 But in general, of course, Of course, AI is the future.

00:42:54.000 I was a professional chess player in my youth.

00:42:56.000 I have seen God when I see AI.

00:42:59.000 But it took decades.

00:43:01.000 It took decades.

00:43:02.000 And so I don't see why it wouldn't be the same and everything else.

00:43:06.000 So if you were making policy for the Trump administration right now, and you were trying to grow us out of, Let's take some parameters as reality.

00:43:19.000 So for example, we're not restructuring Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security in any serious way.

00:43:23.000 Those are your parameters.

00:43:24.000 So now you're screwed.

00:43:25.000 So putting aside those parameters, what growth-oriented policies?

00:43:29.000 I'm sorry, I just put in place all of the roadblocks that prevent anybody from doing anything, which is, of course, the big problem.

00:43:34.000 But assuming all of that, what do you do?

00:43:38.000 Professor Rogoff, what do you do to spur growth in the moment?

00:43:42.000 Aside from things like tax cuts, what regulations do you look at?

00:43:45.000 Where do you see areas of growth in the American economy?

00:43:49.000 Well, there are fantastic areas of growth in the American economy.

00:43:52.000 That's still there, although I think some of these tariffs and trade wars could undermine that.

00:43:58.000 Let's not forget about the fact that our university system has been a magnet for the best and the brightest in the whole world coming here, not just going to university, staying here, founding companies.

00:44:09.000 It's been a big part of our growth.

00:44:11.000 It always has been.

00:44:13.000 And if we taper that off, that's not good.

00:44:15.000 But I mean, well, get rid of the tariff wars would be the first thing.

00:44:19.000 But if you're going to take, say, Raising the age of Social Security off the table, which so far, you know, it's been a third rail.

00:44:28.000 And France hasn't done it.

00:44:29.000 But just think about it.

00:44:31.000 France is really the only other big country that hasn't done it.

00:44:35.000 You know, I mean, that's sort of a simple thing you can do.

00:44:38.000 And you should do those things first.

00:44:40.000 Maybe we could find some way to get the deficit down to 3% or 2% instead of 7% and see if that stabilizes things a bit.

00:44:49.000 And as you said, there's some of the Biden era programs that they're being very slow to phase out that maybe they need to do faster.

00:44:57.000 I mean, the biggest problem I think you face as a Republican president is the biggest problem you face as a Democratic president.

00:45:05.000 You're not going to be in power, possibly, in a few years.

00:45:07.000 So you make all these changes, and then the other side comes in and does the opposite.

00:45:12.000 So, you know, we live in this world where centrist, which I view myself as, but who knows what that means, you know, they don't exist.

00:45:20.000 And so it's very hard to solve our problems.

00:45:23.000 I think we're going to have to have a crisis.

00:45:24.000 I think our debt problem is going to lead to a crisis.

00:45:27.000 That's going to catalyze the political change.

00:45:29.000 The crisis will be inflation.

00:45:30.000 I don't want to say we're going to walk away from our debt.

00:45:33.000 Great for sales of my book if we do that, but I'm not counting on that.

00:45:38.000 I think we're going to have another inflation crisis, and this time it's going to be more painful.

00:45:42.000 I mean, last time, people gave the Fed a pass on it.

00:45:46.000 If you look at inflation expectations, they've gone up, but they haven't gone hysterical.

00:45:50.000 And I think next time they won't, and interest rates will go up, and we'll have to adjust.

00:45:54.000 And everybody else in the world does it.

00:45:57.000 I mean, we have done it less than anybody else in the world's done it.

00:46:01.000 We don't have to go crazy, but, you know, you have to make some moves in the right direction.

00:46:06.000 So it's very disappointing that the big, beautiful bill actually looks like they'll have a higher deficit.

00:46:13.000 If you'd asked me to bet on that back in January, that didn't even occur to me.

00:46:19.000 So, you know, I'm not going to ask you to be held to your crystal ball here, but I talked to a lot of investors, obviously.

00:46:26.000 Everybody is sort of in this bizarre mode where they're excited but nervous and nervous but excited.

00:46:31.000 Every time President Trump makes a positive economic signal, then the markets spike.

00:46:35.000 Every time he makes a negative economic signal, the markets dump.

00:46:38.000 The thing that I've been looking at is the sort of delta between where the markets would be if he had not done a lot of this stuff and where we are right now.

00:46:45.000 So instead of just looking at, you know, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 44,000 when he took office and now it's at 43,000, so it's really not that big a deal.

00:46:52.000 The way that I'm looking at it is probably the Dow Jones Industrial Average should be at 47,000 or 48,000 if we had not done a lot of this stuff as opposed to where it's sitting right now.

00:47:01.000 Because of so many investors, we're sort of holding dry powder, not knowing what the next day brings, and all of this sort of uncertainty, which is its own form of economic hampering.

00:47:11.000 I mean, it obviously puts a cap on people's capacity to grow.

