The Ben Shapiro Show - Generation Z(ohran)?!

00:00:00.000 Today, I want to talk about Zarin Mamdani and why he's leading the answer is there is something deeply wrong with young people in this country. 1.00

00:00:06.000 We'll get to all of that.

00:00:08.000 Plus, Senator Bill Hagerty from Tennessee stops by to talk about the FBI targeting him.

00:00:13.000 We get to President Trump in Asia and all the rest of the news.

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00:00:49.000 Well, there's something bizarre going on in this New York City election, this mayoral election.

00:00:55.000 The thing that's bizarre is that people don't actually love Zorin Mamdani's policies, but he's very likely to win anyway.

00:01:01.000 According to the New York Post, Zorin Mamdani could become mayor without a majority of support, thanks to Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa splitting the vote.

00:01:08.000 And despite New Yorkers opposing his socialist policies, a poll released on Tuesday found Momdani had a 15-point lead over runner-up independent candidates Cuomo in the New Manhattan Institute survey, a wider margin than other polls showing a bit of a tightening of the race.

00:01:24.000 He was ahead 43 to 28.

00:01:25.000 Sliwa was at 19% again.

00:01:28.000 As all these polls are showing, if Sliwa dropped out, there'd be a decent shot for Andrew Cuomo to win the race.

00:01:32.000 But what's most important about this particular poll shows that when it comes to the actual policies that Momdani is pushing, people don't actually like those policies very much.

00:01:43.000 So, for example, 58% of respondents feared that making buses free could make them into rooming homeless shelters, while 33% believed all fares should be eliminated. 0.97

00:01:53.000 So, in other words, by a 25% margin, people actually believed that this free buses idea is incredibly stupid. 0.90

00:02:01.000 His proposal to get rid of the city's gifted and talented program is wildly unpopular. 0.78

00:02:08.000 64% of the same voters who are giving a plurality of their vote to Mamdani believe that gifted and talented should be expanded.

00:02:15.000 Only 21% believe that it should be scaled back in early grades.

00:02:21.000 When it comes to repealing bail reform laws and returning to the bail system before 2019, 55% want to go back before no cash bail.

00:02:30.000 Only 29% back the current program, which is what Momdani backs.

00:02:34.000 So, in other words, his policies are not all that popular among voters, but Momdani himself is significantly more popular with voters.

00:02:42.000 Now, there are a few explanations for this.

00:02:44.000 One explanation is that he's running against some pretty bad competition.

00:02:47.000 Andrew Cuomo is a particularly bad candidate.

00:02:49.000 Mayor Eric Adams is deeply unpopular, but there is something else going on here.

00:02:53.000 And the thing that's going on is Generation Z. Now, I know there are a lot of people on the right who have been talking up Generation Z. It's going to be the most conservative generation.

00:03:02.000 It's a rising wave.

00:03:03.000 Now, there is a segment of Gen Z, particularly young white men, who are moving to the right.

00:03:08.000 There is some poll support for this.

00:03:09.000 But in general, Generation Z is the most left generation by a country mile.

00:03:15.000 It is not close.

00:03:16.000 They are far to the left of the general population on every single issue.

00:03:19.000 And this sort of bizarre idea that Generation Z is going to carry us forward into a conservative future.

00:03:24.000 I'm not seeing the evidence for that as a general matter.

00:03:27.000 Mom Dani being a perfect encapsulation of this.

00:03:30.000 So, in the latest Suffolk poll on the New York City mayoral race, which has Momdani leading Cuomo 44 to 34, Momdani actually trails among all voters age 45 plus.

00:03:41.000 Among voters age 35 to 44, he runs ahead by about 23 points against Cuomo.

00:03:47.000 But among voters who are 18 to 34, so that would be like Gen Z voters and maybe like tail end millennials, Mom Dani runs ahead by 61 points, by 61 points.

00:04:00.000 Okay, that's the gap.

00:04:01.000 That doesn't mean he has 61% support.

00:04:03.000 That means he has high 70s support among people 18 to 34 voting in New York City, according to that poll.

00:04:10.000 And this is not a rarity.

00:04:11.000 Polls of young people show that they are wildly to the left of their forebears on pretty much every single issue.

00:04:18.000 Right now, according to YouGov, President Trump's current approval rating among those under the age of 30 is 29%.

00:04:25.000 According to a recent poll from Cato Institute and YouGov, some 62% of Americans aged 18 to 29 say they are favorable towards socialism.

00:04:34.000 So almost two-thirds say they are favorable towards socialism.

00:04:38.000 There was a spring 2025 Yale youth poll and it found that younger voters were consistently far to the left of the general population on everything from trans agenda issues to abortion to immigration.

00:04:52.000 So the real question is, what is going wrong?

00:04:55.000 Why are young people like this?

00:04:57.000 Now, again, there's always this sort of explanation that young people, when they're young, they're naive, they don't pay taxes, they're not ushered into an actual real life where they are participating in the normal institutions of daily activity.

00:05:10.000 And so they can kind of live in airy fairy land where everything is handed to them on a silver platter.

00:05:14.000 And there's truth to that.

00:05:15.000 We have delayed adulthood for young people all the way into their 30s.

00:05:21.000 But there's something else going on too.

00:05:22.000 And that is that young people have been told that they never have to enter adulthood.

00:05:27.000 That in fact, everything ought to be handed to them.

00:05:29.000 And that when things are not handed to them, either it's because they themselves have some sort of deep abiding illness or society itself is victimizing them in some way.

00:05:38.000 According to Harmony Healthcare IT, they did a poll of young people.

00:05:41.000 46% of Gen Z has been diagnosed with a mental health condition.

00:05:44.000 Almost half, almost half.

00:05:47.000 So either we have hit a radical genetic bottleneck here or you have wild overdiagnosis of a population that is anxiety prone and believes there is a sort of virtue in it.

00:05:59.000 37% suspect they have an undiagnosed mental condition.

00:06:04.000 More than two in five, more than 40% of Generation Z feels that, quote, their generation isn't set up for success.

00:06:12.000 Fewer than half of all Americans under the age of 35 believe they will ever have children.

00:06:17.000 So all the things that would normally usher you into a more mature view of life, getting married, having kids, holding a job, paying taxes, these are things Generation Z is apparently not interested in doing and doesn't believe that they will ever do.

00:06:29.000 Now, again, this is not because Gen Z is some sort of truly victimized generation.

00:06:34.000 In all the history of all the humans on all the planet, the idea that American Generation Z is somehow the greatest victimhood class we have ever had is insane and bizarre.

00:06:46.000 In fact, more Generation Z people hold degrees than millennials and Gen Xers did at their age.

00:06:52.000 According to The Economist, the typical 25-year-old Gen Zer has an annual household income of over $40,000, more than 50% above baby boomers at the same age.

00:07:02.000 According to Bank of America, Generation Z will be the largest and richest generation in American history within just 10 years.

00:07:10.000 So what's going wrong?

00:07:12.000 What's happening right here?

00:07:15.000 I mean, we really do have to understand that there is a radical thing that is happening with young people.

00:07:20.000 It's happening on both the left and the right.

00:07:22.000 The radical thing that is happening on the left is in fact a grievance culture that is resulting in revolutionary thinking.

00:07:28.000 And on the right, something very similar, a grievance culture that is resulting in a different sort of revolutionary thinking.

