The Ben Shapiro Show - EPSTEIN BOMBSHELL? Plus Stephen Colbert GONE!

00:00:00.000 A ton to get to today on Ben Shapiro's show.

00:00:03.000 So, new breaking news in the Jeffrey Epstein saga, a Wall Street Journal, supposed bombshell plus, the president authorizing the attorney general to go to court and try to unseal some Epstein records.

00:00:14.000 And Stephen Colbert will be done with his show.

00:00:17.000 They are firing him.

00:00:18.000 But first, my brand new book, Lions and Scavengers, is available for pre-order right now on Amazon.com.

00:00:23.000 It's a rallying cry against those who would poison our culture, undermine it from within.

00:00:28.000 The scavengers are not going to like it.

00:00:29.000 Again, you can pre-order Lions and Scavengers right now at Amazon.com.

00:00:33.000 Also, season one of Ben Afterdark is officially in the books.

00:00:36.000 Nine glorious episodes of unsolicited celebrity impressions, truly disgusting jelly beans, cursed viewer emails, horrible film suggestions, and that one segment we're still legally reviewing.

00:00:46.000 It's been a beautiful mess.

00:00:47.000 Season two is on the way.

00:00:49.000 It will be weirder, louder, and somehow even less appropriate for your group chat.

00:00:52.000 More info on that coming soon.

00:00:53.000 For now, catch up on season one.

00:00:54.000 All episodes are now streaming exclusively for members on DW Plus because Friday nights are for facts, fury, and occasional flamethrowers.

00:01:02.000 Okay, lots of news today.

00:01:04.000 So we begin with a piece of rather welcome and amusing news.

00:01:08.000 That is Stephen Colbert will be done in very short order.

00:01:11.000 So the left is going nuts today because Stephen Colbert, who has not been funny for solidly a decade, I remember when he was a correspondent on The Daily Show for Jon Stewart.

00:01:21.000 And at that point, he was funny.

00:01:22.000 And then, of course, he did the Colbert report, which was basically just a left-winger trying to mock Bill O'Reilly.

00:01:27.000 And it was intermittently funny.

00:01:28.000 And then they made him the late night show host over at CBS.

00:01:32.000 And he was awful, just truly, truly bad at this job.

00:01:37.000 Well, now CBS is announcing that they are done with Stephen Colbert, that apparently, because of the cost of his show and because of his low ratings, they are going to be ending his show in May of 2026.

00:01:48.000 CBS executives issued a statement.

00:01:50.000 We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire the late show franchise in May of 2026.

00:01:56.000 So by irreplaceable, they mean like we will get rid of him and never replace him, which is typically not what you mean by irreplaceable.

00:02:01.000 If I say that my wife is irreplaceable, what I mean is I'm going to stay married to her forever.

00:02:05.000 I don't mean that I'm going to toss her on the side of the road and never get married again.

00:02:09.000 They say, we are proud that Stephen called CBS home.

00:02:11.000 He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats, the greatest late night television.

00:02:16.000 Well, I don't think so.

00:02:17.000 In fact, I don't think he's going to make the top 10, maybe not top 100 late night hosts, if there are even that many.

00:02:23.000 CBS said, this is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.

00:02:27.000 It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount.

00:02:32.000 However, however, there are rumors abroad, pushed by Brian Steinberg over at Variety, that there's growing speculation that Colbert and other programs are under growing scrutiny from executives at Skydance Media, which is slated to acquire Paramount Global, the parent of both CBS and Comedy Central.

00:02:48.000 And of course, there's been a lot of talk lately about Paramount's settlement with President Trump over his complaints on the cutting of a 60-minutes interview.

00:02:55.000 And so the blue sky left is going crazy over this.

00:02:58.000 The blue sky left believes that basically Paramount is firing Colbert in order to help President Trump in some way, which is really an absurd contention given the fact that, again, Stephen Colbert does not have ratings. 0.99

00:03:11.000 His ratings are trash. 0.98

00:03:13.000 He has terrible ratings. 1.00

00:03:15.000 Period.

00:03:15.000 End of story.

00:03:16.000 And he has not been funny for, again, years and years and years.

00:03:19.000 Here he was last night announcing his ouster.

00:03:22.000 Before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last night.

00:03:27.000 Next year will be our last season.

00:03:29.000 The network will be ending the late show in May.

00:03:33.000 And yeah, I share your feelings.

00:03:43.000 It's not just the end of our show, but it's the end of the late show on CBS.

00:03:48.000 I'm not being replaced.

00:03:50.000 This is all just going away.

00:03:52.000 And just so you recall what a bad host he is, we cut this moving montage of some of his worst moments.

00:04:00.000 And I think we should all remember Stephen Colbert's legacy together.

00:04:06.000 Why should our soldiers be fighting radicals in a civil war in Afghanistan?

00:04:10.000 We've got our own on Capitol Hill.

00:04:12.000 This weekend was Father's Day.

00:04:14.000 And Daddy got just what he wanted. 1.00

00:04:17.000 No one came to Trump's big stupid birthday parade. 1.00

00:04:20.000 MAGA sounds for Make America Grass Again. 1.00

00:04:22.000 You attract more skinheads than free road game. 0.98

00:04:25.000 You talk like a sign language gorilla who got hit in the head. 0.98

00:04:29.000 In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's holster. 0.94

00:04:37.000 Well, without jokes like that, what will we do?

00:04:40.000 Well, we'll probably be more amused and we'll laugh more often and life will be better because actually he was quite a terrible host.

00:04:45.000 Jimmy Kimmel, of course, signed into chat in order to go on his Instagram and write, love you, Steven, F you and all your Sheldons, CBS.

00:04:53.000 Well, I mean, there is the opportunity for ABC to do the funniest thing ever.

00:04:59.000 You know, listen, when Greg Gutfeld is eating your lunch on a cable network, I just got to tell you, that proves that you're not doing a very good job in late night.

00:05:06.000 So again, the media ecosystem is changing rapidly.

00:05:09.000 The fragmentation of media, meaning the lack of a monopoly or an oligopoly for late night TV, for example, the fact that more and more people are cutting the cable and going online for their news and comedy means that these folks are in serious trouble.

00:05:23.000 And so we bid a not particularly fond farewell to Stephen Colbert.

00:05:26.000 Don't worry.

00:05:27.000 He'll still be around for almost a whole other year to be terrible and annoying and tell jokes that are not really jokes and have out dancing syringes to push the vax.

00:05:37.000 He'll still be around for another 10 months.

00:05:38.000 And then, of course, he'll end up over at MSNBC with a late night show that has no ratings either.

00:05:42.000 So, you know, sad news.

00:05:43.000 Condolences to all the fan of Stephen Colbert.

00:05:46.000 All the fan of Stephen Colbert.

00:05:49.000 Alrighty, coming up, Epstein Revelations.

00:05:51.000 What's new?

00:05:52.000 Do Americans care?

00:05:53.000 We'll get into all of that in a moment.

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00:06:56.000 Also, summer is here and nothing beats firing up the grill of family and friends.

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00:08:18.000 Okay, meanwhile, the big story of the day is a supposed bombshell from the Wall Street Journal about the relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

00:08:26.000 And if nothing burgers were put on a spectrum from really, really, really nothing to like just kind of somewhat nothing, this nothing burger is the greatest nothing burger of nothing burgers I've ever nothing burger.

00:08:37.000 This is a really giant nothing burger.

00:08:39.000 There is no burger there.

00:08:40.000 There's not even a bun there.

00:08:41.000 There's nothing.

00:08:42.000 So what exactly is this shocking Wall Street Journal story?

00:08:45.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, it was Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday and Ghelene Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion.

00:08:52.000 She turned to Epstein's family and friends.

00:08:54.000 One of them was Donald Trump.

00:08:57.000 Oh no.

00:08:58.000 Oh no.

00:08:58.000 Okay, so let's just begin with this.

00:09:00.000 Everyone knows that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were friends like a very long time ago.

00:09:05.000 He was banned from Mar-a-Lago in 2007.

00:09:09.000 He and Epstein had palled around in the 90s and early 2000s.

