The Ben Shapiro Show - How White Men Became The Targets Of America’s Most Powerful Institutions

00:00:00.000 A huge piece in Compact magazine exposes how white men were discriminated against in the job market from 2014 on, the wages of DEI plus healthcare imbroglios for Republicans, and of course, a profile of Susie Wiles at Vanity Fair that's creating waves on the Hill First.

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00:00:48.000 So, one of the big questions that has plagued American politics for the last decade and a half is what the hell is going on.

00:00:53.000 And in order to understand what the hell is going on, I think we need to understand the transformation that happened around the year 2014.

00:01:01.000 Between 2012 and 2014, something radically changed in American politics.

00:01:05.000 Now, some of that is the rise of social media.

00:01:08.000 Obviously, this is something that the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt of NYU has discussed ad nauseum: the idea that because we're all addicted to our phones, because we are able to find our own little clicks of people on the internet and then zoom around headlines, both true and untrue, this means that we have sort of poisoned our own brains.

00:01:27.000 And there's a lot of truth to that.

00:01:29.000 I mean, I've talked at length about how algorithms are feeding you information that may not be true and generally is going to confirm your pre-existing biases.

00:01:38.000 But there's something else that happened too, and that's a real world thing.

00:01:41.000 That real-world thing is the rise of DEI.

00:01:44.000 So, in 2012, which again, I still consider 2012 to be the most important election of my lifetime, the one that everybody forgets.

00:01:50.000 That's the one that I think was really important.

00:01:52.000 Why?

00:01:53.000 Well, because in 2008, Barack Obama, America's first black president, was elected on the platform of unifying Americans around race.

00:02:00.000 And racial optimism in the country was at an all-time high by the polling data.

00:02:05.000 And then in 2012, Barack Obama, who had been a very left-wing president, a very progressive president, of course, he had pushed Obamacare through with the skin of his teeth, and he was unpopular.

00:02:18.000 And so he decided that the best way to win re-election was not to broadcast a unifying message, but to divide Americans by race, and then to cobble together enough racial coalitions in order to win a victory.

00:02:30.000 And he defeated Mitt Romney, the most milquetoast candidate in the history of American politics, in what was a fairly solid victory.

00:02:37.000 And that seemed to change everything because by 2014, race relations in the United States were on the decline.

00:02:43.000 And they were on the decline because Barack Obama, who'd made a lot of promises to a lot of people, needed to fulfill those promises, particularly on issues of race.

00:02:51.000 The claim that Barack Obama made with regard to, for example, Trayvon Martin, is that Trayvon could have been his son.

00:02:56.000 That was a racial claim because what he was claiming, of course, is that any black person would have been subjected to the same treatment as Trayvon Martin, that circumstances did not matter.

00:03:05.000 He said the same thing with regard to Ferguson, Missouri, where he claimed that nobody would make up the kinds of experiences that Michael Brown had undergone.

00:03:14.000 And it turned out that in Ferguson, Missouri, Michael Brown's acolytes, people who are pseudo-witnesses, actually did, in fact, make up the story about Michael Brown claiming that he had raised his hands, hands up, don't shoot, and all of the rest.

00:03:26.000 And so race relations by 2014 were on a steep decline in the United States, and they have never recovered.

00:03:32.000 And that is because so much of this attitude, this racially divisive attitude, was then baked into American politics.

00:03:39.000 There's a fascinating and important piece today in Compact Magazine by a person named Jacob Savage talking about the realities of hiring and firing in the sort of elite institutions of the United States, which became explicitly race-based around 2014.

00:03:56.000 He points out, quote, the doors seem to close everywhere and all at once.

00:03:59.000 In 2011, the year I moved to Los Angeles, white men were 48% of lower-level TV writers.

00:04:05.000 By 2024, they accounted for just 11.9%.

00:04:08.000 The Atlantic's editorial staff went from 53% male and 89% white in 2013 to 36% male and 66% white in 2024.

00:04:18.000 White men fell from 39% of tenure-track positions in the humanities at Harvard in 2014 to 18% in 2023.

00:04:27.000 Now, again, there are people who are DEI advocates who will claim that this is the natural state of things.

00:04:33.000 The natural state of things is that white people were being artificially elevated. 0.93

00:04:36.000 And then when that ended, thanks to DEI, of course, white people fell out of positions of power.

00:04:40.000 But the reality is sort of the reverse.

00:04:43.000 That if you believe that America has been for at least a couple of generations generally a meritocracy, particularly on issues of race, that when you go back to sort of how hiring was done in TV studios, for example, some of the most left-leaning areas in American life in 2011, it wasn't that the heads of the writer's room were selecting for white people.

00:05:03.000 It was that they were selecting for the funniest people.

00:05:05.000 And then they decided to radically shift how they did hiring and firing, thus to dispossess people of the positions that they had earned in favor of other people based on group characteristics.

00:05:16.000 You can see what happened here.

00:05:20.000 As Jacob Savage writes, in retrospect, 2014 was the hinge, the year DEI became institutionalized across American life.

00:05:27.000 In industry after industry, gatekeepers promised extra consideration to anyone who wasn't a white man and then provided just that.

00:05:34.000 A former management consultant recalled, quote, with every announcement of promotions, there was a desire to put extra emphasis on gender or race.

00:05:41.000 And when you don't fall into those groups, that message gets louder and louder and gains more and more emphasis.

00:05:45.000 On the one hand, you want to celebrate people who have been at a disadvantage.

00:05:48.000 On the other hand, you look and you say, wow, the world is not rooting for you.

00:05:51.000 In fact, it's deliberately rooting against you.

00:05:54.000 As the Trump administration takes a chainsaw to diversity, equity, and inclusion apparatus, there's a tendency to portray DEI as a series of well-meaning but ineffectual HR modules.

00:06:04.000 But that's not real.

00:06:07.000 This may be how Boomer and Gen X white men experienced DEI, but for white male millennials, DEI was not a gentle rebalancing.

00:06:13.000 It was a profound shift in how power and prestige were distributed.

00:06:19.000 Jacob Savage says this isn't a story about all white men.

00:06:22.000 It's a story about white male millennials in professional America.

00:06:26.000 He points out, it may be hard to remember now, but a decade ago, the prevailing critique of American journalism was that it was woefully lacking in racial and gender diversity.

00:06:36.000 Gawker, as of 2014, was still 57% male and 79% white.

00:06:41.000 Weiss was majority male and 70% white.

00:06:44.000 At 538, Nate Silver complained about a gender gap so severe that only 15% of applications were from women.

00:06:52.000 However, this was all about to change.

00:06:56.000 There was a move that was about to be made because there was a move by the upper levels of management to try to diversify.

00:07:06.000 And what that meant is that people who are white male millennials were going to be basically pushed out of these institutions.

00:07:13.000 Institutions pursuing diversity decided there would be no backsliding.

00:07:16.000 If a position was vacated by a woman or a person of color, the expectation was that it would be filled by another woman or person of color.

00:07:23.000 The hope was always that you were going to hire a diverse candidate, a senior hiring editor at a major outlet told me.

