The Ben Shapiro Show - I Can't Believe These 2026 Polls...

00:00:00.000 Democrats are way ahead in the polling for 2026 in Congress.

00:00:03.000 We'll talk about why that's happening and what needs to change.

00:00:06.000 We'll also get into affordability as well as some bizarre journalistic ethics questions.

00:00:11.000 First, our Dailyware plus Black Friday, it's here right now.

00:00:14.000 Get your annual Dailywire Plus membership for half the price.

00:00:17.000 All the shows, all the movies, all the news you need, 50% off.

00:00:20.000 Go to dailyware.com slash subscribe.

00:00:22.000 Well, we have new economic news.

00:00:23.000 We'll talk about that in a moment.

00:00:25.000 It actually is quite good for the Trump administration.

00:00:28.000 However, we begin with the fact that Democrats in polling currently have a massive advantage in Congress for 2026.

00:00:36.000 According to the latest NPR PBS News Marist poll survey of 1,443 adults conducted from November 10th to 13th found that Democrats hold their largest advantage since 2017 in terms of who people would vote for on the congressional ballot, the generic congressional ballot.

00:00:52.000 Now, remember, you're not voting on a generic congressperson when you actually go to the polling place.

00:00:57.000 You are voting on your congressperson.

00:00:59.000 And so it's possible that widespread dissatisfaction with the Republican Party doesn't necessarily translate into your individual congressperson losing his or her seat.

00:01:09.000 However, Democrats currently hold a 14-point advantage in this poll, which is a very, very large advantage.

00:01:15.000 If that were to stick in the generic congressional ballot, you'd be looking at a Democratic wave in 2026.

00:01:21.000 President Trump in this polling, his approval rating is just 39%, which is his lowest since right after January 6th.

00:01:28.000 A combined six in 10 people blame congressional Republicans or Trump for the government shutdown, which, again, well done, legacy media, for somehow spinning a completely Democrat cause government shutdown into a story about President Trump and Republican intransigents.

00:01:42.000 Nearly six in 10 say that Trump's top priority should be lowering prices.

00:01:46.000 No other issue comes close, actually.

00:01:50.000 So again, those are very bad numbers for the Republicans right now.

00:01:54.000 What does that mean for the 2026 election?

00:01:57.000 Well, in the fall of 2022, Democrats had a lead in the generic congressional ballot.

00:02:02.000 They ended up losing nine House seats to the Republicans.

00:02:06.000 In 2018, during Trump's first term, the Democrats' lead was somewhere between six and 12 points, and they ended up winning 40 seats.

00:02:14.000 In 2014, when Obama was president, Republicans had a five-point advantage and the GOP gained 13 seats.

00:02:19.000 So the number of actual vulnerable districts has shrunk fairly dramatically.

00:02:24.000 So even if Democrats have a gigantic advantage in the generic congressional balloting, again, the way that the districts are stacked up, there are a lot more solid Dem districts and a lot more solid Republican districts and fewer swing districts overall.

00:02:36.000 In fact, we asked our sponsors over at Perplexity.

00:02:39.000 They have a brand new web browser called Comet.

00:02:43.000 And we asked, how many vulnerable Republican seats are there in the House for 2026?

00:02:47.000 And what is the likely range of Democratic wins?

00:02:50.000 And according to Comet, there are about 20 to 25 highly vulnerable Republican House seats going into the 2026 midterm elections based on expert forecasts and ratings of competitive districts.

00:03:00.000 Those vulnerable seats are concentrated in swing districts with close 2024 results.

00:03:05.000 There are a bunch of open seats to retirement, and there are areas with unfavorable demographic shifts for the GOP.

00:03:10.000 Key battlegrounds include districts in Nebraska, Iowa, Pennsylvania, California, and New Hampshire.

00:03:16.000 According to many analyses, 10 to 12 of those seats are currently ranked as toss-ups, and another 8 to 15 are listed as lean Democratic or lean Republican.

00:03:25.000 So all of those could shift depending on, again, how the generalized feeling about the Republican Party goes.

00:03:30.000 Remember, Democrats need three seats to take control of the House, three.

00:03:35.000 So what is the most likely outcome?

00:03:37.000 Well, I mean, probably the upper end of disaster for Republicans is like 25 seats, 20 to 25 seats, which would put Democrats pretty solidly in control of the House.

00:03:47.000 Now, it would take a massive Democratic wave in order for them to actually take the Senate. 0.97

00:03:52.000 The Senate map for the Democrats is not good.

00:03:55.000 Again, asking our sponsors over at Comet, the most vulnerable Senate seats for Republicans in 2026 and the likelihood of Republicans losing them.

00:04:03.000 So the two most vulnerable seats are in Maine and in North Carolina.

00:04:07.000 Senator Susan Collins, frequently a sort of target for many dyspeptic Republicans who don't understand that if you want a Republican to hold the seat in Maine, that a Republican is not going to look like Tom Cotton or Rick Scott.

00:04:20.000 That Republican is going to look like Susan Collins. 1.00

00:04:22.000 Susan Collins is a battler and a survivor up in Maine.

00:04:25.000 She's the only Republican incumbent running in a state won by a 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, meaning this is the only senator who is up for election as a Republican in a state Commonwealth.

00:04:37.000 It is a top Democratic target.

00:04:40.000 That, of course, is a very fraught seat.

00:04:43.000 That race right now has as the leading Democratic candidate, not the sitting governor of Maine, but actually a radical Democratic socialist, Graham Plattner, who is a disaster area for a wide variety of reasons.

00:04:56.000 It'll be an interesting race.

00:04:57.000 And then you have North Carolina.

00:04:59.000 That seat has opened up because Tom Tillis, a frequent target of the president, has decided that he is not going to run for reelect.

00:05:06.000 And so that seat opens up and maybe that seat swivels blue.

00:05:10.000 So that's two seats.

00:05:12.000 But remember, Republicans hold 53 seats, which means that in order for Democrats to take control of the Senate, they would need to take two more.

00:05:19.000 So even assuming you lose Maine, you lose North Carolina.

00:05:21.000 Republicans still have 51.

00:05:24.000 The next most likely switches would be Texas, Iowa, and Alaska.

00:05:28.000 Now, Texas is always the kind of great white whale for Democrats.

00:05:31.000 They're always saying this will be the year that they finally take Texas.

00:05:34.000 That Texas race is John Cornyn.

00:05:36.000 John Cornyn, of course, is facing a pretty dramatic primary challenge from Ken Paxton.

00:05:40.000 Paxton is a significantly less good general election candidate than Cornyn.

00:05:44.000 So that race could be a little bit dicey for the Republicans.

00:05:48.000 Iowa is a very red state, but Joni Ernst, who's a very popular senator, is leaving that seat open. 1.00

00:05:53.000 And open seats get a little dicey.

00:05:55.000 If it's a big Democratic wave in Iowa, you could theoretically see Republicans lose that Iowa seat.

00:06:00.000 And then that would take Republicans down to 50.

00:06:03.000 And at that point, you'd have the vice president Shady Vance breaking any ties in the Senate.

00:06:08.000 There'd be no margin for error for the Senate majority leader, John Thun.

00:06:11.000 There is one more race that is up for Republicans.

00:06:13.000 That is the Ohio race. 0.66

00:06:14.000 John Husted is the current senator.

00:06:18.000 He is running against Sherrod Brown.

00:06:20.000 Sherrod Brown, you'll recall, is one of the senators who just lost a race.

00:06:24.000 He is now coming back.

00:06:25.000 He lost to Bernie Moreno.

00:06:27.000 He's now coming back, and he's going to race again.

00:06:29.000 He was very recently a senator.

00:06:30.000 So that's a vulnerable race as well.

00:06:32.000 In other words, it is not totally out of the range of possibility for Democrats to win the Senate, but it would take a lot for Democrats to win the Senate.

00:06:40.000 If Democrats were to actively take the Senate, they would probably also need to take Alaska, which is, again, a red state. 0.68

00:06:47.000 Dan Sullivan is a popular senator there.

00:06:49.000 So it seems pretty unlikely that the Republicans lose both the House and the Senate, but losing the House would be bad enough.

00:06:55.000 If they lose the House, that's the end of major legislation from the Trump administration.

00:06:59.000 It means endless investigations.