00:07:34.000 But there's some horseshoe theory going on and these two revolutionary movements can sometimes hold hands.

00:07:39.000 You see it really in sort of crystallized fashion with the Mom Donnie campaign.

00:07:44.000 The Democratic Socialists of America, they are taking over the Democratic Party.

00:07:48.000 We'll get into precisely how and why that's happening.

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00:09:59.000 So Canary Mission, which is a nonprofit that examines political issues from a wide variety of sort of more right-leaning perspectives.

00:10:09.000 They have a whole video they did looking at the impact of the Democratic Socialists of America.

00:10:14.000 And there is no question the DSA has had an outsized impact on the Democratic Party.

00:10:18.000 AOC was a charter member of the DSA.

00:10:20.000 Mondani is a DSA guy.

00:10:22.000 The DSA is the jet fuel.

00:10:24.000 for the modern Democratic Party.

00:10:26.000 And this is not a left-leaning, mildly progressive movement.

00:10:31.000 This is a revolutionary movement, a truly revolutionary movement.

00:10:34.000 Here's a bit of the Canary Mission investigation.

00:10:38.000 DSA are revolutionaries, and the Democrats are their first victims.

00:10:43.000 And in city after city, DSA victories prove their plan works.

00:10:48.000 I think that the model that we used in New York is 100% replicatable.

00:10:53.000 And just like the cuckoo, once the DSA grows strong, it pushes the true Democrats out, hollowing the party from within.

00:11:00.000 Building towards political independence and tearing apart the Democratic Party.

00:11:04.000 The DSA is not here to strengthen the Democratic Party.

00:11:08.000 It is here to consume it.

00:11:10.000 We're not here to make the Democrats a little bit better.

00:11:12.000 We're here to actually enact socialism.

00:11:14.000 And socialism is not just better capitalism.

00:11:17.000 It's overthrowing the entire capitalist state.

00:11:20.000 It's our duty, DSA, to cultivate this power.

00:11:25.000 The cuckoo is in the nest, and New York City is poised to elect not a Democrat, but Zoron Mamdani, an extremist within the DSA.

00:11:34.000 We understand that winning an election is not an end.

00:11:38.000 It is a means to an end.

00:11:40.000 The most important thing that we can do is take that empire down from within, ultimately to overthrow our own empire.

00:11:46.000 We need a movement that can drive a snake to the heart of the empire.

00:11:50.000 We need to orient ourselves towards insurrection.

00:11:56.000 So, how exactly does that kind of movement take over the Democratic Party?

00:12:02.000 Where does it come from?

00:12:03.000 The answer is that it's been inculcated by the boomers for generations. 0.94

00:12:07.000 The boomers and the millennials are responsible for their children. 1.00

00:12:10.000 If your child ends up being a radical, it's difficult to say that you had nothing to do with it.

00:12:15.000 In some cases, you didn't.

00:12:17.000 In some cases, that's a rarity.

00:12:18.000 Usually, it is because the boomers and the millennials decided to inculcate a brand of vague anti-Americanism that then metastasized into a very virulent, cancerous form of anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism.

00:12:34.000 This is why whenever I hear parents talk about their kids and they say, you know, I'm just giving them the tools to think.

00:12:38.000 I'm not telling them what to think, what values to hold.

00:12:41.000 That's bad parenting.

00:12:42.000 You should be telling your kids what values to hold.

00:12:44.000 That is actually the number one thing you should be doing as a parent.

00:12:46.000 The most important thing you can do as a parent is to become part of that chain that Edmund Burke talks about between the past and the future, maintaining the wisdom of generations and passing that on to your kids.

00:12:57.000 If you're not doing that, you're not doing your job as a parent.

00:12:59.000 Instead, what we do is we've been farming out our kids to universities filled with radicals who then teach the kids all the same sort of radical politics.

00:13:09.000 Fascinating piece from the New York Times about Momdani called how a small elite college in Maine influenced Momdani's worldview.

00:13:16.000 Now, remember, Zor Mamdani is a member of the most privileged class of humans ever to walk the earth.

00:13:21.000 In fact, he's uniquely privileged because he and his family escaped a third world hellhole called Uganda and they came to the United States and his mom became a famous film producer and his dad became a professor at Columbia University.

00:13:32.000 Both of them hate America.

00:13:34.000 And then they sent him to a bunch of very pricey private schools as well as to a very pricey college.

00:13:39.000 And then he never held a job.

00:13:40.000 And then he went to the assembly and he missed half of his votes while giving himself a raise.

00:13:44.000 And then he ran for mayor.

00:13:45.000 This is a person who has lived high on the hog, shall we say, and yet his entire worldview is revolution against that very system.

00:13:52.000 The system must be destroyed from within.

00:13:55.000 This is one of the great lies about revolutions historically, is that revolutions are led by the proletariat. 0.62

00:14:01.000 And it's a bunch of very impoverished people who kind of rise up and take power.

00:14:05.000 That is not true.

00:14:05.000 It has never been true.

00:14:06.000 It is typically a member of what would be called by the Marxists the bourgeois classes who act as a sort of revolutionary vanguard in order to remake the system.

00:14:15.000 They tend to be frustrated intellectuals, people who didn't get what they deserve, or angry at their parents or angry at the world because they were on the cusp of success, but then success ran away from them.

00:14:25.000 I talk about this at length in Lions and Scavengers, my book.

00:14:29.000 Mamdani is like the apex predator of the scavengers.

00:14:32.000 He really is.

00:14:34.000 So the New York Times writes about this Jeremy Peters report and quote, it wasn't so much what Zor Mamdani said, it was how he said it.

00:14:40.000 We're going to stand up for Haiti because you taught the world about freedom, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York exclaimed to an elated crowd at a Haitian music festival in June.

00:14:50.000 Mamdani pronounced the island's name Ahiti, near perfect Creole elocution.

00:14:55.000 When I heard him say that, I smiled, recalled Brian Purnell, one of Mr. Mamdani's former professors at Bodouin College.

00:15:00.000 He also noted that Mr. Mamdani's reference to freedom was a nod to Haiti's status as the first republic founded by former slaves.

00:15:07.000 That's straight out of the lessons from the Haitian revolution that we teach in Afrikana studies, said Dr. Purnell, who is now the chair of the Afrikana Studies Department at Mamdani's Lama Matter.

00:15:15.000 I will claim that.

00:15:18.000 So, what exactly is the background for Mamdani?

00:15:21.000 Quote, he would become one of the most visible representations of a new generation of progressives whose formative years as young adults were shaped by elite colleges where over the last decade, theories of social and racial justice became even more deeply ingrained in liberal arts education.

00:15:36.000 He graduated in 2014 from Bodouin College in Brunswick, Maine, with a bachelor's in Africana Studies.

00:15:41.000 Now, again, this is the kind of study regimen that creates career useless people.

00:15:48.000 You can't get a job as an Africana studies major outside of politics or social work or being an Africana studies professor.

00:15:57.000 It doesn't actually create a usable degree in any way.

00:16:01.000 His experience there, readings of critical race theorists in the classroom and activism for left-wing causes on campus is emblematic of the highly charged debate over what is taught in American universities.

00:16:12.000 What did he actually learn at Bodouin?

