The Ben Shapiro Show - Hunter Biden MELTS DOWN…On Democrats!

00:00:00.000 Alrighty, folks, a lot coming up on today's show.

00:00:02.000 Hunter Biden, crack addict, former crack addict, but it appears something is still ripping through his system because he just did a wild three-hour interview.

00:00:10.000 What does that say about the Democratic Party?

00:00:12.000 Plus, we'll get to Stephen Colbert, the fallout from his firing, and a couple of actually quite important criminal cases.

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00:00:52.000 Okay, so the big story of the day is Hunter Biden.

00:00:56.000 He's back.

00:00:57.000 Now, why does that matter?

00:00:59.000 There are a couple of reasons it matters.

00:01:00.000 One is that Hunter Biden is a stand-in for his father.

00:01:03.000 When Hunter talks, Hunter is speaking for Joe Biden.

00:01:06.000 And when he speaks for Joe Biden, he is speaking for, believe it or not, the establishment wing of the Democratic Party in some interesting and weird ways.

00:01:13.000 And so what he has to say about politics is sort of relevant.

00:01:16.000 Also, Hunter Biden's exposure of the entire left for the fraud that it is because of his father is quite incredible.

00:01:25.000 And it is worthwhile to remember that Hunter Biden, along with Joe Biden, was part of that inner coterie of people surrounding Joe who knew that Joe was unhealthy, mentally unwell, and all the rest, and who left him in place because they were essentially playing at the presidency.

00:01:37.000 This is something that Jake Tapper and Alex Thampson have reported in their book Original Sin, talking about who was the actual president of the United States for several years.

00:01:46.000 When you listen to Hunter, you should understand Hunter Biden was at least partially the actual president of the United States for several years, and so that makes this interview important.

00:01:56.000 So we begin this interview, discussing this interview, with his thoughts on the election.

00:02:00.000 So first he says, the reason that his dad completely collapsed as a human during that debate with Donald Trump, the most famous debate now in modern American history, the reason for that is because he says that his father was on ambient.

00:02:14.000 I know exactly what happened in that debate.

00:02:16.000 He flew around the world, basically, the mileage that he could have flown around the world three times.

00:02:21.000 He's 81 years old.

00:02:23.000 He's tired.

00:02:24.000 Give him ambient to be able to sleep.

00:02:26.000 He gets up on the stage and he looks like he's a deer in the headlights.

00:02:29.000 And it feeds into every story that anybody wants to tell.

00:02:34.000 So it was the ambient.

00:02:35.000 It was not that his father was not sentient.

00:02:38.000 So first of all, who gives an 81-year-old man ambient on a flight knowing what the predictable results of that will be hours later?

00:02:45.000 I mean, there's just certain materials that you take when you fly.

00:02:48.000 If you take too much melatonin, you can be zonked the next day.

00:02:51.000 Ambient will absolutely, so they gave him to that like the day before or the night before the debate.

00:02:56.000 First of all, if that's true, it shows that his advisors were in some way sandbagging him.

00:03:00.000 But beyond that, it's obviously not true that that is the reason why Joe Biden has been in a state of collapse for several years at this point.

00:03:06.000 Hunter admits that Nancy Pelosi is the person who drove Biden out of the race.

00:03:10.000 Here he was.

00:03:12.000 You know who did not want Kamala Harris to be president and did not want her to be the nominee?

00:03:20.000 Nancy Pelosi didn't want her to be.

00:03:22.000 None of Nancy Pelosi's people wanted her to be.

00:03:24.000 They wanted an open convention.

00:03:26.000 They wanted a floor fight. 0.99

00:03:28.000 They wanted a, I don't know what the hell they wanted, but they wanted to be the ones to anoint whoever they were going to anoint to become the next president of the United States.

00:03:36.000 Who do you think that would have been?

00:03:37.000 I don't know.

00:03:38.000 I really don't know.

00:03:39.000 I don't have any idea.

00:03:40.000 All I know is that they definitely did not want Kamala Harris.

00:03:44.000 And again, which undermined her, which undermined the campaign.

00:03:49.000 I think Hunter trying to defend Kamala right there, saying it wasn't her fault that she lost.

00:03:52.000 It was Pelosi who drove Biden out of the race.

00:03:54.000 He also took some side swipes at people like George Clooney and David Axelrod and the Pods of America bros, basically saying all of these people, they threw Joe Biden out of the race.

00:04:04.000 They shouldn't have.

00:04:04.000 Okay, so a lot of this is defensive play from Hunter, who, again, was the actual president, along with Jill probably, of the country for several years.

00:04:11.000 And predictably, he's pissed about it.

00:04:15.000 And you know what George Clooney did?

00:04:16.000 Because he sat down, I guess, because he was given the blessing by the Obama team or the Obama people and whoever else and David Axelrod and whoever the f ⁇ else is to go, okay, yeah, you know what?

00:04:29.000 We are going to insert our judgment over yours.

00:04:34.000 We, me, and James Carville, who hasn't run a race in 40 years, and David Axelrod, who had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama.

00:04:44.000 And that was because of Barack Obama, not because of David Axelrod.

00:04:47.000 And David Plough, and all of these guys, and the Pod Save America guys, who were junior speechwriters on Barack Obama's Senate staff, who have been dining out on the relationship with him for years, making millions of dollars.

00:05:01.000 The Anita Dunns of the world, who's made $40, $50 million off of the Democratic Party.

00:05:07.000 Kim and everybody around him.

00:05:10.000 I don't have to be nice.

00:05:11.000 Number one, I agree with Quentin Tarantino. 1.00

00:05:14.000 George Clooney is not a fucking actor. 0.99

00:05:16.000 He is a like, I don't know what he is. 1.00

00:05:20.000 He's a brand.

00:05:21.000 And by the way, and God bless him.

00:05:22.000 You know what?

00:05:23.000 He supposedly treats his friends really well.

00:05:25.000 You know what I mean?

00:05:26.000 Buys them things.

00:05:27.000 And he's got a really great place in Lake Como.

00:05:29.000 And he's great friends with Barack Obama.

00:05:32.000 You, what do you have to do with anything?

00:05:34.000 Why do I have to listen to you?

00:05:35.000 What right do you have to step on a man who's given 52 years of his life to the service of this country and decide that you, George Clooney, are going to take out basically a full-page ad in the New York Times to undermine the president at a time in which, by the way, what do people care about the most?

00:05:54.000 So I'm just going to point out here that Hunter Biden would make a better 2028 candidate than Joe Biden made a 2024 candidate.

00:06:01.000 I'm here for him dunking on all of his erstwhile Democratic friends.

00:06:04.000 Hunter, of course, took the opportunity also to defend himself against charges that, for example, his art business was a scam on behalf of the Biden family, which it pretty clearly was.

00:06:13.000 No one buys Hunter Biden finger paintings these days for 500 grand a pop.

00:06:18.000 Do you know how many stories the New York Times wrote about my art?

00:06:22.000 How many?

00:06:23.000 I don't know, like a dozen?

00:06:25.000 To what end?

00:06:27.000 I mean, really, to what end?

00:06:29.000 I mean, at the time that They were writing about my art.

00:06:31.000 Jared Kushner was in Saudi Arabia after being the head of the Middle Eastern policy group for the White House and covering for the leader of Saudi Arabia in the murder of Khashoggi, collecting $2.1 billion investment.