00:07:01.000 It means that the House becomes a baton to wield against everything the Trump administration is trying to do on the executive level.

00:07:08.000 So this requires us to look at what exactly is happening here.

00:07:12.000 Why is President Trump lagging in the polls now?

00:07:14.000 Why is he at 39%, 40%?

00:07:16.000 How does he recover?

00:07:18.000 So there is a brand new Reuters-Ipsos poll that also shows, just like that NPR poll, that Trump is in the high 30s, that he's at 38%, which is the lowest rating he has had since he returned to power in January.

00:07:29.000 What are the reasons for that?

00:07:31.000 Well, it shows actually that the reason is not what people say that it is.

00:07:35.000 So people have been saying that it's his foreign policy, that Trump's foreign policy is tearing apart the Republican Party.

00:07:41.000 It's his foreign policy.

00:07:42.000 It's his policy in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

00:07:44.000 And it's all of his focus on foreign policy that's destroying the party.

00:07:47.000 Actually, wrong.

00:07:48.000 The only actually part of his policy right now that is wildly popular, at least by Trumpian standards, is his foreign policy.

00:07:56.000 In fact, Trump's foreign policy, his approval ratings are better than any prior president of the modern era at this point in his term, which is kind of extraordinary.

00:08:06.000 And for the amount of crap that he is currently taking in the very online spaces, guys, get out and touch grass.

00:08:10.000 It turns out most Americans like the stuff that President Trump has been doing on foreign policy, or at least a plurality of Americans like it.

00:08:16.000 And here's Harry Enton talking about the president's approval ratings on foreign policy.

00:08:21.000 You know, this is one of the areas in which Donald Trump is performing significantly better than he was in term one.

00:08:27.000 One of his best issues relative to term one.

00:08:29.000 What are we talking about?

00:08:30.000 Approval of Trump on foreign policy at this point in term one.

00:08:33.000 Look, Donald Trump was just at a 35% approval rating.

00:08:36.000 Up like a rocket.

00:08:37.000 We're talking about 43% now.

00:08:39.000 That's an eight-point rise on the net approval rating.

00:08:41.000 We're talking about a double-digit rise.

00:08:43.000 The American people like much more of what they're seeing from Donald Trump and foreign policy in term two than they did in term number one.

00:08:52.000 Okay, so again, it ain't his foreign policy.

00:08:54.000 It isn't immigration either. 0.74

00:08:56.000 The president's net approval rating on immigration have gone down, but that's largely because he has solved the immigration crisis in the United States.

00:09:02.000 It turns out that Americans, they get a little bit more heartburn when it comes to deportation of people who are already in the United States.

00:09:09.000 But the part that Trump already solved, which was the Big Biden problem, was leaving that southern border wide open.

00:09:14.000 That was the part that Trump solved.

00:09:16.000 And because he solved that, now that problem is off the table.

00:09:19.000 So Americans aren't even thinking about the southern border.

00:09:21.000 If they were thinking about the southern border in comparison to Biden, his approval ratings would be 80%.

00:09:26.000 But we've now reached the point in the presidency where if you solve the problem, that no longer actually accrues to your benefit or redounds to your benefit.

00:09:33.000 Actually, it kind of goes away just in the mind.

00:09:35.000 Like, when's the last time you thought about the southern border?

00:09:37.000 The answer is you don't because Trump solved it.

00:09:40.000 We'll get to more on the lagging polls for Republicans in a moment.

00:09:43.000 First, in all the time, I've been endorsing Pure Talk, my wireless company, I can honestly say I haven't seen an offer like this from them before.

00:09:49.000 Unlimited talk, unlimited text, unlimited data with a 30-gig hotspot for just $29.95 a month for the rest of your life.

00:09:49.000 Listen to this.

00:09:57.000 Friends, this is Pure Talk's top-tier plan, normally $65 a month.

00:10:00.000 Now through December 7th, just $29.95 a month, you're saving over 50% a month every month for life.

00:10:06.000 Yes, that's on their crazy fast 5G network.

00:10:08.000 This offer is extremely short-lived.

00:10:10.000 Make the switch today.

00:10:11.000 Then tell all your friends.

00:10:12.000 Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro for PureTalk's best unlimited plan for just $29.95 a month for life.

00:10:18.000 And my Pure Talk coverage is excellent.

00:10:20.000 Again, a lot of my life is on my phone.

00:10:22.000 And if I don't have great coverage, it makes me very, very upset.

00:10:24.000 So I do have great coverage from Pure Talk, and it costs me less money.

00:10:27.000 And the company likes me.

00:10:28.000 So that's a good thing.

00:10:29.000 Make the switch.

00:10:30.000 In as little as 10 minutes, keep your phone, keep your number, start saving with unlimited for life for just $29.95 a month.

00:10:34.000 Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to switch to my wireless company, PureTalk.

00:10:39.000 Taxes and fees not included, some restrictions apply.

00:10:41.000 See PureTalk.com for details.

00:10:42.000 Offer ends 12,725.

00:10:44.000 Also, true self-reliance begins with taking control of your own health.

00:10:48.000 Armra colostrum harnesses at nature's original blueprint for resilience.

00:10:51.000 Packed with over 400 bioactive nutrients, colostrum fortifies your gut and strengthens your immune system from the cellular level up.

00:10:57.000 When you invest in your health, you invest in your ability to show up fully, think clearly, and stay in control no matter what comes your way.

00:11:03.000 Look, our bodies are under constant assault.

00:11:04.000 Toxins, processed foods, relentless stress.

00:11:06.000 Your gut is your first line of defense.

00:11:08.000 Most supplements only address part of the problem.

00:11:10.000 Armra colostrum is different.

00:11:11.000 This isn't just another supplement.

00:11:13.000 It's a bioactive whole food, a pure concentrate of bovine colostrum that's sustainably sourced with a commitment to CAF-first sourcing.

00:11:19.000 It's packed with over 400 bioactive nutrients that fortify your entire gut well system, not just one piece.

00:11:24.000 This means balanced and strengthened immune health, better digestion, less bloating, support for healthy metabolism and fat burning from the inside out.

00:11:31.000 Elite athletes have been using colostrum for years because it enhances nutrient absorption, builds lean muscle, and speeds recovery.

00:11:37.000 But the benefits go deeper.

00:11:38.000 Cellular level support for hair, skin, energy, everything.

00:11:41.000 This isn't processed or manipulated.

00:11:43.000 It's pure, potent, and natural.

00:11:44.000 Your body's blueprint for rebuilding itself the way it was designed to function for daily servings, infinite benefits.

00:11:50.000 We've worked out a special offer for my audience.

00:11:52.000 Receive 30% off your first subscription order.

00:11:54.000 Go to armra.com/slash Shapiro or enter Shapiro to get 30% off your first subscription order.

00:12:00.000 That's A-R-M-R-A.com/slash Shapiro.

00:12:05.000 On the economy, he is 24 points underwater, or at least he slid 24 points since February of 2025.

00:12:12.000 On the cost of living, he has slid to negative 39.

00:12:16.000 That's his net approval rating since returning to office on cost of living.

00:12:21.000 And he's getting shellacked at least a little bit on the Epstein files.

00:12:25.000 59% of Americans do not approve of his handling of the Epstein files.

00:12:30.000 Among Republicans, 44% approve, 31% disapprove, 25% don't know.

00:12:35.000 Among Democrats, of course, it's 88 to 6 because Democrats hate everything that he does.

00:12:41.000 So, if you had to put your finger on the two things that are sort of dragging Trump down in the approval ratings, it would be economic issues, which, of course, is true for every president, and yes, the Epstein stuff.

00:12:52.000 Why the Epstein stuff?

00:12:54.000 Well, Democrats were always going to disapprove of Trump on the Epstein stuff, of course, because Democrats disapprove of Trump on literally everything he does.

00:13:01.000 The reason that Trump has dropped in his approval rating on the Epstein stuff is because you have actors who are trying to use the Epstein stuff as a club against the president in order to seize control of the MAGA movement.

00:13:11.000 That's what's happening.

00:13:12.000 Okay, Trump has not done anything radically different about Epstein than Joe Biden did, for example.

00:13:18.000 In fact, he has been significantly more transparent than Joe Biden ever was.

