The Ben Shapiro Show - Is The Trade War ENDING?!

00:00:00.000 Folks, tons of news to get to today.

00:00:02.000 Obviously, the stock market has been jumping.

00:00:04.000 It's been jumping because President Trump seems to be backing off of some of his actual trade war.

00:00:10.000 We'll get to that in a moment.

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00:00:35.000 So the big international news of the day is that the talks that were supposed to be held in London beginning today between Ukraine, the EU, and the United States Have basically been downgraded.

00:00:46.000 The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, was supposed to attend, so was Steve Witkoff.

00:00:50.000 They were all gonna talk together about a proposal they were then going to go to the Russians with to finally bring a ceasefire to the Russia-Ukraine war that's been ongoing since February of 2022.

00:01:00.000 At the last minute, Secretary of State Rubio canceled his trip.

00:01:04.000 That prompted other leaders, secretaries of state from Britain, France, Germany, to then pull out as well.

00:01:10.000 Those would be the foreign ministers of those particular states.

00:01:13.000 All of this is coming amidst heavy pressure from the Trump administration to come to some sort of deal.

00:01:18.000 President Trump had warned last week that Washington, D.C. could walk away from the talks completely if there was no progress on a deal that was also reiterated by Vice President Vance yesterday.

00:01:28.000 He said, quote, it's time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process.

00:01:33.000 Well, for the Russians, that's actually fairly good news because obviously if the United States were to walk away from the process entirely, a crucial base of support.

00:01:41.000 For Ukrainian material would go away.

00:01:44.000 So Vladimir Putin does not have tons of incentive to come to the table at this point.

00:01:48.000 The offer that President Trump's team is putting forth right now is an offer that is very rich for Vladimir Putin.

00:01:54.000 It's an offer that does not put a lot of restrictions on the Russians.

00:01:57.000 It frees them of legitimately all economic sanctions.

00:02:00.000 And in return, they basically stop the war where it currently stands, which means that they are able to de facto claim the entire eastern flank of Ukraine.

00:02:11.000 They're able to, in law, like de jure, recognize Crimea as part of Russia.

00:02:16.000 And not just that.

00:02:18.000 There'd be a ban on Ukraine from seeking membership of NATO, which is very difficult for Ukraine to accept because it's actually literally a part of their constitution.

00:02:26.000 They're supposed to seek membership in NATO.

00:02:28.000 It's also part of their constitution that they're not supposed to just give away land, even if that land is currently being occupied by the Russians.

00:02:35.000 Part four of the plan would see America offer recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea.

00:02:42.000 There are no serious security guarantees in the plan that's been put forth at this point.

00:02:47.000 The security guarantees are vague.

00:02:51.000 It's not a U.S. security guarantee.

00:02:53.000 It's a possible European security guarantee.

00:02:56.000 But the Europeans have not made clear what exactly that looks like at this point in time.

00:03:01.000 Nonetheless, the Ukrainians, in anticipation of the possibility of a deal, have for a couple of weeks now already accepted, in principle, a 30-day zero-condition ceasefire.

00:03:11.000 We'd like to start right now.

00:03:12.000 And Vladimir Putin has not taken them up on that.

00:03:14.000 He has continued to fire drones into Ukraine.

00:03:17.000 Yesterday, about 134 drones were fired over the border from Russia into Ukraine.

00:03:23.000 Obviously, we're at a very, very fraught point in the negotiations.

00:03:26.000 After two long years of a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, at least 50,000 dead on the Ukrainian side, possibly upward to 200,000 dead on the Russian side.

00:03:35.000 Tremendous human cost, significant violations of basic rules of war, particularly by the Russians.

00:03:42.000 This is a crucial week in the negotiations to try to find an end to this war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

00:03:49.000 That's why my team and I actually went to Ukraine, to Kiev.

00:03:52.000 We flew in, took the 10-hour ride into Kiev to get a look for ourselves and then sit down with the president of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, and get the answers the American people deserve.

00:04:02.000 All working?

00:04:03.000 Yes, all good.

00:04:07.000 I want to start by asking you about the meeting that you had in the Oval Office.

00:04:10.000 How do you feel that you could have handled things better with the president and vice president?

00:04:13.000 The meeting in the Oval Office, it did not help Ukraine.

00:04:17.000 You spent nearly $200 billion to the defense of Ukraine.

00:04:20.000 There are lots of questions about where the money is going.

00:04:23.000 There's nothing to hide.

00:04:24.000 We're absolutely open.

00:04:25.000 Wouldn't it be possible by the United States of where those dollars are going?

00:04:28.000 We are kind of the living shield against Russia's invasion to the civilized world. 0.97

00:04:33.000 I want to get to Russia's intentions and the possibilities of the ceasefire.

00:04:36.000 Americans have questions about things that are happening here.

00:04:39.000 Our hour-long interview with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky will be released on this show tomorrow and Friday in two parts with extra material to come only at Daily Wire Plus.

00:04:51.000 So make sure you stay tuned.

00:04:54.000 Okay, meanwhile, the markets have been going up.

00:04:56.000 They went up yesterday.

00:04:57.000 They are up today as well.

00:05:00.000 The reason for that is because it seems that the Trump administration is finally swiveling away

00:05:04.000 From the large-scale trade war they declared on the world.

00:05:06.000 At least that's the signal that the markets are taking away.

00:05:10.000 And it was necessitated by the fact that the markets really were tanking.

00:05:13.000 They were in serious, serious trouble.

