CBS announces that Stephen Colbert will be leaving the Late Show franchise in May of 2026, and the left is going into a frenzy. Plus, a new breaking story about Jeffrey Epstein, a Wall Street Journal bombshell, and more!
00:00:00.000A ton to get to today on Ben Shapiro's show.
00:00:03.000So, 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.
00:00:14.000And Stephen Colbert will be done with his show.
00:00:18.000But first, my brand new book, Lions and Scavengers, is available for pre-order right now on Amazon.com.
00:00:23.000It's a rallying cry against those who would poison our culture, undermine it from within.
00:00:28.000The scavengers are not going to like it.
00:00:29.000Again, you can pre-order Lions and Scavengers right now at Amazon.com.
00:00:33.000Also, season one of Ben Afterdark is officially in the books.
00:00:36.000Nine 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.
00:01:04.000So we begin with a piece of rather welcome and amusing news.
00:01:08.000That is Stephen Colbert will be done in very short order.
00:01:11.000So 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.
00:01:28.000And then they made him the late night show host over at CBS.
00:01:32.000And he was awful, just truly, truly bad at this job.
00:01:37.000Well, 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.
00:02:17.000In 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.
00:02:23.000CBS said, this is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.
00:02:27.000It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount.
00:02:32.000However, 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.
00:02:48.000And 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.
00:02:55.000And so the blue sky left is going crazy over this.
00:02:58.000The 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.
00:04:17.000No one came to Trump's big stupid birthday parade.
00:04:20.000MAGA sounds for Make America Grass Again.
00:04:22.000You attract more skinheads than free road game.
00:04:25.000You talk like a sign language gorilla who got hit in the head.
00:04:29.000In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's holster.
00:04:37.000Well, without jokes like that, what will we do?
00:04:40.000Well, 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.
00:04:45.000Jimmy 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.
00:04:53.000Well, I mean, there is the opportunity for ABC to do the funniest thing ever.
00:04:59.000You 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.
00:05:06.000So again, the media ecosystem is changing rapidly.
00:05:09.000The 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.
00:05:23.000And so we bid a not particularly fond farewell to Stephen Colbert.
00:05:27.000He'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.
00:05:37.000He'll still be around for another 10 months.
00:05:38.000And then, of course, he'll end up over at MSNBC with a late night show that has no ratings either.
00:07:46.000With summer grilling season in full swing, use my code Ben to get 40 bucks off plus.
00:07:50.000Get your pick of free meat for life when you subscribe to any Good Ranchers box that's free.
00:07:54.000Wag you burgers, hot dogs, bacon, or chicken wings in every box for life with your subscription.
00:08:00.000Savvy, she has a she has a little boy, but he's a chunky boy because he keeps eating good ranchers.
00:08:05.000That kid is going through like several good ranchers box every week.
00:08:08.000Again, just go to goodranchers.com and use promo code Bennett Checkout to get an extra 40 bucks off and free meat for life because the moments that matter deserve meat that's made right and raised in America.
00:08:17.000Good ranchers, American meat delivered.
00:08:18.000Okay, 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.
00:08:26.000And 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.
00:08:37.000This is a really giant nothing burger.
00:08:42.000So what exactly is this shocking Wall Street Journal story?
00:08:45.000According to the Wall Street Journal, it was Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday and Ghelene Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion.
00:08:52.000She turned to Epstein's family and friends.
00:09:00.000Everyone knows that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were friends like a very long time ago.
00:09:05.000He was banned from Mar-a-Lago in 2007.
00:09:09.000He and Epstein had palled around in the 90s and early 2000s.
00:09:14.000And that was true for a lot of people with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:09:16.000That is why there are so many prominent people associated with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:09:20.000And of course, Trump had talked about this publicly.
00:09:23.000It wasn't like a giant secret at the time.
00:09:25.000There 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.
00:09:38.000So 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.
00:09:49.000The 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.
00:10:15.000The 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.
00:10:39.000When the FBI and DOJ said that, that was all part of a broader Trump cover-up.
00:10:41.000Now, 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?
00:10:48.000If 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.
00:11:18.000Like he was on a Jeffrey Epstein tape schtipping a 15-year-old or something, right?
00:11:23.000That is the tacit accusation that is underlying and undergirding this entire line of reasoning.