00:13:21.000 And I noticed that many of the big advocates on the Epstein matters are either directly implicated by the Epstein files themselves, like Steve Bannon, or are people who had no qualms about Epstein.

00:13:35.000 We weren't even talking about Epstein a year and a half ago.

00:13:39.000 There were no major motions from Representative Thomas Massey to the Biden administration asking for the release of the Epstein files.

00:13:45.000 In fact, the bill that just passed in the House and then in the Senate and the president signed, that bill, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, was only initiated in July of this year.

00:13:55.000 Why?

00:13:56.000 Well, because it turns out that you have a bunch of angry critics of the president's foreign policy who attempted to use the Epstein files as a way of undermining the president, period.

00:14:05.000 That is what is happening.

00:14:06.000 That doesn't mean people don't have open questions or that normie Americans aren't concerned.

00:14:10.000 Of course, all of that's true.

00:14:12.000 But the people who have elevated this to the top of the issue stack are people who, shall we say, do not like the president's policy decisions.

00:14:20.000 That's what this is about.

00:14:22.000 I mean, here was Thomas Massey yesterday, a guy who's apparently going to stake his entire congressional career on the Epstein files, talking about the Epstein files, again, endlessly.

00:14:35.000 These files implicate billionaires and friends of him, of his, and political donors that he's trying to protect.

00:14:45.000 And Epstein also had close ties to our own intelligence agencies and Israel's intelligence agencies.

00:14:51.000 That's why there's so much effort in trying to stop this.

00:14:56.000 Okay, he has provided no evidence that that is in fact the case because no evidence has actually been provided by anyone that that is in fact the case.

00:15:05.000 He's putting that out there because, again, he's very angry that the president decided to bomb the Fordo nuclear reactor in Iran.

00:15:12.000 That's what this is.

00:15:12.000 Marjorie Taylor Green doing the same thing, seeing an opportunity to try and cause a rift with the administration over foreign policy and using Epstein as a club in order to do that.

00:15:22.000 And Democrats are happy to jump in.

00:15:23.000 Why do you think Abby Phillip is now massaging Marjorie Taylor Greene? 1.00

00:15:29.000 You can tell who's getting the strange new respect these days.

00:15:31.000 When you're on the same side as Abby Phillips with regard to the Epstein files, you might want to think about it a little bit.

00:15:41.000 I do think that this loyalty thing with Trump, if you've covered him as I have, you know it's a one-way street.

00:15:49.000 But she literally is learning that in real time.

00:15:52.000 Right now, just literally yesterday, she said, I've been so loyal to him.

00:15:56.000 And they're calling me a traitor.

00:15:58.000 I think she is realizing that Trump is not there for her.

00:16:04.000 So it's not about the loyalty thing.

00:16:07.000 Marjorie Taylor Greene feels betrayed.

00:16:08.000 The reason that Marjorie Taylor Greene is pissed off is because she doesn't like his foreign policy and she wanted to run for the Senate and she was going to lose. 1.00

00:16:14.000 And Trump told her he wasn't going to back a Senate run where she was going to lose.

00:16:17.000 That's why she's pissed off. 1.00

00:16:18.000 And so she's tried to turn this into a moment where she breaks the Republican Party. 1.00

00:16:22.000 And yes, that is going to have some impact on Republican levels of support for the president.

00:16:28.000 Also, when you have popular podcasters and voices who continue to malign the president without saying his name because they're cowards, who continue to go out there and say that the administration is covering up the Epstein files, the administration without saying Trump's name, because they don't want to offend Trump, they're afraid that Trump will reach over like King Kong and just crush them.

00:16:45.000 And so instead, they simply imply and imply and imply without just saying the thing they want to say out of pure unbridled cowardice.

00:16:53.000 It's pretty impressive.

00:16:54.000 Meanwhile, Democrats, of course, are happy to jump on this bandwagon.

00:16:57.000 Chuck Schumer was out there blasting President Trump on Epstein yesterday.

00:17:02.000 But I want to be very clear.

00:17:03.000 The job is not done.

00:17:05.000 The vote is not the end.

00:17:06.000 It's only the beginning.

00:17:08.000 Once the president signs the bill, he must apply and execute it faithfully.

00:17:12.000 There must be no funny business from Donald Trump.

00:17:17.000 He must not use the excuse of frivolous investigations to release some Epstein documents while intentionally hiding others that deserve to be seen by the American public.

00:17:29.000 This is not an invitation for Donald Trump to pick and choose his version of the truth.

00:17:35.000 This bill is a command for the president to be fully transparent, to come fully clean, and to provide full honesty to the American people, even if he doesn't want to.

00:17:44.000 So I want to be clear.

00:17:46.000 Anything less than full transparency will be unacceptable in the eyes of the American people.

00:17:51.000 If Donald Trump refuses to comply, if he refuses to obey the law, Senate Democrats will hold him accountable.

00:18:00.000 I mean, I'm sorry.

00:18:02.000 Senate Democrats are going to hold him accountable to what?

00:18:04.000 Okay, the DOJ has policies and procedures.

00:18:07.000 The law itself, the one that just passed, that Trump signed, allows exceptions for redaction for national security reasons and for legal reasons.

00:18:15.000 So the bill was just a bunch of virtue signaling by people who don't like Trump.

00:18:19.000 That's all it was.

00:18:20.000 Meanwhile, people like Stacey Plaskett, it's amazing.

00:18:22.000 This is a Democratic delegate from the Virgin Islands.

00:18:26.000 And here she was.

00:18:27.000 She had a relationship with Epstein, right?

00:18:29.000 She was emailing with him.

00:18:30.000 And she says she has no regurts, no regurts at all on Jeffrey Epstein.

00:18:35.000 There are a lot of people who have done a lot of crimes.

00:18:38.000 And as a prosecutor, you get information from people where you can.

00:18:42.000 I've interviewed confidential informants.

00:18:45.000 I've interviewed narcotics, drug traffickers, and others.

00:18:49.000 And that doesn't mean that I'm their friend.

00:18:52.000 That doesn't mean that they are friendly with me.

00:18:59.000 She had no idea.

00:19:00.000 He's just another constituent who was a sex trafficker of the underage.

00:19:05.000 Meanwhile, Jasmine Crockett, the brilliant congresswoman from Texas who would like to run for Senate herself, we'll see how that goes for her. 1.00

00:19:12.000 It's a bull of move cotton.

00:19:13.000 Here she was with Caitlin Collins on CNN trying to suggest that Lee Zeldon had taken money from Jeffrey Epstein.

00:19:18.000 There's only one problem.

00:19:19.000 There's more than one Jeffrey Epstein in the country.

00:19:21.000 And the person she's talking about is not, you know, the Jeffrey Epstein.

00:19:26.000 You mentioned Lee Zeldon there.

00:19:27.000 He's now a cabinet secretary.

00:19:29.000 He responded and said it was actually Dr. Jeffrey Epstein, who's a doctor that doesn't have any relation to the convicted sex trafficker.

00:19:35.000 Unfortunate for that doctor, but that is who doted into a prior campaign of his.

00:19:39.000 Do you want to correct the record on the people that you're going to be?

00:19:41.000 Listen, I never said that it was that Jeffrey Epstein.

00:19:44.000 Just so that people understand when you make a donation, your picture is not there.

00:19:47.000 And because they decided to spring this on us in real time, I wanted the Republicans to think about what could potentially happen because I knew that they didn't even try to go through the FEC.

00:19:57.000 So my team, what they did is they Googled.

00:19:59.000 And that is specifically why I said, A. Jeffrey Epstein, unlike Republicans, I at least don't go out and just tell lies.

00:20:06.000 Because it was not the same one, that's fine.

00:20:08.000 But when Lee Zell didn't have something to say, all he had to say was it was a different Jeffrey Epstein.

00:20:14.000 He admitted that he did receive donations from a Jeffrey Epstein.

00:20:18.000 So at least I wasn't trying to mislead people.

00:20:22.000 Slow clap on that one.

00:20:24.000 She wasn't trying to mislead people by saying that he took money from a Jeffrey Epstein.

00:20:27.000 There's no implication that it was the Jeffrey Epstein.

00:20:30.000 She was just putting out that the guy had the same name.

00:20:32.000 Then what would your point be, madam?

