The Ben Shapiro Show


How Steven Crowder Betrayed His Friends | Ep. 1651


Summary

A runaway girl is kept from her parents because they supposedly misgendered her, and the cost is horrific, and Joe Biden says he has no concerns about storing classified documents in his garage. We discuss conservative comedian Steven Crowder s attacks on Jeremy Boring and The Daily Wire, a runaway girl keeps her parents from their kids because they allegedly misgendered her, a woman says she has no regrets about keeping her in her garage, and more. Today's episode is a special bonus episode of The Ben Shapiro Show, hosted by Ben Shapiro, where we discuss the latest controversy between our former friend Stephen Crowder and us here at the Daily Wire. Subscribe to our new show on Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and review! Subscribe, like, and share the show with your friends and family to help us keep bringing you quality, uncensored, fact-checking journalism. Ben Shapiro - Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire Show on the ground floor of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, wherever you get your news and opinions from the world's most influential media outlets. If you like what you hear, share it with a friend or become a supporter, share this episode on your social media accounts! Thanks for listening and share it on your stories, and tell a friend about what you think about it! Timestamps: 5:00 - What's your favorite part of the show? 6:30 - What would you do with your news feed? 7:15 - What do you would you like to see in the next episode? 8:20 - What are you would like us to do next? 9:40 - What s your biggest takeaway from this week? 11:00 | What's the worst thing you've heard so far? 12:00 13:00 -- What are your thoughts on this week's news story? 15:30 -- What's going to be the worst piece of news you're watching right now? 16:40 -- How do you think you're looking forward to in the future? 17:10 -- What s going to happen in 2020? 18: What s the most important to you? 19: What's next for you're going to do in 2020 and what would you're you're most excited about in the rest of your life? 21:00-- What's a good idea? 22:30 -- What should you be doing in 2020 & 15:20 -- Is it a good thing?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 We discuss conservative comedian Steven Crowder's attacks on Jeremy Boring and the Daily Wire, a runaway girl is kept from her parents because they supposedly misgendered her and the cost is horrific, and Joe Biden says he has no regerts about storing classified documents in his garage.
00:00:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:13.000 This is the Bench Bureau Show.
00:00:15.000 Well, folks, I'm sure many of you have seen the controversy that has broken out between our former friend Stephen Crowder and those of us here at The Daily Wire.
00:00:27.000 And it makes me sick to my stomach.
00:00:29.000 I know that my business partner, Jeremy Boring, has made him sick to his stomach as well, because we had always considered Stephen a friend.
00:00:36.000 I was Stephen's first lawyer.
00:00:37.000 I helped negotiate his contract with Fox News.
00:00:40.000 It's going all the way back.
00:00:41.000 There's got to be at least over a decade.
00:00:43.000 And Stephen and I had always been very friendly.
00:00:45.000 I know Jeremy was even friendlier with Stephen, had counseled him in very rough times.
00:00:50.000 I had personally attempted to intervene when Stephen was demonetized in June 2019 on YouTube.
00:00:58.000 I actually sounded off so loudly that the people at YouTube reached out to me and Susan Wojcicki, the head of YouTube, got on the phone with me and I reamed her out over demonetizing Stephen.
00:01:07.000 And I hope it made a difference.
00:01:09.000 Now, look, I think that Stephen is an incredibly talented comedian.
00:01:12.000 I also think that what he is doing to my friend Jeremy Boring right now is one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen in politics.
00:01:18.000 It really is one of the ugliest things I've ever seen.
00:01:21.000 In order to understand what's happening, I think you have to understand a couple of things.
00:01:23.000 So, for those who missed the story, basically, we offered Stephen a term sheet, a non-binding term sheet.
00:01:28.000 A non-binding term sheet is exactly what it sounds like.
00:01:30.000 It is a list of terms for a proposed negotiation for a contract.
00:01:34.000 And then negotiation happens, then you come to a final contract.
00:01:36.000 That is what a non-binding term sheet is.
00:01:38.000 His agent had solicited us to make him an offer.
00:01:40.000 This is when he was in his closing days with The Blaze.
00:01:43.000 And so we sent him over a non-binding term sheet for $50 million over the course of four years with an additional two-year option at $25 million.
00:01:52.000 That is, as it sounds like, a lot of money, but we thought that Steven is worth it because Steven is, again, an incredibly talented guy with a very, very large following.
00:02:01.000 And, um, If you want to hear the actual terms of the term sheet, all you have to do is go to the description on this particular video or head on over to YouTube and you can see my business partner, Jeremy Boring, read the terms word for word.
00:02:14.000 Stephen's original video in which he attacked us.
00:02:16.000 So this week, this week, Stephen attacked Jeremy Boring and attacked the Daily Wire and suggested that we had essentially offered him an enslavement contract that would have robbed him of all of his freedom and made him subject to the whims of big tech and all the rest of this kind of bullsh**.
00:02:31.000 And it's just not true.
00:02:33.000 Jeremy, unlike Steven, read the entire text of the term sheet on the air and goes through it piece by piece and explains exactly how it works.
00:02:42.000 And in short, all the contract says is we are offering you this gigantic sum of money.
00:02:47.000 And if you start to lose money for the company and for yourself because you lose YouTube, for example, then we both lose money.
00:02:56.000 So you lose some money because this is typically how contracts work on this show.
00:03:00.000 For example, if I lose advertisers and the revenue of the show goes down and I lose revenue personally because the revenue of the show has gone down.
00:03:08.000 So again, if you want the details, the legalistic details of all this, You can check out Jeremy's video it is absolutely comprehensive and irrefutable because again he reveals, I've never seen anybody else do this, he reveals literally the entirety of the of the what was supposed to be confidential term sheet that Stephen decided to partially leak for his own benefit.
00:03:24.000 And this is the part that's really ugly.
00:03:25.000 Okay so the part that's really ugly is the betrayal of friendship.
00:03:29.000 So last night Stephen Crowder In response to Jeremy reading the entire term sheet and saying, somehow Stephen misconstrued this and is using this to attack us and launch a website called Stop Big Con as though we are in the pocket of big tech.
00:03:42.000 We are in the pocket of big tech.
00:03:44.000 We who have invested literally tens of millions of dollars building alternatives to big tech.
00:03:49.000 We who put up people like Matt Walsh and Candace Owens and my show.
00:03:55.000 We who have been attacked by Facebook and have been attacked in the legacy media all the time and who are routinely demonetized.
00:04:01.000 Well, yes.
00:04:02.000 Nailed it.
00:04:03.000 We were in the pocket of Big Tech.
00:04:04.000 This was Steven's line of attack.
00:04:06.000 And supposedly, this line of attack came from that term sheet, right?
00:04:09.000 The idea was that the term sheet was doing the work of Big Tech because the term sheet suggested that if he got demonetized from YouTube and we both lost money, that he would also lose money.
00:04:18.000 What he apparently wanted us to do was continue to pay him extraordinary sums of money even if the show was losing money, which is called a charity.
00:04:23.000 It is not called a business.
00:04:25.000 The hardest thing to do in the conservative movement or anywhere else is to 1.
00:04:29.000 Run a successful business and 2.
00:04:30.000 Make a difference.
00:04:31.000 We here at DailyWare do both things.
00:04:33.000 In fact, we tried to generate a profit so we can continue to make a difference.
00:04:36.000 It turns out when you lose money, you don't actually have the wherewithal or the resources in order to do things like spend enormous quantities of money making What is a Woman by Matt Walsh or making The Greatest Lie Ever Sold by Candace Owens or funding the investigative reporters who shift the Virginia gubernatorial race by uncovering what happens in Loudoun County.
