The Ben Shapiro Show - Is The Economy About To Crash?

00:00:00.000 A lot of the economic numbers look really good.

00:00:01.000 So, why do many Americans feel so bad about the economy?

00:00:04.000 Plus, another terrible crime story out of Charlotte, North Carolina, and the Somali-American fraud scandal continues to percolate. 0.90

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00:00:36.000 Well, folks, it feels as though there is a gigantic disconnect between how the stock market is actually doing, how the economy is actually doing, and people's feelings about the economy.

00:00:46.000 If you look at the statistics right now, the overall inflation rate in the United States is around 3%.

00:00:51.000 That's 50% higher than the Fed's target rate, but it is, in fact, a sort of moderate inflation rate for American history.

00:00:58.000 It's higher than it has been for the course of the last couple of decades when we had unusually low inflation rates, but it is not 8%, 10%.

00:01:07.000 If you look at the overall unemployment rate in the United States, it is currently 4.4%.

00:01:11.000 That is a historically low rate.

00:01:13.000 If you look at the average across the last 50 years of American history, what you see is that the average unemployment rate in the United States is closer to 6%.

00:01:21.000 And of course, if you looked this morning at the opening of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Dow Jones opened nearly 48,000, which of course is historically high, very high.

00:01:31.000 And in fact, the Dow Jones is up year on year about 8%.

00:01:34.000 Okay, so these are big booming numbers.

00:01:37.000 These are good numbers for the economy just overall.

00:01:41.000 And there's reason to believe that the stock market is actually going to increase from here, even if people like me say that there is a bubble and that that bubble will inevitably burst.

00:01:51.000 Because whenever you have a major new technology like say AI, there's an enormous amount of spending that goes into that new tech, big build out, more investment, many companies.

00:02:01.000 And then the expectations are not met by reality.

00:02:04.000 There's a bit of a bust, but the best companies survive and end up transforming the economy.

00:02:09.000 That's the story with the automobile industry.

00:02:11.000 That's the story with the internet.

00:02:14.000 It's the story, I think, also with AI.

00:02:16.000 Even with that said, we may be in for a ride before that bubble bursts at all.

00:02:20.000 As the Wall Street Journal points out, there are many factors that are currently leading to wild bull market optimism on Wall Street.

00:02:27.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, there are five factors that suggest that investors are feeling pretty good about the stock market.

00:02:34.000 One, stock valuations could be worse.

00:02:36.000 Stocks currently look very expensive, like price to earnings ratios, which is what I talk about.

00:02:40.000 The price to earnings ratios right now are totally out of whack for companies like, for example, Tesla.

00:02:45.000 Tesla's earnings on an annualized basis represent a tiny fraction of its actual stock valuation.

00:02:51.000 But the stock valuation of Tesla is not based on how many cars it's selling.

00:02:54.000 It's based on its AI play.

00:02:56.000 It's based on a robotics play.

00:02:58.000 It's based on a wide variety of experimental plays people figure are going to pay off in the long run.

00:03:04.000 And so looking at their car sales is not a good proxy, says Tesla, for what the company is actually worth.

00:03:10.000 Many Wall Street analysts think that the best way to value stocks is to compare their earnings yield, that's the earnings to price ratio expressed as a percentage with yields on ultra-safe government bonds.

00:03:20.000 One popular version of that metric, known as the excess CAPE yield, uses SP 500 companies' average earnings from the past 10 years and adjusts both those earnings and the 10-year treasury yield for inflation.

00:03:30.000 As of November, it stood at 1.7%.

00:03:33.000 That is low by historical standards, suggesting the high prices of stock have shrunk the reward for owning them over bonds, but it's not unprecedented.

00:03:40.000 It's actually up from 1.2% in January.

00:03:43.000 Economic growth is also supporting earnings.

00:03:46.000 Because while there is concern right now about job growth and while there is concern about layoffs at some major retail companies, the reality is that many people believe that job growth has slowed largely because of the sharply reduced illegal immigration happening in the United States.

00:04:04.000 And holiday spending has been pretty strong.

00:04:06.000 Weekly unemployment claims have remained pretty low as well.

00:04:09.000 Now, again, we're still missing some statistics from the Bureau of Labor statistics, but it shows that things remain relatively robust.

00:04:17.000 It is not, by the way, just about the big tech stocks.

00:04:19.000 Now, I have said before that the vast majority of gains accreting on Wall Street are happening at the top end of the market.

00:04:25.000 And statistically, that's true.

00:04:27.000 But that doesn't mean everybody else is doing poorly.

00:04:29.000 The Russell 2000 index of smaller company stocks reached a record high last week.

00:04:34.000 The S ⁇ P 500 Equal Weight Index, which gives the same influence to each company regardless of size, is also near a record, providing a hope that the tech-censored sell-off would not be disastrous, that even if the MAG 7 take a hit, that the rest of the stock market won't collapse.

00:04:48.000 Inflation expectations are also anchored, meaning that nobody believes that the inflation rate is going to go down to zero at any point.

00:04:58.000 But the Fed is looking at cutting interest rates anyway, and prospects for longer run economic growth have actually improved.

00:05:06.000 Negative yields on tenured TIPS showed investors expect rates to stay at rock bottom levels for the foreseeable future.

00:05:13.000 Yields have stabilized at pre-crisis levels.

00:05:16.000 So says Thanos Bardas, senior portfolio manager, co-head of investment grade at Newberg or Berman, for a lot of investors, you have higher confidence to invest in general, whether it's equities or fixed income when real yields are positive.

00:05:27.000 It looks like the economy is operating at potential or above potential.

00:05:30.000 So in other words, things look like they should be pretty good.

00:05:33.000 And it does look as though there is now a solid move in the Calci markets.

00:05:39.000 They're one of our sponsors.

00:05:40.000 There's a move in the prediction markets, not just in favor of a federal decision to cut rates by 25 basis points come December, but a massive move.

00:05:49.000 If you recall, in November, for a little while, it looked as though the markets had moved in favor of the Federal Reserve maintaining its rates, that it would not, in fact, cut those interest rates, that there were worries about inflation, there were worries about affordability.

00:06:03.000 And so the kind of going logic was that the Federal Reserve would keep rates steady.

00:06:07.000 Well, for some reason, since then, there's been a gigantic spike in investment in that prediction market in favor of the cut.

00:06:15.000 So either somebody's trading on inside information, which wouldn't be totally crazy, or it is quite possible that the Federal Reserve is looking at the kind of slowing employment numbers and the relatively mediocre inflation rate and saying that they are more worried about an unemployment increase than they are about an inflation increase.

00:06:32.000 All of which means that if there's more money injected into the economy, the stock market is likely to continue going up and the unemployment rate is likely to stabilize.

00:06:40.000 In just a second, we'll get to why people seem disturbed by the economy, even though the numbers are pretty good.

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00:09:04.000 So why do people feel so terrible about the economy?

00:09:07.000 Right?

00:09:07.000 That's the big question.

00:09:08.000 And the answer, of course, is that what you are getting right now is an embedded feeling about inflation from before.