00:20:34.000 Literally, there would be no point.

00:20:36.000 That's like saying that I found a 5'0 white guy named Michael Jordan and I defeated him in basketball.

00:20:44.000 And then I went on Twitter the next day and I said, I just destroyed Michael Jordan in basketball.

00:20:48.000 And when called upon it, I didn't say, hey, I didn't say it was that Michael Jordan.

00:20:52.000 I mean, like, then of what relevance would it be?

00:20:55.000 Oh, my God.

00:20:56.000 Like, this is our Congress.

00:20:57.000 By the way, speaking of the insanity of our Congress, I have to say, the tastes of the American people when it comes to our Congress, people, undefeated, we make some interesting decisions.

00:21:07.000 Representative Corey Mills of Florida is a disaster area.

00:21:11.000 He's been a disaster area for quite a long time.

00:21:13.000 Representative Nancy Mays is now planning to force a vote on censuring Corey Mills and removing him from several committees.

00:21:19.000 Democrats had triggered a vote on Tuesday to censure Mills and kick him off the Armed Services Committee.

00:21:25.000 And then they withdrew it because the GOP put forward a measure to censure Stacey Plaskett for her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:21:32.000 So basically, there was a dirty deal where Republicans decided not to censure Mills and Democrats decided not to censure Plaskett.

00:21:39.000 And they both should have been censured.

00:21:41.000 I mean, Corey Mills is, I mean, like, his record is quite bad.

00:21:46.000 And the measure is going to touch on a wide array of allegations against Corey Mills, including domestic abuse, stolen valor, and financial misconduct.

00:21:54.000 Nancy Mace sent a letter to the speaker asking him to censure.

00:21:59.000 Why?

00:22:00.000 Well, because apparently, prior to serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to Representative Mace, Mills founded Paysom Solution International LLC and Paysim Defense LLC and acquired Amtec Corporation, companies which engage in security and military contracting with the U.S. government, as well as the governments of foreign nations.

00:22:16.000 Mills retains an ownership interest in those entities.

00:22:19.000 In 2024, the Office of Congressional Conduct found that Paysim Defense ALS has been actively contracting with the federal government, securing close to a million dollars in federal contracts for munitions and weapons distributed to prisons across the country.

00:22:33.000 94 of those contracts have been awarded to entities owned directly by Mills.

00:22:37.000 Apparently, he may have entered into, held, or enjoyed contracts with federal agencies while a member of Congress.

00:22:43.000 Also, apparently, Paysim Solutions does work with the U.S., Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, UAE, Australia, Kenya, Malaysia, and Kuwait.

00:22:52.000 And he had tried to enter into contracts to sell munitions to foreign nations, including Saudi Ukraine and Colombia.

00:22:58.000 Also, there are credible allegations that he misrepresented his military service and that he engaged in stolen valor.

00:23:05.000 Also, there are many accusations that are currently floating around that he committed crimes against women with whom he had romantic relationships, including allegedly physically assaulting a woman and also allegedly threatening to release intimate photographs and videos of another.

00:23:18.000 Now, why do I bring this up?

00:23:19.000 Because if you don't want to lose congressional seats, you shouldn't run bad congressional candidates.

00:23:23.000 All righty, coming up, our Congress is a mess.

00:23:25.000 If Republicans wish to retain the Congress, they might need to dump a couple of pretty bad candidates first.

00:23:29.000 The holidays will be here before you know it.

00:23:31.000 And for many families, that means excitement and a little stress.

00:23:33.000 Between gifts, travel, higher prices, it's easy to feel overwhelmed, especially if you're already relying on credit cards to cover those basics.

00:23:40.000 If that debt is piling up, you're not alone.

00:23:42.000 If you're a homeowner, you might have considered reaching out to American Financing, but hesitated because you don't want to give up your low mortgage rate.

00:23:47.000 Well, that's why American Financing created the Smart Equity Loan, a simple, smart way to get your finances back on track without giving up that low mortgage rate.

00:23:54.000 Unlike a HELOG, which can fluctuate with the market, the Smart Equity Loan offers a fixed rate.

00:23:58.000 So you'll have one predictable monthly payment.

00:24:01.000 It lets you use your home's equity to pay off those high interest debts, free up your cash flow, and still keep your existing mortgage intact.

00:24:06.000 There are no upfront fees to find out if you qualify.

00:24:09.000 Call American Financing today, 866-574-2500, or visit AmericanFinancing.net/slash Shapiro.

00:24:16.000 Call American Financing today at 866-574-2500 or visit AmericanFinancing.net slash Shapiro, NMLS182-334-NLS ConsumerAccess.org.

00:24:26.000 Also, the holidays are here.

00:24:28.000 If you're like me, you're juggling, decorating, shopping, hosting everything.

00:24:31.000 And you look at your windows and you realize, well, those blinds don't look particularly good, but who has time to deal with that right now?

00:24:36.000 Well, that's where blinds.com can help you out.

00:24:38.000 They've completely flipped the script on window treatments.

00:24:40.000 No more waiting around all day for somebody to come measure.

00:24:42.000 No pushy salespeople, no hidden fees.

00:24:44.000 The price you see is the price you pay.

00:24:46.000 Here's what I love.

00:24:47.000 You can do this however you want.

00:24:48.000 DIY it yourself, have professionals handle everything or something in between.

00:24:51.000 You're in control.

00:24:52.000 They've got hundreds of customizable styles.

00:24:54.000 Their design experts are available on your schedule for free consultations.

00:24:58.000 Need measurements?

00:24:59.000 They'll send licensed vetted pros to measure everything at no cost and then install for one low price.

00:25:04.000 From blackout shades to motorized blinds to classic shutters, they've got you covered for every room and budget.

00:25:08.000 It's all backed by their 100% satisfaction guarantee.

00:25:11.000 The Black Friday deals at blinds.com are going strong all month long.

00:25:15.000 So don't miss your chance to save big.

00:25:17.000 And as always, our listeners still get 50 bucks off when you spend $500 or more.

00:25:21.000 Just use code Shapiro at checkout.

00:25:23.000 Limited time offer, rules, and restrictions apply.

00:25:25.000 See blinds.com.

00:25:26.000 For details, go check them out.

00:25:28.000 That's blinds.com.

00:25:29.000 Here's Nancy Mace going after Mills yesterday. 1.00

00:25:34.000 Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 2A1 of Rule 9, I rise to give notice of my intent to raise a question of the privileges of the House.

00:25:43.000 The form of the resolution is as follows: censuring Representative Corey Mills of Florida and removing him from the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

00:25:55.000 Okay, well, it turns out Democrats are salivating at the prospect of going up against Mills.

00:26:02.000 According to the Orlando Sentinel, multiple Democratic candidates are now looking at his district, which is the Florida 7th district.

00:26:09.000 That would be a vulnerable district. 0.65

00:26:10.000 Normally wouldn't be.

00:26:11.000 That is a district that Mills in his last congressional election won, I believe, by 13 points.

00:26:16.000 But historically, that has been a seat that has been held by Democrats before, before Mills.

00:26:21.000 So if he's a bad candidate and if he's going to lose, it would certainly behoove him to get out of the way.

00:26:25.000 And it would behoove Republicans to push him out of the way and get a better candidate in there so that they don't lose that seat.

00:26:31.000 Meanwhile, turns out, again, Congress is filled with wonderful people.

00:26:35.000 One of those wonderful people is apparently Congresswoman Sheila Sherphyllis McCormick, another Congressperson from Florida.

00:26:41.000 So my state is doing yeoman's work in Congress these days.

00:26:44.000 Apparently, the DOJ is charging her with stealing $5 million in FEMA funds, laundering the proceeds, and then using the money to support her 2021 congressional campaign.

00:26:53.000 She faces up to 53 years in prison if convicted.

00:26:57.000 According to the indictment, the DOJ says that Sherphyllis McCormick, 46, and her brother, Edwin Sherphyllis, 51, both of Miramar, worked through their family healthcare company on a FEMA-funded COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract in 2021.

00:27:10.000 In July 2021, the company received an overpayment of $5 million in FEMA funds.

00:27:15.000 Again, apparently they conspired to steal that $5 million, allegedly, and they routed it through multiple accounts to disguise its source.