00:04:53.000 Or put out good information each and every day to rebut the evils of the Biden administration or spend the millions of dollars it takes to sue the Biden administration to stop the OSHA vax mandate or any of that kind of stuff.
00:05:03.000 They cost money.
00:05:04.000 And in order to make that money, you have to run a business.
00:05:06.000 You can't run a charity for your hosts.
00:05:08.000 That apparently is what Stephen wanted.
00:05:09.000 But Stephen decides that this is supposedly his story is that he was so offended by the term sheet he just had to speak out.
00:05:15.000 He had to stand up for the little guy, right?
00:05:17.000 OK, there is there a bunch of problems with this.
00:05:21.000 I was willing to stay silent on all of this, generally speaking, and not get into the weeds, and not get into Stephen's personal conduct, until the point when he personally recorded a phone call with my best friend Jeremy Boring, and then proceeded to release that publicly.
00:05:35.000 That is disgusting.
00:05:37.000 It is disgusting, and it is vile, on a pure human level.
00:05:42.000 Jeremy, again, has gone out of his way for Stephen more times than I can count.
00:05:46.000 He's counseled Stephen personally.
00:05:48.000 And Steven decided, in premeditated fashion, that he was going to tape his friend and then release it to grow his email list.
00:05:54.000 It is that simple.
00:05:56.000 And I'll show you the timeline here because the case here is that, again, this term sheet that he got, he was so offended by it, he just had to speak up.
00:06:02.000 He couldn't be held back any longer.
00:06:04.000 He had to speak up on behalf of the little guy.
00:06:06.000 I'm going to read you the timeline of what happened during this negotiation and when he decided to tape his friend, his supposed friend, Jeremy Boring.
00:06:15.000 So here is the timeline here.
00:06:16.000 October 5th, 2022 is when we sent Stephen this supposedly evil term sheet.
00:06:22.000 So evil.
00:06:23.000 So you would imagine that if the term sheet was that evil, October 6th he couldn't have held back.
00:06:27.000 How could you guys do this?
00:06:29.000 October 5th is when we sent him this term sheet offering him 50 million dollars over four years plus a two-year extension for 25 mil.
00:06:35.000 You know, basketball player type money.
00:06:37.000 On November 2nd, Steven called up Jeremy and said, I want $30 million a year and a bunch of changes to the term sheet.
00:06:43.000 I'm not going to redline the term sheet.
00:06:44.000 I'm not going to edit the term sheet.
00:06:45.000 I just want you to send me a brand new offer.
00:06:47.000 On November 6th, four days later, remember, this is after he's already sounded off.
00:06:51.000 He's got the term sheet.
00:06:51.000 He's had it for a month.
00:06:53.000 November 6th was election night.
00:06:55.000 You'll recall, if you're a Daily Wire fan, Steven Crowder appeared on our election night coverage.
00:07:00.000 Everything was very friendly.
00:07:01.000 Everything was very chummy.
00:07:02.000 Everything was great.
00:07:04.000 November 14th or thereabouts, we decided that we couldn't meet his demand.
00:07:09.000 That his demands were not rational in business terms, that he wanted too much money, and all the rest of it.
00:07:15.000 So we let him know, you know, no hard feelings.
00:07:17.000 We're still friends, just like we do in every contract negotiation.
00:07:21.000 As Tim Poole said on his show last night, you know, we've had contract negotiations with Tim, and we disagreed, and we went our separate ways, and we still like Tim, Tim still likes us, and all the rest.
00:07:29.000 Okay.
00:07:30.000 So November 14th or thereabouts, we told Steven that we couldn't meet his demands.
00:07:35.000 Fast forward another month.
00:07:36.000 December 12th, he registered the site StopBigCon.
00:07:40.000 Hey, that's when he registered it.
00:07:42.000 Remember, October 5th is when he received the terms.
00:07:44.000 November 14th is when we said we could not meet his demands.
00:07:47.000 December 12th is when he registered StopBigCon because he knew that three days later, he was going to be announcing that he was leaving The Blaze, he needed a plan, and attacking us was the plan.
00:07:56.000 December 15th, he announced he was leaving The Blaze.
00:07:59.000 A month after that, he texted Jeremy in friendly fashion to ask if they could talk.
00:08:05.000 On January 9th, he called Jeremy and proceeded to tape him.
00:08:09.000 Without permission, without Jeremy's knowledge, he proceeded to tape a person who was supposedly his friend.
00:08:15.000 And remember, this is all based on the passion of the upset that he had over a term sheet that was submitted to him on October 5th.
00:08:22.000 It is a month.
00:08:23.000 It's actually 36 days after.
00:08:25.000 So January 17th is when he launches Stop Big Con.
00:08:30.000 So just to get this straight, just to get the timeline straight, because this is what we would call a premeditated move in an attempt to grow your email list.
00:08:37.000 This means 104 days elapsed between when Steven Crowder received the term sheet that we submitted to him and when he launched StopBigCon.
00:08:47.000 104 days.
00:08:48.000 And it means that 36 days elapsed between when he decided to attack DailyWire and Jeremy by purchasing StopBigCon and when he called Jeremy to tape him.
00:09:01.000 So that means well over three months elapsed again between him who received this egregiously evil term sheet, which, by the way, is not egregiously evil.
00:09:09.000 The term sheet is perfectly legitimate.
00:09:10.000 It was the basis for further negotiation.
00:09:12.000 There have been moves on both sides, but there's nothing wrong with saying to a person who produces a show.
00:09:17.000 One, you have to produce a certain number of shows.
00:09:18.000 And if you don't, we're not going to pay you for the shows that you don't produce.
00:09:21.000 And two, if your show begins to lose money, you also lose money.
00:09:24.000 This is how business works.
00:09:26.000 This is how the media works.
00:09:28.000 This is how capitalism works.
00:09:29.000 We are not communists.
00:09:30.000 We do not pay people in order to not generate revenue.
00:09:33.000 We cannot run a business.
00:09:34.000 And keep it functional and employ 300 people and have the money to spend on all the wonderful projects that we like to do.
00:09:40.000 On the $100 million we're going to spend on kids content.
00:09:42.000 On the suing of Joe Biden's administration.
00:09:44.000 We can't do any of that stuff unless we are a profitable company.
00:09:48.000 We don't pay people just for the fun of it.
00:09:51.000 So, that means this is totally premeditated.
00:09:54.000 It is an attempt to grow an email list by deliberately misconstruing terms of a perfectly legitimate non-binding term sheet for a person that we, I personally and Jeremy, have gone out of our way to help multiple, multiple times.
00:10:05.000 A person who then claims that we are the big shills for YouTube.
00:10:09.000 Right?
00:10:09.000 We're the ones who are shilling for big tech.
00:10:11.000 So what's his claim on that?
00:10:12.000 His claim is that we're shilling for big tech by saying that if you get banned from YouTube and we lose money because of that, then you also lose money.
00:10:19.000 Well, I noticed that someone else makes the vast bulk of his living via the exposure he receives on YouTube, and his name is Steven Crowder.
00:10:24.000 Steven has a bigger following on YouTube than I do.
00:10:26.000 He has a massive following on YouTube.
00:10:27.000 He's a YouTube superstar.
00:10:28.000 He has six million followers on YouTube.
00:10:30.000 He doesn't want to be banned on YouTube.
00:10:32.000 By the way, he doesn't have to be demonetized in order to in order to continue.