00:05:15.000 The International Monetary Fund, for example, had suggested that a global economic slowdown was in the cards, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:05:23.000 The sharp rise in tariffs since the start of the year marks the onset of a new era that will see the most economies grow more slowly than previously expected, with the United States suffering one of the largest hits to its own prospects, according to the IMF.

00:05:34.000 That's what they said on Tuesday.

00:05:36.000 Pierre Olivier Laurentiis, who's the Funds Economic

00:05:39.000 We're entering a new era as the global economic system that has operated for the last 80 years is being reset.

00:05:45.000 And the IMF said that the immediate impact would be to slow economies around the world.

00:05:49.000 It lowered its forecast for global economic growth this year a full half percent, from 3.3% to 2.8%.

00:05:55.000 That is actually a larger downgrade than the downgrade in the Forecast that happened after Russia invaded Ukraine, which shook up global markets tremendously.

00:06:04.000 For 2026, it has also revised down global growth by about a third of a point.

00:06:09.000 The United States economy, according to the IMF, was expected to suffer damage with growth in 2025 down from a forecasted 2.7% to 1.8% and another 1.7%.

00:06:23.000 So, to mention the IMF forecast, the obvious question, which I asked our sponsors over at Perplexity, is how accurate have prior IMF predictions of annual economic growth been?

00:06:33.000 And Perplexity tells us that the IMF is a prominent source of global and country-level economic growth forecasts, with its World Economic Outlook published twice a year.

00:06:41.000 The accuracy of these forecasts has been subject to extensive evaluation.

00:06:44.000 It's considered fairly accurate.

00:07:15.000 I mean, if trend holds, then their actual downgrade of the possibility of economic growth could still be too optimistic.

00:07:22.000 So again, these are serious economic slowdown projections from the IMF.

00:07:26.000 Now, maybe it went the other way.

00:07:27.000 Maybe it's possible that the IMF is wrong.

00:07:29.000 That could certainly happen.

00:07:30.000 However, those sorts of projections are a major problem for the future of President Trump's presidency.

00:07:36.000 If you want a successful presidency, you must have a thriving economy.

00:07:39.000 This is like the number one rule of all politics, forever and always.

00:07:44.000 Global economic leaders, meanwhile, according to the New York Times, are gathering in Washington this week for the IMF and World Bank meetings.

00:07:51.000 Recent debates over industrial policy and whether the world economy could achieve a soft landing have been replaced by anxiety over the trade war.

00:07:57.000 Well, all of this reversed itself yesterday.

00:07:59.000 The markets actually started to climb.

00:08:01.000 So there are a couple of reasons for this.

00:08:03.000 One, President Trump yesterday reversed a thing that he had been saying about Jerome Powell.

00:08:10.000 So over the weekend, the presidents of the United States He was really, really pushing hard for Jerome Powell to lower the interest rates.

00:08:19.000 This was supposed to compensate for the inflationary effect of the tariffs, but it would actually exacerbate the inflationary effect of the tariffs.

00:08:26.000 The idea was if there was going to be an economic slowdown brought about by lower levels of trade, a market slowdown, maybe injection of more fuel into the economy would suddenly fix that problem.

00:08:35.000 However, the tariff regime was likely to strain supply chains, creating consumer-based inflation.

00:08:41.000 And if you cut the interest rates, that actually exacerbates that inflation.

00:08:44.000 So President Trump was putting heavy pressure on Jerome Powell to cut interest rates again.

00:08:50.000 And the markets weren't having it.

00:08:52.000 They weren't liking it.

00:08:53.000 They were saying the problem here is not Jerome Powell and the interest rates.

00:08:55.000 The problem here is the tariff policy.

00:08:57.000 Well, yesterday, President Trump openly said that he has no intention of firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell, which is a good way to make the market sanguine.

00:09:05.000 I've been saying this for a while.

00:09:06.000 If you want the markets to go up, fire Peter Navarro, let Scott Besson talk, And the president should provide a level of stability in how he discusses the economy.

00:09:14.000 He did that yesterday, and so the markets have been jumping.

00:09:16.000 You have no intention of firing Jerome Powell, because here, I think on the rise of Kevin Hassett a few days ago, said that you and people in the lives were studying this idea of possibly going to force a term at hand.

00:09:28.000 Do you have any plans on doing this?

00:09:29.000 None whatsoever.

00:09:30.000 Never did.

00:09:32.000 The press runs away with things.

00:09:34.000 No, I have no intention of firing him.

00:09:36.000 I would like to see him be a little more active in terms of his idea to lower interest rates.

00:09:44.000 This is a perfect time to lower interest rates.

00:09:46.000 If he doesn't, is it the end?

00:09:48.000 No, it's not.

00:09:50.000 But it would be good timing.

00:09:51.000 It could have taken place earlier.

00:09:54.000 But no, I have no intention to fire him.

00:09:56.000 Okay, so that made the markets feel a lot better.

00:09:59.000 And then the thing that really made the markets feel better is there was a story that broke from CNBC about Treasury Secretary Scott Besson.

00:10:06.000 Apparently, he had a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, and he told investors there will be a de-escalation.

00:10:11.000 It's a direct quote.

00:10:12.000 There will be a de-escalation in the Trump trade war with China in the, quote, very near future.

00:10:16.000 Besson said, no one's going to be a de-escalation.

00:10:19.000 This is a private investor summit in Washington, D.C., hosted by JPMorgan Chase.

00:10:27.000 And then he said that he believed that the prospect of de-escalation between the economic superpowers, quote, should give the world the markets a sigh of relief.