00:27:22.000 So we are only bringing the best.

00:27:24.000 It's been a wonderful, wonderful day for Congress, which remains a repository of enormous amounts of stupidity.

00:27:32.000 Okay, meanwhile, in some positive news for the Trump administration.

00:27:34.000 So we've talked about the Epstein of it.

00:27:36.000 We've talked about the sort of drag effect on Republican approval ratings for President Trump.

00:27:40.000 The biggest issue for the president, obviously, is the affordability issue, as always, as always.

00:27:46.000 If people do not feel secure about the economy, then they start to blame that on the president of the United States, no matter who the president is.

00:27:52.000 That's just the way it works, whether it's fair or whether it's unfair.

00:27:55.000 Hey, well, a couple of pieces of good news for the president.

00:27:57.000 So the September jobs report, which was delayed for some six weeks, and we don't know if there will be an October jobs report at all or when it will come out.

00:28:05.000 But apparently, the U.S. added 119,000 new jobs in September.

00:28:08.000 That is above expectations of 53,000 jobs.

00:28:12.000 The unemployment rate climbed, but that's because more people are joining the job market.

00:28:16.000 That's what happens.

00:28:17.000 Sometimes you can have an increase in jobs, but the number of people who are now seeking a job has increased to outmatch that.

00:28:23.000 That's what happened with the unemployment rate.

00:28:27.000 So the question remains as to whether the Fed is going to cut the interest rates or not.

00:28:32.000 If they believe that employment is slowing, they may in fact cut the interest rates.

00:28:37.000 On the other hand, the stock market continues to churn along.

00:28:41.000 So the Dow Jones industrial average today is likely to pop a little bit.

00:28:45.000 That's because of the NVIDIA earnings report that went out yesterday.

00:28:49.000 So NVIDIA has been just raking it in.

00:28:51.000 And we've talked about some of the circular deals that are allowing for this to happen, in which NVIDIA buys stock in a private company like OpenAI and OpenAI then takes that money and pumps it right back into NVIDIA chips, which pumps up NVIDIA stock.

00:29:05.000 So it's kind of a weird indirect version of a stock buyback in a way, kind of.

00:29:11.000 Well, NVIDIA apparently continues to just sell and sell and sell and sell.

00:29:15.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, NVIDIA reported record sales and strong guidance on Wednesday, helping soothe jitters about an artificial intelligence bubble that have reverberated in markets for the last week.

00:29:24.000 Sales in the October quarter did a record $57 billion.

00:29:28.000 Holy moly.

00:29:29.000 As demand for the company's advanced AI data center chips continued to surge, that's up 62% from one year early and exceeded the consensus estimates.

00:29:39.000 The company increased its guidance for the current quarter.

00:29:41.000 They estimate that sales this quarter are going to reach $65 billion.

00:29:46.000 So in pre-market trading on Thursday, the stock was already jumping.

00:29:50.000 Jensen Huang said, we've entered the virtuous cycle of AI.

00:29:53.000 AI is going everywhere, doing everything all at once.

00:29:55.000 By the way, when we talk about skilled immigration, which we'll get to in a moment, Jensen Huang is like a pretty good indicator of why America, you know, it's good to brain drain other countries and bring the best and brightest here.

00:30:05.000 Jensen Huang is Taiwanese.

00:30:08.000 He is here in the United States because his parents came here.

00:30:10.000 And his company is now worth more than the entire economy of Germany.

00:30:14.000 And it's based in the United States, creating an awful lot of wealth and jobs.

00:30:19.000 So that is the good news.

00:30:21.000 The good news is the employment market is churning along.

00:30:23.000 More people are joining the lines to try and get a job again.

00:30:28.000 The NVIDIA profits were big.

00:30:31.000 On the other hand, there's still a lot of nervousness.

00:30:33.000 And the nervousness is not misplaced.

00:30:36.000 Number one, we don't have data on the October unemployment rate, so it's unclear exactly what the Federal Reserve is going to use for its guidance in terms of raising or lowering the interest rates or just keeping them the same.

00:30:47.000 But meanwhile, Target is having trouble.

00:30:49.000 So at the retail level, people are just buying less stuff, which suggests that all the extra money that people have, a lot of it is going into the upper end of the tech market, but some of it's not bleeding down into the sort of basic everyday staples.

00:31:04.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Target's plan to fix its continuing sales slump involves billions of dollars in investment.

00:31:09.000 Apparently, incoming chief executive Michael Fidelke said the retailer would invest about a billion dollars more next year to improve stores, its merchandise selection and digital capabilities, bringing total new investment next year to $5 billion.

00:31:22.000 That change will include store experience improvements and more exciting merchandise, along with better tech and e-commerce systems.

00:31:27.000 In recent years, shoppers have been complaining of messy stores, items missing on shelves, and less exciting products.

00:31:32.000 Well, I mean, I think there's truth to that.

00:31:35.000 My family and I routinely shop at Target.

00:31:37.000 I will say that it's gotten messier over the years.

00:31:39.000 It used to be a lot cleaner of a store.

00:31:40.000 It used to be better run.

00:31:41.000 So there's truth to that.

00:31:42.000 But the drop in profits, I don't think, is entirely attributable to that.

00:31:46.000 People might just be buying less because of the inflated price of things like groceries and basic staples.

00:31:51.000 And now they're pulling back on their spending.

00:31:54.000 This was the 12th consecutive quarter or week or falling sales for Target.

00:31:59.000 The company said fewer shoppers visited its stores.

00:32:01.000 Those who did spent less during the quarter.

00:32:03.000 Comparable sales from those from stores and digital channels operating for at least a year fell 2.7% in the three months ended November 1st, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:32:13.000 He said that Fidelke, who's the CEO, he said that discretionary items like home to corn apparel are where they are really seeing a downturn, not particularly on groceries, but on the other sort of stuff.

00:32:23.000 Target has already been cutting jobs.

00:32:24.000 So are those stock market gains at the upper end of the market producing jobs in the same way?

00:32:29.000 No.

00:32:29.000 And that's not unusual.

00:32:30.000 So for example, in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble that burst in 2000 at the tail end of the Clinton administration, there was a fairly quick recovery in terms of the stock market under George W. Bush, but it took a little while for the jobs to come back.

00:32:44.000 Because it turns out that when a bubble bursts, there tends to be consolidation.

00:32:48.000 The consolidation increases the revenues and profit margins of companies, but it takes a while for that to bleed down into I now want to hire additional people.

00:32:56.000 Now, again, there is some good news for the Trump administration here.

00:32:59.000 In, for example, the price of groceries.

00:33:02.000 As I've said before, one of the big problems the Trump administration has in terms of the affordability argument is that what people actually want is not a thing that the Trump administration probably is capable of delivering, and that is 2022 prices, 2020 prices, right?

00:33:17.000 That very unlikely we're getting back to that level.

00:33:19.000 So people in their own minds are not comparing what they paid for groceries this year to what they paid for groceries last year.

00:33:25.000 If they were, that's kind of a small incremental increase or dead even.

00:33:29.000 What they are doing is comparing the price of groceries this year to the price of groceries four years ago.

00:33:35.000 And there, really, Biden did bake this into the cake.

00:33:37.000 Once you have prices inflated by 10, 12, 15%, the only way the prices go back down 10, 12, 15% to what they were originally is a dramatic lack of demand.

00:33:48.000 Because particularly with regard to groceries, a radical increase in supply very often is not possible.

00:33:54.000 With that said, it is true, and the president has said this, that the inflation rates are down pretty dramatically from the Biden years.

00:34:03.000 According to Axios, the average classic holiday feast for 10 will run $55.18 this Thanksgiving per the American Farm Bureau's Federation new annual survey.

00:34:11.000 That's about $5.52 per person, down 5% from last year.

00:34:15.000 So that actually is a decline.

00:34:17.000 However, as they say, three years of declines don't fully erase dramatic increases that led to a record cost of $64.05 in 2022.

00:34:27.000 That estimate is based on turkey, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and more.

00:34:31.000 Cheaper turkey is driving a lot of the overall decline.

00:34:36.000 So, again, the Trump administration has been handed a real bag when it comes to inflation and affordability and then been told to solve it.

00:34:45.000 It ain't quite that easy.