00:16:14.000 Mamdani's campaign did not respond to requests for comments about his college years, but professors there challenged the idea his education was politically circumscribed, and they described a serious student who was interested in history and sociology.

00:16:26.000 Yeah, I think not.

00:16:27.000 He formed a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which is a radical anti-Semitic group.

00:16:33.000 He tried to get Bodouin to join an academic boycott of Israel.

00:16:39.000 He, again, joined a studies department that was deeply ensconced in the idea that America is racist, colonialist, and filled with state violence.

00:16:51.000 That's where he first read Franz Fanon.

00:16:54.000 Again, he's like directly from my book, Lions and Scavengers.

00:16:56.000 Fanon is like, again, the kind of spokesperson for what I call the barbarian mindset, this idea that all ills all over the world are the fault of the West, and therefore the West must import these barbarians into our own countries in order to destroy us from within as a sort of spiritual penance for our victimization campaign.

00:17:18.000 Apparently, Mamdani stood out to his professors.

00:17:24.000 His professor said, quote, it's rare for someone to come to college and say, I want to major in Afrikana studies.

00:17:32.000 Well, yes, I can imagine.

00:17:33.000 I can imagine that that's the case.

00:17:36.000 So, again, this is where it comes from.

00:17:38.000 We inculcate this sort of stuff in our kids at the university level.

00:17:42.000 We tell an entire generation of people that they are, in fact, victims of a system that has made them the most wealthy, prosperous, and free people in the history of planet Earth.

00:17:52.000 And then we sell them the soap that if you grant power to one of these people, one of these revolutionaries, that they will fix all of your problems.

00:17:59.000 There are a lot of politicians willing to sell that soap, whether it is Mamdani on the left or a wide variety of politicians on the populist right who also say the same thing to the right-wing version of this.

00:18:08.000 The left-wing version of the grievance campaign is that America is an awful, terribly racist place that has aggrieved third world minorities and crackdown on gays and lesbians and therefore must be brought low by the revolutionaries.

00:18:20.000 Capitalism has brought us all to this horrible fate.

00:18:24.000 On the right, there is an equal and opposite movement.

00:18:27.000 It is growing in power.

00:18:28.000 It has not taken over the Republican Party yet, but it's attempting to.

00:18:31.000 And that right-wing movement is saying the same thing, except it sort of reverses the victimhood class.

00:18:36.000 The victimhood class here would be white Christian males, and the idea would be that white Christian males have been brought low by the system, and that therefore the only corrective to that is a complete revolution against capitalism, meritocracy, and all the rest. 0.69

00:18:49.000 Now, at the seed of both of these movements, there is a grain of truth.

00:18:55.000 There is truth to the idea that America, historically speaking, was not good to black people.

00:19:00.000 That America, historically speaking, was not good to certain classes of immigrants.

00:19:05.000 But the idea that that's because the American system is bad, that's not a flaw with the system, that that's the feature of the system, that's wrong.

00:19:11.000 The same thing is true on the right.

00:19:13.000 When people say white Christian males have been put under boot by the system, there's certainly truth to the idea that there is discriminatory policy, both socially and in governmental policy, that has discriminated against white Christian males over the course of the last 30, 40, 50 years. 0.87

00:19:29.000 There's truth to that.

00:19:30.000 But the idea that that is emblematic of the constitutional system or meritocracy or capitalism, and the only solution is some sort of dictatorship of the white Christian male proletariat, overthrowing constitutional norms and boundaries, going after minorities, that this somehow is the solution. 0.78

00:19:49.000 That is just as revolutionary from the opposite point of view.

00:19:52.000 And in both cases, that sort of crap is being fostered and fomented by boomers who wink and nod at this sort of stuff as jet fuel for their own ambitions or who see these people as sort of the more passionate offspring of their own ideological predilections. 0.82

00:20:07.000 All right, coming up, Jon Stewart performs unspeakable acts on Zoran Mamdani. 0.97

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00:22:33.000 So Jon Stewart, who is now well into his 60s, he's no longer the cool kid in school who is making the funny smug faces at the very, very short clips taken out of context.

00:22:44.000 Now he is passing the baton to Zoran Momdani.

00:22:48.000 Jon Stewart.

00:22:49.000 Jon Stewart has always been horrible for our body politic.

00:22:53.000 I've been critical of Jon Stewart since the very first moment because Jon Stewart turned news into comedy, but then pretended that he was a news person.

00:23:00.000 So you do the clown nose on, clown nose off routine, which has allowed him to hide behind his sanctified status as a pseudo-comedian in order to be incredibly scurrilous about how he pursues politics.

00:23:14.000 Well, now Stewart has anointed Mom Dani, Jackie Robinson, because he has to fit Mom Dani somehow into his boomer framework, right?

00:23:24.000 The boomer framework that basically says that as long as you are brown and you are going to be elected to a position, that means that you're being elected to the position in a historic way, fighting back against white supremacy.

00:23:38.000 This is how, again, Zoran Mamdani would remain a fringe figure in the DSA, except for the fact that he does have older generations fostering him, funding him, paying for him.

00:23:48.000 And Momdani is emblematic of his generation, just as Stewart is emblematic of his generation on the left.

00:23:53.000 Here you go.

00:23:55.000 I wish you all the best.

00:23:57.000 Honestly, you know, I think any New Yorker who looks at someone getting an opportunity who's representing communities that have not been as representative, a Muslim, a young person, a progressive, a Democratic socialist, you know, there are so many different communities that are looking to you.

00:24:15.000 And this, I hate to put it on you, as a bit of a Jackie Robinson moment.

00:24:19.000 And I know that that probably will be a lot of fun.

00:24:22.000 He also waits for me to put that on him.

00:24:24.000 But man, oh man, what an exciting opportunity.

00:24:29.000 Wow.

00:24:29.000 I mean, with tough questions like that, I mean, he's going to need to light a cigarette after that, Mom Dani.

00:24:35.000 My goodness.

00:24:37.000 Jon Stewart calling him Jackie Robinson. 0.98

00:24:39.000 Again, without the help of this pathetic generation, this older generation fostering the rise of the radicals, it couldn't happen. 0.98

00:24:46.000 Would not be possible. 0.98

00:24:48.000 But Jon Stewart didn't just gush over Mom Dani there by calling him Jackie Robinson, which is utterly inapt. 0.98

00:24:55.000 It's ridiculous. 0.94

00:24:56.000 The idea that Zoran Momdani has faced any serious level of discrimination in the United States is nuts. 0.98

00:25:01.000 It is crazy.

00:25:02.000 Jackie Robinson was a black man who faced death threats and slurs every day of his playing career.

00:25:08.000 And long after for the great crime of being a black man playing baseball, Zoran Momdani has been rewarded and feted and handed everything this country has to offer specifically because of his ethnic diversity and immigrant background.

00:25:21.000 And somehow he's akin to Jackie Robinson.

00:25:24.000 But that was just the beginning.

00:25:27.000 And what I love hearing about this is one of the things that's been so frustrating in our politics is so much of it has been defined over these last 10 years as the negative case against someone.

00:25:37.000 And finally, and I think this is not blown smoke.

00:25:40.000 I think you've made an affirmative case for people.

00:25:43.000 I think the enthusiasm that they have for you is because you've made an affirmative case that's not about protecting something that's going to be lost or a bad man that's over there.