00:10:36.000 Pesant insisted that despite the U.S. ratcheting up tariffs on Chinese imports to 145% and then China retaliating with 125% duties, the goal of Trump's policy is not, in fact, to decouple.

00:10:47.000 He said that negotiating with China will be a slog, but the goal is not to sort of separate off to the markets because They do not believe that the tariff policy laid out by the president and the administration are actually well thought out or well calibrated, responded really aggressively.

00:11:04.000 The markets jumped at 1,000 points yesterday.

00:11:07.000 They've been climbing all day today.

00:11:09.000 Well, President Trump himself then said the same thing yesterday.

00:11:12.000 He said tariffs on China are going to come down substantially.

00:11:17.000 145% is very high, and it won't be that high.

00:11:20.000 It's not going to be that high.

00:11:23.000 It got up to there.

00:11:24.000 We were talking about fentanyl where various elements built it up to 145.

00:11:30.000 No, it won't be anywhere near that high.

00:11:34.000 It'll come down substantially, but it won't be zero.

00:11:38.000 We'll get to more on this in just a moment.

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00:13:51.000 Okay, so there will still be tariffs, but it'll be lower.

00:13:56.000 And again, this approximates a better policy.

00:13:58.000 As I've said before, fighting a trade war with China could theoretically be a good thing, but you actually have to fulfill certain preconditions in order to make that trade war successful, including drawing very close to your other trade allies, giving businesses time to reshore.

00:14:12.000 So that we don't have broken supply chains.

00:14:14.000 Finding new places to get crucial materials like rare earth minerals.

00:14:17.000 Building up our military so that if China decides to take a stab at grabbing Taiwan, we actually can deter them. 0.86

00:14:22.000 All those are things you need to do before you ratch up a massive trade war with China that would likely cause them to get more aggressive.

00:14:29.000 And certainly, if you're going to do that, you cannot then alienate all of your allies who are then going to triangulate between China and the United States.

00:14:36.000 Which is, by the way, what Europe was actually doing.

00:14:39.000 They weren't caving to the United States and cutting off China.

00:14:41.000 They were actually trying to flirt with both sides.

00:14:43.000 Caroline Lovett yesterday at the White House, White House Press Secretary, she was grilled over the Trump trade war with China.

00:14:48.000 What does it mean that President Trump wants to cut a deal with China?

00:14:52.000 I actually do have something to share on that.

00:14:55.000 I asked the president about this before coming out here, and he wanted me to share with all of you that we're doing very well in respect to a potential trade deal with China.

00:15:03.000 As I mentioned, there have now been 18 proposals in more than 100 countries around the world who are wanting to make a deal with the United States of America, and the president and the administration are setting the stage for a deal with China.

00:15:15.000 So we feel everyone involved wants to see a trade deal happen, and the ball is moving in the right direction.

00:15:21.000 The Press: Setting the stage for a deal with China, what does that mean?

00:15:24.000 Has the President spoken directly with Xi yet?

00:15:27.000 I don't have anything to read out on a direct talk between the president and President Xi, but we will continue to keep you updated.

00:15:34.000 And Secretary Besant reportedly today told investors that the trade standoff with China, he expects, will be de-escalating soon because, as he described it, reportedly the situation is unsustainable.

00:15:45.000 Is the president considering taking steps to de-escalate the situation?

00:15:48.000 Again, I just read you words directly from the president of the United States.

00:15:51.000 Those are moments ago.

00:15:52.000 That's where his head is at right now.

00:15:57.000 The underlying fundamentals of the economy are not in bad shape here.

00:16:00.000 It's that President Trump took a stick and put it right in the spokes of the bicycle, of the economic bicycle, and now he's trying to withdraw that, which is in fact a good thing.

00:16:09.000 Well, meanwhile, Tesla is getting just banged in the public market.

00:16:13.000 I mean, just absolutely knocked around in the public markets, not in terms of share price.

00:16:18.000 But in terms of their earnings reports.

00:16:20.000 So according to the Wall Street Journal, their net income slid 71% in the first quarter as the company struggled to overcome competitive pressure overseas and a reputational hit from CEO Elon Musk's polarizing role in the Trump administration.

00:16:32.000 Musk did say that he will be spending less time, significantly less time, in his federal cost-cutting work at Doge starting next month.

00:16:39.000 He said, I believe the right thing to do is to fight the waste and fraud and try to get the country back on the right track, which is good.

00:16:44.000 It is also good for him to actually go back and run the company the way that it needs to be run.

00:16:50.000 Musk actually was asked about the trade war, and apparently he sighed deeply before addressing the Trump administration's policy.

00:16:56.000 He said that he was advocating for lower tariffs.

00:16:58.000 He said, I just want to emphasize that the tariff decision is entirely up to the presidents of the United States.

00:17:02.000 Whether he will listen to my advice is up to him.

00:17:06.000 Investors are presumably still sanguine about Tesla sales.

00:17:10.000 The media are making a bigger deal out of this than it probably is.

00:17:13.000 Again, the lower sales are based on the fact that Tesla is likely this year to bring out some less expensive models with better supply lines.

00:17:24.000 With all that said, the media has been celebrating the downfall of Elon, even though there is no such downfall.

00:17:31.000 That is what the members of the media do.

00:17:33.000 Speaking of people celebrating downfalls that are not yet occurring.

00:17:35.000 So the media continue to call for the ouster of Pete Hegseth.