00:06:48.000 When he was doing that, and they were selling golden sneakers and Bibles to people off their donor list, the New York Times was still writing stories about the legitimacy of me deciding that I wanted to be a painter or not.

00:07:04.000 Well, I mean, there was an election going on, as you may have noticed.

00:07:07.000 And the fact is that the president of the United States, many people suspected, was the beneficiary of these sort of strange coincidences around the sales of your pseudo-art.

00:07:16.000 More from this insane interview with Hunter Biden in just a moment.

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00:09:37.000 Hunter Biden also suggested that he was totally qualified to be on Burisma's board.

00:09:40.000 Again, one of the kind of seamy realities about the last election cycle is some of it was about Joe Biden's age.

00:09:45.000 A lot of it was about a widespread perception, correct, of the Biden family's absolutely deep and abiding corruption. 0.80

00:09:52.000 Here is Hunter now denying that he had been put on the board of Burisma for any political reason, which of course is absolutely ridiculous.

00:09:59.000 He had no experience in the energy sector.

00:10:01.000 He couldn't point out Ukraine on a map, and suddenly he was on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm.

00:10:06.000 A lot of it had to do with money.

00:10:07.000 100%.

00:10:09.000 You know, I had an organization that was willing to pay me for a service that I was 100% qualified to do.

00:10:16.000 I went to Yale Law School.

00:10:18.000 I served on dozens of boards before this.

00:10:20.000 I was an expert in corporate governance.

00:10:24.000 I have an encyclopedia knowledge of the region.

00:10:28.000 I had served on a major infrastructure company's board and had done work in global aid relief throughout the entire world and had an enormous list of connections of my own.

00:10:39.000 And I was qualified to be on that board.

00:10:42.000 So actually, he was doing it, you know, because he was really good at it.

00:10:45.000 It had nothing to do with his last name being Biden.

00:10:46.000 By the way, that's a reversal for Hunter, who openly admitted a few years ago that he would not have been on the Burisma board except for the fact that his last name was Biden.

00:10:53.000 The last part of this particular interview, the sort of Hunter Biden defending himself, that got amusing when he started making the argument that crack is somehow safer than alcohol, which is a hell of an argument here.

00:11:05.000 Does crack cocaine make you act any differently?

00:11:08.000 No.

00:11:09.000 Is it safer than alcohol?

00:11:11.000 Probably.

00:11:12.000 People think of crack as being dirty.

00:11:14.000 It's the exact opposite.

00:11:16.000 When you make crack, what you're doing is you're burning off all the impurities so that it could bind with the sodium bicarbonate, which makes it smokable.

00:11:26.000 I think this is the prelude to Hunter Biden's version of Breaking Bad, where he actually goes and starts distributing.

00:11:32.000 Again, I love that he's making this argument.

00:11:35.000 But put all this aside.

00:11:36.000 Put the Biden administration aside for a second and put aside the inherent corruption, the fact that Joe Biden was dead for several years and that his family was essentially running the government.

00:11:44.000 Put all of that aside.

00:11:45.000 If you see Hunter as a stand-in for the sort of Joe Biden moderate wing of the Democratic Party, things start to get kind of interesting because Hunter Biden also spoke here about policy.

00:11:55.000 And there are two particular issues where Hunter Biden put specific focus.

00:11:59.000 And those two issues were on illegal immigration and Israel.

00:12:02.000 And these are the issues where Democrats are completely at odds with the American people, but they will not let it go.

00:12:09.000 They are more likely to let go of the trans issue than they are to let go of illegal immigration, open borders, as well as the sort of new thing of the moment, which is the idea that Israel is the great victimizer in the Middle East and the Palestinians are the great victims in the Middle East, including Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Islamic Jihad, and all the rest. 0.63

00:12:26.000 And this is sort of fascinating because if you're trying to figure out the direction of the Democratic Party, if you're trying to get out the divining rod and determine which direction the Democratic Party is going to move into, the sort of more moderate side or the more radical side, you have to understand the moderates are already caving to the radicals.

00:12:42.000 They're already caving to the radicals.

00:12:44.000 They may separate off from the trans stuff because it's been so wildly unsuccessful for them.

00:12:48.000 But the root cause of the Democratic Party is a belief that America is a great victimizer in the world.

00:12:53.000 America's allies are great victimizers in the world.

00:12:56.000 And therefore, America ought not have borders.

00:12:59.000 And also, America, her foreign policy should essentially be to abandon any strong ally as long as it is beneficial to the Democratic Party to do so.

00:13:09.000 There's a sort of third worldism that is set in the Democratic Party.

00:13:12.000 I don't mean in the radical wing of the Democratic Party, I mean in the mainstream Joe Biden wing, because Hunter Biden, remember, was Joe Biden's brain, at least the part of it that was semifunctional.

00:13:21.000 So here was Hunter Biden going off on President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.

00:13:25.000 You might be like all these Democrats say, you have to talk about and realize that people are really upset about illegal immigration.

00:13:35.000 You.

00:13:36.000 How do you think your hotel room gets cleaned?

00:13:38.000 How do you think you got food on your table?

00:13:41.000 Who do you think washes your dishes? 1.00

00:13:43.000 Who do you think does your garden? 1.00

00:13:45.000 Who do you think is here by the sheer just grit and will that they figured out a way to get here because they thought that they could give themselves and their family a better chance?

00:13:58.000 And he's somehow convinced all of us that these people are criminals.

00:14:03.000 White men in America are 45 more times likely to commit a violent crime than an immigrant. 0.98

00:14:12.000 So he actually concludes that statement that white men are more likely to commit crimes than immigrants by suggesting that we should actually force El Salvador to send back illegal immigrants, which is funny since the ones we're sending to El Salvador are by and large people with actual criminal records. 0.70

00:14:27.000 These guys think that we need to run away from all values in order for us to lead.

00:14:32.000 I say, f ⁇ you. 1.00

00:14:33.000 How are we getting those people back from El Salvador?

00:14:36.000 Because I'll tell you what, if I became president in two years from now or four years from now or three years from now, I would pick up the phone and call the president of El Salvador and say, you either send them back or I'm going to invade. 0.98

00:14:49.000 It's a fucking crime what they're doing. 0.99

00:14:53.000 He's a dictator thug. 1.00

00:14:55.000 Bukeli or Trump. 0.99

00:14:56.000 Both.

00:14:59.000 Now, again, the reason this is important is because Hunter was Joe Biden's partially functioning brain during the administration.

00:15:05.000 This is the Democratic Party perspective on illegal immigration.

00:15:07.000 America ought to be an open borders country because unfettered immigration without any sort of real security, without any sort of concern about cultural assimilation, is an effective good. 0.73

00:15:19.000 That is something the Democratic Party deeply believes.

00:15:21.000 And as we start discussing 2028 candidates, understand there will not be a Democrat on the stage who significantly calls for border security.

00:15:28.000 It will not be a thing.

00:15:30.000 It's not just with regard to immigration.

00:15:32.000 The Democratic Party also realizes that the energy in its party is very much on the side of third worldism, the sort of Zoran Mamdani belief that the third world has been victimized by America and her allies, and therefore the third world must have her revenge.

00:15:49.000 So for example, Hunter Biden was talking about the dramatic increase in anti-Semitism under his father's administration, which is certainly a thing that happened.