00:11:29.000So 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.
00:11:35.000It can't just be Jeffrey Epstein and Trump were friends and they made lewd jokes together.
00:11:41.000Do we know that President Trump makes lewd jokes?
00:11:44.000We 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.
00:11:52.000So 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.
00:11:59.000So what is the Wall Street Journal's big expose that had been rumored by Mark Halperin and others all day yesterday and retailed?
00:12:07.000Quote, pages from the leatherbound album assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006.
00:12:15.000That again, this is before Epstein had been picked up on charges, arrested, or anything like that, like three years before that.
00:12:21.000It'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.
00:12:29.000It's unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration's recent review.
00:12:33.000The president's past relationship with Epstein says the Wall Street Journal is at a sensitive moment.
00:12:38.000The letter bearing Trump's name, which was reviewed by the journal, is baudy, like others in the album.
00:12:43.000It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.
00:12:49.000A pair of small arcs denote the woman's breasts.
00:12:52.000And the future president's signature is a squiggly Donald below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.
00:12:56.000The letter concludes, happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful Secret.
00:13:04.000So 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.
00:13:16.000Among 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.
00:13:26.000The album also contained a letter from a now-deceased Harvard economist, one of Epstein's report cards from Mark Twain Jr.
00:13:31.000High in Brooklyn, and a note from a former assistant that included an acrostic with Epstein's name.
00:13:36.000Epstein was Wexner's money manager at the time.
00:13:39.000Zershowitz's letter included a mock-up of Vanity Unfair magazine cover with mock headlines like, who was Jack the Ripper?
00:14:23.000Well, because he used the word enigmas.
00:14:26.000By 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.
00:14:36.000Not one single time, as far as I'm aware.
00:14:39.000I believe he used the word enigma one time to refer to Ben Carson or something verbally.
00:14:43.000But does that sound like Donald Trump to you?
00:14:45.000It does not sound like Donald Trump to me.
00:14:48.000But let's assume, for a second, and by the way, President Trump immediately is denying that he wrote the letter.
00:14:53.000Probably he just tasked some sort of secretary with writing a spicy letter to Jeffrey Epstein for his birthday.
00:15:00.000The secretary did that and then Trump signed it.
00:15:02.000That 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.
00:15:12.000Trump 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.
00:15:20.000And again, Trump was asked for comment on this.
00:15:23.000And Trump immediately said that this was essentially fake news and then threatened to sue the Wall Street Journal.
00:15:28.000He 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.
00:15:36.000And if they print it, they will be sued.
00:15:38.000Mr. Murdoch stated he would take care of it, obviously, did not have the power to do so.
00:15:41.000The editor of the Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker, was told directly by Caroline Lovitt and by President Trump that the letter was a fake.
00:15:47.000But Emma Tucker doesn't want to hear that.
00:15:49.000Instead, they're going with a false, malicious, and defamatory story anyway.
00:15:53.000President Trump will be suing the Wall Street Journal, News Corp, and Mr. Murdoch shortly.
00:15:57.000The press has to learn to be truthful and not rely on sources that probably don't even exist.
00:16:00.000President 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.
00:16:08.000It has truly turned out to be a disgusting and filthy rag.
00:16:11.000Writing defamatory lies like this shows their desperation to remain relevant.
00:16:15.000If 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.
00:16:23.000It certainly would not have sat in a file waiting for Trump to have won three elections.
00:16:26.000This is yet another example of fake news.
00:16:28.000That 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?
00:16:35.000They leaked his IRS files, for goodness sake.
00:16:38.000You think they would have sat on that?
00:16:59.000And 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.
00:17:19.000This is when he did tapes with Michael Wolf in August 2017.
00:17:22.000By the way, again, there's still 15 hours of tapes of Epstein with Steve Bannon, which have never been released.
00:18:36.000You send in your box filled with old tapes and pictures.
00:18:38.000Their team digitizes everything by hand in the United States, and then you get it all back on the cloud or thumb drive along with your originals.
00:19:35.000Whether 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.
00:19:41.000And when those sirens sound, sometimes they have just 15 seconds to reach a bomb shelter.
00:19:45.000But Israelis don't have enough bomb shelters.
00:19:47.000That'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.
00:19:53.000That'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.