00:09:14.000 People had an outsized expectation of what could be done when Trump entered office.

00:09:18.000 Obviously, wages would have to increase an awful lot in order to make up for the inflation we have seen since 2020.

00:09:24.000 We've seen this massive, massive inflation in costs since 2020.

00:09:27.000 And that's because the government just helicoptered money around, which created gigantic inflation, less in terms of wages than in terms of costs, particularly in places like housing, which has a lot of obstacles to building new housing.

00:09:42.000 Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, he says that the economy is continuing to outperform expectations.

00:09:47.000 He's correct about this.

00:09:49.000 Mr. Secretary, a lot of people are out there holiday shopping.

00:09:52.000 Here is how the president described back in April what to expect from this season.

00:09:57.000 Maybe the children will have $2 instead of $30, you know?

00:10:01.000 And maybe the $2 will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.

00:10:06.000 Was the president's prediction then correct?

00:10:09.000 Margaret, it's actually been a very strong holiday season.

00:10:12.000 And we've seen across all the income cohorts thus far.

00:10:18.000 And so there's nothing to say that they're $2 instead of $30.

00:10:21.000 The president was wrong to predict lower numbers of purchases and higher prices.

00:10:27.000 The economy has been better than we thought.

00:10:29.000 We've had the 4% GDP growth in a couple of quarters.

00:10:34.000 We're going to finish the year despite the summer shutdown with 3% real GDP growth.

00:10:40.000 And Scott Bessant went on to say that one of the reasons we're seeing affordability problems is because of scarcity and overregulation due to Democratic policy, largely in blue cities, which is true.

00:10:50.000 Democrats created scarcity, whether it was in energy or over-regulation, that we are now seeing this affordability problem.

00:11:00.000 And I think next year we're going to move on to prosperity.

00:11:03.000 You do think there is an affordability problem?

00:11:04.000 Sorry?

00:11:05.000 You do believe that?

00:11:06.000 Oh, I think the Biden administration created a terrorist.

00:11:09.000 No, but now we're nearly 12 months in.

00:11:11.000 You said the president would own the economy at this point.

00:11:13.000 I said that the Biden administration created the worst inflation in 50 years and maybe for working Americans, the worst inflation of all time.

00:11:22.000 And we have pulled that number down.

00:11:25.000 Okay.

00:11:25.000 And he is right about all that.

00:11:27.000 Again, the thing that Americans expected is not a thing that could be delivered.

00:11:31.000 What the Trump administration has largely done is stabilize prices, at least compared to wages.

00:11:35.000 What they have not done is radically reduced prices because, in order, again, to radically reduce prices in any field, you need either a gigantic increase in supply or a radical reduction in demand.

00:11:46.000 And when it comes to things like housing, even a radical increase in supply is going to take some time.

00:11:50.000 And you're not going to get a reduction in demand for any of this stuff unless you actually see an economic recession, which is the opposite of what the Trump administration would like to see.

00:11:59.000 There's a reason why Jamie Dimon is pointing out that the consumer is basically fine, but inflation is not going down, which seems to be correct.

00:12:05.000 JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said on Sunday, in the short run, it looks like the American consumer is doing fine, is chugging along.

00:12:12.000 Companies are making profits.

00:12:13.000 Stock markets are high.

00:12:14.000 That could easily continue.

00:12:16.000 There are little small negatives.

00:12:17.000 Jobs are weakening, but just a little bit.

00:12:18.000 Inflation is there and maybe not going down.

00:12:22.000 Now, one thing that Diamond said that's really interesting is he's looking at AI and a lot of the concern right now, particularly among younger Americans, that AI is going to take their jobs.

00:12:30.000 And what he says is jobs have gotten a little weaker, wages have gotten a little weaker.

00:12:33.000 And when you talk to businesses, they're going to be a little bit more cautious hiring.

00:12:36.000 That's not because of AI.

00:12:37.000 That's just because they want to do more with less.

00:12:39.000 I don't think AI is going to dramatically reduce jobs, unbelievably, next year.

00:12:44.000 Now, next year, of course, is not the entire concern.

00:12:46.000 There could be long-term job loss from AI in particular industries.

00:12:52.000 But there is, in fact, a gigantic disconnect between how people are feeling about the economy, particularly young people, and what the economy is actually doing right now.

00:13:00.000 And so we have to try and understand why that's happening.

00:13:02.000 According to a brand new poll from Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, more than 40% of 18 to 29-year-olds surveyed last month said they are struggling or just getting by.

00:13:12.000 One quarter believe they'll be worse off financially than their parents.

00:13:15.000 Now, again, to be fair, a lot of people struggle when they're 18 to 29 years old.

00:13:20.000 Now, I was a Harvard law school graduate, and I remember essentially living paycheck to paycheck with my wife for at least several years early on in our marriage.

00:13:29.000 I remember there was a point where we were thinking of taking out a second credit card in order to pay off the first credit card.

00:13:35.000 We were, I think, down to $2,000 in our savings at one point.

00:13:38.000 So it's kind of normal to struggle when you're 24, 25, 26 years old.

00:13:43.000 The question is: the directionality.

00:13:45.000 Do you feel like you're going to get out of it?

00:13:48.000 Well, it's not just that young people feel like they are struggling.

00:13:52.000 They are concerned about what comes next.

00:13:55.000 So there's widespread concern over inflation.

00:13:58.000 That includes 37% of all Americans, of all young Americans, believe that inflation is their top issue.

00:14:05.000 That includes 36% of Democrats, 48% of Republicans, and 34% of Independents.

00:14:11.000 Other concerns include healthcare, housing, jobs, taxes, and wages.

00:14:18.000 What's fascinating is that, again, when people feel unsettled, it is not as though they come down squarely in one ideological camp.

00:14:26.000 They actually start just losing faith in pretty much all ideological labels.

00:14:30.000 One of the most interesting results from this Harvard-Harris poll was a question about support for ideological categories in economics.

00:14:40.000 And what the poll showed is that in 2018, 43% of young people said that they supported capitalism.

00:14:47.000 That went up to 45% in 2020.

00:14:49.000 And today it is 39%.

00:14:50.000 So it's down fairly significantly.

00:14:53.000 Democratic socialism, however, is down dramatically.

00:14:56.000 So these sort of Bernie Sanders wild redistributionism schemes, 39% said they supported that in 2018, 40% in 2020, only 29% today.

00:15:07.000 So capitalism, according to this Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics poll, according to that poll, young people still favor capitalism over democratic socialism by 10 percentage points.

00:15:18.000 As for socialism proper, like the nationalization of resources, only 21 percent of young people say they support that ideological category, which again is really, really interesting.

00:15:29.000 In other words, they don't know where to turn.

00:15:32.000 The one thing that it seems like they want is quote unquote strong leadership.

00:15:36.000 When people don't know where to turn and they want strong leadership, that is not necessarily a wonderful thing.

00:15:42.000 Now, as far as right track, wrong track, when you look at this youth poll, what it shows is that a huge number of people believe that the nation is headed into the wrong track.