00:34:46.000 Now, when it comes to the matter of affordability, the big question for President Trump is what can he do about affordability?

00:34:52.000 Well, there are two things he can do on immigration.

00:34:54.000 One thing is he could take the unskilled immigrants who are here illegally and he could deport a lot of them. 1.00

00:35:00.000 This would presumably be less of a drain on public resources.

00:35:03.000 It would also presumably increase wages at the bottom levels.

00:35:06.000 Now, that comes along with the increased prices of the things that those wages are used for.

00:35:12.000 However, the vice president has pointed out that it would take some pressure off of housing.

00:35:16.000 That's probably true, at least in the short term.

00:35:19.000 So that's one aspect of immigration.

00:35:21.000 And then the other aspect is you do need to bring in skilled immigrants.

00:35:25.000 I know this has somehow become a very, very controversial matter on the political right.

00:35:29.000 There's a big debate over H-1B visas.

00:35:31.000 We've talked about the flaws in the H-1B visa program, which are quite real.

00:35:35.000 People abusing it, people using it to bring in people who are sort of lower-level tech people who could easily be Americans filling those jobs.

00:35:43.000 But we do, in fact, need skilled immigrants coming into the country if you wish to make things more affordable.

00:35:47.000 Because again, the only way to make things more affordable on a basic econ 101 level is you increase supply and the demand stays the same, or you reduce the demand and the supply stays the same.

00:36:01.000 That's the only way to reduce prices because prices are a function of supply and demand.

00:36:05.000 Those are the only two factors that are going into the prices.

00:36:07.000 Now, there are a lot of things that go into the supply and the demand, everything from subsidies to regulation.

00:36:13.000 However, if you wish for cheaper products, which is what affordability is, and again, I'm kind of amazed that we constantly hear this drumbeat from the right.

00:36:23.000 All these Americans buying their cheap foreign products.

00:36:26.000 Well, what if Americans just want, there's another word for Americans wanting to buy cheap products.

00:36:31.000 It's called affordability.

00:36:33.000 That's literally what that means.

00:36:34.000 It doesn't have to be a foreign product, but it does have to be affordable.

00:36:36.000 And if you wish for things to be affordable, then the inputs in making that thing also have to be cheaper and more plentiful.

00:36:43.000 Okay, so the president has taken a lot of flack from members of his sort of heritage American right, shall we say, about his comments on skilled immigration.

00:36:52.000 This is not the president in favor of mass migration.

00:36:54.000 This is the president saying what is clearly and obviously true, which is that if you have a factory and you do not have people who are capable of staffing that factory in fruitful fashion, you can't just take somebody off the unemployment line and have them producing missiles tomorrow.

00:37:09.000 You may need, at least temporarily, to bring in some foreign skilled labor in order to make that factory run.

00:37:14.000 Otherwise, the factory gets outsourced and then Trump tariffs it and now it's expensive for Americans.

00:37:18.000 This is all very, very basic stuff, but the basic has now become controversial.

00:37:22.000 Here is the president speaking at the U.S. Saudi Investment Forum yesterday talking about skilled immigration.

00:37:29.000 You can't come in, open up a massive computer chip factory for billions and billions of dollars like is being done in Arizona and think you're going to hire people off an unemployment line to run it.

00:37:43.000 They're going to have to bring thousands of people with them.

00:37:46.000 And I'm going to welcome those people.

00:37:48.000 Now, my, I love my conservative friends.

00:37:52.000 I love MAGA, but this is MAGA.

00:37:54.000 And those people are going to teach our people how to make computer chips.

00:37:59.000 And in a short period of time, our people are going to be doing great.

00:38:04.000 And those people can go home where they probably always want to be.

00:38:10.000 Okay, so again, he is not wrong about this.

00:38:13.000 He's taking an awful lot of flack for this.

00:38:15.000 One of the things about President Trump is that the people who don't like Trump's policy very often wishcast his policy into something else.

00:38:22.000 So isolationists will wishcast his policy into a sort of paleo-con isolationism, which is not actually his policy.

00:38:30.000 Or they'll wishcast his economic policy into some sort of economic autarky.

00:38:34.000 That is not his actual policy.

00:38:36.000 His policy is a mix of impulses, some of them that tend to be more paleo-con in nature, like tariffs, and some of them that tend to be pretty free market based, like, for example, the free flow of skilled labor, which he tends to be more in favor of.

00:38:49.000 But if you want affordability, one of the things the government can do to actually make things more affordable is, for example, allowing companies to bring in labor that is useful to them, at least on a temporary basis, in order to get the factories up and running, which will increase wages and keep jobs at home here in America.

00:39:06.000 Preventing outsourcing, preventing higher wages and prices from being the result.

00:39:13.000 Again, just supply and demand.

00:39:16.000 Meanwhile, again, the president is cracking down on illegal immigration.

00:39:18.000 Now, Zorn Mamzani in New York isn't.

00:39:20.000 Zorn Mamdani is now vowing that he is going to prevent the NYPD from assisting ICE.

00:39:26.000 Here was the new mayor.

00:39:27.000 I mean, New York is going to get it good and hard.

00:39:28.000 They deserve it.

00:39:29.000 They voted for it.

00:39:30.000 Here's Zorn Mamdani.

00:39:33.000 People are living in fear.

00:39:34.000 And what we will ensure is the NYPD will be delivering public safety, not assisting ICE in their attempts to fulfill the administration's goal of creating the single largest deportation force in American history.

00:39:47.000 So that is his chief priority.

00:39:48.000 Again, the things that Mamdani is doing right now, he's not going to get a lot of his economic plans done.

00:39:53.000 Thank God for New Yorkers.

00:39:54.000 But he is going to virtue signal a lot about illegal immigration.

00:39:57.000 And so I hope that he enjoys the next time a Democrat is president and decides to reopen that southern border and Greg Abbott or whoever the governor of Texas has started shipping those illegal immigrants up to New York. 0.95

00:40:07.000 I hope he has fun with that.

00:40:10.000 Here's Mamdani saying that he will tell Tom Homan that this city is an immigrant city. 0.70

00:40:17.000 Yeah, I will tell Tom Homan what I will tell anyone who asks, which is the fact that I am looking forward to representing the entirety of the city.

00:40:24.000 And this city is also an immigrant city.

00:40:26.000 It's a city that's proud of its immigrants' heritage.

00:40:28.000 It's proud of the fact that so many from across the world find their home in this city.

00:40:32.000 And we will protect those New Yorkers as we protect every New Yorker.

00:40:37.000 So does he mean illegal immigrants?

00:40:39.000 Because apparently he does.

00:40:41.000 And meanwhile, all of this is leading to where is the state of the current economy?

00:40:45.000 So the Trump administration believes that if they can keep the interest rates low, if those interest rates can drop even more, they can spur demand.

00:40:53.000 If they can spur demand, then presumably they will increase demand for labor.

00:40:58.000 People will have higher wages and all the rest.

00:41:01.000 The problem is, again, we have an inflationary economy.

00:41:03.000 We do.

00:41:03.000 The inflation rates are still riding about 50% too high.

00:41:06.000 I understand that we all got used to 10% inflation rates, but the reality is that the inflation rate is still riding somewhere between 2.8 and 3%.

00:41:14.000 That is 50% higher than the Federal Reserve would want.

00:41:16.000 It is 2.8% higher than I would want.

00:41:20.000 I want the inflation rate to be zero.

00:41:22.000 I think it's ridiculous that we gradually inflate the currency based on what I think is bad Chicago school economics theory.

00:41:28.000 I'm more of a Vienna school guy.

00:41:30.000 But put that aside, the president is angry at Chairman Powell over at the Federal Reserve for not lowering the interest rates even more than he has already done.

00:41:37.000 Here he was yesterday.

00:41:40.000 The mortgage rates are down despite the Fed.

00:41:43.000 I mean, Scott, you got to work on this guy.

00:41:45.000 He's got some real mental problems.

00:41:48.000 And there's something wrong with him.

00:41:50.000 It's just, sweet.

00:41:52.000 I be honest, I'd love to fire his ass.

00:41:55.000 He should be fine.

00:41:56.000 Guy's grossly incompetent.

00:42:00.000 Okay, but here is the thing.