00:25:54.000 It's about an idea that you have.

00:25:57.000 And it surprised me that the Democratic establishment did not embrace that energy.

00:26:07.000 Oh, but they have.

00:26:08.000 Oh, but this is the part where Stuart is wrong.

00:26:10.000 They have.

00:26:11.000 Stewart is the Democratic establishment.

00:26:13.000 I mean, it's hard to say that Kathy Hochl isn't the Democratic establishment.

00:26:16.000 Kathy Hochul literally appeared on stage with Mom Donnie two nights ago, even while she says that she's not going to do any of the things that he wants her to do. 0.57

00:26:24.000 Because again, for the boomers, it's all about that revolutionary energy. 0.95

00:26:27.000 Now, here's the thing about revolutionary energy: everyone who hopes to harness the revolutionary energy and channel it toward more moderate goals fails.

00:26:36.000 The revolutionary energy always eats everything around it.

00:26:39.000 It is a universal acid.

00:26:41.000 It eats right through the floor.

00:26:43.000 You cannot contain this sort of nuclear energy with cement.

00:26:49.000 It's not going to work.

00:26:50.000 It'll burn right through the floor.

00:26:51.000 It'll go right down to China, China syndrome here. 0.90

00:26:54.000 Well, here's Kathy Hochle say, well, you know, I'm not going to do the kind of tax increases that Mom Donnie's. 0.99

00:26:59.000 That doesn't matter.

00:27:00.000 It doesn't matter because time is passing Kathy Hochle by.

00:27:03.000 She fed the alligator.

00:27:04.000 Now the alligator is going to beat her. 0.99

00:27:07.000 You've previously said that you wouldn't be raising taxes.

00:27:10.000 Have you reconsidered that stance?

00:27:14.000 No, I would say one energetic rally does not get me to change my positions, I assure you.

00:27:20.000 But I do hear people's voices.

00:27:22.000 I process what everybody says, but I also have to balance governing this state and making sure that those people who are actually the reason we have a generous, supportive budget that helps lift people up, it's their revenues that we tax.

00:27:42.000 Yeah, but it doesn't matter.

00:27:44.000 Again, go back to that poll.

00:27:45.000 New Yorkers don't like Mom Donnie's ideas, but they want to be part of the revolution.

00:27:49.000 They want to feel part of the thing because too many New Yorkers, particularly young New Yorkers, whose elders have massaged them and have treated them with kid gloves and have never told them no, have told them that all of their own failures, all of their own sicknesses, all of their own shortcomings are not their fault and are not correctable by them.

00:28:09.000 They're only correctable by a shift in the system.

00:28:13.000 Those people have made their bet and now they're going to have to lie in it.

00:28:18.000 And once this energy is loosed, it cannot be contained.

00:28:22.000 The Democrats have loosed the whirlwind and it is going to eat them now.

00:28:25.000 There's some new polls, for example, up in Maine showing that Graham Plattner, the Nazi tattooed candidate who's supposedly an oyster farmer, but actually is the scion of apparently relative wealth.

00:28:37.000 Well, after that news came out that he has a Nazi tattoo, which he then had covered up, there was a poll showing that the current Maine governor jumped in front of him in the race by a couple of points.

00:28:46.000 That is not going to last.

00:28:47.000 It is going to recede because the revolutionary energy has been unleashed now.

00:28:52.000 Here is a video from Alex Seitzwald, the reporter of the cars outside of a Graham Plattner event in Maine.

00:29:04.000 I mean, this is a lot of people showing up for Graham Plattner in Maine, like a lot, a lot of people showing up for the Nazi tattoo guy.

00:29:11.000 Why?

00:29:12.000 Well, because he's got that revolutionary energy, and that's all that matters.

00:29:15.000 And people will make excuses for him.

00:29:17.000 The revolutionaries will always have people who justify them, who softpeddle them, who allow them to lie about their own positions in order to achieve power.

00:29:25.000 I mean, you saw in that Canary Mission video, the basic idea put forward by DSA members that they're going to say the things they need to do in order to obtain power.

00:29:34.000 They're going to lie in order to obtain power, and then they're going to do the revolutionary stuff.

00:29:37.000 That's always true.

00:29:38.000 And the question is, who lets them get away with the lies?

00:29:41.000 Who massages? 1.00

00:29:42.000 Who helps them massage those beliefs into something palatable?

00:29:45.000 Well, the answer is MSNBC does it for people like Graham Plattner.

00:29:50.000 Here he was trying to make excuses to Jen Saki about the Nazi tattoo.

00:29:55.000 We were contacted.

00:29:56.000 We were asked if I had a tattoo that had Nazi overtones.

00:30:02.000 I have had this thing for ages and it had never once come up.

00:30:09.000 At that point, we looked at it, we saw what they sent.

00:30:12.000 And it's a stylized skull and crossbones.

00:30:15.000 Stylized skull and crossbones are very popular with military units for obvious reasons, but it looked quite similar.

00:30:21.000 And at that point, I don't want something like that on my body that is going to make people think I have any kind of ideological similarity to something that I'm that is essentially so antithetical to my politics.

00:30:37.000 So I was more than happy to get it covered up.

00:30:40.000 As soon as so you learned in October and as soon as you learned, you got it covered up immediately within days, within a day.

00:30:46.000 What was the process there?

00:30:49.000 It was a busy weekend when we found out.

00:30:51.000 I didn't get to it, I think, until that Tuesday.

00:30:53.000 But yeah, it was within a few days.

00:30:57.000 Well, you know, again, this attempt to cover for platforms, it's not because the left is somehow really upset about the Nazi tattoo and they're happy that he got rid of it.

00:31:07.000 It's because the whole goal is to cover for the radicals, to allow the radicals free reign.

00:31:12.000 That is the entire goal here.

00:31:13.000 And this is how you end up with Zorin Mamdani as a radical leader in New York.

00:31:16.000 And it's why the future of the Democratic Party is with radicalism, because there is no systemic immune system rejection of this radicalism.

00:31:24.000 It doesn't exist anymore.

00:31:26.000 Now, the same thing seems to be happening on the right, and it is a real problem because it turns out that the vast majority of Americans are normies.

00:31:33.000 The vast majority of Americans like meritocracy.

00:31:36.000 The vast majority of Americans believe in the traditional American dream, meaning economic progress for them and for their children, meaning capacity to build community and church and live in freedom.

00:31:50.000 The vast majority of Americans like the Constitution and the Declaration.

00:31:53.000 In other words, the vast majority of Americans like the country.

00:31:55.000 They like America.

00:31:57.000 But if you let the radical revolutionary vanguard take over your party out of some sort of benighted idea that you must unite with the radicals in order to achieve victory, you're not going to achieve victory, number one, because Democrats are in rough waters because of what they've done here.

00:32:12.000 But number two, the victory that you achieve will be pyrrhic because you will have sacrificed the thing that you actually care about to the people who hate that thing, all in the name of garnering enthusiasm from the young.

00:32:25.000 And by the way, if this were really working out great for the young, why are they so depressed?

00:32:29.000 Why are they so upset?

00:32:30.000 Why are they so anxious?

00:32:31.000 Why aren't they getting married or reproducing?

00:32:34.000 It turns out that inculcating a victimhood grievance mentality in an entire generation of people doesn't just make the country work.

00:32:41.000 It makes those people miserable to boot.