00:20:00.000The 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.
00:20:11.000To learn more about IFCJ's life-saving work, visit benforthefellowship.org.
00:20:15.000That is one word, benforthefellowship.org.
00:20:18.000You're helping out people in the Holy Land when you check them out.
00:20:56.000In any case, what does this amount to?
00:20:58.000In the end, it amounts to virtually nothing.
00:21:00.000Now, 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.
00:21:08.000This is what A.G. Bondi should have done from the outset.
00:21:10.000I was critical of the Attorney General from the outset for the rollout of the story, not for the conclusion the FBI and DOJ drew.
00:21:16.000As 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?
00:21:31.000That's the stuff that I know and that's the stuff that you know.
00:21:36.000But 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.
00:21:47.000Those don't exist according to Alan Dershowitz.
00:21:49.000They're just, which the FBI is not going to put up.
00:21:52.000That there is no quote unquote Epstein list.
00:21:54.000He didn't keep a giant list of people he was blackmailing.
00:21:56.000And there's no evidence of actual blackmail, according to the FBI and DOJ.
00:22:01.000And so we can't release you evidence that doesn't exist of a crime that we can't charge.
00:22:06.000We'll release what we can, and we will file a petition to a court to get them to release whatever a court will allow.
00:22:12.000Because again, there are rules and procedures in all of this.
00:22:15.000As 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.
00:22:21.000After all, the FBI and DOJ are law enforcement agencies.
00:22:30.000It is also to ensure that innocent people don't get completely smeared by fictitious evidence based on their investigations.
00:22:38.000That is one of the reasons they will release redacted files, for example.
00:22:41.000So President Trump put out a statement yesterday.
00:22:43.000Based 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.
00:22:51.000This scam perpetuated by the Democrats should end right now.
00:22:54.000And again, the scam he's talking about is the push by Democrats to suggest he's engaged in a gigantic cover-up.
00:23:00.000The Attorney General then responded, President Trump, we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts.
00:23:06.000Now, realistically, is that going to happen?
00:23:10.000The court gets to make the final determination on what gets released.
00:23:14.000And 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.
00:23:32.000And 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.
00:23:43.000Those would be the sorts of interests the court has to take into account.
00:23:46.000All 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.
00:24:03.000As 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.
00:24:23.000This looks a lot like a financial crime, not just like a crime.
00:24:28.000And so you have to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
00:24:30.000What gets released into the public has to follow particular federal procedures and protocols that apply to every criminal case.
00:24:36.000So President Trump is saying, we'll go to the court, we will ask, the court will do what the court does.
00:24:41.000As far as a special counsel, there have been calls for a special counsel.
00:24:45.000I'm not a big fan of special counsels in general because typically their remit tends to expand over time and become self-justifying.
00:24:53.000That'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.
00:25:08.000The Wall Street Journal editorial board put out a piece talking about a special counsel.
00:25:14.000And 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.
00:25:22.000But White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said Thursday afternoon that Trump would not recommend a special prosecutor.
00:25:28.000They 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.
00:25:38.000It'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.
00:25:43.000The unnoble question is what would be left after the sensitive materials are scrubbed.
00:25:48.000As far as a special counsel, again, the problem is this.
00:25:53.000Forget about any immediate disclosure of anything new.
00:25:55.000The question that MAGA minds want answered would instead get buried for months or more.
00:26:00.000If 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?
00:26:07.000And that, of course, is exactly correct.
00:26:10.000And 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.
00:26:26.000And the FBI and the DOJ actually have to go through protocols and procedures on this sort of stuff.
00:26:32.000And 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.
00:26:42.000Are they really interested or would they be fools not to cynically take advantage of a public opportunity?
00:26:47.000Well, here's Caroline Levitt saying, listen, we are not doing the special counsel thing.
00:27:02.000And as for his discussions with the Attorney General, I'm not sure.
00:27:06.000Okay, 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.
00:27:17.000It 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.
00:27:25.000Now, again, that's typically not how the FBI and DOJ work.
00:27:28.000If 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.
00:27:38.000Now, the claim is that it should be released into the public simply because of interest in the case.
00:27:44.000I mean, you can see the rationale on both sides of this, but those rules are there for a reason.