00:09:14.000 And that was true for a lot of people with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:09:16.000 That is why there are so many prominent people associated with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:09:20.000 And of course, Trump had talked about this publicly.

00:09:23.000 It wasn't like a giant secret at the time.

00:09:25.000 There was that famous quote from President Trump, 2002, New York magazine profile of Epstein, quoting Trump, quote, I've known Jeff for 15 years, terrific guy.

00:09:31.000 He's a lot of fun to be with.

00:09:32.000 And he's even said he likes beautiful women as much as I do.

00:09:34.000 And many of them are on the younger side.

00:09:36.000 Jeffrey enjoys his social life.

00:09:36.000 No doubt about it.

00:09:38.000 So if you're going to break a bombshell about the supposed Epstein case, let's just be clear about what the accusation now is, particularly in the online world led by the Tucker Carlsons of the world.

00:09:49.000 The accusation is that Jeffrey Epstein was a spy for Mossad who was running a and then blackmailing the various and sundry famous and rich men who he had trafficked girls to on behalf of Mossad.

00:10:04.000 That is Tucker's accusation.

00:10:06.000 There are others who are saying that he works for CIA or that he was freelancing it.

00:10:10.000 And then that the federal government led by Donald Trump is covering that up.

00:10:14.000 That is the accusation.

00:10:15.000 The accusation is that Trump is covering that up and not being transparent and that the FBI and DOJ, when they released that letter last week saying that effectively speaking, there are no third parties that they could charge, there's no credible evidence that Epstein trafficked to these prominent men or women, these third parties, when they said there was no credible evidence of blackmail or that he was working for a foreign intelligence agency or a domestic intelligence agency.

00:10:39.000 When the FBI and DOJ said that, that was all part of a broader Trump cover-up.

00:10:41.000 Now, if you're going to make that accusation, then presumably Trump would have to be covering up something pretty bad, like something pretty dark, right?

00:10:48.000 If the idea is that Trump were going to be complicit in the most evil of evil things, which is the engagement of Trump and then blackmail based on that, and that Trump is covering that up, if you're going to make that claim, which again is something that many of these folks will sort of suggest, imply, spill out there without naming Trump personally, if they're going to make that claim that Trump is engaged in the cover-up, then presumably he needs to be covering for something that he did that was truly egregious, really, really, really awful.

00:11:18.000 Like he was on a Jeffrey Epstein tape schtipping a 15-year-old or something, right?

00:11:22.000 That would be the thing.

00:11:22.000 That is the accusation.

00:11:23.000 That is the tacit accusation that is underlying and undergirding this entire line of reasoning.

00:11:29.000 So if the Wall Street Journal is going to drop a bombshell about Jeffrey Epstein and Trump, presumably it would have to rise to that level.

00:11:35.000 It can't just be Jeffrey Epstein and Trump were friends and they made lewd jokes together.

00:11:41.000 Do we know that President Trump makes lewd jokes?

00:11:43.000 We do. 0.98

00:11:44.000 We know that President Trump makes lewd jokes because he was elected in 2016, just weeks after a bombshell recording of him talking about grabbing women by their genitals. 0.92

00:11:52.000 So yeah, it turns out that Donald Trump makes lewd jokes with people on a fairly regular basis, or at least he used to when he was a little bit younger.

00:11:59.000 So what is the Wall Street Journal's big expose that had been rumored by Mark Halperin and others all day yesterday and retailed?

00:12:07.000 Quote, pages from the leatherbound album assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006.

00:12:13.000 We should note that as well.

00:12:15.000 That again, this is before Epstein had been picked up on charges, arrested, or anything like that, like three years before that.

00:12:21.000 It's 2003, are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages.

00:12:29.000 It's unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration's recent review.

00:12:33.000 The president's past relationship with Epstein says the Wall Street Journal is at a sensitive moment.

00:12:38.000 The letter bearing Trump's name, which was reviewed by the journal, is baudy, like others in the album.

00:12:43.000 It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.

00:12:49.000 A pair of small arcs denote the woman's breasts.

00:12:52.000 And the future president's signature is a squiggly Donald below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

00:12:56.000 The letter concludes, happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful Secret.

00:13:02.000 Okay.

00:13:04.000 So just going to point out: number one, there were many, many, many letters in this particular birthday tribute album to a guy who was shipping everything in sight, including underage girls.

00:13:16.000 Among the people who submitted letters, it ranged from like Leslie Wexner, who we know gave something like $150 million to Epstein for purposes still unspecified, and attorney Alan Zershowitz.

00:13:26.000 The album also contained a letter from a now-deceased Harvard economist, one of Epstein's report cards from Mark Twain Jr.

00:13:31.000 High in Brooklyn, and a note from a former assistant that included an acrostic with Epstein's name.

00:13:36.000 Epstein was Wexner's money manager at the time.

00:13:39.000 Zershowitz's letter included a mock-up of Vanity Unfair magazine cover with mock headlines like, who was Jack the Ripper?

00:13:45.000 Was it Jeffrey Epstein?

00:13:47.000 Okay, so what was the actual note?

00:13:49.000 Here's what the note said.

00:13:51.000 Okay, it said, voiceover, there must be more to life than having everything.

00:13:55.000 And then it's a fake conversation between Trump and Epstein.

00:13:57.000 Donald, yes, there is, but I won't tell you what it is.

00:14:00.000 Jeffrey, nor will I, since I also know what it is.

00:14:02.000 Donald, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

00:14:04.000 Jeffrey, yes, we do come to think of it.

00:14:06.000 Donald, enigmas never age. 1.00

00:14:07.000 Have you noticed that?

00:14:08.000 Jeffrey, as a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

00:14:11.000 Donald, a pal is a wonderful thing.

00:14:13.000 Happy birthday and may every day be another wonderful secret.

00:14:16.000 Okay, I'm just going to point out that the chances that Donald Trump personally dictated or wrote this letter are close to zero.

00:14:22.000 How do I know?

00:14:23.000 Well, because he used the word enigmas.

00:14:26.000 By the way, as far as I'm aware, as to the use of the word enigma, and I checked President Trump's Twitter account because, again, that's how he writes, he has never used the word enigma not a single time from his real Donald Trump account.

00:14:36.000 Not one single time, as far as I'm aware.

00:14:39.000 I believe he used the word enigma one time to refer to Ben Carson or something verbally.

00:14:43.000 But does that sound like Donald Trump to you?

00:14:45.000 It does not sound like Donald Trump to me.

00:14:47.000 I'll just put that out there.

00:14:48.000 But let's assume, for a second, and by the way, President Trump immediately is denying that he wrote the letter.

00:14:53.000 Probably he just tasked some sort of secretary with writing a spicy letter to Jeffrey Epstein for his birthday.

00:15:00.000 The secretary did that and then Trump signed it.

00:15:02.000 That is the most logical explanation for all of this, that he didn't sit there like personally writing a letter, typing out a letter to Jeffrey Epstein or anything like that.

00:15:12.000 Trump spokeswoman told the journal in 2023, of course, that Trump had banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club at some point in the past without elaborating.

00:15:20.000 And again, Trump was asked for comment on this.

00:15:23.000 And Trump immediately said that this was essentially fake news and then threatened to sue the Wall Street Journal.

00:15:28.000 He then put out a statement saying the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch personally were warned directly by President Donald J. Trump that the supposed letter they printed by President Trump to Epstein was a fake.

00:15:36.000 And if they print it, they will be sued.

00:15:38.000 Mr. Murdoch stated he would take care of it, obviously, did not have the power to do so.

00:15:41.000 The editor of the Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker, was told directly by Caroline Lovitt and by President Trump that the letter was a fake.

00:15:47.000 But Emma Tucker doesn't want to hear that.

00:15:49.000 Instead, they're going with a false, malicious, and defamatory story anyway.

00:15:53.000 President Trump will be suing the Wall Street Journal, News Corp, and Mr. Murdoch shortly.

00:15:57.000 The press has to learn to be truthful and not rely on sources that probably don't even exist.