00:15:57.000 And he says the real reason for that is because of the Israelis. 0.75

00:16:00.000 The Israelis created the anti-Semitism. 1.00

00:16:01.000 So in other words, after Hamas murdered 1,200 Jews in Israel and took 250 hostage, a couple of dozen of whom are still being held hostage after a year and a half, that it's Israel's fault that the anti-Semitism broke out.

00:16:16.000 I think it's probably the most prescient thing that's been written about this in at least many months.

00:16:22.000 Tom Friedman wrote a thing is that the worst thing that's happened to the Jewish people is the Israeli government, Jewish people globally, the threats to their lives, the anti-Semitism that it has generated.

00:16:37.000 The worst thing that's happened to the Jewish people is the Israeli government, according to Hunter Biden.

00:16:42.000 And then he brags about how his father tried to hamstring Israel in its pursuit of getting back its hostages and ending Hamas, an actual, honest to God, American State Department-designated terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.

00:16:53.000 He took away the bunker-busting bombs from the Israelis. 1.00

00:16:55.000 He tried to curtail Netanyahu's thing.

00:16:57.000 He forced Netanyahu to open up shipping lanes and aid lanes at the Robot Crossing to be able to get food aid in.

00:17:07.000 He put pressure over and over and over again.

00:17:09.000 And now, by the way, that is not even remotely happening.

00:17:12.000 What is happening is they were bombing food lines.

00:17:14.000 There's no one in there to be able to record it.

00:17:16.000 The World Food Program, the UNHCR, none of the aid organizations are able to make it in.

00:17:21.000 Doctors Without Borders no longer can make it in.

00:17:23.000 There have been more journalists killed at this war in Gaza than in any other war combined.

00:17:29.000 And nobody's doing anything about it.

00:17:30.000 I mean, this is propaganda on behalf of Hamas, we should point out here, because the reality is that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the GHF, which has been actually facilitating the entry of aid into Gaza, as we'll discuss a little later on in the show, has been denying Hamas access to the food, which is why Hamas is shooting people and then attempting to insinuate itself among the population in order to shoot at Israeli soldiers who then respond.

00:17:51.000 That is the real thing that's been happening in the Gaza Strip.

00:17:53.000 But again, these are the parts of the Democratic base that the Democrats are trying to woo.

00:17:58.000 It is very important to them, illegal immigration and third worldism. 1.00

00:18:03.000 There is no systemic immunity for the Democratic Party against their radical base.

00:18:07.000 It does not exist.

00:18:08.000 So if you think they're going to nominate somebody who's quasi-moderate in 2028, wrong you are.

00:18:13.000 It is not going to happen.

00:18:14.000 This is a party that is an empty vessel that has no direction forward.

00:18:19.000 The supposed moderates in its own coalition are completely unable to argue their way out of a paper bag against the so-called progressives in their coalition.

00:18:29.000 So James Carville, his solution, James Carville, is basically that the Democratic Party ought to ignore its own agenda and simply just rip on Trump.

00:18:38.000 That's the only way to somehow appeal to moderates in America, according to James Carville.

00:18:42.000 Quote, constipated, leaderless, confused, a cracked out clown car, divided.

00:18:47.000 These are words I hear my fellow Democrats using to describe our party as of late.

00:18:50.000 The truth is, they're not wrong.

00:18:51.000 The Democratic Party is in shambles.

00:18:53.000 Zorin Mamdani's victory in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary wasn't an isolated event.

00:18:58.000 It represents an undeniable fissure in our political soul.

00:19:01.000 We are divided along generational lines.

00:19:03.000 Candidates like Mr. Mamdani are impatient for an economic future that folks my age are skeptical can be delivered.

00:19:08.000 We are divided along ideological lines.

00:19:10.000 A party that is historically allegiance to the state of Israel is at odds with a growing faction that will not look past the abuses in Gaza and the West Bank.

00:19:17.000 From Medicare for all purists to Affordable Care Act reformists, the list goes on and on.

00:19:21.000 The Democratic Party is steamrolling toward a civilized civil war.

00:19:23.000 It's necessary to have it.

00:19:24.000 It's even more necessary, says James Carville, to delay it.

00:19:28.000 Basically, hope for a savior.

00:19:30.000 Quote, the only thing that can save us now is an actual savior, because a savior, because a new party can be delivered only by a person.

00:19:36.000 See Barack Obama in 2008 and Bill Clinton in 1992.

00:19:40.000 No new party or candidate has a chance to break through until November 2026.

00:19:44.000 Until then, we must run unified in opposition to the Republicans and gain as many House seats as possible.

00:19:49.000 So that's his plan.

00:19:49.000 His plan is: yeah, there's a civil war, and you can hear.

00:19:52.000 James Carville, supposed moderate, is already caving to Zoran Mamdani and the progressives.

00:19:59.000 This is the biggest problem for the Democratic Party.

00:20:01.000 Hunter Biden, again, is a supposed representative of the moderate Joe Biden wing of the Democratic Party.

00:20:06.000 And there are zero issues in which he can argue against the far left of his party.

00:20:11.000 It just doesn't exist.

00:20:12.000 And so no matter how many Democrats emerge from the woodwork to try and argue against this, they keep getting shouted down.

00:20:18.000 Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, he's trying to dissociate from the momdonification of the Democratic Party.

00:20:24.000 He says the mayor of New York isn't the leader of the party or anything.

00:20:28.000 What do you make of his candidacy?

00:20:31.000 Well, look, the mayor of New York has never, never, ever been the leader of the Democratic Party.

00:20:36.000 What we need to focus on is the message.

00:20:38.000 I was listening to Senator McCormick.

00:20:40.000 They just voted for a budget the Republicans did that added $3.5 trillion to the debt.

00:20:45.000 The Democratic Party, again, has no systemic immunity to any of this.

00:20:48.000 And this is why, for example, AOC is actually in quite good shape to be a Democratic nominee in 2028.

00:20:53.000 I'm telling you, they're selling her short. 0.98

00:20:55.000 Anybody who's telling you AOC is not a serious candidate is just wrong about this.

00:20:59.000 Now, again, she is going to continue to stump for open borders. 0.75

00:21:01.000 The biggest question for Democrats is not a question of candidates.

00:21:04.000 It's a question of how well the country is doing.

00:21:07.000 If the economy continues to do really well under President Trump, Democrats are going to have a very difficult time going forward.

00:21:13.000 If the economy were to sink, AOC is incredibly well placed.

00:21:16.000 And even her insane open borders perspective is going to be swallowed by a large percentage of the population seeking revenge against a Trump Republican party if the economy goes the other way. 1.00

00:21:25.000 And that's just the way economics works in the United States.

00:21:28.000 Whichever is the party in power, if the economy goes south, gets blamed for it.

00:21:31.000 Here is AOC, who is mirroring exactly what you heard Hunter Biden saying about illegal immigration just a moment ago.

00:21:39.000 There are consequences to ripping up law-abiding, dutiful, undocumented people from their country. 1.00

00:21:46.000 There are consequences.

00:21:51.000 Now, AOC has been attempting, as you can see from her policy, to moderate in certain particular ways to keep one foot in sort of every camp.

00:21:58.000 She doesn't want to be labeled with the full-scale Zorin Mamdani, Ilhan Omar, anti-Semite brush.

00:22:03.000 And so instead, what she's doing is one time she cried when they refunded Iron Dome in Israel.

