The Ben Shapiro Show - IT WILL NEVER DIE: Democrats Unleash New Brand of WOKE

00:00:00.000 Democrats are embracing a brand new form of wokism. 0.91

00:00:02.000 The old woke is dying, but something new and ugly is taking its place.

00:00:05.000 We'll explain.

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00:01:23.000 Well, folks, one question a lot of people on the right and in the center, and even on the left, are asking themselves these days is whether peak woke is over.

00:01:30.000 After all, we suffered through legitimately a decade of wokeness.

00:01:35.000 Wokeness being the proposition that any disparity between groups was evidence of discrimination.

00:01:40.000 And this manifested as DEI.

00:01:42.000 It manifested as the idea that the government had to constantly rig the system in the reverse direction.

00:01:47.000 It was the Ibram XKendi ideology, the Robin DeAngelo ideology, that again, if any group was performing less well than another group, that had to be a result of a discriminatory system.

00:01:59.000 And it feels as though on a racial level, we we passed peak woke.

00:02:03.000 That simply saying now, systemic racism is not going to result in some sort of left-wing policy.

00:02:09.000 And that if you go up against that, you're going to be able to retain your career.

00:02:13.000 You're not going to be fired.

00:02:15.000 And there was peak woke with regard to transgender ideology.

00:02:18.000 The idea being that if you were a man who identified as a woman, you're part of a discrete and insular minority, and that the problems you were having in your life were the faults of the systems around you, and therefore the systems had to be torn down in the name of justice.

00:02:32.000 And anybody who argued with you had to be destroyed, had to be censored, had to be taken off the air, had to be punished.

00:02:39.000 And it feels like we're past that as well.

00:02:41.000 So where does the left go next?

00:02:43.000 Where's the left go next?

00:02:45.000 Well, the answer is they're going back to something kind of old.

00:02:47.000 And what they are going back to is what could theoretically be titled economic wokeness.

00:02:52.000 Economic wokeness mirrors exactly the same argument as racial wokeness or trans wokeness, except it applies to economic categories.

00:02:59.000 And when I say this is sort of an old argument, it is because it's basically the argument that was made by Karl Marx.

00:03:04.000 And it seems as though Democrats are more and more moving in that direction.

00:03:08.000 I bring this up because Politico has a fascinating piece today by Elena Schneider titled Democratic Research Finds Voters Prefer Populism over abundance.

00:03:18.000 What do they mean by that?

00:03:19.000 Well, they're basically two wings of the Democratic Party right now that are sort of battling it out for ideological supremacy.

00:03:26.000 One could be titled The Abundance Wing.

00:03:28.000 The abundance wing is led by people like Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, who wrote the book Abundance.

00:03:33.000 The basic idea is that Democrats should be better technocrats.

00:03:37.000 They should stop attempting to destroy capitalism, and instead they should go for better regulations.

00:03:43.000 That if you want more housing, what you might want to do is actually deregulate the housing market in certain areas.

00:03:48.000 Now, of course, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson are very strong Democrats, and they want more government involvement in a wide variety of areas.

00:03:55.000 But their basic idea is that in order for them to achieve their goals, presumably of reducing income inequality or achieving greater fairness in society, that you actually do have to follow some sort of effective policies that make people richer, that make the society richer.

00:04:10.000 Now it's kind of a an uphill battle in the Democratic Party, obviously, because a lot of the policies that the government involves itself in are actually quite bad policies.

00:04:19.000 But that is one side of the Democratic Party.

00:04:22.000 As Politico describes it, the abundance agenda is, again, basically this idea that overly bureaucratic regulations can actually make things worse.

00:04:33.000 Democrats could move in that direction.

00:04:34.000 They could move toward, you know, actually running cities well.

00:04:37.000 Kind of a Michael Bloomberg approach to governing New York City.

00:04:40.000 Michael Bloomberg was a quasi-democrat, kind of an independent Democrat.

00:04:44.000 Or theoretically, they could move in a more radical direction, particularly on economics.

00:04:50.000 It seems, according to a brand new memo obtained first by Politico, that Democrats are being cautioned about relying on abundance ideas.

00:04:59.000 Instead, they need to push for an economic populism that basically is rooted in grievance.

00:05:06.000 According to Politico, the memo reads, quote, well, there are elements of the abundance agenda that have appeal, and the choice on which messages to deliver is not zero sum.

00:05:14.000 A populist economic approach better solved for Democrats' challenges with working class voters.

00:05:18.000 If candidates are asking which focus deserves topmost billing in Democrats' campaign messaging, the answer is clear.

00:05:24.000 Though some voters believe excessive bureaucracy can be a problem, it ranks far behind other concerns, and tackling it does not strike voters as a direct response to the problem of affordability.

00:05:33.000 Now you may be saying to yourself, well, hold up.

00:05:36.000 Isn't actual good policy a response to problems of affordability?

00:05:41.000 This isn't about solving the problem.

00:05:43.000 This is about gaining political power, thus to wreck the system. 0.99

00:05:46.000 This memo, penned by Kamala Harris campaign veterans Jeff Jerrin, a Democratic polster and strategist Brian Fallon, and the liberal economic group groundwork action instead says that what people really want to hear from their favorite politicians is that rich people suck and they should be destroyed. 0.98

00:06:04.000 That's the basic proposition.

00:06:06.000 Progressives, led by Representative Greg Caesar of Texas, have pushed economic populism, arguing the party must rebuild its relationship with working class voters by vilifying billionaires and corporate power.

00:06:17.000 That's more in line with what the memo argued will reach voters, as quote, majorities of Democrats and independents and two in five Republicans believe the outsized power of billionaires and corporations in our government is a bigger problem than red tape and bureaucracy.

00:06:29.000 So again, the idea is going to be that we blame all economic problems on the system, on the capitalist system that generates millionaires and billionaires, as Bernie Sanders would say, or on corporations that commit the grave sin of being incredibly productive and thus and thus garnering a bigger market share.

00:06:47.000 Now, the reason I'm calling this economic wokeness is because in order to see the parallel, all you have to do is basically replace one word.

00:06:56.000 So again, the idea for racial wokeness is that disparities are in and of themselves signs of discrimination.

00:07:03.000 Racial discrimination is in fact the norm. 0.86

00:07:05.000 It is not aberrational, it's not bad apples, it's part of the entire system. 0.52

00:07:08.000 And the system is designed purposefully by white people to discriminate against people of color.

00:07:14.000 That is the basis of wokeness.

00:07:16.000 It really goes back to critical race theory.

00:07:19.000 And the rubric that I'm using here is from the experts on this thing.

00:07:23.000 People like Jean Stefanchek and Richard Delgado.

00:07:26.000 To get to economic wokeness, all you have to do is replace the word racial with economic.

00:07:32.000 And now you say economic disparities are in and of themselves signs of economic discrimination.

00:07:38.000 Economic discrimination is ordinary, not aberrational.

00:07:41.000 It's not just that there's one price gouger out there, it's the whole system is designed to price gouge.