00:07:28.000 If there was a black woman at the beginning of her career you wanted to hire, you could find someone. 0.98

00:07:32.000 But if she was any good, you knew she'd get accelerated to the New York Times or the Washington Post in short order.

00:07:37.000 By 2019, the newsrooms of ProPublica, The Washington Post, and the New York Times were majority female, as were new media upstarts Weiss, Vox, BuzzFeed, and the Huffington Post.

00:07:46.000 And then 2020 happened and the wheels came off.

00:07:48.000 In the aftermath of George Floyd's death, writes Savage newsrooms tripped over themselves to stage a reckoning.

00:07:54.000 The New York Times solemnly promised sweeping reforms on top of the sweeping reforms it had already promised.

00:07:59.000 The Washington Post declared it would become the most diverse and inclusive newsroom in the country.

00:08:03.000 CNN pledged a sustained commitment to race coverage.

00:08:06.000 Bone Apetit confessed, quote, our mastheads have been far too white for far too long.

00:08:10.000 NPR said diversity was nothing less than its North Star.

00:08:14.000 And this resulted in differential hiring practices, unsurprisingly.

00:08:19.000 In 2021, new hires at Condon Apps were just 25% male and 49% white.

00:08:24.000 At the California Times, parent company of the LA Times and the San Diego Union Tribune, they were 39% male and 31% white.

00:08:32.000 That same year, ProPublica hired 66% women and 58% people of color at NPR.

00:08:37.000 78% of new hires were people of color.

00:08:42.000 At the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg had described his hiring philosophy: quote, by opening the possibilities of younger people, women, and people of color, by imagining their rise in a deliberate way, I've just widened the pool of potential leadership.

00:08:53.000 There's no quota system here.

00:08:56.000 But he said, quote, it's really, really hard to write a 10,000-word cover story.

00:08:59.000 There are not a lot of journalists in America who can do it.

00:09:02.000 The journalists in America who do it are almost exclusively white males.

00:09:05.000 And yet, the Atlantic succeeded in hiring fewer and fewer of these white males.

00:09:09.000 Since 2020, nearly two-thirds of the Atlantic's hires have been women, along with nearly 50% people of color.

00:09:18.000 So what you see is a deliberate attempt to force white millennials out. 0.81

00:09:23.000 This is also true with regard to the universities, not just in legacy media.

00:09:28.000 All right, coming up more on America's DEI episode.

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00:12:05.000 Point your toes west.

00:12:06.000 There is a push to quote-unquote diversify all of the institutions of higher education.

00:12:13.000 As Savage points out, white men may still be 55% of Harvard's arts and sciences faculty, down from 63% a decade ago, but this is a legacy of Boomer and Gen X employment patterns. 0.61

00:12:22.000 For tenure track positions, the pipeline for future faculty, white men have gone from 49% in 2014 to 27% in 2024, and in the humanities from 39% to 21%.

00:12:36.000 The white men who do get hired are often older and more established or foreign.

00:12:41.000 Meanwhile, Yale's history department, with 10 white male professors over the age of 70, provides a striking illustration of the generational divide in hiring.

00:12:49.000 Since 2018, Yale has hired four older white men as full professors.

00:12:53.000 But among the 16 tenured or tenure-track millennials, just one is a white man.

00:12:59.000 The remedial action takes many forms.

00:13:01.000 Berkeley commissioned regression analyses to identify which quasi-legal strategies would produce the fewest number of white male job offers.

00:13:07.000 At Dartmouth, the Mellon to Postdoc program provided 10 tenure-track positions for new hires with a demonstrated commitment to addressing racial underrepresentation in their disciplines, and none were white men.

00:13:20.000 So, again, this has become deregor across the university system.

00:13:26.000 At Berkeley, as recently as 2015, white male hires were 52.7% of new tenure-track faculty.

00:13:31.000 In 2023, they were 21.5%.

00:13:37.000 This is true in the preserve of television as well.

00:13:43.000 A whistleblower sent Jacob Savage a document from early 2017, an internal needs sheet compiled by major talent agency that shows how steep the headwinds were for white males across the grid, which tracks staffing needs for TV writers' rooms.

00:13:56.000 The same shorthand appears dozens of times: diverse, female, women, and diverse only.

00:14:01.000 These mandates came from some of the most powerful names in television: Noah Howley, Dean Devlin, Ryan Murphy.

00:14:08.000 This was systematic discrimination documented in writing, implemented without consequence.

00:14:13.000 It's striking how casual it all was.

00:14:15.000 For example, Chicago Fire, the upper level can be anyone, but we need diverse staff writers.

00:14:22.000 As in other industries, the upper level positions were filled by people with gigantic resumes, very often of whom they were older white males.

00:14:29.000 But the entry-level jobs, the way that people actually got ahead, there was a glass ceiling put in place.

00:14:36.000 Every fellowship grant and hiring incentive was suddenly skewed toward changing who got in the door.

00:14:41.000 So you're looking at the media, you're looking at institutions of higher education, you're looking at Hollywood and everywhere else.

00:14:49.000 So as Jacob Savage puts it, for a decade it kept going faster and faster without any actual quotas to achieve, only the constant exhortation to do better.

00:14:57.000 The diversity complex became self-radicalizing, a strange confluence of top-down and bottom-up pressure. 0.95

00:15:03.000 No one ever said what the right number of white men would be, but it was always fewer than you currently had.

00:15:08.000 Over the course of the 2010s, nearly every mechanism liberal America used to confer prestige was reweighted along identitarian lines.

00:15:15.000 Seven white male Gen Xers won the MacArthur Genius Fellowship in 2013 alone, the same as the total number of white male millennials who have won since.

00:15:22.000 In 2014, two white male millennials were National Book Award finalists, including one winner.

00:15:27.000 That year, nine white male American artists under 40 appeared at the Whitney Biennial.

00:15:32.000 But of the 70 millennial writers nominated for national book awards in the decade that followed, three were white men.

00:15:38.000 The big four galleries represent 47 millennial artists.

00:15:41.000 Three are white men.

00:15:43.000 At the 2024 Whitney Biennial, which featured 45 millennial artists, zero were white American men.

00:15:49.000 The shift has happened everywhere, including in medicine.

00:15:53.000 In 2014, white men were 31% of American medical students.

00:15:57.000 By 2025, they were 20.5%.

00:16:01.000 That's true in tech as well.

00:16:03.000 At Google, white men went from nearly half the workforce in 2014 to less than a third by 2024, a 34% decline.

00:16:10.000 In 2014, at Amazon, entry-level professionals were 42.3% white male.

00:16:16.000 Mid-level managers fell from 55.8% white male in 2014 to 33.8% in 2024.

00:16:26.000 So refuges were formed, crypto, podcasting, substack. 0.93

00:16:31.000 But the bottom line is that when you're talking about one job and one person is going to get that one job, you've created a zero-sum game.

00:16:40.000 And if that zero-sum game is being weighted in favor of particular races, that is unfair and wrong.