00:15:53.000 4% of Democrats, of course, say the nation is headed in the right track.

00:15:56.000 They're very upset with President Trump.

00:15:58.000 33% of Republicans say that the nation is headed on the right track, 27% wrong track, 39% unsure.

00:16:05.000 So those aren't similar numbers even among Republicans.

00:16:09.000 More than half of Hispanic and black respondents report financial hardship compared with 39% of white peers.

00:16:14.000 Financial insecurity is sharply higher among non-degree holders, 53%, than among college students, 28%, and graduates, 32%.

00:16:24.000 And again, economic pressure is the defining force in young people's lives.

00:16:27.000 There's nothing atypical about that.

00:16:29.000 That, of course, is true. 0.83

00:16:30.000 And so that requires us to ask if, in fact, young people do have it historically bad.

00:16:35.000 Now, by some measures, they do in terms of the percentage of income they're spending on housing.

00:16:40.000 That is way higher than it was, say, 40 years ago for their parents in 1980.

00:16:45.000 1980 percentage of income spent on housing was lower than it is today.

00:16:50.000 And we can get into that in a moment.

00:16:52.000 But to pretend that unemployment rates are just gigantic among young people, particularly college graduates, would be to ignore the actual statistics.

00:17:00.000 The unemployment rate for new law school graduates, for example, like the more educated you are, the better chance that you're about to get a pretty good paying job.

00:17:07.000 That seems to be the pattern that has resulted in some pretty terrible college policy in which we seem to believe that if we artificially inflate the number of people who go to college, then we will also artificially inflate their career prospects, which, of course, is really, really silly.

00:17:21.000 It turns out that when you look at the bell curve of earnings, that bell curve remains, even if you take the entire bell curve and shift it up by two years in terms of years of education obtained.

00:17:32.000 By the statistics, the unemployment rate for new law graduates is somewhere between 4.5% and 5%.

00:17:37.000 For overall engineering graduates, that'd be like electrical, petroleum, mechanical, the overall employment rate is 0.9 to 2.3%, which is really, really low.

00:17:45.000 It's basically a 0% unemployment rate.

00:17:49.000 So those would be a lot of the jobs that are currently being ignored in favor of liberal arts majors, which again is one of the reasons why the government should not subsidize majors that are unlikely to earn out.

00:18:00.000 Computer science and computer engineering, that may be one area where AI is cutting in because AI is designed by engineers to replace engineers in many ways.

00:18:08.000 For medicine, there's 100% employment rate.

00:18:10.000 So there are certainly areas of the American economy where you can get a job.

00:18:13.000 Again, the unemployment rate today remains steady at 4.4%, and there's still well over 7 million unfilled jobs in the United States.

00:18:23.000 So one thing that is worth noting about the way that people perceive the lifestyle in America is largely location dependent.

00:18:32.000 You know, this is something that I've pointed out before, and I've gotten a lot of flack for it.

00:18:35.000 But living in Austin, Texas is not the same thing as living in New York.

00:18:38.000 That is just really true.

00:18:39.000 It is basically true.

00:18:41.000 And if you're looking, for example, at the price of housing and the elevated price of housing, it's very difficult to average the elevated price of housing between areas of the country that are more suburban or rural and big cities.

00:18:54.000 Big cities universally have gone way up because more Americans have moved to those cities and fewer Americans are moving away when the opportunity does not present itself.

00:19:02.000 This is why a few weeks ago, people seemed to get very uptight when I said, listen, there are things we can do in places like New York City to lower housing prices, create more affordability.

00:19:11.000 Those things are not rent freezes.

00:19:12.000 That is subsidizing building of new housing, getting rid of overregulation, making it much easier to cut through all the red tape.

00:19:20.000 But New York City is never going to be as affordable as Des Moines, Iowa.

00:19:20.000 All of that can be done.

00:19:24.000 It's just not going to happen.

00:19:25.000 New York is a restricted area in terms of the amount of land available.

00:19:29.000 It is much more expensive to build there.

00:19:32.000 There are many more people there.

00:19:33.000 And so, just again, supply and demand suggest that when demand is really, really, really sky high, like it is in big cities like LA, Chicago, New York, that the housing price is going to be higher than it is where demand is not nearly as high.

00:19:46.000 And none of this is a moral judgment.

00:19:48.000 It is just a fact.

00:19:49.000 And so, the point I made is: if you're a young person, if you're 20 years old, 21 years old, and you're struggling to afford a place in New York City and you can find a comparable job in Minnesota, you might want to think about moving because just for your own betterment of life, it might be worthwhile to consider not being in New York.

00:20:04.000 And this notion that you are owed the same level of affordability in New York as you are in Des Moines, Iowa or Minnesota or something, that's silly.

00:20:15.000 That is not how reality works.

00:20:17.000 I also wish for a pony that craps gold, but that's not actually how reality New York will never be as affordable as St. Petersburg, Florida.

00:20:24.000 It's just not going to happen.

00:20:26.000 And pretending that it is, well, I mean, that's a bad way to do life.

00:20:31.000 That doesn't mean we can't make political changes or that we shouldn't.

00:20:34.000 Of course, we should.

00:20:35.000 But one of the reasons that you're seeing unaffordability, particularly in major urban areas, is because of high demand and low supply.

00:20:42.000 Well, the high demand is part of that equation.

00:20:44.000 And it is true that the myth that young people have been sold that they never need to move at any point, especially when they are young, before they have kids, when they are first getting out in the world, that's had a real impact in terms of public policy and in terms of pricing.

00:21:01.000 And all these factors have to be taken into account when we determine why things are unaffordable.

00:21:06.000 Because the question is why things are unaffordable, not whether it is moral for things to be unaffordable or not unaffordable.

00:21:13.000 Okay, why are things unaffordable?

00:21:14.000 Well, one reason is because, according to our sponsors at Comet, a project of perplexity, I asked: are 21-year-olds moving less today in the United States than they did in 1980?

00:21:24.000 And is that creating upward pressure on housing prices and downward pressure on wages in major cities?

00:21:29.000 And the answer is: yes, residential mobility among young adults has fallen substantially since 1980.

00:21:34.000 And this reduced movement is one factor among several that can raise housing costs in thriving cities that its effect on wages is more complex and not uniformly downward.

00:21:42.000 Data from the current population survey and related research shows a broad long-run decline in U.S. residential mobility since the 1980s.

00:21:50.000 In the 1980s, about 20% of Americans moved every year.

00:21:54.000 By 2018, 2019, only about 10% did, with especially steep drops among young adults and in short-distance moves.

00:22:02.000 So, what is the effect on housing prices?

00:22:04.000 Lower mobility can reduce the flow of people from high-cost, opportunity-rich metros to cheaper areas, keeping demand high in superstar cities, while supply is constrained by zoning and other limits, which tends to push up prices and rents.

00:22:15.000 One of the things that happens in overcrowded cities is NIMBYism.

00:22:18.000 People don't want a gigantic apartment building going up right next door to them in major cities sometimes.

00:22:24.000 They don't want a gigantic block that is filled with cheaper housing going up right next to where they live, may lower their real estate values.

