The Ben Shapiro Show - Former FBI Director Headed to JAIL for Threatening Trump?!

00:00:00.000 Folks, we've got a ton to get to today.

00:00:02.000 Did the former FBI director threaten President Trump's life?

00:00:05.000 Plus, the Supreme Court is deciding on birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions, and President Trump is finally leaving the Middle East.

00:00:12.000 And we interview the probable next president of Romania.

00:00:15.000 But first, I was going to do an all-new ad read for my brand new show, Ben After Dark, premiering tonight on DW +, exclusively for our members.

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00:02:03.000 What am I talking about?

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00:02:30.000 Alrighty, so controversy arises from random areas of the political spectrum these days.

00:02:37.000 Do you remember James Comey?

00:02:39.000 James Comey was the former FBI director.

00:02:42.000 He was the FBI director who presented the so-called Steele dossier to President Trump.

00:02:46.000 And then that Steele dossier just happened to leak into public view. 0.86

00:02:49.000 That was the one that suggested that President Trump wasn't just a Russian cat's paw, that he was actually having affairs with prostitutes in Moscow and all this sort of crazy stuff. 0.73

00:02:58.000 And Comey presented that to Trump. 0.91

00:02:59.000 And then magically, it just emerged in the press very soon afterward.

00:03:02.000 The news being that Comey had presented it to President Trump.

00:03:05.000 James Comey, of course, was also the FBI director who let Hillary Clinton off the hook for mishandling of classified documents, a precedent that would then be used for, as it turns out, pretty much every subsequent president who... 1.00

00:03:16.000 It now appears everyone is allowed to just mishandle classified documents because James Comey deliberately misread a statute to let Hillary Clinton off the hook.

00:03:23.000 But then, right before the election, also announced that there was more of an investigation into Hillary Clinton mishandling classified information, leading Democrats to believe that he threw the election to Donald Trump.

00:03:33.000 So, needless to say, he was a very, very bad FBI director. 0.71

00:03:36.000 Soup to nuts, awful FBI director. 0.92

00:03:38.000 Well, in his post-FBI director career, he decided to become a giant weirdo who wanders around forests. 0.98

00:03:44.000 I'm not even kidding.

00:03:45.000 That's what he does.

00:03:45.000 He is basically the world's worst Instagram influencer.

00:03:49.000 And so, just as an example, here is a tweet from James Comey a couple of years ago.

00:03:56.000 It is a picture of James Comey, who is a uniquely tall individual, by the way, he's like 6 '9", standing among the redwoods of California with the caption, so many questions.

00:04:06.000 Wow.

00:04:07.000 Deep.

00:04:08.000 But we're not done.

00:04:09.000 James Comey also had a very weird tweet about Iowa.

00:04:13.000 Here is his weird tweet about Iowa.

00:04:16.000 This, of course, is circa 2017.

00:04:18.000 It says, Goodbye, Iowa.

00:04:21.000 Goodbye.

00:04:21.000 And it's just him standing in the middle of a road.

00:04:23.000 So James Comey is a person who likes to stand in random places and take contemplative pictures of the things around him or himself and just kind of put it out there.

00:04:32.000 James Comey also is some sort of novelist.

00:04:34.000 I don't know whether any of his novels have actually been successful at any point in the past, but he has a new book right now called FDR Drive.

00:04:43.000 That is all about, presumably, some sort of far-right extremist talk show host who's creating threats against the federal government that are turning into people assassinating folks in the federal government.

00:04:56.000 And it takes an intrepid investigative prosecutor to go after this particular right-wing talk show host.

00:05:03.000 He's a strange person, shall we say.

00:05:05.000 And this is a reminder to you that every government agency is staffed with lots of weird people.

00:05:11.000 There are lots of weird people on Earth.

00:05:13.000 Think about your own personal life.

00:05:14.000 Tons of weird people around you, right?

00:05:16.000 Everybody has their own brand of weird.

00:05:17.000 And those people are also in the federal government.

00:05:19.000 And when you give them outsized power and they're big weirdos, weird things happen.

00:05:23.000 Okay, so how is James Comey relevant?

00:05:25.000 The answer is James Comey yesterday put up a tweet.

00:05:29.000 I already put up a post on his Instagram.

00:05:31.000 And it was another one of these contemplative posts or would-be contemplative posts.

00:05:36.000 Except that this one got him in a little bit of trouble.

00:05:39.000 He put this up on Instagram.

00:05:40.000 It's a cool shell formation on my beach walk.

00:05:43.000 And it was a series of shells that were put in the sand to read 86-47.

00:05:51.000 Now, for a moment, you might be thinking to yourself, what are we watching lost?

00:05:55.000 What do these numbers mean?

00:05:56.000 Why are these numbers important?

00:05:58.000 And then you think, oh, wait a moment.

00:06:01.000 47 would be like Donald Trump, the 47th president of the United States.

00:06:05.000 And the number 86...

00:06:07.000 Well, that could mean a couple of things.

00:06:09.000 Originally, to 86, someone meant to like throw them out of a bar or restaurant or to cancel a password.

00:06:18.000 It's sort of like Deep Six, but 86 someone.

00:06:23.000 So this could also be interpreted as kill the president.

00:06:26.000 That is one way to interpret this shell formation. 1.00

00:06:28.000 It's as 8647, not get rid of the president, like kill him. 0.98

00:06:33.000 And this is how Secret Service has taken it. 0.70

00:06:36.000 They said, um, you are not allowed to threaten the president in public media.

00:06:41.000 That is a violation of 18 U.S. Code 871 threats against the president and successors to the presidency.

00:06:48.000 Well, James Comey, you know, he put that out there and pretty soon the entire White House came down on his head.

00:06:55.000 So Taylor Butowich over at the White House, chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, while President Trump is currently on an international trip to the Middle East, the former FBI director puts out what clearly can be interpreted as a hit on the sitting president of the United States, a message etched in the sand is deeply concerning to all of us and is being taken seriously.

00:07:14.000 Donald Trump Jr. signed in to say, just James Comey casually calling for my dad to be murdered.

00:07:21.000 Kristi Noem came out and ripped into James Comey as well, the head of the Department of Homeland Security.

00:07:28.000 Pretty much the entire cabinet got in.

00:07:30.000 Kristi Noem said, disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of President Trump.

00:07:35.000 DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.

00:07:39.000 Stephen Miller, of course a top advisor to President Trump, he put out a statement, reading, as the former FBI Director and key leader of the deep state, Comey's call for assassination, while the president is abroad no less, is a chilling escalation of the war against our democracy by a faction committed to its destruction.

00:07:55.000 Kash Patel, the head of the FBI.

00:07:57.000 Didn't want to get lost in the shuffle, so he put out a statement saying, We are aware of the recent social media post by former FBI Director James Comey directed at President Trump.

00:08:04.000 We are in communication with the Secret Service and Director Curran.

00:08:07.000 Primary jurisdiction is with the Secret Service on these matters, and we, the FBI, will provide all necessary support.

00:08:14.000 Then President Trump came out, and he himself commented on James Comey's bizarre post, to say the least.

00:08:23.000 He knew exactly what that meant.

00:08:25.000 A child knows what that meant.

00:08:27.000 If you're the FBI director and you don't know what that meant, that meant assassination.

00:08:34.000 And it says it loud and clear.

00:08:37.000 Now, he wasn't very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant.

00:08:43.000 And he did it for a reason, and he was hit so hard.

00:08:49.000 Because people like me and they like what's happening with our country.

00:08:52.000 Our country has become respected again and all this.

00:08:54.000 And he's calling for the assassination of the president.

00:08:57.000 Obviously he apologized and said he wasn't calling for violence.

00:09:01.000 But what do you want to see happen?

00:09:04.000 I don't want to take a position on it because that's going to be up to Pam and all of the great people.

00:09:09.000 But I will say this.

00:09:10.000 I think it's a terrible thing.

00:09:12.000 And when you add his history to that...

00:09:15.000 If he had a clean history, he doesn't. 0.99

00:09:18.000 He's a dirty cop. 1.00

00:09:19.000 He's a dirty cop. 0.99

00:09:21.000 And if he had a clean history, I could understand if there was a leniency. 0.98

00:09:27.000 But I'm going to let them make that decision.

00:09:31.000 Now President Trump, when he says he's a dirty cop, what he means there is that James Comey was presiding over the FBI when the Hillary Clinton Fusion GPS scam document that initiated the entire Russiagate investigation was basically laundered.

00:09:45.000 By the Hillary Clinton campaign via the intelligence apparatus to the FBI.

00:09:49.000 That's what he means.

00:09:50.000 He means all of Russiagate can basically be laid at the feet of James Comey.

00:09:54.000 Comey put out an apology message saying, I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message.

00:10:01.000 I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.

00:10:04.000 It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind.

00:10:06.000 So I took the post down.

00:10:08.000 We get some more on this in a moment.

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00:12:20.000 Okay, so he's claiming ignorance on all this.

00:12:23.000 Now, there are a few things right off the bat.

00:12:26.000 First of all, President...

00:12:27.000 Trump was nearly assassinated twice last year, like two times.

00:12:31.000 So we should take very seriously threats of violence against the president of the United States.

00:12:36.000 I mean, he nearly had his head blown off on national TV.

00:12:38.000 And then he was nearly assassinated again by a person who was sitting outside of his golf course in Florida and was waiting for him to get to a particular hole so he could kill him.

00:12:49.000 And then, of course, we know that the Iranians were also attempting to assassinate President Trump. 0.95

00:12:54.000 So it's not as though there is a shortage of threats.

00:12:56.000 On the president's life.

00:12:57.000 We also know that members of the radical left despise President Trump.

00:13:01.000 And there would be few tears shed by many of those people if, God forbid, something were to happen to President Trump.

00:13:07.000 So in that sort of climate, what Comey says there is indeed pretty bad.

00:13:12.000 Is it prosecutable?