00:47:14.000 Because of all of that, when people ask me what I think the future of the economy is, if I had to ballpark recession or no recession inside the next three years, say, during the rest of President Trump's term, it sounds wishy-washy.

00:47:31.000 Probability that there's a fairly serious recession sometime in the next three years.

00:47:34.000 Where do you put that probability?

00:47:37.000 So I've been using two years.

00:47:38.000 I did an interview back in January where I said that.

00:47:42.000 And people said, you're crazy.

00:47:45.000 You know, it's going to be the greatest thing ever.

00:47:47.000 But I think when you overheat the economy, which is what we're doing, that at some point the Fed, it's going to be raising interest rates and raising interest rates.

00:47:57.000 It's raising interest rates because that's where the market is driving it.

00:48:00.000 It's not because it's wanting to be the economy to crash.

00:48:04.000 I think the odds of a recession are well over 50% or significant slowdown to be wishy-washy about it.

00:48:12.000 But yeah, I think that'll happen.

00:48:14.000 I think the odds of having a big inflation in my book, I said five to seven years, maybe I'd say under four years now.

00:48:22.000 Interest rates will go up and can President Trump stand the heat?

00:48:27.000 Well, the book is Our Dollar, Your Problem.

00:48:29.000 It's Professor Kenneth Rogoff.

00:48:31.000 You should definitely read it because it is a fascinating history of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, but also just currency exchange, debt problems.

00:48:39.000 What you need to know is in this book.

00:48:41.000 Professor Rogoff, really appreciate the time.

00:48:43.000 Thank you so much for having me, Ben, and good luck with the rest of the year for all of us.

00:48:49.000 Meanwhile, the foreign policy of the United States appears to be at least a little bit discombobulated at this point.

00:48:57.000 So Russia continues to strengthen its talk about its own imperialistic image.

00:49:02.000 Unbelievably enough, Joseph Stalin has now returned to Moscow's ornate subway stations.

00:49:07.000 So I look forward to other commentators traveling there to talk about the beauty of the subway stations featuring actual honest-to-God Stalin. 0.53

00:49:13.000 In any case, the New York Times reports a new statue was unveiled by the authorities this month showing Stalin gazing sagely into the distance, flanked by adoring workers and children holding out flowers to him.

00:49:22.000 A replica of one that was removed in 1966 during a de-Stalinization campaign.

00:49:27.000 The new relief quickly became an attraction with people leaving flowers, stopping to pose for pictures, including with their children or just watching pensively.

00:49:34.000 The sculpture is part of the gradual rehabilitation of a brutal leader who still has the power to divide Russians 72 years after his death.

00:49:40.000 The Kremlin has revived parts of his legacy and its efforts to recast Russia's history as a series of glorious triumphs that it is determined to continue in Ukraine.

00:49:49.000 Well, that's absolutely horrifying, considering that Stalin is responsible for the death of legitimately millions of people in Ukraine under the Hladimir, as well as hundreds of thousands of people during the Great Terror from 1936 to 1938.

00:50:03.000 So that's great.

00:50:05.000 Things are going really well with Vladimir Putin and company.

00:50:08.000 The Trump administration's approach to Putin remains unclear at this point.

00:50:12.000 We can hope that they are shifting toward a more hawkish view of what needs to happen with regard to Ukraine.

00:50:17.000 Meanwhile, Germany is starting to step up, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:50:21.000 German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday, He said this is the start of a new form of military-industrial cooperation between our two countries and one that has huge potential.

00:50:41.000 Well, Germany is in fairly decent fiscal shape, so they certainly have the capacity to spend more in places like Ukraine.

00:50:47.000 The question is whether they actually can provide the military materiel.

00:50:54.000 Again, the goal would be to actually go after critical infrastructure inside Russia itself.

00:51:06.000 So, where is the United States on this?

00:51:08.000 Remains totally unclear.

00:51:10.000 The same holds true, by the way, with regard to the Iran negotiations.

00:51:14.000 President Trump keeps putting out sort of warm statements about the Iran negotiations.

00:51:20.000 Apparently, according to Reuters, Iran is suggesting that they might pause their enrichment if the United States recognizes their right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, which of course is ridiculous.

00:51:33.000 Why exactly would we recognize their right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes?

00:51:37.000 The whole goal of that would be so that they can then ramp up their enrichment for quote-unquote civilian purposes and then break out and two months later they have a nuke.

00:51:45.000 That is the entire goal of that.

00:51:49.000 What precisely is the incentive structure that causes the United States to sign on to a deal like that?

00:51:54.000 Why not just keep the maximum pressure on?

00:51:56.000 Really, what do you get?

00:51:57.000 Their word that they're pausing it?

00:51:59.000 How long is the pause that you are talking about?

00:52:02.000 Isn't that pause just going to, I mean, presumably this would mean the end of sanctions, by the way.

00:52:07.000 Iranian sources suggest that any temporary suspension of the enrichment, even temporary, would require the United States to then release assets to the government of Iran.