00:16:00.000 President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos, ABC, 60-minute CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal. 0.91

00:16:08.000 It has truly turned out to be a disgusting and filthy rag. 0.95

00:16:11.000 Writing defamatory lies like this shows their desperation to remain relevant. 0.99

00:16:15.000 If there were any truth at all on the Epstein hoax, as it pertains to President Trump, the information would have been revealed by Comey Brennan, crooked Hillary, and other radical left lunatics years ago.

00:16:23.000 It certainly would not have sat in a file waiting for Trump to have won three elections.

00:16:26.000 This is yet another example of fake news.

00:16:28.000 That last point that he's making there, which is, if there was truly hidden, egregious stuff about Trump in the Epstein files, do you think the Democrats would have sat on that?

00:16:35.000 They leaked his IRS files, for goodness sake.

00:16:38.000 You think they would have sat on that?

00:16:39.000 The answer, of course, is no.

00:16:40.000 They would not have sat on that.

00:16:42.000 Okay, so is the note real?

00:16:44.000 Is the note fake?

00:16:45.000 Okay, so let me just say, personal belief, I think the note is probably at the very least not written by him.

00:16:51.000 And the reason, again, I think that is it doesn't accord with anything that we know about how President Trump writes.

00:16:56.000 But let's say that it's real.

00:16:59.000 And you mean that we knew for years that he was friends with Jeffrey Epstein, that Jeffrey Epstein himself, himself is on tape talking about how he was close friends with Donald Trump back in the day, and that Trump basically was dating Melania at the time that they were on his plane and all the rest of this sort of stuff.

00:17:19.000 This is when he did tapes with Michael Wolf in August 2017.

00:17:22.000 By the way, again, there's still 15 hours of tapes of Epstein with Steve Bannon, which have never been released.

00:17:25.000 So release the tape, Steve.

00:17:27.000 But what exactly is the great shocker here?

00:17:30.000 I mean, there are pictures of Trump with Melania, with Jeffrey Epstein and Glenn Maxwell.

00:17:35.000 What is the revelation here?

00:17:36.000 And the answer is there is no revelation here.

00:17:38.000 There is nothing new here.

00:17:40.000 Donald Trump sent a bawdy joke to Jeffrey Epstein about young women.

00:17:45.000 He literally said it out loud in a 2002 New York magazine profile.

00:17:49.000 This is the thing about President Trump.

00:17:50.000 Ain't a lot hidden about President Trump.

00:17:53.000 We know pretty much everything about President Trump.

00:17:55.000 He has been one of the most public people in the history of the world for about half a century at this point.

00:18:02.000 So the Wall Street Journal is going after him with this, like, this is what you've got.

00:18:06.000 This is the hit.

00:18:08.000 Already coming up.

00:18:09.000 How much do Americans actually care about the Epstein stuff?

00:18:11.000 We'll get into the polling data.

00:18:12.000 Plus, President Trump actually winning victories and the Democrats continuing to spin off into insanity.

00:18:18.000 First, we're all constantly snapping photos on our phones.

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00:19:22.000 Also, this just in from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

00:19:25.000 Right now, the situation across Israel remains very fragile, very fraught.

00:19:29.000 Israeli Neighborhoods were destroyed in that last round of fighting with Iran.

00:19:32.000 Dozens of Israelis were killed.

00:19:34.000 There are a lot of injured.

00:19:35.000 Whether in peacetime or at war, the people of Israel know that an overwhelming number of ballistic missiles could be fired at them at any moment.

00:19:41.000 And when those sirens sound, sometimes they have just 15 seconds to reach a bomb shelter.

00:19:45.000 But Israelis don't have enough bomb shelters. 1.00

00:19:47.000 That's particularly true in Tel Aviv and also in Israel's north, where there have been a lot of attacks over the course of the last couple of years.

00:19:53.000 That's why the fellowship is working around the clock to build and place hundreds of concrete reinforced bomb shelters, each of them ready when the next rocket strike occurs.

00:20:00.000 The fellowship is deploying 60 new bomb shelters, including 10 immediate placements and 50 upgraded models with blast-resistant steel doors to protect vulnerable Israeli communities from future threats.

00:20:11.000 To learn more about IFCJ's life-saving work, visit benforthefellowship.org.

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00:20:24.000 The vice president, J.D. Vance, put out a statement about this.

00:20:28.000 He said, forgive my language, but the story is complete and utter bull.

00:20:31.000 The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed for publishing it.

00:20:33.000 Where is the letter?

00:20:34.000 Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it?

00:20:36.000 Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?

00:20:39.000 Doesn't it violate some rule of journalistic ethics to publish a letter like this without showing it to the victim of the hit piece?

00:20:44.000 Will the people who have bought into every hoax against President Trump show an ounce of skepticism before buying into this bizarre story?

00:20:52.000 I mean, J.D. Vance is right.

00:20:55.000 The vice president is right.

00:20:56.000 In any case, what does this amount to?

00:20:58.000 In the end, it amounts to virtually nothing.

00:21:00.000 Now, President Trump, for his part, has come out and said, fine, you know, I'm going to try to release everything that I can, which again, would have been the proper response at the beginning.

00:21:08.000 This is what A.G. Bondi should have done from the outset.

00:21:10.000 I was critical of the Attorney General from the outset for the rollout of the story, not for the conclusion the FBI and DOJ drew.

00:21:16.000 As I've said, all I know is the public information and what I've been told by sources inside the federal government who have seen a lot more of the information than I have and what we've been told publicly by the president, the vice president, head of the FBI, deputy director of the FBI, AG, right?

00:21:31.000 That's the stuff that I know and that's the stuff that you know.

00:21:34.000 And all the rest is rank speculation.

00:21:36.000 But the way this should have been retailed is you come out, you answer all the questions, you say, here are the reasons we can't release more information because say, for example, the Epstein tapes are actually not tapes inside Epstein bedrooms.

00:21:47.000 Those don't exist according to Alan Dershowitz.

00:21:49.000 They're just, which the FBI is not going to put up.

00:21:52.000 That there is no quote unquote Epstein list.

00:21:54.000 He didn't keep a giant list of people he was blackmailing.

00:21:56.000 And there's no evidence of actual blackmail, according to the FBI and DOJ.

00:22:01.000 And so we can't release you evidence that doesn't exist of a crime that we can't charge.

00:22:06.000 We'll release what we can, and we will file a petition to a court to get them to release whatever a court will allow.

00:22:12.000 Because again, there are rules and procedures in all of this.

00:22:15.000 As well, there should be, by the way, there should be rules and procedures at the FBI and DOJ with regard to the kinds of information they release publicly.

00:22:21.000 After all, the FBI and DOJ are law enforcement agencies.

00:22:24.000 That is what they are.

00:22:26.000 And it is not just their job to prosecute crime.

00:22:28.000 That is certainly their chief job.

00:22:30.000 It is also to ensure that innocent people don't get completely smeared by fictitious evidence based on their investigations.

00:22:38.000 That is one of the reasons they will release redacted files, for example.

00:22:41.000 So President Trump put out a statement yesterday.

00:22:43.000 Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent grand jury testimony subject to court approval.

00:22:51.000 This scam perpetuated by the Democrats should end right now.

00:22:54.000 And again, the scam he's talking about is the push by Democrats to suggest he's engaged in a gigantic cover-up.

00:23:00.000 The Attorney General then responded, President Trump, we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts.

00:23:06.000 Now, realistically, is that going to happen?

00:23:09.000 The answer is probably not.

00:23:10.000 The court gets to make the final determination on what gets released.

00:23:14.000 And the court would have to have a pretty significant overriding interest in releasing grand jury testimony, which is usually kept sealed specifically because a grand jury may decide not to indict, or it may be that much of the testimony to a grand jury is found to be non-credible, which is apparently some of the thing that's happening here.

00:23:32.000 And so if it's just a list of people, for example, who traveled on Jeffrey Epstein's plane, and then they're now going to be smeared for the rest of their lives as pedophiles, then perhaps the court has an interest in not unsealing that sort of stuff.

00:23:43.000 Those would be the sorts of interests the court has to take into account.