00:22:08.000 This week, she voted against cutting U.S. funding for Israel completely.

00:22:12.000 There was a bill that was on the floor to completely cut the funding.

00:22:14.000 She voted against it.

00:22:16.000 And her office in Westchester Square in the East Bronx was splattered in red paint and adorned with a sign reading AOC funds genocide in Gaza.

00:22:23.000 But this, again, is a problem for the Democratic Party, is that in the end, they are not going to be able to repel the far left.

00:22:29.000 They're turning into a far left party.

00:22:31.000 No one's going to stop it.

00:22:32.000 And Hunter Biden and Joe Biden are a perfect example of this.

00:22:35.000 They were the decaying brand of a supposedly moderate Democratic Party that will not and does not have the stones to actually fend off the far left brand of the Democratic Party that is the direction the Democratic Party is going to move.

00:22:46.000 And that's the most interesting thing about what Hunter Biden has to say.

00:22:49.000 All of these sort of revenge tactics on former Democrats and Democratic advisors.

00:22:53.000 I'm here for that.

00:22:54.000 It's fun.

00:22:55.000 But the most interesting thing about Hunter Biden and what he's saying is that he's saying the quiet part out loud.

00:22:59.000 Joe Biden wanted open borders.

00:23:01.000 Joe Biden likes third worldism.

00:23:03.000 And that was the supposed moderate in the Democratic Party.

00:23:06.000 Already coming up, Stephen Colbert is on his way out and he's quite bitter about it.

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00:25:38.000 Okay, meanwhile, the fallout from the Stephen Colbert firing continues.

00:25:42.000 Stephen Colbert shed extremely salty tears yesterday.

00:25:46.000 He's on CBS.

00:25:47.000 And the only way you're going to hear about it is on this show because no one actually watches Stephen Colbert's show.

00:25:51.000 And he launched into the person who's been paying him $15, $20 million a year.

00:25:57.000 Over the weekend, somebody at CBS followed up their gracious press release with a gracious anonymous leak saying, They pulled the plug on our show because of losses pegged between $40 million and $50 million a year.

00:26:10.000 $40 million is a big number.

00:26:12.000 I could see us losing $24 million, but where would Paramount have possibly spent the other $16 million?

00:26:18.000 Oh yeah!

00:26:20.000 Oh...

00:26:22.000 Oh yeah!

00:26:26.000 I did that.

00:26:26.000 I'll play.

00:26:27.000 I'll try like that.

00:26:29.000 Still, that's still a lot of money.

00:26:31.000 I mean, where does the late show rank?

00:26:33.000 Jim, what other companies lost that kind of money last year?

00:26:36.000 Red Lobster? 1.00

00:26:39.000 Damn it. 1.00

00:26:40.000 I told them we should stop offering the audience unlimited shrimp. 1.00

00:26:44.000 Maya, Maya, take it away. 0.93

00:26:46.000 Take it away.

00:26:51.000 There's no laugh anywhere inside anywhere there.

00:26:53.000 And they're still wondering why Stephen Colbert was canceled.

00:26:55.000 I love the fact that he can't even deny that his show lost that much money.

00:26:58.000 He has to somehow just yell at his employer for paying a settlement with President Trump over the 60 minutes botchery with Kamala Harris.

00:27:06.000 Colbert then spends some time telling President Trump to go F himself, which of course is exactly how Stephen Colbert brought himself to this point. 0.58

00:27:11.000 He turned into late night televangelism for left-wing nonsense. 0.91

00:27:16.000 That is how.

00:27:17.000 There has yet to be a, it is a Sahara desert of laughs over at the Stephen Colbert show, which is why he was canceled.

00:27:23.000 Here are some more, not laugh lines.

00:27:26.000 With those numbers, I got to say, it makes sense we'd be canceled.

00:27:30.000 I get it, guys.

00:27:32.000 And thanks again.

00:27:33.000 Thanks again to the network.

00:27:33.000 Okay.

00:27:34.000 In a completely unrelated story, on Friday, Donald Trump posted, I absolutely love that Colbert got fired.

00:27:42.000 His talent was even less than his ratings.

00:27:45.000 Thank you.

00:27:46.000 How, how, how?

00:27:51.000 How dare you, sir?

00:27:53.000 Would an untalented man be able to compose the following satirical witticism? 1.00

00:27:58.000 Go f*** yourself. 1.00

00:27:59.000 Anyway. 1.00

00:28:12.000 Bye.

00:28:15.000 God, he is so funny.

00:28:15.000 Thank you.

00:28:16.000 He is so funny.

00:28:17.000 He is so unfunny.

00:28:18.000 It's amazing how unfunny he is.

00:28:20.000 That guy held down a late night slot for several years in real life.

00:28:24.000 That's crazy.

00:28:25.000 Well, one of the people who was very upset about this was, of course, Stephen Colbert's original mentor, Jon Stewart.

00:28:30.000 I'm old enough to remember when Stephen Colbert was funny.

00:28:33.000 And the answer is when he was a correspondent for Jon Stewart.

00:28:36.000 And then he stopped being funny.

00:28:37.000 Well, Jon Stewart was very upset about this as well.

00:28:39.000 He came to defend his friend.

00:28:42.000 I will note again that one of the funniest things about Jon Stewart is his age.

00:28:45.000 So Jon Stewart is currently 62 years old, and he's still cosplaying as a cynical 33-year-old.

00:28:49.000 Here we go.

00:28:51.000 Shows that say something, shows that take a stand, shows that are unafraid.

00:28:58.000 And not to, believe me, this is not a, we speak truth to power.

00:29:02.000 We don't.

00:29:02.000 We speak opinions to television cameras, but we try.

00:29:05.000 We try every night.

00:29:08.000 And if you believe as corporations or as networks, you can make yourselves so innocuous that you can serve a gruel so flavorless that you will never again be on the boy king's radar, A, why will anyone watch you and you are wrong?

00:29:29.000 Again, where are the laughs?

00:29:30.000 And the answer is you became hectoring scolds.

00:29:32.000 That is the reason why the failure is occurring is the hectoring scolding.

00:29:36.000 There's nothing funny or interesting about any of this.

00:29:38.000 You can blame that on Donald Trump, but the reality is you guys got in your own heads over Donald Trump and there was nothing you could do about it.

00:29:45.000 And all the humor left your body the minute that that happened.

00:29:47.000 Okay, meanwhile, with the Democrats in disarray, they are trying to hone in again on the Epstein case.

00:29:54.000 They just keep honing in on the Epstein case as though there is tons more to find.

00:29:58.000 And so Democrats have been trying to force votes on Epstein in the House.

00:30:03.000 The House Republicans keep saying, listen, just give the DOJ time or the AG time to release what it is that they can.

00:30:08.000 This idea that Congress has to pass some sort of resolution to pry the Epstein files free. 0.74

00:30:12.000 First of all, an enormous number of the Epstein files are under court seal.

00:30:16.000 So you actually have to apply for a court release.

00:30:19.000 Second of all, there are FBI procedures and protocols before you simply release stuff into the public arena.

00:30:24.000 The Democrats know this.

00:30:25.000 The Democrats don't care about the Epstein stuff.

00:30:26.000 They don't care about this at all.

00:30:27.000 It is a completely cynical play by the Democrats.

00:30:30.000 This is the point that Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is making.