00:07:45.000 And who's it designed by?

00:07:46.000 It's designed by rich people, not white people, rich people, to discriminate against the poor.

00:07:51.000 Now, the beauty of economic wokeness is that unlike racial wokeness, which can be debunked every time you look at group studies, right?

00:08:00.000 The easiest way to debunk the sort of racial wokeness idea that the systems are in and of themselves corrupt because they benefit white people at the expense of black people, or white people at the expense of people of color, is you can always point to a group that outperforms white people.

00:08:15.000 Nigerian Americans are very, very highly educated and also black.

00:08:18.000 Chinese Americans have extraordinarily high median household income.

00:08:22.000 They didn't design the constitution.

00:08:24.000 When it comes, however, to economic wokeness, there will always be some people who are poorer than other people.

00:08:30.000 Now, people move in and out of these categories.

00:08:32.000 This is why it is a mistake to talk about quote unquote the poor and the rich.

00:08:37.000 There are many people who are poor now who will one day become rich.

00:08:40.000 There are many people who are rich who will one day become middle class or poor.

00:08:44.000 There's tremendous economic mobility in the United States.

00:08:46.000 By the available studies, if you are born into the bottom quintile of income earners in the United States, there's a better than 60% shot that you will not end up there, that you will end up in a higher bracket in terms of income by the time you are an adult.

00:09:01.000 With that said, this sort of economic populism is rooted in grievance.

00:09:06.000 And it's a real problem because it does have a popular appeal.

00:09:10.000 It is one thing to claim that America is racist or that America is transphobic or heteronormative.

00:09:16.000 Most people look at that and they go, eh, eh, I don't know that many racists, I really don't know that many people who are like sitting around all day long thinking about transgenderism.

00:09:27.000 Actually, if I say a man is not a woman, that's just because that's basic logic. 0.99

00:09:30.000 And if I say that people, you know, ought to make better decisions in their lives.

00:09:35.000 That literally has nothing to do with race.

00:09:37.000 When it comes to the economy, however, when it comes to people's economic statuses, people have an amazing way of dissociating the rich people they personally know from quote unquote rich people in general.

00:09:50.000 Most people in America know somebody who's wealthy.

00:09:52.000 And I would bet that the vast majority of people who know people who are wealthy know good people who are wealthy and bad people who are wealthy.

00:09:58.000 They probably also know a lot of poor people, some of whom are good and some of whom are bad.

00:10:02.000 Because people come in all shapes and sizes and all sorts of moral qualities.

00:10:07.000 However, when it comes to how people think of their own economic performance, the easiest pitch that you can make to somebody is if you are having a tough time economically speaking, I can fix it by ripping down this guy.

00:10:19.000 Right?

00:10:19.000 That billionaire should not exist.

00:10:21.000 This is why Bernie is having a moment.

00:10:22.000 Now, the only thing that is preventing that is continued economic growth.

00:10:25.000 If we get continued economic growth, then economic wokeness doesn't apply.

00:10:28.000 If people feel pretty good about their direction in the economy, then economic wokeness won't help because people don't feel discriminated against.

00:10:36.000 They don't feel like they're put under the thumb.

00:10:37.000 If, however, as we are seeing in the polling data, people do feel that they are stuck, that they don't have economic mobility, and they have an entire legacy media infrastructure pushing this lie.

00:10:48.000 And they have people on both the right and the left making this argument that you can't get ahead in America.

00:10:52.000 No matter what you do, you can't get ahead in America, which is not true.

00:10:56.000 If you have politicians telling you that to garner more power, people believe it.

00:11:01.000 And if they believe it, they start tearing down the very systems that generated prosperity, like free markets, private property, capitalism in the first place.

00:11:08.000 And so it's quite dangerous for Democrats to move in the direction of economic wokeness.

00:11:13.000 And again, I'm not going to say that this is relegated to Democrats.

00:11:15.000 I think there are some populist Republicans who would love to move in this direction, talking about how the basic structures of capitalism are deeply unfair.

00:11:25.000 You see this sort of rhetoric arising again on the populist right.

00:11:29.000 Now again, I understand the art of politics requires getting elected.

00:11:33.000 And getting elected requires dissimulating, dissembling, saying things that are not true.

00:11:39.000 And that many politicians are willing to say untrue things in order to garner that power.

00:11:43.000 That doesn't make it moral or good.

00:11:46.000 And these sort of populist notion that capitalism is quote unquote stacked against you in a country that is the richest country in literally all of human history, and in which people who are at the bottom of the economic ladder after income and wealth transfers, because we have massive wall of our programs in this country, are earning about 45 to 50,000 a year.

00:12:09.000 Which is about the same, by the way, as the median household income in Germany or France.

00:12:13.000 That's like the bottom of the pile for the United States after those wealth transfers.

00:12:18.000 When you point that out, people get mad, but it happens to be the case.

00:12:23.000 And so if Democrats embrace this next stage of economic wokeness, and I think that all of the pressure that's been built up, people feeling as though they are under the thumb, it's going to get poured in that direction.

00:12:32.000 And that's why economic success is absolutely necessary.

00:12:35.000 It's also why we need to make a robust defense of things like private property and free markets.

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00:15:06.000 Why is private property good?

00:15:08.000 Private property is good because you ought to retain the fruits of your labor.

00:15:13.000 Because you are an individual human being with creative capacity, and it is immoral for people to steal the things you create from you.

00:15:22.000 Private property is an outgrowth of basic individual autonomy.

00:15:26.000 Free markets are an outgrowth of private property.

00:15:29.000 Because the idea is that if I own the fruits of my labors, I can then alienate them, meaning I can trade them or I can sell them, and that we can trade and both of our lives get better because I traded something I want for something that you want.

00:15:41.000 That is the predicate of a free market economy.

00:15:44.000 And that right does not begin with the government.

00:15:46.000 That right begins with God.

00:15:48.000 Because after all, God made us in a particular way, the way that he made us was creative.

00:15:55.000 When it says that man is made in God's image, sort of Judaic understanding of that is man has creative capacity, because the one thing you know about God from the very beginning of the Bible, like the very beginning, is that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

00:16:10.000 God is creative.

00:16:10.000 What is man is creative?

00:16:12.000 Man has the capacity to create.

00:16:14.000 Man has the capacity to cultivate the garden, to labor.

00:16:17.000 And so keeping the fruits of our labor is something that human beings want to eat.

00:16:20.000 This is why communism always fails.

00:16:21.000 Because if you tell people they don't get to keep what they earned, that they basically should be treated as disposable labor widgets and all of the fruits of their labors taken away and redistributed, people won't work.

00:16:32.000 They'll just stop doing it.

00:16:33.000 It's why communism always ends with coercion.

00:16:38.000 So the free market is not rooted in some sort of peculiar institution created by rich people.

00:16:45.000 It is rooted in basic human notions of autonomy and individual worth.

00:16:51.000 And that's why it's kind of scary when you hear an exchange between a senator named Tim Kane, who you may recall was actually a vice presidential nominee with Hillary Clinton back in 2016, and Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas.