00:32:43.000 Folks, fast facts is coming up in just a moment.

00:32:45.000 First, real men don't apologize for being men.

00:32:47.000 They build, they protect, they do the hard work that keeps the world running.

00:32:50.000 And the classic story that defined part of the past decade of the Daily Wire, we said boys are boys, girls are girls.

00:32:55.000 And then Harry's Razors called the hate speech and pulled their ads.

00:32:57.000 So we did what men with a backbone do.

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00:33:34.000 Well, now it's time for some fast facts.

00:33:40.000 Speaking of radicalism and the impacts on policy that radicalism can have, Breitbart has a good report out today based on a New York Times report about the kiddie stroll sex market on LA's Figueroa Street.

00:33:54.000 According to the New York Times, for the 77th Street Division, which covers the northern half of the Figueroa Corridor, prostitution had always been a problem.

00:34:01.000 But in recent years, the officers had seen the magnitude of child sex trafficking explode.

00:34:06.000 Now, you should know that Figueroa is just in the middle of downtown.

00:34:10.000 Gangs that had long sold drugs began to take advantage of Figueroa's lucrative opportunity.

00:34:14.000 With a dozen girls, one trafficker could easily make $12,000 a night. 1.00

00:34:18.000 Drugs are sold once and gone forever, but girls can be resold indefinitely, said Police Sergeant Alvaro Navarro, who had been in the division for two decades.

00:34:25.000 Motel owners who noticed the parades of customers but feared the gang's retribution kept quiet.

00:34:30.000 There is one problem.

00:34:32.000 According to the New York Times, California repealed the law allowing the police to arrest women who loitered with the intent to engage in prostitution.

00:34:39.000 That repeal was known as SB 357, and it was intended to prevent profiling of black, brown, and trans women based on how they, of course, of course it was, of course, because radicalism always comes, guys, with a smile.

00:34:53.000 How dare you arrest women who are loitering or men dressed as women who are loitering, clearly with intent to prostitute themselves? 0.86

00:35:00.000 How dare?

00:35:01.000 Because it might result in a disproportionate number of non-white people being arrested.

00:35:05.000 That was the logic behind SB 357.

00:35:08.000 When it was implemented in January 2023, according to the New York Times, the effect was that uniformed officers could no longer apprehend groups of girls in lingerie on Figueroa, hoping to recover minors among them.

00:35:19.000 Now officers needed to be willing to swear they had reason to suspect each girl was underage.

00:35:23.000 But sometimes with the fake eyelashes and the wigs, it was impossible to tell.

00:35:28.000 One girl told voice officers her trafficker had explained things succinctly.

00:35:31.000 We run Figueroa now.

00:35:34.000 Apparently, by the end of 2023, the city attorney was calling Figueroa the kiddie stroll because many of the girls weren't even 13 years old.

00:35:41.000 Now, again, that bill was pushed by a state rep named state senator named Scott Weiner, who is currently running for Congress.

00:35:50.000 Weiner, you'll recall, is the person who's also been pretty famously featured in photos dressed in SNM gear in the middle of gay parades and all the rest.

00:36:00.000 The ACLU had backed this pro-prostitution bill.

00:36:06.000 The New York Times basically ignored the fact that Weiner is running for Congress and was also one of the driving forces behind all this, as well as Newsom's involvement.

00:36:16.000 Now, radicalism has consequences.

00:36:17.000 Those consequences can actually be counted in lives lost, in lives wrecked, and all the rest.

00:36:23.000 Meanwhile, again, radicalism has a permission structure.

00:36:27.000 Our Quasi friend Michael Moles was on the Hill speaking with the Senate Judiciary Committee about this yesterday, where he promptly pointed out that all the talk about right-wing violence, even if that's true, there is right-wing violence, left-wing extremist violence is rewarded by the structure in a way that right-wing violence is not.

00:36:43.000 This is certainly true.

00:36:46.000 You know, there is appropriate concern, the kind of concern that one would never have on the left because they don't face any threats on college campuses.

00:36:53.000 College campuses are key, though, here, Senator, because when some fringe right-winger does something awful, he's castigated, thrown into prison, as he should be.

00:37:01.000 When a fringe left-winger commits terrorist attacks, sometimes he's given university positions, as happened with the Weather Underground, an organization which blew up part of this very building, and they were rewarded with sine cures at universities.

00:37:15.000 Again, not wrong.

00:37:16.000 And here was Michael pointing out that, you know, when you try to claim that it's disproportionately on the right, well, I mean, that's true if you just ignore left-wing violence totally.

00:37:26.000 The Covenant School massacre in Nashville, in which a trans-identifying shooter murdered Christian school children after outlining her ideological motivations.

00:37:35.000 According to authorities, there was no ideological motive there.

00:37:38.000 Go figure.

00:37:40.000 The Black Lives Matter riots, overtly leftist demonstrations that left dozens of people dead and over a billion dollars worth of property damage.

00:37:48.000 Likewise, those failed to show up on registers of left-wing political violence.

00:37:53.000 Even an attack by Antifa that targeted me personally, as well as conservative college students for our political views, appeared in official records and data sets as nothing more than obstructing law enforcement.

00:38:06.000 It turns out the left commits relatively little political violence when you don't count the political violence that the left commits.

00:38:15.000 Again, totally right about this.

00:38:17.000 The permission structures created by the radical left mean that violence is significantly more likely to take place.

00:38:24.000 And people who refuse to acknowledge that these permission structures exist, well, they're actually fomenting the permission structures in doing so.

00:38:31.000 Meanwhile, one of the most astonishing stories of the day, Bill Gates has now decided to reverse himself on his climate doomerism.

00:38:38.000 So you'll remember that Bill Gates has spent decades talking about how the global warming catastrophe is going to swamp us all.

00:38:44.000 We'll all be aboard Noah's Ark attempting to escape the tides.

00:38:48.000 Well, now he actually says that climate change will not lead to humanity's demise.

00:38:52.000 It's almost as though all of these sort of expert class, world-changing pseudo-experts, they didn't know what they were talking about in the first place.

00:38:52.000 Why?

00:39:02.000 And we're not being honest because the truth is they always knew that the kinds of measures they were proposing to quote unquote stop global warming were not going to be sufficient to what they were suggesting.

00:39:13.000 They always knew this.

00:39:14.000 Here is Bill Glates, who has a Bill Gates, who has a new climate message, has now shifted and moved.

00:39:20.000 The goal here to improve human lives.

00:39:24.000 And shouldn't we, in our awareness of how little generosity there is to help measure, you know, should we get them a measles vaccine or should we do some climate-related activity?

00:39:40.000 And if we could take, if we stopped funding all vaccines and that, you know, saved you 0.1 degree, would that be a smart trade-off?

00:39:49.000 That's the kind of question we have to ask.

00:39:53.000 So I'm a climate activist, but I'm also a child survival activist.

00:39:59.000 So what he's saying there is that actually, when it comes to the kind of causes you pursue, there are trade-offs as to human energy.

00:40:05.000 But the most important thing he said is, quote, although climate change will have serious consequences.

00:40:10.000 This is what he wrote in a blog post, particularly for people in the poorest countries.

00:40:13.000 It will not lead to humanity's demise.

00:40:15.000 People will be able to live and thrive in most places on earth for the foreseeable future.