00:13:13.000 Did Comey actually mean it? 1.00

00:13:14.000 So this takes you to the edge of the stupidity versus malice conversation. 0.99

00:13:19.000 As I've said very frequently on this show. 0.99

00:13:23.000 I generally like to attribute people's motivations when they do something wrong to stupidity rather than malice, unless I have like very solid counter evidence. 0.98

00:13:31.000 This is like right at the edge. 1.00

00:13:33.000 At the very least, this is incredibly stupid. 1.00

00:13:36.000 However, James Comey isn't incredibly, that guy's a stupid guy. 1.00

00:13:39.000 He is a stupid man. 1.00

00:13:42.000 I mean, I showed you his tweets standing on a road in the middle of Iowa and standing in a forest. 1.00

00:13:46.000 Like this is a weird, stupid man. 1.00

00:13:49.000 And so it isn't all that hard for me to get to the conclusion. 1.00

00:13:52.000 That he took a picture. 0.96

00:13:53.000 He thought that 86-47 meant something like, ah, get rid of Trump, as opposed to kill President Trump. 0.63

00:13:59.000 On the other hand, could he be malicious?

00:14:01.000 Could he hate President Trump enough that he would openly call for that? 1.00

00:14:03.000 Now, if it were really malicious and not stupidity, you have to assume at least a stupid malice, okay? 1.00

00:14:10.000 You have to assume at least a level of stupidity where the former FBI director does not know enough about the law to understand that if you openly threaten the President of the United States on social media, Secret Service is going to come knocking at your door. 1.00

00:14:20.000 So, I mean, That would be like the truest level of stupidity and malice would be that he wants to kill Trump, but he's stupid enough to post it online knowing that he's probably going to go to jail for it. 1.00

00:14:32.000 That's like the top level of both stupidity and malice. 1.00

00:14:36.000 If you're at the top level of malice, then presumably he wouldn't just post something about it. 1.00

00:14:39.000 If you're at the top level of stupidity, then he would post something about it and then walk it back, which may be what this is. 0.99

00:14:47.000 The bottom line is this, with regard to James Comey. 0.99

00:14:50.000 Is the Justice Department going to take this very far?

00:14:52.000 No, we'll have to see how far they take it.

00:14:55.000 It is certainly true that many of the people who are currently going after James Comey are people who also feel specifically targeted by folks like James Comey.

00:15:02.000 That includes the current FBI Director, Kash Patel.

00:15:05.000 So it'll be fascinating to see how this plays out.

00:15:07.000 Joining us on the line to discuss is Executive Editor of The Daily Wire and host of The Morning Wire, now available on video everywhere that you can get Morning Wire.

00:15:17.000 John Bickley, so let's talk about this bizarre story.

00:15:21.000 So, you know, is there anything that I'm missing here?

00:15:22.000 What is the current status?

00:15:24.000 Do you believe, do your sources tell you, that a prosecution is forthcoming for James Comey along these lines? 0.99

00:15:30.000 You know, I like your analysis there about stupidity versus malice. 0.99

00:15:35.000 I kind of look at it like ego versus malice. 0.99

00:15:38.000 We have egomaniacs in the government a lot, and this guy is top, top of the rung here.

00:15:45.000 He's...

00:15:46.000 He's been the savior of the Justice Department, the savior of the FBI.

00:15:51.000 It's part of the reason he got fired back in 2017 by Trump.

00:15:55.000 And I think he loves, he probably feels like this is a big win for him.

00:15:58.000 He loves getting media attention.

00:16:01.000 I don't think he probably thinks there's much of a threat that something's going to be actually taken to the next level for him.

00:16:09.000 I don't see that.

00:16:11.000 I do see this as a check on the...

00:16:14.000 The feeling by a lot of people on the left, particularly these people that have been in major public offices, that they feel like they can say anything.

00:16:20.000 I think the Trump administration is checking him here.

00:16:23.000 Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, really playing the left's game against them about heightened rhetoric.

00:16:31.000 8647, is it a direct threat?

00:16:34.000 It could be interpreted as a direct threat.

00:16:37.000 It's not the kind of direct threat I think that is ultimately actionable. 1.00

00:16:42.000 It is extremely stupid, like you said. 0.99

00:16:44.000 I think it's very egotistical in the sense that Comey is trying to create some waves, get himself back in the headlines. 1.00

00:16:51.000 He's done it.

00:16:52.000 Congratulations.

00:16:53.000 I think he will get some more scrutiny than he's going to be comfortable with.

00:16:57.000 Will we go to the next level?

00:16:59.000 I have a hard time seeing that to the next stage.

00:17:02.000 So meanwhile, over at Morning Wire, obviously you guys have been covering extensively President Trip to the Middle East.

00:17:10.000 A lot got done on that trip.

00:17:11.000 A lot of big deals getting done in Saudi, in UAE, in Qatar.

00:17:15.000 A lot of ramifications for the future of the Middle East more broadly.

00:17:18.000 He's made comments about relieving sanctions on Syria, for example.

00:17:21.000 He seems like he is open to a deal with Iran, although it is unclear what exactly that deal would look like.

00:17:26.000 What are your big takeaways at Morning Wire from his trip to the Middle East?

00:17:31.000 Yeah, you know, we've been looking at this from a few levels.

00:17:33.000 One of them is the economic level.

00:17:35.000 I think there's been a need for stability economically here.

00:17:39.000 And the announcement of a lot of these deals, particularly the almost $2 trillion in deals from his Middle East tour, is huge news for the U.S. These are real deals.

00:17:51.000 This really matters.

00:17:52.000 It impacts every American's wallet in the end.

00:17:55.000 It impacts the stock market.

00:17:57.000 We've seen the stock market.

00:17:58.000 Really rebound.

00:18:00.000 I mean, part of that's the truce between the U.S. and China that was announced this week, the total walkback of all these tariffs.

00:18:08.000 30% now is the tariff rate for the U.S. against China, dramatically down.

00:18:16.000 All of this is good news.

00:18:19.000 It's very complicated.

00:18:20.000 When you're talking about Syria and you're talking about Iran, of course, extremely complicated in terms of the ramifications of these kinds of deals.

00:18:29.000 Trump does a lot of stuff in public.

00:18:31.000 He makes his deals in public.

00:18:33.000 He's saying a lot of things.

00:18:34.000 He's very optimistic about an Iran deal.

00:18:36.000 It's hard to know what's really happening behind the scenes, how close they really are.

00:18:41.000 Iran cannot be trusted. 1.00

00:18:44.000 And I think it is right to be extremely skeptical of any deal we work out with them.

00:18:49.000 That said, this consistent message of Trump trying to broker peace throughout the globe.

00:19:07.000 And I think that people are happy to hear that.

00:19:09.000 Syria, it's complicated.

00:19:11.000 I was actually very interested in your perspective on that.

00:19:14.000 I do think, again, this idea of de-escalation in general, sort of writ large, is his goal.

00:19:22.000 He's accomplishing that, at least in terms of bringing the temperature down for now, where these details end up.

00:19:28.000 We'll see if the deal actually is hammered out and how good it looks in the final stages.

00:19:36.000 Well, that is John Bickley.

00:19:37.000 He is the executive editor of The Daily Wire and host of The Morning Wire, now, again, available on video anywhere.

00:19:43.000 John, great to talk to you.

00:19:46.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:19:47.000 Great to talk to you.

00:19:51.000 The Trump big birthright citizenship case is now before the Supreme Court.

00:19:55.000 There was a hearing yesterday.

00:19:57.000 This case is interesting for a couple of reasons.

00:19:59.000 One is President Trump issued an executive order saying that birthright citizenship no longer applies in the United States.

00:20:05.000 And this raises a couple of questions for the Supreme Court because district courts put an injunction on the EO, nationwide injunctions.

00:20:11.000 There are two separate issues in this case.

00:20:13.000 One issue is what is the authority of local courts to provide nationwide injunctions?

00:20:18.000 And this has become an incredibly hot issue because Every time President Trump does anything, ranging from using the Alien Enemies Act to this sort of EO, some local court will then issue a nationwide injunction.

00:20:29.000 As I've discussed before on the program, there's not a lot of precedent historically for the idea that a local district court can simply enjoin an entire national policy.

00:20:38.000 Typically, what you would do is have an injunction in the area over which the judge presides, not over the policy nationwide.

00:20:43.000 Otherwise, you could just forum shop, find some district court judge somewhere who doesn't like the president, and nationwide enjoin any.

00:20:50.000 This is a point that was made by Clarence Thomas back in 2018 in a concurrence in a case called Trump vs.

00:20:59.000 Hawaii.

00:21:00.000 And Clarence Thomas wrote, at that time, As he points out, the basic idea of injunction is supposed to be for the case in front of you, not for all similar cases all the way across the nation.

00:21:30.000 He says the judiciary's limited role was reflected in the court's decisions about who could sue to vindicate certain rights.

00:21:37.000 So this would go to standing.

00:21:39.000 Typically, in order to bring a lawsuit, you have to have standing.

00:21:42.000 You have to have been damaged by a particular law.

00:21:44.000 By you being damaged by a particular law doesn't mean that everyone across the country was quote-unquote damaged by the same law.

00:21:50.000 He says, That would have been in like 1963.

00:22:14.000 And then they still remain pretty rare.

00:22:16.000 But recently, again, this is 2018, Clarence Thomas writes, they've exploded in popularity.

00:22:20.000 Some scholars have criticized the trend.

00:22:23.000 No persuasive defense has yet been offered for the practice.

00:22:25.000 And of course, Clarence Thomas is correct about this.

00:22:28.000 He says, universal injunctions are legally and historically dubious.

00:22:31.000 If federal courts continue to issue them, this court is duty-bound to adjudicate their authority to do so.

00:22:36.000 So that's going to be one of the big issues that comes up in this particular case.

00:22:39.000 And it looks very much like the Supreme Court is going to limit.

00:22:43.000 This form of judicial overreach.

00:22:46.000 Now, Amy Coney Barrett came under some fire yesterday. 0.97

00:22:49.000 She, of course, a Trump appointee.

00:22:50.000 Justice Barrett, she asked the Solicitor General for the United States about this yesterday, whether or not the administration will actually obey court decisions.

00:23:00.000 Did I understand you correctly to tell Justice Kagan that the government wanted to reserve its right to maybe not follow a Second Circuit precedent, say, in New York, because you might disagree with the opinion?

00:23:13.000 Our general practice is to respect those precedents, but there are circumstances when it is not a categorical practice.

00:23:21.000 This administration's practice or the longstanding practice of the federal government?

00:23:25.000 And I'm not talking about in the Fourth Circuit, are you going to respect a Second Circuit?

00:23:29.000 I'm talking about within the Second Circuit.