00:16:45.000 And the reaction to that on parts of the political right has been a reverse identitarianism.

00:16:50.000 See, people of my generation, and I am a millennial, I believe, I'm 41.

00:16:56.000 People of my generation, we were brought up in the 1990s, early 2000s, and we were taught from a very, very early age that Martin Luther King Jr.'s exhortation to judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, was morally correct, because it is, in fact, morally correct.

00:17:14.000 And then an entire cadre of elite institutional professionals decided not to do that anymore.

00:17:20.000 And not only not to do that, they decided that the majority, in many cases, of potential employees in a potential applicant pool were bad because of the immutable characteristics, the color of their skin, because of their maleness.

00:17:37.000 The idea was that these people were somehow lesser, that they had participated in systemic discrimination.

00:17:42.000 And even if they themselves were not racist, the system was racist.

00:17:46.000 And thus, these people had to be dispossessed.

00:17:48.000 They took the most tolerant cohort of people, people who had been trained in the idea of a colorblind meritocracy, and then they told them that colorblind meritocracy was for them, but it wasn't for anyone else.

00:18:01.000 They were told that they should continue to adhere to an idea of colorblind meritocracy because it was morally correct, but they were the beneficiaries of racialist systems and therefore they had to pay.

00:18:11.000 That is unsustainable.

00:18:13.000 There's one system for everyone.

00:18:15.000 And if you are told that colorblind meritocracy is something that you should morally accept, which is true, and then you are told it doesn't apply to you.

00:18:24.000 It only applies to everyone else.

00:18:27.000 Well, you are likely to get a generation of people who start to reject a colorblind meritocracy and start to look at race relations as a zero-sum game rather than an additive bonus, who start to see everything as a question of who gets the job and why is it based on immutable characteristics and who start to see themselves as a put-upon identity group because in fact, they are a put-upon identity group.

00:18:50.000 If a group is determined to be lesser than on the basis of immutable characteristics, of course they're going to start seeing themselves in identitarian ways.

00:18:59.000 Now, it doesn't mean that they are right to do so.

00:19:02.000 It does mean, however, that the only way to destroy all of this, this new identitarian moment we are living in, and an identitarianism of the left that adheres to the idea that group identity is really, really good, except if you're talking about white Christian men, and an identitarian right that has formed in counter response that says, fine, you want to play that game, we'll play that game too. 0.61

00:19:25.000 The only way out of that is to go back to a system that we were all taught as kids and that was natural to us, colorblind meritocracy.

00:19:32.000 Colorblind meritocracy is good.

00:19:35.000 It is right.

00:19:35.000 Why?

00:19:36.000 Because meritocracy is the only system of human relations ever devised that has positive externalities.

00:19:43.000 Meaning that when the most meritorious people, the people who are best at the job, get jobs, you get greater efficiency.

00:19:50.000 You get better job performance.

00:19:52.000 You get better innovation, better products.

00:19:54.000 People are able to expend their best abilities to the benefit of everyone else.

00:20:01.000 Every other system, every other anti-meritocratic system, has negative externalities.

00:20:06.000 It helps the people who are inside the system and hurts the people who are outside the system.

00:20:10.000 Meritocracy benefits everyone.

00:20:12.000 Because even if you didn't get the job, let's say you lost the job to a person who is better qualified than you, better at the job than you.

00:20:19.000 Well, number one, that means that the person who filled the job is going to perform the job better than you would have.

00:20:26.000 And so that company will do better.

00:20:27.000 They will perform better.

00:20:28.000 The prices will be better.

00:20:30.000 The products will be better.

00:20:31.000 And second, you will end up in a job where you are most meritorious.

00:20:35.000 If you want a happier human society, meritocracy is the way.

00:20:39.000 And yet we were told that meritocracy is inherently bad.

00:20:41.000 Why?

00:20:42.000 Because people looked at the outcome numbers and they judged for themselves that if outcomes were not equal, therefore the system was unequal and bad.

00:20:52.000 If you don't use a meritocracy, then you have to prejudge.

00:20:55.000 Either you are going to judge a system based on the effects of the system or you're going to pre-judge a system based on your perception of fairness between groups.

00:21:05.000 Cosmic justice, as Thomas Sowell would put it.

00:21:08.000 And there is nothing just about the idea that a person should be hampered in their capacity to succeed because of their immutable characteristics.

00:21:15.000 That is just wrong.

00:21:17.000 That's why this article is really important.

00:21:18.000 It explains an awful lot about our current political moment.

00:21:21.000 And it does say that we need to end grievance-based politics.

00:21:24.000 Grievance-based politics need to end.

00:21:26.000 Yes, white male American millennials, Christians have reason for grievance. 1.00

00:21:32.000 The solution to that grievance is meritocracy.

00:21:36.000 It is not, in fact, reverse grievance.

00:21:40.000 Because otherwise we're just going to ping pong between grievances.

00:21:42.000 And it's just a question of who grabs the government gun and crams down their preferred solution today.

00:21:48.000 That is not what America was built on.

00:21:50.000 It is not what is going to cause America to succeed.

00:21:53.000 And again, the negative externalities of the DEI system have been felt everywhere, from the social sphere to the job sphere to the governmental sphere.

00:22:02.000 And that spiral will keep on swirling the drain unless we reverse it and go back to, again, the thing that we all taught our kids, the thing that we were taught as kids, to treat every individual human being as an individual and not on the basis of some sort of immutable characteristic.

00:22:20.000 It was a sin against America what happened over the course of the last decade.

00:22:25.000 A sin against decency.

00:22:27.000 And the fact that so many people are still invested in that sin or who now want to pursue the same sin, but with a different color at the top, all of that does not speak to a successful America.

00:22:39.000 All righty, coming up, we are going to get to Susie Wiles. 0.65

00:22:41.000 She is profiled in Vanity Fair and has some things to say about the administration that are kind of fascinating.

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00:24:53.000 Okay, meanwhile, the other big controversy of the day is an interview series that Susie Wiles, the president's chief of staff, did with Vanity Fair.

00:25:01.000 So I just have a question number one.

00:25:03.000 Why are you doing big interviews with Vanity Fair?

00:25:06.000 It seems to me that at this point, if you're a member of the Trump administration, you should well know at this point that Vanity Fair is probably going to take the spiciest things that you say about your colleagues and put them in print.

00:25:18.000 I mean, Vanity Fair was apparently taping the interviews.

00:25:20.000 And so Susie Wiles said some pretty spicy things about the administration.

00:25:23.000 So there are kind of two issues.

00:25:24.000 One is why Susie Wiles would do that. 1.00

00:25:26.000 That's less interesting to me, frankly, than what Susie Wiles actually said.

00:25:30.000 Because whenever you get a window into a room that is typically closed, it's interesting to see what the people inside the room are saying.

00:25:36.000 Why Susie Wiles would do that? 1.00

00:25:38.000 I mean, I assume that the president knew about it.

00:25:41.000 I assume that she wasn't freelancing it.