00:23:46.000 All the people who are claiming that the FBI and DOJ should just release into the public gigantic spates of files on all of this without regard to, for example, the names of the victims, which could be a problem, or without regard to the fact that, again, Jeffrey Epstein associated with an extraordinary number of people because this is the way he did his business.

00:24:03.000 As I said when I analyzed this last week, it appears to me based on his financial record and the fact that he's been accused of stealing money, essentially, by people like Leon Black, that there's a very good shot that what Epstein actually was doing was hobnobbing with the rich and famous in order to get them to give him money for investments or some other purpose.

00:24:23.000 This looks a lot like a financial crime, not just like a crime.

00:24:28.000 And so you have to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

00:24:30.000 What gets released into the public has to follow particular federal procedures and protocols that apply to every criminal case.

00:24:36.000 So President Trump is saying, we'll go to the court, we will ask, the court will do what the court does.

00:24:41.000 As far as a special counsel, there have been calls for a special counsel.

00:24:45.000 I'm not a big fan of special counsels in general because typically their remit tends to expand over time and become self-justifying.

00:24:53.000 That's exactly what happened with the Robert Mueller investigation, where Robert Mueller started off with a relatively small investigation and then tens of millions of dollars later ended up with basically nothing, an empty bag, after the media ran with that story for full-on three years.

00:25:08.000 The Wall Street Journal editorial board put out a piece talking about a special counsel.

00:25:14.000 And they say the latest MAGA idea on the Jeffrey Epstein files is that there should be a special counsel appointed to investigate because A.G. Pambondi is now part of the deep state or something.

00:25:22.000 But White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said Thursday afternoon that Trump would not recommend a special prosecutor.

00:25:28.000 They say, Mr. Trump says he wants Ms. Bondi to put out more information, whatever she thinks is credible, and that's fine, subject to judicial orders and sensitivities to privacy, which is a real concern for accusers and victims.

00:25:38.000 It's easy for those on the outside to demand more disclosure since they don't have to make those hard calls or be accountable for them.

00:25:43.000 The unnoble question is what would be left after the sensitive materials are scrubbed.

00:25:48.000 As far as a special counsel, again, the problem is this.

00:25:53.000 Forget about any immediate disclosure of anything new.

00:25:55.000 The question that MAGA minds want answered would instead get buried for months or more.

00:25:58.000 Rumor innuendo would reign.

00:26:00.000 If the special counsel emerged after a year and announced there really wasn't much to see here, would any of the Epstein theorists really be convinced?

00:26:06.000 Unlikely.

00:26:07.000 And that, of course, is exactly correct.

00:26:10.000 And that is also why it is ridiculous that people like Thomas Massey and Rocana are launching an effort to call on Congress to force a release of Epstein-related records.

00:26:26.000 And the FBI and the DOJ actually have to go through protocols and procedures on this sort of stuff.

00:26:32.000 And I will note that there are many Democrats who seem very invested in the Epstein case very suddenly, like had nothing to say about this for years on end, but now are very, very interested. 0.55

00:26:42.000 Are they really interested or would they be fools not to cynically take advantage of a public opportunity?

00:26:47.000 Well, here's Caroline Levitt saying, listen, we are not doing the special counsel thing. 0.75

00:26:51.000 President Trump is not interested.

00:26:53.000 Well, the idea was floated from someone in the media to the president.

00:26:56.000 The president would not recommend a special prosecutor in the Epstein case.

00:27:01.000 That's how he feels.

00:27:02.000 And as for his discussions with the Attorney General, I'm not sure.

00:27:06.000 Okay, so as far as the discharge petition, it would tee up a floor vote on legislation, giving Attorney General Pambondi 30 days to release a broad array of files released to Epstein, Glenn Maxwell, and other associates.

00:27:17.000 It would provide for the release of investigative files without regard for any embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.

00:27:25.000 Now, again, that's typically not how the FBI and DOJ work.

00:27:28.000 If somebody makes a false accusation in a federal affidavit, for example, about somebody, and there's no evidence to support it, the FBI typically will not release that into the public.

00:27:38.000 Now, the claim is that it should be released into the public simply because of interest in the case.

00:27:44.000 I mean, you can see the rationale on both sides of this, but those rules are there for a reason.

00:27:49.000 As far as transparency, Caroline Levitt is saying, what's the claim that Trump has not been transparent?

00:27:53.000 What exactly is the claim here?

00:27:56.000 The Attorney General and the FBI, led by Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino, Cash Patel, these are great patriots, some of the most trusted voices in the Republican Party movement.

00:28:06.000 It's part of the reason the president appointed him, appointed them to these high law enforcement positions.

00:28:11.000 And they spent many months going through all of the files related to Jeffrey Epstein, and they concluded what they found in that memo, which they drafted and they released.

00:28:21.000 And so the president has been transparent.

00:28:23.000 He has followed through on his promises to the American people.

00:28:28.000 As far as the claim that this is all a hoax, what is the hoax?

00:28:31.000 Well, Caroline Lovitt explained, the hoax is that people are claiming that Trump is covering something up, which I agree is a hoax.

00:28:38.000 There's been a lot of discussion about the Epstein files and the president's comments yesterday calling it a hoax.

00:28:44.000 Can you clarify which part of the Epstein hoax is the hoax part?

00:28:49.000 The president is referring to the fact that Democrats have now seized on this as if they ever wanted transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, which is an asinine suggestion for any Democrat to make.

00:29:01.000 The Democrats had control of this building, the White House, for four years, and they didn't do a dang thing when it came to transparency in regards to Jeffrey Epstein and his heinous crimes.

00:29:12.000 She's certainly right about all of that.

00:29:14.000 She was also asked about whether President Trump has been talking to influencers, and she says, well, yes, but all these people who are attempting to sort of hijack MAGA, and that is the real thing that's happening here.

00:29:24.000 Many of the people who are most exercised over the Epstein thing, many of whom were happy to hobnob with Andrew Tate and the Tate brothers five minutes ago, despite credible accusations, many of those same people are really upset with the Trump administration for not doing what they wanted on Iran, on Ukraine.

00:29:24.000 Let's be very clear.

00:29:41.000 And now they are using this as an excuse to try and seize power inside the MAGA movement away from President Trump.

00:29:47.000 Well, good luck with that.

00:29:48.000 Here is Caroline Lovett yesterday.

00:29:51.000 The president and this team are always in contact with the president's supporters with voices of many kinds on both sides of the aisle.

00:29:58.000 I think that's part of the reason this president is a great president because he's willing to listen and hear other people's perspectives.

00:30:04.000 But ultimately, he has led this country, not just over the past six months to historic success, but also through his first four years as president.

00:30:12.000 And as the leader and the creator of the MAGA movement, he has led through these perilous times for our country based on instinct and in the best interest of the country.

00:30:21.000 And as I always say, the American people should trust in President Trump.

00:30:27.000 Okay, so there are a couple of questions here with regard to how this is impacting the Trump presidency, all of this on an overall level.

00:30:34.000 One is, do the American people believe that they're getting everything on the Epstein case?

00:30:38.000 And the answer to that by the polling data is no.

00:30:40.000 A Reuters-Ipsos poll from earlier this week found 69% of Americans think the government is hiding a list of Epstein's clients.

00:30:47.000 Now, just because 69% of Americans believe that an absence of evidence means that there is in fact a thing that is being hidden, just because that's true doesn't mean that their claim is true.

00:31:00.000 The real question, and the one that President Trump put his finger on at the very beginning of all of this, and it made everybody really mad, but Trump was kind of right.

00:31:07.000 He said, is this a priority for the American people?

00:31:10.000 I'm doing like amazing things for the American people right now, says President Trump.

00:31:14.000 I'm making peace happen in the Middle East through strength.

00:31:18.000 I'm backing Ukraine against Russia to prevent more Russian predations. 0.97

00:31:23.000 I am taking action to end wars in the Middle East, in Africa, in Eastern Europe.

00:31:29.000 I'm pushing forward new pieces of legislation.

00:31:31.000 I'm keeping your taxes low.

00:31:33.000 I'm doing all sorts of stuff that you want.