00:27:49.000As far as transparency, Caroline Levitt is saying, what's the claim that Trump has not been transparent?
00:27:56.000The 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.
00:28:06.000It's part of the reason the president appointed him, appointed them to these high law enforcement positions.
00:28:11.000And 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.
00:28:21.000And so the president has been transparent.
00:28:23.000He has followed through on his promises to the American people.
00:28:28.000As far as the claim that this is all a hoax, what is the hoax?
00:28:31.000Well, Caroline Lovitt explained, the hoax is that people are claiming that Trump is covering something up, which I agree is a hoax.
00:28:38.000There's been a lot of discussion about the Epstein files and the president's comments yesterday calling it a hoax.
00:28:44.000Can you clarify which part of the Epstein hoax is the hoax part?
00:28:49.000The 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.
00:29:01.000The 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.
00:29:12.000She's certainly right about all of that.
00:29:14.000She 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.
00:29:24.000Many 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.
00:29:51.000The president and this team are always in contact with the president's supporters with voices of many kinds on both sides of the aisle.
00:29:58.000I 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.
00:30:04.000But 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.
00:30:12.000And 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.
00:30:21.000And as I always say, the American people should trust in President Trump.
00:30:27.000Okay, 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.
00:30:34.000One is, do the American people believe that they're getting everything on the Epstein case?
00:30:38.000And the answer to that by the polling data is no.
00:30:40.000A Reuters-Ipsos poll from earlier this week found 69% of Americans think the government is hiding a list of Epstein's clients.
00:30:47.000Now, 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.
00:31:00.000The 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.
00:31:07.000He said, is this a priority for the American people?
00:31:10.000I'm doing like amazing things for the American people right now, says President Trump.
00:31:14.000I'm making peace happen in the Middle East through strength.
00:31:18.000I'm backing Ukraine against Russia to prevent more Russian predations.
00:31:23.000I am taking action to end wars in the Middle East, in Africa, in Eastern Europe.
00:31:29.000I'm pushing forward new pieces of legislation.
00:31:33.000I'm doing all sorts of stuff that you want.
00:31:35.000And you're asking about Epstein like day in and day out.
00:31:37.000How many Americans actually care about this?
00:31:39.000And a lot of influencers were very upset with President Trump for saying this because they, of course, are very upset about the Epstein case.
00:31:46.000A lot of Americans, not statistically a ton, but many Americans are terminally online, like really, really online.
00:31:54.000And that doesn't mean their concerns are specious or not real or inauthentic.
00:31:58.000But 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.
00:32:06.000In 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.
00:32:18.000And 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?
00:32:26.000Let's have Harry Enton review the results.
00:32:29.000I mean, on X, all you hear about is the Epstein files.
00:32:33.000But how about out in the real public, Republicans who said the top issue was Epstein case?
00:32:56.000You know, that doesn't mean it's not a secondary issue for some people.
00:32:59.000But again, his approval rating among Republicans, President Trump's, remains, as it ever was, very, very high.
00:33:05.000And it shows, and this is a real issue, the massive, incredible, looming gap between the world of X and the real world.
00:33:13.000I've been saying for a long time, people need to get out and touch grass.
00:33:16.000And what I mean by that is turn off X and go talk to friends, family, people in the real world.
00:33:21.000If you go and talk to people in the real world, first of all, the polarization that splits Americans by politics, it's real.
00:33:26.000It'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.
00:33:42.000And politicians who follow the rabbit hole that is X are very likely to find themselves at odds with the American people.
00:33:48.000They're very likely to be suckered into believing that X is somehow a representative sample of what Americans think.
00:33:54.000And I understand because politicians, everybody acts with whatever data they have.
00:33:58.000But what if the input is really crappy?
00:34:00.000What 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?
00:34:10.000What 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?
00:34:19.000Now, 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.
00:34:32.000And it's a great shortcut for politicians.
00:34:34.000It means you don't have to go talk to your constituents.
00:34:36.000You just go to X, see what's trending, tweet something out and feel good about yourself.
00:34:39.000But it is not reflective of the real world.
00:34:41.000The 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.
00:34:51.000And this is where President Trump is unique, truly unique.
00:34:53.000So you have to understand President Trump's informational diet to understand why he is not being suckered by a lot of this stuff.
00:34:59.000President 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.