00:17:38.000 And let's be very clear why they're doing this.

00:17:39.000 The reason they're calling for the ouster of Pete Hegseth is because Pete Hegseth...

00:17:46.000 The dirty little secret of the sort of horseshoe theory of foreign policy on the right right now is that there are right-wingers who sound exactly like Barack Obama.

00:17:54.000 If you attributed quotes from many of the isolationist right-wingers to Barack Obama, they would be absolutely indistinguishable.

00:18:02.000 Pete Hegseth has always been a peace-through-strength advocate who believes that America needs to flex military might when absolutely necessary, should have a robust military capacity.

00:18:15.000 This is one of the chief conflicts that led, presumably, to the ouster of Dan Caldwell, who was one of his top aides at the Pentagon.

00:18:26.000 The suspicion is, and again, this is just suspicion, that Caldwell was leaking to some of his media buddies, presumably people like Tucker Carlson, about things that were going on inside the Department of Defense, and then that he was fired.

00:18:36.000 Caldwell denies that.

00:18:37.000 He says that he was not fired for leaking.

00:18:38.000 Instead, he says he was framed.

00:18:40.000 Here is Dan Caldwell appearing with Tucker Carlson.

00:18:44.000 And this is after, about a month after, Tucker Carlson was tweeting out kind of strangely timed tweets about Iran.

00:18:52.000 And then Caldwell, who is in fact very much aligned with Carlson, appears on Carlson's show to discuss how he was framed.

00:19:01.000 So I just want to be totally direct with you.

00:19:04.000 Did you leak?

00:19:08.000 Absolutely not.

00:19:11.000 Absolutely not.

00:19:23.000 Do you know what you've been accused of?

00:19:31.000 And Darren Selnick and Colin Carroll, the other two individuals that were escorted out of the Pentagon, initially placed on leave and then fired on Friday, we have not been told as of this recording.

00:19:43.000 One, is there what we were being investigated for?

00:19:48.000 Two, is there still an investigation?

00:19:51.000 And three, was there even a real investigation?

00:19:53.000 Because there's a lot of evidence that there is not a real investigation.

00:19:59.000 So according to Caldwell, there was no investigation.

00:20:01.000 He's being ousted by people who are framing him in some way.

00:20:05.000 Well, Pete Hegseth talked about the leaks inside the Pentagon.

00:20:08.000 Here's what he had to say.

00:20:11.000 When you dismiss people who you believe are leaking classified information, and again, the investigation is ongoing and that will take time, and when the evidence produced it will go to DOJ, why would it surprise anybody, Brian, if those very same people keep leaking?

00:20:25.000 To the very same reporters.

00:20:27.000 Whatever information they think they can have to try to sabotage the agenda of the president or the secretary.

00:20:33.000 So once a leaker, always a leaker.

00:20:36.000 Often a leaker.

00:20:38.000 And so we look for leakers because we take it very seriously. 1.00

00:20:41.000 And we will do the investigation.

00:20:42.000 And if those people are exonerated, fantastic.

00:20:45.000 We don't think, based on what we understand, that it's going to be a good day for a number of those individuals because of what was found in the investigation.

00:20:52.000 So if they want to keep leaking...

00:20:54.000 And pushing and peddling things to try to sabotage the president's agenda, that's unfortunate.

00:20:59.000 But that's how leaking works in this town.

00:21:01.000 We're focused on recruiting, on rooting out DEI, on securing our southwest border, on the president's agenda, and it's going very well at the Pentagon, and I'm proud of it.

00:21:10.000 So he's right about all of those things.

00:21:12.000 By the way, it is worth noting that in that interview between Caldwell and Carlson, Carlson kept asking, did you leak classified material?

00:21:18.000 That's not the question.

00:21:19.000 You can leak material that is also unclassified but damaging to, for example, the Secretary of Defense.

00:21:24.000 That's still called a leak.

00:21:25.000 It doesn't have to be classified material in order for you to be fired over it.

00:21:28.000 So it's sort of an interesting distinction that was made even in the middle of that interview.

00:21:34.000 Again, one of the things that I think is an open battle inside the Trump administration that is yet to be sort of made clear is the battle between the sort of peace through strength crowd in the defense apparatus and the isolationist crowd in the defense apparatus.

00:21:48.000 Sometimes speaks like an isolationist, but in reality, Trump 1.0 foreign policy, the most successful aspect of his administration, by the way, ranging from the Abraham Accords to the deterrence of Russia to the attempts to box in China, all of those were rooted in peace through strength ideas.

00:22:03.000 And there are a lot of very frustrated people who don't seem to actually want President Trump to follow the peace through strength ideas that got him elected in the first place and that he pursued with alacrity and success in his first administration.

00:22:16.000 Speaking of the State Department, Marco Rubio is going through the State Department properly, and I think in excellent fashion, with a hatchet.

00:22:25.000 According to the Free Press, the Trump administration has become an aggressive shakeup at the State Department that will close 132 agency offices, including those launched to further human rights, advance democracy overseas, counter-extremism, and prevent war crimes.

00:22:37.000 What this really is, there are a lot of people who work at the State Department who are very much associated with sort of the John Kerry foreign policy.

00:22:44.000 And Marco Rubio is going through there with a chainsaw.

00:22:47.000 The plans to reorganize the leading foreign policy agency in the United States are outlined in internal documents obtained by the Free Press.

00:22:52.000 They show how the State Department will eliminate or restructure hundreds of offices in Washington, D.C. The State Department is bringing its number of offices down from 734 to 602.