00:10:36.000 The demonetization does not mean that he doesn't indirectly make money on YouTube.
00:10:39.000 The exposure he receives on YouTube allows him to push people to Mug Club.
00:10:43.000 He knows this.
00:10:44.000 This is why he has a pissed off YouTube segment, which is smart.
00:10:47.000 He does the same thing on his show that I do on my show.
00:10:50.000 Exactly the same thing.
00:10:52.000 You will hear me on the show when I discuss COVID.
00:10:53.000 Say, I'm about to say a bunch of things I can't say on YouTube.
00:10:56.000 So head on over to Daily Wire Plus and subscribe and hear the rest of it.
00:11:00.000 Steven does the same thing.
00:11:01.000 He says, he says, I'm going to have my piss off YouTube segment in which he avoids saying the things that will get him permanently banned on YouTube, but directs people to his site.
00:11:09.000 So is he a show for big tech?
00:11:11.000 Is he a show for big tech?
00:11:13.000 Because if you were really not a show for big tech, apparently he would just say whatever he wants any day.
00:11:17.000 He would just say it any day.
00:11:19.000 And if they knock him off, they knock him off.
00:11:20.000 But he's not doing that because he's not a moron.
00:11:23.000 Steven's not a moron.
00:11:24.000 He apparently is just a bad person who tapes his friends and then releases the tapes for personal gain.
00:11:30.000 I'm personally insulted by Steven's behavior here.
00:11:35.000 I'm more insulted.
00:11:36.000 It has nothing to do with me because he hasn't actually said anything about me.
00:11:39.000 It has to do with you don't get to attack my best friend and suggest that my best friend is some sort of shill for big tech when we spend every day, literally every day in this business attempting to fight big tech and to win.
00:11:51.000 When you spend every day trying to bring good content to people who can't get it in a lot of other ways and build a business.
00:11:58.000 Who go out of our way to make offers to people for tens of millions of dollars so they can continue to provide the content that you want.
00:12:05.000 Tens of millions of dollars to people like Steven Crowder.
00:12:07.000 I don't see a lot of other people walking across the table to make this offer to Steven Crowder.
00:12:12.000 The easiest thing to do in our particular industry is to attack your friends and make money off of that.
00:12:19.000 The hardest thing to do in our industry is to win at business and to win against the left, and those two things are simultaneous.
00:12:25.000 Because if you lose money, you can't keep operating and fight the agenda of the left.
00:12:32.000 It makes me nauseous to be talking about this, honestly.
00:12:37.000 It makes me sick to be talking about this.
00:12:41.000 I'm sad for Stephen that he feels the necessity to plan for months apparently to attack his friends to try to grow an email list in the most cynical possible fashion and tape his friends on the phone and then release that public.
00:12:56.000 Who does that?
00:12:57.000 Who does that?
00:12:58.000 Is that something you do?
00:12:59.000 I'm going to just ask you on a personal level.
00:13:01.000 Have you ever done that?
00:13:01.000 Have you ever taped your friends?
00:13:03.000 Is that a thing that you do?
00:13:05.000 You text your friend just so you can set them up on tape.
00:13:08.000 And then you selectively release parts of the tape to try to make them look bad.
00:13:11.000 It fails, by the way.
00:13:13.000 And you lie about the terms that you are offered in order to grow your email list and look like the truest conservative in all the land.
00:13:21.000 The man who's truly standing up while, by the way, not being banned from YouTube.
00:13:25.000 He explicitly says on his show that he does not say things on YouTube so he will not be banned on YouTube.
00:13:31.000 But when we say the same thing to him, apparently it's super bad.
00:13:34.000 Or alternatively, this is one of the all-time planned attacks for monetization I have ever seen.
00:13:42.000 And doing it by attacking a person like Jeremy, who's been extremely kind to Steven, is just vile at the highest possible level.
00:13:51.000 It's personally Repulsive.
00:13:54.000 It's absolutely repulsive.
00:13:56.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.
00:13:57.000 First, if the past couple of years have taught us anything, it's that in a crisis-like situation, it can be very difficult to come by the things you actually need.
00:14:04.000 Remember during the pandemic at the very, very beginning, you couldn't get any toilet paper?
00:14:07.000 Well, imagine that something bad happens after a natural disaster and now you can't get the antibiotics you need.
00:14:11.000 That's a serious problem.
00:14:12.000 This is where Jace Medical comes in.
00:14:15.000 You need to be prepared for anything, and my new partners at Jace Medical are here to help.
00:14:19.000 Jace Medical helps you get a long-term supply of prescription medication.
00:14:22.000 Their mission is to empower you to be better medically prepared.
00:14:25.000 A great way to start preparing is with the Jace Case.
00:14:27.000 It's a pack of five different courses of antibiotics you can use to treat a whole host of bacterial illnesses, including UTIs, respiratory infections, sinusitis, skin infections, and more.
00:14:35.000 All you have to do is fill out a simple online form and, in some cases, jump on a quick call with one of their board-certified physicians.
00:14:40.000 From there, you can ask your physician treatment-related questions on an ongoing basis.
00:14:44.000 This is a smart thing to do.
00:14:46.000 You've got to be prepared in case of crisis and JaceCase allows you to do so.
00:14:49.000 I have the JaceCase.
00:14:50.000 It means that my family has what we need if the worst should happen.
00:14:53.000 I want you to be prepared for anything as well.
00:14:54.000 Go to jacemedical.com, enter code BEN and check out for 10 bucks off your order.
00:14:58.000 Again, that's jacemedical.com, promo code BEN.
00:15:01.000 Also, if you are tired of the government playing games with your savings and your retirement plan, you should at least invest a little bit in precious metals.
00:15:07.000 It's something that I've done.
00:15:08.000 I don't like the government having total control of all of my assets.
00:15:11.000 I don't like them being to inflate and deflate the currency.
00:15:13.000 I'm not a big fan of them being able to regulate the stock market in particular ways, which affects my portfolio.
00:15:18.000 There's one asset that has been a durable store of value for literally all of human history, pretty much, and that would be gold.
00:15:24.000 This is why I invest at least a little bit of my money in precious metals from my friends over at Birch Gold.
00:15:28.000 Birch Gold, Makes it easy to convert an IRA or 401k into an IRA in precious metals.
00:15:32.000 Text Ben to 989898.
00:15:34.000 Claim your free info kit on gold.
00:15:35.000 Then talk to one of their precious metal specialists.
00:15:37.000 When you purchase from Birch Gold by January 31st, you'll get a signed copy of my book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps, which seems more and more like the Biden administration's playbook these days with an A-plus rating.
00:15:46.000 With the Better Business Bureau, thousands of happy customers, and countless five-star reviews, you can trust Birch Gold to help you protect your savings.
00:15:51.000 I bought gold because I was tired of my money being impacted by dumb decisions made by our leaders in Washington, D.C.
00:15:56.000 If you want to be more like me, text Ben to 98-98-98.
00:15:59.000 Claim that free information and get a signed copy of my book.
00:16:02.000 That is Ben.
00:16:02.000 Text it to 98-98-98 today.
00:16:03.000 Alrighty.
00:16:03.000 98 98 today.
00:16:05.000 Alrighty, now on to regular news.
00:16:08.000 So let's talk for a second about this horrific story out in Maryland.
00:16:14.000 One of the things we do here at Daily Wire is we fund investigative reporters.
00:16:17.000 Our best investigative reporter right now is Luke Rosiak.
00:16:19.000 Luke does an amazing job.