00:22:32.000 And so, they vote to stop all of that.

00:22:35.000 And these are political reality.

00:22:37.000 Now, you can try to ban those sorts of regulations and stop those sorts of regulations, and that would be good.

00:22:41.000 But is that going to solve the problem?

00:22:43.000 Obviously, it's not, which is why you've seen mass population movement from North to South.

00:22:47.000 It's why you've seen in migration to popular regions like the Sunbelt, according to Comet.

00:22:54.000 Now, again, standard economic theory predicts that more workers moving into a city should put downward pressure on wages there unless local productivity or demand rises enough to offset the larger labor supply.

00:23:05.000 So, this is the other problem: if you have a lot of people who are in a city and you have more people moving to that city, that is creating more demand for housing and it is going to mean less available supply of jobs, right?

00:23:18.000 Because you have more people who are seeking the same job.

00:23:20.000 That creates competition for the jobs, which means that the wages tend to be lower.

00:23:24.000 So, this would explain some of the affordability dislocation.

00:23:28.000 And in fact, when you ask Comet, what percentage of the American population lived in major metros in 1980 compared to today, in 1980, roughly three quarters of Americans lived in major metros.

00:23:38.000 Today, it is closer to mid-80%.

00:23:43.000 According to the Census Bureau, about 76% of the U.S. population lived in metro areas in 1980, which meant that a quarter of Americans did not.

00:23:52.000 Okay, so that meant less upward pressure in these major cities.

00:23:55.000 As of 2024, non-metropolitan counties held 14% of the U.S. population, implying that 86% live in metro areas under current federal definitions.

00:24:06.000 So more and more people have been moving to these cities and fewer and fewer people are leaving.

00:24:10.000 So again, none of this is inexplicable.

00:24:14.000 It does mean that how do you solve some of this stuff?

00:24:18.000 Well, number one would be you need to get rid of subsidies that lie to people because subsidies that pretend that affordability can be achieved simply through signing people checks.

00:24:27.000 When government checks go into an area, affordability is usually not the result.

00:24:32.000 Inflation is usually the result in cost.

00:24:35.000 That is true in education.

00:24:36.000 It is true as housing.

00:24:38.000 It is true in healthcare.

00:24:39.000 It is true everywhere.

00:24:41.000 And so government solutions are not going to be the ones that actually fix this.

00:24:46.000 The best the government can do is get out of the way and let the markets fix it themselves.

00:24:50.000 Alrighty, coming up, what exactly can President Trump do to fix the perception that the economy is on the ropes?

00:24:56.000 We'll get to that in a moment.

00:24:57.000 First, this episode is sponsored by Chef IQ.

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00:27:22.000 So what exactly can President Trump do?

00:27:24.000 The Trump team is trying to get him to focus in on affordability concerns.

00:27:28.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, just before President Trump left the White House for Thanksgiving, top aides met with him in his private dining room to discuss inflation and the economy in hopes he would calibrate his message on affordability.

00:27:39.000 In another meeting last month, this time in the Oval Office, AIDS presented Trump with surveys from one of the president's own pollsters detailing voters' concerns about cost of living.

00:27:46.000 His team has begun showing him social media posts that illustrate how Americans view the economy.

00:27:51.000 Top aides have taken turns talking to their boss about his economic messaging and the need to emphasize what voters are feeling.

00:27:56.000 Almost every senior White House official is involved in this effort.

00:27:59.000 So far, Trump has largely avoided any I feel your pain messaging telling AIDS the economy is strong. 0.87

00:28:04.000 I mean, again, this is one area where I have serious empathy for the presidents of the United States.

00:28:08.000 As a facts, not feelings guy, I get the aversion to saying, yes, all your concerns are totally justified.

00:28:14.000 And I understand why people feel things are unaffordable.

00:28:17.000 Also, there are decisions that people can make in some circumstances in order to make things less unaffordable.

00:28:24.000 And when Trump looks at the broad-scale federal economy, he's thinking to himself, what are the things I'm supposed to do that I am not currently doing?

00:28:32.000 He has dismissed Washington's focus on affordability as a trap set by Democrats, intent on papering over the administration's economic achievements.

00:28:39.000 In many private conversations, Trump has argued former President Biden was responsible for inflation, not him.

00:28:44.000 And again, I have nothing but sympathy for the president on this.

00:28:46.000 He is right about this.

00:28:48.000 He's right about this.

00:28:51.000 So how do you solve all that?

00:28:52.000 Well, one thing could be to present a plan.

00:28:56.000 Okay, so what exactly should that plan be?

00:28:59.000 Well, part of that plan should be making clear to the American people where the jobs are, where the opportunity is.

00:29:08.000 So if you're going to talk about subsidizing people to do things, perhaps the administration should consider the possibility of helping to subsidize people moving from more expensive areas to less expensive areas where the jobs are, or continuing to facilitate through federal regulation tax breaks for moving from a high-tax area to a low-tax area, or from a more unaffordable place to a less unaffordable place, to a more affordable place.

00:29:33.000 Those might be some things that we could think about doing.

00:29:36.000 However, the easiest political path is always to find an enemy and then club him with a bat.

00:29:41.000 And the president seems to have settled on the idea that there is food price fixing, and that's why all of this is happening.

00:29:46.000 Now, this is, again, just a variation on a theme that Joe Biden tried.

00:29:49.000 Joe Biden tried this.

00:29:51.000 He tried to say that prices were really high because of evil corporate greed and collusion.

00:29:55.000 And it wasn't true.

00:29:58.000 This notion that what is happening at the grocery store level is anti-competitive behavior in the food supply chain.

00:30:06.000 There may be particular areas in the food supply chain where that is true.

00:30:13.000 With that said, is going after those companies going to somehow lower the food prices?

00:30:20.000 It'll be interesting to see.

00:30:21.000 I mean, one way you can lower the food prices, presumably, is to get rid of some of the tariffs on some of the food prices.

00:30:25.000 We've already done that on things like coffee and bananas.

00:30:31.000 But again, the disconnect between the statistics on the economy and how people feel about the economy, a large part of that is attributable to not only media coverage, which of course is very anti-Trump, but also it is attributable to the fact that there is an economic hangover from the Biden administration that is very real.

00:30:49.000 And now Trump's been the president for a year.

00:30:50.000 So you own whatever is happening now, even though it was really embedded from a year ago.

00:30:55.000 And also the fact that a huge percentage of people are now living in major metro areas.

00:31:01.000 And those areas are, in fact, more unaffordable than other outlying and surrounding areas.

00:31:05.000 And people are moving less because they've been told over and over and over again that it should be somehow affordable and, in fact, thriving to live in New York City when you are 21.

00:31:15.000 And you see, people are 21 comparing themselves to people who are 50.

00:31:18.000 Why don't I live the life that my father, my grandfather lived?

00:31:22.000 Well, you are living a better life than your father or grandfather did at the same age.

00:31:27.000 But you're not living a better life than your grandfather does now because your grandfather is 70 and he's been in the workforce for the last half century.