00:23:31.000 And can you say, is that this administration's practice or a longstanding one?

00:23:35.000 As I understand it, longstanding policy of the Department of Justice.

00:23:41.000 It'll be interesting to see how the Supreme Court comes down on this.

00:23:43.000 I would imagine that they are going to limit the power of nationwide injunction for district courts, which in and of itself would be a win for the Trump administration.

00:23:49.000 Because otherwise, you're just going to, as I say, have forum shopping for some district judge somewhere to knock down entire national policy, and that is not why the court system was built this way.

00:23:58.000 Now, onto the broader underlying issue here of birthright citizenship.

00:24:02.000 So, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution says, with regard to citizenship, All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

00:24:19.000 That is the text at issue here.

00:24:22.000 And this has been subject to some pretty wide-ranging controversy over the course of American judicial history.

00:24:27.000 What does that mean?

00:24:28.000 So originally, this was obviously meant to be directed at the children of freed slaves.

00:24:35.000 Because the idea was that while slaves were not, in fact, They were considered legally, they should have been obviously, but they were not considered legally citizens of the United States.

00:24:44.000 They couldn't vote.

00:24:45.000 They didn't have constitutional rights.

00:24:48.000 What about their kids?

00:24:50.000 Are their kids citizens or not?

00:24:51.000 So the 14th Amendment says, yes, they are.

00:24:53.000 They were born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

00:24:57.000 The phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof is the key phrase.

00:25:00.000 Because if you just wanted a birthright citizenship clause, like plain and simple, why do you need that phrase?

00:25:05.000 Why not just say, All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States.

00:25:10.000 That would be a pure birthright citizenship clause.

00:25:13.000 Why add the phrase subject to this jurisdiction thereof?

00:25:16.000 What exactly does that mean?

00:25:17.000 Are there people who are born in the United States but not subject to the jurisdiction thereof?

00:25:22.000 And the Supreme Court has ruled on this in a variety of ways, many times, mostly indirectly.

00:25:28.000 That is why this case has now reached the Supreme Court.

00:25:32.000 The court, first in 1873, in a case called the Slaughterhouse Cases, said the phrase subject to this jurisdiction was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign states born within the United States.

00:25:47.000 Okay, so that seems pretty unequivocal.

00:25:49.000 In 1873, which again, the 14th Amendment was ratified in the year 1868.

00:25:59.000 Okay, so five years later.

00:26:00.000 Five years after ratification, the Supreme Court said in the slaughterhouse cases that subject to the jurisdiction was meant to exclude, let's say that you're an ambassador.

00:26:09.000 You're an ambassador from the UK.

00:26:11.000 You're here.

00:26:11.000 Your wife has a baby.

00:26:13.000 Is the baby a citizen of the United States?

00:26:14.000 Subject to the jurisdiction thereof says no, because your kid is actually a British citizen and subject to the jurisdiction of British law.

00:26:21.000 Okay, so now apply that to our modern context.

00:26:24.000 Let's say that you're a Mexican national.

00:26:25.000 You're a Mexican citizen.

00:26:26.000 You come across the border with your wife. 0.96

00:26:29.000 You drop a baby.

00:26:30.000 Is that baby subject to this jurisdiction of the United States, or is that baby subject to the jurisdiction of Mexican law?

00:26:36.000 And it seems, according to the slaughterhouse cases, that that kid should actually not be an American citizen.

00:26:41.000 That kid should actually just be a Mexican citizen. 0.78

00:26:45.000 But then, in a case called U.S. v.

00:26:49.000 Wong Kim Ark in 1898, the Supreme Court held that a child born in the United States of parents of Chinese descent, who at the time of his birth were subject to the Emperor of China, But had a permanent domicile in residence in the United States and are there carrying on business and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the emperor of China.

00:27:08.000 That kid was, in fact, a citizen.

00:27:11.000 So that seems to contradict what was being said in the slaughterhouse cases.

00:27:15.000 So in Wong Kim Ark, the court said, well, that's just dicta.

00:27:17.000 Okay, so when you read a Supreme Court decision, there is sort of the precedent and then there's dicta.

00:27:22.000 The actual governing law is the ruling.

00:27:26.000 And then courts can sometimes distinguish between that and stuff that the court kind of says on the way to get to the decision, which they will call dicta, sort of side points that are not binding in law.

00:27:36.000 There's also a case in 1884 called Elk v.

00:27:38.000 Wilkins, in which the Supreme Court ruled that children of Native Americans who were born in the United States were not citizens by birthright unless they were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

00:27:46.000 Again, same kind of thing.

00:27:47.000 Native Americans who were living on reservations or were subject to the jurisdiction of their tribe were not automatically citizens of the United States if born within the boundaries of the United States.

00:27:56.000 Get some more on this in a moment.

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00:30:04.000 So, that brings us to a case called Plylar v.

00:30:08.000 Doe in 1982. 0.94

00:30:09.000 There, the court found that illegal immigrant kids were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and therefore could be given free education.

00:30:19.000 In other words, this actually is kind of an open constitutional question.

00:30:23.000 Now, the practice in the United States has been birthright citizenship for well over a century at this point.

00:30:30.000 Not only that, in 1940, there was a piece of legislation from Congress that basically enshrined the idea of birthright citizenship.

00:30:38.000 However, it is a fascinating legal argument and would obviously make a very big difference in terms of how migration is done to the United States.

00:30:46.000 Because one of the ways that illegal immigration has become so prevalent In the United States, if somebody comes, they overstay their visa, for example, they drop a baby.

00:30:53.000 Now the baby is an American citizen.

00:30:54.000 And so because the baby is an American citizen, the idea would be that the parents should be given preference in terms of becoming American citizens.

00:31:03.000 They can easily see there's a world where the Supreme Court would rule that, for example, Wong Kim Ark, which is the governing precedent here, which was holding, again, that a child born in the United States to Chinese parents Who are subject to the emperor of China, but had permanent domicile and residence, that those babies are birthright citizens.

00:31:23.000 So you could say, if you have a permanent green card, for example, not a temporary visa, not you're here illegally, if you have a green card and you drop a baby, the baby's a citizen.

00:31:31.000 You can see the court saying that, based on Wong Kim Ark, that would not be in conflict with Wong Kim Ark.

00:31:38.000 However, is that the way that the court is likely to go?

00:31:41.000 Probably not.

00:31:42.000 Probably not.

00:31:43.000 The Solicitor General of the United States, Made the claim on behalf of the Trump administration that I've made here, which is that the citizenship clause was originally designed for the children of former slaves, which of course it was.

00:31:55.000 Your Honor, I'd say three things in response to that.

00:31:57.000 First of all, our primary contention is that the citizenship clause related to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens who weren't even present as a discrete class at that time.

00:32:06.000 Okay, so I think that just on a legal basis, that seems correct to me.

00:32:12.000 As far as the birthright citizenship clause and how it'll be interpreted by the Supreme Court, again, I think the Supreme Court is going to be reluctant to step into this fight, so probably they will rule against the EO on that basis.

00:32:24.000 Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked, okay, let's say that you actually were able to get rid of birthright citizenship.

00:32:29.000 How exactly would you even effectuate that at a hospital, for example, to determine whether a kid is a citizen or not?

00:32:34.000 What do hospitals do with a newborn? 0.98

00:32:38.000 What do states do with a newborn?

00:32:41.000 I don't think they do anything different.

00:32:43.000 What the executive order says in section two is that federal officials do not accept documents How are they going to know that?

00:32:55.000 How?

00:32:58.000 So you can imagine a number of ways that the federal officials could...

00:33:03.000 Such as?

00:33:04.000 Such as they could require a showing of, you know, documentation, showing legal presence in the country.

00:33:09.000 For a temporary visitor, for example, they could see whether they're on a B-1 visa, which would exclude kind of the birthright citizenship in that country.

00:33:16.000 For all the newborns?

00:33:17.000 Is that how that's going to work?

00:33:19.000 Again, we don't know because the agencies were never given the opportunity to formulate the guidance.

00:33:25.000 They're only going to have 30 days to do this.

00:33:27.000 You think they can get it together in time?

00:33:30.000 That's what the executive order instructs them to do, and hopefully they will do so.

00:33:34.000 Okay, so it'll be interesting to see which way the court goes.

00:33:39.000 My guess is that the court will limit nationwide injunctions as well they should.

00:33:43.000 My guess is that they will not go along with the argument that the court Supreme Court is going to invalidate birthright citizenship.

00:33:52.000 I think that's going to be a stretch.

00:33:53.000 It'll be hard for them to do it.

00:33:55.000 Justice Alito, by the way, had the best line with regard to the nationwide injunctions.

00:33:58.000 He said, the practical problem is there are 680 district court judges and all Article 3 judges are vulnerable to an occupational disease, which is the disease of thinking I am right and I can do whatever I want.

00:34:07.000 That is exactly right.

00:34:09.000 Justice Alito, of course, a tremendous justice.

00:34:11.000 All righty.

00:34:11.000 Meanwhile, the tax bill that is percolating through the Republican system.

00:34:17.000 Unclear at this point whether it's actually going to materialize in time or whether it is not.

00:34:22.000 A lot of issues have to be hashed out here.

00:34:24.000 As I said yesterday, there's going to have to be some political magic here done by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson as well as the Senate Majority Leader John Thune to get this thing together.

00:34:32.000 It is a giant unwieldy bill.

00:34:33.000 You have several different wings of the party who are arguing for different things.

00:34:36.000 You have the so-called moderates in the party who are arguing for higher caps on SALT deductions as well as arguing for zero cuts effectively to Medicaid.

00:34:45.000 Zero restructuring, zero work requirements on Medicaid, and all of the rest.

00:34:49.000 That'd be like Josh Howley in the Senate, as well as people like Mike Lawler in the House.

00:34:54.000 Again, these are people from purple states or purple district.

00:34:56.000 Then you have people who are very strong on the idea that we need to make cuts, because the reality is that we are facing a fiscal disaster in the United States over the course of coming years.

00:35:04.000 That if we continue to blow out our deficit to the tune of $2 trillion a year, eventually, it's all fun and games.

00:35:10.000 And if you jump from the sixth story, the first five stories are fine.

00:35:13.000 It's the sixth one that really hurts.

00:35:15.000 And that's sort of the idea with the American economy, that at a certain point here, you can see, for example, right now, the 30-year bond yields in the United States are disastrously high.