00:25:43.000 I assume that there is some rationale for why she wanted to go talk to the people at Vanity Fair, presumably because she figured, okay, if they write a hit piece about the administration, then the administration will survive it.

00:25:56.000 The administration always survives hit pieces.

00:25:58.000 And maybe, just maybe, Vanity Fair will actually do some sort of decent coverage.

00:26:02.000 Maybe that was the logic.

00:26:04.000 Maybe on a personal political level, Susie Wiles is looking beyond this term and she's figuring, okay, maybe I'm not inside the JD Vance team.

00:26:13.000 I'm sort of auditioning for another role.

00:26:15.000 You know, it's unclear what is driving Susie Wiles to do that interview. 0.98

00:26:19.000 What's much more interesting to me is what Susie Wiles actually said.

00:26:23.000 So first of all, we should point out that she appears to be in no danger of losing her job over this.

00:26:27.000 According to the New York Post, President Trump defended White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

00:26:32.000 So apparently in this interview, she said that Trump has an alcoholics personality, meaning that he is, you know, hyperactive and obsessive.

00:26:41.000 And Trump said, no, she meant that I mean, see, I don't drink alcohol.

00:26:44.000 I've often said that if I did, I'd have a very good chance of being an alcoholic.

00:26:44.000 Everybody knows that.

00:26:48.000 I've said that many times about myself.

00:26:49.000 I do.

00:26:49.000 It's a very possessive personality.

00:26:52.000 I said that many times about myself.

00:26:53.000 I'm fortunate I'm not a drinker.

00:26:55.000 If I did, I could very well, because I've said, what's the word not possessive, possessive and addictive type of personality?

00:27:00.000 Oh, I've said it many times, many times before.

00:27:04.000 In the profile, Wiles told author Chris Whipple that high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, that personalities are exaggerated when they drink, and that the president has an alcoholics personality because he operates with a view that there's nothing he can't do.

00:27:18.000 And so the president defended her.

00:27:19.000 He said, I didn't read it, but I don't read Vanity Fair, but she's done a fantastic job.

00:27:23.000 I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong.

00:27:25.000 It was a very misguided interviewer, purposefully misguided.

00:27:28.000 And he said that she is fantastic.

00:27:30.000 He said he thought Whipple may have deceived Wiles regarding his focus.

00:27:33.000 Yeah, deceived.

00:27:34.000 He didn't have great access, a couple of very short interviews, and Susie generally doesn't do interviews.

00:27:38.000 If anybody knows the interviewer, if they know Vanity Fair, Vanity Fair is a totally, it's lost its way.

00:27:42.000 It's also lost its readers, as you know, know she's fantastic.

00:27:47.000 Well, Susie Wiles also had some words about, for example, the vice president of the United States.

00:27:53.000 She said that JD Vance was a conspiracy theorist for a decade, which is sort of fascinating because obviously the vice president of the United States has fairly warm relations with people who are themselves warm on conspiracies.

00:28:05.000 She also said that Attorney General Pam Bondi whiffed in her handling of the Epstein files, which of course is perfectly true. 1.00

00:28:12.000 And so again, there's sort of two issues.

00:28:13.000 Why she talked to Vanity Fair and if she said what she said was true.

00:28:19.000 So apparently, Vance then went out and defended her.

00:28:22.000 He claimed the only conspiracies he believes are the true ones, which, you know, maybe.

00:28:28.000 And I've seen so many people who will say one thing to the president's face, Democrats and Republicans, and then will do the exact opposite behind the scenes.

00:28:37.000 You know why I really love.

00:28:39.000 And you know why I really love Susie Wiles?

00:28:42.000 Because Susie is who she is in the president's presence.

00:28:47.000 She's the same exact person when the president isn't around.

00:28:50.000 I've never seen Susie Wiles say something to the president and then go and counteract him or subvert his will behind the scenes.

00:29:00.000 Okay, so Susie Wiles herself put out a statement saying that the Vanity Fair series was a disingenuously framed head piece, quote, significant context was disregarded, and much of what I and others said about the team and the president was left out of the story.

00:29:12.000 I assume after reading it that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the president and our team.

00:29:18.000 White House Press Secretary Caroline Lovitt came out and dismissed the article.

00:29:22.000 Here's what she had to say.

00:29:24.000 This was unfortunately another attempt at fake news by a reporter who was acting disingenuously and really did take the chief's words out of context.

00:29:34.000 But I think most importantly, the bias of omission was ever present throughout this story.

00:29:39.000 The reporter omitted all of the positive things that Susie and our team said about the president and the inner workings of the White House.

00:29:47.000 And as Susie said today, it's deeply unfortunate that happened, but it won't distract us from making America great again.

00:29:54.000 Is this going to have any lasting impact?

00:29:55.000 The answer is no, but it's sort of a fascinating thing.

00:29:58.000 Apparently, Wiles said the president believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin won't be satisfied with getting part of Ukraine.

00:30:04.000 Quote, Donald Trump thinks he wants the whole country.

00:30:06.000 So once again, demonstrating that President Trump's instincts are very often better than his staff's.

00:30:10.000 President Trump is correct about all of this.

00:30:12.000 Apparently, in April, when Trump announced the Liberation Day tariffs, Wiles said the White House struggled to agree on an approach.

00:30:19.000 Wiles tried to convince the president to wait to roll out his sweeping tariffs until there was more unity among his advisors, but Trump forged ahead anyway.

00:30:27.000 So, you know, will there be internal fallout?

00:30:29.000 Probably not.

00:30:30.000 The president does a good job of keeping a lid on sort of internal dissension inside his team.

00:30:35.000 However, do I believe that Susie Wiles and the team at the White House had no idea that Vanity Fair was going to pursue some sort of hit piece?

00:30:42.000 I find that very, very difficult to believe.

00:30:44.000 Okay, meanwhile, the president obviously is having a tough time in the approval ratings right now.

00:30:50.000 A huge part of that is based on concerns about affordability.

00:30:53.000 And as I've said before, affordability is sort of a weasel word.

00:30:55.000 It encompasses a lot of different things.

00:30:58.000 Right now, the focus on affordability is reverting back to the focus on Obamacare.

00:31:06.000 So I asked our sponsors over at Comet, a project of perplexity, how much are the Obamacare premiums expected to rise if Obamacare subsidies expire at the end of 2025?

00:31:17.000 According to Comet, if an enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expire at the end of 2025, average out-of-pocket premiums for people now receiving subsidies are projected to more than double in 2026, increasing by roughly 110 to 115%.

00:31:33.000 In dollar terms, KFF estimates that the average annual payments would rise from about $900 in 2025 to about $1,900 in 2026 for subsidized enrollees.

00:31:46.000 KFF's October 22.5 analysis estimates that subsidized marketplace enrollees would see their annual premiums jump from an average of $888 to $1,904 if enhanced premium tax credits lapse.

00:31:59.000 Separate from those subsidies, insurers are proposing significant 2026 rate increases with a median premium hike of about 18 to 26 percent for ACA plans.

00:32:07.000 You can see why, for example, Mike Lawler, who is a congressman from New York, is freaking out.