00:31:35.000 Well, one thing that the Trump administration is doing with regard to the economy, aside from talking about the stock market success and the unemployment rate, one thing that they are doing is redirecting away from that and toward the crime issue.

00:31:46.000 So another horrific crime happened in Charlotte, North Carolina.

00:31:51.000 Yesterday, there's a very fraught Senate race for Republicans that is happening in the next election cycle.

00:31:57.000 That is an open seat because Tom tell us the Republican senator is stepping down and Michael Watley is running against Roy Cooper in that seat.

00:32:04.000 That is going to be an extraordinarily expensive race. 0.99

00:32:07.000 If Republicans lose the North Carolina Senate seat, that takes them down to 52.

00:32:13.000 It's also a decent bellwether for what happens in 2028 because if Republicans are losing North Carolina across the board, that's a real problem for whomever is the nominee in 2028.

00:32:22.000 And so Charlotte, North Carolina is sort of epicenter of purple politics right now.

00:32:26.000 According to the Daily Wire, a twice-deported illegal immigrant with a rap sheet allegedly brutally stabbed a man on a Charlotte, North Carolina train.

00:32:33.000 Honduran illegal immigrant Oscar Gerardo Salazarno Garcia is accused of stabbing a man with a large fixed-blade knife on the light rail on Friday, leaving him in critical condition.

00:32:43.000 He was first deported from the United States March 9th, 2018, before he crossed the border illegally again, and then was removed again in 2021, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

00:32:51.000 He then sneaked back in undetected for a third time on an unknown date.

00:32:56.000 He was previously arrested for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, destroying evidence, resisting arrest, using a false ID.

00:33:01.000 He also has convictions for robbery and illegal reentry.

00:33:04.000 Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam called it a heinous attack, saying her agency has taken action to ensure he faces justice.

00:33:11.000 Noam said that ICE lodged an arrest detainer to ensure that this particular stabber is not released back into North Carolina neighborhoods.

00:33:20.000 But she said, we cannot guarantee the country will honor the detainer since they have a history of not cooperating with ICE.

00:33:26.000 Both President Trump and the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy commented on the incident.

00:33:30.000 President Trump put out on Truth Social a statement, another stabbing by an illegal migrant in Charlotte, North Carolina.

00:33:34.000 What's going on in Charlotte?

00:33:35.000 Democrats are destroying it like everything else, piece by piece.

00:33:40.000 Meanwhile, over in Los Angeles, we were told, you remember, that ICE raids in MacArthur Park were terrible.

00:33:47.000 We should not have any immigration authorities over in MacArthur Park, which is not one of the nicer areas of Los Angeles, MacArthur Park.

00:33:54.000 Well, it has become a drug-ridden, terrible place to be, MacArthur Park.

00:34:00.000 Here, here is some of the video from the New York Post.

00:34:00.000 Not a shock.

00:34:08.000 So you can see, I mean, these are people just shooting up in the open air.

00:34:11.000 It's horrifying.

00:34:11.000 This kind of stuff is just horrifying.

00:34:14.000 People sitting on the seat in rows.

00:34:18.000 An occasional arrest.

00:34:22.000 Leaving the ground littered with used needles, people who may be sleeping or dead, just on the sidewalks.

00:34:30.000 So that way, we have the bodily.

00:34:33.000 Remember, the federal government was ripped up and down under President Trump for the great crime of sending federal agents into MacArthur Park, which we were told is a place kids play.

00:34:41.000 I used to live in L.A. You generally don't send your kids unaccompanied to MacArthur Park.

00:34:45.000 That is not a real thing.

00:34:46.000 According to the New York Post, MacArthur Park has erupted into LA's Fentanyl Ground Zero, a collapse and chaos-soaked war zone where overdoses hit by the hour.

00:34:54.000 People die daily.

00:34:55.000 Crime crews corner the market.

00:34:56.000 And what used to be a neighborhood park now teeters on the brink of total collapse.

00:34:59.000 The park, the largest green space in the district, now hosts an unknown number of unhoused people.

00:35:04.000 That's homeless, though on most days, it's fair to estimate the population in the hundreds.

00:35:08.000 MacArthur's unofficial residents are made comfortable by groups handing out food and even free crack pipes as part of safe smoking kits.

00:35:14.000 So there's no such thing as safely smoking crack, but the idea is you won't get AIDS.

00:35:18.000 With tens of millions of dollars coming from the city to support the park's inhabitants.

00:35:23.000 Along a narrow street, residents called Fentanyl Alley.

00:35:25.000 Dead rats lie underfoot.

00:35:26.000 People are passed out in the open.

00:35:27.000 Fentanyl-fueled and dangerous.

00:35:28.000 A notorious stretch locals say is among the park's most perilous.

00:35:33.000 Again, it is turned into a complete disaster area under the auspices of a Democratic administration in Los Angeles.

00:35:39.000 And yes, under Governor Gavin Newsom.

00:35:42.000 Meanwhile, over in New York, Zorhan Mamdani says that he is going to end homeless camp sweeps, which, of course, is going to make the city significantly more unlivable.

00:35:54.000 According to Michael Goodwin, writing for the New York Post, the new mayor inadvertently revealed he has learned nothing about homelessness when he announced on Thursday his administration will not dismantle the fetid camps springing up around the city.

00:36:06.000 The reason he claimed is that Mayor Adams' policy of removing the camps lacks compassion and has not led to the people involved being placed into permanent housing with appropriate social services.

00:36:15.000 Mamdani said, if you're not connecting homeless New Yorkers to the housing they so desperately need, you cannot deem anything you're doing to be a success.

00:36:22.000 And then he said, whether it's supportive housing, whether it's rental housing, whatever kind of housing it is, because what we've seen is the treatment of homelessness as if it is a natural part of living in the city, when in fact it's more often a reflection of a political choice being made.

00:36:34.000 Well, it is a reflection of a political choice being made, a choice to let people sleep out in the open, do drugs in the open, and live in their own filth.

00:36:43.000 I mean, I used to live in L.A., I watched the homeless problem take over the entire city.

00:36:47.000 Apparently, Zorhan Mamdani wants to do that in New York as well.

00:36:50.000 These local governance issues are going to be a major issue come 2026 and 2028.

00:36:56.000 Meanwhile, controversy continues over the immigration situation with regard to Somali Americans in Minnesota.

00:37:02.000 All of this, of course, is tied into Joe Biden's radical open borders policy.

00:37:07.000 And that is tied into stories like the story that we just saw in Charlotte, where people are repeatedly crossing the border over and over and then committing crimes.

00:37:14.000 According to the New York Times, in the weeks after Joe Biden was elected president, advisors delivered a warning his approach to immigration could prove disastrous.

00:37:21.000 By the way, I do find it hilarious that these stories are now being reported in December 2025.

00:37:27.000 So if this was happening four years ago, four and a half years ago, shouldn't we have been told that the immigration problem was an actual problem four and a half years ago by places like the New York Times at a higher pitch than they were doing at the very least?

00:37:43.000 Biden has pledged to treat unauthorized immigrants more humanely than Trump, but Biden was now president-elect.