00:40:20.000 Well, that is, well, I am shocked.

00:40:22.000 I am shocked.

00:40:23.000 I mean, my goodness, you mean the things that we have been saying on this program for legitimately a decade are true?

00:40:28.000 That actually global warming, while it could be a problem in certain areas, is something that human beings can adapt to. 0.98

00:40:36.000 What's amazing is that after spending decades promoting an agenda that basically amounted to the end of capitalism, something that was pushed by the World Economic Forum and its fellow travelers, that after spending decades claiming that we needed a wild revision of how human beings live in order to marginally lower the curve on the climate increase, now Bill Gates is reversing himself because it turns out that's stupid.

00:41:01.000 I mean, here's Bill Gates saying that the Paris climate goals were unrealistic to begin, which of course is true. 0.63

00:41:05.000 But those of us who said this were castigated and pilloried by people like Bill Gates.

00:41:11.000 That was a key milestone because the countries of the world said, hey, this is a mutual problem.

00:41:18.000 The temperature rise, the entire world will experience a temperature rise from the emissions from all these countries. 0.60

00:41:26.000 So getting countries to commit was very, very important.

00:41:31.000 The one thing about that accord that turned out not to be realistic was the ambitious goal of staying to 1.5 degrees.

00:41:40.000 We won't be able to do that.

00:41:42.000 Even if you took all the money away from health, you wouldn't be able to do that.

00:41:48.000 Okay, so then why was it important?

00:41:49.000 It was not important.

00:41:50.000 It was only not only not important.

00:41:51.000 It was quite bad. 0.89

00:41:52.000 If you set unrealistic goals and suggest that they are in fact realistic and then you fall short, all you end up doing is number one, discrediting your own cause, and number two, expending vast amounts of resources in pursuit of a dumbass goal to begin.

00:42:05.000 I mean, Gates is now saying all the things that those of us who are climate realists were saying for a very, very long time.

00:42:11.000 Quote, a few years ago, the government of one low-income country set out to cut emissions by banning synthetic fertilizers.

00:42:17.000 Farmers' yields plummeted.

00:42:18.000 There was much less food available.

00:42:19.000 Prices skyrocketed.

00:42:21.000 The country was hit by a crisis because the government valued reducing emissions above other important things.

00:42:27.000 And the thing that I object to here is not Bill Gates coming around to reality.

00:42:30.000 The thing I object to is that if you mentioned reality 10 years ago, you were considered a quote-unquote climate denier.

00:42:35.000 Even if you were somebody who said, sure, there could be some components of anthropogenic climate change.

00:42:40.000 Sure, human beings could be causing an increase in the climate.

00:42:42.000 That doesn't mean you can end capitalism or stop farming procedures or prevent people from eating meat. 1.00

00:42:49.000 That's stupid. 1.00

00:42:50.000 If you said that, you were called the climate denier. 1.00

00:42:51.000 Now Bill Gates is saying the same exact things.

00:42:54.000 Well, you know what?

00:42:55.000 I'm glad he came around.

00:42:57.000 But let's just be clear on who was being honest and who was lying all along.

00:43:01.000 Meanwhile, the government shutdown continues.

00:43:03.000 Democrats continue to somehow claim that this is all going well for them.

00:43:07.000 I don't see any evidence whatsoever this is going well with them.

00:43:10.000 Apparently, Republican poll numbers have actually increased because of the shutdown because Democrats look totally out of their mind.

00:43:16.000 Nobody even knows why they're doing this.

00:43:18.000 Here is Schumer trying to deny the reality.

00:43:21.000 Just now here on the floor, the Republican leader seemed perplexed about what precisely it is that Democrats are pushing for.

00:43:27.000 He knows damn well what Democrats want.

00:43:31.000 It's the very same thing that a vast majority of Americans want, including nearly 60% of MAGA voters.

00:43:37.000 We want lower health care costs now.

00:43:40.000 We want to solve the ACA premium crisis now.

00:43:46.000 Okay, well, I mean, you could also try to negotiate that after the end of the government shutdown when you fund the continuing function of the government.

00:43:54.000 I don't, I honestly don't understand what Democrats' strategy here is.

00:43:57.000 They've really put themselves in a position where they have no leverage.

00:44:02.000 And not only do they have no leverage, the SNAP benefits are about to cut off in a couple of days here.

00:44:07.000 And when that happens, Democrats will be blamed.

00:44:10.000 They can try to pretend they won't be by going on MSNBC and saying that.

00:44:13.000 I mean, here's Representative Angie Craig trying to blame Speaker Johnson for all of this. 0.99

00:44:20.000 I say if his mouth is moving these days, he's lying.

00:44:24.000 There has never been a lapse in appropriations for SNAP in any other government shutdown.

00:44:30.000 This isn't new territory for this administration.

00:44:33.000 They know.

00:44:34.000 Secretary Brooke Rollins, her own website up until Friday night spelled this out clearly, that that contingency fund can be used to fund SNAP benefits in November.

00:44:50.000 Again, like this is good luck with this.

00:44:53.000 Truly good luck.

00:44:54.000 John Fetterman, the only sane Democrat apparently left, he says, you know, Democrats probably should not be doing this. 1.00

00:44:59.000 This is a very stupid move. 1.00

00:45:02.000 That's just not whatever you say. 1.00

00:45:04.000 I'm not going to describe the lives of millions of Americans as like a euphemism as leverage.

00:45:10.000 I mean, this isn't a political game.

00:45:12.000 I'm not checking about how it's polling or who's going to blink or whatever.

00:45:21.000 Yeah, again, he is right, and Democrats want to oust him for it.

00:45:25.000 Okay, meanwhile, House Republicans are going after Joe Biden.

00:45:28.000 They're pointing out that Joe Biden actually, a lot of the stuff that he signed was signed by the AutoPen.

00:45:34.000 Now, again, the controversy here is not about whether Biden is allowed to use the AutoPen.

00:45:38.000 He's allowed to use the AutoPen.

00:45:39.000 The question is whether his cognitive decline was so severe that he didn't even know what he had delegated power to sign.

00:45:45.000 That's the actual complaint here.

00:45:47.000 According to CNN, former President Joe Biden experienced such cognitive decline while in office that it remains a serious question as to whether he was aware of the substance of the various pardons and commutations signed in his name via AutoPen, according to the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee.

00:46:01.000 They sent that to Pambondi. 0.58

00:46:03.000 The committee deems void President Biden's executive actions that were signed using the AutoPen, and the committee determines that action by the Department of Justice is warranted to address the legal consequences of that determination.

00:46:13.000 Now, that was made public alongside a 93-page report outlining their conclusions.

00:46:18.000 They said they had a cover-up of the president's cognitive decline evidenced, and quote, no record demonstrating President Biden himself made all the executive decisions that were attributed to him.

00:46:30.000 Now, the Democrats, of course, are very upset about all of this.

00:46:35.000 Speaker Johnson is backing this.

00:46:36.000 He says every executive action with the AutoPen should be voided, considering that Joe Biden was no longer with us.

00:46:42.000 Oversight Chairman James Comer released a blockbuster report now on the Biden Autopen presidency.

00:46:50.000 And this report includes 47 hours worth of transcripts and testimony revealing that every executive action signed by the Autopen without written authorization from President Biden should be voided.