00:35:26.000 Why is that?

00:35:27.000 Because people are scared that they are not going to be able to get their money paid back to them outside of inflated currency by the United States government over time.

00:35:36.000 There will come a point here where the United States is paying trillions of dollars a year just in interest on our national debt.

00:35:42.000 Like trillions of dollars, like a significant percentage.

00:35:44.000 Of our GDP will go to paying for the interest on our national debt if we don't get our spending under control.

00:35:50.000 So you have Republicans who are pointing this out and saying we at the very least need to be bending the cost curve.

00:35:54.000 This is the case that Senator Ron Johnson is making.

00:35:56.000 He's saying, you know, what we really should be doing in this bill is just going back to 2019 spending levels.

00:36:00.000 Why exactly are we doing wildly inflated spending from after the COVID period? 0.67

00:36:06.000 That's silly.

00:36:06.000 Here is Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to get a fiscal hawk.

00:36:10.000 I ran in 2010 because we were morging our children's future.

00:36:14.000 We were $14 trillion in debt.

00:36:15.000 Now we're $37 trillion in debt.

00:36:17.000 And Republicans aren't fixing the problem. 0.98

00:36:20.000 We're exacerbating it.

00:36:21.000 That's unacceptable.

00:36:22.000 It's not beautiful.

00:36:23.000 I'm sorry.

00:36:24.000 It's not a big, beautiful bill.

00:36:25.000 That's called rhetoric.

00:36:27.000 It's mislabeling.

00:36:29.000 It's false advertising.

00:36:32.000 Okay, so, meanwhile, Senator Rand Paul, again, another fiscal hawk, he says the same thing.

00:36:36.000 He says, we're raising the debt ceiling by $4.5 trillion.

00:36:38.000 What are you talking about now?

00:36:41.000 I think the deficit will still exceed two trillion.

00:36:44.000 One of the reasons I believe that is a third component of the bill is raising the debt ceiling $5 trillion.

00:36:50.000 This has never been done before.

00:36:51.000 It's an historic amount.

00:36:53.000 It's an obscene amount.

00:36:55.000 It's something that is not conservative.

00:36:57.000 And no conservative should support raising the debt ceiling $5 trillion.

00:37:01.000 So that alone is enough for me not to support the bill.

00:37:04.000 Even though I support large segments of the bill, my fear is that really true cutting is not going to happen.

00:37:13.000 Now, again, squaring this circle is going to be very difficult because you do have representatives like Mike Lalo who are in trouble in some of these purple districts.

00:37:20.000 And remember, the House Republican majority is razor thin right now.

00:37:25.000 As Politico reports, the boiling internal GOP debate that's holding up President Trump's self-declared big, beautiful bill isn't over the deductibility of state and local taxes.

00:37:33.000 It's about the class and geographic divide splintering today's Republican Party, and it's really about two midterm elections.

00:37:38.000 Trump's first in 2018, when a series of Republicans from affluent districts retire or lost.

00:37:42.000 And his second, next year's election, when many of the lawmakers elected from upscale suburbia ever since are facing difficult re-elections.

00:37:49.000 And that's why SALT deductions have become such a big issue.

00:37:53.000 So most Trump-era congressional Republicans are fine with lower caps on SALT deductions because they're from red states or red areas within blue states, but there are some who are not.

00:38:04.000 And so Mike Lawler has said they have a very myopic view of New York and California.

00:38:09.000 He says, you know, you're going to lose our seats and then you're not going to have a majority anymore.

00:38:12.000 And that's not totally wrong.

00:38:14.000 Meanwhile, the hardliners are saying, listen, this doesn't cut spending in any material way.

00:38:19.000 And what you're doing here is basically leading us a little bit slower toward the cliff.

00:38:24.000 All of this led to a bit of a breakdown yesterday when a planned Friday vote in the House Budget Committee to advance that GOP megabill was placed in peril with three hardliners pledging to oppose the party line legislation.

00:38:35.000 This is yesterday afternoon.

00:38:38.000 Representative Ralph Norman, who sits on the Budget Committee, told reporters he would vote against the package of tax cuts and extensions, border security investments, energy policy, and more.

00:38:46.000 He was joined by Chip Roy of Texas and Josh Pasheen of Oklahoma.

00:38:50.000 And Jody Arrington, the House Budget Chair, he said, we'll see as far as when the vote would actually be moved forward.

00:38:58.000 So again, this is very fraught, at the very least.

00:39:02.000 According to Politico, House Republican leaders are having to salvage their party-line megabill a lot sooner.

00:39:07.000 Then they thought.

00:39:08.000 A surprise holdout by those conservative members of the House Budget Committee is forcing Speaker Johnson to entertain significant changes to the GOP sweeping domestic policy bill, endangering his ambitious Memorial Day timeline for a House package.

00:39:20.000 The hard right objections surrounding missing fiscal scores for the legislation and ongoing concerns about the depth of Medicaid cuts Republicans are prepared to make.

00:39:28.000 One option under serious discussion as a concession to those fiscal conservatives is moving up the onset of work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries.

00:39:35.000 By two years, from 2029 to 2027.

00:39:40.000 Now, again, that makes a lot of sense.

00:39:42.000 I mean, those things should be moved up.

00:39:43.000 I'm not sure why work requirements should only be put in place, you know, four years from now.

00:39:48.000 That is a bizarre thing.

00:39:49.000 Of course, that should be moved up.

00:39:51.000 But again, you have several wings of the Republican Party that are all clashing with one another at this point.

00:39:58.000 If it does not move forward with alacrity, however, you will see an economic downturn, a serious economic downturn, because the markets have already priced in.

00:40:05.000 A big, beautiful bill passing.

00:40:08.000 Beyond that, many of the most controversial provisions of the so-called big, beautiful bill push a bunch of the sort of pain off into the future.

00:40:17.000 So, for example, according to Politico, for all four years of President Trump's presidency and only those years, Americans would enjoy benefits like no taxes on tips or overtime.

00:40:26.000 Then, it won't be until 2029, when congressional GOP incumbents have already run for re-election and Trump is gone, that voters feel the sting.

00:40:34.000 From the pay-fors, that includes much of the Medicaid cuts estimated to strip healthcare coverage from more than 10 million people.

00:40:39.000 Now, again, it's not stripping healthcare coverage from 10 million people.

00:40:42.000 That is a wild overstatement. 0.78

00:40:43.000 The idea that people should not have to work in order to receive Medicaid if they are otherwise healthy and young is silly.

00:40:49.000 That's not stripping coverage.

00:40:51.000 That is saying you need to do the bare minimum.

00:40:53.000 You're talking about 80 hours a month, by the way.

00:40:55.000 I want to see Democrats make the argument you don't need to work 80 hours a month if you are otherwise fit and healthy in order to receive Medicaid benefits.

00:41:03.000 And why?

00:41:03.000 You just get to be as lazy as a bum and sit around doing nothing and still receive Medicaid?

00:41:07.000 Why? 0.90

00:41:08.000 Why would that be?

00:41:10.000 But that, of course, is what the media are pitching.

00:41:13.000 Get to more on this in a moment.

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00:42:24.000 There are some perks that are being added to the bill, including a so-called MAGA deposit for babies.

00:42:30.000 We've talked about this before, the so-called MAGA account, Invest America.

00:42:33.000 This is basically every baby born in the United States.

00:42:35.000 It's a $1,000 trust fund, essentially.

00:42:37.000 It is placed in an untouchable fund until they are 18 years old.

00:42:40.000 That is linked.

00:42:41.000 Or invested in the S&P 500, which means it grows over time.

00:42:45.000 Which, by the way, I think should be used as an alternative to other forms of special benefit.

00:42:50.000 How about we get rid of some of the other subsidies and we use that instead?

00:42:54.000 That makes more sense.

00:42:56.000 There's a $4,000 tax break for seniors.

00:42:58.000 Medicaid work requirements, however, wouldn't kick in until 2029.

00:43:05.000 Medicaid address checks, which is the states would have to verify the addresses of people enrolled in Medicaid.

00:43:10.000 That wouldn't kick in until 2029.

00:43:13.000 The GOP bill would force states to cover 5% to 25% of food aid costs under SNAP.

00:43:19.000 That would kick in October 2027.

00:43:22.000 Now again, states should be paying for this stuff generally.

00:43:25.000 I'm not sure why the federal government should be paying for that as opposed to the state government.

00:43:29.000 With that said, again, dragging this thing over the finish line is going to be difficult.

00:43:35.000 There is danger here if the Republicans do not drag it over the finish line.

00:43:38.000 Jamie Dimon. 0.70

00:43:40.000 He says that recession is still very much on the table and pretending otherwise is quite silly.

00:43:45.000 He's the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, of course.

00:43:48.000 Look, I'm going to defer to economists who give it about a 50% chance.

00:43:52.000 I think all these things are probably inflationary a little bit more and slowing down the economy.

00:43:58.000 If there's a recession, I don't know how big it'll be or how long it'll last.

00:44:01.000 Hopefully we'll avoid it, but I wouldn't take it off the table at this point.

00:44:05.000 So, meanwhile, President Trump came home today.

00:44:09.000 From the Middle East after a very successful round of negotiations and business dealings with Saudi, UAE, and Qatar.

00:44:16.000 So first he went to Saudi Arabia where he cleared some $600 billion in deals.

00:44:19.000 Then he went to Qatar where he cleared some $1.2 trillion in deals.

00:44:22.000 Then he went to UAE where he cleared like $1.4 trillion in deals.

00:44:25.000 So a lot of money supposed to come into the United States thanks to all of this.

00:44:31.000 There's still some sort of open questions here as to what happens on the big outstanding issues in the Middle East that are not financial and commerce related.

00:44:38.000 The biggest one, of course, is Iran. 1.00

00:44:40.000 So, Saudi has an interest in the Iranian nuclear program not being there.

00:44:44.000 Israel, of course, has an interest in the Iranian nuclear program not being there.

00:44:47.000 UAE has an interest in the Iranian nuclear program not being there.

00:44:50.000 Qatar, they're basically a cutout for Iran, so they're perfectly fine with an Iranian nuclear program, actually, which is one of the reasons that it's a little disquieting when President Trump praises Qatar for trying to broker an Iran deal.