00:30:34.000 We need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing.

00:30:37.000 So no vote on this resolution.

00:30:41.000 Again, the reason that Speaker Johnson is doing this is basically he is saying that the administration is going to release what it is going to release.

00:30:47.000 The idea there's some sort of massive cover-up is a botchery.

00:30:50.000 Again, that botchery should be laid at the hands of Pam Bondi, the attorney general, who went out there and claimed that there was all this material that led to a particular conclusion and then dropped the news that actually that conclusion was wrong and the material did not lead there in the first place.

00:31:02.000 Representative Ralph Norman, a members of the House Rules Committee, is accusing Democrats of grandstanding and says Republicans refuse to give the minority party an endless microphone.

00:31:12.000 Steve Scalise, who is the House majority whip, he says at the end of the day, Democrats are yelling and screaming.

00:31:17.000 They spent four years covering up for Epstein.

00:31:19.000 And you know, at least President Trump in the court is right now trying to get documents released.

00:31:22.000 I really think you're going to see hopefully a lot unsealed from that.

00:31:24.000 And then we've got some other options as well.

00:31:27.000 In fact, if you're worried about the Trump administration not taking the Epstein file stuff seriously, then why is the Deputy AG seeking a meeting with Ghelain Maxwell, according to Axios?

00:31:36.000 Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced today he is seeking a meeting with Ghelaine Maxwell.

00:31:42.000 Blanche said in a social media post, Pamboni instructed him to contact Maxwell's team, which he has done.

00:31:47.000 He intends to meet with Maxwell soon.

00:31:48.000 He said, no one is above the law.

00:31:50.000 No lead is off limits.

00:31:50.000 Now, remember, the FBI and the DOJ, they have already reviewed all of this material.

00:31:56.000 It is highly unlikely that Ghelaine Maxwell is going to say anything now that she hasn't said before, at least that has any sort of credibility. 0.85

00:32:02.000 Now, she is a sex criminal. 1.00

00:32:04.000 We should remember this. 0.79

00:32:05.000 And so it is quite plausible that she is now going to start offering all sorts of unspecified or unverifiable allegations in order to muddy the waters.

00:32:13.000 This is one of the problems with talking to criminals.

00:32:15.000 They tend to be criminals.

00:32:16.000 However, is it worthwhile to talk with her?

00:32:18.000 Sure.

00:32:19.000 I mean, first of all, I assume there were many interviews with Ghalain Maxwell before her trial.

00:32:24.000 Blanche said in a statement, the Department of Justice does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, nor from the responsibility to pursue justice Wherever the fact may lead.

00:32:31.000 Blanche added that the FBI and DOJ's joint statement sent earlier this month regarding Epstein, quote, remains as accurate today as when it was written.

00:32:38.000 He said, President Trump has told us to release all credible evidence.

00:32:42.000 If Ghelaine Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and DOJ will hear what she has to say.

00:32:49.000 Her attorney, of course, has said that the discussions are underway and that Ghelane will always testify truthfully and added, we are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case.

00:32:59.000 Now, again, Maxwell is trying to wiggle her way free of all of the charges that were filed against her. 0.54

00:33:04.000 She was found guilty in 2021 of sex trafficking and other charges.

00:33:07.000 Is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in the state of Florida.

00:33:12.000 There have even been calls to free her.

00:33:14.000 And Glae Maxwell knows this.

00:33:15.000 Glae Maxwell for sure knows that if she can offer enough sort of bait, it's possible that there will be people who call for her release, that she will be the great heroine of the story somehow, despite having been Epstein's girlfriend who was convicted of sex trafficking on behalf of Epstein.

00:33:34.000 And criminals are very good at succoring people, and this is just another example of that.

00:33:38.000 Okay, so Democrats, of course, are pushing this incredibly hard.

00:33:40.000 What's fascinating is which Republicans are also pushing this incredibly hard?

00:33:44.000 Because the question there is, what is the agenda?

00:33:45.000 Do they actually believe Trump is complicit in a cover-up?

00:33:48.000 If so, they should just say so out loud.

00:33:49.000 This is the part that nobody will ask them.

00:33:51.000 Do they think Donald Trump is covering the Epstein stuff up?

00:33:55.000 If they think Donald Trump is covering the Epstein stuff up, will someone not ask them?

00:33:58.000 I'm asking right now.

00:34:00.000 I'm asking Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massey, if you think Donald Trump is covering up the Epstein stuff, what is it that you think he is covering up and why?

00:34:08.000 Can you please just explain it?

00:34:09.000 Seriously, you're the ones making the claim a cover-up is going on of such utter epic proportions that there must be a congressional resolution to pry the files out of these hands.

00:34:22.000 Thomas Massey was walking onto the House floor with a binder labeled the Epstein files phase two and the bill number of a resolution he is co-sponsoring with Gadfly Rokana, who's attempting to get in from he's attempting to get attention, obviously, for a 2028 run.

00:34:35.000 Massey said the Epstein bill resolution is non-binding, so it's kind of fake.

00:34:38.000 The resolution I have with Kana would be binding on the president.

00:34:41.000 So what is it that he thinks that Trump is hiding?

00:34:45.000 And why, if you are a loyal Trumpist Republican, somebody who believes the president ought to succeed, are you doing this?

00:34:51.000 Why are you fostering a conspiracy theory about Trump?

00:34:54.000 Forget about Epstein, a conspiracy theory about a Trump cover-up that Democrats are currently pushing for political gain.

00:35:00.000 That is the thing that is happening right now.

00:35:02.000 Marjorie Taylor Greene is doing the same thing.

00:35:05.000 She put out a tweet.

00:35:07.000 If you tell the base of people who support you of deep state treasonous crimes, election interference, blackmail, and rich, powerful, elite, evil cabals, you must take down every enemy of the people.

00:35:14.000 If not, the base will turn and there's no going back.

00:35:16.000 Dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfied.

00:35:18.000 They want the whole steak dinner and will accept nothing else.

00:35:21.000 Okay, fine.

00:35:22.000 So why do you think he's not giving you the so-called steak dinner, Representative Green?

00:35:26.000 Like, what is your theory of the case?

00:35:26.000 Really?

00:35:28.000 I would love to hear your theory of the case.

00:35:30.000 Hey, let's be clear again on what pseudo-MAGA is doing here.

00:35:32.000 I'm calling him pseudo-mAGA because Trump is the decider of MAGA.

00:35:35.000 He is the person who created MAGA.

00:35:37.000 He's the builder of MAGA.

00:35:38.000 He's the definer of MAGA.

00:35:39.000 Pseudo-MAGA are people who claim to speak on behalf of the MAGA movement, who represent a tiny sliver of the people who voted for Donald Trump.

00:35:46.000 What are they actually attempting to do?

00:35:48.000 What they are actually attempting to do, again, is seize control of the supposed MAGA movement from the only person who founded it and created it, Donald J. Trump.

00:35:56.000 That is what is happening right now.

00:35:57.000 They don't like Trump's policy in the Middle East.

00:35:59.000 They don't like Trump's policy on Ukraine.

00:36:01.000 They don't like some of Trump's domestic policy.

00:36:03.000 And so what they are attempting to do is shift allegiances away from Trump and to some sort of bizarre agglomeration of isolationism and gigantic government subsidization scheme.

00:36:18.000 I mean, Massey is on the isolationist side.