00:35:38.000And 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.
00:35:54.000You 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.
00:36:01.000And now those views are being heard by a bunch of people, particularly young people.
00:36:05.000And 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.
00:36:18.000I think that's what you're going to see.
00:36:20.000But 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.
00:36:35.000And this is where President Trump is much more connected to reality than many of his critics on this sort of stuff.
00:36:40.000And it's why President Trump is now right to call on Pam Bondi to try to get as much as possible released.
00:36:45.000But people who are saying the Epstein, this is going to do deep and lasting damage.
00:36:48.000First of all, I think a lot of the people who are saying that are doing so for malicious reasons.
00:36:52.000They 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.
00:37:06.000They'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.
00:37:14.000I 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.
00:37:21.000But with all of that said, President Trump, again, much more connected to reality than virtually all of his critics.
00:37:27.000Joining us on the line to discuss this and many other subjects is one of the wisest people in America.
00:37:32.000Wisdom 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.
00:37:41.000He has a brand new book titled Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth.
00:37:44.000Professor, thanks so much for joining the show.
00:37:51.000So in your book, you talk about the modern age of feeling.
00:37:55.000And 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.
00:38:14.000And 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.
00:38:29.000I 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.
00:38:42.000We 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.
00:38:51.000We wouldn't be stuck with three networks and a handful of newspapers and so forth.
00:38:56.000But 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.
00:39:21.000We'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.
00:39:46.000So, Professor, that obviously sounds like a real uphill battle in the moment, given the forces stacked on the other side.
00:39:53.000So, I mean, how do we go about fighting that?
00:39:55.000Because this is a real thing that's happening to an enormous number of people.
00:39:59.000Conspiracism, for example, is running rife on both sides of the political aisle right now because that is emotionally driven.
00:40:05.000I mean, conspiracy theories are typically driven by an appeal to emotion in the absence of fact.
00:40:10.000And in fact, the absence of fact is taken as support for the theory.
00:40:14.000Absence of evidence is not evidence that your theory is wrong.
00:40:17.000It's evidence that your theory is right.
00:40:18.000It's just somebody is hiding the actual truth.
00:40:24.000So how do we go to sort of the first principles?
00:40:27.000How 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?
00:40:51.000Let'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.
00:41:07.000And there's something that we find as a constant throughout, and that is people who stepped forward to provide models for other people.
00:41:17.000Progress 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.
00:41:49.000But 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.
00:42:03.000So I think part of that, Professor, is the reinstitution of trust in institutions.
00:42:07.000And I know that's sort of a strange anti-narrative point these days because there's so much distrust in our institutions.
00:42:16.000I 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.
00:42:24.000But how do you rebuild trust in institutions?
00:42:26.000Here 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.
00:42:36.000But here I'm talking about even things that are as basic as church.
00:42:39.000You know, the lack of trust in institutional churches, for example, the lack of trust even in family structure.
00:42:45.000These things have really gone the way of the dodo.
00:42:52.000Because 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.
00:43:01.000You've hit the nail on the head here, Ben.
00:43:03.000So 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.
00:43:23.000Certainly in my lifetime, in my parents' and my grandparents and my great-grandparents' lifetime, trust has never been so low.
00:43:29.000But you're right about something else.
00:43:31.000The institutions earned that distrust by their own failures.
00:43:36.000And you're also right that it's not just the institutions of government.
00:44:17.000But if we're going to get anywhere, we've got to begin now.
00:44:20.000We're beginning at a very, very low point.
00:44:22.000Even trust in institutions that have historically had high levels of trust, the judiciary, the military, trust has collapsed in these institutions.
00:45:29.000They are cutting a bunch of wasteful government spending, including to, again, publicly funded radio that is just left-wing propaganda.
00:45:36.000And that is a perfectly worthwhile and good thing.
00:45:39.000It also includes cuts to USAID, which of course is absolutely worthwhile.
00:45:45.000Now, again, there's foreign spending that we should do in order to counter Chinese spending.
00:45:49.000Chinese, they use their money in order to build their soft power around the globe, ranging from Africa to Latin America.
00:45:54.000And sure, we should also use soft power to fight the Chinese in these arenas.
00:45:58.000But USAID had basically just become a bankroll for a bunch of left-wing causes.
00:46:02.000That'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.