00:45:01.000 I mean, yes, because Qatar plays both sides. 0.70

00:45:04.000 Again, treating all of these countries as though they are identical is very silly.

00:45:08.000 UAE, Qatar, and Saudi, not the same.

00:45:11.000 UAE and Saudi are completely aligned.

00:45:13.000 Qatar is so unaligned with UAE and Saudi that they nearly went to war in 2017.

00:45:19.000 Really?

00:45:20.000 Here's President Trump paying homage to Qatar trying to broker the Iran deal.

00:45:25.000 Iran is very lucky to have the Emir because he's actually fighting for them. 0.97

00:45:32.000 He doesn't want us to do a vicious blow to Iran.

00:45:40.000 He says, you can make a deal, you can make a deal.

00:45:42.000 He's really fighting, and I really mean this.

00:45:44.000 I think that Iran should say a big thank you to the Emir, because the Emir is fighting very much that we don't.

00:45:53.000 I mean, at this point, you might want to ask yourself, if the Emir is fighting very hard for Iran, why are we taking a $400 million jet from him?

00:46:01.000 There are always strings attached.

00:46:03.000 Qatar is a country.

00:46:05.000 With 2.6 million people living in it.

00:46:07.000 By the way, not 2.6 million citizens.

00:46:09.000 2.6 million people.

00:46:10.000 Qatar's actual citizenry is somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000.

00:46:14.000 The rest are foreign migrant workers and or slaves. 1.00

00:46:17.000 Because modern slavery is a real thing in Qatar.

00:46:20.000 Again, this kind of warm relationship we have with Qatar boggles the imagination.

00:46:24.000 It really does.

00:46:25.000 That's not saying that we shouldn't do business deals with them.

00:46:28.000 It's not saying we shouldn't try to foster better relations with them.

00:46:30.000 It is saying we should hold them accountable.

00:46:32.000 Which is something that I hope President Trump...

00:46:34.000 We'll certainly do.

00:46:35.000 Meanwhile, President Trump yesterday made some more comments with regard to Iran, in which, again, it's unclear which way the administration is going to go.

00:46:43.000 He issues warnings with regard to Iran, but the devil is in the detail with Iran always. 0.93

00:46:47.000 There was a rumor yesterday that the Trump administration was proposing basically a three-year moratorium on all nuclear development with Iran, and then after that, the JCPOA.

00:46:55.000 The answer to that is no, because if you leave it to the next person in office, who could theoretically be a Democrat, that just means Iran goes nuclear.

00:47:02.000 That is basically just JCPOA, the Obama deal that Donald Trump called the worst deal in history, part two.

00:47:08.000 And by the way, it is worth noting right now that Republicans have already united to fight a JCPOA, part two.

00:47:16.000 There's a letter that was put out Wednesday, signed by every single GOP senator except for Rand Paul, naturally, and 177 House Republicans.

00:47:24.000 The GOP members asked President Trump to explicitly reinforce the warnings that he and his officials in his administration have issued.

00:47:31.000 That the regime must permanently give up any capacity for enrichment.

00:47:35.000 That, of course, is the right perspective.

00:47:38.000 Now, the thing that's being pitched to the Iranians or from the Iranians is something short of that.

00:47:43.000 Iran has already said it won't do that.

00:47:44.000 Here's President Trump talking about this yesterday.

00:47:48.000 Iran wants to trade with us, okay, if you can believe that.

00:47:50.000 And I'm okay with it.

00:47:52.000 I'm using trade to settle scores and to make peace.

00:47:57.000 But I've told Iran, we make a deal. 0.97

00:48:00.000 You're going to be really, you're going to be very happy.

00:48:03.000 But more than anything, I've told Iran very simply, because I heard somebody making my case last night on television.

00:48:10.000 I didn't like it.

00:48:12.000 Because they were saying, there's plenty of time.

00:48:15.000 There's not plenty of time.

00:48:17.000 There's not plenty of time.

00:48:18.000 You feel urgency?

00:48:20.000 Well, they're not going to have a nuclear weapon.

00:48:22.000 And eventually they'll have a nuclear weapon.

00:48:24.000 And then the discussion becomes a much different one.

00:48:29.000 Okay, so again, I think President Trump does live in the world of reality.

00:48:32.000 And so I do not think that he is going to make those sorts of concessions to the Iranians. 0.50

00:48:37.000 I don't think he's going to be taken in by them.

00:48:38.000 Now, again, the Iranians are very good at this game, like extremely good at this game.

00:48:42.000 The phrase in the Middle East that's constantly used about Iran is that they never win a war or lose a peace, which seems to be about right. 1.00

00:48:48.000 And the manipulations that Qatar is trying on behalf of Iran are quite dangerous, but I think President Trump understands that.

00:48:54.000 And meanwhile, Vladimir Zelensky, Heating President Trump's desire for him to go to Turkey to negotiate with Vladimir Putin without any sort of preliminary ceasefire.

00:49:04.000 Zelensky was basically abandoned in Turkey then by Vladimir Putin.

00:49:07.000 So Vladimir Putin did not, in fact, show up.

00:49:09.000 Zelensky yesterday did show up in Ankara.

00:49:13.000 Again, he was there to talk.

00:49:15.000 And Putin didn't show because Putin has no desire for this war to end.

00:49:17.000 He believes he can simply outlast the United States.

00:49:20.000 The United States will get bored and withdraw support.

00:49:21.000 And then he'll be able to do whatever he wants in Ukraine.

00:49:24.000 Here was Zelensky talking about it yesterday.

00:49:26.000 Do you have a message for Vladimir Putin?

00:49:29.000 I'm here.

00:49:30.000 I think this is a very clear message.

00:49:35.000 Okay, so he said he was here.

00:49:38.000 It was a message to Putin.

00:49:39.000 President Trump, for his part, says nothing will happen until Putin and Trump get together.

00:49:45.000 I'm not disappointed.

00:49:46.000 What would I be disappointed?

00:49:47.000 We just took in...

00:49:48.000 Four trillion dollars, and he says, "Are you disappointed about a delegation?" I know nothing about a delegation.

00:49:53.000 I haven't even checked.

00:49:55.000 Look, nothing's gonna happen until Putin and I get together, okay?

00:49:59.000 And obviously, he wasn't gonna go.

00:50:01.000 He was gonna go, but he thought I was gonna go.

00:50:02.000 He wasn't going if I wasn't there.

00:50:05.000 And I don't believe anything's gonna happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together.

00:50:09.000 But we're gonna have to get it solved, because too many people are dying.

00:50:14.000 Okay, well, I hope that President Trump continues to put the pressure on Putin because Zelensky is doing what he wants. 0.76

00:50:18.000 He brought Zelensky to the table.

00:50:20.000 Zelensky's at the table.

00:50:21.000 In fact, he's the only one at the table.

00:50:23.000 Putin is not at the table as of yet.

00:50:25.000 More pressure is going to obviously have to be applied.

00:50:28.000 And Trump wasn't going to go to Turkey if Putin wasn't going.

00:50:32.000 So he had a bit of a bizarre catch-22 where Putin, according to Trump, wasn't going to show up if Trump wasn't going to show up.

00:50:38.000 Trump wasn't going to show up if Putin wasn't going to show up.

00:50:40.000 So neither of them show up and Zelensky shows up.

00:50:42.000 Again.

00:50:43.000 The desire by Putin to get to the end of this is significantly lower than the desire by Zelensky and Ukraine to get to the end of this.

00:50:49.000 And I think Putin knows that at this point.

00:50:52.000 And meanwhile, speaking of problems in Eastern Europe and situations in Eastern Europe.

00:50:57.000 So the country of Romania has an election coming up.

00:51:00.000 Romania, you'll recall, did actually have an election.

00:51:03.000 That election was invalidated last year, supposedly because of Russian interference in the election.

00:51:11.000 So there is a Romanian government investigation alleging that the election in December of 2024 had been tilted toward a candidate named Kalin Georgescu, who is not particularly well known, but then he ended up winning.

00:51:25.000 And the Romanian government decided to simply invalidate the election based on allegations of Russian interference.

00:51:32.000 There's a problem, however, for that particular argument, which is that the current frontrunner, a man named George Simeon, He is probably going to win in the first round of the vote in Romania.

00:51:44.000 So Georgescu was basically ruled out of order that they said he can't run.

00:51:48.000 So he's been replaced by George Simeon.

00:51:50.000 Simeon then won 40% of the vote.

00:51:53.000 He is very, again, likely to win the presidency.

00:51:57.000 We're joined on the line by George Nicolai Simeon.

00:51:59.000 He, of course, is the frontrunner in the current Romanian election.

00:52:02.000 He is the founder and current president of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians.

00:52:07.000 Obviously, Romanian elections have been a point of significant political controversy over the course of the last few months.

00:52:13.000 Mr. Simeon, thanks so much for joining the program.

00:52:14.000 Really appreciate it.

00:52:16.000 Thank you, Ben, for inviting me.

00:52:19.000 I'm quite a fan.

00:52:21.000 I've been following your podcasts, your shows, for 10 years, I think.

00:52:28.000 And I can't believe I'm now the star of it.

00:52:32.000 Well, thank you so much for joining us.

00:52:34.000 So why don't we start with this?

00:52:35.000 people who don't follow Romanian politics closely, they're not even sure what happened.

00:52:40.000 There was an election, the election was kind of thrown out, and now you're the Basically, our establishment, our deep state, didn't like the guy who won the elections.

00:52:55.000 They couldn't control him.

00:52:57.000 So they had to make a decision and the decision was to annul the elections and to say there was some foreign interference with the electoral process.

00:53:08.000 They didn't present any proof, no shred of evidence that this actually happened, because it didn't.

00:53:15.000 It was just the will of the people.

00:53:18.000 He took 22% of the votes in the first round and he was ready to win.

00:53:25.000 To have a landslide victory in the second round.

00:53:29.000 And when they saw that the smearing campaign against him, the mainstream media attacks are not working, that the people are not afraid, they said, okay, through the Constitutional Court in Romania, which is like a political instrument, it's made of politicians, not of real judges.

00:53:52.000 They decided to annul the elections on the 6th of December.

00:53:57.000 So we are facing an ongoing coup d 'etat.

00:54:01.000 They said that we will have repeated elections.

00:54:04.000 Mr. Georgescu had his dossier ready for the new elections.

00:54:10.000 And at the end of March, they said, Mr. Georgescu cannot run.