00:17:01.000 So they got into an exchange the other day in the Senate, in which Tim Kane got very upset because there was a nominee for a position who had suggested that rights do not come from the government, they come from God.

00:17:13.000 And this somehow set off Tim Kane, despite the fact that this is very clear in our founding documents.

00:17:19.000 You state, and this is a quote from Secretary Rubio, our rights come from God, our creator, not from our laws, not from our governments.

00:17:27.000 I find that very, very troubling.

00:17:30.000 I'm a devout person.

00:17:31.000 I was a missionary in Honduras.

00:17:33.000 We've got other devout folks in this room, Christian, Jewish, Muslim American.

00:17:38.000 The notion that rights don't come from laws and don't come from the government, but come from the creator.

00:17:45.000 That's what the Iranian government believes.

00:17:47.000 It's a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Baha'is, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities.

00:17:59.000 And they do it Because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their creator.

00:18:05.000 So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.

00:18:13.000 Well, um that is just a gigantic softball over the middle of the plate for Senator Ted Cruz, who knows the words of the Declaration of Independence.

00:18:21.000 I mean, all you have to do is read that document ones, as Senator Cruz points out.

00:18:26.000 That radical and dangerous notion, in his words, is literally the founding principle upon which the United States of America was created.

00:18:37.000 And if you do not believe me, and you made reference to this, Mr. Barnes, then you can believe perhaps the most prominent uh Virginian to ever serve Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in the Declaration of Independence, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator.

00:19:08.000 Not by government, not by the Democratic National Committee, but by God with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

00:19:20.000 Well, you know, Senator Cruz had that one teed up for him, but that is a fundamental reality.

00:19:25.000 This is why capitalism free markets, these are good things.

00:19:29.000 They're not just good in terms of being utilitarian, though they are.

00:19:32.000 I talk about in lines and scavengers at length, why markets themselves are good, why they are morally good.

00:19:38.000 They are not just good in terms of having good outcomes.

00:19:41.000 And I I hear it constantly from people, you know, communism or social these are great ideas.

00:19:45.000 They just have, you know, downside effects.

00:19:47.000 They just don't work as well as they should, but they're kind of nice ideas.

00:19:50.000 And my response is always they are really quite terrible ideas.

00:19:53.000 You know what's a great idea?

00:19:55.000 Private property and free markets.

00:19:57.000 They are great and moral ideas.

00:19:59.000 Here's Red Wright in Lions and Scavengers, which you should pick up right now.

00:20:02.000 We are making a run at number one on Amazon right now, so now would be a great time for you to pick up a copy.

00:20:07.000 Quote, you own the product of your hands.

00:20:09.000 As we have explored, one of the fundamental principles of the philosophy of lions is that man is made in the image of God, a creative choosing being with autonomy and power.

00:20:17.000 We thus have a right to our own labor.

00:20:18.000 The philosopher John Locke, one of the great influences on the American founding, explained this right to property.

00:20:23.000 Quote, every man has a property in his own person.

00:20:26.000 This nobody has any right to but himself.

00:20:29.000 The labor of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.

00:20:33.000 Private property goes to the essence of what it means to be a human being.

00:20:36.000 Without it, creative power is denied its source.

00:20:39.000 Property is embedded in nature.

00:20:40.000 As historian Richard Pipes notes, anthropologists have concluded that there never was a society so primitive as not to acknowledge some forms of ownership.

00:20:48.000 Every child understands this reality.

00:20:50.000 By the age of two, children understand the difference between their property and the property of others.

00:20:55.000 As researchers, Nicholas Knowles of Michigan State University and Susan Gellman of the University of Michigan right, preschoolers demonstrate an understanding of the nuanced contrast between ownership and possession.

00:21:06.000 They defend possession of an object more aggressively if they own it, and strenuously object when their property rights as well as the property rights of others are violated.

00:21:13.000 Every parent knows this too.

00:21:14.000 Give one of your kids an allowance for doing chores, then tell her to hand over half the allowance to her younger brother who's been sitting aside and casually watching television.

00:21:21.000 You're likely to end up with a major and rather justifiable tantrum on your hands.

00:21:25.000 Private property is just a reality of the world.

00:21:28.000 Virtually all animals, human beings, most of all, innately understand and believe in ownership.

00:21:32.000 Human beings then develop rules and rituals surrounding the ownership and dispensation of private property, regularizing and cultivating a set of neutral principles that enable us to live with one another.

00:21:42.000 From private property springs the system of the free market.

00:21:45.000 It's time for lions, for people who actually believe in the success of the United States to robustly defend the free market.

00:21:54.000 This is not something to apologize for.

00:21:56.000 No, you are not immoral if you're a billionaire.

00:21:58.000 Any more than you're immoral if you are impoverished.

00:22:01.000 No, there is no point, no dollar point where if you earn above this dollar amount, suddenly you're now a bad person. 0.98

00:22:08.000 That's ridiculous.

00:22:10.000 Nor is the rich person rich because he is stealing it from the poor person. 0.60

00:22:13.000 We do not live in a subsist a subsistence society in which free market innovation and trade are uncommon.

00:22:20.000 We live in the most commercial society in human history, which means Bill Gates did not steal a damn thing from anybody to become Uber rich.

00:22:27.000 And guess what?

00:22:27.000 He made a lot of people much richer, not just for owning His stock, but also using his products or working for places like Microsoft.

00:22:34.000 It's important to mention all of this because again, I think that we're going to enter fairly soon.

00:22:40.000 An economically woke era.

00:22:41.000 And there need to be aggressive defenders against that.

00:22:44.000 Aggressive defenders.

00:22:46.000 On the right, and if people are smart enough on the left too.

00:22:50.000 Because free markets mean prosperity.

00:22:52.000 Now, again, you can argue about social safety nets, whether those should be provided at the at the social level versus the governmental level or locally, state or federally.

00:23:01.000 Those are all fair arguments.

00:23:04.000 But doing what the Democratic Party is about to do, and what some parts of the Republican Party are about to do, which is to say the free markets themselves are fundamentally flawed, and that you, you alone should control it.

00:23:14.000 You should centralize the power.

00:23:16.000 That is likely to be both counterproductive economically speaking.

00:23:20.000 It is certainly immoral.

00:23:22.000 And it is going to lead to more actual interpersonal conflict.

00:23:25.000 Because if you truly believe that people who are rich got there by screwing people who are poor, that justifies you in doing really bad things to people who are rich.

00:23:32.000 And by the way, maybe one day you will be rich because it turns out, again, a huge number of people who are rich now were not rich growing up.

00:23:40.000 I was not rich growing up.

00:23:42.000 I'm very rich now.

00:23:43.000 There may come a point in the future where I'm not as rich.

00:23:46.000 That is life.

00:23:48.000 And those decisions, for the most part, in a free society, are in the hands of people making good decisions.

00:23:54.000 Alrighty, coming up, we will get to this breaking story from Daily Wire.

00:23:58.000 It really is an incredible story.