00:52:18.000 Why would we do that?

00:52:19.000 What exactly is the, what is the goal there?

00:52:22.000 Just to get a name on a piece of paper?

00:52:24.000 First of all, once again, this is where the Senate should step in, seriously.

00:52:27.000 Like, it turns out that treaties, I know, it's become non-practice, but it turns out that the Senate does have treaty power, just as the JCPOA should have been approved by the Senate of the United States, and was not.

00:52:38.000 Anything that's done here should be approved by the Senate of the United States.

00:52:48.000 It is just JCPOA 2.0.

00:52:52.000 So, you know, we'll find out what happens there.

00:52:56.000 Meanwhile, the United States' efforts in ensuring that humanitarian aid does get into the Gaza Strip, those actually have been effective.

00:53:04.000 Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been showing up in the Gaza Strip in line preparing to actually get the food that they want.

00:53:11.000 In fact, they're even breaking into Hamas held warehouses that are holding things like flour.

00:53:16.000 It appears that Hamas's stranglehold on the Gaza Strip may be breaking at this point.

00:53:21.000 And there's been some talk of a possibility of another hostage release.

00:53:23.000 So we'll keep you up to date on those sorts of negotiations.

00:53:26.000 Meanwhile, RFK Jr. has now ended COVID-19 recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women in terms of vaccines.

00:53:35.000 He is right about that.

00:53:37.000 The idea that you require as a child a COVID vaccine, it was always.

00:53:43.000 A sketchy proposition at best.

00:53:44.000 Well, joining us on the line to discuss all of this is, of course, friends of the show, Dr. Marty McCary, who is the commissioner for the FDA.

00:53:51.000 Dr. McCary, great to see you.

00:53:53.000 Good to be with you, Ben.

00:53:55.000 So let's talk about the new standards with regard to the COVID vaccine.

00:53:59.000 Obviously, you and I talked about this a lot during the actual rollout of the COVID vaccine.

00:54:04.000 Much of the data that was presented to the public was not actually rooted in data.

00:54:07.000 There was a lot of talk at the very beginning about how the COVID vaccine was going to prevent transmission of the disease, which it actually did not do a particularly good job of doing, at least with regard to Omicron and the later variants.

00:54:18.000 What is the new guidance from the FDA?

00:54:20.000 What is the new standard for the FDA with regard to the COVID vaccine?

00:54:23.000 Well, Ben, there's been two camps that have evolved in the scientific community about the COVID booster strategy, giving people a booster in perpetuity every year.

00:54:33.000 One camp has said, we need some clinical trial data.

00:54:36.000 We need to know that it's still necessary, that it works, that people should take it, that there are benefits.

00:54:41.000 The other camp is the blind camp. 0.99

00:54:44.000 That is, the FDA should put on blinders and just rubber stamp new vaccines that create new proteins in the body.

00:54:50.000 Every year in perpetuity.

00:54:52.000 So a young baby today would get 80 COVID shots in her average 80-year lifespan.

00:54:58.000 And so we are clearly in the science camp.

00:55:02.000 That is, we believe in evidence-based medicine and common sense.

00:55:05.000 And we're saying to the companies that are bringing products to us now to be stamped every year with an approval that we'd like to see some clinical data.

00:55:13.000 And so that is where we are, and I think that's where the American people are.

00:55:16.000 Remember, 85% of healthcare workers said no to the last COVID booster in the last COVID season.

00:55:25.000 Now, there are a lot of people who are suggesting that because of the FDA's new approach to all of this, somehow people who need COVID shots are not going to be able to get them, that because the FDA is essentially pushing for the idea that COVID shots are mainly applicable to the people that, again, you and I were talking about this when it was happening.

00:55:41.000 To people who are at high risk and seniors, or the people who are, again, most at risk of COVID in general, that somehow this will deprive people who need the shot of the shot.

00:55:48.000 What do you make of that critique?

00:55:50.000 Well, that's not true.

00:55:52.000 There are COVID vaccines on the market.

00:55:54.000 We had approved the Novavax vaccine, which is a traditional vaccine that does not use mRNA, and it's designed for COVID.

00:56:01.000 A lot of people who have concerns about vaccine injury from mRNA COVID shots.

00:56:07.000 Have preferred the Novavax vaccine.

00:56:10.000 While we're saying that the indication that is the official label is for high-risk people, people with severe immunosuppression and other high-risk cases where doctors are using their discretion, they're still on the market.

00:56:10.000 It's on the market.

00:56:22.000 And certainly somebody can take it off-label at their own discretion, but it's not something that we recommend.

00:56:29.000 So the broader question is, do we need the government recommending Which Americans get the vaccine and which Americans do not?

00:56:38.000 And if we are going to be doing that, we want to make it based on evidence.

00:56:41.000 So we have a label that is consistent with where we think the evidence and the common sense best supports the use.