00:32:12.000 Mike Lawler is suggesting that fellow Republicans are screwing this thing up.

00:32:18.000 Quote, I am pissed for the American people.

00:32:20.000 This is BS.

00:32:21.000 That is because if the ACA subsidies expire, he maybe loses his seat.

00:32:27.000 He called it idiotic not to have an upper-down vote on extending the subsidies.

00:32:30.000 It's political malpractice.

00:32:31.000 He said Lawler is not aligned with the leadership on the other side of the aisle.

00:32:36.000 He says that Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer want the subsidies to expire so they can run on it, which is probably right.

00:32:43.000 Lawler said he's open to supporting a Democratic-led discharge petition, which would force a vote on extending the subsidies, which are set to expire on December 31st.

00:32:51.000 House Majority Leader, Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, confirmed to reporters on Thursday that there would be no vote on ACA subsidies.

00:32:59.000 He responded to Lawler by praising the lawmaker, calling him a dear friend and close colleague.

00:33:04.000 The Republicans have put forward their own plan.

00:33:06.000 That plan would lower the cost of health care something like 11%.

00:33:12.000 The problem is that lowering premiums by 11% from the otherwise gigantic jump of 125% probably is not going to be enough to save Republicans some seats.

00:33:22.000 The lower healthcare premiums for all Americans act that House Republicans are pushing would increase transparency for pharmacy benefit managers, appropriate cost-sharing reduction plans that would lower premiums, expand access to health association plans that would allow self-employed workers and other membership-based organizations like Costco, Amazon, and Sam's Club to create their own health insurance pools and ensure small and mid-sized employers can protect themselves from catastrophic claims.

00:33:46.000 According to the Congressional Budget Office, this would lower the benchmark health insurance premiums by 11% and save $35.6 billion through 2035, which is a little bit of money.

00:33:57.000 But again, that's really not the question.

00:33:59.000 Is it better than what Democrats are proposing on a pure policy level?

00:34:03.000 Sure.

00:34:04.000 Because continuing to subsidize these gigantic insurance schemes fostered by the Obama administration and then expanded by Joe Biden, that obviously is bad for the country and bad for the American taxpayer.

00:34:18.000 But if what you are worried about is a gigantic rise in premiums that is not going to be paid for by increases in wages or by compensatory changes to regulatory structures, then of course you do have a political problem.

00:34:31.000 Chip Roy, for his part, is very upset with this bill.

00:34:34.000 He says that they should go further.

00:34:36.000 Here is the Republican representative from Texas.

00:34:38.000 Of course, he is extremely fiscally conservative.

00:34:41.000 And now we're sitting here and we're listening to nonsense about health care where my colleagues on the other side of the aisle sit here saying, well, you guys aren't doing anything about the massive expensive cost of health care.

00:34:51.000 Why do you think it's expensive?

00:34:54.000 Because you literally cut a deal with insurance companies to run health care.

00:34:58.000 You think that's going to run wild?

00:35:00.000 That's why they have 2,000% profit increases and the American people can't afford to go to the doctor of their choice while we enrich insurance companies.

00:35:00.000 Yeah.

00:35:08.000 And yet Republicans will complain about it, and then they'll offer milquetoast garbage like we're offering this week, and then go home at Christmas and say, look at what we're doing.

00:35:18.000 We're campaigning on reducing health care.

00:35:20.000 Well, congrats your friggin Latin. 0.74

00:35:23.000 So, again, he is not wrong on the merits.

00:35:25.000 The question is politically, are Republicans going to survive a gigantic Obamacare expansion in costs that fall on subsidized plans?

00:35:34.000 The reality is that Republicans ought to create a transitional plan that probably extends the subsidies for not three years, for a year or two years.

00:35:43.000 And in the meantime, puts in place the sorts of changes to the regulatory structure that would allow for a massive decrease in costs or flattening of the cost curve.

00:35:53.000 This, by the way, should be the Republican plan for a lot of necessary fiscal changes.

00:35:58.000 The American people are not willing.

00:35:59.000 Listen, I wish they were.

00:36:00.000 I wish the American people were willing to accept a Javier-Mele-style economic reset when it comes to regulatory structures, but they're not.

00:36:07.000 And so the question is, do you wish to embrace a program that is likely to lose you the House majority and therefore destroy the rest of the Trump term?

00:36:15.000 Or do you wish to make a pragmatic compromise that is ugly and terrible and a result of Republican failures to provide an alternative plan over the course of the last 10 years, but also preserves a Republican majority and the possibility of a real change in the regulatory structure?

00:36:33.000 That's the real question here.

00:36:35.000 There really is no third choice where you get to do all the things you want and there's no political fallout.

00:36:38.000 It seems that Democrats know this, which is why they are pursuing yet another government shutdown at the end of January.

00:36:43.000 Chuck Schumer is saying as much.

00:36:44.000 He was asked three times whether there will be another government shutdown in January over Obamacare subsidies.

00:36:49.000 And here's what he had to say.

00:36:52.000 As I said, the bottom line is very simple, and that is that the way to solve this problem, because the toothpaste is already out of the tube, is get it done by January 1st.

00:37:04.000 The Republicans, if they care so much and feel the heat, they should make sure they pass our bill.

00:37:10.000 Yes, that doesn't sound like you've arrived on a strategy for how to handle January 3rd.

00:37:15.000 So is that in play?

00:37:16.000 Yes or no?

00:37:17.000 The health care issue the same as it was when the government shutdown this fall?

00:37:20.000 I answered the question.

00:37:21.000 But that doesn't sound clear, though.

00:37:22.000 The bottom line is very clear.

00:37:26.000 You can't do it after January 1st.

00:37:30.000 So, yeah, again, I think that Schumer and the rest of the Democrats are begging for this.

00:37:35.000 They want it.

00:37:36.000 They're going to run on it.

00:37:37.000 That is their whole idea.

00:37:39.000 All right.

00:37:39.000 Meanwhile, again, the president of the United States, he is facing down some pretty significant 2026 losses if the perception of the economy goes the wrong way.

00:37:48.000 Unemployment did, in fact, rise in November to 4.6%.

00:37:51.000 Of course, that's not a historically high unemployment rate, but it is an increase in the unemployment rate.

00:37:56.000 A long-delayed government report, according to the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, showed 64,000 jobs were gained in November.

00:38:02.000 105,000 jobs were lost in October.

00:38:05.000 Job losses in June, August, and October mean the U.S. economy has actually shed jobs in three out of the past six months.

00:38:11.000 Taken together, the data point to one of the weakest American labor markets in years.

00:38:17.000 While the economy has added jobs so far this year, mostly on the back of gains in healthcare and education, the shock of shifting trade policies and an immigration crackdown has restrained labor demand and supply, making for tepid hiring overall.

00:38:30.000 Some economists and investors were putting less stock in Tuesday's job numbers because of likely distortions from the government closure, which prevented the Labor Department from collecting some data that it normally would have.

00:38:40.000 We're not falling off the table by any means, but this is not a sort of booming jobs market, for sure.