00:37:49.000 His positions threatened to drastically increase border crossings.

00:37:51.000 Experts advising his transition team warned in a Zoom briefing in the final weeks of 2020, according to people with direct knowledge of that briefing.

00:37:57.000 That jump, they said, could provoke a political crisis.

00:38:00.000 Chaos was the word the advisors had used in a memo during the campaign.

00:38:04.000 They offered a range of options to avert that crisis by better deterring migrants. 1.00

00:38:07.000 Biden seemed to grasp the risk, but he and his top aides failed to act on those recommendations.

00:38:13.000 A New York Times examination of Biden's record found that he and his closest advisors repeatedly rebuffed recommendations that could have addressed the border crisis faster and eased what became a potent issue for Trump as he saw its return to the White House and justify the aggressive tactics roiling American cities today.

00:38:28.000 Former Biden administration officials told the Times that Biden and his close circle of confidence, including Ron Clain, Mike Donnellin, Jennifer O'Malley-Dillon, and Anita Dunn, made two crucial errors.

00:38:37.000 First, they underestimated the scale of migration that was coming.

00:38:40.000 Second, they failed to appreciate the political reaction to that migration, believing that stronger enforcement would alienate Latino and progressive voters, and that a border surge would not be an important issue to most voters.

00:38:50.000 And of course, that turned out not to be true at all at all.

00:38:54.000 Well, the consequences of open borders policy have been disastrous, obviously.

00:38:59.000 And the most obvious iteration of a gigantic open borders policy is not merely the number of illegal immigrants in the country, generally speaking.

00:39:07.000 It is enclaves of immigrants who also came here legally through the expansion of the definition of asylum and refuge to include hundreds of thousands of Somali immigrants living in the United States.

00:39:21.000 This has broken out into the open, obviously, in the aftermath of this $1 billion welfare fraud that encompassed a wide variety of members of the Somali community in Minnesota.

00:39:31.000 The media have chosen to take one angle.

00:39:33.000 Their angle is that it's racist to notice this.

00:39:35.000 It's terrible to notice this.

00:39:36.000 So, for example, here was CNN's Dana Bash going after the president's immigration watchdog, Tom Homan, on Somali Americans.

00:39:48.000 Are ICE agents stopping people because they look, quote-unquote, Somali?

00:39:55.000 No, they're not.

00:39:56.000 You know, the law requires agents are trained in Fourth Amendment training every six months.

00:40:01.000 Board of Patrols trained Fourth Amendment training.

00:40:04.000 They stop.

00:40:05.000 You can detain and question people for a short period of time based on a reasonable suspicion.

00:40:10.000 And what is that suspicion?

00:40:11.000 Is it based on how they look?

00:40:16.000 No, their appearance alone can't raise reasonable suspicion.

00:40:20.000 It's articulable facts, a lot of different facts taken into consideration.

00:40:23.000 And the Supreme Court just backed the Trump administration up on this.

00:40:27.000 I know a lot of the media said, oh, the Supreme Court just justified racial profiling.

00:40:31.000 That's not what the Supreme Court said.

00:40:33.000 Supreme Court said they agree with the way these operations are being conducted because the standard of reasonable suspicion is being used by both ICE and the Board of Patrol in the interior operations.

00:40:43.000 Again, the basic idea here is going to be, apparently, that it is very bad for Homeland Security to try and track down illegal Somali immigrants because it must be race-based, as opposed to the fact that there are, in fact, illegal Somali immigrants living in Minnesota.

00:40:59.000 I mean, this is a point that Homan is making to Dana Bash.

00:41:01.000 He says, listen, there is a large illegal Somali community in Minnesota.

00:41:07.000 There's an illegal alien community, a large illegal alien community there.

00:41:11.000 Look, if you're a U.S. citizen, you know, you have nothing to fear.

00:41:15.000 We're looking for criminal aliens. 1.00

00:41:17.000 And also, if you're a resident alien, you have a felony conviction by statute, you could be set up for deportation.

00:41:23.000 So we're looking for public safety threats, national security threats, and illegal aliens. 0.99

00:41:28.000 Nothing's changed, Dana, from day one.

00:41:31.000 Okay, so, I mean, he is right about that.

00:41:33.000 Meanwhile, the administration is saying, listen, Minnesota, if you don't fix your Medicare fraud problem, you're going to lose your Medicaid funding.

00:41:39.000 Why should the American taxpayer have to subsidize your state fraud?

00:41:45.000 Either fix this in 60 days or start looking under your couch for spare change because we are done putting the bill for your incompetence.

00:41:53.000 This administration will never stop fighting to protect the vulnerable Americans who rely on these programs and the taxpayers who fund them.

00:42:00.000 We're going to crush waste, fraud, and abuse.

00:42:05.000 And that is Dr. Mehmet Oz, who, of course, is presiding over CMS, which is the service that has to determine whether, in fact, waste, fraud, and abuse are happening inside Medicaid.

00:42:13.000 And again, apparently, the left-wing response to this is not to call out the fraud or to fight the fraud.

00:42:19.000 It's to call anybody who notices it racist.

00:42:22.000 So here, for example, is a host on MS Now asking Keith Ellison if they'll arrest ICE agents.

00:42:31.000 Should the police officers be, I guess, arresting ICE who they feel are doing it using excessive force?

00:42:39.000 Look, the police chief, Brian O'Hara, great man, by the way, is well able to speak for himself.

00:42:48.000 But I think what he's hoping is to prevent.

00:42:52.000 This is why he's making the comment now so that it doesn't ever come to that.

00:42:57.000 So that one, ICE agents will observe the requirements of the law and that officer and that they will know that we're not going to stand by and let them break the law.

00:43:10.000 Okay, it's unbelievable.

00:43:11.000 You got Keith Ellison, that's the state attorney general in Minnesota, claiming that ICE is going to be held accountable to the law while he presided over a state that allowed $1 billion in welfare fraud from a Somali community allied with, wait for it, Keith Ellison, Ilhan Omar, whose district this took place in.

00:43:25.000 She, of course, is very upset with the presidents of the United States for noticing.

00:43:29.000 So she went after Stephen Miller, who is the immigration advisor, the top immigration advisor for President Trump, calling Stephen Miller, who happens to be Jewish, a Nazi.

00:43:41.000 When I think about Stephen Miller and his white supremacist rhetoric, it reminds me, yes, it reminds me of the way the Nazis described Jewish people in Germany.

00:43:54.000 And, you know, as we know, there have been many immigrants who've tried to come to the United States, who've turned back, you know, one of them being Jewish immigrants.

00:44:05.000 Listening to this woman gallivant around talking about the plight of Jewish immigrants to the United States during the Holocaust as a supporter in rhetoric of Hamas, Hezbollah, and every other terrorist group attempting to exterminate Jews all over the world. 0.84

00:44:22.000 It's a little rich.

00:44:23.000 Is this going to be a winning play for Democrats?

00:44:25.000 I think not.

00:44:25.000 There's a reason why the administration is focused in on crime and illegal immigration.