00:36:20.000 He's not on the giant government spending side.

00:36:22.000 Green seems to be on the side of both.

00:36:24.000 But whatever the case is, there's clearly an attempt to attack Trump here.

00:36:28.000 Why the attacks on Trump?

00:36:29.000 That's the question I'm asking.

00:36:30.000 Go after Epstein all you want.

00:36:32.000 But you are accusing Trump of a cover-up.

00:36:32.000 That's fine.

00:36:35.000 So if you're accusing Trump of a cover-up, the question is, why are you, what's the theory?

00:36:39.000 Or is it a cynical play to attempt to drive down Trump's favorables and seize control of the movement that he built?

00:36:45.000 Because that's what it looks a lot like.

00:36:48.000 That's my theory of why you are doing what you are doing.

00:36:51.000 Because I don't believe you that you are doing this in the name of quote unquote transparency.

00:36:55.000 Because if you were doing this in the name of quote unquote transparency, then presumably when House Republicans were in control, because they've been in control of the House for a bit here, you would have been fostering resolutions on the release of Epstein files under Joe Biden, which I don't recall you doing.

00:37:10.000 Beyond that, again, why are you, the argument you're making is that Trump and team are covering up the Epstein stuff.

00:37:16.000 If you are joining, if you find yourself on the same side as Rokana on this issue, I'm just wondering why exactly we should consider you loyal members of MAGA, if this is indeed about supposed loyalty to MAGA, which is what Taylor Green is making it all about.

00:37:32.000 All righty, in just one second, I want to get into a couple of major criminal cases that are actually quite fascinating because they underscore why MAGA is popular and why there is a feeling abroad in the United States that there's a movement to free criminals from prison.

00:37:46.000 Alrighty, meanwhile, a couple of stories about criminal cases that really underscore why the MAGA movement exists.

00:37:52.000 So a federal judge has now sentenced former Louisville, Kentucky police detective Brett Hankison to nearly three years in prison for his role in the botched 2020 raid during which Breonna Taylor was fatally shot.

00:38:03.000 This is according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:38:04.000 Hankison was convicted in 2024 of civil rights abuse after blindly firing 10 shots through Taylor's home during the raid.

00:38:10.000 His shots did not strike Taylor.

00:38:12.000 They did not strike any of the neighbors.

00:38:15.000 He had faced a maximum of life in prison.

00:38:18.000 Okay, so the Justice Department under President Trump asked for a one-day prison sentence, basically saying this conviction is bull and he never should have been convicted in the first place.

00:38:26.000 Instead, the U.S. District Court Judge, Rebecca Grady Jennings, sentenced him to 33 months.

00:38:32.000 Now, again, that is less than the guidelines sentencing range, but it is a reflection of how insane, insane our criminal justice system became in the aftermath of Black Lives Matter summer that Hankison was ever convicted in the first place. 0.60

00:38:44.000 For those who don't remember the Breonna Taylor case, basically the Breonna Taylor case was about a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who was in an apartment with her boyfriend.

00:38:55.000 And her boyfriend believed the police were intruders because there was a no-knock warrant that was issued.

00:39:01.000 They did, in fact, knock at the door because there was suspicion that drug activity was going on from this apartment.

00:39:06.000 They knocked.

00:39:07.000 The boyfriend fired a shot with a handgun through the door, hitting one of the officers in the leg.

00:39:12.000 And then the police responded by firing more than 30 rounds, several of which hit and killed Taylor.

00:39:16.000 Hankison did not fire any of the shots that killed Breonna Taylor.

00:39:20.000 Did not fire any of those shots.

00:39:22.000 So what was the conviction on the basis of?

00:39:24.000 Well, actually, he was indicted on state charges for felony, want, and endangerment in 2020 and was acquitted.

00:39:30.000 And the federal government, under Joe Biden, brought a civil rights violation case against this police officer, Brett Hankin, under Section 242 of Title 18, which is depriving a person of their rights under the color of law.

00:39:45.000 Okay, now, typically you have to willfully do that.

00:39:48.000 That is like if you arrest somebody while you're a cop and you know that that person is innocent and you arrest them and then you abuse them, that is a civil rights violation under section 242 of Title 18.

00:39:57.000 There has to be a willfulness component here.

00:40:00.000 The DOJ's original statements on the conviction of Brett Hankin suggested, according to Attorney General Merrick Garland, today, Brett Hankison was found guilty by a jury of his peers for willfully depriving Breonna Taylor of her constitutional rights.

00:40:13.000 His use of deadly force was unlawful and put Ms. Taylor in harm's way.

00:40:16.000 This verdict is an important step toward accountability for the violation of Breonna Taylor's civil rights, but justice for the loss of Ms. Taylor is a task that exceeds human capacity.

00:40:25.000 So I asked our friends over at Perplexity, our friends and sponsors, aside from Brett Hankin, are there any other prior cases of 18 USD 242 being used to convict a police officer for recklessly firing at a suspect during a situation in which officers were lawfully present and being fired upon at the time?

00:40:42.000 And Perplexity notes that courts have recognized reckless disregard of a constitutional right, which is the question here, can meet the willingness requirement in some context, but this is not always uniformly applied.

00:40:52.000 And then it cites several cases, Perplexity, in which there was no actual use of 18 U.S. Code 242 to prosecute.

00:41:01.000 And that includes, for example, the Amadou Diallo case, in which officers fired 41 shots at an unarmed individual believing he was threat.

00:41:08.000 Prosecutors concluded there was insufficient evidence of specific intent to violate rights.

00:41:12.000 So no civil rights violation there.

00:41:14.000 Kenned State shooting, where National Guardsmen fired into the crowd after being surrounded and pelted with rocks.

00:41:18.000 The court found that there was no willful intent necessary to fulfill 18 U.S. Code 242.

00:41:24.000 In U.S. v.

00:41:25.000 Bradley, an officer fired at a fleeing suspect after a misunderstood traffic incident.

00:41:30.000 And a conviction under 242 was upheld on the theory of reckless disregard of rights.

00:41:33.000 But that situation did not include the officers being fired upon.

00:41:37.000 In fact, says Perplexity, a review of available legal analyses and commentaries reveal that prior to cases like Brett Hankinson's, it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for federal prosecutors to secure a 242 conviction against an officer for recklessly firing at a suspect during an incident where officers were lawfully president, officers were themselves under fire, and the conviction was based on reckless gunfire, not sexual misconduct, theft, or anything else.

00:42:01.000 There appeared to be no documented cases, none, before Brett Hankin, where an officer was convicted under 18 U.S. Code 242, specifically for recklessly firing at a suspect during a lawful police operation where officers were actively being fired upon.

00:42:16.000 Okay, that's how insane this case was.

00:42:19.000 So again, according to the evidence at the trial, officers knocked on Taylor's doors.

00:42:22.000 There's a no-knock warrant, but they knocked.

00:42:24.000 There's a major contention at the trial originally that there was no knock.

00:42:26.000 There was a knock.

00:42:27.000 They knocked on the door.

00:42:28.000 They announced themselves as the cops.

00:42:30.000 No one answered the door.

00:42:31.000 The officers saw no indication anyone in the home was awake or heard the announcement because there was no response.

00:42:35.000 They rammed the door open.

00:42:37.000 Taylor's boyfriend, believing that there were intruders, even though they had clearly announced themselves, fired his handgun at the officers and then they fired back.