00:54:15.000 Why?

00:54:15.000 Because he had some alleged pro-Russian opinions.

00:54:21.000 So we say that he cannot run, just like the Ayatollahs in Iran, for example.

00:54:30.000 So I'm running instead of him, I'm his substitute, so to say.

00:54:36.000 And we have the popular support.

00:54:38.000 We won big time in the first round on the 4th of May.

00:54:45.000 And this Sunday we'll have the second round.

00:54:48.000 And I should be elected if nothing happens.

00:54:52.000 Nobody meddles with the elections.

00:54:53.000 If we have fair and free elections, I should be the next Romanian president.

00:54:59.000 So, obviously, because of all the accusations of Russian interference and all the rest, that's sort of top of the heap in terms of questions people are asking about Romania and your candidacy.

00:55:07.000 What do you think the relationship between Romania, the EU, the United States, Russia, Ukraine.

00:55:13.000 What should the position of Romania be in the ongoing war in Ukraine, especially considering the fact that obviously Romania borders Ukraine?

00:55:21.000 Well, we have three strategic pillars at the basis of our security strategy.

00:55:29.000 One is the membership of NATO, second membership of the European Union, and third, the strategic partnership with the US.

00:55:39.000 You cannot have one without the other.

00:55:42.000 We struggled a lot to exit the communist zone and to be part of the free world.

00:55:49.000 We made lots of sacrifices.

00:55:52.000 We actually supported quite a lot.

00:55:57.000 We invested a lot in the war effort in Ukraine.

00:56:02.000 It's clearly that the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

00:56:08.000 It is something unimaginable for some in the Western world, for some who do not know how the Russians react, how they behave.

00:56:20.000 But for us, it is very, very clear.

00:56:23.000 As it is clear that this war must stop, we must have a ceasefire, a truce, and the peace negotiations that already started, like you saw in Istanbul earlier, must conclude.

00:56:37.000 To a long-lasting peace.

00:56:40.000 The only thing we can hope and pray is that President Trump will make new security guarantees from the Russians because they are a danger and not only for us, for all the region, for Romania, for Poland, for the Baltic states. 0.96

00:56:59.000 So, aside from national security issues, there's been enormous amounts of pressure put on you and your party with regard to, say, traditional Judeo-Christian values, traditional biblical values.

00:57:10.000 A lot of the same insults have been hurled that say Viktor Orban in Hungary have been hurled at you, hurled at your party.

00:57:17.000 What's your perspective on the sorts of values that should be promulgated in Romania and why do you think there's been so much resistance to that?

00:57:24.000 Well, if you are a Christian Orthodox, you are pro-Russian. 0.95

00:57:29.000 If you love your country, you are a fascist. 0.93

00:57:34.000 If you say even that Putin is a criminal and you respect Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, for example, they say, yeah, but Donald Trump is pro-Russian and he's a Russian spy. 0.77

00:57:50.000 They would say anything in order to fight who we are, to fight our values.

00:57:58.000 I formed five years ago.

00:58:00.000 I was never involved in politics and I started from zero, a political party, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, who stand on four pillars: Christian faith, love for our nation, natural family and freedom.

00:58:19.000 So we are smeared, we are attacked by the mainstream media.

00:58:25.000 They don't like really that we say that only a relationship between a man and a woman can give birth to a child.

00:58:35.000 That we say it's not normal to mutilate small children and to have gender operation on small children.

00:58:44.000 We say the Green Deal causes a lot of poverty in Europe and in the free world, while India, China and other countries are polluting and we are not having the result and we are not saving the planet, etc.

00:59:04.000 You already know all the narrative.

00:59:08.000 The only change is that this time we are winning.

00:59:12.000 They were trying to isolate me.

00:59:14.000 They were trying to say nobody is talking to me.

00:59:18.000 But with the victory of Donald Trump with his second mandate, things are changing also in Europe.

00:59:26.000 I formed the Make Europe Great Again movement in order to win more and more national governments on our side.

00:59:37.000 And it's happening.

00:59:38.000 This Sunday we'll have elections in Romania and Poland.

00:59:42.000 I was two days ago in Poland to support the conservative candidate there, Karol Nawrotzki, who is the successor of Andrei Duda.

00:59:52.000 And we will be in power in a short period in the EU institutions, in the European Council.

01:00:01.000 This is our aim.

01:00:03.000 And this is exactly why they are trying to meddle with elections.

01:00:07.000 They are trying to annul elections.

01:00:09.000 They are trying to ban candidates like Marine Le Pen in France and to consider ISD in Germany like an extremist organization.

01:00:18.000 They only like the rule of law.

01:00:21.000 And democracy only when it's suitable for them.

01:00:25.000 When the tides are changing and people are voting conservative, they become what they are really about.

01:00:38.000 Authoritarian dictators, totalitarian regimes.

01:00:43.000 So obviously you have seen this massive populist upsurge in Europe.

01:00:47.000 An enormous amount of that has been driven by the immigration issue.

01:00:50.000 What is the immigration issue like in Romania?

01:00:52.000 How much of that has mattered in this election cycle?

01:00:56.000 It didn't matter because we are a poor country.

01:01:00.000 We are a rich country from the point of view of resources because it's a popular subject now in Washington.

01:01:09.000 I can tell you we have lots of rare earth.

01:01:12.000 We have oil, we have natural gas both onshore and offshore in the Black Sea.

01:01:18.000 We have basically all the elements in the Mendeleev table.

01:01:22.000 But we are not benefiting from these minerals, so half of our active population is working abroad.

01:01:31.000 But it is a subject in Western Europe where our Romanians live.

01:01:36.000 So this is why we had about 65% of the votes in the Romanians living in Western Europe.

01:01:46.000 I'm currently in Paris.

01:01:47.000 I was earlier in Brussels and yesterday in Rome meeting with the Romanians that are working there.

01:01:54.000 So it's like a phenomenon all over the 27 states of the European Union.

01:02:01.000 Of course, we are against illegal migration.

01:02:05.000 Of course, we are for respecting the law.

01:02:08.000 Of course, we are for common sense.

01:02:10.000 And our enemies are beginning to be...

01:02:15.000 Disrespected and ignored by the population who is not manipulated anymore by the mainstream media and have X accounts, Facebook accounts, YouTube or TikTok accounts.

01:02:29.000 The social media really helped to transform our society into a real democracy.

01:02:38.000 Now, I don't even need to campaign anymore because the Romanians are doing their videos, are campaigning for us.

01:02:47.000 So, Mr. Simeon, let's say that you become the elected leader of Romania.

01:02:52.000 What do your first few actions look like?

01:02:54.000 What do your first few months look like?

01:02:55.000 What are your top priorities?

01:02:58.000 Well, I'm running under a limited...

01:03:02.000 Project to bring back democracy into Romania.

01:03:07.000 I never believed this.

01:03:08.000 I'm 38 years old.

01:03:10.000 The Romanian revolution happened 35 years ago against the communists.

01:03:16.000 Over 1,000 people died then for freedom and for democracy.

01:03:22.000 And now it seems to be our duty to fight for democracy and freedom for the return to the constitutional order.

01:03:31.000 Hoping that we will this time have validated elections.

01:03:37.000 I will, of course, concentrate also on the economy, on reducing red tape, bureaucracy, and getting the private sector in power, because they are the people who generate prosperity.

01:03:54.000 And this is my main focus, to work with foreign investors, to help our local businesses to manage to make Romania.

01:04:06.000 Which is a great, great country to generate prosperity for its citizens.

01:04:14.000 Well, that is George Nicolai Simeon.

01:04:16.000 He, of course, is running for president of Romania.

01:04:18.000 He's the current frontrunner, likely to be the future president of Romania.

01:04:22.000 Sir, thanks so much for taking the time.

01:04:23.000 Good luck in the elections.

01:04:25.000 Thank you, Ben.

01:04:26.000 Alrighty, folks, it's time to get into a segment.

01:04:28.000 We are now calling The Takedown.

01:04:29.000 Here's the deal.

01:04:30.000 The left loves to put out monologue speeches, diatribes completely unchallenged, but not anymore.

01:04:35.000 In Takedown, we're going head-to-head, breaking apart arguments piece-by-piece, exposing the contradictions, the logical fallacies, the outright nonsense.

01:04:41.000 They've had their say.

01:04:42.000 Now, it's my turn.

01:04:43.000 Let's get to it.

01:04:44.000 This is The Takedown.

01:04:48.000 Alrighty, so, Ruben Gallego.

01:04:51.000 He's the senator from Arizona who shouldn't be a senator from Arizona.

01:04:54.000 Again, Republicans need to stop running bad candidates.

01:04:56.000 You can't run Kerry Lake for every single seat ever, guys.

01:04:59.000 Just stop it.

01:04:59.000 Anyway.

01:05:00.000 Ruben Gallego is now not just a senator from Arizona.

01:05:03.000 He has presidential aspirations.

01:05:05.000 He wants to run for president.

01:05:06.000 He pretty openly is saying he wants to run for president.

01:05:09.000 And so now he has presented a five-pillar plan on the border and immigration.

01:05:15.000 And let's just say that this plan that he is presenting is at odds with some of the things that he has said in the past, and some of it's just bad.

01:05:22.000 So here is Ruben Gallego explaining that our border and immigration systems are broken.

01:05:29.000 Our border and immigration systems are broken.

01:05:31.000 For decades, Congress has tried to take action, but at the end of the day, politics got in the way.

01:05:37.000 We've seen the same chaos over and over.

01:05:39.000 It's time to push forward and enact a plan that works.

01:05:44.000 So where were you for several years there, man, dude?

01:05:46.000 Like, really, where were you?

01:05:47.000 I would like to know.

01:05:49.000 You are a senator from Arizona.

01:05:50.000 Arizona is one of the state's hardest hit by the border crisis.

01:05:53.000 Went down to the border in Arizona and watched as...

01:05:57.000 The entire border was unoccupied by anything remotely like Border Patrol, as Mexican drug cartel drones were flying above the American side of the border.

01:06:06.000 We were there.

01:06:06.000 We saw it.

01:06:07.000 That was your statement, dude.

01:06:08.000 And you were nowhere to be seen.

01:06:10.000 Not only was he nowhere to be seen, by the way, if you go all the way back to 2017, Ruben Gallego was getting very angry when he was a representative at that point for Phoenix.