00:16:21.000 It was Luke who uncovered the sexual assault of a minor by a person who identified as a member of the opposite gender in a bathroom in Loudoun County and the denial of Loudoun County School District that anything bad had happened.
00:16:31.000 And it totally shifted the Virginia governor's race.
00:16:32.000 Well, now Luke has another story.
00:16:34.000 And this story is just, it's just gut-wrenching.
00:16:37.000 So here is the story.
00:16:39.000 Apparently, the state of Maryland refused to give a Virginia runaway back to her parents because her parents quote unquote misgendered her.
00:16:48.000 And then she was sex trafficked, according to the mom.
00:16:50.000 These are the wages.
00:16:52.000 of a state that values gender ideology nonsense over the actual safety of children.
00:16:57.000 Here's what Luke reports, quote, A 14-year-old transgender runaway from Virginia endured a six-month nightmare that saw her twice fall into the hands of sex traffickers, the second time after Baltimore bureaucrats refused to return her to her home state because they accused her adoptive parents of misgendering her, according to records reviewed by the Daily Wire.
00:17:13.000 The child, identified in legal documents as Sage, was adopted by her biological grandmother, Michelle Blair, after the death of her father.
00:17:19.000 Long troubled, Sage began identifying as a male named Draco and ran away from their rural home in late August of 2021, only to end up on the mean streets of Baltimore, where authorities rescued her from a convicted sex offender, according to records.
00:17:30.000 So she ran away from home.
00:17:31.000 She ended up in Maryland.
00:17:32.000 She was in the home of a convicted sex offender, and the authority found her.
00:17:37.000 But instead of taking her back to her parents, instead they decided to put her in an inner city group home.
00:17:41.000 Why?
00:17:42.000 Well, because they said that her adoptive blood relative parents didn't sufficiently recognize her transgender identity.
00:17:50.000 So they'd rather put her in essentially an orphanage in Baltimore with random people rather than with her adoptive parents, who apparently are close relatives, because her close relatives refuse to acknowledge that a boy can become a girl or a girl can become a boy.
00:18:06.000 It is not possible to return the child to that home, said Judge Robert B. Kershaw after an impassioned plea from Baltimore Assistant Public Defender Anissa Khan.
00:18:14.000 Instead, the judge turned Sage over to the Baltimore City Department of Juvenile Services, quote, for placement in a hardware-secure therapeutic facility, which makes reasonable accommodation for respondents' expressed male gender and desire to live as a trans male.
00:18:25.000 Remember, this is a 14-year-old child.
00:18:27.000 This is a child.
00:18:29.000 That meant housing the girl just rescued from a sex offender with some of Baltimore's most troubled biological males.
00:18:33.000 After months in Maryland institutions, Sage bolted, only to resurface in Texas, where she once again had been allegedly trafficked to pedophiles, according to records.
00:18:42.000 Unlike their counterparts in Maryland, Texas officials returned her to her parents, according to an ethics complaint that was filed by the parents against the public defender.
00:18:53.000 Khan allegedly told the girl to lie about being abused by her parents, seemingly in order to create a legal precedent allowing states other than where a teen lives to refuse to return a runaway teen if transgender issues are in play.
00:19:04.000 So again, just to be clear about what happened here.
00:19:08.000 The accusation is that the Baltimore assistant public defender, Anisa Khan, encouraged this very troubled 14-year-old girl, who is now identifying as a boy, to claim abuse at the hands of her adoptive close relative parents so that she would not be returned to those people mainly because they say that she's actually a girl and not a boy.
00:19:27.000 Being the subject of an interstate tug-of-war driven by an ideological leftist bureaucracy was a new kind of exploitation for SAGE, who had become accustomed to evil men seeking to use them for profit or gratification.
00:19:37.000 Her grandmother recounted for police how the cruel spiral began for the child she still hopes to raise.
00:19:41.000 I went to wake up my daughter, Blair said, describing the morning of August 25th, 2021 in an Appomattox County Sheriff's Office report.
00:19:47.000 She was gone.
00:19:48.000 The window screen had been cut open.
00:19:50.000 I immediately looked everywhere and they drove to the Appomattox Sheriff to report Sage missing.
00:19:53.000 Sage would later reveal she sneaked out to meet someone she thought was a 16-year-old boy who liked skateboarding, but the person was in fact a sex offender who had been grooming her online and took her to Washington and then to Baltimore, according to Michelle.
00:20:04.000 A frantic search that included the Sheriff's Office, FBI, Virginia State Police, and U.S.
00:20:08.000 Marshals ended one week later, when Sage was found in Baltimore with Kenneth Fisher, a 36-year-old convicted sex offender.
00:20:14.000 In the weeks she'd been missing, Sage experienced untold horror at his hands.
00:20:18.000 Blair would later write in a victim impact statement, quote, When Sage was delivered to this man, he told my daughter she was now part of his family.
00:20:24.000 Sage replied she was only 14 years old and please don't rape me, to which Kenneth Fisher immediately took her into his bedroom and violently raped her.
00:20:29.000 He enjoyed strangling her, but not quite to death.
00:20:31.000 This sick man trafficked her to so many men that Sage lost count.
00:20:35.000 Fisher is now being housed in jail, but he was not the last adult to exploit Sage, because after Sage was found, Blair drove all night to pick her up.
00:20:41.000 But the city of Baltimore said she was being held in jail as a defendant, apparently for running away.
00:20:46.000 Her court-appointed lawyer was Khan, whose LinkedIn page says, quote, defense attorneys become the heroes of justice, as they were called to stand in the gap between the coercive power of the state and the relatively limited power of the indigent accused, who were and are still disproportionately black and Latinx.
00:21:00.000 It was Khan who persuaded Judge Kershaw not to return Sage to her home in Virginia after her 72-year-old grandfather, overcome by emotion, accidentally called her she.
00:21:09.000 Ironically, Blair is a longtime court-appointed child advocate, ordinarily making her an ideal trusted parent.
00:21:15.000 But the Maryland Juvenile Court maintained her home was abusive, even after a local Virginia agency's investigation found no such mistreatment.
00:21:22.000 Blair believes Khan was intent on making her daughter a poster child in the fight for trans rights above parental rights, no matter the cost.
00:21:28.000 A week after ruling that Sage could not be sent back to Virginia, Kershaw received a form asserting Blair's right of custody and the obligation of the state of Maryland to turn her over under the Interstate Compact on juveniles, the ICJ.
00:21:39.000 Kershaw rejected it on a technicality.
00:21:43.000 Kershaw, careful to use Sage's preferred masculine pronoun and new name, also faulted the petition for failing to, quote, state the circumstances of Draco's running away or his location at the time the application was made.
00:21:53.000 Kershaw ordered Sage fitted with a GPS monitor and sent to an institution called the Children's Home.
00:21:59.000 But it seems that Draco then ran away again, Sage ran away again, and found herself in Texas, where she was then trafficked to a bunch of pedophiles.
00:22:11.000 So, the trans agenda taking precedence over any interest of the child.
00:22:18.000 Absolutely horrifying story.
00:22:20.000 Good on Luke for reporting it.
00:22:22.000 If this is a systemic problem across the country, Kids being removed from their parents because the parents refuse to go along with the predations of gender ideology.
00:22:30.000 We are in a world of trouble, and so are our children.
00:22:33.000 Just a horrifying story.
00:22:33.000 That's the kind of work that we're doing over at Daily Wire, uncovering that sort of stuff.
00:22:36.000 So good on Luke Rosiak, our investigative reporter, for uncovering another bombshell.