00:56:48.000 Well, again, a lot of this raises questions about the conduct of the Biden administration, particularly during the rollout of the vaccine.

00:56:55.000 And now that you're actually in the seat.

00:56:57.000 What sort of information do you think should have been presented to the American public?

00:57:00.000 I know that there's been a sort of Senate investigation that's ongoing into what the public knew and when the public knew it about things like myocarditis resulting allegedly from the use of the vaccine.

00:57:11.000 What should the Biden administration have been doing differently?

00:57:13.000 What did they do wrong during the original rollout of the vaccines?

00:57:16.000 Well, Ben, I've learned a lot about what's been going on at the FDA as I've looked under the hood.

00:57:22.000 And yes, you're correct.

00:57:23.000 That the agency sat on myocarditis complication data from the mRNA COVID vaccines.

00:57:30.000 And so that was deeply troubling.

00:57:32.000 A lot of myocarditis cases, maybe thousands, could have been prevented had people had good information or modified the vaccine strategy or recognized natural immunity.

00:57:43.000 There's a lot of stuff that we're learning.

00:57:45.000 So we're trying to create a transparent process.

00:57:47.000 I do think the vaccine-injured community deserves better answers than they were given over the last four years.

00:57:54.000 Those studies will take some time.

00:57:56.000 But I think we have to be honest.

00:57:58.000 We have to be impeccably honest.

00:57:59.000 And that's why we went ahead and published our COVID vaccine regulation framework for boosters in the New England Journal of Medicine.

00:58:06.000 I've done, I think, 50 interviews in the eight weeks.

00:58:09.000 I've been commissioner.

00:58:10.000 We're trying to let people know what we're thinking and give the companies an early heads up ahead of the vaccine schedule and manufacturing timeframe.

00:58:20.000 Now, meanwhile, obviously a lot of controversy has arisen because of RFK Jr.'s running of HHS, and people have been asking questions about where focus ought to be in terms of trying to discern the causes of disease, something that obviously RFK Jr.'s been putting tremendous focus on, Secretary Kennedy.

00:58:37.000 When we talk about that, the biggest and most controversial one is all the discussions of autism.

00:58:42.000 What is the FDA doing to look into that?

00:58:44.000 Yeah, the secretary has controversially said What do you make of that?

00:58:53.000 Well, first of all, the secretary is asking questions that people in America are asking, and I think they deserve better answers than they've been given.

00:59:00.000 The NIH has been entirely focused on genetic bases for diseases.

00:59:06.000 And so they've created a culture within the U.S. academic community that kind of...

00:59:13.000 The gene can fix a lot of our health problems.

00:59:15.000 Well, we have to study genetic science, but we also have to study food and microplastics and pesticides and seed oils and the 70% of the diet of children that is ultra-processed and all these chemicals in our food supply that are banned in Europe and other places.

00:59:31.000 So we are seeing a new agenda now.

00:59:34.000 To take a look at everything.

00:59:35.000 And that's the Maha report that came out last week.

00:59:38.000 The Secretary has commissioned a study of root causes of autism.

00:59:43.000 The NIH is conducting that.

00:59:45.000 At the NIH, we're supporting it by curating databases that we think are useful for adverse event reporting instead of these clunky systems like VAERS where people report.

00:59:56.000 Vaccine complications of myocarditis or a death from the COVID vaccine.

01:00:00.000 And nobody really looks at it.

01:00:03.000 And then we tell the public, well, we can't make anything of it because it's self-reported data.

01:00:07.000 Well, you created a clunky database that you're then saying we can't use.

01:00:12.000 So what are we doing?

01:00:13.000 So we're curating good national electronic health record data with millions of records de-identified where we can do good adverse event reporting.

01:00:26.000 Well, that, of course, is the brand new commissioner of the FDA, Marty McCary.

01:00:30.000 Dr. McCary, thanks so much for taking the time.

01:00:32.000 Really appreciate your hard work on all of this.

01:00:34.000 Good to see you, Ben.

01:00:35.000 Thanks.

01:00:36.000 All righty.

01:00:36.000 Meanwhile, in lighter news or heavier news, depending on how seriously you take celebrity trials, Diddy Watch continues apace.

01:00:43.000 Some of the witnesses in the case are now going out and speaking to the media.

01:00:48.000 One of the big questions for all the witnesses is, why didn't you do anything about all this terrible stuff in the first place?

01:00:53.000 And the answer for most of them is that they actually just thought everything was hunky-dory, because I guess this is just de rigueur in celebrity land.

01:01:00.000 There is a male escort who worked with Diddy who is called The Punisher.

01:01:07.000 I believe that's what this person's name was.

01:01:10.000 The Punisher.

01:01:12.000 I just can't believe this.

01:01:14.000 Anyway, The Punisher Hayes.

01:01:17.000 He was on CNN, because this is the world in which we now live, explaining Why he didn't actually come forward with any of this stuff?