00:47:03.000 This is an unprecedented situation in American politics and government.

00:47:09.000 The actions of President Biden simply were not all his own actions.

00:47:14.000 And there are major implications to that.

00:47:18.000 I mean, again, this is not wrong.

00:47:20.000 Democrats are still trying to misdirect away from this.

00:47:22.000 Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, he is angry at the Representative James Comer, who is pushing this forward through the House Judiciary Committee.

00:47:29.000 He says this is clown activity.

00:47:31.000 Well, no, actually, the clown activity was you guys for like several years maintaining that your president was totally fine only to take him and dump him overboard the minute that it became clear that he was actually holding down your chances of a 2024 victory. 0.93

00:47:47.000 The so-called chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comar, continues to behave like a malignant clown. 0.84

00:47:54.000 He can't point to a single thing that he's actually done to make life better for the American people. 0.70

00:48:02.000 Well, I mean, that's, I mean, I have a question.

00:48:06.000 You are currently holding up the government.

00:48:08.000 You're the one who's promoting the shutdown.

00:48:10.000 It's you and your team.

00:48:13.000 There's a reason why the Democrats are not in particularly good odor with the American public at this point.

00:48:18.000 Joining me on the line is Senator Bill Hegerty of Tennessee.

00:48:20.000 He is the former ambassador to Japan under President Trump as well.

00:48:24.000 Senator Hegerty, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:48:26.000 Really appreciate it.

00:48:27.000 Good morning, Ben.

00:48:28.000 It's good to be with you.

00:48:28.000 Thanks.

00:48:30.000 So why don't we begin with this kind of insane story about the FBI attempting to access your phone records during the Jack Smith probe?

00:48:37.000 What's the story there for those who haven't been following?

00:48:40.000 Well, Ben, I think it's beyond attempting to access.

00:48:42.000 I think they actually did, which is an outright disgrace.

00:48:45.000 This is the extraordinarily partisan Jack Smith case in 2023, just after he committed the Mar-a-Lago break-in, if you recall that, the photo op that they leaked out across the media with President Trump's in President Trump's home, where they had all these documents with confidential covers on them that they immediately leaked into the media.

00:49:08.000 He decided it's a good idea to come after eight sitting senators and a congressman.

00:49:13.000 What he did was he requested our phone records, evidently requested more phone records than what was revealed.

00:49:18.000 But what we found out initially was that myself and seven of my Senate colleagues, plus a congressman, all had our phone records handed over to Jack Smith and his extraordinary witch hunt.

00:49:28.000 And I think at any point during that period, Ben, any sentient being who read the news media would know that there was a witch hunt underway, that Jack Smith's effort was wholly partisan.

00:49:40.000 And for my carrier, Verizon in this case, to just turn around and hand over my phone records that not only told, you know, whom I'd called, the duration of the call, but where I was when I made the phone calls, Verizon, more than happy to hand it over.

00:49:54.000 AT ⁇ T would not hand over Ted Cruz's records.

00:49:57.000 They actually inquired.

00:49:58.000 AT ⁇ T inquired what was the legal foundation, never heard anything back.

00:50:02.000 But you look at Verizon, and I've taken a deeper look into Verizon.

00:50:05.000 What was going on there?

00:50:06.000 Well, I came to find out that the general counsel of Verizon used to be a staffer for one Democrat congressman named Henry Waxman, one of the most partisan players in the House of Representatives.

00:50:17.000 So what you have now is a general counsel who's a Democrat operative, more than happy to conspire and to collaborate with Jack Smith on this witch hunt.

00:50:27.000 There is a speech and debate clause in the United States Constitution, absence of treason or felony.

00:50:33.000 Any of my conversations like this are privileged.

00:50:36.000 And the pretext here is just beyond comprehension that they believe that they could come in and begin to snoop and spy on United States senators.

00:50:47.000 However, they did it.

00:50:48.000 And my phone company, again, I'm just shocked that they would have handed my records over, not let me know.

00:50:54.000 I talked with people that are very familiar with how this works here in Washington in the legal community.

00:50:58.000 They said, had I been a drug dealer, Ben, I would have probably been notified by Verizon.

00:51:03.000 But as a sitting U.S. Senator, no notification.

00:51:06.000 Again, an operative working in the general counsel's office, you know, we'll let the air clear here and find out what really went on.

00:51:13.000 But you've got this former Democrat staffer's team that is more than happy to collaborate with Jack Smith against sitting United States senators handing over this sort of sensitive information.

00:51:22.000 The legislative privilege does apply here.

00:51:26.000 That is, again, a constitutional red line that they've crossed, and there's a lot to be answered for right now.

00:51:34.000 So, Senator, what do you think the corrective ought to be?

00:51:36.000 Assuming that everything that you're saying bears out, that the Verizon made a political decision to turn over the records, that Jack Smith's investigation was indeed predicated on political attempts to target members of the Republican Party, high-ranking members, including yourself.

00:51:49.000 What should the corrective activity be here?

00:51:51.000 Well, I think this should never be allowed to happen again.

00:51:54.000 So I think the punishment needs to be swift and it needs to be severe.

00:51:57.000 We only just found out about this a couple of weeks ago.

00:51:59.000 Verizon has been wholly uncooperative to this point.

00:52:02.000 I've inquired about the information that they received.

00:52:05.000 What sort of documentation did they get from Jack Smith that they relied upon to hand over my records?

00:52:09.000 Again, no answer.

00:52:10.000 Talk to the hand has pretty much been the response.

00:52:12.000 I'm not stopping.

00:52:13.000 I'm going to continue to press.

00:52:15.000 And as this unfolds, Ben, I tend to pursue every legal avenue possible against the carrier Verizon.

00:52:21.000 I regret that I've been a customer for decades of Verizon.

00:52:24.000 The fact is, I didn't even get a call from customer service.

00:52:27.000 You know, I've written to the president.

00:52:29.000 I've written to the general counsel.

00:52:31.000 No response, no reply.

00:52:32.000 You'd think I'd at least get an apology.

00:52:35.000 But again, it's talk to the hand at this point, and that is not going to work well.

00:52:39.000 So making an example out of this situation, I think, is absolutely important, Ben.

00:52:43.000 We cannot have this to happen in the United States of America.

00:52:46.000 If I put it into your realm, you're a great journalist.

00:52:50.000 Could you imagine if the Department of Justice could have an FBI person down the hall every time you talk to a source?

00:52:59.000 Think about what the chilling effect would be.

00:53:01.000 Every time I talk to one of my colleagues about the legislative process, do I need to worry about the FBI investigating me to seek those records?

00:53:09.000 You think about what would happen to you.

00:53:11.000 The Department of Justice has actually put in place explicit rules prohibiting the snooping on news gathering type of activities that I just described for you.

00:53:21.000 I would think that a United States senator in the legislative process would at least be accorded that level of deference.

00:53:26.000 Instead, Jack Smith and his wholly partisan team comes after United States senators and our carriers are more than happy to hand over the information.

00:53:36.000 So obviously the Trump administration is now in charge of the FBI and the DOJ.

00:53:40.000 What's been the response from the FBI under Cash Patel and the DOJ under Pam Bondi on this topic?

00:53:45.000 Well, thankfully, we do have Cash Patel and Dan Bongino there as soon as they found out, and they only found out by accident, Ben, that this had happened, that these records had been revealed.