00:22:40.000 Just horrifying, horrifying stuff.
00:22:41.000 Okay, meanwhile, the big entertainment story of the day is that Alec Baldwin is going to be charged with involuntary manslaughter in the shooting of the cinematographer of a film called Rust.
00:22:50.000 You'll remember this was a big controversy at the time.
00:22:53.000 Apparently Alec Baldwin had pointed the gun, he's a Western of some sort, he pointed the gun at a camera, and then he had shot the gun, and there was live ammo in the gun, and he ended up killing the cinematographer.
00:23:06.000 The New York Times reports, for more than a year, the actor Alec Baldwin has tried to defend himself against the suggestion he bore responsibility for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of Rust, a low budget Western he was filming on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
00:23:17.000 He told detectives he had been assured the gun he was rehearsing with that day did not contain live ammo, sat down for an extensive TV interview, sought indemnification for financial liability in the case, and then sued crew members on the film, claiming they were the ones responsible for handing him a loaded gun.
00:23:29.000 But on Thursday, prosecutors said they would charge him with two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the killing of the cinematographer.
00:23:34.000 Alina Hutchins, 42, saying they believed he had a duty to ensure the revolver was safe to handle.
00:23:39.000 Andrew Arrebs, special prosecutor appointed by Santa Fe County's district attorney to help handle the case, said, quote, We're trying to make definitely clear that everybody's equal under the law, including A-listers like Alec Baldwin.
00:23:49.000 We also want to make sure the safety of the film industry is addressed and things like this don't happen again.
00:23:53.000 The film's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, loaded the gun that day and was responsible for weapons on the set, will also be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter.
00:24:01.000 The film's first assistant director, Dave Halls, who handed Baldwin the gun, agreed to a plea deal on the charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon.
00:24:07.000 So a lot of people were pretty surprised by this because they said, well, hold up, Baldwin was handed a loaded gun and he had no reason to believe that there was actually live ammo in the gun.
00:24:18.000 SAG-AFTRA, a union that represents film, TV, and radio workers, said that the death of this particular cinematographer was a preventable tragedy, but it was not a failure of duty or a criminal act on the part of any performer.
00:24:30.000 So, here are some of the prosecutors talking about Baldwin.
00:24:34.000 Originally, you'll remember that Baldwin claimed he didn't even pull the trigger, that the trigger sort of pulled itself.
00:24:38.000 And some of the prosecutors were like, well, that's not true.
00:24:41.000 I didn't pull the trigger.
00:24:42.000 So you never pulled the trigger?
00:24:43.000 No, no, no, no.
00:24:44.000 I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them.
00:24:46.000 Never.
00:24:47.000 The Santa Fe County District Attorney and Special Prosecutor telling Judge Jeanine that Baldwin isn't being truthful and they say Hutchins would be alive if he had done his job.
00:24:57.000 We definitely believe he pulled the trigger.
00:25:00.000 The FBI lab report confirms that, so definitely the trigger was pulled.
00:25:06.000 Well, I mean, clearly the trigger was pulled. Guns don't fire themselves, contrary to popular opinion.
00:25:10.000 The DA, Mary Carmack-Altweese, said that Baldwin should have checked the gun and the projectiles and that that's why this is effectively his responsibility.
00:25:17.000 But if you have an actor with what he or she thinks is a prop gun, not a real gun, is that actual negligence if it turns out that that gun can actually shoot? It's more than that.
00:25:31.000 Every person that handles a gun has a duty to make sure that if they are going to handle that gun, point it at someone and pull the trigger, that it is not going to fire a projectile and kill someone.
00:25:42.000 And this is really about justice for Helena Hutchins.
00:25:45.000 We've talked to many actors, A-list and otherwise, that have said that they always check their guns or they have someone check it in front of them.
00:25:54.000 Okay, now obviously there are other actors who suggest that's not in fact the case.
00:25:57.000 The statute in New Mexico is relatively vague and it depends on sort of what you consider his legal duty.
00:26:03.000 According to the New Mexico statute on involuntary manslaughter, they say that involuntary manslaughter consists of a lawful act, commission of a lawful act, which might produce death in an unlawful manner or without due caution and circumspection.
00:26:16.000 So the question is, is this without due caution and circumspection?
00:26:19.000 What the prosecutors presumably are going to have to prove is that there is a duty for Baldwin to actually check the loading of the gun.
00:26:28.000 And so somebody else was responsible for it, or is he responsible for it?
00:26:32.000 Privately, a police report said he had lamented to a detective that if, quote, your name becomes associated with something, nobody wants to work with you anymore.
00:26:38.000 Nobody.
00:26:40.000 Obviously, we'll see how this trial falls out.
00:26:44.000 I don't actually know the answer as to, on set, who's responsible for ensuring that the guns that you use are actually unloaded.
00:26:52.000 I actually kind of find it somewhat hard to believe, actually, that actors are to be tasked with determining whether the guns they are being handed are loaded or not.
00:27:00.000 I mean, that seems like an extra dramatic responsibility on the part of whomever the advisor to the film is, the person who's doing the technical advising, who actually makes sure that the guns are supposedly unloaded.
00:27:10.000 Baldwin says himself that it's not the practice for actors to check their own guns.
00:27:15.000 But we'll keep an eye on that developing story because it obviously is of some interest.
00:27:19.000 Alec Baldwin's lawyers, for their part, say they're confident they'll win because, again, the idea is that he's not responsible for checking the ammo.
00:27:27.000 You're responsible, on a personal level by the way, for checking your own ammo, but apparently Alec Baldwin is not.
00:27:31.000 I don't know the answer to this on a set.
00:27:32.000 I just don't.
00:27:33.000 Meanwhile...
00:27:35.000 Speaking of people who are claiming accident, but this time actually don't actually get to claim accident, that would be Joe Biden.
00:27:39.000 So Joe Biden came out yesterday and he said that he has no regerts, none, about his handling of classified documents, which is kind of shocking considering the classified documents were found in his possession, in his garage, in his office, in the Penn Biden Center for Chinese Donations.
00:27:53.000 Here is Joe Biden yesterday claiming that he has nothing.
00:27:55.000 There's no regerts, man.
00:27:56.000 He's going to get a neck tattoo that says just that.
00:28:00.000 As we found a handful of documents that were filed in the wrong place, we immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department.
00:28:10.000 We're fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.
00:28:13.000 I think you're going to find there's nothing there.
00:28:16.000 I have no regrets.
00:28:17.000 I'm following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do.
00:28:20.000 It's exactly what we're doing.
00:28:23.000 There's no there there.
00:28:24.000 Thank you.
00:28:26.000 Well, I mean, there is a there there.
00:28:28.000 In fact, there are classified documents there.
00:28:29.000 And the question is how they got there.
00:28:30.000 And the other question is how they got found.
00:28:33.000 Because typically, again, when you are moving boxes from one place to another, you don't typically open like all your boxes of documents.
00:28:39.000 When especially you're like a low level worker, you're a mover, you're called to the place to move out of the Penn Biden Center for Chinese Grift and to move those boxes, presumably to Joe Biden's Corvette garage or something.
00:28:50.000 You don't typically like is like the College hunks for hire checking out the classified information in the boxes?
00:28:58.000 And the answer is no, it was Joe Biden's lawyers who were going through the boxes.
00:29:01.000 So the question is, do you hire lawyers when you're moving?
00:29:04.000 I've never hired lawyers when I'm moving.
00:29:05.000 It's not a thing that I typically do because their hourly rates are extraordinarily high.