00:42:44.000 And when they fired back, he had put Breonna Taylor in harm's way and Breonna Taylor was killed.

00:42:48.000 Hankison, who was convicted, was not one of the officers who fired from the doorway.

00:42:52.000 He fired separately from the side of the building through a sliding glass door and a bedroom window, both of which were covered with closed blinds and curtains.

00:43:00.000 Evidence shows that many of the shots passed through Taylor's apartment and didn't hit anybody else.

00:43:05.000 So this person ended up being convicted by the Joe Biden DOJ.

00:43:08.000 It's an absurd case, an absurd case.

00:43:10.000 I've never even heard of a case in which an officer was convicted of a civil rights violation for firing during an actual firefight with a suspect in which officers were lawfully present and the alleged victims in the neighboring apartments were not hit.

00:43:23.000 Where is the willfulness component of this?

00:43:24.000 And the answer is it didn't exist, but it reminds you of exactly how insane our entire law enforcement system went in the aftermath of Black Lives Summer, which is why MAGA existed. 0.78

00:43:35.000 It is why the second phase of MAGA existed.

00:43:38.000 It was because of stuff like that.

00:43:40.000 Meanwhile, the left's dedication to letting truly awful criminals out of prison continues apace.

00:43:47.000 One of the big stories that is breaking today is that a man who was convicted in the murder of a six-year-old first grader named Eton Pats is now going to have to be retried or released according to an appeals court.

00:44:00.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, a New York federal appellate court overturned the conviction of the man found guilty in the 1979 kidnapping and killing of six-year-old Eton Pats, bringing back to the spotlight a case that drew national attention and changed the way missing children cases are handled.

00:44:13.000 Pedro Hernandez, the former Bodega store worker, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

00:44:18.000 Why?

00:44:19.000 Well, in 2017, he confessed to police.

00:44:21.000 He lured Eton into the store's basement, strangled him, and disposed of the body back in 1979.

00:44:26.000 The reason this was such a big case at the time is because this is the first child ever to appear on those missing milk cartons.

00:44:33.000 On Monday, a three-judge panel for the second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the jury from Hernandez's child received instructions that would have unquestionably impacted its deliberations.

00:44:43.000 So what exactly happened?

00:44:45.000 Well, the story is this.

00:44:46.000 Eton, a first grader, disappeared while walking alone for the first time to his school bus stop in the Manhattan neighborhood of Soho on the morning of May 25th, 1979, and he was never found.

00:44:54.000 He became one of the first missing kids to appear on a mill carton.

00:44:58.000 May 25th, which is when he was abducted, is now known as National Missing Children's Day.

00:45:02.000 Three decades later, in 2012, police arrived at the New Jersey home of Hernandez following a tip from his own brother-in-law.

00:45:07.000 Hernandez confessed to police after about seven hours of questioning without being given his Miranda warnings, which informed suspects about their rights, such as the right to a lawyer.

00:45:15.000 According to Monday's ruling, immediately afterwards, Hernandez signed a Miranda waiver and detectives asked him to, quote, tell us again exactly what you just told us before.

00:45:22.000 So Hernandez's defense lawyers argued he had given a false confession and it was because of the police, his mental illness, his low IQ.

00:45:30.000 During questioning, he took his medication, including a fentanyl patch.

00:45:33.000 He told the police he'd been diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar, other mental illnesses.

00:45:37.000 His first trial was in 2015, mistrial.

00:45:40.000 Second trial ended in February 2017 with unanimous guilty verdict on charges of murder and kidnapping.

00:45:46.000 So, what was the issue here?

00:45:48.000 Well, the issue was that during the second trial, the jury sent the judge a few different notes focused on the confessions.

00:45:53.000 In the third one, the jury asked, if it found Hernandez's confession without the Miranda warning was not voluntary, would later confessions have to be disregarded?

00:46:00.000 The judge told the jury the answer is no.

00:46:02.000 And so that is wrong.

00:46:03.000 That is wrong as a matter of law.

00:46:05.000 However, the basic question here is whether Hernandez was pressured into his original confession or whether he was just talking to the cops.

00:46:13.000 This has happened in prior cases and the Supreme Court has ruled on this.

00:46:16.000 If the cops come to your house and you confess to a crime and they haven't read you your Miranda rights yet, and then they read you your Miranda rights and then you reconfess to the crime.

00:46:24.000 If you did the original confession voluntarily, that's not a problem.

00:46:28.000 So that was the question in this particular case.

00:46:31.000 The notion that he was compelled to testify to the cops without his Miranda warnings, and then later they read him the Miranda warnings and had him re-up.

00:46:38.000 And that was one of the issues in the trial, but it's not clear that the jury actually found that that's what was going on.

00:46:45.000 Beyond that, we should point out that the original Miranda ruling is deeply flawed.

00:46:49.000 The original Miranda ruling, which suggests that the only way to enforce the Fifth Amendment is to let criminals out of prison for having done crimes, is wrong.

00:46:57.000 There are many other ways you can punish officers for failing to take account of the rights of suspects, but letting criminals wander the streets because the officers did a bad job questioning the suspect turns out is a terrible idea.

00:47:08.000 One way that you could do this would be to, for example, fire officers who are found to have committed violations of the law in their questioning, to fine police departments.

00:47:16.000 There are lots of things you could do.

00:47:17.000 Miranda is a very, very badly decided decision by the Supreme Court.

00:47:20.000 But even putting that aside, the bottom line is that it is this sort of case that leads people to believe in the law and order aspect of the MAGA platform, which is very real.

00:47:31.000 Again, it's insane this person is going to be released onto the streets, presumably, barring some sort of serious retrial.

00:47:37.000 Meanwhile, another law enforcement news, the Trump administration on Monday released more than 230,000 pages of documents on the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

00:47:46.000 This had been one of the pledges of President Trump during the campaign was to release a lot of information on, for example, the RFK assassination, the JFK assassination, MLK, and also Epstein.

00:47:55.000 And the big issue with Epstein is that there are still people who are alive and kicking who are presumably mentioned in the Epstein files without criminal evidence that they actually did anything criminally wrong.

00:48:05.000 That is one of the things the FBI has to go through in determining what it can release, what it should release, and all the rest.

00:48:09.000 The same thing really does not apply to the MLK assassination.

00:48:13.000 Apparently, the family of MLK actually did not want some of the files released because they make MLK look not wonderful because a lot of those files are not specifically about the assassination.

00:48:22.000 They're about MLK's personal life, which, as biographers have noted, was quite troubled.

00:48:27.000 Attorney General Pambondi said the American people deserve answers after the horrific assassination of one of our nation's great leaders.

00:48:34.000 President Trump signed an executive order in January to release the documents.

00:48:37.000 Unlike the JFK documents, Dr. King's files had never been digitized, and they sat collecting dust in facilities across the federal government for decades, according to Tulsi Gabbard's office.

00:48:46.000 Among the files, the office said, were pages related to King's assassin, James Earl Ray, including that Ray's former cellmate stated he discussed an alleged assassination plot with Ray.

00:48:55.000 King's two surviving children, Martin Luther King Jr.

00:48:58.000 III and Bernice A. King, asked those looking through the documents to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continued grief.

00:49:05.000 Again, the thing they're concerned about is that the FBI, which again was being run by J. Edgar Hoover at the time, had, quote, worked to discredit, dismantle, and destroy their father's reputation.