00:44:28.000 Those are winning issues for them.

00:44:30.000 And they have to wait for the American people, presumably, to get used to the new level of inflation that is just a part of our lives now.

00:44:37.000 Meanwhile, the president is apparently unhappy with Christy Noam.

00:44:41.000 According to the bulwark, two unnamed former DHS officials who served under both Biden and Trump say that Trump is indeed considering moving on from Christy Noam potentially really soon.

00:44:50.000 A third ex-DHS official who served under both described the situation as fluid.

00:44:54.000 Now, of course, this could be nonsense.

00:44:55.000 You have unnamed officials who served under both Biden and Trump, meaning they're not Trump loyalists.

00:44:59.000 So they could be attempting to undermine Trump by attacking Christy Noam.

00:45:02.000 Apparently, Trump personally likes Noam, but a lot of White House officials are frustrated with her leadership, specifically her employment of chief advisor Corey Lewandowski, who, according to sort of most reports, is allegedly her boyfriend.

00:45:17.000 A big-name Republican could theoretically replace her. 1.00

00:45:20.000 I think it is unlikely that Christy Noam goes, but it doesn't mean that it's totally impossible.

00:45:25.000 The other official who supposedly was on the hot seat, but who actually is not, is the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth.

00:45:30.000 So Hegseth over the weekend did an interview in which he talked about the fact that the Washington Post had promoted a false story, which is that he literally argued in favor of a double-tap strike on people who are just floating around in the water.

00:45:43.000 That report was basically debunked by the New York Times.

00:45:45.000 Here was Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at the Reagan National Defense Forum.

00:45:50.000 Did you at any time say that everybody on board should be killed?

00:45:55.000 Does anybody hear from the Washington Post? 1.00

00:45:58.000 I don't know where you get your sources, but they suck. 1.00

00:46:02.000 Of course not. 0.99

00:46:03.000 Anybody that's been in the situation room or they've been in the war room there, Secretary's office, know you don't walk in and say, kill them. 0.99

00:46:11.000 It's just patently ridiculous. 0.94

00:46:12.000 It's meant to create a cartoon of me and the decisions that we make and how we make them. 0.99

00:46:17.000 Just ridiculous.

00:46:21.000 So, again, he is openly denying that report. 1.00

00:46:24.000 He said, we're tracking narco-terrorists and killing them.

00:46:27.000 The thing that I think most Americans who follow the news very closely need to understand about how all Americans follow the news is that people get a gestalt sense of the news. 0.93

00:46:34.000 What that means is that they have sort of an overall picture of the things that are happening without following the details.

00:46:39.000 So, well, everybody who is nitty-gritty involved in the grime and details of politics is very focused in on who said what and when and when was the order given.

00:46:48.000 Most Americans are going to take away Pete Hegseth wants to kill narco-terrorists trying to ship fentanyl and cocaine into America, and people opposing him don't want him to do that.

00:46:56.000 I mean, that's a win for Hegseth.

00:46:57.000 Just is on a PR level.

00:47:01.000 The days in which these narco-terrorists, designated terror organizations, operate freely in our hemisphere are over. 1.00

00:47:09.000 These narco-terrorists are the al-Qaeda of our hemisphere, and we are hunting them with the same sophistication and precision that we hunted Al-Qaeda. 1.00

00:47:18.000 We are tracking them. 1.00

00:47:20.000 We are killing them. 1.00

00:47:21.000 And we will keep killing them so long as they are poisoning our people with narcotics so lethal that they're tantamount to chemical weapons. 0.99

00:47:31.000 So, again, it's going to be very tough for Democrats to argue against this, but Trump and his entire administration have the magical gift of being able to get Democrats to defend literally anything up to and including narco-trafficking. 0.97

00:47:43.000 Adam Schiff, who you'll recall from his ridiculous Russia gate nonsense for years on end, he says that the strikes on these boats are unconstitutional and morally repugnant.

00:47:52.000 I would actually say that they're trying to ship drugs into the United States would be more morally repugnant if we're going to try to put a marker on it, but okay.

00:48:00.000 Based on what you know, do you believe these boat strikes are legal?

00:48:07.000 No, I don't.

00:48:08.000 They're unlawful, they're unconstitutional, and killing two people who are shipwrecked at sea is also morally repugnant.

00:48:15.000 I agree with Tom.

00:48:16.000 We should do everything lawfully that we can to stop the scourge of drugs coming into this country, but this is not at all lawful or constitutional.

00:48:26.000 And frankly, if the Pentagon and our defense secretary are so proud of what they're doing, let the American people see that video.

00:48:36.000 Well, again, you want to do this?

00:48:39.000 You want to play this game?

00:48:39.000 All right.

00:48:40.000 Tom Cotton, the senator from Arkansas, he properly says, listen, if there's a boat loaded with drugs to kill Americans, it's a valid target and we should blow it out of the water.

00:48:48.000 Any boat loaded with drugs that is crewed by associates and members of foreign terrorist organizations that are trying to kill American kids, I think is a valid target. 0.97

00:48:59.000 I'm not just comfortable with it.

00:49:01.000 I want to continue it.

00:49:04.000 So again, that is on the good side of the Trump administration PR ledger.

00:49:04.000 Okay.

00:49:07.000 On the bad side, the Trump administration's use of the pardon power has been exorbitant.

00:49:12.000 The Trump administration, of course, has now pardoned an ex-Honduran president who was charged with major narco-trafficking.

00:49:21.000 And this, again, is going to be an awkward situation for Republicans trying to defend.

00:49:26.000 Here is George Stephanopoulos over the weekend grilling Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri on Trump's drug pardon.

00:49:34.000 And there's not a great answer for this, unfortunately.

00:49:37.000 What do you mean you're not familiar with the facts and circumstances of the pardon?

00:49:40.000 It's been well reported all across the country.

00:49:42.000 He's the former president of Honduras.

00:49:43.000 He was convicted of conspiring to bring in 400 tons of cocaine into the United States, also guns and other materials.

00:49:51.000 It's been front page news across the country.

00:49:54.000 Aren't you curious about that?

00:49:56.000 Well, I'm curious about your pushback on that particular point.

00:49:59.000 With your previous guest, you had zero pushback because he's giving the Democrat talking points like you spew every single week, which is probably why your ratings are so bad.

00:50:07.000 But to make the point, what I'm saying is that you're trying to divert here the attention from what the American people actually support.

00:50:17.000 So again, it's going to be hard for Republicans to defend that.

00:50:20.000 I mean, if the best that we can do is just slapping George Stephanopoulos, I mean, it's fine, but I'm not sure that it's going to do the work.

00:50:25.000 Meanwhile, another pardon of Trump's has now gone awry, according to MediaITE in a blistering post to Truth Social early on Sunday.

00:50:32.000 The president has now bashed Representative Henry Quear of Texas for announcing his intent to run for re-election as a Democrat after receiving a pardon from the president, who's facing charges for allegedly taking over $600,000 in foreign bribes.

00:50:44.000 His wife was also charged.