00:29:09.000 But that is how they uncovered all these documents in the first place.
00:29:12.000 Meanwhile, CNN doing its best to cover for Joe Biden.
00:29:14.000 Well, you know, this kind of stuff happens all the time.
00:29:16.000 And really what it is, it's a problem of overclassification.
00:29:19.000 Oh, so when a Democrat does it, it's over classification.
00:29:21.000 When Donald Trump does it, it's because he is evil and selling the nuclear codes to Vladimir Putin.
00:29:27.000 Here is CNN trying to talk Joe Biden's way out of this.
00:29:30.000 Katie, this has been a big question, of course, not just in light of what happened with Trump's documents, but also now with Biden.
00:29:35.000 Is it an accepted thing?
00:29:37.000 How common is this?
00:29:38.000 What has your reporting found?
00:29:40.000 Yeah, Caitlin, this kind of classified spillage happens almost literally every day.
00:29:45.000 And most of the time, it's completely accidental.
00:29:48.000 An employee accidentally takes home a classified document in a briefcase.
00:29:52.000 Well, I mean, whoopsie.
00:29:53.000 And this must have been a big whoopsie at three separate locations.
00:29:57.000 And they're searching through it like five years later, since Joe Biden left office in 2017.
00:30:02.000 So, yeah, that's weird.
00:30:03.000 That's weird.
00:30:08.000 I'm noticing a shocking lack of confidence, actually, as it turns out, by the investigators in many of these cases.
00:30:14.000 Remember, the DOJ did not send lawyers to go oversee the searching of the documents, even after they knew that Joe Biden had classified documents in his house.
00:30:20.000 They're like, yeah, Joe, just lawyers will handle that.
00:30:22.000 It'll be fine.
00:30:23.000 Why not?
00:30:23.000 They're doing an amazing job.
00:30:26.000 And meanwhile, speaking of people who are doing an amazing job, the Supreme Court says it still has not identified the person who leaked the draft abortion opinion in Roe versus Wade.
00:30:33.000 I'm sorry.
00:30:34.000 That is bull.
00:30:37.000 Like, maybe the Supreme Court is unable to find that out, but who exactly is on the job over there?
00:30:42.000 Inspector Clouseau?
00:30:44.000 The Supreme Court staff is not large.
00:30:46.000 It's not like you have thousands of people working for the Supreme Court.
00:30:48.000 Some of the most coveted positions in all of the legal profession are clerkships under a Supreme Court justice.
00:30:56.000 And usually it's like four, five, six clerks per justice.
00:30:59.000 And even a very small cadre of people.
00:31:01.000 It cannot be this hard to find out who leaks this stuff to Politico.
00:31:04.000 Nonetheless, the Supreme Court announced on Thursday that an internal investigation had failed to identify who leaked a draft of the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.
00:31:11.000 In a 20-page report, the court-martial, Gail Curley, who oversaw the inquiry, said that investigators had conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 employees, all of whom had denied being the source of the leak.
00:31:21.000 But several employees acknowledged that they had told their spouses or partners about the draft opinion and the vote count in violation of the court's confidentiality rules, the report said.
00:31:29.000 The investigation did not determine that any of those discussions led to a copy of the draft opinion becoming public, however.
00:31:34.000 Investigators also found no forensic evidence of who may have leaked the opinion in examining the court's computer devices, networks, printers, and available call and text logs, the report said.
00:31:42.000 The finding raised the possibility no one will be held to account for one of the most stunning breaches of secrecy in the Supreme Court's history.
00:31:49.000 The leak left the court in a state of mutual suspicion about whether a clerk or even a justice betrayed its code of silence about rulings before they were announced.
00:31:55.000 The inconclusive report comes as opinion polls have shown weakened trust in the court and all of the rest of this sort of stuff.
00:32:02.000 I find it absolutely hard to believe that if the full power of American law enforcement were unleashed on this particular case, it would be impossible to find who among the 97 people who were interviewed.
00:32:12.000 I mean, this is basically just an Agatha Christie mystery.
00:32:15.000 It's a closed box mystery.
00:32:17.000 One of these 97 people Or a spouse leaked this.
00:32:22.000 So who is it?
00:32:23.000 This doesn't seem like it should take this long to figure out.
00:32:26.000 But apparently it does.
00:32:28.000 Either that or somebody knows and they're not revealing it for a very good reason.
00:32:31.000 I love that the left is trying to claim that Samuel Alito leaked it.
00:32:33.000 Yeah, that would make perfect sense.
00:32:35.000 It makes perfect sense that Samuel Alito would leak his own draft opinion in order to drive extraordinary ire and outrage prior to the vote being actually done.
00:32:43.000 Yes, makes perfect sense.
00:32:44.000 You nailed it, guys.
00:32:46.000 It is far more likely that it's a left-wing law clerk.
00:32:49.000 And by the way, I think eventually we will find out, once the statute of limitations has closed, we will find out who this was, and this person will then be fetted as a hero by the left.
00:33:00.000 for attempting to stop this great predation of allowing states to legislate on the issue of abortion.
00:33:06.000 Meanwhile, the Ukraine situation gets more and more dire, and it seems like there's no end in sight.
00:33:10.000 We'll get to that in a moment.
00:33:11.000 First, there's one substance that is keeping me alive and kicking these days.
00:33:14.000 That is black rifle coffee.
00:33:16.000 I have three young kids.
00:33:16.000 I have a fourth on the way.
00:33:18.000 I have a puppy in the house, and I work, which means I'm up at all hours of the morning.
00:33:22.000 They're waking me up in the middle of the night.
00:33:24.000 I need my coffee.
00:33:24.000 I need my Black Rifle Coffee.
00:33:26.000 And, Black Rifle Coffee Company doesn't just make great coffee.
00:33:28.000 They're on a mission to build a support network for veterans, first responders, and law enforcement by serving you the best coffee you've ever had.
00:33:34.000 Thanks to your support, that dream has become a reality.
00:33:36.000 This year alone, Black Rifle Coffee donated over 120,000 bags of coffee to veterans and first responders, while expanding their own team of active duty service members, veterans, and veteran family members.
00:33:45.000 If you want to continue supporting this incredible company, go to BlackRifleCoffee.com, use promo code SHAPIRO at checkout for 10% off your purchase and your first coffee club order.
00:33:53.000 Black Rifle Coffee is roasted by a veteran-led team of brilliant coffee graders here in the United States.
00:33:56.000 The coffee is truly one-of-a-kind.
00:33:58.000 It's your support that gets the gear, funding, and supplies into the hands of people on the front lines.
00:34:02.000 Head on over to BlackRifleCoffee.com.
00:34:04.000 Use promo code SHAPIRO for 10% off.
00:34:06.000 You can also find Black Rifle Coffee in grocery and convenience stores near you.
00:34:10.000 Black Rifle Coffee, America's coffee.
00:34:12.000 Also, The Daily Wire, we have a bunch of open roles right now.
00:34:15.000 One of the ways we are seeking to fill those roles is by going to our friends over at ZipRecruiter.com and trying to find the best employees.
00:34:21.000 If you are looking for great employees, ZipRecruiter is the place to go.
00:34:23.000 If you need to hire for your business, do it the same way we do.
00:34:25.000 Head on over to ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire.
00:34:27.000 Try it for free.
00:34:28.000 ZipRecruiter uses powerful technology to find the right candidates for your job.
00:34:32.000 And if you see a candidate you like, you can easily send them a personal invite so they're more likely to apply.