01:06:21.000 He was getting very angry at the Trump administration for enforcing the law.

01:06:24.000 So go back to 2017.

01:06:26.000 And the DHS was ordering more aggressive enforcement of detainment and deportation laws for undocumented immigrants, according to azpbs.org.

01:06:34.000 So what exactly did he say?

01:06:36.000 He said, the new guidelines tell us one thing.

01:06:38.000 The Trump administration is willing to go after just about any member of the immigrant community.

01:06:43.000 Last week, ICE arrested a DACA recipient and continues to hold them in custody without showing sufficient cause for his detention.

01:06:49.000 Now the administration releases guidelines that lay the groundwork for mass deportation and tries to sell it to the American people as business as usual.

01:06:55.000 This is far from the truth.

01:06:58.000 And he continued to complain.

01:07:00.000 He suggested, quote, these are not the values our country was founded on.

01:07:04.000 So he says that the border isn't a political talking point to him.

01:07:07.000 I think that it is.

01:07:08.000 I really, really think that it is.

01:07:10.000 Our border isn't a political talking point to me.

01:07:13.000 In cities like Yuma, Nogales and Douglas, Americans and Mexicans raise their kids, start businesses, and cross-border trade fuels our economy.

01:07:21.000 But for these communities to thrive, we must have a secure border.

01:07:25.000 As a Marine combat veteran, I'm serious about keeping this country safe and doing it without sacrificing our values.

01:07:32.000 He is so serious about keeping our country safe.

01:07:35.000 He's so serious that back in July of 2018, House Republicans passed a resolution in support of officers and staffers with ICE.

01:07:46.000 The Senate did too.

01:07:48.000 And you know who abstained from that vote, who decided not to actually vote for A resolution supporting ICE.

01:07:57.000 That one.

01:07:58.000 Ruben Gallego, who is then a representative, voted present on that particular resolution.

01:08:03.000 So, yeah.

01:08:05.000 Then he got to the actual point.

01:08:06.000 He says he wants more Border Patrol agents.

01:08:09.000 Okay, fine.

01:08:10.000 I mean, sure.

01:08:11.000 Then he says that he wants to reform the asylum system.

01:08:13.000 Now, when he says he wants to reform the asylum system, what he means is he wants to make it much easier than it currently is under the Trump administration to grant asylum.

01:08:21.000 He also...

01:08:22.000 Wants to grant a broader pathway to citizenship for people.

01:08:24.000 So what he really wants is a more open border, more regularized.

01:08:29.000 And so there are sort of two issues when it comes to the southern border.

01:08:31.000 One is people who are crossing the border between ports of entry illegally.

01:08:35.000 The other is people who are showing up at ports of entry and wanting to enter the country, being given a sort of preliminary asylum ruling, being let into the interior and never showing up again.

01:08:45.000 There is very little in what Ruben Gallego is saying that stops number two.

01:08:49.000 In fact, it actually accelerates number two by basically saying we should have quick, fast asylum hearings and basically let people into the country. 0.65

01:08:56.000 Also, pathway to citizenship for pretty much everybody who's here already.

01:08:59.000 So amnesty.

01:09:01.000 That's his argument.

01:09:01.000 So yeah, solidify those borders, but amnesty everybody who's here.

01:09:05.000 That does not sound like a moderate plan to me.

01:09:07.000 Here's Ruben Gallego.

01:09:08.000 We need to secure the southern border, reform our asylum system, expand legal pathways to citizenship, protect DREAMers, and tackle the reasons why people leave their homes in the first place. 0.99

01:09:19.000 Anyone who tells you that we can't do it all is selling America short.

01:09:24.000 We can't secure a border.

01:09:25.000 We can't fix our immigration system. 1.00

01:09:27.000 And we can do it in a way that is tough, fair, orderly, and humane.

01:09:33.000 So what exactly is that way?

01:09:35.000 So if you actually look at his 21-page plan for his new immigration system, remember this is important because he wants to run for president as a Democrat.

01:09:42.000 And Democrats are going to pretend to be quasi-border hawks before opening the border wide again.

01:09:46.000 So he says we need to make it easier for people to come to the United States legally, according to azluminaria.org.

01:09:53.000 The plan calls for increasing the annual allotment of some visas and green cards and of removing or significantly increasing arbitrary per-country caps.

01:10:01.000 He calls for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants brought to the United States as children.

01:10:05.000 That's like at least three and a half million people.

01:10:08.000 He also wants a pathway to citizenship for spouses of U.S. citizens who are in the country illegally.

01:10:14.000 Joe Biden tried that last year.

01:10:16.000 That would have covered like 600,000 more people.

01:10:18.000 She's talking about 4 million people immediately given amnesty under Gallego's plan.

01:10:23.000 Also, he wants to hire more asylum officers and give them the power to decide those cases.

01:10:29.000 So he wants to cut back on asylum access during border surges, but by adding more asylum judges, do you really believe that he's not going to loosen the standards on asylum from what Trump is doing right now?

01:10:43.000 Diego argues the United States needs to figure out why migrants are leaving their home countries in the first place and then address those problems.

01:10:49.000 Okay, that may very well be true, but that is actually the responsibility of their home countries, not the responsibility of the United States, per se.

01:10:57.000 Again, the game that Democrats are going to play now is they're going to pretend to be border hawks because they recognize that across the globe, open borders is not a popular position.

01:11:07.000 They understand that.

01:11:09.000 And so now they're going to try to cosplay as tough on immigration.

01:11:12.000 Border hawks.

01:11:13.000 Ruben Gallego is not that.

01:11:15.000 He has never been that. 0.98

01:11:16.000 Pretending otherwise is simply silly.

01:11:19.000 Okay, meanwhile, the Democrat resistance is not going particularly well.

01:11:25.000 They have yet to find sort of the talking point that they wish to hit upon.

01:11:29.000 Bruce Springsteen tried his best.

01:11:32.000 They wheeled him out.

01:11:33.000 He's like Joe Biden, except he quasi sings.

01:11:36.000 Bruce Springsteen is currently 75 years old.

01:11:42.000 And, you know, I gotta say, I was never a Springsteen fan.

01:11:45.000 I understand.

01:11:46.000 I understand that a lot of people love him.

01:11:48.000 All right, whatever.

01:11:48.000 But he is now going around talking about how Trump is treasonous.

01:11:54.000 In my home, the America I love, the America I've written about. 0.97

01:12:00.000 That has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.

01:12:15.000 Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.

01:12:32.000 Okay, where's Robert De Niro?

01:12:34.000 We're just going to bring out the octogenarian Democrats to try and lead the resistance. 0.90

01:12:38.000 Good luck on that one.

01:12:38.000 Speaking of old Democrats, Chuck Schumer says that Trump is a dictator as well.

01:12:42.000 Why?

01:12:43.000 Because he does not like offshore wind farms.

01:12:47.000 These people are beyond parody.

01:12:48.000 They're beyond parody.

01:12:50.000 Trump gave them an absolute political gift with this whole Qatar jet thing.

01:12:54.000 They're off it within like three days.

01:12:55.000 It's unbelievable.

01:12:56.000 Instead, they're like, ah, he's probably a dictator because, you know, offshore wind.

01:13:00.000 Yes, this is what the blue-collar man and woman in America cares about, is that Trump doesn't like wind farms.

01:13:07.000 Donald Trump hates offshore wind.

01:13:11.000 He hates offshore wind because supposedly years ago they built a wind farm off the coast of his Scotland golf course.

01:13:21.000 He fought to kill it.

01:13:22.000 He lost.

01:13:23.000 So now he's taking it out on all offshore wind to the detriment of the American energy.

01:13:32.000 In a way, it's like a dictatorship.

01:13:40.000 In a way, it is like a dictatorship. 0.90

01:13:42.000 Yeah, because the wind farms, oh my God, they are so incompetent. 0.92

01:13:46.000 Maybe Trump will be president forever.

01:13:47.000 Maybe Trump 2028 isn't.

01:13:48.000 I don't know.

01:13:49.000 I mean, you guys are so bad at this.

01:13:50.000 Truthfully, awful at this.

01:13:52.000 Already, it's a Friday.

01:13:53.000 That means it's time for some culture talk.

01:13:56.000 So, I have some culture updates.

01:13:57.000 First of all, There is a person named Lord.

01:14:00.000 I say person because this person who is a woman wishes to suggest that she is not, in fact, a woman.

01:14:06.000 When asked by Chapel Roan, another woman who pretends that she's not a woman. 0.85

01:14:10.000 I don't know what's so bad about being a woman that women don't want to just be it. 1.00

01:14:13.000 And why is Chapel Roan trying to run away from being a woman? 1.00

01:14:15.000 And apparently so is Lord.

01:14:17.000 Not like L-O-R-D-E. 1.00

01:14:20.000 I don't know what the E does.

01:14:21.000 It's silent.

01:14:23.000 And apparently Chapel Roan asked Lord if she was non-binary.

01:14:28.000 Which is not a thing.

01:14:29.000 There's no such thing as a non-binary person.

01:14:31.000 There are intersex people, but there's no such thing as a person who is non-binary. 0.99

01:14:35.000 It's a made-up nonsense term for trash, for stupid, for people who have some sort of deep desire for attention that they cannot earn any other way, apparently. 0.99

01:14:44.000 Lorde said, quote, I'm a woman except for the days when I'm a man. 1.00

01:14:48.000 Well, that's interesting.

01:14:49.000 Does she randomly grow up?

01:14:50.000 How does that work, precisely?

01:14:52.000 Apparently, Lorde said her idea of gender began to change in 2023. 0.98

01:14:56.000 So, I'm just going to point out at this point that Lorde is 28 years old.

01:15:00.000 Her idea of her gender began to change when she was, according to her, 26. Uh, that, what?

01:15:16.000 Hmm.

01:15:17.000 I feel like that's not a biological imperative then.

01:15:20.000 If I'm going to be given this line that all of this is just part of, it's all baked into the cake.

01:15:25.000 Born this way, baby, in the words of Lady Gaga.

01:15:27.000 If that's the take, then you don't get to claim that you randomly changed your mind about your gender when you were trying on a pair of men's jeans in 2023.

01:15:38.000 That's what she says.

01:15:39.000 She says she tried on a pair of men's jeans and sent the photo to her collaborator, Jim E. Stack.