00:42:02.000 Putting all of America's failures or successes in the economy on the Federal Reserve is a mistake.

00:42:07.000 It is a systemic mistake.

00:42:09.000 The Federal Reserve is considering not cutting the rates.

00:42:12.000 I would say that's the likelihood at this point.

00:42:14.000 You have an economy that is overheated in terms of the stock market, huge, huge numbers pouring into the stock market.

00:42:20.000 The stock market, again, it's jumping again today based on those NVIDIA earnings.

00:42:26.000 The question is whether those circular deals are going to end up paying off in the end, whether it is a bubble or whether it's legit.

00:42:33.000 You already have an employment market that does not seem to be cratering.

00:42:38.000 It's kind of holding steady.

00:42:40.000 So I guess the idea here would be that you have to lower the interest rates into an already hot market in order to keep the unemployment rate from spiking.

00:42:46.000 But the unemployment rate is like 4.4%.

00:42:48.000 There's not a historically high unemployment rate here in the United States.

00:42:52.000 I do not think that this is the way that affordability happens is by, again, more bubblish helicopter money.

00:42:57.000 That does not seem like a great idea to me.

00:43:00.000 Meanwhile, one of the ways that you could actually create affordability would be to stop with the bad left-wing policy.

00:43:07.000 And one of the things I notice too often on the right is this belief in the free market goes away the minute that it is tested by any economic question at all.

00:43:17.000 And the minute that the free market, literally the minute the free market produces a lag effect, a bunch of people on the right jump off the bandwagon on the free market.

00:43:25.000 Oh, no, no, no, no.

00:43:26.000 Now we need, this is when we need government policy.

00:43:28.000 Government should step in and stop everything cold.

00:43:30.000 This is when we need a new national socialism, or maybe not.

00:43:34.000 Maybe it turns out that bad policy remains bad and that the economy has hiccups all the time.

00:43:40.000 And maybe it's true that the government turns those hiccups into full-blown cardiothoracic problems.

00:43:49.000 Case in point, the Free Press has a good piece by Matt Miller talking about the ghost apartments in New York City.

00:43:57.000 What he says is that strict limits on rent increases under 2019 laws in New York have left an estimated 50,000 apartments vacant across the city.

00:44:06.000 Because the restrictions on what landlords can charge for these apartments often don't even cover the cost of maintaining them, they become ghosts.

00:44:12.000 It's like they don't exist at all.

00:44:15.000 Incoming New York Mayor Azar Mamdani promised during his campaign to immediately freeze the rent for rent-stabilized apartments, but those rents have essentially been frozen since 2019.

00:44:24.000 At the time, the laws were widely heralded as the strongest set of rent regulations anywhere in America.

00:44:29.000 They were designed to protect tenants from supposed price gouging.

00:44:32.000 But actually, what has happened is that sometimes tenants die, sometimes tenants move.

00:44:38.000 And if you can't raise the rent, well, then it actually costs you more money to keep the apartment lights on with a renter there than it would be to just leave the apartment totally empty.

00:44:49.000 New York's rent laws rely on vacancy controls, which means rents don't reset between tenants.

00:44:55.000 So just because somebody leaves doesn't mean you can charge a new higher rent to the new tenant.

00:44:59.000 The government instead assigns a maximum rent for every rent-stabilized apartment.

00:45:03.000 That rent can't be meaningfully increased no matter how much money I have to spend on renovations.

00:45:08.000 According to the authorities, the rent guidelines board, the average cost to operate an apartment in a rent-stabilized Manhattan building built before 1974 was $1,560 a month, not including mortgage payments.

00:45:20.000 Rounding for simplicity's sake, assuming $50,000 of renovations, that maximum legal rent on the apartment would only increase to about $1,230.

00:45:30.000 After all the work was done, an apartment owner would still be upside down on that apartment.

00:45:35.000 Because once again, it turns out that government policy usually achieves the reverse of the thing that it is attempting to achieve.

00:45:42.000 Okay, meanwhile, the DOJ is running into some problems of its own.

00:45:46.000 One of those problems, apparently, is basic competence.

00:45:49.000 According to Politico, the Trump administration's criminal prosecution of former FBI director James Comey is now in serious jeopardy.

00:45:55.000 The federal judge overseeing the case questioned the validity of a grand jury indictment that charged Comey with lying to and obstructing Congress.

00:46:03.000 U.S. District Judge Michael Nakmanov pressed prosecutors during a hearing on the events around the charges against Comey.

00:46:09.000 They questioned whether the entire grand jury even saw the actual two-count indictment a magistrate judge received after grand jurors rejected one of the three charges proposed by the interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan.

00:46:20.000 So apparently, Halligan was called to the courtroom and he asked her to address the court.

00:46:27.000 And it appears that actually the grand jurors were not present when the original indictment and a narrower substitute were presented to the magistrate judge.

00:46:36.000 Halligan said that the four-person and another grand jury were present, but not everybody in the grand jury.

00:46:42.000 So that is an irregularity.

00:46:44.000 Typically, the grand jury has to see the charges.

00:46:48.000 Assistant U.S. Attorney Tyler Lemons suggested the replacement indictment was a necessity because the grand jury had turned down one of the proposed charges.

00:46:55.000 Quote, they really had no other way to return it.

00:46:58.000 So a lawyer for Comey said there's no indictment.

00:47:02.000 So the procedural misstep was tantamount to a complete bar to prosecution.

00:47:08.000 So at the very least, the government provided problems for itself.

00:47:12.000 Maybe it's a procedural problem, but basic competence would be a good thing.

00:47:16.000 Meanwhile, Pam Bondi has been talking about the possibility of a new Epstein investigation, which of course will quiet zero of the critics because it will come to the same conclusions as, you know, the old Epstein investigation.

00:47:26.000 But it'll allow Pam Bondi, I suppose, to kick the can down the road. 1.00

00:47:29.000 She has handled this about as poorly as any AG has handled any issue that I've ever seen.

00:47:32.000 Here is the Attorney General yesterday.

00:47:35.000 What changed since then that you launched this investigation?

00:47:39.000 Information that has come for information.

00:47:44.000 There's information that new information, additional information.

00:47:47.000 And again, we will continue to follow the law to investigate any leads.

00:47:52.000 If there are any victims, we encourage all victims to come forward.

00:47:55.000 And we will continue to provide maximum transparency under the law.

00:48:03.000 Okay, so again, a new investigation will please pretty much no one and also drag this thing out for several more months.

00:48:09.000 So well done once again to the Attorney General Pambondi.

00:48:12.000 Again, everything from her Epstein binders to the original announcement that there would be no additional charges brought with regard to people related to the Epstein case.

00:48:22.000 Announcements that there was no foreign intelligence intervention.

00:48:25.000 All of that was handled about as badly as you can handle it.

00:48:27.000 And apparently she is going to keep that pattern going.

00:48:30.000 So well done there.

00:48:31.000 Meanwhile, in positive DOJ news, I mean, positive only in the sense that the DOJ is doing its job.

00:48:36.000 Apparently, a New Jersey man whose lengthy prison sentence for fraud convictions was commuted by President Trump in 2021 is now headed back to federal prison for another fraud conviction.

00:48:45.000 U.S. District Judge Michael Schipp, according to ABC News, handed down a 37-year sentence on Friday to one Eliyahu Eli Weinstein of Lakewood, also known as Mike Koenig.

00:48:55.000 Apparently, he has to pay $44 million in restitution due immediately.

00:48:58.000 He was convicted in March on charges.

00:49:00.000 He helped defraud dozens of investors out of $35 million.

00:49:04.000 Apparently, according to prosecutors, Weinstein and others falsely promised investors access to deals involving scarce medical supplies, baby formula, and first aid kits destined for wartime Ukraine.

00:49:13.000 This would be the third time he has been convicted in a New Jersey federal court for defrauding investors.

00:49:18.000 The first case involved a real estate Ponzi scheme.

00:49:20.000 The second stemmed from additional fraud he committed while on pre-trial release.

00:49:24.000 He caused losses of $230 million.

00:49:27.000 He was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

00:49:29.000 President Trump commuted his term to time served, about eight years into his sentence in 2021, just before leaving office.

00:49:37.000 And right after he was released, he went back to doing this.

00:49:39.000 He's now going back to jail.