00:34:36.000 Their user-friendly dashboard makes it easy to filter, review, and rate your candidates all from one place.
00:34:40.000 Let ZipRecruiter help you find the best people for all your roles.
00:34:43.000 Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within day one.
00:34:46.000 See for yourself.
00:34:47.000 Head on over to ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
00:34:49.000 Try ZipRecruiter for free.
00:34:50.000 Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E.
00:34:55.000 ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire.
00:34:57.000 So, do the same thing that we do.
00:34:59.000 Head on over and use it.
00:35:00.000 ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire to get started finding the best employees, contact them easily, sift through the resumes, do all the hard work a lot more easily with ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
00:35:10.000 That's ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E.
00:35:14.000 Also, speaking of the Daily Wire and our hiring processes, we've got some open positions.
00:35:19.000 We are seeking an enthusiastic news junkie and skilled communicator who's passionate about advancing innovative anti-woke ideas to fill an immediate opening for a senior publicist position.
00:35:28.000 Daily Wire's senior publicist will play a key role in planning and executing national PR campaigns for Daily Wire talent, brands, projects, and products in broadcast, print, and electronic media.
00:35:36.000 This role will work closely with the PR team to support and execute media strategies set by the department head and Daily Wire executive leadership.
00:35:43.000 Apply for this position and all of our other positions.
00:35:45.000 Head on over to dailywire.com slash Ben.
00:35:47.000 Click careers.
00:35:48.000 That's dailywire.com slash Ben.
00:35:50.000 Click careers today.
00:35:52.000 Okay.
00:35:52.000 Meanwhile, the situation over in Ukraine continues to devolve and there's no off-ramp here.
00:35:56.000 There has to be some sort of off-ramp here, guys.
00:35:59.000 Otherwise, this is just going to continue ad infinitum.
00:36:02.000 And I'm not seeing any off-ramp here from the Biden administration.
00:36:05.000 I understand the strategy, which is keep ratcheting up the pressure on the Russians until they come to the table.
00:36:10.000 The question is, what are you offering the Russians so that they should come to the table?
00:36:13.000 You have to offer something.
00:36:14.000 Virtually every conflict in human history has ended with some sort of negotiation.
00:36:17.000 Very few of them end with the total defeat of one side or another.
00:36:22.000 This happens to be one where negotiation is going to be the outcome because Russia is not going to disappear as a state, nor is Ukraine going to march into Moscow.
00:36:29.000 So the question is, what happens next?
00:36:32.000 Well, on the one hand, you obviously want to maintain pressures that the Russians don't feel that they can continue to push without counterpressure.
00:36:40.000 On the other hand, there has to be some sort of backdoor negotiation happening with Putin and his team, because if this continues to ramp up and Russia really believes that they are going to lose everything, That's when the nukes may come out.
00:36:51.000 That is when Vladimir Putin decides to mobilize 2 million people and just flood the zone.
00:36:54.000 Or maybe he decides to fire a missile over into NATO territory in order to try and break NATO proper.
00:37:02.000 And basically dare you come back at me over the border.
00:37:07.000 War is a fluid situation, and the longer it lasts, the more opportunities you have for a major screw-up.
00:37:13.000 You'll recall that just a few months ago, there was a situation in which a missile fired by Ukraine of Russian-make ended up hitting Poland, and there was talk for like a brief hot second that maybe it was Russia that it hit Poland, maybe we're all going nuclear war, right?
00:37:24.000 You remember that for five seconds?
00:37:26.000 And it turned out that it was actually Ukraine attempting to hit Russia and missing and instead hitting Poland?
00:37:30.000 I mean, that sort of stuff happens in war.
00:37:32.000 So, we all have an interest at this point in facilitating an end to this conflict.
00:37:37.000 I understand why the Ukrainian people have no interest in doing that.
00:37:40.000 They're saying, listen, we got invaded and we're pushing back as much as we want to.
00:37:43.000 Don't tie our hands.
00:37:44.000 I get it.
00:37:44.000 I also understand that the United States, and I'm an American, has achieved its interests already.
00:37:49.000 The interests the United States was seeking to achieve are one, the crippling of the Russian military for stepping over its boundaries.
00:37:54.000 Done.
00:37:55.000 Two, the prevention of Russia from invading another sovereign country.
00:37:58.000 Done.
00:37:59.000 Three, the realignment of Ukraine with the West.
00:38:01.000 Done.
00:38:02.000 Four, the realignment of Europe away from Russia and more toward the United States.
00:38:06.000 Done.
00:38:06.000 Five, the warning of China that if they attempt something similar with Taiwan, there will be dire economic and possibly military consequences.
00:38:13.000 All of those goals have now been achieved.
00:38:14.000 So the question becomes, what is America's further interest in continuing without end to facilitate this thing?
00:38:20.000 According to the New York Times, however, the new U.S.
00:38:22.000 aid is being provided.
00:38:23.000 The attempt is to break through the Russian defenses.
00:38:26.000 The U.S.
00:38:26.000 plans to send Ukraine 90 Stryker armored combat vehicles as part of a roughly $2.5 billion shipment of arms and equipment that is expected to be announced at a meeting of allies in Germany on Friday, according to the DoD.
00:38:36.000 The decision to send Strykers for the first time and possibly deliver them within weeks comes just days after Britain committed to sending Ukraine 14 Challenger battle tanks and the United States, France and Germany agreed to send dozens of armored infantry fighting vehicles, including 50 Bradley fighting vehicles.
00:38:50.000 The U.S.
00:38:50.000 announcement came one week after the Biden administration announced another $3 billion package of military assistance that will include Bradleys, which officials said would be especially helpful to Ukrainian units fighting Russian forces in the Donbass region of the country's east.
00:39:04.000 Western officials fear Ukraine has only a narrow window before an anticipated Russian springtime offensive.
00:39:08.000 They've been working quickly to give Kiev sophisticated weapons they had earlier held out on sending because of concerns of provoking Moscow.
00:39:15.000 On Wednesday, Colin Kahl, U.S.
00:39:16.000 Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, told reporters Ukraine needed more mechanized infantry and armored personnel carriers to punch through heavily fortified Russian defenses.
00:39:24.000 He said the Russians are really digging in.
00:39:25.000 They're digging in, they're digging trenches, they're putting in dragons, teeth-laying mines.
00:39:28.000 To enable Ukrainians to break through, the emphasis has been shifted to enabling them to combine fire and maneuver in a way that will prove to be more effective.
00:39:35.000 The United States has been also helping Ukraine target Crimea.
00:39:39.000 Now, Crimea, it's been sort of a foregone conclusion since 2014 was going to stay Russian.
00:39:42.000 The reason being that Russia had brought extraordinary resources into Crimea to sort of solidify it as a Russian province.
00:39:48.000 So now the talk is allowing Ukraine to go into Crimea.
00:39:53.000 Again, there has to be an off-ramp here.
00:39:55.000 Guys, I'm all for ratcheting up the pressure, but there has to be... Yes, the stick.
00:40:00.000 Where's the carrot?
00:40:02.000 Is there a carrot?
00:40:02.000 There must be a carrot, otherwise it will be only stick.
00:40:05.000 When it is only stick, that means the other side is going to respond in kind, obviously.
00:40:09.000 According to the New York Times, for years, the United States has insisted that Crimea is still part of Ukraine, but the Biden administration has held to a hard line since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, refusing to provide Kiev with the weapons it needs to target the Crimean peninsula, which Russia has been using as a base for launching devastating strikes.
00:40:22.000 Now that line is starting to soften.