00:23:02.000 Separately, undersecretaries at the State Department are also being instructed within 30 days to present plans to reduce their U.S. personnel in individual departments by 15%, according to a senior State Department official.

00:23:12.000 These include six top offices employing thousands of people.

00:23:15.000 The reorganization comes as the Trump administration seeks to drastically reduce the size and scope of the federal government.

00:23:21.000 Secretary of State Rubio said, quote, in its current form, the department is bloated, bureaucratic, unable to perform essential diplomatic mission in the new era of great power competition.

00:23:28.000 That is why I'm announcing a comprehensive reorganization plan that will bring the department into the 21st century.

00:23:35.000 And again, all of this is very much in line with traditional Republican thinking on foreign policy.

00:23:40.000 So Mike Pompeo.

00:23:42.000 Who, for some unspecified reason, became persona non grata inside the Trump administration 2.0, despite the fact that he was a highly successful Secretary of State in Trump administration 1.0.

00:23:52.000 He said the State Department is desperately in need of significant reorganization.

00:23:54.000 There's much efficiency that can be gained there.

00:23:58.000 So these planning documents are mostly about cutting jobs in Washington, D.C., not cutting jobs sort of all over the world in places that the State Department is particularly necessary.

00:24:10.000 The rest of the Trump administration is following suit.

00:24:13.000 The EPA is also making similar moves.

00:24:15.000 According to the Washington Post, the Environmental Protection Agency has informed more than 450 employees working on environmental justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

00:24:23.000 They will also be fired or reassigned, according to an agency spokesperson.

00:24:27.000 So the EPA led by Administrator Lee Zeldin making very similar moves to what's happening over its state, what's happening over its defense, what's been happening in the rest of the Trump administration, finding the employees who do not belong and then getting rid of them, which is what should have happened long ago inside the federal government.

00:24:42.000 EPA Assistant Deputy Administrator Travis Voigt.

00:24:44.000 Again, why precisely?

00:25:00.000 There's a diversity, equity, and inclusion and environmental justice arm of the EPA.

00:25:05.000 is beyond me on a logical level.

00:25:07.000 What does that have to do with keeping the air clean and the water fresh, precisely?

00:25:11.000 The agency said this is the first step in a broader effort to ensure the EPA is best positioned to meet its core mission of protecting human health and the environment, empowering the great American comeback.

00:25:20.000 So again, all of this is good.

00:25:21.000 There are important things being done by the administration.

00:25:23.000 That's why I'm glad to see the administration swiveling when it comes to some of the economic measures that were put in place on April 9th.

00:25:30.000 I'm glad to see the State Department making cuts, the EPA making cuts as well.

00:25:34.000 The Trump administration is also poised for another win at the Supreme Court.

00:25:38.000 On Tuesday, there was a hearing in a case regarding the question of whether local school board members, parents, could ban LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign propaganda from the classroom, particularly for elementary schools.

00:25:51.000 We'll get to more on this in a moment.

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00:26:20.000 it automatically adjusted to focus on other muscle groups.

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00:27:00.000 That's F-I-T-B-O-D.me. 1.00

00:27:04.000 Also, Israel continues to endure relentless attack. 0.97

00:27:07.000 Missile fire has now resumed from hostile forces terrorists who continue to want the complete annihilation and devastation of the Jewish state.

00:27:14.000 Here in America, it's nearly impossible to comprehend the reality of living under that kind of threat.

00:27:18.000 For Israeli citizens, The timing could not be more meaningful than now,

00:27:47.000 right after the sacred Passover holiday.

00:27:49.000 Where we commemorated Israel's historic liberation and establishment as a nation.

00:27:52.000 Please consider making a special contribution today to help safeguard the people of Israel in their time of need.

00:27:57.000 You can make your donation at benforthefellowship.org.

00:28:00.000 That's benforthefellowship.org.

00:28:02.000 Thanks for your generosity, and may God bless you.

00:28:04.000 NBC News reports that members of the 6-3 conservative majority seem sympathetic during a lively two-and-a-half-hour oral argument toward the parents' claims the Montgomery County Board of Education violated their religious rights by failing to provide an opt-out for their kids.

00:28:18.000 Some justices indicated the board's refusal to provide an opt-out might have been motivated by hostility toward religion, which, by the way, it certainly is. 1.00

00:28:26.000 One of the funnier aspects of this particular hearing was that the justices were quite familiar with the books that were being referenced by the defendants in this case who wanted to stack a bunch of far-left sexual agitprop in elementary schools.

00:28:42.000 Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch was one of several justices who raised comments made by a former member of the school board who had suggested that a student who objected to the books as parroting dogma passed on by her parents and compared their complaints to those white supremacists who opposed civil rights law.

00:28:56.000 Again, that is very typical of the left.

00:28:59.000 The basic idea on the left is that you cannot have a truly held religious belief.

00:29:03.000 All truly held religious beliefs are just a guise for bigotry. 0.69

00:29:06.000 They're really secretly just a bigot and are using the Bible as a cover for your bigotry.

00:29:11.000 This is just another reason why the Trump administration has now launched a task force.

00:29:17.000 Investigating anti-Christian bias was hosted by Attorney General Pamela Bondi yesterday.

00:29:25.000 The inaugural meeting of the task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias in the federal government was joined by peaceful Christian Americans who are unfairly targeted by the Biden administration for their religious beliefs.

00:29:35.000 Attorney General Bondi said, quote, as shown by our victim's stories today, Biden's Department of Justice abused and targeted peaceful Christians while ignoring violent anti-Christian offenses.