00:24:00.000 Plus, a very fraud hearing for RFK Jr. on the hill.

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00:26:13.000 Alrighty, meanwhile, speaking of this sort of scavenger mentality, perhaps the apotheosis of the scavenger mentality is Zoran at Mamdanny.

00:26:22.000 Mamdanny, of course, is lucky enough to have 8,000 candidates running against him, splitting all of the polling against him.

00:26:29.000 He's still stuck in the mid-40 percentage range.

00:26:32.000 But he does have Eric Adams running against him who's pulling 10 to 12%, Curtis Sleewa, who's pulling 15 to 17%, and Andrew Cuomo is pulling someone in the mid-20s.

00:26:40.000 When you combine all of their support, Andrew Cuomo could theoretically pull it out if everybody else dropped out.

00:26:46.000 There's a rumor that the White House was offering Adams an incentive to drop out and Curtis Leo an incentive to drop out.

00:26:51.000 Both yesterday came out and said they are not dropping out, which is just great.

00:26:54.000 I guess we're just going to Felm on Louise this New York mayor or race.

00:26:57.000 Here is Eric Adams.

00:26:59.000 I'm surprised of how the standards of report in the New York Times has dropped so much.

00:27:07.000 I've never asked for a job with HUD.

00:27:10.000 I've never been close to the promise a job with Hood.

00:27:13.000 I have not communicated with the president.

00:27:15.000 What I must do is what I've always said.

00:27:18.000 Stay focused.

00:27:20.000 Don't be distracted by all the cessational that is always run our city, keep it safe, and run for re-election.

00:27:26.000 Oh, great.

00:27:27.000 Well, if that happens, he's gonna lose.

00:27:29.000 Curtis Lewa, who again, I like Curtis, but Curtis is not going to be the next mayor of New York.

00:27:33.000 Here he was saying he's not gonna drop out either.

00:27:36.000 You can't bribe me, you can't lease me, you can't rent me, you can't motivate me to leave this race. 1.00

00:27:44.000 I am running as the Republican candidate.

00:27:47.000 Okay.

00:27:48.000 Well, then Zar Mam Dani is going to be the next mayor in New York.

00:27:50.000 I mean, it really is that simple at this point.

00:27:53.000 Meanwhile, Mam Dani is challenging President Trump to a public debate saying, let's cut out the middleman.

00:27:59.000 Did Eric came after ex-governor Andrew Cuomo called on the Queen Socialist to debate him five times during a press conference on Thursday.

00:28:06.000 So great job by Mom Donny trying to duck Andrew Cuomo.

00:28:11.000 So Andrew Cuomo is his chief competition here, and Cuomo says, Why don't we debate?

00:28:14.000 And Mom Dani's like, well, I'd rather not debate you since I'm running against you.

00:28:18.000 I'd rather debate President Trump, which of course only elevates him no matter how he does against Trump.

00:28:21.000 He believes that will get out the New York base, which doesn't like Trump very much, out to the polls.

00:28:26.000 So Mom Donny said, Let's cut out the middleman. 1.00

00:28:28.000 Why should I debate Donald Trump's puppet when I could debate Donald Trump himself?

00:28:33.000 So, first of all, I think that that would actually be quite amusing if President Trump were to take him up on that. 0.96

00:28:37.000 Because Mom Donny is a complete useless person who has never built a thing in his entire life, and President Trump would make that extraordinarily clear.

00:28:45.000 So there's a case to be made that Trump should actually just say yes. 0.93

00:28:48.000 What does he have to lose?

00:28:49.000 It would be highly amusing.

00:28:52.000 I mean, honest to God, I I would I would pay good money to debate Zarman Dani.

00:28:56.000 That would be a delight.

00:28:57.000 That'd be an absolute sheer delight.

00:29:02.000 However, he's in a commanding position that is basically his just his way of avoiding a debate with the only possible competition in Andrew Cuomo.

00:29:10.000 So good luck to the city of New York.

00:29:12.000 You know, we're in New York doing this book tour right now.

00:29:14.000 And I have to say, it is truly it's an amazing city.

00:29:17.000 I mean, it's an unbelievable city.

00:29:18.000 It is a city that is built on commerce.

00:29:21.000 There's an author whose name is Stefan Zweig, who was very famous in Europe in the 20s and the 30s.

00:29:27.000 And then he ended up killing himself during World War II out of despair at what had happened to Europe.

00:29:32.000 But he wrote a memoir called The World of Yesterday.

00:29:36.000 And in the world of yesterday, he he traveled to a bunch of countries.

00:29:39.000 He sort of describes getting to know the countries.

00:29:41.000 And one of the things that he writes, Stefan Zweig, that is really quite fascinating, is he writes about visiting America.

00:29:47.000 And he says, Listen, when I went to Britain, what I found is that I could basically walk into a pub and I could get to know people just by sitting down in a pub and buying a drink for somebody.

00:29:57.000 I went to France, I'd go to a coffee house, and I'd be able to sit down, just get to know people right away.

00:30:03.000 Same thing in Germany.

00:30:04.000 He said he tried that in the United States and it didn't work.

00:30:06.000 He said he went to a pub and basically everybody's kind of standoffish, and he went to a coffee house and everybody's kind of busy.

00:30:13.000 And so he wanted to know what it was that that made America tick.

00:30:18.000 What made America different?

00:30:20.000 And so what he ended up doing was he ended up going to employment offices.

00:30:27.000 He went to job offices and looked for a job, like applied for jobs.

00:30:34.000 And here's what he writes about America.

00:30:36.000 He says, My first impression was overpowering.

00:30:39.000 Although New York did not yet have the enchanting night beauty, which it now has.

00:30:42.000 This is again 1920s or 1910s, even.

00:30:45.000 The Russian Cascades of Light in Times Square were not yet present, nor the city's dream like heaven, which, with its billions of artificial stars, glitters at the real ones in the sky.

00:30:53.000 The appearance of the city as well as the traffic lacked the daring grandeur of today.

00:30:56.000 For the new architecture was only trying itself out uncertainly with an occasional skyscraper and the astonishing development of taste in show windows and decorations had only modestly set in.

00:31:06.000 But to look down from the Brooklyn Bridge with its constant gentle swing at the harbor and wander about in the stone canyons of the avenues was discovery and excitement enough.

00:31:13.000 But he said that he wasn't really able to connect with anybody.

00:31:16.000 He said there weren't any cinemas.

00:31:18.000 There weren't any small, comfortable cafeterias or art galleries, libraries, museums at the time.

00:31:22.000 He said in matters cultural, everything was still far behind our Europe.

00:31:26.000 He said I was swept along like a rudderless boat in the icy, windy streets.

00:31:30.000 And so he instead decided to invent the game for himself.

00:31:34.000 He said, I pretended I was friendless and alone, a jobless emigrant with my last seven dollars in my pocket.

00:31:39.000 Do that, I said to myself, what they have to do.

00:31:40.000 Imagine you're forced to earn your own living after three days.

00:31:43.000 Look around and see how one begins here as a stranger without connections or friends to find a position.

00:31:47.000 So I wandered from agency to agency and examined the lists tacked on their door.

00:31:51.000 Here a baker was wanted.

00:31:53.000 There a temporary clerk who knew French and Italian.

00:31:55.000 Here a clerk for a bookshop.

00:31:56.000 This last incidentally was the first opportunity for I'm for my imaginary self.

00:32:00.000 And so I climbed up three flights of iron stairs, asked about the salary, compared it with the prices for a room in the Bronx, which I'd seen advertised in the newspaper.

00:32:07.000 After two days of job hunting, I had theoretically found five jobs by which I could have made my living.

00:32:13.000 He said, through this job hunting, I learned more about America in those very first few days than in all the succeeding weeks, when I traveled comfortably to Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago.

00:32:24.000 Because what he realized is that America predominantly was a place of bustling and commerce and job hunting, and Mom Tani is going to kill all that. 0.82

00:32:34.000 He's gonna kill all that out of envy.

00:32:36.000 Because he believes that's a bad thing. 0.99

00:32:38.000 That's a bad thing.

00:32:39.000 This sort of enervation that has set in.

00:32:42.000 This is the economic wokeness.

00:32:43.000 Just as racial wokeness creates enervation in people, it teaches them no matter how hard you try, you're not going to get ahead because shadowy unseen racial forces are cracking down upon you.

00:32:52.000 Economic wokeness makes the same argument.

00:32:54.000 No matter how hard you try, you just can't get ahead.

00:32:58.000 And you know what?

00:32:58.000 That's not true.

00:33:00.000 It is not true.

00:33:01.000 Okay, mobility has gone down in the country, people are not moving nearly as much as they were.

00:33:06.000 If you talk to Generation Z folks, their their job picture, like what they believe that they ought to get out of job, let's just say it's very different for a lot of them than it was when I was 18, 19, 20 years old.

00:33:20.000 And either that's gonna change, or economic wokeness will win, and the results will be the tearing down of the things that actually make the country prosperous.

00:33:28.000 Okay, meanwhile, a massively shocking report from our own Daily Wire, Cassia Kiva doing the extraordinary reporting here.

00:33:36.000 So you may remember that there was a person named Tony Aguilar.

00:33:39.000 Tony Aguilar was a contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and he was fired.

00:33:45.000 And then he started making all sorts of claims on all sorts of major shows.

00:33:49.000 So he went on Tucker Carlson's show and he claimed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the IDF had been doing a terrible job.

00:33:56.000 And the IDF was shooting children.

00:33:59.000 Here was Tucker Carlson interviewing Tony.

00:34:01.000 By the way, he didn't just have on Tony Aguilar once.

00:34:03.000 He had him on twice, Tucker Carlson.

00:34:06.000 So let me ask you about the story that you have told that's a really difficult story, awful story.

00:34:13.000 Uh, but about the boy who you were in contact with who was who was killed.

00:34:18.000 Shot to death.

00:34:20.000 Well, what what happened?

00:34:24.000 So you know this little boy is similar in age to my son.

00:34:30.000 Brown eyes.

00:34:32.000 My son has brown eyes.

00:34:33.000 I see my son's face when I look at him.

00:34:39.000 And this little boy, you know, he's not he's not ISIS.

00:34:46.000 He's not a combatant.

00:34:50.000 This was on secure distribution site number two.

00:34:54.000 The 28th of May, our second day of doing distribution.

00:35:00.000 I'm on that location.

00:35:03.000 I didn't get this secondhand.

00:35:05.000 I didn't see it from afar and then and then assume I saw it.

00:35:10.000 I touched it, I felt it.

00:35:13.000 Okay, and then he went on to claim that his boy was killed shortly thereafter by the IDF.

00:35:17.000 He called the boy Amir there.

00:35:19.000 Now the Daily Wire had done reporting on this and found there were major inconsistencies in this story.

00:35:23.000 Not only were the details he shared about their interaction inconsistent with third-party footage of it, the boy's stepmother said that she'd seen the boy alive for at least two months after Aguilar claimed he was dead.

00:35:33.000 In a tape testimonial, Siham Al Jarabia said the boy did not go missing until July 28th.

00:35:39.000 That's around the same time Aguilar began telling the story, but he said the boy was killed on May 28th.

00:35:44.000 Okay, so the Gaza Humanitarian Fund commenced a search for the boy after Aguilar began telling his story, basically blaming the GHF or the IDF for the phantom death of the boy.

00:35:54.000 And I say phantom advisedly, because as it turns out, after interviews with family members and weeks of detective work, the boy, Whose actual name is Abud was found living with his birth mother after he abruptly left his stepmother's home in July.

00:36:07.000 The child's identity was confirmed through biometrics.

00:36:09.000 He remained in possession of a shirt that he wore in Aguilar's original viral video.

00:36:14.000 In fact, here is tape of Abood, alive and well, thank God. 1.00

00:36:16.000 To the first door to the left, bottom left.

00:36:19.000 Mahababa.

00:36:21.000 Keep that look.

00:36:23.000 Hello, please.

00:36:24.000 Oh, I don't know if it's me and the life.

00:36:34.000 Okay, so again, a pretty astonishing story, but very often the lie makes its way all the way around the world before the truth can get its pants on.

00:36:42.000 Joining us on the line to discuss all of this a little bit earlier today, I spoke with Brent Scher, the editor in chief of The Daily Wire, who, of course, was involved in breaking the story.

00:36:51.000 Brent, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:36:52.000 Really appreciate it.

00:36:53.000 Yeah, of course.

00:36:55.000 So, I mean, this is an amazing story.

00:36:57.000 How exactly did we go about tracking down this information about this kid who again was alleged to have been gunned down by the IDF, particularly by a person who was at one time working for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

00:37:09.000 That was a claim that found an airing on Tucker Carlson, among other outlets.

00:37:13.000 Yeah, I mean, the story goes back about a month now when Tony Aguilar, who is the former Gaza Humanitarian Fund contractor, told the story to a very leftist outlet of this story about meeting a boy named Amir, and he told all these really vivid details of his interaction with Amir.

00:37:32.000 You know, Amir kissed his hand and said thank you in English, just to then walk off where he was then gunned down.

00:37:40.000 And those are exact words by Tony Aguilar.

00:37:42.000 Gunned down by the IDF.

00:37:45.000 Our reporter, Cassie Akiva, who um, of course, is on maternity to leave, but still ran down this story because she's an amazing reporter.

00:37:53.000 Um, she noticed immediately and reported some big inconsistencies in the story, and that's when this whole thing started to unravel.

00:38:02.000 It was the small details of what Tony Aguilar was saying that didn't really jive with facts on the ground or what was seen in other footage.

00:38:12.000 Now, after Aguilar initially told his story, the Gaza Humanitarian Fund went out to find this boy because they, like Cassie, didn't believe the story that Tony was telling.

00:38:24.000 And, you know, they went through all their networks in Gaza that they have built while um putting on aid for the last few months.

00:38:32.000 Um, and finally, they found this boy.

00:38:35.000 He was not shot.

00:38:36.000 He in fact had ran away from his home to live with his birth mother, where he's been for the last month.

00:38:44.000 And I'll say a big thing here is the Gaza Humanitarian Fund was very concerned that this boy, who Tony Aguilar called Amir, but his real name is Abud.

00:38:54.000 They were really concerned that this story that which went viral in the United States put Amir's life in major threat because his story became a propaganda tale for not only Hamas, but everybody else who wishes bad on Israel, because by saying that Israel committed this heinous crime, they got what is probably their biggest war or their most successful battle against Israel right now, which is in the PR world.

00:39:23.000 So they thought that Hamas would go through great lengths to keep the fact that Amir was alive, hidden from the world.

00:39:33.000 But thankfully, due to their work and Cassie's reporting, now the world knows this whole thing has been a lie.

00:39:40.000 I mean, that it's an amazing story, and it just demonstrates again the willingness to hear this out.

00:39:45.000 I mean, this is like a full episode of Tucker's show.

00:39:47.000 He appeared, I believe, with Senator Chris Van Holland, Tony Aguilar to tell this story.

00:39:51.000 It turns out that that was a completely false story.

00:39:54.000 And again, the Daily Wire had reported last month that there was a review of body cam footage from an American security contractor who's literally standing next to Tony Aguilar that showed a different interaction than what Aguilar originally described.

00:40:05.000 It showed the boy walking up to the man wearing the body cam and kissing his hand and then turning to Aguilar and asking for help convincing the crowd to let them take the food.

00:40:13.000 And Aguilar touches the boy's shoulders and chest.

00:40:16.000 And then Aguilar says, This little young man here, obviously pretty young, he has food.

00:40:19.000 Go home, go home, okay.

00:40:20.000 Thank you.

00:40:20.000 And then the boy walks toward the crowd.

00:40:23.000 So we did actually reach out to Tony Aguilar for comments on this.

00:40:28.000 What did he have to say?

00:40:30.000 Yeah, so that's actually really interesting.

00:40:32.000 Aguilar, about a month ago when we wrote this initial story, when we wrote this initial story on the inconsistencies, Aguilar got back to our reporter, and he said actually that he never actually confirmed that Amir was dead, but he saw a boy laying there and assume that he was dead.

00:40:51.000 After we challenged the facts, um, in the past few weeks, his story has gotten only more vivid.

00:40:58.000 He's told podcasts lately that he watched Amir get shot in the leg, shot in the torso, and saw him dead on the floor.

00:41:07.000 Now, again, we now know that the boy is alive and well.

00:41:10.000 He has zero bullet wounds.

00:41:13.000 So, I mean, we can't get inside Tony Aguilar's head and know whether he's actually mistaken or whether he just spun this whole thing up.

00:41:22.000 But nothing that he's said before our initial report or since has been anywhere close to true or proven true.

00:41:31.000 Now, again, one of the things that's amazing here is that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation moved to protect this kid.

00:41:37.000 And that does raise the question as to why they would have to protect the kid, except that presumably Hamas would want to retcon this thing by actually killing the kid.

00:41:44.000 Hamas would want to get a hold of the child, kill the child, and then essentially say to the rest of the world that the story must originally been true because the kid is dead.

00:41:52.000 I mean, that that would be the logical reason to put this kid under protection.

00:41:55.000 Theoretically, if Hamas were interested in protecting the civilian population, he would have been perfectly safe being alive and well in the Gaza Strip. 0.91

00:42:02.000 Yeah, and I mean GHF is taking an immense amount of care to make sure that this boy actually survives, because you know, that's what their goal is to be a humanitarian force in Gaza, a place that hasn't seen successful aid in months, years, um, largely because it's mainly been through the United Nations.

00:42:23.000 But the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has done so much to not only find this boy, but then make sure that they can keep him safe from Hamas.

00:42:31.000 Because as you said, Hamas does not want the world to know what we reported this morning, that the entire story of the Israelis just indiscriminately shooting children at an aid site is bogus.

00:42:45.000 There's it's there's no basis in fact.

00:42:48.000 Now, so far, we've reported the story.

00:42:51.000 Fox News has picked up on the story.

00:42:53.000 That's about it.

00:42:53.000 You have not seen legacy media reporting on the story in any real way, which again demonstrates that the lie can make its way all the way around the world before the shoe gets it, the truth gets its shoes on in the morning.

00:43:04.000 Are you surprised at all that the legacy media have not picked up on the story?

00:43:08.000 Um, I'm not surprised that it hasn't happened immediately.

00:43:11.000 I really hope that they do their reporting and get in touch with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, read our work and see that it is indisputably true that this boy, that MSNBC for one, did a whole report on their site, special report, video interviews, everything with Tony Aguilar on how this boy is dead.

00:43:32.000 That story has to be corrected.

00:43:34.000 These podcasts, you mentioned Tucker Carlson.

00:43:36.000 Um, he had him on to vividly tell the story of Amir and use it as a, you know, cautionary tale about what's really going on in Israel.

00:43:46.000 Tucker Carlson has to address this.

00:43:48.000 And you mentioned a sitting Democrat senator, Chris Van Holland, had uh had Tony Aguilar in taped uh taped a whole interview with him with a senator.

00:44:00.000 Um, I mean, he needs to come out and say that, yeah, everything that I broadcasted to my voters and the people was wrong.

00:44:10.000 Well, Brent Schur, editor in chief of the Daily Wire, credit to you, credit to our reporter, Cassio Akivo, who dug this up.

00:44:15.000 It's a long process, and it's very well substantiated.

00:44:18.000 Go check out the report at DailyWire.com right now.

00:44:20.000 Really appreciate it, Brent.

00:44:22.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:44:23.000 Well, meanwhile, speaking of stories that have made their way around the world over and over and over and over, you know, the story of supposed Israeli genocide that that is a lie.

00:44:31.000 It has been a lie since the beginning.

00:44:32.000 It is not a genocide, it's a war.

00:44:34.000 Israel has been extraordinarily meticulous, actually, in its pursuit of the war.

00:44:38.000 But one of the things that has been retailed, another lie that's been retelled, is that the reason that Republicans and Americans overwhelmingly actually are pro-Israel is because of Israeli money or Jew money or APAC money.

00:44:49.000 And this sort of lie has been wildly trafficked, particularly in in sort of the comedian bro world.

00:44:56.000 A lot of comedians have been saying this sort of stuff.

00:44:59.000 And, you know, it's very hard to sort of deal with these claims from comedians because on the one hand, they will make a claim that is certainly not a joke, like an actual serious claim.

00:45:07.000 They they they are comedians, so they will then play a Mott and Bailey game where they make a claim that's factually untrue.

00:45:12.000 They're called on the factually untrue claim, and then they put the clown nose on and they say, Oh, well, I'm just a comedian. 0.55

00:45:16.000 You can't expect me to get it right, which is really a silly way to do things.

00:45:20.000 If you want to make a joke about a thing, make a joke about a thing.