00:49:42.000 Put him in jail forever, man.

00:49:43.000 Put him in jail and leave him to rot.

00:49:45.000 Truly.

00:49:47.000 What a scumbag. 0.61

00:49:49.000 Just gross.

00:49:50.000 Okay, meanwhile, on the drama scene, I have to say that Olivia Nuzzy, man, I don't know what's going on with that lady, but pretty wild. 1.00

00:50:03.000 So Olivia Nuzzy, who has worked at a wide variety of outlets, she seems to have made a bad habit out of sleeping with the people that she covers. 1.00

00:50:13.000 That would include, of course, RFK Jr.

00:50:16.000 She didn't sleep with RFK Jr.

00:50:17.000 Apparently, she was just sexting him. 0.59

00:50:20.000 But she has a long history, apparently, of attention seeking. 0.94

00:50:27.000 Apparently, when she was a teenager, she did a lady gaga-esque track called Jailbait.

00:50:34.000 An old MySpace page from 2009 shows her posing in a purple tank dress with thigh-high boots and a skinny headband with a revealing lace top and handcuffs.

00:50:44.000 So that's great.

00:50:47.000 So she, of course, was fired when she was from New York Times magazine because she was sexting with RFK Jr., which is really quite awkward.

00:51:01.000 And then it turns out that she has a more bizarre history as well.

00:51:07.000 Apparently, when she was 21, she dated Keith Olberman when he was 55, which, okay, man.

00:51:13.000 Apparently, according to Ryan Lizza, who was her fiancé, she also slept with ex-South Carolina governor Mark Sanford in 65, who was 65 while they were dating.

00:51:24.000 So apparently they'd also traveled the Appalachian Trail, which was, as you recall, an excuse that Mark Sanford used for one of his other affairs, apparently.

00:51:33.000 Olberman had paid for Nuzzie to attend college, covered her rent, and outfitted her in luxury designs from Tom Ford, Herve Léger, and Cartier. 1.00

00:51:43.000 Sounds like some solid journalism.

00:51:45.000 Sounds great.

00:51:47.000 I'm glad that our journalistic crew is doing such a wonderful job day in and day out.

00:51:54.000 She also has a brand new book titled American Kanto that is coming out December 2nd.

00:51:58.000 So there'll be a movie made out of that, that's for sure.

00:52:02.000 I think the real story there is a story as old as time.

00:52:06.000 Older men will do pretty much anything to sleep with younger women, no matter how crazy those younger women appear to be. 1.00

00:52:13.000 Again, nothing new there.

00:52:14.000 That is just the nature of the beast.

00:52:16.000 Unfortunately, human beings are filled with sin.

00:52:18.000 Joining me online is Mary Margaret Ohan.

00:52:20.000 She, of course, is our Daily Wire White House correspondent covering events there day by day.

00:52:25.000 Mary Margaret, good to see you.

00:52:28.000 Good to be here, Ben.

00:52:31.000 Okay, so let's talk about the latest in Epstein Gate mania that just continues day by day.

00:52:37.000 I am a person who is highly irritated by this entire story because I don't think anything new is going to break.

00:52:41.000 It seems as though all of it seems to have been spun up, or at least a large part of it is spun up by people who don't like the president's agenda.

00:52:47.000 That seems to be the feeling at the White House as well.

00:52:49.000 How does the White House plan to deal with sort of next steps in Epstein Gate scandal mania?

00:52:55.000 Yeah, I think a lot of people around here feel the same way you do, Ben.

00:52:58.000 I think the vibe around the White House is that, A, the Democrats did not care about the Epstein files until recently when they could become more of a political talking point.

00:53:09.000 And at the same time, the president and his team have been saying over and over, you know, this is a Democrat-led hoax, which has led a lot of people to say, wait, what?

00:53:17.000 The Epstein files aren't exactly a hoax.

00:53:20.000 But what the White House is telling me is that's the perception of how the Democrats are handling it.

00:53:24.000 They're not actually interested in it because of the victims, according to the White House.

00:53:27.000 They're interested in it in order to score political points.

00:53:30.000 Now, the president did sign the Epstein bill last night.

00:53:34.000 We're supposed to be seeing these files sometime within the next 30 days.

00:53:38.000 But there's a couple of things to note here.

00:53:40.000 One is that we're not going to see everything.

00:53:42.000 There's going to be a lot of stuff redacted, whether that's to protect the identity of some of these young female victims, whether that is related to what the DOJ says, something along the lines of death.

00:53:53.000 If they're too related to death, we might not know about it.

00:53:55.000 I'm assuming that means Jeffrey Epstein's death.

00:53:58.000 A couple different factors there.

00:54:00.000 And so what the White House knows, and I think what all of us know at this point, is that there are going to be people who are not satisfied with the release of these files.

00:54:07.000 There are always going to be people that are saying that the DOJ, that the Trump administration, that future administrations are covering things up.

00:54:14.000 They're purposefully not revealing the full truth about the Epstein files.

00:54:17.000 And so that's definitely an anxiety in and of itself.

00:54:21.000 No one is going to be satisfied with the release of the files, and there's always going to be more questions that we want to answer.

00:54:27.000 And so the White House is grappling with all of this.

00:54:29.000 But in the meantime, their messaging is to lean into the revelations that we've learned about Democrats.

00:54:35.000 They didn't want the files released, and the Democrats released some of them.

00:54:38.000 And lo and behold, a whole bunch of Democrats are implicated in these releases themselves.

00:54:43.000 So what the White House is doing is they're sending out messaging to reporters and to the public on some of these Democrats who are implicated, such as Larry Summers, such as Katie Couric, such as a whole other host of Democrats, such as Stacey Plaskett.

00:54:57.000 And they're highlighting the relationships that these people had with Epstein, such as Stacey Plaskett texting with Epstein during a congressional hearing related to President Trump.

00:55:06.000 I actually spoke with Donald Trump Jr., the president's son, and I asked him, do you think the Democrats are going to regret releasing these files?

00:55:13.000 And he said, yes, he thinks so.

00:55:15.000 He thinks this is not going to play out well in their favor.

00:55:17.000 And the more we learn, the more these Democrats are probably going to be making some angry phone calls to their friends in the House of Representatives and saying, why did you put us in this situation?

00:55:27.000 No one is winning.

00:55:30.000 Now, Mary Margaret, meanwhile, there's been some talk that Zora Mamdani might be headed to the White House for a meeting with the President of the United States.

00:55:37.000 What have you been hearing about that?

00:55:40.000 Yes, so he's coming tomorrow, and I'm a little disappointed.

00:55:44.000 I was hoping that he was coming today.

00:55:46.000 I'll be in the White House press pool today, which means that if there is an open press event in the Oval Office, I get to go in there and hopefully ask the president some questions.

00:55:55.000 But he'll be coming here tomorrow, and he'll be meeting with the president, who announced that he was coming in a rather unusual truth social post where he called Zoron a communist and said that he asked to come to the White House on Friday.

00:56:08.000 So that's going to happen.

00:56:09.000 Obviously, this is going to be some great television if the press is allowed into that meeting.

00:56:14.000 I heard one person say that we haven't seen a little moment like this since the Zelensky-Trump advance moment in the Oval Office.

00:56:23.000 And, you know, Zoron is very interested in press himself.

00:56:26.000 He's very good at it.

00:56:27.000 He's gotten a lot of national attention, global attention.

00:56:30.000 And the president is aware of this.

00:56:32.000 And, you know, he says he wants to make sure that New York City is a good place.

00:56:36.000 Zoron allegedly does as well.

00:56:38.000 And so that'll be a very fun meeting to tune into as we prepare to head to our Thanksgiving holidays.

00:56:45.000 Well, that is going to be some spicy stuff.

00:56:48.000 And, you know, hopefully it'll help get that turkey digested.

00:56:51.000 Mary Margaret, thanks so much for the time.

00:56:53.000 And thanks for the coverage, as always.

00:56:55.000 Thank you, Ben.

00:56:57.000 All righty, folks.

00:56:58.000 Coming up, we'll jump into that vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag.

00:57:00.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:57:02.000 If you are not a member, become a member.

00:57:03.000 Use Coach Shapiro.

00:57:04.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 20, 2025

I Can't Believe These 2026 Polls...

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript