The Ben Shapiro Show - Iranian Propaganda Syndrome

00:00:00.000 Are you suffering from ideological bloat, verbal diarrhea, brain cramps, all over the current Trump action against Iran? 0.98

00:00:08.000 This is a medical warning. 0.98

00:00:10.000 You may be suffering from IPS Iranian propaganda syndrome. 1.00

00:00:14.000 Left untreated, it may result in stupidity, clickoring, an awkward giggle. 0.99

00:00:21.000 To understand just what's actually going on, I want to start with the truth. 1.00

00:00:24.000 This war is justified. 1.00

00:00:26.000 It will be short, and we will win.

00:00:31.000 Okay, so let's talk about the justification for the war.

00:00:34.000 A lot of people are still asking, understandably, what this conflict is all about.

00:00:38.000 After all, they say the administration has made a wide variety of cases.

00:00:42.000 It's about preventing terrorism, or maybe it's about nuclear development or ballistic missile development, or it's about helping the Iranian people overthrow the regime.

00:00:49.000 It's about an imminent threat or maybe a more distant future threat.

00:00:53.000 See, here is the actual answer.

00:00:56.000 All of the above.

00:00:57.000 See, as we've discussed, Iran is an enemy of the United States and has been for nearly half a century. 0.81

00:01:02.000 They're responsible for the death of hundreds of Americans, the undermining of American allies, the spread of terror regionally and globally, attempted assassinations of President Trump, and massive geopolitical turmoil.

00:01:12.000 Iran is also a supplier of oil to China.

00:01:14.000 About 60% of all Iranian oil goes to China, our chief geopolitical opponent, and they are a supplier of drones to our other chief geopolitical opponent, Russia.

00:01:23.000 And then there's the question of why now?

00:01:24.000 So again, there are a few reasons.

00:01:26.000 Iran has been radically ramping up its ballistic missile facilities to the point where the United States and its allies would be unable to fully stop Iran's terror apparatus and regional power grab. 0.52

00:01:36.000 Iran has been redeveloping its nuclear capacity since the 12-day war.

00:01:39.000 If they achieved a nuclear weapon, it would make it nearly impossible to course correct the regime or topple it.

00:01:44.000 See North Korea. 0.91

00:01:45.000 At the same time, a unique opportunity presented itself.

00:01:48.000 Millions of Iranians in the streets, hoping to overturn the regime.

00:01:51.000 A uniquely weak Iranian air defense capacity and the complete collapse of the Iranian economy.

00:01:56.000 It is in America's interest for Iran to pose no threat to its neighbors, the region or the world.

00:02:00.000 It's in our interest to dramatically weaken that China-Russia-Iran axis.

00:02:04.000 And it's in our interest to act when we can at the point of highest possible success and the point of lowest possible risk.

00:02:11.000 So why doesn't the Trump administration just say all of this clearly?

00:02:14.000 The Trump administration, for example, has not pointed out really the connections between Iran and Russia.

00:02:19.000 The answer is because President Trump is still pursuing a settlement in Ukraine.

00:02:22.000 He's trying not to alienate the Russians.

00:02:24.000 The administration also is not tying Iran to China because President Trump is trying to find an off-ramp with China regarding Taiwan and doesn't want to draw China into the conflict with Iran.

00:02:33.000 Trump also isn't making the case that Iran is a target of opportunity for regime change or that the United States is engaging in preemptive war, probably out of concern for rhetorical similarity to the Bush administration.

00:02:44.000 But here's the thing.

00:02:45.000 This is not Iraq and Trump is not Bush.

00:02:48.000 Which brings us to the bigger question, how does all of this end?

00:02:51.000 We've heard a variety of goals from the Trump administration.

00:02:53.000 Destruction of Iran's forward capacity, unconditional surrender, regime change.

00:02:57.000 Any or all of these results would count as major wins for the Trump administration.

00:03:02.000 For its part, the White House says that President Trump will set the terms of victory.

00:03:05.000 Yesterday, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt explained.

00:03:09.000 That Iran is in a place of unconditional surrender. 0.70

00:03:11.000 He's not claiming the Iranian regime is going to come out and say that themselves.

00:03:16.000 What the president means is that Iran's threats will no longer be backed by a ballistic missile arsenal that protects them from building a nuclear bomb in their country.

00:03:26.000 I could make an empty threat, but if I have no actions to back it up, then it's an empty threat.

00:03:31.000 And so President Trump will determine when Iran is in a place of unconditional surrender, when they no longer pose a credible and direct threat to the United States of America and our allies.

00:03:41.000 Now, it sounds a little bit facetious, but it really isn't.

00:03:43.000 It isn't because in the end, it is really unlikely the Iranian government is going to simply announce that it has surrendered.

00:03:49.000 actually has not happened in a major American war since World War II, when General Alfred Yodel signed the German instrument of surrender in France and Japanese representatives did the same aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

00:04:00.000 There have been armistic, like the Korean War.

00:04:03.000 We've seen political transitions like Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela.

00:04:06.000 But unconditional surrender, as in Ayatollah Mushtaba Khomeini on an American aircraft carrier signing a document, that is not going to happen.

00:04:13.000 So what would unconditional surrender mean practically?

00:04:16.000 As Caroline Levitt says, it would mean Iran is in no position to continue the fight in any real way.

00:04:22.000 And here's the thing.

00:04:22.000 We're almost there now.

00:04:24.000 We are running out of targets in Iran.

00:04:26.000 That is the reality.

00:04:27.000 Here is a timeline of the first to 10 days of Operation Epic Fury as put out by the Department of War.

00:04:33.000 I mean, that is an awfully large list of targets, including the blowing up of Iran's major air defenses.

00:04:39.000 By March 3rd, the United States had emptied the Arabian Gulf Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman of all Iranian warships.

00:04:44.000 By this Monday, we put 50 Iranian Navy vessels out of action.

00:04:47.000 Caroline Lovitt spelled out the Iranian Navy's dire position yesterday.

00:04:51.000 The United States is also annihilating the Iranian regime's navy, and we have destroyed more than 50 Iranian naval vessels, including a major drone carrier ship.

00:05:02.000 None of the regime's vessels are operating in major regional waterways, and the Iranian Navy has been assessed as combat ineffective.

00:05:10.000 Okay, so basically, the Iranians have been relegated to firing the occasional drone at American shipping. 0.87

00:05:16.000 Well, what about suspicions that Iranians might plant mines in the Straits of Hormuz?

00:05:20.000 President Trump touted destruction of those mines on Truth Social yesterday.

00:05:24.000 He said, quote, I'm pleased to report that within the last few hours, we have hit and completely destroyed 10 inactive mine-laying boats and or ships with more to follow President Trump.

00:05:32.000 Meanwhile, Iran's oil industry is basically at the mercy of the United States.

00:05:36.000 We and our Israeli allies have attacked the oil facilities that are most directly connected to the IRGC.

00:05:40.000 We're not blowing up all the oil fields or anything remotely like it.

00:05:43.000 We certainly could.

00:05:44.000 We are not doing that because we do not wish to push the Chinese into some sort of action.

00:05:49.000 And also because a lot of those oil fields are still connected to an Iranian economy that supports the population.

00:05:54.000 The oil fields and refineries that are being hit are directly connected to the IRGC.

00:05:59.000 It's still possible that in the near future, the United States might just grab Kharga Island and take control of 90% of Iranian oil export capacity.

00:06:06.000 And as for complaints that the United States is at the mercy of Iranian-caused oil shocks, that is not true.

00:06:11.000 I'm sorry, but it isn't.

00:06:13.000 Crude oil closed yesterday at about 80 bucks.

00:06:16.000 Remember, catastrophists were predicting 48 hours ago it would be at 150 or 200 bucks a barrel.

00:06:22.000 As Alicia Finley points out in the Wall Street Journal, quote, unlike during past oil shocks in the 1970s and the First Gulf War, the United States does not depend on the Middle East for oil.

00:06:30.000 The vast majority of the oil Americans consume is now produced in the United States and Canada.

00:06:35.000 Americans will see higher prices in the short term because oil is traded globally.

00:06:39.000 But we face little risk of actual supply shortages, unlike the 70s.

00:06:42.000 More vulnerable is China, which gets most of its oil from the Middle East and Russia.

00:06:47.000 So, what comes next?

00:06:48.000 Well, we may be nearing the point where the Iranian regime will have been as weakened as humanly possible from the air.

00:06:54.000 And that means the devastation of the IRGC's facilities.

00:06:57.000 Yesterday, tape allegedly emerged from Iran of an IRGC Basije member abandoning his post.

00:07:02.000 Here's what that looks like.

00:07:05.000 He's apparently saying everyone is gone or leaving.

00:07:08.000 I'm going home too.

00:07:09.000 It seems like the regime is finished and we should surrender.

00:07:11.000 I just hope the people don't take revenge on us.

00:07:14.000 And you can hope that's real.

00:07:14.000 Even if it's propaganda, I hope that it is going out to the IRGC and Basij at this point.

00:07:20.000 Now, this kind of stuff could be happening all over the country.

00:07:23.000 We don't really know because the regime has shut down the internet.

00:07:26.000 What we do know is that the IRGC has been totally pulverized from the air.

00:07:30.000 There is no money coming in to pay the Ayatollah's henchmen, and the Ayatollah himself is dead, and his ridiculous son is now supposedly running the place, and people are bowing to cardboard cutouts of him.

00:07:40.000 Well, soon, as the president has suggested over and over again, it will actually be up to the Iranian people to take the final steps.

00:07:46.000 Remember, this war actually began with the Iranian government slaughtering protesters in the streets, some 32,000 of them.

00:07:52.000 President Trump promised help was on the way, and he has delivered.

00:07:55.000 The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, seems to be preparing the Iranians for precisely that moment, that they will have to move en masse to seize their government.

00:08:02.000 He wrote on X yesterday: quote, people of Iran, we are waging a historic war for liberty.

00:08:07.000 This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you to remove the Ayatollah regime and gain your freedom. 0.55

00:08:11.000 Together with the United States, we are hitting the tyrants of Tehran harder than ever. 1.00

00:08:15.000 The Ayatollah is no more, and I know you don't want him replaced with another tyrant.

00:08:18.000 So you must act.

00:08:19.000 We are creating the conditions for you to do so.

00:08:21.000 We have hit countless regime targets.

00:08:23.000 We have taken out thousands of IRGC thugs and hundreds of their missile launchers. 0.99

00:08:27.000 We are focused on regime targets and are doing our best not to harm the people of Iran.

00:08:31.000 We are your ally, your best ally.

00:08:32.000 We fully respect your sovereignty, culture, and heritage.

00:08:35.000 You asked for help, and help has arrived.

00:08:37.000 We'll continue to hit with growing force the tyrants who terrorized you for decades. 0.98

00:08:40.000 The Ayatollahs and their henchmen are on the run, but those cowards have nowhere to hide. 1.00

00:08:43.000 In the coming days, we will create the conditions for you to grasp your destiny.

00:08:47.000 Your dreams will become a reality.

00:08:48.000 When the time is right, and that time is fast approaching, we'll pass the torch to you.

00:08:52.000 Be ready to seize the moment.

00:08:55.000 I mean, that's pretty clear.

00:08:57.000 Meanwhile, Reza Pahlavi, who is the crown prince, the son of the Shah, he is saying the exact same thing.

00:09:04.000 He says the moment is coming when the people of Iran are going to have to rise up. 1.00

00:09:08.000 Obviously, many of the people in the streets who are protesting and were being shot were supporters of Reza Pahlavi, who's put himself out there as sort of a figurehead leader, a sort of almost English monarch figure to lead a transition.

00:09:26.000 He says we're now at the decisive stage of our final struggle.

00:09:32.000 I urge you to secure your essential provisions as soon as possible.

00:09:37.000 And for your own safety, withdraw from the streets and remain in your homes.

00:09:43.000 Continue to strike and do not show up for work.

00:09:49.000 Continue your nightly chance to show your unity to the military and law enforcement forces.

00:09:58.000 This is your last chance to break from the oppressive forces and join your people.

00:10:06.000 Await my final call.

00:10:09.000 Well, whatever happens next, the Trump administration, along with our Israeli allies, have done unbelievable work here, destroying Iran's missile launchers and manufacturing capacity, wrecking its drone facilities, wrecking its nuclear facilities, devastating the IRGC infrastructure.

00:10:22.000 All of that is a win for the United States and our allies.

00:10:25.000 Joining me on the line to discuss all of this is Sham Sankar.

00:10:27.000 He is the chief technology officer and executive vice president of Palantir Technologies.

00:10:31.000 He actually joined Palantir as employee number 13 and then helped transform Palantir from a Silicon Valley startup into a global industry-leading software and AI company.

00:10:39.000 He has a brand new book titled Mobilize, How to Reboot the American Industrial Base and Stop World War III.

00:10:44.000 Sham, thanks so much for the time.

00:10:45.000 Really appreciate it.

00:10:47.000 Ben, thanks for having me.

00:10:48.000 So why don't we begin with the current conflict in Iran?

00:10:51.000 The United States obviously is utilizing technologies that are of a wildly different generation than what Iran is using. 0.96

00:10:58.000 You see the full force and might of what a first world American and Israeli military look like when unleashed on a backwards military. 0.99

00:11:06.000 What do you think of the American and Israeli performance?

00:11:07.000 And then we'll get to sort of the shortcomings of that performance and what needs to change for the future.

00:11:13.000 Well, I think the current performance has been astonishing.

00:11:16.000 If you look at the volume and scale, the complexity of what's been coordinated.

00:11:20.000 But I also think, to your point here, Iran really illustrates what's been happening to our industrial base over the last 30 or 40 years here. 0.86

00:11:28.000 Having won the Cold War, really the impetus for writing Mobilize is that we now live in a world where we've lost deterrence.

00:11:35.000 You know, if you go back as far as 2014, we had the annexation of Crimea, the militarization of the Spratly Islands in 2015.

00:11:42.000 We've had a pogrom in Israel.

00:11:44.000 We have the Ukraine war going on.

00:11:46.000 We have the Houthis holding trade hostage. 0.79

00:11:48.000 And of course, this is all culminating in the current conflict that we're seeing.

00:11:52.000 And it's reminding us of the fundamental lesson of World War II and the early Cold War, which is that deterrence is about production.

00:11:59.000 It is not your stockpile that scares your enemy.

00:12:02.000 It is your ability to generate and regenerate that stockpile.

00:12:06.000 And your ability to make weapons really does matter.

00:12:09.000 And when a country goes to war, the whole country goes to war.

00:12:13.000 When you look at what the United States has been doing, as you mentioned, our technology is obviously far superior, not only to the Iranian technology, and then they're trying to fly F-4s from the Vietnam War era up against F-35s, which is just insane, obviously.

00:12:26.000 But you also have seen how much further advanced American and Israeli technology are than Russian technologies, than many Chinese technologies, which have been seen in Iran.

00:12:36.000 What do you think of sort of our comparative military prowess technologically?

00:12:39.000 And then I want to get back to the supply chain argument because that is the big question is actually how we generate enough force that it scares everybody else off the ball.

00:12:50.000 Yeah, I mean, without a doubt, our military is the best in the world by a wide margin.

00:12:55.000 Our service members are better than we deserve.

00:12:57.000 Quite frankly, the talent that is oozing out of that, the uniform services is eye-watering.

00:13:03.000 And the equipment they have is breathtaking.

00:13:06.000 I think the warning in that is that we shouldn't use our technological advantage as an excuse not to have quantity.

00:13:13.000 You know, quantity is a quality all to its own.

00:13:16.000 And you could reason by analogy.

00:13:19.000 In World War II, the Germans were better engineers.

00:13:21.000 They had more exquisite technology.

00:13:23.000 They just couldn't make it in any numbers that mattered whatsoever.

00:13:27.000 And so having a 70% solution that you could outproduce by a factor of 50 was determinative.

00:13:33.000 And as we look at broader threats, as we look at deterring China, whereas we were the best at mass production at the beginning of World War II, obviously China is the best at mass production today. 0.97

00:13:45.000 And we need a strategy to counter their strategy in that regards.

00:13:48.000 And I think almost through divine providence, there's a reason the AI revolution is an American phenomenon.

00:13:55.000 This is David's slingshot against Goliath here.

00:13:58.000 You know, you're not going to win the war with software, but you can use AI to underwrite the reindustrialization of America.

00:14:05.000 And that's really important, not just narrowly in terms of weapons, because if you look at the industrial base that won World War II, it was not a defense industrial base.

00:14:13.000 It was an American industrial base.

00:14:14.000 Chrysler used to make the Minuteman, ICBM, and minivans.

00:14:19.000 Kodak was in the spy business.

00:14:21.000 We had a very different American economy where our companies, they weren't dual-use products.

00:14:26.000 That's too facile.

00:14:27.000 They were dual purpose companies.

00:14:29.000 They were equally invested in prosperity and freedom that underwrote that prosperity for the American people.

00:14:36.000 So let's talk about how the AI revolution is going to help the United States.

00:14:39.000 So as you mentioned, quality can be overcome by quantity.

00:14:43.000 We've actually seen this repeatedly.

00:14:45.000 It doesn't tend to work in the long run, but in the short run, it can do extraordinary damage.

00:14:49.000 I think that actually the October 7th war is a great example of this, where you have the most low-tech attack on Israel, and it is capable of doing tremendous damage. 0.51

00:14:57.000 Obviously, over the long run, technological advantage will tell if you can ramp up your production to meet it.

00:15:02.000 But your point is you shouldn't have to ramp up production to meet it.

00:15:05.000 You should just be so ready that nobody ever wants to take you on.

00:15:07.000 So how do we use AI to revolutionize our manufacturing industrial base?

00:15:12.000 Well, the good news is this is already starting to happen.

00:15:14.000 So the work that we're doing in ramping submarine production, the work that we're doing with American manufacturers outside of the defense context, the opportunity is to use AI to eliminate the deadweight loss dwell time when the factory floor is sitting idle.

00:15:28.000 So an example of this would be production planning.

00:15:30.000 Oh, I need to read 150-page PDF.

00:15:33.000 I need to understand what I need to change about production.

00:15:35.000 What's different about this part?

00:15:36.000 How do I quote it?

00:15:37.000 How do I come up with the plan?

00:15:38.000 Then I have the American worker, the best worker in the world, go build those things.

00:15:43.000 So in one example, we were able to reduce planning from three weeks to one hour.

00:15:49.000 This producer got so efficient with their need to produce, they actually added a third shift.

00:15:54.000 So this is, I think, a narrative violation, which is like, wait a second.

00:15:56.000 So AI is creating blue-collar jobs.

00:15:59.000 And I'm not talking about building data centers.

00:16:01.000 I mean persistent production that's going to exist well beyond when the data center gets stood up here.

00:16:06.000 And I think the way I think about it is.

00:16:09.000 It's going to give the American worker superpowers. 1.00

00:16:12.000 How do we make the American worker 50 times more productive than any other worker in the world?

00:16:16.000 Because I am a reindustrialization maximalist.

00:16:19.000 I don't think, I think to a large degree, friendshoring is kind of a half measure.

00:16:24.000 I mean, I'm all for our allies and partners, don't get me wrong, but here is the basis for that.

00:16:28.000 A conceptual basis is that innovation is actually a consequence of productivity.

00:16:33.000 The thing you can't do is tell yourself, hey, we're going to do the innovation.

00:16:36.000 They're going to do the production.

00:16:38.000 If you wait long enough, the production is what inspires the next generation of innovations.

00:16:38.000 Guess what?

00:16:43.000 And you're depriving yourself of that stimulus of how to do it.

00:16:46.000 We see that very concretely with SpaceX.

00:16:48.000 The fact that they co-locate the R ⁇ D people with the production people allows them to realize what the problems are and very quickly make the Raptor V3 eye-wateringly different and more efficient with less parts than the original Raptor engine.

00:17:01.000 I mean, this makes perfect sense and nobody actually thinks about it in those terms because the truth is that if you're at home and your sink breaks, you're going to innovate a way out of your sink being broken.

00:17:10.000 Whereas if you were just told, go come up with some creative solution to fix sinks.

00:17:14.000 It's more abstract.

00:17:15.000 It's not right in front of you.

00:17:16.000 The necessity is not the mother of invention.

00:17:18.000 I think that maybe the flip side of what you're saying, that production and innovation are linked, is that necessity is the mother of invention.

00:17:23.000 If you want to make it better and it's right in front of you, then obviously the impetus to actually go and do that is really going to be high.

00:17:30.000 So all of this goes to what should the United States be focusing on when we do build up?

00:17:35.000 I mean, there's been a lot of talk about what kinds of technologies we should be focused on and a lot of interesting debate about that because we've seen some low-tech elements that we've underproduced.

00:17:46.000 But at the same time, we are overproducing in some areas.

00:17:50.000 I mean, there's been a lot of talk by the Trump administration about the continued utility of, for example, aircraft carriers, been very useful in this war.

00:17:56.000 Will it be useful in a war or a conflict over the Taiwan Straits?

00:18:00.000 We should resist the kind of Soviet communist central planning urge to think that we can, from a top-down perspective, design the perfect force structure.

00:18:09.000 One of my quips has been, everybody's given up on communism, including the Russians and the Chinese, except for Cuba and the Department of Defense.

00:18:17.000 Now, all credit to the Department of War as different from the Department of Defense in the last year, it is an unrecognizable place that has just slashed and burned bureaucracy and has really put us on the right footing to solve these problems with urgency.

00:18:31.000 But that I think is one of the challenges.

00:18:33.000 So as an example, I think in World War II, we made roughly 154 different airframes.

00:18:40.000 I'm pretty sure 10 of them really mattered.

00:18:42.000 But obviously, there was no way to know ex ante which 10 were going to really matter.

00:18:46.000 So part of what makes our system so amazing is that we cherish what I like to call the heretic and hero.

00:18:53.000 So Hyman Rickover, who built the nuclear navy in the 50s, think about this.

00:18:58.000 So Oppenheimer, the father of the bomb, thought that Rickover is going to fail.

00:19:04.000 He told him, this is going to fail. 1.00

00:19:06.000 You're a moron. 1.00

00:19:07.000 There's no way you're going to build nuclear-powered submarines. 1.00

00:19:09.000 Think about the chutzpah that's needed to say, yeah, I know you're the best at this in the world, but I think I can still do this.

00:19:15.000 And the humiliation that guy had to suffer, his first office was the women's restroom because the Navy was trying to figure out how to get him to quit.

00:19:22.000 But that is actually, if you look at the history of defense innovation, it always looks like that.

00:19:26.000 Churchill, as the head of the Royal Navy, built the tank.

00:19:30.000 He had to call it the landship because obviously in the Admiralty, he wasn't allowed to build ground warfare equipment.

00:19:37.000 But it shows you that our greatest innovations always come from this kernel of heresy, someone who's thinking differently.

00:19:43.000 The system is trying to crush them.

00:19:45.000 And I think it's really important in this moment to remember because a lot of the lessons, the wrong lessons we learned having won the Cold War, is that you can rely on the system, that there is a process that's going to generate that.

00:19:56.000 And a big part of the message of mobilize is, no, there isn't.

00:19:59.000 That's a cargo call.

00:20:00.000 What has always generated victory is incredibly compelling humans who are just almost pathologically committed to success and winning and their ideas.

00:20:08.000 Whether it was Andrew Higgins and the Higgins boat that won the war, the Navy tried to kill this boat, but in the end, 92% of all boats in World War II were Higgins boats.

00:20:17.000 Can you imagine what would have happened?

00:20:18.000 We would not have landed at Normandy successfully without the Higgins boat, you know, or Edward Hall and the Minuteman and just a very feisty character who was fired more than once, but still in the end was the only guy who could give us a solid fueled rocket ICBM.

00:20:35.000 So I want to finish by asking you where you think the United States currently stands geopolitically.

00:20:40.000 Obviously, there's a lot of worry, I think proper worry under both the Obama and the Biden administrations about the recession of American power in the world, the attempt to almost draw spheres of influence.

00:20:51.000 President Trump is fighting back hard against that.

00:20:53.000 Obviously, there have been a lot of sort of interesting interpretations of what was going on inside the Trump administration was the Don Rowe doctrine that we were going to essentially dominate the Western hemisphere, but the Eastern hemisphere, we're kind of going to leave alone.

00:21:04.000 We're going to allow Russia to carve out its sphere of influence and China to carve out its sphere of influence. 0.53

00:21:08.000 President Trump seems to be cutting hard against that.

00:21:11.000 And right now, it seems to me that the United States actually stands at the brink of a historic opportunity to extend its global dominance by a century, by two centuries, given our advantage in terms of innovation, in terms of tech, and in terms of the economic capacity.

00:21:25.000 But it does require some of the willpower that you're talking about.

00:21:28.000 Where do you think that we stand, especially as we, I assume, draw toward the end of the conflict in Iran?

00:21:34.000 Well, I think will is exactly the issue because I see the same opportunity you do.

00:21:38.000 The American worker built the 20th century. 0.96

00:21:40.000 We have an opportunity for the American worker to build the 21st century.

00:21:43.000 It requires our greatest threat is suicide, not homicide.

00:21:46.000 It's our ability to realize that we need to reindustrialize, that we need to invest in technologies that make the American worker more productive, make the American worker more prosperous.

00:21:55.000 That requires us as a whole to be unwarfitting, both in the literal sense, like we need to make a lot more munitions.

00:22:01.000 We need to take this very seriously.

00:22:02.000 This is the basis of underwriting our deterrence, but also as an economy generally, in terms of how quickly we are implementing these technologies to realize, remember, the end goal is to realize prosperity for the American people.

00:22:16.000 Well, that's Sham Sankar. 0.87

00:22:17.000 He is CTO of Palantir and his new book is Mobilize.

00:22:19.000 Sham, thanks so much for the time.

00:22:20.000 Really appreciate it.

00:22:21.000 Thank you, Ben.

00:22:23.000 Well, if President Trump, Pahlavi, and Tenyah were to have their way and the Iranian people were to rise up, it would make a transformational change in the Middle East.

00:22:29.000 In the meantime, obviously, the place is still rife with conflict, which is why our sponsors, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, exist.

00:22:37.000 So let me paint you a picture of what's going on right now, actually.

00:22:40.000 Siren's blazer.

00:22:40.000 It's midnight.

00:22:41.000 You have a few seconds to grab your kids and run to a bomb shelter.

00:22:44.000 Now, imagine that you're elderly and things don't kind of work like they used to.

00:22:47.000 Getting downstairs can feel impossible.

00:22:49.000 And then you end up in a bomb shelter for hours, even days, because you don't want to go up and down the stairs.

00:22:54.000 That sort of stuff is happening across Israel as Operation Epic Fury continues.

00:22:58.000 America and Israel are winning, but obviously the situation on the ground means that lots of people are rushing to bomb shelters.

00:23:04.000 It means that homes have been destroyed.

00:23:05.000 That is why the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is there on the ground bringing food, emergency equipment, care for children, and help for the elderly, and also supplying bomb shelters and medical centers with critically needed essentials.

00:23:16.000 If you've ever wondered what it looks like to stand with Israel for good against evil, this would be it.

00:23:21.000 Please act right now.

00:23:21.000 Give 45 bucks right now to rush life-saving essentials to the vulnerable under fire.

00:23:25.000 Visit benforthefellowship.org to rush your life-saving gift.

00:23:29.000 That is one word, benforthefellowship.org.

00:23:31.000 Again, benforthefellowship.org.

00:23:34.000 Also, as you can see, I'm on the road, not in my home studio.

00:23:37.000 And that means that I'm not eating the way that I should.

00:23:40.000 Very difficult to get good nutrition while I'm on the road.

00:23:42.000 But this is why I rely upon Balance of Nature.

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00:23:47.000 I tell my own kids that, but nobody really explained why.

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00:23:50.000 If you're feeling off, tired, foggy, a big part of that might be what's missing from your diet.

00:23:54.000 Luckily, our sponsors of Balance of Nature can help.

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00:24:06.000 Those are the natural compounds your body uses every single day to adjust, repair, and respond to stress.

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00:24:13.000 They take real produce, they run it through a tailored vacuum-cold process that stabilizes that phytonutrition instead of destroying it.

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00:24:28.000 Again, I'm on the road.

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00:24:30.000 It helps keep me healthy even when I'm not getting enough sleep and the new cycle is crazy.

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00:24:55.000 The Washington Post is now reporting that pro-Iran accounts have been overwhelming social media with AI slop connecting Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:25:03.000 According to the Post, quote, to erode public support for the joint U.S.-Israel military operation, Iranian state media has sought to portray those countries' leaders as part of a corrupt and depraved Epstein class or Epstein regime.

00:25:14.000 While such content often fails to gain much trash outside Iran, the message is spreading through generically named news accounts that researchers say appear to be using the Epstein conspiracy theories to serve pro-Iran talking points to a global audience.

00:25:26.000 The Epstein Posts are part of a maelstrom of Iran-related misinformation that has engulfed social media since February 28th, when strikes by the United States and Israel killed the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and touched off a conflict that has spread across the Middle East.

00:25:38.000 Next in with real footage of the conflict are dramatic videos of missile strikes, downfighter jets, earth-shaking explosions that have racked up millions of views on X, TikTok, Instagram, and Telegram, only to be debunked as AI-generated fakes, real footage from past conflicts being passed off as new, or scenes from video games.

00:25:54.000 Well, here's the thing: Iran has found pretty fertile ground for this psyop. 0.95

00:25:58.000 Members of the grievance party, eager to spread rumors of conspiratorial cabals who are actually running the world.

00:26:03.000 In their view, President Trump is never the decision maker.

00:26:06.000 It's deeper, darker forces who are in true control.

00:26:09.000 Jimmy Kimmel, right on Q, exemplified this last night when he thought it was absolutely hilarious to point out that Trump's actions in Iran are supposedly a distraction from the Epstein files.

00:26:18.000 Because, of course, the conspiracy can't end with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:26:23.000 Now, entire wars are being started by the Epstein cabal.

00:26:26.000 The same thing that those with Iranian propaganda syndrome and the people promoting it, like Iran, are saying. 0.54

00:26:30.000 Here's Kimmel.

00:26:32.000 Trump claims we are way ahead of schedule on the war.

00:26:35.000 He's got a schedule, which means it should be over just around the time we see his taxes and the rest of the Trump-Epstein files.

00:26:42.000 Ironically, this war he launched to distract us from those could turn out to be more damaging to him than the Trump-Epstein files themselves.

00:26:50.000 They're saying this could be worse, and that would mean he'd have to come up with another distraction from the war.

00:26:57.000 And if you do need that, Mr. President, I got a good warning.

00:26:59.000 You know what would distract us from the war?

00:27:01.000 Release the unreleased Trump-Epstein files.

00:27:03.000 That would be a shiny object we can gather around. 0.96

00:27:09.000 Now, again, to be fair to Kimmel, he probably didn't need Iranian propaganda in order to push that trash. 0.99

00:27:14.000 He just hates Trump. 0.99

00:27:15.000 That's good enough for him.

00:27:16.000 The same is probably true of Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a man so pro-Iran that he lobbied just a few years ago to remove the IRGC from America's list of sanctioned terror groups.

00:27:25.000 Well, now he's out there promoting lies about how America is somehow losing a war in which we've absolutely devastated our enemies.

00:27:31.000 I just came from a two-hour closed-door classified briefing on the war.

00:27:38.000 Just confirmed to me it's totally incoherent.

00:27:41.000 We are not going to be able to achieve any of our stated objectives.

00:27:45.000 But I mention it because it's another closed-door briefing.

00:27:49.000 We have still not yet heard a full explanation as to why this is necessary.

00:27:56.000 We still have had no hearings in front of Congress that the public can see.

00:28:00.000 And I think that's pretty simple.

00:28:02.000 Because if the president did what the Constitution says, come to Congress to get authorization for this war, he wouldn't get it.

00:28:10.000 The American people would demand that their member of Congress, their senator, whether they be a Republican or Democrat, vote no because this is a disaster of epic proportions.

00:28:21.000 Disaster of epic proportions?

00:28:22.000 By what standard does this a disaster of epic proportions?

00:28:26.000 Truly, we are talking about, in wartime terms, minimal loss of capacity by the United States and devastating havoc wreaked on our enemies.

00:28:36.000 That's what Chris Murphy is out there doing, pushing the left-wing propaganda.

00:28:40.000 But then there are your favorite commentators, many of whom seem strangely susceptible to conspiratorial musings about the Iran conflict.

00:28:47.000 Let's talk about Joe Rogan for a second.

00:28:48.000 So obviously, I'm friendly with Joe.

00:28:50.000 Joe is a skeptic of intervention.

00:28:51.000 It's fair enough.

00:28:52.000 But his arguments are not convincing.

00:28:55.000 Joe keeps insisting that this is an endless war.

00:28:58.000 Now, that's wild because we are less than two weeks into the war, and it's not going to last probably more than another two weeks when Michael Schellenberger pointed this out on his show.

00:29:08.000 Joe then responded that all wars are endless, which, I mean, they're not.

00:29:17.000 That's not ultimately, they're not acting on the basis of achieving regime change.

00:29:21.000 But it just seems so insane based on what he ran on.

00:29:24.000 I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? 1.00

00:29:27.000 He ran on no more wars and these stupid, senseless wars. 0.99

00:29:31.000 And then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it. 0.99

00:29:37.000 Well, but he said he's against endless wars.

00:29:41.000 They're all endless.

00:29:43.000 What the?

00:29:45.000 No, they're not because wars have a beginning and they have an end.

00:29:50.000 Not all wars are endless, obviously.

00:29:53.000 By the way, Joe happens to be wrong on the numbers in terms of people feeling betrayed who are in MAGA.

00:29:57.000 MAGA remains behind President Trump four square.

00:30:00.000 According to a brand new YouGov Economist poll, 91% of MAGA supporters approve of the way Trump is handling Iran.

00:30:06.000 83% of Republicans overall approve.

00:30:09.000 No one is feeling betrayed unless they fundamentally misunderstood President Trump's foreign policy from the get-go.

00:30:15.000 So why then is Joe saying what he is saying?

00:30:18.000 Well, as I say, he had on Michael Schellenberger yesterday, and Schellenberger is a reporter who had originally posited that the Jeffrey Epstein story was about foreign intelligence and child sex trafficking to prominent people.

00:30:28.000 And then he bothered to look at the evidence.

00:30:30.000 He went through the documents. 0.62

00:30:32.000 He found a far more prosaic grift and sexual abuse story in which Jeffrey Epstein built rich people for money and used that money to pursue his sick fetishes.

00:30:39.000 But Joe was not having any of that.

00:30:41.000 And he continued to posit that somehow the real story of the Iran war and everything else is that Donald Trump is somehow being blackmailed by Epstein material.

00:30:50.000 Russians aren't behind him. 1.00

00:30:51.000 I mean, Trump is, look what he's been through.

00:30:53.000 I mean, he's, you know, he's got where he is.

00:30:54.000 There's no way he's going to, they don't have anything on him.

00:30:57.000 That's why I know that.

00:30:58.000 I don't think they have anything on him.

00:30:59.000 But how does he behave that way?

00:31:01.000 Well, they could, but we don't see any evidence for it.

00:31:03.000 Well, you wouldn't see any evidence until it broke out until they released it.

00:31:07.000 Yeah.

00:31:08.000 And I'm sure we'll get into Epstein.

00:31:10.000 But I mean, I just think when you don't have evidence of something, then you can't assume that it's happening.

00:31:17.000 I haven't seen any evidence.

00:31:18.000 I've seen evidence that Trump is fully independent.

00:31:21.000 So Joe's standard of evidence here is literally no evidence.

00:31:25.000 So if there's no evidence of a proposition, according to Joe, then you should assume that it's happening.

00:31:32.000 Now, here's the problem.

00:31:34.000 That mindset is the most exploitable mentality possible for bad actors.

00:31:37.000 Iran knows this, which is why they are spreading it. 1.00

00:31:39.000 And ironically, people who pose as the great skeptics of the system, the people who suspect a conspiracy lurking around every single corner, are actually often drinking from a well poisoned by actual Iranian propaganda. 0.99

00:31:50.000 Now, to be fair, some people don't need Iranian propaganda to push this stupidity. 0.97

00:31:54.000 True members of the Grievance Party don't need any encouragement at all. 0.99

00:31:57.000 They despise America's institutions and history just as much as the Iranian government does. 1.00

00:32:01.000 A couple of days ago, the Lord Hawha of the Middle East tried to liken the United States to Japan before Pearl Harbor. 0.51

00:32:07.000 And that came just days after claiming that President Trump's call for unconditional surrender was a prelude to the mass of Iranian women by Americans.

00:32:14.000 Here is Tucker Carlson.

00:32:17.000 But if it ever emerges that our diplomatic efforts with Iran, both in February of this year and in June of last year, were fake and they were designed to lull the Iranians into a false sense of security so we could launch a sneak attack on them. 0.64

00:32:35.000 How is that better than Pearl Harbor?

00:32:36.000 How is that better than any dishonorable sneak attack in history?

00:32:40.000 Of course, it's not.

00:32:41.000 It's low.

00:32:42.000 It's beneath the United States.

00:32:43.000 It's beneath us as American citizens.

00:32:45.000 And anyone who participated in that needs to be punished for it right away.

00:32:48.000 So our negotiators who are negotiating, if they're providing cover for military preparation, they need to be punished.

00:32:55.000 The bad guys, remember, are the Americans, always and forever. 1.00

00:32:58.000 Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas is absolutely correct when he says that he does not share a party with people who mirror Elizabeth Warren's economic policies or Rashida Tlaib's foreign policy.

00:33:07.000 That would be the grievance party.

00:33:11.000 I do not agree that I share a political movement or a political party with anyone who traffics in anti-Semitism.

00:33:23.000 And for that matter, doesn't just traffic in anti-Semitism or at least adjacent to anti-Semitism shares Liz Warren's economic policies. 1.00

00:33:40.000 Or Rashida Tlaib's foreign policy.

00:33:45.000 Well, speaking of people who share Rashida Tlaib's foreign policy, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, true isolationist and sort of charter member of the Noam Chomsky Foreign Policy Brigade on the far right of the Republican Party.

00:33:59.000 He was complaining about the war in Iran, suggesting that somehow it is a symptom of a policy to free all oppressed people, which will lead to endless war.

00:34:08.000 Again, this is, if there is such a thing as AI slop, this is just political slop, true slop.

00:34:16.000 As far as the reasons for the war, there have been many different reasons floated, but none of them, I think, have been very convincing.

00:34:22.000 One reason is that we want to free the Iranian people from oppression.

00:34:26.000 I have a great deal of sympathy.

00:34:27.000 I want people to be free around the world.

00:34:29.000 But if our foreign policy is to free oppressed people, I'm not sure where war would end.

00:34:34.000 I mean, there are many people that are said to be oppressed in China, Tibet, the Uyghurs, North Korea, Russia.

00:34:42.000 Where would war end if our goal is to free oppressed people?

00:34:45.000 So I think that goal is too grandiose and would perpetually tie us up in war.

00:34:52.000 Well, number one, it turns out that that's not our actual policy.

00:34:56.000 Our policy is to end threats to the United States and our interests.

00:34:58.000 We're not focused on going to war to end the oppression of the North Koreans or the Chinese, and Rand Paul knows that.

00:35:03.000 But, you know, the propagandists have to propagandize.

00:35:05.000 And that, in the end, is Iran's last resort, getting some fifth columnists in the United States to push their ideas.

00:35:11.000 Iran is still claiming that its own attacks on surrounding countries were false flags by, wait for it, the Jews. 0.94

00:35:18.000 I mean, guys, I'd understand that junk coming from Tucker, but have some respect for yourselves.

00:35:26.000 The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying, regarding the Republic of Azraj on Turkey and Cyprus, the general staff of the armed forces explicitly and officially announced that no such projectiles were launched from within Iran or by our military forces.

00:35:45.000 As for Cyprus, even British officials confirmed no such incident took place.

00:35:48.000 That's not true.

00:35:54.000 They've consistently warned against false flag operations.

00:36:00.000 The Baghdad bobbing, the Baghdad bobbing is extremely strong here. 0.99

00:36:07.000 Nonetheless, some will be taken in by all of this, undoubtedly.

00:36:09.000 They'll believe that somehow, despite America's overwhelming victory in Iran, that we are winning right now, we've lost.

00:36:15.000 Maybe they'll point to the plethora of bad information on X.

00:36:18.000 Now, listen, there are a lot of people who fall for this sort of stuff.

00:36:20.000 A lot of Democrats, members of the grievance right who will promote it.

00:36:23.000 The fact that they are mirroring the same conspiratorial insanity as the government of Iran says something about their priorities, the priority being undermining faith and trust in the Trump administration and also America's institutions more broadly. 0.77

00:36:33.000 So, for those who are suffering from Iranian propaganda syndrome, if you find yourself mirroring the false narratives of people who seek America's destruction, try to get off the juice.

00:36:43.000 Seriously, listen, it's easy to fall for propaganda, but that is why we launched the Daily Wire: to help you not fall for the propaganda.

00:36:50.000 You should subscribe, but also, let me tell you about how we run our business here at The Daily Wire.

00:36:54.000 Well, when we launched, we had all the usual uncertainties.

00:36:57.000 What if nobody listens?

00:36:57.000 What if people don't care what we have to say?

00:36:59.000 Well, we took the risk.

00:37:00.000 I'm glad that we took that risk.

00:37:02.000 And you can do the same.

00:37:03.000 You can launch a business with our sponsor, Shopify.

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00:38:02.000 It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today.

00:38:06.000 Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/slash Shapiro.

00:38:09.000 Again, that's shopify.com/slash Shapiro.

00:38:12.000 Shopify.com/slash Shapiro.

00:38:14.000 Also, every weekday on the Ben Shapiro show, we take the news, we try to make it all make sense.

00:38:19.000 Sometimes it's more fun to argue about it.

00:38:20.000 So, we have Friendly Fire.

00:38:22.000 Join me, Michael Knowles and Andrew Clayton, for a completely live conversation about the biggest stories in the headlines, the media narrative surrounding them, and of course, our Oscars preview.

00:38:30.000 Yeah, you forgot the Oscars are happening, didn't you?

00:38:32.000 I watched every single Oscar-nominated film this year.

00:38:36.000 I suffered, so you don't have to.

00:38:37.000 Watch Friendly Fire live this Friday, yes, Friday, the 13th, at 2 p.m. Eastern on DailyWire.com and the Daily Wire Plus app.

00:38:44.000 Many in the legacy media continue their quest to cover for radical Islam.

00:38:47.000 CNN yesterday had to retract its insane article seemingly sympathizing with ISIS terrorists who tried to lob IEVs at a New York protest.

00:38:54.000 The original CNN article explained, as we talked about yesterday, quote: two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could have been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather.

00:39:04.000 But in less than an hour, their lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti-Muslim protest outside of Mayor Zorhan Mamdani's home.

00:39:13.000 Well, CNN had to retract that one because why are you romanticizing terror?

00:39:18.000 Like they were going to go out on a date and then things went wildly wrong.

00:39:21.000 They were arrested.

00:39:22.000 Sato Voce for throwing bombs.

00:39:25.000 So CNN retracted it.

00:39:26.000 They said, quote, a post regarding the two individuals arrested for throwing homemade bombs outside of New York City, Mayor Zoran Mamzani's home failed to reflect the gravity of the incident, thereby breaching the editorial standards we require for all our reporting.

00:39:38.000 It has therefore been deleted.

00:39:39.000 Oopsies.

00:39:40.000 Well, that actually wasn't CNN's only screw-up of the day yesterday on this story.

00:39:43.000 Last night, Abby Phillip, or her teleprompter, reported that the IED bombers were targeting Zoran Mamzani.

00:39:51.000 Two Republicans say Muslims don't belong here after an attempted terror attack against New York's Mayor Zorhan Mamdani.

00:39:59.000 And the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, says nothing really to condemn those comments.

00:40:05.000 I'm just going to point out that the attacks by the IED throwing ISIS guys were against an anti-Islam rally, not against Zor Mamzani.

00:40:14.000 She walked it back online the next day.

00:40:16.000 But why is it that for the legacy media, all editorial errors run in one direction and one direction only, the direction of sympathy for the far left and their radical Islamist fellow travelers?

00:40:25.000 Well, in other news, hot debate has now broken out in the Republican Party over the so-called SAVE Act.

00:40:29.000 Republicans support the SAVE Act, of course.

00:40:31.000 That is the act that would force voter ID nationally.

00:40:34.000 Democrats in the Senate have been holding it up.

00:40:36.000 President Trump correctly points out that the SAVE Act is quite popular with Americans.

00:40:40.000 Boy, do they get killed because even the Democrats, you saw the numbers today?

00:40:44.000 Democrats voted 86% that this stuff should be passed.

00:40:49.000 The Democrats, with the Republicans, you're at 98%, but Democrats are at 86%, except for the people that run the Democrat Party because they want to try and win elections illegally.

00:41:02.000 The only reason you vote against voter ID is because you want to cheat.

00:41:06.000 There's no other reason.

00:41:07.000 They come up with reasons.

00:41:09.000 They say, it's racist.

00:41:11.000 That's their number one racist.

00:41:13.000 Then you have to explain it, and they're just sitting there mumbling.

00:41:16.000 They can't explain it.

00:41:17.000 President Trump has also been having some fun mocking Chuck Schumer.

00:41:21.000 It's the easiest thing we have.

00:41:24.000 Now, the problem is you call it the Save Act.

00:41:27.000 And nobody knew what the hell the SAVE Act.

00:41:29.000 Have you been seeing?

00:41:30.000 I've been working overtime the last month.

00:41:32.000 It's called the capital of the Save America Act.

00:41:37.000 And I saw Schumer yesterday, we will stop Save America. 0.94

00:41:43.000 He's getting killed.

00:41:44.000 They can't do it.

00:41:45.000 Well, President Trump says that Republicans now should not approve anything until the Save Act passes.

00:41:52.000 But they have to get it done because if we don't get this done, I'm for, if it takes you six months, I'm for not approving anything.

00:41:59.000 I'm for not approving anything.

00:42:01.000 I don't think we should approve anything until this is approved.

00:42:04.000 And they can't win politically.

00:42:07.000 Look, you have them in a corner, and they're listening to every word I'm saying.

00:42:10.000 It doesn't matter because they can't win it politically. 0.89

00:42:13.000 Because when they say, we don't want voter identification, we don't want proof of citizenship, all these things are just losers for them.

00:42:20.000 And Chuck Schumer, for his part, keeps arguing that if we clean the voter rolls of people who have moved or are dead and require people to use voter ID, somehow this is going to result in mass voter disenfranchisement, a proposition that pretty much no one actually agrees with.

00:42:34.000 It makes it, it allows ICE to kick tens of billions of people off the rolls, off the rolls, and they don't tell them until election day.

00:42:46.000 And you show them and you say, you're not registered anymore.

00:42:49.000 You're not registered here.

00:42:51.000 You're not on the rolls.

00:42:53.000 And they say, I didn't know that.

00:42:54.000 This is a bill that destroys the country.

00:42:57.000 And it is not about showing ID when you show up to vote.

00:43:01.000 It's about the voter registration rolls, destroying them, purging them, not letting people know, and taking the rights in an algorithm put together by ICE, put together by Doge and Musk.

00:43:15.000 It's an outrage.

00:43:16.000 Okay, if you just say Doge Musk three times in a row, then Beetlejuice appears, according to Chuck Schumer. 0.94

00:43:21.000 This is silly.

00:43:22.000 If you can't abide by the law with regard to voting, you shouldn't vote. 0.82

00:43:25.000 And if you moved and you didn't tell them you moved, then you probably should tell them you moved.

00:43:29.000 Democrats trying to turn basic adult function into some sort of mensa test are lying.

00:43:33.000 It's not hard to register to vote.

00:43:35.000 And it's not hard to determine where and how to vote.

00:43:38.000 People have been figuring out for decades.

00:43:39.000 But now, because Democrats are trying to filibuster the SAVE Act in the Senate, which means to prevent it from passing by forcing Republicans to find 60 votes in the Senate, President Trump is talking about killing the filibuster.

00:43:49.000 Senate Majority Leader John Thune, by contrast, says, no, we're not doing that.

00:43:53.000 We don't have the votes either to proceed, get on a talking filibuster, nor to sustain one if we got on it.

00:44:02.000 But that is just a function of math.

00:44:04.000 And there isn't anything I can do about that.

00:44:06.000 I mean, I understand the president's got a passion to see this issue addressed, as we all do.

00:44:10.000 Does he understand that, though?

00:44:12.000 Well, we've conveyed that to him, but we'll continue to make that argument because I think it's important that everybody understand that this really is about the votes.

00:44:22.000 It's about the math.

00:44:23.000 So a lot of people asking, why doesn't Thune kill the filibuster?

00:44:25.000 And the answer is actually simple.

00:44:27.000 He's concerned if Republicans kill the filibuster, the next time the Democrats have a majority in the House and the Senate and run the presidency, they simply run roughshod over Republicans and essentially end any chance of possible parity in future elections, all with just 51 votes.

00:44:40.000 They add new states, they add new senators, they change the voting rules and all the rest.

00:44:43.000 There have been two arguments that have been put out there to counter John Thune's argument.

00:44:48.000 First, there's the argument that Republicans should end what's known as the talking filibuster.

00:44:52.000 Now, when most people think about the filibuster, they think of Jimmy Stewart talking for hours until he faints and Mr. Smith goes to Washington.

00:44:58.000 It takes 60 votes to ensure cloture, which means to stop a talking filibuster. 0.72

00:45:03.000 Under Senate Rule 19, each senator can speak twice per day.

00:45:06.000 Members of the same party can hold the floor continuously, physically.

00:45:10.000 Theoretically, John Thune could force Democrats to do that, like get up there and just talk and talk and talk and talk.

00:45:15.000 In the past, however, opposing parties have allowed the so-called silent filibuster, a filibuster that all agree would be possible in the absence of talking for days at a time.

00:45:23.000 So people basically say, you don't have 60 votes.

00:45:26.000 Instead of making us talk for weeks on end, we are just going to, you know, not do that.

00:45:31.000 And you don't have 60 votes to kill it anyway.

00:45:32.000 So why doesn't John Thune kill the silent filibuster?