00:31:35.000 And you're asking about Epstein like day in and day out.

00:31:37.000 How many Americans actually care about this?

00:31:39.000 And a lot of influencers were very upset with President Trump for saying this because they, of course, are very upset about the Epstein case.

00:31:44.000 Because let's be real about this.

00:31:46.000 A lot of Americans, not statistically a ton, but many Americans are terminally online, like really, really online.

00:31:54.000 And that doesn't mean their concerns are specious or not real or inauthentic.

00:31:58.000 But if we're going to talk about how many Americans really think that the Epstein case is like top of agenda for them, the answer is really, really low.

00:32:06.000 In fact, President Trump in the last CNN poll retains an 88% approval rating among Republicans, which is actually up two points from the last time this was polled before all of the Epstein news.

00:32:18.000 And how many Americans, how many Republicans say that the Epstein files, the Epstein case is their number one concern, like the thing they care about most?

00:32:26.000 Let's have Harry Enton review the results.

00:32:29.000 I mean, on X, all you hear about is the Epstein files.

00:32:33.000 But how about out in the real public, Republicans who said the top issue was Epstein case?

00:32:38.000 The answer is one.

00:32:39.000 One, and not 1%.

00:32:41.000 One.

00:32:42.000 One respondent.

00:32:45.000 Okay, one respondent.

00:32:46.000 And by the way, there were 1,057 respondents to that poll, and there were 306 or 307 registered Republicans in that poll.

00:32:53.000 One said the Epstein file was their top issue.

00:32:55.000 One.

00:32:56.000 You know, that doesn't mean it's not a secondary issue for some people.

00:32:59.000 But again, his approval rating among Republicans, President Trump's, remains, as it ever was, very, very high.

00:33:05.000 And it shows, and this is a real issue, the massive, incredible, looming gap between the world of X and the real world.

00:33:13.000 I've been saying for a long time, people need to get out and touch grass.

00:33:16.000 And what I mean by that is turn off X and go talk to friends, family, people in the real world.

00:33:21.000 If you go and talk to people in the real world, first of all, the polarization that splits Americans by politics, it's real.

00:33:26.000 It's not nearly as bad as it is on X. But beyond that, many of the opinions that are most promulgated on X, the most extreme opinions, most conspiratorial opinions that pick up velocity and virality on X are not reflected by the American body politic.

00:33:41.000 They just are not.

00:33:42.000 And politicians who follow the rabbit hole that is X are very likely to find themselves at odds with the American people.

00:33:48.000 They're very likely to be suckered into believing that X is somehow a representative sample of what Americans think.

00:33:54.000 And I understand because politicians, everybody acts with whatever data they have.

00:33:58.000 But what if the input is really crappy?

00:34:00.000 What if the input that politicians are using to decide whether or not a policy is popular is the same exact input that Grok 4 was using when it started calling itself Mecca Hitler? 0.75

00:34:10.000 What if it turns out that X is being gamed and that a huge number of the big narratives on X do not match up with the stuff the American people care deeply about?

00:34:19.000 Now, the media is very online because it's easy to cover the news if you're online and just trolling X. Much easier to do that than it is to go talk with actual human beings or go find the news for yourself or anything like that.

00:34:31.000 It's a great shortcut.

00:34:32.000 And it's a great shortcut for politicians.

00:34:34.000 It means you don't have to go talk to your constituents.

00:34:36.000 You just go to X, see what's trending, tweet something out and feel good about yourself.

00:34:39.000 But it is not reflective of the real world.

00:34:41.000 The amount of media coverage on the Epstein case, the amount of X coverage and conspiratorial insanity on the Epstein case far outweighs what's happening in the real world.

00:34:51.000 And this is where President Trump is unique, truly unique.

00:34:53.000 So you have to understand President Trump's informational diet to understand why he is not being suckered by a lot of this stuff.

00:34:59.000 President Trump is not on X. President Trump was never really on X. What I mean by that is he put stuff out on Twitter, but he was not somebody who's spending all day just reading the scroll, doom scrolling on Twitter.

00:35:11.000 That's not who President Trump is.

00:35:12.000 His media diet largely consists of cable news and establishment media outlets and the New York Post.

00:35:18.000 That is the stuff that he is mostly reading.

00:35:21.000 He literally has his staff print out articles.

00:35:23.000 He is not sitting there with a computer and browsing the internet or even with his cell phone.

00:35:27.000 He has his staff print things out for him because he likes to read physical media.

00:35:31.000 What does that mean?

00:35:32.000 What it means is that many of the narratives that quickly gain velocity and then run out of steam, he just go right under his radar.

00:35:37.000 He doesn't care about them.

00:35:38.000 And so he actually has a better connection to the real world than many of the people who have been basically brainwormed by X. And those brainworms are pretty serious and they have a spillover effect.

00:35:50.000 Now, can those impact real life?

00:35:52.000 Absolutely.

00:35:53.000 Absolutely.

00:35:54.000 You can get a conspiracy theory started on X, pick up a ton of velocity, get a bunch of followers and suddenly find yourself on some of the biggest podcasts in the country.

00:36:01.000 And now those views are being heard by a bunch of people, particularly young people.

00:36:05.000 And so my prediction is that you will see more of a connect, does it make sense, between the insanity you see on X and the beliefs of younger generations who are using X or TikTok for their media consumption.

00:36:18.000 I think that's what you're going to see.

00:36:20.000 But that does not mean that the normal American just trying to live his or her life, build a family, build a community, have a job, go to church, that those people are deeply, deeply concerned and spending every day trolling the internet for the latest internet outrage about Jeffrey Epstein or anything else.

00:36:35.000 And this is where President Trump is much more connected to reality than many of his critics on this sort of stuff.

00:36:40.000 And it's why President Trump is now right to call on Pam Bondi to try to get as much as possible released. 1.00

00:36:45.000 But people who are saying the Epstein, this is going to do deep and lasting damage.

00:36:48.000 First of all, I think a lot of the people who are saying that are doing so for malicious reasons.

00:36:52.000 They are doing so because they hope that their own online narratives, which do not prevail in real life on anything from foreign to domestic policy, will somehow get an ear in the White House if they can damage the president with a bunch of false nonsense about the Jeffrey Epstein story.

00:37:06.000 They're hoping that if they can wield power on that, then they can somehow get back into the presidency on a bunch of foreign policy decisions.

00:37:12.000 I think it's a losing game.

00:37:13.000 I think it's a malicious game.

00:37:14.000 I wish we were being called out more often by some of the people in the orbit of the White House who themselves are close with some of these influencers.

00:37:21.000 But with all of that said, President Trump, again, much more connected to reality than virtually all of his critics.

00:37:27.000 Joining us on the line to discuss this and many other subjects is one of the wisest people in America.

00:37:32.000 Wisdom is in short supply, Professor Robert George McCormick, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, Director of Princeton's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

00:37:41.000 He has a brand new book titled Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth.

00:37:44.000 Professor, thanks so much for joining the show.

00:37:45.000 I really appreciate it.

00:37:46.000 It's a great pleasure, as always, Ben.

00:37:48.000 Thanks for having me on the show.

00:37:51.000 So in your book, you talk about the modern age of feeling.

00:37:55.000 And I've been talking about this in the context of the disconnect between the world online and the world of reality, that the world online, which promotes narratives, these sort of viral narratives that go very, very hot, people get very passionate about them, and the world of reality, where it turns out most people don't even know about those things or care about those things, that that gap is creating real problems in American life.

00:38:14.000 And it underscores, I think, what you're talking about, which is an emphasis on short-form content that generates emotional reactivity as opposed to the sort of genuine arguments that allow for discussion, agreement, and truth seeking.

00:38:28.000 Yeah, that certainly is right.

00:38:29.000 I mean, we had all hoped at the beginning that the internet would give people access to more information, expose people to more perspectives, and that as a result of that, we would all be better off.

00:38:42.000 We would have a better shot at getting at the truth of things because we'd have more exposure to more ideas, more arguments, and more or easier access to information.

00:38:51.000 We wouldn't be stuck with three networks and a handful of newspapers and so forth.