01:01:25.000 There was always pressure in terms of being disposable because obviously I'm there to create something, like a scene, to create an environment.

01:01:33.000 So at times where there was sexual pressure, you know, because it's out of my norm, I did have a feeling of, okay, I'm one.

01:01:43.000 You know, scenario where if I don't perform the right way, if I don't create the right ambiance, then maybe I won't get called back.

01:01:50.000 But that's the most pressure that I had.

01:01:53.000 There was no indication of I mean, there are no signs.

01:02:07.000 There are no signs whatsoever.

01:02:09.000 Joining us on the line is the host of the Megyn Kelly show, of course, Megyn Kelly. 0.96

01:02:13.000 And Megyn, thanks so much for taking the time to explain to me what is the Diddy case?

01:02:18.000 Why should we care?

01:02:19.000 And my general take has been I'm not sure why what we are watching is not just an expose of Diddy being a terrible person and his girlfriend also kind of being a bad person, as opposed to what are the charges and how does what we're watching actually justify the charges?

01:02:37.000 Diddy's long-term girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, and others were not participating in his weird romps voluntarily, but were essentially coerced into them by threats and or force by Diddy, who had this weird obsession with bizarre things involving workers, tons of baby oil, and lots of lube.

01:02:57.000 If I hear that word one more time from reporters I respect and like, it's just so jarring.

01:03:03.000 In any event, that that I used to think that this revolved solely around the workers who they definitely have proven he used regularly.

01:03:13.000 But I was corrected on that by a source close to the case that the theory is that the girlfriends themselves were being.

01:03:20.000 Because while they may or may not have been voluntarily participating in some of these so-called freak offs, in many of them, they were doing it just because they were being threatened by combs, either threatened with a beating.

01:03:40.000 And that's really where the prosecution's going to make something.

01:03:45.000 There's no question they've proven transportation.

01:03:49.000 They've got that, and each one of those is potentially a 10-year sentence.

01:03:52.000 So he's definitely looking at some very serious jail time on the least of the serious charges.

01:04:04.000 And for that, you have to prove that somebody's basically running a crime organization, that he lives in crime.

01:04:10.000 He regularly engages in crime with the help of those around him.

01:04:14.000 And to prove RICO, you only need two predicate acts, so two acts of crime.

01:04:19.000 The prosecutors have spent this trial so far, we're in week two or beginning of week three, By proving multiple, I mean multiple, they opened the case with that infamous videotape from the Intercontinental in L.A. of Diddy beating Cassie Ventura outside in that hallway and then dragging her back into the hotel room.

01:04:39.000 Right there, you've got assault, battery, and kidnapping.

01:04:42.000 And there's been multiple testimony introduced of him beating her several times.

01:04:48.000 Right now, they're in the midst of trying to prove that he blew up or tried to.

01:04:52.000 Kid Cudi's car, this is another singer, Who testified himself about how Diddy and he were seeing the same woman, this Cassie Ventura, the star witness.

01:05:01.000 He didn't realize that she was still with Diddy, but when Diddy found out, he went over to his assistant's, Diddy's assistant's house.

01:05:09.000 She just left the witness stand saying, her name is Capricorn Clark.

01:05:13.000 She said he came, he was brandishing a gun.

01:05:16.000 He said, get dressed, get in the car, we're going to go kill that N-word. 1.00

01:05:20.000 As a reference to Kid Cudi, that she did get in the car with him.

01:05:23.000 There was a security guard, too.

01:05:24.000 They went to Kid Cudi's house.

01:05:25.000 He wasn't at home, but that Diddy broke in.

01:05:28.000 We had testimony earlier from Kid Cudi saying, hey, my house was broken into on that day, and my Christmas gifts, this is right before Christmas, had been opened up.

01:05:36.000 My security cameras had been moved, and my dog was locked in a room.

01:05:40.000 And I saw Black Escalade, that I thought was Diddy's, there at some point that day.

01:05:45.000 And we just had testimony from LA authorities saying, They traced that black Escalade back to Bad Boys Records, which is Diddy's company.

01:05:54.000 Then later, Kid Cudi said his Porsche got blown up.

01:05:57.000 Somebody cut a huge hole in the top of it and threw a Molotov cocktail in there.

01:06:01.000 And today we've seen an L.A. fire department guy testifying to what kind of Molotov cocktail it was, exactly what kind.

01:06:08.000 It was a malt liquor bottle.

01:06:10.000 I mean, you can't make it up.

01:06:11.000 It's just like the details that have come out.

01:06:12.000 Let me get it exactly.

01:06:13.000 What kind of bottle was used?

01:06:15.000 Jimenez.

01:06:16.000 Old English 800 malt liquor.

01:06:18.000 And the wick?

01:06:19.000 A designer type of scarf.

01:06:21.000 Silky.

01:06:22.000 In my opinion, this was targeted.

01:06:24.000 So that's just one of the predicate acts they're trying to show.

01:06:27.000 Diddy committed.

01:06:28.000 They're not charging these as separate crimes.

01:06:30.000 It's just individual acts of alleged criminality as part of the overall racketeering conspiracy.

01:06:35.000 So what exactly is his defense?

01:06:37.000 Just that he's a jerk and everybody knows he's a jerk and he does terrible things, but everybody sort of consented to the terrible things.

01:06:43.000 Is that essentially the essence of his defense?

01:06:45.000 Yeah, I mean, he hasn't really responded so well on the Kid Cudi allegations other than you can't prove it.

01:06:50.000 You know, they elicited testimony from Kid Cudi that when he eventually confronted Diddy, Diddy denied doing it.

01:06:56.000 Diddy do it? 0.99

01:06:57.000 Diddy did not do it, Diddy says.

01:06:59.000 And so that's going to be his defense there.

01:07:02.000 But it's just devastating for the defense that the prosecution opened with that videotape because we all saw it.

01:07:08.000 And Diddy does not deny that is him on that tape beating Cassie Ventura.

01:07:15.000 And it's gone in undisputed that that was in the middle of a freak-off, one of these so-called prompts that lasted days.

01:07:21.000 And whether she consented at the beginning or didn't, she clearly was not consenting to stay there any longer.

01:07:26.000 And anyone with eyes can see that on the tape.

01:07:29.000 And he physically beat her, I mean, openly, in the hallway of the Intercontinental.

01:07:34.000 Imagine what he's capable of behind closed doors.

01:07:37.000 and dragged her back into the room.

01:07:39.000 That's great evidence for the prosecution's case that...

01:07:53.000 People who had to clean up the room after the fact confirmed her report.

01:07:57.000 So, I mean, that right there lends so much credibility to her report that while, yeah, sometimes I wanted to do it, I didn't always want to do it.

01:08:03.000 The defense is introducing evidence like emails from her saying, I love the freak-offs.

01:08:09.000 I can't wait to do a freak-off now.

01:08:11.000 And look forward to our next freak-off.

01:08:13.000 And evidence that she paid the workers for the freak offs and invited the workers.

01:08:17.000 She called some service called Cowboys for, what was the word?

01:08:23.000 I can't remember.

01:08:26.000 Cowboys for cuties or something like that.

01:08:28.000 These are services that are out there, Ben Shapiro.

01:08:31.000 I feel like a child here.

01:08:31.000 I'm innocent.

01:08:33.000 They'll show up.

01:08:34.000 They'll show up at your house and they'll work for you.

01:08:38.000 And so she was the one running herd on all of that.

01:08:41.000 Diddy didn't have the direct interaction with them, but he would sit there and watch these romps.

01:08:45.000 So the defense is trying to show she was a willing participant.

01:08:49.000 They also elicited testimony from her that one of the reasons she didn't leave, because her relationship went from, I think, 03 to 18, 15 years, was she enjoyed the lifestyle.

01:09:00.000 She loved the cars and she loved the boats and she loved the Diddy lifestyle.

01:09:05.000 They're trying to style her as like a money-grubbing, you know, glomer who was totally fine with all these proms. 1.00

01:09:13.000 She wasn't by anybody.

01:09:14.000 And she's only got like regrets after the fact now because things blew up.

01:09:19.000 And they're also painting her as just a jealous woman.

01:09:22.000 The main source of their arguments wasn't these freak-offs.

01:09:26.000 It was her jealousy over a woman named Gina. 0.51

01:09:29.000 Who was supposed to testify as victim number three, but has absconded.

01:09:34.000 She's had second thoughts about testifying, and now she will not testify.

01:09:38.000 Though, Ben, she did give an interview to a YouTuber a couple of years ago.

01:09:42.000 At least the New York Times is reporting that the woman who appeared on this YouTube feed is Gina, victim three, not independently confirmed by yours truly.

01:09:50.000 And in that interview, she talks about how he beat her, he kicked her in the stomach, her, Gina.

01:09:56.000 That he made her get at least two abortions.

01:09:58.000 I mean, you hear these testimonials and you hate P. Diddy.

01:10:02.000 You hate Sean Combs.

01:10:04.000 And that's what's happening with the jury, I guarantee you.

01:10:06.000 He's sitting there in a little gray sweater with his little polo shirt folded over underneath.

01:10:11.000 He's got reading glasses on.

01:10:13.000 He's got gray hair now.

01:10:15.000 He actually showed up on day one with a Bible.

01:10:19.000 And he wants them to believe he's this Bible, you know, sweater-wearing, cashmere, little old man.

01:10:25.000 And yet you hear these testimonials and you really look forward to whatever is happening to him in prison, happening for years to come.

01:10:33.000 So this is going to be the, you know...

01:10:36.000 That we're really growing to loathe him progressively every day, but that doesn't necessarily mean these are crimes.

01:10:42.000 So one of the big sort of open questions about all of this that a lot of people have kind of trended toward conspiracism on is why it took so long for any of these prosecutions to be brought.