00:38:46.000 Now, wages are in fact rising, which is interesting.

00:38:48.000 So the wages continue to rise, but the job market is roiling.

00:38:51.000 And this has been sort of the mood for the Trump administration for a while, is this feeling that even while things are generally going kind of pretty well, that things could fall down at any second?

00:39:02.000 And I think a lot of people are feeling that right now.

00:39:04.000 Meanwhile, the president of the United States is set to interview the feds, Christopher Waller, for chair.

00:39:09.000 The two frontrunners are former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh and Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council.

00:39:15.000 Hassett is widely considered the frontrunner.

00:39:17.000 Christopher Waller was named to the Feds board by Trump and confirmed by the Senate at the end of Trump's term in 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:39:23.000 He's a leading internal advocate for rate cuts this year.

00:39:26.000 He is widely considered sort of an institutionalist.

00:39:28.000 So a lot of people on Wall Street would be much more comfortable with Waller than they would with, for example, Kevin Hassett, but he doesn't have the sort of personal relationship with Trump that Hassett and Warsh enjoy, which is probably why he is unlikely to be the final pick.

00:39:41.000 President Trump is programming for loyalty at this point, which you understand after the amount of staff turnover that he had in the last administration.

00:39:50.000 A lot of people in the administration are not super happy with the Kevin Hassett of it.

00:39:54.000 According to Politico, Hassett's detractors believe he has not been effective as head of the National Economic Council other than as a public messenger for the president's agenda.

00:40:01.000 He hasn't really done much in driving policy that is causing concern.

00:40:05.000 He's ill-suited to take the helm of the central bank, but that's not how Trump's going to pick.

00:40:09.000 Trump does focus a lot on the messaging.

00:40:11.000 It is the one thing that President Trump is a greater expert on than pretty much anything else is his focus on messaging.

00:40:17.000 And so it would not be a surprise if Kevin Hassett indeed ended up at the head of the Federal Reserve, assuming, of course, that he can get past the Senate.

00:40:25.000 Okay, meanwhile, the president is pursuing policies at this point.

00:40:28.000 Some of the policies the president is pursuing seem to be, shall we say, short-termism.

00:40:36.000 For example, President Trump is now expected to sign an executive order reclassifying marijuana.

00:40:42.000 I think this is a horrible move.

00:40:44.000 I think that marijuana is, in fact, a massive detriment to young people all across America.

00:40:49.000 I've held this view pretty consistently for a couple of decades because it seemed to me that all of the talk about how marijuana was completely harmless, non-addictive, and all the rest of it was just not borne out by the science.

00:41:01.000 Nor did it seem to me to be borne out by the anecdotal evidence, considering that I know a number of young people who have essentially gotten addicted to pot, especially because the pot strains that are currently available have much higher THC content than the pot strains, even when I was a teenager.

00:41:15.000 The president, though, knows that it is a popular idea to reclassify marijuana because the sort of myth-making around the non-harmfulness of marijuana has become so strong.

00:41:28.000 The order would reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I drug, which the DEA defines as having no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse, to a Schedule III drug, which the DEA defines as having a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.

00:41:41.000 I do not see the evidence that marijuana has a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.

00:41:47.000 That reclassification could have implications for research of marijuana or use for medical purposes.

00:41:53.000 President Trump said that he was considering reclassification very strongly.

00:41:58.000 He said, we're considering that because a lot of people want to see it.

00:42:00.000 The reclassification because it leads to tremendous amounts of research that can't be done unless you reclassify it.

00:42:05.000 So we're looking at that very strongly.

00:42:06.000 Okay, if we really believe that reclassification of marijuana in order to do research on marijuana is the thing, I am skeptical that that is what this is about.

00:42:16.000 I've yet to see a major medical issue other than perhaps stem cell research that has broken into the public view with regard to should we do more research on it or not.

00:42:25.000 Certainly not with regard to marijuana.

00:42:29.000 A year ago, President Trump had suggested his return to the White House would usher in a new era for marijuana, making it easier for adults to access safe products and giving states greater leeway to pursue legalization.

00:42:40.000 He had started talking about this in 2024, of course, when he was running for reelection.

00:42:45.000 This seems to me a bad move.

00:42:47.000 According to the Calci Markets, it is now a near certainty that there will be a rescheduling of marijuana before 2028.

00:42:55.000 Unlikely, according to the Calci Markets, their sponsor of the show, that marijuana will be rescheduled this year.

00:43:01.000 But before the end of 2026, 82% shot in the prediction markets.

00:43:06.000 Before 2028, 89% shot in the prediction.

00:43:09.000 That's what we need.

00:43:10.000 We mean more young people enervated by pot.

00:43:13.000 I can't see how that would go wrong in any possible way.

00:43:16.000 And the sort of short-term thinking, temporary payoffs to motivated constituencies.

00:43:21.000 Well, I mean, there is a downside, which is that people high on pot don't tend to vote in massive numbers.

00:43:25.000 Well, at the same time, over in Los Angeles, we do have news with regard to the Rob Reiner and Michelle Singer-Reiner murders at the hands, allegedly, of their son, Nick.

00:43:34.000 Prosecutors have now charged Nick Reiner with two counts of first-degree murder.

00:43:38.000 He also faces a special allegation of using a dangerous and deadly weapon, a knife.

00:43:42.000 Here's the Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hockman talking about it.

00:43:47.000 Today, I'm here to announce that our office will be filing charges against Nick Reiner, who is accused of killing his parents, actor-director Rob Reiner, and photographer-producer Michelle Singer-Reiner.

00:44:01.000 These charges will be two counts of first-degree murder with the special circumstance of multiple murders.

00:44:09.000 He also faces a special allegation that he personally used a dangerous and deadly weapon, that being a knife.

00:44:16.000 These charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty.

00:44:26.000 So, obviously, this person should go to prison for life, but we also have so many red flags.

00:44:31.000 And this, again, I think that the biggest takeaway for an enormous number of Americans is if you have members of your family who are in serious need of professional help, do not gloss it over out of love for your family members.

00:44:43.000 That sort of empathy leads to terrible consequences in too many cases.

00:44:47.000 Apparently, Reiner's troubled son, Nick, reportedly stormed off in a huff, according to the New York Post, after a tiff with comedy heavyweight Bill Hayter at Conan O'Brien's Christmas party, which preceded the murder by not very long.

00:44:59.000 Nick, who was accused of slaughtering his filmmaker's dad and mom in their Brentwood home sometime between Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, interrupted Hayter at the holiday bash, according to an eyewitness.

00:45:08.000 When the SNL alum told Nick, he was in the middle of a private conversation.

00:45:11.000 The source said Nick just stood there and stared before storming off.

00:45:14.000 The unsettling interaction concerned other partygoers.

00:45:17.000 Apparently, he was not invited, but his parents tried to bring him, and the trio got into a very loud argument, possibly because Nick was back on drugs and refusing yet another go at treatment.

00:45:28.000 So terrible, terrible story on every front possible.

00:45:32.000 Just a horrifying story.