00:45:22.000 If you want to make a serious claim, make a serious claim.

00:45:24.000 I think we can tell the difference.

00:45:27.000 So for example, Andrew Schultz, who's been very critical of us here at the Daily Wire, for a variety of reasons that I can't quite discern, actually, because they don't seem ideologically coherent.

00:45:37.000 Uh, here he was fairly recently claiming that APAC is basically running our politics, which of course has become a very hot talking point on large parts of the left and I will say a horseshoe theory part of the right.

00:45:50.000 But the real decisions, like if we're gonna send more aid to Ukraine, if we're gonna send more aid to Israel, those decisions are already made because we continue to make them.

00:45:59.000 Despite Americans not wanting them, the same fing decision gets made, right?

00:46:03.000 Over and over again. 0.99

00:46:06.000 America does not support this shit that's going on here. 1.00

00:46:08.000 None of us do. 1.00

00:46:09.000 We're seeing the death and we're seeing the destruction.

00:46:10.000 We're like, what the f is happening?

00:46:12.000 Why do we keep supporting this?

00:46:13.000 Like what is going on?

00:46:15.000 It seems to feel, at least at this point, that through APAC or maybe through other means, there's incredible influence on our politicians.

00:46:25.000 I mean, Ted Cruz is just tap dancing for Israel, left and right.

00:46:28.000 Okay, so again, the implication here is that Ted Cruz is pro-Israel because he's been supported in congressional races by APAC.

00:46:34.000 Not that APAC supports Ted Cruz because he's pro-Israel and was already pro-Israel, but Ted Cruz is bought and paid for by APAC money.

00:46:40.000 And this is a very common claim that's sort of made in the manosphere or made in the podcast bro sphere or the comedian sphere.

00:46:46.000 It was a claim that was also made by the comedian Tim Dylan fairly recently. 0.93

00:46:51.000 If someone said I hate gay people, I'd say okay. 1.00

00:46:55.000 But I don't is that grounds for them to be deported? 0.90

00:47:00.000 Doesn't this feel like it's going to a bad place?

00:47:03.000 Does it feel good?

00:47:06.000 Does it feel good?

00:47:09.000 It feels a little bit like we're doing this at the behest of billionaire Israeli donors.

00:47:18.000 No, yes, perhaps.

00:47:21.000 Okay, so again, the the theory here is that all of America's politics is from the shadows, being run by APAC or Israeli billionaire donors, not sure who he's talking about there, or Jewish philanthropists or whatever the case may be.

00:47:34.000 That's really why Americans are pro-Israel, or why Trump is pro-Israel, or why Ted Cruz is pro-Israel or all the rest.

00:47:41.000 The reason I point this out is because if you are going to claim that money passing hands makes you a shill for the thing from which you are receiving the money, then I'm wondering precisely why Andrew Schultz and Tim Dylan, among many, many, many others, are perfectly willing to go to Saudi Arabia for hundreds of thousands of dollars and perform for a regime that is responsible for a war in Yemen.

00:48:05.000 By the way, Saudi losing the war with with Yemen was was actually quite a bad thing, or at least pulling out of areas that led the Houthis to be in charge.

00:48:13.000 So I'm actually not even critiquing the Saudi war with Yemen.

00:48:16.000 That was the Biden administration.

00:48:17.000 But if you're going to be a war is always terrible, and the and the people who perpetuate the wars, they're they're evil, the only reason you'd be pro that is because you're getting paid.

00:48:27.000 Let's just talk about Saudi Arabia and you know, the people who are paying people like Andrew Schultz and Tim Dylan to arrive.

00:48:32.000 So I asked our sponsors over at Comet, how many people were killed in Saudi Arabia's war with Yemen?

00:48:38.000 Quote, Saudi Arabia's war with Yemen has resulted in an estimated 377,000 deaths as of 2021, with the majority caused by conflict-related famine, disease, and lack of health care.

00:48:50.000 Roughly 150,000 deaths are directly attributed to military operations, including airstrikes and battles, many of which were led by the Saudi coalition.

00:48:59.000 At least 15,000 civilians were killed by direct military action, especially air strikes.

00:49:04.000 The answer is actually probably much, much, much larger, by the way.

00:49:08.000 If the logic is that Israel is bad because war is bad, then Saudi would be worse because war is bad. 0.73

00:49:16.000 But no, I mean, I assume that Andrew Schultz, who considers himself a social liberal, and so does Tim Dylan, that they understand that same-sex activity is still criminal in Saudi Arabia and can be penalized by everything up to and including the death penalty, depending on the circumstances,

00:49:33.000 that in rare circumstances, apputation for theft is still a penalty on the books, although lashes has become more common over there, that migrant workers are still routinely forced into a form of trafficking very much akin to slave labor, that actually it took until 1962 to abolish chattel slavery in Saudi Arabia, that there is no such thing as free speech in Saudi Arabia.

00:49:53.000 If you're wondering about free speech, like Saudi Arabia ain't famous for it.

00:49:57.000 But apparently you're allowed to take hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Saudi monarchy in order to what?

00:50:06.000 Perform comedy over there?

00:50:08.000 Any critical words?

00:50:08.000 Any?

00:50:09.000 Any critical words of the of the Saudi regime?

00:50:11.000 See, here's the thing.

00:50:12.000 I don't actually think that Saudi is buying and paying for Andrew Schulter Tim Dillon.

00:50:17.000 I don't think they're going to change their views on Saudi Arabia because Saudi is paying the money to go perform a comedy show.

00:50:23.000 But if the claim that you make is that all of our politics is run by secret money, by nefarious forces, then you should be kind of careful about the people stuffing money in your pockets, shouldn't you?

00:50:36.000 Full credit to Tim Dylan.

00:50:37.000 He at least says the quiet part out loud, seriously.

00:50:42.000 Get over it.

00:50:43.000 Get over it.

00:50:45.000 We're going to Riyadh.

00:50:47.000 The House of Saud is paying us hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of us millions, not me.

00:50:53.000 But they're paying millions of dollars to comedians.

00:50:56.000 Get over it.

00:50:57.000 We're taking the money.

00:50:59.000 How about that?

00:51:00.000 How about that?

00:51:01.000 Sorry.

00:51:02.000 Oh, you weren't invited?

00:51:03.000 Oh, you got nothing going on.

00:51:06.000 Boo-hoo-hoo. 1.00

00:51:08.000 Boo-hoo-hoo for you. 1.00

00:51:11.000 I would never do it.

00:51:13.000 You weren't offered.

00:51:14.000 No one invited you.

00:51:18.000 There's people that I respect that turned it down, but a lot of people are doing it like a lot, like almost everyone.

00:51:26.000 A lot of people are doing it.

00:51:30.000 They bought comedy.

00:51:32.000 So what?

00:51:34.000 All right.

00:51:34.000 Well, if that's the way that this goes, then I guess that's the way this goes.

00:51:37.000 And I guess that's um that bizarre moral high ground that you've been claiming.

00:51:41.000 Uh maybe maybe you should let that one go, perhaps.