00:38:56.000 But there has been a dark side to social media, and there's been a dark side to the Internet, confusion, short narratives, kind of grotesque emotivism that seems to have gripped the country, especially younger generations, but not exclusively so.

00:39:10.000 We have to say.

00:39:11.000 Now, Ben, it's not going away.

00:39:12.000 The internet's not going away.

00:39:14.000 Social media are not going away.

00:39:16.000 So we can't just, you know, wish them away.

00:39:19.000 We're going to have to reform them. 0.98

00:39:21.000 We're going to have to bring to the internet and bring to social media voices that are actually sane and reasonable and that don't take the shortcuts of appealing to emotion and feeling, but actually provide reliable information, make genuine arguments, do business in what I call the proper currency of intellectual discourse, a currency consisting of reasons and evidence and arguments.

00:39:46.000 So, Professor, that obviously sounds like a real uphill battle in the moment, given the forces stacked on the other side.

00:39:53.000 So, I mean, how do we go about fighting that?

00:39:55.000 Because this is a real thing that's happening to an enormous number of people.

00:39:59.000 Conspiracism, for example, is running rife on both sides of the political aisle right now because that is emotionally driven.

00:40:05.000 I mean, conspiracy theories are typically driven by an appeal to emotion in the absence of fact.

00:40:10.000 And in fact, the absence of fact is taken as support for the theory.

00:40:14.000 Absence of evidence is not evidence that your theory is wrong.

00:40:17.000 It's evidence that your theory is right.

00:40:18.000 It's just somebody is hiding the actual truth.

00:40:20.000 That is an emotional argument.

00:40:21.000 It's not a logical argument.

00:40:22.000 There's no actual way to debunk it.

00:40:24.000 So how do we go to sort of the first principles?

00:40:27.000 How do we get people to engage their reasoning centers rather than their emotional centers when in the moment, at least, it feels so much more satisfying to sort of go with the amygdalic response to any event?

00:40:39.000 Well, let's look at history.

00:40:41.000 And of course, history is filled with evil and carnage and bad things that we human beings have done to each other.

00:40:49.000 But let's look at the good moments.

00:40:51.000 Let's look at when actual progress, real progress, the real thing has been made, whether it's in overcoming slavery or establishing civil liberty or Republican government, whatever it is.

00:41:04.000 How did those good things happen?

00:41:07.000 And there's something that we find as a constant throughout, and that is people who stepped forward to provide models for other people.

00:41:17.000 Progress has been made when it's genuine progress, and when it has been made in no small measure by the presence of people who became heroes and saints, they modeled for other people what it means to be a good person, what it means to be a truth seeker, what it means to stand up for Republican government or civil liberty or against slavery or against racism or whatever the evil was of the day that someone needed to stand up against.

00:41:44.000 It was always hard.

00:41:45.000 It was always an uphill battle.

00:41:47.000 It always looked impossible then.

00:41:49.000 But people will follow the example of leaders, of heroes and saints, of people who make sacrifices and model the kind of behavior that we'd like to see spread abroad in the culture.

00:42:03.000 So I think part of that, Professor, is the reinstitution of trust in institutions.

00:42:07.000 And I know that's sort of a strange anti-narrative point these days because there's so much distrust in our institutions.

00:42:14.000 And I think for so many good reasons.

00:42:16.000 I think a lot of our institutions were basically hollowed out, emptied out, and then worn around as though they still had institutional legitimacy after they had already been burned out from the inside.

00:42:24.000 But how do you rebuild trust in institutions?

00:42:26.000 Here I'm thinking of not just the American government and the institutions of American government, which of course, I think that a healthy amount of distrust of American government and its interventions is obviously warranted.

00:42:36.000 But here I'm talking about even things that are as basic as church.

00:42:39.000 You know, the lack of trust in institutional churches, for example, the lack of trust even in family structure.

00:42:45.000 These things have really gone the way of the dodo.

00:42:48.000 But how do you reinstitute those?

00:42:50.000 And how long a project is that?

00:42:52.000 Because I think one of the disheartening things about this moment is that it takes generations to build up institutional trust, and it takes about one second to destroy it.

00:43:00.000 That's exactly right.

00:43:01.000 You've hit the nail on the head here, Ben.

00:43:03.000 So what is, I think, quite unprecedented, or if it's not entirely unprecedented, it's been a long time since we were in this condition, is the literal collapse of trust in the principal institutions of culture, the institutions that transmit culture to each new generation.

00:43:23.000 Certainly in my lifetime, in my parents' and my grandparents and my great-grandparents' lifetime, trust has never been so low.

00:43:29.000 But you're right about something else.

00:43:31.000 The institutions earned that distrust by their own failures.

00:43:36.000 And you're also right that it's not just the institutions of government.

00:43:39.000 It's the institutions of journalism.

00:43:41.000 It's the institutions of religion.

00:43:44.000 It's more broadly the institutions of culture.

00:43:47.000 Now, how do you earn it back?

00:43:49.000 That's a slow and difficult process, but you do it by doing the right thing and doing it for the right reason and doing it when it's hard.

00:43:58.000 Standing up in the face of mobs, standing up in the face of kind of overwhelming public opinion or the passions of the day.

00:44:05.000 And again, it requires leadership.

00:44:06.000 It requires saints and heroes, people who will do the hard stuff.

00:44:10.000 How long a project is it?

00:44:12.000 50-year project?

00:44:13.000 Maybe even a 100-year project?

00:44:15.000 Maybe a 200-year project.

00:44:17.000 But if we're going to get anywhere, we've got to begin now.

00:44:20.000 We're beginning at a very, very low point.

00:44:22.000 Even trust in institutions that have historically had high levels of trust, the judiciary, the military, trust has collapsed in these institutions.

00:44:32.000 And you cannot do without them.

00:44:35.000 I mean, there's a kind of dream, a kind of anarchist dream that, well, we can do without institutions.

00:44:38.000 We can live as individuals.

00:44:40.000 No, it doesn't work that way.

00:44:42.000 It requires institutions to transmit whatever is good about a culture, to transmit culture to each new generation.

00:44:52.000 Well, as Professor Robert George, his brand new book is Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth is definitely worth the read.

00:44:57.000 This is everything that he does.

00:44:58.000 Professor George, really appreciate the time.

00:45:00.000 Thank you.

00:45:00.000 It's a pleasure to be with you again, Ben.

00:45:02.000 Meanwhile, the president is, in fact, doing things that help the American people.

00:45:07.000 On Thursday night, Republicans in the House Rules Committee moved to push forward the $9 billion rescission.

00:45:15.000 The House passed it, and they sent it to President Trump's desk for his signature.

00:45:18.000 So that means defunding of NPR.

00:45:21.000 The vote was 216 to 213.

00:45:23.000 Only two Republicans opposed it.

00:45:26.000 These rescission moves are excellent.

00:45:29.000 They are good.

00:45:29.000 They are cutting a bunch of wasteful government spending, including to, again, publicly funded radio that is just left-wing propaganda.

00:45:36.000 And that is a perfectly worthwhile and good thing.

00:45:39.000 It also includes cuts to USAID, which of course is absolutely worthwhile.

00:45:45.000 Now, again, there's foreign spending that we should do in order to counter Chinese spending. 0.99

00:45:49.000 Chinese, they use their money in order to build their soft power around the globe, ranging from Africa to Latin America.

00:45:54.000 And sure, we should also use soft power to fight the Chinese in these arenas. 1.00

00:45:58.000 But USAID had basically just become a bankroll for a bunch of left-wing causes.

00:46:02.000 That's actually particularly clear when you see a new memo released by the Committee on the Judiciary over at the House of Representatives talking about the use of grants, cooperative agreements, or other awards received by the USAID or State Department and given to NGOs in, for example, Israel, where they basically funded a bunch of the protesters in the streets for the years leading up to October 7th.

00:46:26.000 So essentially, your taxpayer dollars were, we're not talking about military ADS.

00:46:30.000 We're talking about literally going to NGOs who are putting hundreds of thousands of people in the streets to protest the government of Israel.