00:45:33.000 Meanwhile, we still don't know who the shooter is in the Brown University case.

00:45:37.000 There have been a lot of rumors online.

00:45:39.000 I don't bring you rumors.

00:45:40.000 So I'm going to wait until we actually have some confirmation from authorities as to who they believe committed this heinous act of violence.

00:45:47.000 The police did release new videos of the suspected gunman responsible for Saturday's shooting at Brown University as the investigation entered a fourth day, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:45:56.000 The videos show a light-skinned man wearing dark clothing, a medical mask, beanie, and at times gloves and a crossbody bag.

00:46:01.000 The man is seen pacing, walking, and running through residential streets near Brown in the two hours before the attack.

00:46:07.000 Apparently, there's also footage of the potential suspect walking past a police cruiser with its lights on after the shooting.

00:46:15.000 Providence Police Department Chief Oscar Perez said, we believe he was actually casing out this area to commit the crime.

00:46:21.000 Now, there are cameras everywhere, but apparently no cameras in the area that he was.

00:46:25.000 So that is why they're having a tough time identifying him, supposedly.

00:46:29.000 Again, there are rumors that they've already identified him, but they've not released it yet.

00:46:32.000 Here was the police chief asking the public for help in identifying the shooter.

00:46:37.000 And the reason we have shown these videos, there's a purpose, right?

00:46:40.000 So as you can see, they're enhanced photos, there's enhanced video footage.

00:46:45.000 And so we're asking the public to ensure that they can see them.

00:46:48.000 They can see here that you want to follow the body movements, the way the person moved their arms, the body posture, the way they carry their weight.

00:46:58.000 I think those are important movement patterns that may help you identify this individual, which is extremely important.

00:47:05.000 There's some suspicion that the targets of the shooting had to do with Jewishness.

00:47:11.000 The professor who is leading this particular study group was the head of the Judaic Studies program over at Brown University.

00:47:17.000 Whether or not this is linked to another murder that happened apparently in Brookline near Boston is unclear.

00:47:25.000 According to the Jerusalem Post, Nunal Lorero, a nuclear scientist at MIT, was shot dead inside his home in the town of Brookline near Boston.

00:47:33.000 He was found critically wounded by gunfire inside his residence and was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead in the early morning hours.

00:47:40.000 The circumstances surrounding the shooting are still being examined.

00:47:43.000 There's no possible suspect yet.

00:47:44.000 There's no possible motive yet.

00:47:47.000 A neighbor said that he heard three loud bangs.

00:47:50.000 It appears to be a targeted killing.

00:47:54.000 Various Jewish organizations have speculated online that the professor was targeted for his political affiliations as a pro-Israel advocate.

00:48:00.000 Again, unclear whether that is the case or not.

00:48:04.000 Over in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a 35-year-old Jewish man was stabbed on Kingston Avenue with the attacker reportedly shouting F these Jews and saying it would be all right if the Holocaust happened today.

00:48:13.000 So it's been an interesting Hanukkah for the Jewish community globally.

00:48:18.000 We'll bring you the latest on all of this.

00:48:20.000 One of the fascinating aspects of so many of these incidents is that even when you know the motive full scale, there's still an attempt by legacy media to cover it up.

00:48:29.000 This is particularly true when the motive happens to be radical Islam.

00:48:32.000 Reporter Linda Kinkade reporting on the Bondi Beach shooting over in Sydney, Australia, she points out there were ISIS flags in the car of the shooters.

00:48:43.000 Authorities are now investigating a possible link with extremists.

00:48:48.000 They found Dash Can footage that showed an ISIS flag taped to the window of the suspect's car.

00:48:54.000 Inside that car, there were also unexploded devices and another two homemade ISIS flags.

00:49:02.000 Okay, well, at the same exact time that this is being reported, and we all know that this is a radical Islamic terror attack, ABC News' faith Abube downplayed the extremist motive entirely.

00:49:13.000 As for the suspect, authorities say one of them was a licensed gun owner with six firearms, but they have not yet revealed a motive.

00:49:21.000 Guys, we'll find that out.

00:49:24.000 I mean, I'm sorry.

00:49:25.000 Like, this is just bad reporting.

00:49:27.000 It's just bad reporting.

00:49:28.000 Democrats are focused for all of their time and effort on taking your gun.

00:49:33.000 So radical Muslims shoot up Jews in Sydney.

00:49:36.000 Time to take your guns.

00:49:37.000 Here is Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who has presided over mass Muslim migration into Minnesota, which has resulted, among other things, in over a billion dollars in fraud. 0.88

00:49:45.000 Here he is saying that it is BS that assault weapons being banned would somehow encroach upon our constitutional freedoms.

00:49:54.000 I don't know.

00:49:55.000 Do you really think limiting them to less than 100 bullets is going to do anything?

00:50:00.000 Yes, it is.

00:50:00.000 Yes.

00:50:01.000 Yes, it is going to save lives.

00:50:03.000 Just like the extreme risk protection orders, which I can pull quotes from many of these folks who said, this will do nothing.

00:50:09.000 This will not protect lives.

00:50:11.000 This will take away our freedoms.

00:50:13.000 It's time to start reporting that that is all bullshit.

00:50:17.000 It does do something.

00:50:18.000 It does make a difference.

00:50:20.000 And to stand here and have to look in the eyes of parents who lost their little ones, shame on them.

00:50:25.000 And shame on us if we don't get this done.

00:50:28.000 Again, amazing that after there is a shooting at Brown University, motive unknown, and a shooting in Bondi Beach, motive very much known, the solution is for you to give up your AR-15, apparently.

00:50:38.000 President Trump has a better solution.

00:50:39.000 That would be to expand his travel ban to a wide variety of radicalized Muslim countries.

00:50:44.000 The Trump administration has now instituted, according to Axios, full restrictions and entry limitations against Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria, as well as people with travel documents issued by the Palestinian Authority.

00:50:56.000 The White House said in an announcement, many of the restricted countries suffer from widespread corruption, fraudulent or unreliable civil documents and criminal records, and non-existent birth registration systems systematically preventing accurate vetting.

00:51:09.000 Makes some sense, especially given the problems that we have had with vetting the immigrants coming to the United States.

00:51:15.000 Joining me on the line is Cabot Phillips, the Morning Wire contributor.

00:51:18.000 And he has a brand new report on something called Manhattan Project 2.0.

00:51:22.000 Kavot, thanks so much for the time.

00:51:23.000 I appreciate it.

00:51:24.000 Absolutely, Ben.

00:51:25.000 So why don't you tell me about Manhattan Project 2.0?

00:51:28.000 What is this?

00:51:29.000 Yeah.

00:51:30.000 So over the last few years, as AI has burst on the scene nationwide, most of the development has actually been happening in the private sector in Silicon Valley companies we all know, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google.

00:51:41.000 But the Trump administration is really big that this whole thing is a national security issue, similar to the nuclear arms race or the space race in the 50s and 60s.

00:51:51.000 And they're adamant that, hey, if we fall behind here to China, to Russia, you know, any other country, it's going to have the same impact as if we had not been the first to create nuclear weapons in the 1940s.