00:51:44.000 Okay, meanwhile, there's a big hearing yesterday.

00:51:47.000 RFK Jr. was testifying in front of Congress, and things got quite heated at this hearing before the Senate.

00:51:57.000 The Senate Finance Committee had a hearing with him, and both Republicans and Democrats were pretty upset with RFK Jr.

00:52:04.000 Some of the Democrats are upset with RFK Jr. over his take on vaccines.

00:52:07.000 Some of the Republicans were also concerned about turmoil over at the CDC.

00:52:12.000 And there's no question there's a lot of turmoil over at the CDC right now.

00:52:15.000 And it's just a reality.

00:52:16.000 The staffing has been a problem at the CDC.

00:52:18.000 There are super qualified people who are working at HHS.

00:52:23.000 Marty McCarry at FDA, wildly qualified.

00:52:25.000 Jay Badachari over at NIH, supremely qualified.

00:52:29.000 CDC has been a mess.

00:52:31.000 Obviously a lot of controversy coming out of a department that usually is less about vaccine standardization and significantly more about how to run, for example, the Medicare and Medicaid systems, which are actually gigantic, gigantic hundreds of billions of dollars programs.

00:52:52.000 Bill Cassidy, the senator from Louisiana, who voted in favor of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s confirmation.

00:52:58.000 He asked him about Operation Warp Speed and vaccination, because RFK Jr. has basically been making the claim that he doesn't know whether the vaccine was helpful in any way.

00:53:08.000 Now, here's what the available data says.

00:53:10.000 What the available data says that the vaccine was wildly oversold at the beginning, which is certainly true.

00:53:14.000 That is certainly true that it was wildly oversold.

00:53:16.000 There were claims made about the vaccine preventing transmission.

00:53:19.000 That wasn't true.

00:53:20.000 Those were overtly false claims that were made by public officials in positions of responsibility without any actual research even being done on that question by, for example, Pfizer.

00:53:31.000 We talked about it on the show when that came out.

00:53:34.000 And then there were claims that kids needed to get it, which was never true, or that young people needed to get it, which also was not really true.

00:53:41.000 And so the new standard has been if you're old or obese, then maybe we'll recommend the COVID vaccine for you.

00:53:47.000 But RFK Jr. in some of his rhetoric seems to have gone further, suggesting that the vaccine is responsible for, for example, millions of deaths, that it killed more people than it saved.

00:53:56.000 And the evidence for that proposition is very scanty.

00:53:58.000 Well, Senator Bill Cassidy sort of trapped RFK Jr. yesterday on this matter.

00:54:02.000 Here he was.

00:54:04.000 Mr. Secretary, do you agree with me that the president, that the president deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Schaeze?

00:54:11.000 Absolutely, Senator.

00:54:13.000 Let me ask you.

00:54:14.000 But you just told Senator Bennett that the COVID vaccine killed more people than COVID.

00:54:22.000 Well, that was a statement.

00:54:23.000 I did not say that.

00:54:25.000 Okay.

00:54:25.000 Then let me ask because you also were.

00:54:28.000 Senator, I just want to make clear.

00:54:30.000 Well, we'll check the record.

00:54:31.000 That's a question of fact.

00:54:33.000 You also said that the You were also as lead attorney for the children's health defense.

00:54:38.000 You engaged in multiple lawsuits attempting to restrict access to the COVID vaccine.

00:54:44.000 Again, it surprises me that you think so highly of Operation Warp Speed when, as an attorney, you attempted to restrict access.

00:54:52.000 Okay, so again, awkward moment for RFK Jr.

00:54:56.000 RFK Jr. was also asked about whether the vaccine had saved lives.

00:55:01.000 Here was his answer.

00:55:03.000 Would you accept the fact that a million Americans died from COVID?

00:55:09.000 I don't know how many died.

00:55:12.000 You're the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

00:55:15.000 You don't have any idea how many Americans died from COVID?

00:55:18.000 I don't think anybody knows that because the there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC.

00:55:26.000 And there was a lot of people.

00:55:29.000 And these are modeling.

00:55:32.000 Oh, from COVID.

00:55:34.000 This is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

00:55:36.000 Do you think the vaccine did anything to prevent additional deaths?

00:55:41.000 Again, I would like to see the data and talk about the data.

00:55:46.000 You have had this job for eight months and you don't know the data about whether the vaccine is not a good thing.

00:55:51.000 Oh, yeah.

00:55:52.000 And that's the problem is that they didn't have the data.

00:55:55.000 The data by the Biden administration absolutely dismal.

00:55:59.000 Okay, so let me just be clear.

00:56:00.000 Public officials should be held to very high levels of scrutiny.

00:56:03.000 They should, across the board.

00:56:04.000 There should be serious questions asked of those public health officials.

00:56:07.000 The Vice President of the United States fired back on all this, defending RFK Jr. by pointing out the fact that the left totally robbed America of its understanding of of science and belief in science.

00:56:19.000 He defended RFK Jr. by tweeting out when I see all these senators trying to lecture and gotcha Bobby Kennedy today, all I can think is you all support off-label, untested irreversible hormonal therapies for children, mutilating our kids and enriching big pharma.

00:56:32.000 You're full of bleep and everyone knows it. 0.99

00:56:34.000 And there's absolutely truth to what J.D. Vance is saying there, the Vice President.

00:56:38.000 That's absolutely true.

00:56:39.000 I've made that point myself.

00:56:41.000 However, when it comes to the standards we use in science, those should be defended.

00:56:48.000 We shouldn't be, especially in a data-driven area, just asking questions.

00:56:52.000 We should be actually seeking real answers with great specificity so we can get to the answers as to whether, for example, the vaccine schedule should be changed.

00:57:00.000 Forget about removing certain vaccines.

00:57:02.000 Should the schedule be changed?

00:57:04.000 Should we tranch it out differently like they do in Europe?

00:57:06.000 Like these are all, I think, absolutely open questions and interesting questions.

00:57:10.000 So I asked our sponsors over at Comet, Project of Perplexity, how does the European vaccination schedule differ from the American schedule for early childhood?

00:57:18.000 And what comments says the European early childhood vaccination schedule is generally more flexible, very significantly between countries, and often includes fewer mandatory vaccines than the American schedule, which is more standardized, covers more diseases, and typically follows a set timetable nationwide.

00:57:33.000 In the United States, most vaccines are administered at 24-6 and 12 to 18 months.

00:57:37.000 Some vaccines like HEP B start at birth, others, MMR, Varicella, hepatitis A begin at 12 months.

00:57:43.000 In Europe, some countries adopt slower schedules, spacing vaccines further apart or starting later to allow for immune system development.

00:57:49.000 So these are all open questions and definitely worthy of investigation.

00:57:52.000 But I think if the purpose of the question is not to elicit an answer, but it's just to cede suspicion, that is in and of itself a bit of a problem.

The Ben Shapiro Show - September 05, 2025

IT WILL NEVER DIE: Democrats Unleash New Brand of WOKE

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