00:29:43.000 Thanks to President Trump, we've ended those abuses and will continue to work closely with every member of this task force to protect every American's right to speak and worship freely.

00:29:51.000 And that, of course, is a very, very good thing.

00:29:54.000 FBI Director Kash Patel stopped by to talk about the fact that the FBI under Joe Biden had targeted Catholics.

00:30:00.000 Secretary of State Rubio raised concerning allegations of bias, including some against Christian Foreign Service officers who wanted to homeschool their kids.

00:30:09.000 There's no question, by the way, that the sort of DEI and everything agenda of the Biden administration was, in essence, directed at white Christians. 0.64

00:30:17.000 Because the basic idea of DEI is that white Christians represent the majority of the country, and therefore they are the sort of evil overlords of the American system and must be brought to heel. 0.96

00:30:27.000 The only way that you could possibly reverse that is to actually start ferreting out anti-Christian bias inside the federal government.

00:30:33.000 It was, by the way, a meeting that included pretty much all of the secretaries.

00:30:38.000 Literally all of them.

00:30:40.000 So this is something the administration is taking absolutely seriously, as it certainly should.

00:30:45.000 Meanwhile, in the big media news of the day, 60 Minutes looks like it might be on its deathbed.

00:30:51.000 This comes after Paramount owner Sherry Redstone has been policing 60 Minutes stories to find out about their bias.

00:30:59.000 According to Semaphore, Ben Smith's organization, Paramount owner Sherry Redstone in recent days sought to know which upcoming 60-minute stories were about President Trump, according to two people familiar with the situation that triggered a series of events that ended with the Tuesday resignation of the show's longtime producer, Bill Owens.

00:31:13.000 He resigned, complaining he no longer had the editorial independence to run the iconic Sunday evening news show.

00:31:18.000 He said over the past two months, it's become clear I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it to make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 minutes and right for

00:31:25.000 I'm stepping aside so the show can move forward.

00:31:28.000 Now. He provides no evidence that Sherry Redstone or any of the management were actually telling him to change the stories.

00:31:35.000 They were just asking to see which stories were actually being pursued, which, given the fact they are the owners of 60 Minutes, is well within their remit.

00:31:42.000 The claim they're making is that she's only doing that because of Trumpian pressure.

00:31:46.000 But let's be clear about this.

00:31:48.000 If the Obama administration were bringing pressure on media outlets, which they routinely did, to do their bidding, or the Biden administration was bringing pressure to, for example, ignore the fact that the man was brain dead for several years, And the media did that work.

00:32:00.000 There would be no coverage from the media about this sort of scandalous behavior and pressure.

00:32:05.000 A spokesperson for Sherry Redstone, according to Semaphore, has denied that she saw or sought to see 60 Minutes pieces and emphasized to Semaphore Redstone and Paramount were not seeking to kill stories.

00:32:14.000 One person familiar with the situation noted Redstone had both publicly and privately criticized 60 Minutes in recent months.

00:32:19.000 Oh no, you're not allowed to criticize a show that you're paying for?

00:32:21.000 That'll come as a shock to Michael Knowles.

00:32:24.000 And if I can't criticize shows that we pay for here at Daily Wire, what am I going to do with my life?

00:32:27.000 My goodness.

00:32:29.000 Owens' resignation comes as Paramount is hoping to close a merger with the entertainment company Skydance.

00:32:34.000 Again, the media are speculating that the reason that Cherry Redstone is putting an eye on all of this is not because she's ticked off by the bias of 60 Minutes, which, by the way, she should be. 0.96

00:32:41.000 60 Minutes is a wildly leftist-oriented show.

00:32:44.000 The real reason, they think, is because she's trying to essentially curtail the freedom of 60 Minutes in order to broker some sort of better deal with the FCC to allow the merger between Paramount and Skydance. 0.99

00:32:58.000 Now, if that were the case, by the way, then CBS already would have settled with the Trump campaign.

00:33:04.000 So Trump has sued CBS News and 60 Minutes, and they have not settled that out yet.

00:33:10.000 So theoretically, they already would have settled that.

00:33:12.000 They are not, in fact, doing that, which, again, I think this is an overread by the media, an attempt to basically suggest, as always, that anytime the owner of a major media outlet says that a newspaper or a television show or a station is too far to the left, that is a form of censorship.

00:33:27.000 You remember that the media did the same exact thing when Jeff Bezos said that he was going to redo the sort of editorial structure at the Washington Post.

00:33:35.000 The idea was that he had somehow violated the compact, whereby, what, if you buy a media outlet, it has to be run according to the people who were running it before or according to the low-level staffers?

00:33:45.000 That is not the way to run any sort of business in actuality.

00:33:47.000 Meanwhile, in the midst of all this, you may have noticed that pretty much all headlines right now revolve around, you know, President Trump and the Republicans.

00:33:54.000 It's almost as though the Democrats don't exist because they kind of don't at this point.

00:33:58.000 They have lost almost the will to resist.

00:34:01.000 Obviously, you have Bernie Sanders and AOC taking private jets to large venues.

00:34:05.000 And now that's a thing.

00:34:07.000 But Democrats are kind of struggling for what their message ought to be.

00:34:10.000 Now they have unleashed a new term.

00:34:11.000 It is called dark woke, which is.

00:34:13.000 So, you'll recall.

00:34:17.000 Just a few years ago, at a NASCAR race, people started chanting F Joe Biden.