01:15:44.000 I say Jim E because the name is spelled Jim hyphen capital E, not Jimmy.

01:15:51.000 Jim E, like wall E. Apparently, he's some sort of Disney robot.

01:15:55.000 He responded, I want to see the U that's in this picture represented in the music.

01:16:00.000 Then, while writing one of the songs that appeared on an album called Man of the Year, she said she tried to visualize how her gender felt in that moment, dressed in men's jeans with duct tape on her chest, similar to her Met Gala look this year.

01:16:16.000 These people are very well.

01:16:19.000 Very, very well.

01:16:20.000 Probably we should let them.

01:16:22.000 Promulgate culture and decency to your children.

01:16:26.000 Now, that seems to be the thing that matters the most.

01:16:29.000 That's just, that's great.

01:16:31.000 Okay, so what did we learn?

01:16:33.000 We learned there are a lot of mentally ill people in the performing arts is one of the things that we learned.

01:16:37.000 Now, speaking of people in the performing arts, we have some updates on Halle Berry.

01:16:41.000 I know you haven't heard that name for a while, but apparently, Cannes Film Festival Has now issued a new dress code forbidding voluminous outfits and nudity from the red carpet and theaters.

01:16:53.000 By the way, I have the same exact rules at our dinner table.

01:16:56.000 No voluminous outfits and also no nudity at the dinner table.

01:17:00.000 And mostly it works except for the two-year-old.

01:17:03.000 The fact that you have to make these rules for, you know, grown-ass adults is pretty impressive.

01:17:10.000 Apparently, according to an article that is available at MSNBC, Given the cultural reorientation toward conservatism across the Western world, especially in America, this new dress code reeks of control.

01:17:26.000 That reeks of control.

01:17:30.000 Okay.

01:17:31.000 Apparently, it was at least in part a reaction to Bianca Sensori's viral moment on the Grammys red carpet in February where she and her Nazi husband showed up and then she just took off all her clothes. 0.99

01:17:45.000 So that's great.

01:17:47.000 And apparently, this had something to do with Halle Berry because Halle Berry has worn stuff, I guess, that is either voluminous or contains nudity. 1.00

01:17:57.000 Before I even get to this, do you remember what Halle Berry was in last?

01:18:00.000 I remember I saw her, I feel like, in one of the John Wick movies.

01:18:03.000 So, you know what, I'm going to ask our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity.

01:18:08.000 Yes, I am correct about that.

01:18:09.000 So, John Wick chapter 3, she was in it.

01:18:12.000 It was kind of weird.

01:18:14.000 But she hasn't been in a lot recently.

01:18:15.000 She was in the X-Men series.

01:18:17.000 You'll recall where she played Tulsi Gabbard.

01:18:19.000 Sorry, Storm.

01:18:19.000 And then she was in Monsters Ball, where she won Academy Award for Best Actress.

01:18:23.000 That's when Billy Bob Thornton was, that was kind of his first round being a thing.

01:18:26.000 She was in Die Another Day playing Jinx Johnson.

01:18:29.000 That's why they, as we'll see, they asked her about James Bond, which is kind of interesting.

01:18:34.000 And yeah, that was kind of it.

01:18:36.000 You know, it's been a checkered career, shall we say.

01:18:39.000 Some hits, a lot of misses.

01:18:41.000 But that wasn't the only Halle Berry story.

01:18:44.000 Apparently.

01:18:44.000 Halle Berry did something.

01:18:45.000 We have a good Halle, bad Halle.

01:18:47.000 We need the Trump music here.

01:18:49.000 We have good Halle, bad Halle and Con.

01:18:51.000 So she said something that is true, which is that James Bond should never be a woman. 1.00

01:18:55.000 Again, I love the fact that we have to say the perfectly obvious now because apparently it's very controversial to say the perfectly obvious.

01:19:04.000 I don't know if 007 really should be a woman. 1.00

01:19:07.000 I mean, you know, in 2025, it's nice to say, oh, she should be a woman, but... 1.00

01:19:13.000 I don't really know if I think that's the right thing to do.

01:19:17.000 And no, I doubt there'll be a jinx spinoff.

01:19:19.000 There was a time that that could have happened, probably should have happened.

01:19:22.000 I would have loved for that to happen.

01:19:24.000 But I think that time has passed. 0.99

01:19:29.000 That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard, that there was a time when it should have happened. 0.99

01:19:32.000 Of course it shouldn't have happened that way because men and women are different. 1.00

01:19:35.000 Again, I provide you with the perfect example of why this is the case.

01:19:40.000 The reason that James Bond...

01:19:41.000 is an interesting and cool character.

01:19:43.000 One of the reasons is because since the inception of the James Bond character, he can talk any woman he meets into bed, right?

01:19:49.000 This is just a reality of the character.

01:19:51.000 It's not me saying it.

01:19:52.000 This is what the character is.

01:19:54.000 So there is a widespread perception that that is like a difficult thing to do.

01:19:59.000 And what makes James Bond uniquely charming, suave, and persuasive is that he can do that.

01:20:03.000 He can get beautiful women into bed with him. 0.99

01:20:05.000 You know what we call a woman who can get any man into bed with her? 1.00

01:20:09.000 A woman.

01:20:11.000 That's what we call a woman who can get any man into bed with her, basically. 1.00

01:20:14.000 Because it turns out the male sex drive and the female sex drive are not the same.

01:20:18.000 And there is science to prove this.

01:20:20.000 This is not me just speaking anecdotally.

01:20:23.000 This is scientific.

01:20:25.000 Scientifically speaking, they have done studies.

01:20:27.000 This is actually my favorite social science study.

01:20:29.000 There is a couple of professors and what they did is they had a beautiful woman walk through a bar and proposition a bunch of men. 0.98

01:20:39.000 I said to them, listen, I don't want to have a relationship with you.

01:20:42.000 I'm not interested in the quick jibber jabber.

01:20:44.000 Let's just go back to my place.

01:20:46.000 And nearly 100% of the men in the bar said yes.

01:20:49.000 Nearly 100%.

01:20:50.000 The only ones who said no, it was because they had an other appointment or because they were married and they had to get home.

01:20:57.000 And those were the only reasons.

01:20:59.000 Everyone else in the bar said yes.

01:21:01.000 Then they repeated the experiment, except they had a man go into a bar and do the same thing.

01:21:05.000 The man would go up to him and say, listen, I don't want to mess around here.

01:21:08.000 Let's just go back to my place.

01:21:09.000 His hit rate was zero.

01:21:11.000 Zero.

01:21:12.000 Because it turns out that men and women do not approach sex the same way.

01:21:16.000 So if James Bond, one of his major appeals, is that, well, then it doesn't work the same way if he's a chick. 0.97

01:21:23.000 The same thing, by the way, also happens to be true in, I know that it's a now famous Hollywood idiocy, that women can beat up very large men. 0.88

01:21:33.000 And it's in the Bond movies, right? 0.93

01:21:34.000 You'll see Anna De Armas beating up guys who are like four times her size. 1.00

01:21:37.000 And it's ridiculous. 0.87

01:21:38.000 And actually, when you watch these sort of stunt scenes, the preparation for the scenes where Ana de Armas is beating up these giant men, you can tell how ridiculous it is. 0.82

01:21:48.000 They add all sorts of sound effects and they move the camera in different ways.

01:21:51.000 They add velocity to her movements in order to make it look as though she can really beat the hell out of it. 1.00

01:21:55.000 Ana de Armas is a tiny person. 0.80

01:21:57.000 Ana de Armas is her height.

01:22:00.000 She is 5 '6".

01:22:01.000 She might weigh.

01:22:04.000 Like, I don't know what Ana de Armas' weight is.

01:22:07.000 It cannot be particularly high.

01:22:09.000 I would bet that Ana de Armas weighs no more than 125 pounds soaking wet. 1.00

01:22:14.000 I don't care who you are.

01:22:15.000 If you are a 125 pound woman and you are going up against a 220 pound man, you're done.

01:22:21.000 You're finished.

01:22:22.000 It's why there are weight classes among men.

01:22:23.000 It's why you don't have a lightweight fighting Mike Tyson. 0.99

01:22:26.000 Because that would be idiotic. 0.96

01:22:29.000 So, can you make James Bond a 125-pound beautiful woman and it be the same character? 0.99

01:22:34.000 Of course not.

01:22:34.000 Okay, so Halle Berry is right about that.

01:22:36.000 But then we got to Halle Berry being a weirdo because we have to.

01:22:38.000 So, it was Mother's Day, which means it was time for Halle Berry to pose nude with her paramour talking about lubrication.

01:22:45.000 Oh, goody gumdrops.

01:22:49.000 Jojo, how my day started.

01:22:51.000 How my Mother's Day started.

01:22:53.000 And now, I'm going to tell you about, I'm not going to show you, I'm going to tell you about how my mother's day is going to end.

01:23:01.000 Isn't that right, man?

01:23:02.000 Yes.

01:23:02.000 I wish you'd hurry up, too.

01:23:06.000 First of all, we got our Let's Spin, because Let's Spin just came out in this cute little travel size.

01:23:12.000 And so since we're in Cannes, France, I travel with it for the first time.

01:23:16.000 And we're about to give it a spin.

01:23:18.000 You about to can revamp.

01:23:26.000 Happy Mother's Day once again, everybody.

01:23:28.000 I hope all of you are somewhere spinning.

01:23:32.000 Oh my god, I ain't never been so happy to have Mother's Day come to an end.

01:23:39.000 Well, as it is Mother's Day, I hope that her two children really revel in that Mother's Day video and really enjoy it.

01:23:46.000 Because there's nothing children love better on Mother's Day than to hear their parents talk about lubrication publicly in bed.

01:23:53.000 With her new boyfriend.

01:23:55.000 Pretty solid stuff there.

01:23:58.000 That's great.

01:24:01.000 That's just great.

01:24:04.000 All right.

01:24:07.000 Well, that's the thing that's happening in all of our lives, apparently.

01:24:10.000 Already, coming up, we'll get to the latest on Scandal Biden.

01:24:14.000 Yes, it turns out that everybody knew, but everybody pretended they didn't know.

01:24:17.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:24:19.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

01:24:20.000 Use code Shapiro.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - May 16, 2025

Former FBI Director Headed to JAIL for Threatening Trump?!

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