00:46:37.000 And so that is where much of the money was going in USAD is going to not only useless, but counterproductive left-wing agit prop.

00:46:45.000 So the fact that rescission is going to cut a lot of that is definitely a good thing.

00:46:48.000 Meanwhile, President Trump is pushing for the so-called Genius Act.

00:46:53.000 Apparently, according to Axios, after huddling in Speaker Mike Johnson's office, members of the House Freedom Caucus switched their votes to yes, ending a nearly 10-hour standoff.

00:47:02.000 House GOP leadership unlocked support for the vote by agreeing to attach one of the key crypto measures, the anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act.

00:47:12.000 That would be to ban the government from having its own cryptocurrency.

00:47:16.000 Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he spoke with Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Wednesday about adding the provision to the NDAA.

00:47:23.000 So the Genius Act, I asked our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity, what exactly is in the Genius Act.

00:47:30.000 And what it does is it creates a federal regulatory framework for stable coins.

00:47:35.000 So stable coins are essentially crypto assets that are pegged to the value of the dollar.

00:47:40.000 Now, they're not necessarily one-to-one.

00:47:42.000 It's not as though you buy a stable coin and if you could turn it in for a dollar.

00:47:45.000 And this is one of the things the Genius Act was designed to do.

00:47:47.000 It was designed to put regulations on anything calling itself a stable coin, right?

00:47:51.000 Bitcoin is not a stable coin.

00:47:52.000 Bitcoin is tied essentially to the widespread public adoption of Bitcoin itself.

00:47:58.000 It's its own currency.

00:47:59.000 It's its own cryptocurrency.

00:48:00.000 Stable coins are supposedly tied to the value of the underlying asset.

00:48:04.000 In this case, for example, the United States dollar.

00:48:06.000 And so what the Genius Act was designed to do was provide some stability in the stablecoin market and then let a thousand flowers bloom.

00:48:13.000 You can buy a stable coin that is worth half a dollar or a stablecoin that is worth a dollar.

00:48:18.000 According to Perplexity, the main objectives were to impose strict requirements on stablecoin issuers to ensure that these digital tokens are fully backed by high quality liquid reserves.

00:48:28.000 It's designed to prevent the kinds of losses seen during previous crypto crashes and guarantees that holders can actually redeem those coins for cash at any time.

00:48:34.000 So it turns stable coins into an actual, usable, tradable, and stable commodity.

00:48:40.000 They're actually stable coins, right?

00:48:42.000 They're not just cryptos.

00:48:43.000 They're stable coins.

00:48:45.000 The other goal was to mandate anti-money laundering compliance, AML, and prohibit risky reserve practices and requires all issuers, including those abroad, to obey U.S. sanctions and AML laws if they do business with U.S. customers.

00:48:55.000 So the goal here is to not allow stable coins pegged to the U.S. dollars to essentially act as a workaround to move into sanctioned areas like, say, Iran or Russia.

00:49:05.000 It'll also help preserve the U.S. dollar dominance because the law aims to strengthen the role of the dollar in the global digital economy.

00:49:11.000 So instead of necessarily buying Bitcoin as a hedge against the dollar, you're now going to buy a stable coin, which is essentially a crypto version of the dollar.

00:49:19.000 That is the goal here.

00:49:20.000 So is that a good thing?

00:49:21.000 Well, I mean, it's being pushed inside the administration by tech bros like David Sachs.

00:49:26.000 So my answer here would be yes.

00:49:27.000 This is a good thing.

00:49:28.000 It does, in fact, help innovation.

00:49:31.000 Meanwhile, the White House is preparing an executive order targeting woke AI, and it's outlining the president's vision to win the AI race with China, which, of course, is deeply important.

00:49:39.000 AI is the technology that is going to be dominating the next several generations of human life at a minimum.

00:49:45.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, White House officials are preparing an executive order targeting tech companies with what they see as woke artificial intelligence models going after DEI.

00:49:55.000 The order would dictate that AI companies getting federal contracts be politically neutral and unbiased in their AI models in effort to combat what administration officials see as a liberal bias in some of those models.

00:50:05.000 And again, this is absolutely true.

00:50:07.000 There are preset standards that are used by these AIs in order to dictate sort of safety standards.

00:50:13.000 And the goal here would be to say that you can't have a safety standard on an AI that ignores, for example, basic biological fact, like men exist and women exist, and a man cannot become a woman.

00:50:23.000 The trend has been troubling AIs are David Sachs and Sri Ramakrishnan, senior White House policy advisor for AI.

00:50:29.000 And you'll recall he was involved tangentially.

00:50:32.000 His name was used in a sort of foolish and I think not particularly productive debate over H-1B visas.

00:50:38.000 There's an interesting conversation to be had. 0.77

00:50:40.000 I'm not sure why it was about Sriram.

00:50:42.000 But this move by the White House to make more neutral these AI tools is definitely a good and useful thing.

00:50:49.000 So President Trump continues to win victories.

00:50:51.000 Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to target illegal immigration.

00:50:55.000 Last night, Caroline Levitt said that any suggestion that there was going to be amnesty for illegal immigrants, that is not a thing.

00:51:03.000 From my understanding, the White House nor the president has actually read through this legislation.

00:51:08.000 We've been focused on, of course, the One Big Beautiful bill, which passed, which is another historic accomplishment of this president in record time.

00:51:14.000 The Genius Act this week, the rescissions package.

00:51:17.000 That's been the focus of the White House.

00:51:19.000 But the president has made it very clear he will not support amnesty for illegal aliens in any way.

00:51:26.000 Okay, so again, can't be clearer than that.

00:51:29.000 By the way, again, the left is going nuts over President Trump's immigration policy, but they are not so sort of voice admitting that many, many illegal immigrants are receiving federal tax benefits, including things like food stamps.

00:51:40.000 Here's Representative from Ilajayapol accidentally admitting this.

00:51:44.000 Yesterday, I was at a food bank in my district talking about the snap cuts, the horrible snap cuts and Medicaid cuts.

00:51:51.000 And they told me that people are not even showing up to Head Start where they get their food.

00:51:58.000 They're not showing up to the food Banks because they're afraid.

00:52:02.000 And it's not just undocumented immigrants, it is people of all legal statuses.

00:52:08.000 It's undocumented immigrants who have been here for 20 years.

00:52:12.000 Why?

00:52:12.000 Oh, why are Democrats so mistrusted on illegal immigration?

00:52:15.000 It's a mystery wrapped in, wait for it, an enigma.

00:52:17.000 No one knows why, why so many people are exercised about illegal immigration, except for the vast majority of American citizens.

00:52:24.000 Yeah, the left is terminally online.

00:52:26.000 I've talked about the right being terminally online.

00:52:27.000 The left is also terminally online, and it puts them in severe electoral danger.

00:52:32.000 Alrighty, speaking of terminally online, the Democrats, terminally online, it's a real problem for them.

00:52:37.000 There is a brand new poll out, and it shows actually that Democrats are down in the congressional generic ballot by five points, which is kind of insane.

00:52:45.000 I mean, we are 18 months out from the next election cycle, and they are trailing.

00:52:52.000 They are not in good shape.

00:52:53.000 And the reason for that is they are wildly unpopular.

00:52:55.000 This is a point Jake Tapper was making over on CNN.

00:52:59.000 A brand new CNN poll out today shows the Democrats' favorability among Americans.

00:53:03.000 It is at its lowest point in the history of CNN's polling back to 1992.

00:53:08.000 Only 28% of Americans view the Democratic Party favorably.

00:53:14.000 Those are really terrible numbers, truly awful numbers.

00:53:17.000 Well, why is that?

00:53:18.000 Because the Democratic Party is split between the traditionalist Democrats, who seem to be sort of do-nothing Democrats for the base, and the base Democrats who are embracing communism, socialism, and third worldism, which is a move.

00:53:31.000 I will say, I'm not sure a lot of Americans are in favor of that move.

00:53:34.000 Representative Rocana of California, who of course has been a guest on the show, yesterday he came out and endorsed Zorin Mamdani in the New York mayoral race.