00:34:22.000 And the anchor who was covering that NASCAR race then suggested the crowd was actually chanting, let's go Brandon.

00:34:28.000 So conservatives, Republicans, we started using the slogan, let's go Brandon, to refer to F Joe Biden.

00:34:33.000 And then the Biden administration, trying to seize back the language, put out memes of old Joe Biden with laser eyes, calling him Dark Brandon.

00:34:43.000 Or they put out memes of him with his sunglasses, grinning.

00:34:46.000 It didn't go well because then he physically died in the middle of the race and then dropped out of the race.

00:34:52.000 So it went very poorly.

00:34:53.000 Well, now they're trying something new. 0.81

00:34:54.000 They think that just by adding the word dark to things, it makes it cool, which is really silly.

00:34:59.000 And they're obviously copying right now the Elon Musk memery of dark MAGA.

00:35:06.000 And so now they have dark woke.

00:35:08.000 According to the New York Times, there was a time last summer when the Democratic Party was cool.

00:35:12.000 Yeah, that was really, really a short period of time.

00:35:16.000 And there was a point in time when I was significantly closer to like 150 pounds.

00:35:23.000 It was a moment.

00:35:24.000 It was a moment.

00:35:24.000 And then it went away.

00:35:25.000 Kamala Harris had just stepped in as the Democratic Party's nominee for president in the waning days of Brat Summer. 0.90

00:35:30.000 She went on the popular podcast Call Her Daddy.

00:35:32.000 Tim Walz's outdoorsy drip led to a Chapel Road-inspired camo trucker hat.

00:35:36.000 The memes were flowing.

00:35:37.000 The party's mood was high.

00:35:38.000 Now, you'll recall that even by the end of Brad's summer, it was pretty much over for Kamala Harris.

00:35:42.000 The call of her daddy appearance was a giant fail and cost her a bunch of money. 0.52

00:35:46.000 Tim Walz was never a bro.

00:35:49.000 Nobody ever saw Tim Walz as a bro unless the bros were hanging out at a high school musical production with jazz hands.

00:35:56.000 But now, apparently, Democrats are in search of a new memery.

00:36:01.000 So, says the New York Times, as liberals try to get their groove back, some party insiders say Democratic politicians have been encouraged to embrace a new form of combative rhetoric aimed at winning back voters who have responded to President Trump's no-hold-bars version of politics.

00:36:13.000 Online, it has a name, Dark Woke.

00:36:17.000 According to Bavak Laffia, a communications consultant and former digital director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Republicans have essentially put Democrats in a respectability prison.

00:36:26.000 There's an extreme imbalance in strategy that allows Republicans to stay stuff that really grabs voters attention.

00:36:31.000 But we're stuck saying boring pablum.

00:36:32.000 I see this as a strategic shift within Democratic messaging.

00:36:35.000 I'm a fan of dark woke.

00:36:38.000 So, what exactly is dark woke?

00:36:40.000 Well, during a meeting of the House Oversight Committee last May, Representative Jasmine Crockett, Democrat of Texas, you'll recall her from such hits as suggesting that Marjorie Taylor Greene had a bad butch body before shouting about her fake eyelashes.

00:36:57.000 She is dark woke.

00:36:59.000 She is dark woke.

00:37:01.000 And that's because she's very meme-friendly. 0.62

00:37:03.000 Got her an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, by the way, when she said that Marjorie Taylor Greene had a, quote, bleach blonde, bad-built butch body. 1.00

00:37:11.000 Good times.

00:37:13.000 And so, presumably, Democrats are very in love with this sort of stuff.

00:37:16.000 Well, good luck to them, because this is not what's going to get you out of the morass.

00:37:20.000 You know what else isn't going to work?

00:37:22.000 Calling Republicans Nazis.

00:37:23.000 Believe it or not, the Democrats are still... 0.96

00:37:26.000 He's apparently going to trot out the line that Donald Trump is a Nazi.

00:37:30.000 The latest iteration of this comes courtesy of Larry David, who used to be funny, but apparently lost his sense of humor.

00:37:36.000 I don't remember sitting Shiva for his sense of humor, but somebody should have because he's been dead for a while.

00:37:40.000 In any case, he has a piece in the New York Times titled Larry David, My Dinner with Adolf.

00:37:46.000 And it's supposed to be making fun of the fact that Bill Maher actually went to the White House to meet the president of the United States, which is verboten.

00:37:51.000 You're not supposed to acknowledge that Donald Trump is a human.

00:37:54.000 It is not funny at all.

00:37:56.000 There is literally not a laugh line in the entire piece by Larry David.

00:37:59.000 Quote, But we needed to talk to the other side,

00:38:20.000 even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.

00:38:24.000 Now, again, is there a laugh line anywhere in here?

00:38:27.000 Also, please explain the similarity between Donald Trump and Hitler.

00:38:31.000 Like, please explain.

00:38:32.000 Has Donald Trump invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity?

00:38:36.000 If so, please name them.

00:38:38.000 Okay, but Larry David continues along these lines.

00:38:41.000 He was wearing a tan suit with a swastika armband and gave me an enthusiastic greeting that caught me off guard.

00:38:46.000 Frankly, it was a warmer greeting than I normally get from my parents, and I was accompanied by a slap on the back.

00:38:50.000 I found the whole thing quite disarming.

00:38:52.000 I joked I was surprised to see him in a tan suit, because if he wore that out, it would be perceived as unfurl-like.

00:38:57.000 That amused him to no end, and I realized I'd never seen him laugh before.