00:53:55.000 As soon as they found out, they convened the eight senators, brought us together and explained what they knew.

00:54:00.000 And they still don't know everything.

00:54:02.000 But this is something that they are digging into to get to the bottom of.

00:54:05.000 This is misbehavior beyond comprehension when you think about the executive branch spying on the legislative branch and the constitutional implications of that.

00:54:13.000 So they have immediately stepped up and said they're going to get to the bottom of it.

00:54:16.000 Pam Bondi could not be more cooperative as well. 1.00

00:54:18.000 And a number of my colleagues have reached out to Pam demanding an investigation here to get to the bottom of what Jack Smith did, what his team did.

00:54:26.000 Again, I want to understand from the perspective of the carrier who should have been protecting my interest as a customer, who should have at least had sufficient diligence, undertaken sufficient diligence to check the United States Constitution before handing my records over.

00:54:38.000 ATT at least was willing to ask what the legal predicate was.

00:54:42.000 Verizon evidently more than happy to collaborate with Jack Smith.

00:54:45.000 So we've got some real problems here.

00:54:47.000 Again, we're still in the phase of trying to get information.

00:54:50.000 Verizon has been uncooperative.

00:54:52.000 The DOJ and FBI, I'm sure, are digging into this as quickly as they can.

00:54:56.000 But with this type of investigation, they won't be able to disclose perhaps the details that we'd like to know right now.

00:55:03.000 I'm going to keep digging at it from the other side.

00:55:06.000 Well, Senator Haggerty, down another topic.

00:55:08.000 You were the former ambassador to Japan under President Trump during his last term.

00:55:12.000 You've been watching President Trump in Japan meeting the new prime minister of Japan, forming a strategy that looks like it's about forming alliances to help counter the rise of China.

00:55:22.000 What do you make of the president's trip?

00:55:24.000 What do you make of his strategy right now vis-a-vis Japan?

00:55:27.000 His trip is going extremely well, Ben.

00:55:29.000 I talked with our U.S. ambassador to Japan, George Glass, yesterday.

00:55:32.000 I talked with Kevin Kim, who was on the way to the airport to pick the president up in South Korea as well.

00:55:37.000 He's our chargé d'affaires, the acting ambassador in South Korea.

00:55:40.000 They are working their hearts out to make certain that this is the most productive trip the president could possibly have.

00:55:46.000 His time in Japan was absolutely outstanding.

00:55:49.000 If you think about the business deals that were announced, the capital investment that's coming into America, this is something we started under his first term with great success.

00:55:56.000 Japan became, when I was ambassador, the number one investor in America.

00:56:02.000 They're right back in the swing of it again.

00:56:04.000 And again, our ambassador Glass is doing a terrific job of making all of this work.

00:56:08.000 The Japanese want to be our strongest possible ally.

00:56:12.000 The new prime minister, Takeichi, she is very focused on strengthening U.S.-Japan alliances.

00:56:18.000 I spoke with her just last week about this.

00:56:20.000 She's determined to make the strongest possible relationship. 0.99

00:56:24.000 You may recall that President Trump had a very strong relationship with Prime Minister Abe when I was serving as ambassador.

00:56:30.000 Prime Minister Abe was a good friend of President Trump, a very good friend of mine.

00:56:34.000 And Prime Minister Takeichi is a protégé of Prime Minister Abe.

00:56:38.000 In fact, she gave President Trump, Prime Minister Abe's favorite putter, a great remembrance for someone that President Trump deeply misses.

00:56:46.000 Prime Minister Abe, as you know, was sadly assassinated in Japan.

00:56:50.000 But she's going to carry the mantle forward.

00:56:52.000 What I see happening in Japan is much deeper cooperation on the economic front.

00:56:58.000 And that forms a foundation, Ben, from an economic standpoint, from an energy cooperation and collaboration standpoint, and from a technology collaboration standpoint.

00:57:06.000 That solid foundation supports then our military cooperation.

00:57:10.000 And we have more United States military stationed in Japan than any other nation in the world.

00:57:16.000 People ask, why do we have such a large presence there?

00:57:18.000 Well, it's pretty simple when you think about it.

00:57:20.000 Japan is situated in a very tough neighborhood, meaning you have North Korea, Russia, and China right at your doorstep.

00:57:26.000 If you think about what's happening in the region, whether it's in the Philippines, it's in the Taiwan Strait, China's aggression has been extraordinary.

00:57:33.000 After we fell, after the fall of Afghanistan under Joe Biden, what we saw was this sort of behavior manifest itself all over the world, but particularly in the Taiwan Strait.

00:57:43.000 We saw China's aggression step up dramatically after they realized the United States under Joe Biden would not step up and protect its allies.

00:57:50.000 What we've seen happening in the Philippines, even more aggressive.

00:57:53.000 Now we've had both South Korea and Japan working with the Philippines, working with us, creating a calmer environment there and better military-to-military cooperation.

00:58:03.000 My goal is to see more of that take place.

00:58:06.000 We just had a trilateral dialogue between South Korean, Japanese, and United States business people in Tokyo.

00:58:12.000 That happened about 10 days ago with about 40 CEOs, over 100 attendees, again, looking to deepen our economic cooperation, our technological cooperation.

00:58:21.000 And I think everyone understood at that meeting that our economic security runs parallel to our national security.

00:58:27.000 And the stronger our economic ties, the deeper those ties happen to be, then the stronger we will be as allies together.

00:58:32.000 And I see nothing but a bright future ahead, both for U.S.-Japan relations, but also for U.S. relations with the Republic of Korea.

00:58:40.000 And more and more cooperation, Ben, will begin to take place between the Republic of Korea and Japan.

00:58:45.000 And as you may know, there's a long history dating back to 1910 when Japan occupied the Korean Peninsula.

00:58:51.000 That took place until 1945 when we liberated the Korean Peninsula.

00:58:54.000 Now you've got North Korea and that tension there.

00:58:57.000 We've got to deal with it.

00:58:58.000 Kim Jong-un actually started launching again ahead of the president's trip to Asia.

00:59:03.000 President Trump is focused on that relationship as well.

00:59:06.000 But I'm very optimistic that we're going to see new cooperation from an economic standpoint, a military standpoint, and again, an opportunity to see things settle down.

00:59:15.000 President Trump's going to meet with President Xi here in South Korea.

00:59:19.000 That's a new breakthrough opportunity.

00:59:21.000 I'm optimistic there as well.

00:59:22.000 A lot of good things are happening.

00:59:26.000 Senator Bill Hagerty from Tennessee.

00:59:27.000 Senator, thanks so much for your time.

00:59:29.000 We'll keep an eye on that unfolding case regarding the FBI and Verizon surveilling you.

00:59:33.000 Really appreciate the time.

00:59:34.000 Certainly, Ben.

00:59:35.000 Thank you for having me today.

00:59:36.000 All righty, folks.

00:59:37.000 Coming up, we are going to jump into the question of President Trump trying to get a settlement out of the DOJ for all of their malfeasance during the last several years going after him.

00:59:49.000 We'll talk about that, the Republican response to it.

00:59:51.000 Plus, the Senate actually bucking President Trump on trade.

00:59:53.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:59:55.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:59:56.000 Use Code Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show - October 29, 2025

Generation Z(ohran)?!

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