00:40:24.000 After months of discussions with Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration has finally started to concede a key that may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation, according to several U.S.
00:40:34.000 officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
00:40:37.000 White House officials insist there's no change in position, because they say we always said that Crimea is part of Ukraine, but yeah, there's a change in position when you are now saying that you should provide Ukraine the military resources to go back into Crimea.
00:40:50.000 The Biden administration has come to believe that if the Ukrainian military can show Russia its control of Crimea can be threatened, that actually strengthening keeps position in any future negotiations.
00:40:57.000 Okay, so where are the negotiations?
00:40:59.000 Now listen, it could be possible that Putin is the one who's refusing to negotiate.
00:41:03.000 That's fine, but somebody should say that.
00:41:06.000 And so somebody should actually say, I'm not, that's not what I'm hearing.
00:41:08.000 Somebody at the White House should say Vladimir Putin has been utterly unwilling to negotiate on any terms at all, but if he's willing to negotiate at a certain point, you might want to actually negotiate instead of Putin with his back to the wall is announcing another mobilization round.
00:41:22.000 The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov announced on Tuesday, the Putin will deliver a speech in St.
00:41:28.000 Petersburg to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Soviet forces breaking the Nazi siege of Leningrad.
00:41:33.000 And apparently he is going to announce another mass mobilization.
00:41:37.000 We have to 1.5 million men mobilized under arms by the Russian government.
00:41:42.000 Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger is shifting his view on Ukraine and its NATO bid.
00:41:46.000 Originally, you'll recall that he was not in favor of Ukraine joining NATO because he said that that would essentially provoke Russian action.
00:41:51.000 Now he's saying Ukraine should join NATO essentially to deter the Russians from further acts of aggression.
00:41:56.000 And again, I think there's truth to that.
00:41:57.000 Or maybe that's a negotiating position.
00:41:59.000 Maybe you go to Russia and you say, listen, Ukraine will not formally join NATO, but they do have a mutual defense guarantee with us and we are going to continue to ship them the weaponry they need to deter a future attack.
00:42:10.000 Maybe that's a negotiation point.
00:42:11.000 So Putin can go back to his people and say, Ukraine will never be a part of NATO.
00:42:15.000 Like there has to be some wit.
00:42:16.000 Again, in a negotiation, everybody has to feel as though they lost a little bit and everybody has to feel as though they gained a little bit.
00:42:22.000 But it appears that none of that is on the table.
00:42:25.000 And this is going to just kind of simmer for the West at a relatively mid-level range of attention, up until the point where something goes dramatically wrong.
00:42:35.000 Now, speaking of things that are going dramatically wrong, the situation on our southern border continues to be an absolute disaster area.
00:42:42.000 Alejandro Mayorkas, our awful Department of Homeland Security Secretary, he admits that we now need FEMA to help address issues with illegal immigration on the southern border.
00:42:50.000 FEMA is providing emergency food and shelter program funds to help cities around the country recover or defray the costs of non-citizen arrivals.
00:43:01.000 CBP and ICE are working closely with cities to share information and coordinate the disposition of non-citizens in immigration enforcement proceedings.
00:43:15.000 Okay, so, obviously this administration, it's been a disaster area.
00:43:19.000 Mayorkas says we have a comprehensive strategy.
00:43:21.000 They do not have a comprehensive strategy or anything remotely close to it.
00:43:23.000 Here's Mayorkas.
00:43:25.000 We're executing a comprehensive strategy to secure our borders and build a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system.
00:43:34.000 Working within a broken system, in desperate need of legislative reform, two weeks ago, we announced new lawful pathways for non-citizens seeking relief in the United States, accompanied by a consequence regime for those who do not avail themselves of those processes.
00:43:54.000 Okay, so their new policy is nonsense.
00:43:56.000 It is not going to be effective in any way, shape or form.
00:43:58.000 It basically allows you to apply online to immigrate illegally.
00:44:02.000 It's not going to stop the flood across the border.
00:44:03.000 Everybody knows this.
00:44:05.000 So meanwhile, this is the dumb game that we play.
00:44:08.000 Create an unworkable border policy and then say, what if we just legalize everybody?
00:44:12.000 So now you got, again, once every couple of years, you get the bipartisan group of senators who decide they're going to solve immigration by amnestying 10 million people.
00:44:20.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, this is now, you know, happening again.
00:44:23.000 This is one of the reasons why, at least, thank God, the Republicans took the House, even if it's by a slim margin.
00:44:27.000 This thing is DOA in the House of Representatives.
00:44:29.000 But the Senate is attempting to cram something through.
00:44:31.000 Quote, a bipartisan group of senators is pushing ahead in the new Congress with efforts to reach an agreement on border security and immigration policy after talks ran out of time last year.
00:44:39.000 We're committed to finding lasting solutions to this crisis, said Kirsten Sinema, the senator from Arizona, who co-hosted a trip with Senator John Cornyn.
00:44:47.000 Kirsten Sinema, who chairs the Homeland Security Border Committee, is pushing for a deal that combines a path to citizenship for about 2 million people who were brought to the United States illegally as children, these would be the dreamers, in exchange for changes to how the asylum system at the border functions.
00:45:01.000 That would probably include expanding detention of asylum-seeking migrants and an extension of Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that allows illegal border crossers to be quickly turned back to Mexico.
00:45:09.000 So in other words, she is basically proposing a short-term fix, but a permanent solution for the two million so-called dreamers.
00:45:16.000 How about no?
00:45:17.000 How about we figure out what to do with the people here once we have plugged the giant leak in the boat?
00:45:22.000 I'm amused that they keep saying, well, you know, the water in the boat, we'll just leave, like, the water's here.
00:45:26.000 We'll leave the water in the boat.
00:45:27.000 That obviously has to stay.
00:45:29.000 Also, we will, in exchange for us leaving the water at the bottom of this boat, we will also, like, temporarily put a piece of duct tape on the boat.
00:45:38.000 It'll come loose in, like, a minute.
00:45:40.000 But at least we'll know that this water is permanently in the boat.
00:45:42.000 Like, that's not how any of this should work.
00:45:44.000 You should figure out how to stop the leak before you figure out what to do with the people who are already here.
00:45:48.000 Otherwise, you're just facilitating more leaking.
00:45:52.000 Which is exactly what happens.
00:45:53.000 Again, every couple of years you get a gang of 8 or a gang of 12 and they try to figure out immigration.
00:45:57.000 The reality is that the American people agree on immigration.
00:46:00.000 What they want is two separate bills.
00:46:02.000 One for border security, in which we actually solidify the border.
00:46:05.000 And the second, we figure out what to do with the people here.
00:46:08.000 And it seems to me a proper solution on that one would go something like this.
00:46:10.000 Are the people who are here illegally of benefit to the United States or are they not?
00:46:16.000 When they came in, their status, that is almost totally irrelevant.
00:46:19.000 The question is, you got here, you skipped a line, you ended up here.
00:46:22.000 Now, is it good for the United States that you are here?
00:46:25.000 And the answer for some will be yes, and the answer for others will be no.
00:46:28.000 That is what sovereign countries get to do.
00:46:29.000 They get to pick and choose who enters the sovereign country.
00:46:32.000 But apparently that is a bridge too far.
00:46:35.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
00:46:37.000 You're not going to want to miss it.
00:46:38.000 We'll be talking with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about all things China, Russia, and the Trump administration.
00:46:44.000 If you're not a member, become a member.
00:46:45.000 Use code SHAPIRO at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.