01:10:51.000 Because a lot of these predicate offenses are taking place over the course of decades.

01:10:54.000 Everybody who's famous apparently went to his white parties and some of these people took part in these freak-offs. 0.81

01:11:02.000 One is that there's some sort of conspiracy, that he was working with law enforcement to create tapes or whatever.

01:11:06.000 And the other theory is that in Hollywood, actually the line between just being some of the worst people on planet Earth and criminal activity is really thin.

01:11:14.000 And you can get away with an awful lot of crap in Hollywood until the point that you can't.

01:11:19.000 Which one of those do you think is more explanatory?

01:11:22.000 The latter.

01:11:23.000 I believe the latter.

01:11:24.000 Let me give you an example, Ben.

01:11:26.000 Recently it was brought to my attention that Beyonce is using videotape of yours truly at every single one of her concerts.

01:11:32.000 She's on a tour right now.

01:11:33.000 So she's decided to use some videotape of me pointing out that country music's been around for a long time before she got into it and she's not the be-all end-all.

01:11:42.000 She's very focused on me and this one line of commentary.

01:11:46.000 What has she said about Diddy?

01:11:48.000 Where's her commentary about that disgusting pervert with whom she and her gross husband were best friends? 0.99

01:11:53.000 Because I've seen plenty of pictures of them celebrating together and at Diddy's parties.

01:11:59.000 Gee, she didn't have a moment to spare a word for him.

01:12:02.000 So yeah, it runs deep, the rot in this community.

01:12:05.000 And I do think that these people are extremely well connected.

01:12:08.000 I mean, Alan Dershowitz was on our show today talking about how in the Epstein cases, he knows, firsthand he knows of multiple men's names that have not yet hit the press, who should be coming under the microscope as Not victims, perpetrators of this thing that Epstein was perpetrating.

01:12:28.000 But we don't know their names.

01:12:29.000 And he was saying, why not?

01:12:31.000 Why not even under the Trump DOJ don't we know their names?

01:12:34.000 And the same question bears asking in the Diddy case.

01:12:37.000 Because these people are very well connected.

01:12:39.000 They've got a lot of money.

01:12:40.000 And let's just take a look at that videotape that we talked about a moment ago.

01:12:45.000 Where was that videotape?

01:12:46.000 Well, Diddy paid somebody at the hotel, we believe a security guard, not the one who...

01:13:03.000 And my own belief is that that's how it got leaked to CNN years later, and that's why we have a record of it.

01:13:08.000 Because the testimony was that somebody at the hotel deleted it.

01:13:10.000 When he got back to work the following Monday, poof, it was gone.

01:13:14.000 And I'll venture to say so is Diddy's $100,000 that he offered to the first guy unsuccessfully.

01:13:24.000 The average person would have a difficult time resisting that.

01:13:28.000 And let's not kid ourselves.

01:13:29.000 Federal officials and state officials can be bought off too.

01:13:32.000 So I think it's actually very likely that whether it was explicit or implicit, Diddy persuaded many federal officials or other officials to look the other way.

01:13:40.000 And now they have to keep the secret because they're complicit.

01:13:43.000 They've been bought off.

01:13:45.000 And I don't know that we'll ever know the full extent.

01:13:47.000 I, for one, will say I was very disappointed in the results of both the Epstein raids and the Diddy raids. 0.66

01:13:52.000 The Diddy raids that, of these two properties, only resulted in, like, tons of lube, back to that word, tons of baby oil, the high heels and, like, you know, provocative clothing, and various guns and gun parts, which could be nefarious.

01:14:09.000 Some of them had the serial numbers scraped off.

01:14:11.000 Or not, because he is a celebrity who I'm sure is under threat, and therefore it's not surprising that there would be guns on his property.

01:14:18.000 So where's the money stuff?

01:14:20.000 You know, where are the tapes showing everybody else who was at these parties, whether it's an Epstein party or a Diddy party?

01:14:27.000 That I cannot answer.

01:14:28.000 And so one of the questions that arises just on sort of a moral level that I wanted to get your take on is the question of Cassie Ventura and some of the women who were willing participants at least some of the time in this sort of stuff.

01:14:41.000 You know, raise the sort of broader societal question of if there are abusive men and people know about these abusive men, what obligation should women have, do women have, if these guys are doing criminal things like beating the crap out of them in hallways, to actually go to the cops and stop this sort of behavior?

01:14:54.000 Because obviously these guys are not just a threat to them, they're a threat to plenty of other people.

01:14:58.000 What do you make of that question?

01:15:00.000 I mean, I do think it's your moral obligation, irrespective of what the woman says.

01:15:04.000 It's just like knowing that your neighbor beats his wife, but she doesn't call the cops on him.

01:15:07.000 I'd call the cops on my neighbor in a heartbeat.

01:15:11.000 I'd have zero qualms about calling the cops on him if he were doing that.