00:50:45.000 So Trump wrote, Can you imagine? 0.89

00:50:47.000 The Democrats, under the crooked Joe Biden administration, who always use extreme force and jail time to destroy their political opponent, wanted to put Congressman Henry Quayar and his wife, Imelda, in prison for 15 years, which I predicted these radical left lunatics would do. 0.72

00:50:59.000 And they never stopped wanting to fulfill this evil quest.

00:51:01.000 The Dems mercilessly went after Henry with everything they had.

00:51:04.000 They were looking to destroy him, his lovely wife, his two young daughters, and anyone close to them.

00:51:08.000 When the Democrats overwhelmingly lost the 2024 presidential election and power with it, they regardless did everything they could to keep going after the Queer family. 1.00

00:51:15.000 The Dems were vicious and all because Henry strongly wanted, correctly, border security.

00:51:20.000 But Trump has now changed his tune. 0.66

00:51:23.000 Quote, only a short time after signing the pardon, Congressman Henry Queyar announced that he will be running for Congress again in the great state of Texas, a state where I received the highest number of votes ever recorded as a Democrat, continuing to work with the same radical left scum that just weeks before wanted him and his wife to spend the rest of their lives in prison and probably still do.

00:51:39.000 Such a lack of loyalty, something that Texas voters and Henry's daughters will not like.

00:51:42.000 Oh, well, next time, no more Mr. Nice Guy.

00:51:46.000 So I do not love the pardon power.

00:51:50.000 It is not my favorite part of the Constitution.

00:51:53.000 It is typically misused by members of both parties, and this one seems like a giant fail.

00:51:59.000 Okay, meanwhile, in meaningless news, the Trump administration has secured the World Cup for the United States.

00:52:08.000 And this means it was time for President Trump to receive an award from FIFA.

00:52:12.000 I mean, listen, I'm glad that the World Cup is coming to the United States, though I have no great adherence to soccer at all.

00:52:20.000 Nonetheless, the president was joined by FIFA president Gianni Infantino for the World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center.

00:52:26.000 And there, Trump was given a prize, which I have to say, this is quite an ugly trophy.

00:52:32.000 I mean, really, really an ugly trophy. 0.84

00:52:35.000 Like, I have a bizarre sort of predilection for hideous trophies and hideous statues.

00:52:41.000 My favorite is of a soccer player, Ronaldo.

00:52:43.000 It is one of my favorite things in the world: a horrible statue of Ronaldo that does not appear to be him.

00:52:48.000 It appears to be some sort of bizarro Superman version of Ronaldo.

00:52:52.000 Anyway, here was Trump receiving this award, which appears to be a set of human hands springing from the bowels of hell and holding up the globe.

00:53:06.000 Yeah.

00:53:06.000 It is not.

00:53:07.000 Anyway, here it was.

00:53:09.000 Mr. President, this is your prize.

00:53:13.000 This is your peace prize.

00:53:14.000 There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go.

00:53:23.000 And I'm wearing it right now.

00:53:24.000 Okay.

00:53:25.000 Let me hold.

00:53:26.000 Fantastic.

00:53:28.000 Excellent.

00:53:32.000 So President Trump gets that prize.

00:53:34.000 And then he said, I think the worst thing he's ever said as president.

00:53:36.000 He said, it's time to rename American football.

00:53:39.000 No, no.

00:53:41.000 This, this right here, this is the globalist cuck agenda.

00:53:44.000 There will be no renaming of American football.

00:53:46.000 Sure, it makes no sense that football is called football since we mostly use our hands in football.

00:53:51.000 Nonetheless, this is ground that we will not seed as Americans.

00:53:54.000 Under no circumstances, we will rename the sport with the oblong object that we throw from football.

00:54:01.000 We're not doing that.

00:54:03.000 And you all over the world keep calling soccer football because it's a sport that you play with your feet.

00:54:07.000 It is literally a ball that you kick with your feet and thus is called football.

00:54:11.000 We're not bowing to you.

00:54:13.000 We won't.

00:54:14.000 Just as the metric system makes far more sense than the system of measurement we use, but we will never bow because Anglo-American power. 0.93

00:54:21.000 Here, this is just American power.

00:54:22.000 We're not doing it.

00:54:23.000 So, President Trump, I love President Trump, but I got to say, this is one of the worst things he said as president right here.

00:54:29.000 When you look at what has happened to football in the United States, it's again soccer in the United States.

00:54:37.000 We seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that's called football.

00:54:41.000 But when you think about it, shouldn't it really be called?

00:54:45.000 I mean, this is football, there's no question about it.

00:54:47.000 We have to come up with another name for this.

00:54:49.000 Yeah.

00:54:51.000 It really doesn't make sense when you think about it.

00:54:55.000 Don't think about it.

00:54:57.000 America first, baby.

00:54:59.000 American football is called football, even though it doesn't make any sense because we're America.

00:55:03.000 That's all.

00:55:04.000 Artie, coming up, the Supreme Court is set to rule over the firing of executive branch officials by the Trump administration.

00:55:11.000 Is it constitutional?

00:55:11.000 Is it not?

00:55:12.000 What does it mean for the future of what Trump is trying to do first?

00:55:15.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:55:17.000 If you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on L annual plans.

00:55:21.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

00:55:25.000 Oh, this is an illusion.

00:55:27.000 An echo of a voice that has died.

00:55:32.000 and soon that echo will cease they say that merlin is mad They say he was a king in Dovid.

00:55:55.000 The son of a princess of lost Atlantis.

00:55:59.000 They say the future and the past are known to him.

00:56:03.000 That the fire and the wind tell him their secrets.

00:56:07.000 That the magic of the hillfolk and druids come forth at his easy command.

00:56:14.000 They say he slew hundreds.

00:56:17.000 Hundreds, do you hear?

00:56:19.000 That the world burned and trembled at his wrath.

00:56:26.000 The Merlin died long before you and I were born.

00:56:31.000 Merlin Emirus has returned to the land of the living.

00:56:37.000 Vortigen is gone.

00:56:39.000 Room is gone.

00:56:41.000 The Saxon is here. 0.76

00:56:43.000 Saxon Hengist has assembled the greatest war host ever seen in the island of the mighty. 0.84

00:56:48.000 And before the summer is through, he means to take the throne.

00:56:53.000 And he will have it.

00:56:54.000 If we are too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to take up arms against him, here is your hope: a king will arise to hold all Britain in his hand.

00:57:04.000 A high king who would be the wonder of the world.

00:57:09.000 You to a future of peace.

00:57:16.000 There'll be no peace in these lands till we are all dust.

00:57:19.000 Men of the island of the mighty, you stand together.

00:57:25.000 You stand as Britons.

00:57:27.000 You stand as one.

00:57:32.000 Great darkness is falling upon this land.

00:57:36.000 These brothers are our only hope to stand against it.

00:57:40.000 Not our only hope.

00:57:42.000 They say Merlin slew 70 men with his own hands.

00:57:47.000 I could say he slew 500.

00:57:51.000 No man is capable of such a thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 08, 2025

Is The Economy About To Crash?

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