00:53:43.000 I will endorse him.

00:53:45.000 Look, he's a very charismatic, relatable person, and he spent a lot of time talking about the cost of living in New York, in this country, and how we address it.

00:53:54.000 How do we create good paying jobs?

00:53:56.000 How do we give people a raise?

00:53:58.000 How do we make sure that the cost of rent, the cost of child care, the cost of health care comes down?

00:54:04.000 And that's important for the Democratic Party to start talking about these economic issues.

00:54:11.000 Well, you know, if this is the move you want to make, go for it, Democrats.

00:54:15.000 Like, really, I encourage you to do all of this because you're now endorsing a guy based on his charisma who has supported the abolition of private property.

00:54:26.000 That seems like a very weird thing to do in the world financial hub of New York City.

00:54:30.000 But I guess if you guys want to go with it and then make that the model for national governance, you can try it.

00:54:37.000 My platform is that every single person should have housing.

00:54:40.000 And I think faced with these two options, the system has hundreds of thousands of people unhoused, right?

00:54:47.000 For what?

00:54:49.000 And if there was any system that could guarantee each person housing, whether you call it the abolition of private property or you call it, you know, just a statewide housing guarantee, it is preferable to what is going on right now.

00:55:06.000 So if you could abolish private property, that would be preferable to people living unhoused. 0.98

00:55:10.000 I love when they say people living unhoused.

00:55:12.000 So public housing and homeless shelters are available in all major American cities for people who are destitute.

00:55:19.000 And we, of course, have welfare programs for people who are destitute.

00:55:22.000 The vast majority of people who are living on the streets are either mentally ill or drug abusers or both.

00:55:27.000 It is a serious, real problem in major American cities.

00:55:30.000 But his solution is abolish private property, which stands alongside abolish capitalism and also abolish Western civilization because you have to globalize the intifada.

00:55:37.000 Good luck with this.

00:55:38.000 When Tim Walls is the moderate in your party, you are in serious trouble.

00:55:42.000 Here was Tim Walls yesterday saying they need to be more pro-business.

00:55:46.000 Donald Trump sells snake oil or whatever, but it's capturing this idea of wealth and being able to be successful, which we as Democrats, we want people to pay their fair share, but why are we against people being successful like that?

00:56:00.000 We can't be.

00:56:00.000 Why are we against we should talk about businesses?

00:56:03.000 Not all businesses exploit their workers and we get ourselves stuck in that.

00:56:07.000 Oh, well, because I think we lose that.

00:56:11.000 I mean, why not more of this?

00:56:12.000 And the answer is because the base doesn't like this very much.

00:56:15.000 Democratic Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, he is going out against Mamdani.

00:56:20.000 And this is the tack that the Democrats should be taking, if they had any brains at all.

00:56:25.000 You'll hear no ambiguity out of my mouth. 0.99

00:56:28.000 We do not need a job-killing socialist. 0.92

00:56:30.000 We don't need a job-killing socialist who wants to raise taxes and supports anti-Semitic rhetoric, right?

00:56:37.000 In a city with the highest taxes in the country and the largest Jewish population. 0.99

00:56:43.000 Are you surprised?

00:56:44.000 That's not what that's not.

00:56:49.000 So, again, if Democrats are smart, this is how they'd move.

00:56:53.000 Fortunately for Republicans, they apparently are not.

00:56:55.000 Now, in other news, the White House released a letter yesterday about President Trump's health condition.

00:57:02.000 That health condition is apparently a mild but chronic illness related to his age.

00:57:07.000 He has chronic venous insufficiency, a condition in which the legs have trouble delivering blood back to the heart.

00:57:12.000 That is why he has some swollen ankles.

00:57:14.000 Caroline Levitt described the diagnosis yesterday.

00:57:18.000 The president underwent a comprehensive examination, including diagnostic vascular studies.

00:57:24.000 Bilateral lower extremity venous Doppler ultrasounds were performed and revealed chronic venous insufficiency, A B9, and common condition, particularly in individuals over the age of 70.

00:57:39.000 Importantly, there was no evidence of deep vein thrombosis or arterial disease.

00:57:45.000 Additionally, recent photos of the president have shown minor bruising on the back of his hand.

00:57:50.000 This is consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin, which is taken as part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen.

00:58:01.000 This is a well-known and benign side effect of aspirin therapy.

00:58:05.000 And the president remains in excellent health.

00:58:10.000 So again, there are people who are trying to claim that the president is unhealthy.

00:58:13.000 That, of course, is not true.

00:58:15.000 Now, in other news, speaking of places that actually are unhealthy, I have to say Europe may be cooked.

00:58:20.000 I mean, truly cooked.

00:58:22.000 Apparently, the UK has now moved to lower the voting age to 16, to 16 years old.

00:58:29.000 Have you ever met a 16-year-old?

00:58:31.000 Have these people ever met a 16-year-old?

00:58:32.000 I mean, I understand that for liberals who apparently believe that we should all live like we're 16 years old, you know, dependent on someone else with no actual responsibility for our own actions.

00:58:41.000 That sure, why not have 16-year-olds vote? 0.95

00:58:44.000 I mean, they don't have jobs, they live off somebody else's paycheck.

00:58:46.000 And that's precisely the kind of people that presumably the left would love voting.

00:58:50.000 That's not a rip on what 16-year-olds will become, but if you've ever met a 16-year-old, let's just say that the prefrontal cortex is not well developed enough to withhold the passions of the amygdala.

00:59:00.000 But here's Kier Starmer, the cloddish Labor prime minister of Great Britain, saying that they're going to lower the country's voting age to 16.

00:59:12.000 I think it's really important that 16 and 17-year-olds have the vote because they're old enough to go out to work, they're old enough to pay taxes, so to pay in.

00:59:23.000 And I think if you pay in, you should have the opportunity to say what you want your money spent on, which way the government should go.

00:59:31.000 So, I'm really pleased that we're able to bring more young people into our democracy and give them the chance to have a say over how their taxes are going to be paid and what they're going to be used for.

00:59:45.000 So, I'm just going to point out that that's crazy.

00:59:49.000 That that's crazy.

00:59:50.000 If the idea is that you pay tax money into the government and therefore you should vote, then okay, let's take the corollary.

00:59:58.000 If you don't pay taxes, you shouldn't vote.

00:59:59.000 Is he up for that?

01:00:01.000 I feel like not.

01:00:02.000 I feel like not, because then I think that the voting base would turn the other way.

01:00:06.000 As far as the idea that lots and lots of people in the UK are serving in the military at the age of 16 and 17.

01:00:15.000 So it is true that one-third apparently of the UK's army intake was under 18.

01:00:21.000 16-year-olds make up the single largest year group, but that means that like 2,500 to 3,000 16 and 17-year-olds are joining the regular armed forces every year.

01:00:31.000 Like 2,500 to 3,000, according to our sponsors over at Perplexity.

01:00:35.000 And now, if I ask, so how many 16 and 17-year-olds are there in the UK?

01:00:39.000 If the idea is you can serve in the military and like 2,500 to 3,000 of you every year are joining the military, the total number of 16-year-olds estimated in the UK is 741,000.

01:00:50.000 The estimated number of 17-year-olds is 723,000.

01:00:53.000 So you're talking about 1.5 million votes, essentially, because 2,500 people joined the military at this age.

01:01:00.000 I don't think it's about that for the Labour Party.

01:01:03.000 I think this is about changing the voting base, of course, and making it easier for them to win elections. 1.00

01:01:09.000 A totally idiotic idea, but we'll see how it works out for them because the UK has been pursuing idiotic idea after idiotic idea day after day after day. 1.00

01:01:18.000 Alrighty, coming up on the Ben Shapiro show, the strangest story of the day. 1.00

01:01:23.000 This is just for our members.

01:01:25.000 Apparently, the rule of the day is never go to a Cold Play concert, or at least don't cheat on your wife at a Cold Play concert, or at least don't get caught on the big screen cheating on your wife at a Cold Play concert.

01:01:33.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - July 18, 2025

EPSTEIN BOMBSHELL? Plus Stephen Colbert GONE!

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