00:39:00.000 Suddenly, he seemed so human.

00:39:02.000 It just goes on in this vein for hundreds of words, and the conclusion is that at the very end of it, Larry David is now a Nazi.

00:39:10.000 So apparently Bill Maher is also a Trumpy Nazi type.

00:39:15.000 And if you weren't satisfied with that Nazi comparison, Al Gore is still wandering the landscape somewhere.

00:39:19.000 You remember Al Gore.

00:39:20.000 He was vice president under Bill Clinton.

00:39:22.000 Then he ran against George W. Bush, and then he lost to George W. Bush.

00:39:25.000 And then he spent like a decade claiming that all the polar bears were going to die and the entire earth had a fever.

00:39:32.000 Remember that?

00:39:32.000 Well, on Monday, he came back to declare that President Trump's administration was like Nazi Germany.

00:39:38.000 Speaking at an event at the start of San Francisco's Climate Week, according to Politico, Gore said the Trump administration was, quote, trying to create their own preferred version of reality to achieve sweeping objectives.

00:39:49.000 Just like, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, Hitler! 0.95

00:39:52.000 Quote, I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler's Third Reich to any other movement.

00:39:57.000 It was uniquely evil, full stop, I get it.

00:39:59.000 But, but, there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil.

00:40:05.000 Yes, this is just like that time.

00:40:08.000 Hitler signed an executive order to increase the flow on showerheads. 0.67

00:40:13.000 It's exactly like that.

00:40:15.000 I mean, man, the parallels are just eerie.

00:40:18.000 Well, one of the problems for Democrats is, of course, that they ain't got nothing.

00:40:22.000 And so if you are stuck, if you are down to dark, woke, and Trump is a Nazi, you're in trouble.

00:40:27.000 Even their thought leaders can't answer basic questions.

00:40:29.000 Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, former Harvard Law School professor, well, she was asked over the course of the last Do you regret saying that President Biden had a

00:41:00.000 mental acuity?

00:41:01.000 He had a sharpness to him.

00:41:02.000 You said that up until July of last year.

00:41:06.000 I said what I believed to be true.

00:41:08.000 And you think he was as sharp as you?

00:41:14.000 I said I had not seen decline.

00:41:19.000 And I hadn't at that point.

00:41:21.000 You did not see any decline from 2024 Joe Biden to 2021 Joe Biden?

00:41:26.000 Not when I said that.

00:41:28.000 You know, the thing is, look, he was...

00:41:34.000 Sharp. He was on his feet.

00:41:37.000 I saw him.

00:41:38.000 Live event.

00:41:39.000 I had meetings with him a couple of times.

00:41:41.000 Senator, on his feet is not praise.

00:41:46.000 He can speak in sentences.

00:41:48.000 Is not praise.

00:41:49.000 All right.

00:41:50.000 Fair enough.

00:41:52.000 Look. It is...

00:41:55.000 The question is, what are we going to do now?

00:41:59.000 Okay. That's the question, is what are they going to...

00:42:02.000 Well, I mean...

00:42:02.000 I think one of the questions is why you lied for so long about his health and mental acuity.

00:42:07.000 But we know the answer to that.

00:42:08.000 That's what the Democratic Party was deathly afraid that Kamala Harris was going to be the nominee, which, of course, she ended up being. 1.00

00:42:14.000 So we now have a compendium of elderly white people lying to you and people calling Donald Trump a Nazi.

00:42:21.000 And we have dark woke.

00:42:22.000 Do anything sound great to you?

00:42:24.000 Like Americans, do we have any takers here? 1.00

00:42:27.000 Well, maybe we have a hot new star, apparently.

00:42:30.000 There's a new mayor of Oakland.

00:42:32.000 The new mayor of Oakland is a person named Barbara Lee.

00:42:37.000 Now remember, Barbara Lee is a human who was actively considered for Joe Biden's vice presidential slot before it went to Kamala Harris.

00:42:46.000 Because again, don't worry, it wasn't the DEI administration in any way.

00:42:49.000 Why would I say that Barbara Lee is sort of a DEI possibility when it comes to picking her for VP? 0.98

00:42:54.000 Because here she was, fairly recently, suggesting that a $50 minimum wage Would solve inflation?

00:43:02.000 Oh, the levels of genius.

00:43:04.000 Like an onion of genius.

00:43:05.000 Every layer you uncover reveals yet another layer of genius.

00:43:08.000 My goodness.

00:43:10.000 Just do the math.

00:43:11.000 Of course we have national minimum wages that we need to raise to a living wage.

00:43:17.000 You're talking about $20, $25?

00:43:19.000 Fine. But I have got to be focused on what California needs and what the affordability factor is when we calculate this wage.

00:43:27.000 Ms. Lee, thank you.

00:43:28.000 Yes, yes.

00:43:30.000 It was going to – it was going to create affordability.

00:43:33.000 A $50 minimum wage was going to create affordability.

00:43:36.000 Oh, the levels of – why are Democrats having such a tough time?

00:43:39.000 Again, it's a target-rich environment for them, and they can't seem to hit on any of it.

00:43:42.000 It's pretty incredible.

00:43:43.000 All righty, folks, coming up, we are going to get into the mailbag and answer some of your questions.

00:43:47.000 Just remember, you actually have to be a member to view any of that or be part of the mailbag.

00:43:52.000 Become a member right now.

00:43:53.000 Use code Shapiro.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - April 23, 2025

Is The Trade War ENDING?!

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