00:52:03.000 So they're calling this the New Manhattan Project basically to create this sense of urgency that, hey, we cannot let other countries get ahead of us here.

00:52:12.000 So Trump wants the federal government to play a big role in helping these private sector companies get ahead, if nothing else, for national security.

00:52:19.000 So he signed a number of executive orders.

00:52:21.000 He's pushed billions, if not trillions of dollars into these industries over the next decade.

00:52:27.000 And this most recent executive order that he signed last month, they're calling it the Genesis mission.

00:52:32.000 It's going to connect 40,000 scientists at 17 nationwide labs.

00:52:38.000 These are national labs.

00:52:39.000 And it's also directing those national labs to create one single coordinated AI platform.

00:52:45.000 I talked to a number of AI scientists for this mini documentary, and a lot of them said a big issue that they've been having is they're all working on separate platforms.

00:52:52.000 So they might have similar data, but they're not actually collaborating here because they're all on separate platforms.

00:52:58.000 So Trump administration is trying to create one centralized place for all this research to take place.

00:53:04.000 Now, one of the biggest needs for the new AI software that's being developed is data.

00:53:09.000 These projects require huge amounts of data to train their software on real-world applications.

00:53:15.000 And the executive order is saying, hey, the government, if nothing else, has plenty of data.

00:53:20.000 So they're going to provide these private companies access for the first time to huge government databases on everything from energy grids, weather patterns, geological surveys, healthcare, you name it.

00:53:32.000 And then from there, the AI companies are being directed to use that data to focus their AI machines on what the government is calling challenges of national importance.

00:53:42.000 That includes advanced manufacturing, robotics, biotechnology, and then nuclear fission.

00:53:47.000 So basically, the Trump administration is telling the private sector, we have the data, we have the infrastructure and the money.

00:53:54.000 You guys have the technology and the engineers.

00:53:56.000 Let's work together here.

00:53:58.000 Has there been any blowback as far as the government involvement in the AI sector?

00:54:03.000 Obviously, it's politically pretty volatile because there are a lot of major AI companies right now that are all competing with one another.

00:54:09.000 And as soon as the government gets involved in the private sector, even though this is the private sector kind of helping out a government mission, you're going to run into some obstacles.

00:54:16.000 What's the blowback been like?

00:54:18.000 It's interesting.

00:54:19.000 The blowback has been more from the smaller and newer AI companies.

00:54:23.000 So a lot of the bigger companies, for example, for the documentary, I interviewed Greg Brockman.

00:54:28.000 He's the co-founder of OpenAI, probably the most influential one in the space.

00:54:32.000 He was all for this.

00:54:33.000 He said, hey, this is great.

00:54:34.000 There's been this Wild West scenario for AI for years where no one has really known what government regulation was going to look like.

00:54:41.000 And so, this regulation will actually be a good thing because we now know the set of rules we're playing with.

00:54:45.000 There's more government support.

00:54:47.000 But there are smaller emerging AI companies that say, yeah, of course, the big guys are fine with this because they have huge legal teams that can navigate these new regulations.

00:54:56.000 They have a lot more money.

00:54:57.000 They have a lot more lobbying influence and they have a lot more access to the White House.

00:55:02.000 And so, of course, the big boys want this because it might stifle competition.

00:55:06.000 That has been the big rub.

00:55:07.000 And then the other part of this has been Trump trying to streamline AI regulations at the state level.

00:55:14.000 So we know that there are a number of states, especially red states, that are concerned about these AI data centers popping up in their states for potential health reasons.

00:55:22.000 And they're also concerned about what the implications are of having all this software at the state level for privacy, things of that nature.

00:55:30.000 The Trump administration, they do not want this patchwork type of regulations for AI.

00:55:35.000 So they've issued a new executive order basically giving Attorney General Bondi the right to overrule state-level regulations on AI.

00:55:44.000 And they're now threatening these states, saying if you guys pass AI regulations that they said would enact onerous AI laws, whatever that means, then we can restrict federal funding and federal broadband grants to your states.

00:55:59.000 So Trump is trying to keep each state from having their own regulations.

00:56:02.000 He's saying if you have 50 different regulations in 50 different states, the U.S. will not have AI innovation.

00:56:08.000 And so I think that is the other element of this where you're going to see a lot of back and forth tug of war, especially on the right, because a lot of MAGA folks are not happy about that executive order from the president.

00:56:18.000 Well, it's a fascinating controversy and a fascinating move by the Trump administration, recognizing a very real threat in the possible Chinese domination of AI. 0.58

00:56:25.000 That's Cabot Phillips, Morning Wire contributor.

00:56:27.000 You can go check out Morning Wire every day here at Daily Wire Plus.

00:56:30.000 Cabot, appreciate the time.

00:56:32.000 Absolutely.

00:56:33.000 All righty, coming up for our subscribers, the New York Times has a long expose on just where Jeffrey Epstein got his money.

00:56:39.000 It's pretty fascinating.

00:56:40.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:56:42.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:56:43.000 Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:56:46.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

00:56:50.000 Oh, this is an illusion.

00:56:52.000 An echo of a voice that has died.

00:56:57.000 And soon that echo will cease.

00:57:09.000 They say that Merlin is mad.

00:57:17.000 They say he was a king in Dovid.

00:57:20.000 The son of a princess of lost Atlantis.

00:57:23.000 They say the future and the past are known to him.

00:57:28.000 Let the fire and the wind tell him their secrets.

00:57:32.000 Let the magic of the hill folk and druids come forth at his easy command.

00:57:39.000 They say he slew hundreds.

00:57:42.000 Hundreds, do you hear?

00:57:44.000 That the world burned and trembled at his wrath.

00:57:51.000 The Merlin died long before you and I were born.

00:57:56.000 Merlin Emirus has returned to the land of the living.

00:58:02.000 Vortigan is gone.

00:58:04.000 Rum is gone.

00:58:06.000 The Saxon is here. 0.76

00:58:08.000 Saxon Hengist has assembled the greatest war host ever seen in the island of the mighty. 0.84

00:58:13.000 And before the summer is through, he means to take the throne.

00:58:18.000 And he will have it.

00:58:19.000 If we are too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to take up arms against him, here is your hope.

00:58:25.000 A king will arise to hold all Britain in his hand.

00:58:29.000 A high king.

00:58:30.000 He would be the wonder of the world.

00:58:33.000 You To a future of peace, there'll be no peace in these lands till we are all dust.

00:58:44.000 Men of the island of the mighty, you stand together!

00:58:50.000 You stand as Britons!

00:58:52.000 You stand as one.

00:58:56.000 Great darkness is falling upon this land.

00:59:01.000 These brothers are our only hope to stand against it.

00:59:05.000 Not our only hope.

00:59:07.000 Esse Merthyn slew 70 men with his own hands.

00:59:12.000 At Cathay, he slew 500.

00:59:16.000 No man is capable of such a thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 17, 2025

How White Men Became The Targets Of America’s Most Powerful Institutions

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