00:45:35.000 There are a few practical reasons.

00:45:36.000 First, if 47 Democrats each gave six-hour speeches and they did that continuously in a cycle, they could stop the business of the Senate for literally months.

00:45:45.000 Also, the only way to keep the Senate in session in order to keep the pressure on Democrats to keep talking would be for Republicans to maintain a quorum, meaning 51 senators nearby.

00:45:53.000 If they don't have a quorum, like if somebody goes home and suddenly there are 49 senators, Democrats can move to adjourn the session and then the clock restarts and all the senators can speak twice again, which means that killing the silent filibuster basically ensures pain but not gain.

00:46:06.000 Now, that's not going to stop critics from attacking Senator Thune and other Republicans as somehow feeble or insufficient in their defense of conservative policy.

00:46:14.000 That's always the rap from people in my industry toward politicians that the reason that Republicans don't do enough is a lack of will. 0.78

00:46:20.000 If only they had more Nietzschean willpower or maybe they're corrupt.

00:46:23.000 But that's actually not what's happening.

00:46:24.000 The simple case here is that in the Senate, which happens to be a more collegial body than the House, I know a lot of senators, Republicans must always have one eye on the question of what happens when the political shoe is on the other foot.

00:46:34.000 Just as Democrats killed the judicial filibuster only to watch Republicans stack the Supreme Court, Republicans have to be careful not to kill the filibuster on other issues just to watch Democrats ram through fundamental changes to the nature of American life and law.

00:46:47.000 Well, Democrats are obstructing.

00:46:49.000 There's no question that that is what is happening.

00:46:51.000 The Democratic shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, purportedly over there, upset over the Trump administration's ICE policies, continues.

00:46:58.000 Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was fighting mad over this yesterday.

00:47:03.000 Democrats have made the conscious political decision, crazy as it is, by word and by deed, to protect criminal, illegal aliens over hardworking American citizens. 0.64

00:47:14.000 That's it.

00:47:15.000 Democrats have dragged the American people through multiple shutdowns now.

00:47:19.000 First, to protect, remember last time in the longest shutdown in history, last fall, their argument was they wanted to protect health care benefits for illegal aliens, and now they've jeopardized the security of every American citizen to keep criminal illegal aliens in our country. 0.88

00:47:32.000 They want to fight the Department of Homeland Security and the rule of law.

00:47:37.000 Johnson is correct.

00:47:38.000 Senator Thune points out the Democrats have gone totally awol.

00:47:41.000 They're not even negotiating over the DHS shutdown.

00:47:45.000 So here we are in the 26th day now of a government shutdown instigated by Democrats after they had agreed to the very bill that they are now opposing and are now opposing, even sitting down and talking and negotiating on the things they say they want.

00:48:08.000 Well, Democrats, for their part, seem to think they're winning this political fight anyway.

00:48:12.000 Senator Jeff Merkley is out there claiming, as always, that ICE is the Gestapo.

00:48:17.000 I mean, my goodness, folks.

00:48:19.000 Now, Trump has turned ICE into secret police.

00:48:24.000 I can't believe that we now have secret police in America, but we do.

00:48:29.000 I well recall studying secret police back when I was in college, and the basic mark of them was they'd show up in unmarked vans, unmarked uniforms, no judicial warrant, knock down doors without a judicial warrant, grab people, detain them, and often prevent them from having access and communication with families or lawyers.

00:48:56.000 All of that's happening right now in America.

00:49:00.000 We now have a secret police called ICE.

00:49:03.000 Well, I mean, it's not that secret since you're calling it ICE and you just explained everything that they're doing and also all the things that they are doing are in compliance with federal law in order to deport illegal immigrants.

00:49:13.000 But you keep going with those Gestapo comparisons. 0.79

00:49:16.000 It's ridiculous.

00:49:17.000 The least joyous of all joys, Joy Behar, is comparing ICE to the reign of terror. 0.84

00:49:24.000 I feel like we're living in the reign of terror.

00:49:26.000 Am I the only one here to remember the French Revolution?

00:49:29.000 I mean, I really feel like every day I wake up and he has created more chaos, more misery around the world.

00:49:38.000 The economy is going down the toilet.

00:49:41.000 Gas prices are going to the roof.

00:49:43.000 World economies are suffering.

00:49:45.000 And we're in the middle of this.

00:49:46.000 And I feel like we're pretty much helpless to do anything because the Republican Party will not stand up to this full.

00:49:53.000 Yes, we are in a reign of terror because what reign of terrors are very, very famous for is bat bleep loons wearing extremely garish jewelry, jabbering on television for long periods of time against the regime. 1.00

00:50:06.000 That's what Reigns of Terror are famous for, is for letting people jabber to the crowd about how terrible the regime is.

00:50:13.000 For some reason, Democrats seem to think that this DHS shutdown is a winner.

00:50:16.000 That's not what the polls say.

00:50:17.000 According to a new NBC News survey, ICE is indeed unpopular at 38% approval rating.

00:50:22.000 But you know what's even less popular?

00:50:24.000 Democrats, they are stuck at 30%.

00:50:27.000 By the way, California Governor Gavin Newsom is stuck at 27% approval.

00:50:30.000 Well, maybe that's because he has so poorly handled California.

00:50:34.000 A breaking story from CBS News shows massive hospice fraud in Gavin Newsome state.

00:50:38.000 According to that report, quote, three years ago, California's state auditor sounded the alarm that L.A. County had seen a 1,500% increase in hospice companies since 2010, more than six times the national average relative to its elderly population.

00:50:51.000 Auditors estimated LA County hospices overbuild Medicare by $105 million in a single year.

00:50:58.000 CBS News analysis reveals that over 700 of the roughly 1,800 hospices in LA County trigger multiple red flags for fraud as defined by the state.

00:51:07.000 Well, I mean, that's not great for the governor of California, but I guess at least his wife isn't pushing weird gender films in California classrooms while paying herself a bunch of money. 1.00

00:51:14.000 Well, strike that.

00:51:15.000 Sorry, actually, new report in that did happen.

00:51:19.000 According to the New York Post, Jennifer Siebel Newsome, a documentary filmmaker, quote, leaned on her powerful hubby and his education board to push preachy flicks about toxic masculinity into classrooms, casting her husband as an enlightened Democratic savior, all while raking in up to $300,000 annually through her nonprofit, the Representation Project and for-profit outfit Girls Club Entertainment. 0.98

00:51:39.000 Well, I guess the good news is that now they can afford to eat at the French laundry.

00:51:43.000 Alrighty, folks, the show is continuing.

00:51:45.000 There's more show.

00:51:45.000 You know, when I say at the end of the public show, that that's the end of the, there is like more show to come.

00:51:50.000 And this is where I answer your questions and you get to interact directly with me and we can be best friends, but only if you become a member.

00:51:55.000 Head on over to dailywire.com right now and become a subscriber.

00:51:59.000 Legal sent this list of everything we're not allowed to do in season two.

00:52:04.000 We're going to do all of it.

00:52:06.000 We've got games, more celebrity guests.

00:52:08.000 And yes, the mailbag is somehow worse.

00:52:10.000 If you thought season one was extra, season two, we're doubling down.

00:52:14.000 We're not supposed to be doing this.

00:52:16.000 Exactly.

00:52:17.000 Been after dark season two, streaming on Daily Wire

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 11, 2026

Iranian Propaganda Syndrome

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