00:46:26.000So essentially, your taxpayer dollars were, we're not talking about military ADS.
00:46:30.000We're talking about literally going to NGOs who are putting hundreds of thousands of people in the streets to protest the government of Israel.
00:46:37.000And so that is where much of the money was going in USAD is going to not only useless, but counterproductive left-wing agit prop.
00:46:45.000So the fact that rescission is going to cut a lot of that is definitely a good thing.
00:46:48.000Meanwhile, President Trump is pushing for the so-called Genius Act.
00:46:53.000Apparently, 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.
00:47:02.000House 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.
00:47:12.000That would be to ban the government from having its own cryptocurrency.
00:47:16.000Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he spoke with Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Wednesday about adding the provision to the NDAA.
00:47:23.000So the Genius Act, I asked our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity, what exactly is in the Genius Act.
00:47:30.000And what it does is it creates a federal regulatory framework for stable coins.
00:47:35.000So stable coins are essentially crypto assets that are pegged to the value of the dollar.
00:47:40.000Now, they're not necessarily one-to-one.
00:47:42.000It's not as though you buy a stable coin and if you could turn it in for a dollar.
00:47:45.000And this is one of the things the Genius Act was designed to do.
00:47:47.000It was designed to put regulations on anything calling itself a stable coin, right?
00:48:00.000Stable coins are supposedly tied to the value of the underlying asset.
00:48:04.000In this case, for example, the United States dollar.
00:48:06.000And so what the Genius Act was designed to do was provide some stability in the stablecoin market and then let a thousand flowers bloom.
00:48:13.000You can buy a stable coin that is worth half a dollar or a stablecoin that is worth a dollar.
00:48:18.000According 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.
00:48:28.000It'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.
00:48:34.000So it turns stable coins into an actual, usable, tradable, and stable commodity.
00:48:45.000The 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.
00:48:55.000So 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.
00:49:05.000It'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.
00:49:11.000So 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.
00:49:31.000Meanwhile, 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.
00:49:39.000AI is the technology that is going to be dominating the next several generations of human life at a minimum.
00:49:45.000According 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.
00:49:55.000The 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.
00:50:07.000There are preset standards that are used by these AIs in order to dictate sort of safety standards.
00:50:13.000And 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.
00:50:23.000The trend has been troubling AIs are David Sachs and Sri Ramakrishnan, senior White House policy advisor for AI.
00:50:29.000And you'll recall he was involved tangentially.
00:50:32.000His name was used in a sort of foolish and I think not particularly productive debate over H-1B visas.
00:50:38.000There's an interesting conversation to be had.
00:50:42.000But this move by the White House to make more neutral these AI tools is definitely a good and useful thing.
00:50:49.000So President Trump continues to win victories.
00:50:51.000Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to target illegal immigration.
00:50:55.000Last night, Caroline Levitt said that any suggestion that there was going to be amnesty for illegal immigrants, that is not a thing.
00:51:03.000From my understanding, the White House nor the president has actually read through this legislation.
00:51:08.000We've been focused on, of course, the One Big Beautiful bill, which passed, which is another historic accomplishment of this president in record time.
00:51:14.000The Genius Act this week, the rescissions package.
00:51:17.000That's been the focus of the White House.
00:51:19.000But the president has made it very clear he will not support amnesty for illegal aliens in any way.
00:51:26.000Okay, so again, can't be clearer than that.
00:51:29.000By 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.
00:51:40.000Here's Representative from Ilajayapol accidentally admitting this.
00:51:44.000Yesterday, I was at a food bank in my district talking about the snap cuts, the horrible snap cuts and Medicaid cuts.
00:51:51.000And they told me that people are not even showing up to Head Start where they get their food.
00:51:58.000They're not showing up to the food Banks because they're afraid.
00:52:02.000And it's not just undocumented immigrants, it is people of all legal statuses.
00:52:08.000It's undocumented immigrants who have been here for 20 years.
00:52:26.000I've talked about the right being terminally online.
00:52:27.000The left is also terminally online, and it puts them in severe electoral danger.
00:52:32.000Alrighty, speaking of terminally online, the Democrats, terminally online, it's a real problem for them.
00:52:37.000There 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.
00:52:45.000I mean, we are 18 months out from the next election cycle, and they are trailing.
00:53:18.000Because 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.
00:53:31.000I will say, I'm not sure a lot of Americans are in favor of that move.
00:53:34.000Representative 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.
00:53:45.000Look, 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.
00:53:58.000How do we make sure that the cost of rent, the cost of child care, the cost of health care comes down?
00:54:04.000And that's important for the Democratic Party to start talking about these economic issues.
00:54:11.000Well, you know, if this is the move you want to make, go for it, Democrats.
00:54:15.000Like, 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.
00:54:26.000That seems like a very weird thing to do in the world financial hub of New York City.
00:54:30.000But I guess if you guys want to go with it and then make that the model for national governance, you can try it.
00:54:37.000My platform is that every single person should have housing.
00:54:40.000And I think faced with these two options, the system has hundreds of thousands of people unhoused, right?
00:54:49.000And 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.
00:55:06.000So if you could abolish private property, that would be preferable to people living unhoused.
00:55:10.000I love when they say people living unhoused.
00:55:12.000So public housing and homeless shelters are available in all major American cities for people who are destitute.
00:55:19.000And we, of course, have welfare programs for people who are destitute.
00:55:22.000The vast majority of people who are living on the streets are either mentally ill or drug abusers or both.
00:55:27.000It is a serious, real problem in major American cities.
00:55:30.000But his solution is abolish private property, which stands alongside abolish capitalism and also abolish Western civilization because you have to globalize the intifada.
00:55:38.000When Tim Walls is the moderate in your party, you are in serious trouble.
00:55:42.000Here was Tim Walls yesterday saying they need to be more pro-business.
00:55:46.000Donald 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?
00:56:49.000So, again, if Democrats are smart, this is how they'd move.
00:56:53.000Fortunately for Republicans, they apparently are not.
00:56:55.000Now, in other news, the White House released a letter yesterday about President Trump's health condition.
00:57:02.000That health condition is apparently a mild but chronic illness related to his age.
00:57:07.000He has chronic venous insufficiency, a condition in which the legs have trouble delivering blood back to the heart.
00:57:12.000That is why he has some swollen ankles.
00:57:14.000Caroline Levitt described the diagnosis yesterday.
00:57:18.000The president underwent a comprehensive examination, including diagnostic vascular studies.
00:57:24.000Bilateral 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.
00:57:39.000Importantly, there was no evidence of deep vein thrombosis or arterial disease.
00:57:45.000Additionally, recent photos of the president have shown minor bruising on the back of his hand.
00:57:50.000This 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.
00:58:01.000This is a well-known and benign side effect of aspirin therapy.
00:58:05.000And the president remains in excellent health.
00:58:10.000So again, there are people who are trying to claim that the president is unhealthy.
00:58:31.000Have these people ever met a 16-year-old?
00:58:32.000I 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.
00:58:41.000That sure, why not have 16-year-olds vote?
00:58:44.000I mean, they don't have jobs, they live off somebody else's paycheck.
00:58:46.000And that's precisely the kind of people that presumably the left would love voting.
00:58:50.000That'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.
00:59:00.000But 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.
00:59:12.000I 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.
00:59:23.000And 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.
00:59:31.000So, 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.
00:59:45.000So, I'm just going to point out that that's crazy.
01:00:02.000I feel like not, because then I think that the voting base would turn the other way.
01:00:06.000As 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.
01:00:15.000So it is true that one-third apparently of the UK's army intake was under 18.
01:00:21.00016-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.
01:00:31.000Like 2,500 to 3,000, according to our sponsors over at Perplexity.
01:00:35.000And now, if I ask, so how many 16 and 17-year-olds are there in the UK?
01:00:39.000If 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.
01:00:50.000The estimated number of 17-year-olds is 723,000.
01:00:53.000So you're talking about 1.5 million votes, essentially, because 2,500 people joined the military at this age.
01:01:00.000I don't think it's about that for the Labour Party.
01:01:03.000I think this is about changing the voting base, of course, and making it easier for them to win elections.
01:01:09.000A 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.
01:01:18.000Alrighty, coming up on the Ben Shapiro show, the strangest story of the day.
01:01:25.000Apparently, 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.
01:01:33.000Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
01:01:35.000If you're not a member, become a member.
01:01:36.000Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.