01:15:11.000 Heartbeat.

01:15:15.000 By the way, my neighbor's lovely and is not beating his wife.

01:15:18.000 But yeah, I do think it's a question of morality.

01:15:20.000 You have no legal obligation to do it, but you definitely have a moral obligation to do it.

01:15:24.000 And whether the victim participates in the investigation is really the problem of law enforcement.

01:15:29.000 I mean, we've seen that in case after case, where victims do call the cops and complain and then will not cooperate with the investigation once it gets going because they don't actually want to go through this.

01:15:39.000 And they're afraid, nine times out of ten, of their abuser.

01:15:42.000 And they know they're going to get it even worse when they're behind closed doors with him again.

01:15:46.000 Now, in the case of Cassandra Ventura, I have to say I have a lot of empathy for that woman.

01:15:51.000 She was not like an amber herd.

01:15:53.000 She was very sweet on the stand.

01:15:56.000 I mean, she was almost nine months pregnant.

01:15:58.000 She was about to give birth.

01:15:59.000 And she just seemed like a meek, weak, sad person.

01:16:04.000 She's been suffering from suicidal ideations.

01:16:08.000 Long past breaking up with Diddy.

01:16:10.000 I mean, he met her when she was 19 years old, and he was 17 or 18 years older than she was.

01:16:16.000 He was Diddy.

01:16:17.000 He was huge in the music industry.

01:16:19.000 She was an ingenue, hoping to make it as a singer. 0.96

01:16:22.000 He could give her everything.

01:16:23.000 She had nothing.

01:16:24.000 He made her over.

01:16:25.000 He made her a star.

01:16:26.000 He controlled everything about her life when she was very young.

01:16:29.000 And there's been testimony they really did fall in love.

01:16:32.000 She was absolutely stunning to look at.

01:16:36.000 One of the most gorgeous people you've ever set eyes upon.

01:16:39.000 And she trusted him.

01:16:41.000 She loved him and she trusted him.

01:16:42.000 And he started to exploit her slowly with these weird prompts that were sold to her as like, oh, this is how you'll show me that you love me.

01:16:50.000 Oh, I know it's weird, but I really love it.

01:16:52.000 Will you please do it for me?

01:16:53.000 I mean, there are a lot of women who have been sucked in by that kind of messaging by someone more powerful and older.

01:16:58.000 He had her call him Pop-Pop because she had a grandpa she loved and she called him Pop-Pop.

01:17:04.000 Like I did.

01:17:04.000 And he exploited the name she had for her grandpa and called her baby girl and had her call him pop-up, which is just one of the weird pieces of the dynamic between the two of them.

01:17:16.000 So I easily could understand how this young girl got pulled into his web.

01:17:20.000 And then it's very, very difficult.

01:17:22.000 Much as we'd love to say as women, you know, on the first blow, I'd be out. 1.00

01:17:27.000 It wouldn't take more than one backhand for me to run from him to the cops.

01:17:32.000 I've known many.

01:17:33.000 Many powerful women. 0.99

01:17:35.000 I interviewed one at NBC who was one of the first women on board at Apple who helped invent Siri and was like a high-up executive there who was getting beaten, she said, by her husband.

01:17:46.000 And she was one of the ones who wouldn't cooperate with the investigation once the cops got involved.

01:17:50.000 It can happen.

01:17:51.000 Even if you're very savvy, very smart, and very accomplished.

01:17:54.000 And it can certainly happen to somebody who gets involved with somebody age 19. So I do want the audience to understand this is not an Amber Heard situation.

01:18:01.000 She did not walk off the stand and you were like, oh my god.

01:18:04.000 I think most people were like, oh my god, he's a monster.

01:18:08.000 And this poor girl, while she does have some texts and emails suggesting it was not all involuntary, the prosecution doesn't have to show that.

01:18:15.000 If they just show some of these freak-offs were not involuntary.

01:18:19.000 She said he forced her to do one with a urinary tract infection.

01:18:23.000 Like, absolutely no woman would do that voluntarily. 0.99

01:18:26.000 Like, that is somebody who's being coerced or feels like she cannot say no.

01:18:29.000 So I think he's heading for a conviction, Ben.

01:18:32.000 Well, that's Megan Kelly.

01:18:33.000 You can check out all of her analysis on a wide variety of issues, including ones like this, over at The Megan Kelly Show.

01:18:38.000 Megan, really appreciate the time and the insight.

01:18:41.000 Anytime.

01:18:42.000 Alrighty, folks.

01:18:43.000 The show is continuing for our members right now.

01:18:45.000 We have updates on Andrew Tate.

01:18:47.000 Yes.

01:18:48.000 Wait, wait, wait.

01:18:49.000 He didn't cure brain cancer.

01:18:51.000 He was charged with mortal crimes.

01:18:52.000 I know.

01:18:53.000 I, too, am shocked.

01:18:54.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:18:56.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - May 29, 2025

Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?

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