00:49:15.000 Again, they have a theory that Ray was not the person who shot their father.

00:49:18.000 All the evidence suggests that Ray shot Martin Luther King Jr.

00:49:21.000 That is what the evidence suggests.

00:49:24.000 The administration clearly is attempting to release as much as it can.

00:49:28.000 And yes, of course, this has to do with a recommitment to transparency from the Trump administration in the aftermath of the Epstein hubbub.

00:49:35.000 There's no question that that's one of the things that is happening here. 0.89

00:49:37.000 But to suggest that this is some sort of fundamental failure by the Trump administration, that they don't have to go through different procedures and protocols with regard to a half-century old file as opposed to stuff that is currently ongoing with living people, that, of course, is incredibly silly.

00:49:54.000 And meanwhile, remember that time that we were told that the Trump administration was going to leech the military in L.A. fascists to take over President Trump declaring himself emperor and all the rest?

00:50:03.000 Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, hundreds of Marines who were deployed to L.A. last month during protests over immigration enforcement will now withdraw from the city, according to the Pentagon.

00:50:11.000 Defense Secretary Pete Hegset has directed the redeployment of around 700 Marines from L.A., according to Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.

00:50:20.000 So, so much for the idea that the federal government is taking over L.A., which was, of course, the big complaint of everybody ranging from Governor Gavin Newsom to Senator Alex Padilla of Los Angeles and California.

00:50:31.000 The federal government said it deployed hundreds of Marines to L.A. to protect federal buildings in June.

00:50:36.000 They have now withdrawn those Marines.

00:50:39.000 Karen Bass then declared victory as though she was some sort of guerrilla insurgent, quote, L.A. stands with our troops, which is why we are glad they are leaving.

00:50:46.000 Weird take, hot take.

00:50:50.000 The Pentagon estimated their deployment would cost at least $134 million.

00:50:53.000 And again, they were put there in order to defend ICE facilities from outside attack from rioters, which wouldn't have been necessary except for all of the insanity of a left wing dedicated to the proposition that open borders are the way America ought to do business.

00:51:07.000 And meanwhile, in the Senate, John Thune is sort of stuck because Congress would like to adjourn.

00:51:14.000 They would like to get to their summer recess.

00:51:16.000 They want to go back, talk with their constituents, and also, yes, go on summer vacation.

00:51:19.000 President Trump is saying you guys should stay in session until you actually approve some of my nominees.

00:51:24.000 Senate Majority Leader Thune presumably would like to push that forward.

00:51:27.000 He said, we're thinking about it.

00:51:28.000 That's what he told Axios on Monday about President Trump's call to cancel all or part of the August break.

00:51:32.000 He says we want to get as many noms through the pipeline as we can.

00:51:36.000 But he said people are accustomed to going back.

00:51:38.000 This is the time of year when they go back and interact with their constituents and talk about some of the things that we've gotten done.

00:51:45.000 So again, leadership would like for there to be an adjournment, obviously.

00:51:48.000 President Trump would like for his nominees to get through.

00:51:50.000 Democrats have been holding up those nominees in extraordinary ways.

00:51:54.000 And meanwhile, in Democratic Party news, we were talking a little bit earlier about the 2028 nomination process.

00:52:00.000 There are a lot of Democrats, and when I say a lot, I mean seven, who are very interested in Pete Buttigieg, who's a 2028 nominee.

00:52:06.000 I fail to understand precisely why.

00:52:08.000 Aside from being a gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana, where he wasn't particularly good at his job, then running for president where he got shellacked, and then becoming a terrible Secretary of Transportation, what are his sterling credentials that make people so interested in Pete Budigej?

00:52:22.000 Well, now there's a story from the New York Post that certainly throws a crimp into his plans for a presidential run in 2028.

00:52:30.000 According to the New York Post, former Transportation Secretary Pete Budigej failed to replace outdated air traffic control systems while in office.

00:52:37.000 Instead, his agency shelled out tens of billions of dollars on a DEI agenda, according to federal spending records and airline industry insiders.

00:52:45.000 In one meeting, Budijej told industry executives air traffic control upgrades would just allow them to fly more planes.

00:52:51.000 And so why would that be in his interest?

00:52:54.000 That's a weird take.

00:52:55.000 Why would it be in the interest of the Department of Transportation to facilitate the flying of more planes?

00:53:00.000 I feel like that's the actual job.

00:53:01.000 But apparently, Buttigej didn't think that was the job.

00:53:03.000 What his department was really interested in was handing out hundreds of diversity, equity, and inclusion grants, totaling more than $80 billion over four years, at least half of the DOT's entire budget for a typical fiscal year.

00:53:16.000 That's insane.

00:53:17.000 That's totally crazy.

00:53:20.000 He was definitely pushing an agenda, an air industry official said, noting that the transportation secretary had little to no interest and took definitely zero action toward air traffic control modernization.

00:53:30.000 So basically, instead of spending any money on the stuff that you're supposed to do at the DOT, he yelled at the airlines, didn't visit rec sites, and spent all of the money on DEI nonsense.

00:53:43.000 The air industry official said at first, the DOT and he were reluctant to say there was an air traffic controller shortage or that the shortage had anything to do with flight delays or flight cancellations.

00:53:53.000 Now, spokesperson for Butigej rejects the claims and points to increased air traffic controller hiring and software changes.

00:54:00.000 But as everyone knows, things did not get markedly better under Secretary Budijej.

00:54:06.000 The DOT's Bureau of Transportation statistics show most flight cancellations, 54.3% were caused by weather.

00:54:13.000 One-third, 34.7%, were attributable to air carriers.

00:54:16.000 10% were due to failures in the national aviation system.

00:54:21.000 80% of flights were on time.

00:54:23.000 7% of the delays were due to air carriers.

00:54:25.000 7% late arriving aircraft.

00:54:26.000 5% to the aviation system.

00:54:30.000 So, you know, he's trying to argue that actually he spent the money correctly, that it actually went to facilitate the hiring at the FAA and all of the rest.

00:54:38.000 However, in an urgent letter to Butigej's DOT in April 2024, according to the Post, Air Industry Trade Association officials warned at the current rate of their hiring, it could take as long as 90 years for the FAA to reach its targeted staffing levels in some of the critical New York air traffic control centers.

00:54:54.000 At the same time, the focus of the department under Budijej also shifted, with roughly 400 DEI-related grants approved, according to review of federal spending between 2021 and 2024.

00:55:04.000 Just 60 grants for diversity, equity, or inclusion initiatives were approved during the previous administration.

00:55:09.000 So 60 grants compared to 400 grants under Budijej.

00:55:15.000 Biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure law in 2021 provided a lot of the funding.

00:55:20.000 But again, the spending was out of control.

00:55:23.000 So Budijedge would yell at the airlines while simultaneously spending billions of dollars on DEI initiatives.

00:55:29.000 This is what you're going to run, Democrats, this right here?

00:55:31.000 It's a strange move.

00:55:34.000 Cotton, we'll see how it works out for them.

00:55:36.000 All righty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.

00:55:38.000 We will hop into the mailbag and take some of your questions.

00:55:40.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:55:42.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:55:43.000 Use code Shapiro.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - July 22, 2025

Hunter Biden MELTS DOWN…On Democrats!

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