The Ben Shapiro Show - August 14, 2026


Joe Rogan Is Falling for the Charlie Kirk Conspiracy

Topics
Candace Owens Conspiracy Theorist free health care back to school season
Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Joe Rogan Donald Trump Theo Vaughn JD Vance Tristan Tate Andrew Tate Vladimir Scorpius Ronald Reagan Candace Owens Tyler Robinson Charlie Kirk James Tallarico George W. Bush X. Quote Grief Hillary Clinton Michael Dukakis Golden Crest Barack Obama Erica Kirk Text Ben and 7 more
Everyone Is Getting the Democratic Primaries Wrong Race, the Media, and a Professor’s Suicide: This Story Is WILD

Episode Stats


Length

33 minutes

Words per minute

195.48

Word count

6,490

Sentence count

537

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

56

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 So yesterday, Joe Rogan announced that he is beginning to believe Candace Owens' bizarre theories about Charlie Kirk's assassination.
00:00:07 Namely, that it wasn't Tyler Robinson.
00:00:09 It must be a government cover-up.
00:00:11 It could have been anybody from TPUSA to Erica Kirk to the Israeli government to French assassins to me personally.
00:00:18 So today I'm going to talk about why that's actually pretty important. 0.64
00:00:21 Not just the morality of believing evil conspiracism from a manipulative loon like Candace. 0.93
00:00:25 Obviously, that's immoral. 0.99
00:00:27 I'm not just going to talk about the untruth of Candace's bizarre theories because those theories are an IQ test.
00:00:33 And if you believe them, you fail the IQ test.
00:00:35 I'm going to talk about the responsibility of our political leadership when it comes to conspiracism.
00:00:40 I'm going to talk about who ought to be the people leading the country people who follow the people or people who speak the truth.
00:00:46 That is perhaps the biggest issue in today's politics, with ramifications far beyond whatever benighted crap Candace or Joe Rogan or Theo Vaughn dump on their podcast today.
00:00:55 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:01:04 So, as I say, yesterday, Joe Rogan dropped the bombshell that he is starting to believe Candace Owens' theories about Charlie Kirk's assassination.
00:01:11 Here's what he had to say.
00:01:14 Wasn't that guy a furry?
00:01:15 No, he loved a furry.
00:01:16 Oh, he loved a furry.
00:01:17 Yeah, but I'm not even sure if that's true.
00:01:20 The more time goes on, the more I'm leaning towards Candace Owens. 0.98
00:01:23 Whatever the spin is about Tyler Robinson, there's some bullshit to it. 1.00
00:01:27 I don't know how much of his bullshit, but there's some bullshit. 1.00
00:01:33 Okay, listen, I know. 1.00
00:01:34 I like Joe personally, he's a nice guy. 1.00
00:01:37 Also, this kind of stupidity ought to immediately make you question Joe's capacity to discern truth from fiction. 1.00
00:01:42 Because, dude, come on. 1.00
00:01:45 Come on.
00:01:46 This is the equivalent of essentially endorsing the theory that staring at hieroglyphics can solve your health problems, which Joe also kind of did recently.
00:02:00 The hieroglyphs actually carry the information in the form.
00:02:05 And so the form of those shapes, now we've, you know, some of the greatest minds.
00:02:10 On the earth, people are starting to recognize that if you draw one of those shapes and show it to a human mind, it creates an incredible medical response.
00:02:18 You can reverse inflammation, all kinds of things by looking at the shape because the shape is creating a way to understand it.
00:02:24 Looking at the shape of certain hieroglyphs?
00:02:25 Yeah.
00:02:26 The shapes that are in Egyptian hieroglyphs are now being used to really change human biology.
00:02:32 We're realizing it was not a symbolic representation of something, it was a full transmission of information.
00:02:39 Is there papers written on this?
00:02:41 So, Ibrahim is one of the greatest minds out there.
00:02:46 He's out of Egypt, Cairo, Egypt, and he's in his 80s now.
00:02:50 And I'm going to connect you with him because you'd love to have him on this show.
00:02:53 But he has been hired by large groups, and now Switzerland has hired him now to recode their 5G network with these shapes to improve biology and life around the 5G network.
00:03:06 Now, I'm not super shocked by this kind of stuff.
00:03:16 Joe Rogan, Joe tends to believe pretty much every conspiracy theory that he can find.
00:03:20 Because let's be real, conspiracism is fun.
00:03:23 Like, it's super fun, it's chatty.
00:03:24 You can fill five hours talking with your comedian friends about how the moon landing was fake and underwater demons who might be aliens control our lives.
00:03:31 I get the shtick, right?
00:03:32 Joe's shtick is that he is basically caveman discovering the world by talking with all the people.
00:03:36 This never results in any firmly held belief, so he'll endorse James Tallarico, the psychotic left wing howdy duty of Texas, and Donald Trump within two years of each other.
00:03:46 But listen, it's fun to watch the journey.
00:03:48 It's just sitting with your friends in college and popping open a beer or in Joe's case, smoking a blunt and waxing philosophic on whether your chair really exists, man.
00:03:56 Or whether when you see the color red and I see the color red, is it the same color red, bro?
00:04:02 Or which Kardashian sister is the hottest? 0.99
00:04:04 You know, it's like bullshit the bros. 1.00
00:04:06 That's what the show is. 0.99
00:04:07 And under normal circumstances, that's fine and fun and whatever.
00:04:10 It's a free country.
00:04:10 You can listen to what you want.
00:04:11 There are two things that make this kind of stuff a problem for America more generally.
00:04:14 One, when people start treating this stuff seriously, And two, when politicians start treating this stuff seriously, because people start treating this stuff seriously.
00:04:23 So listen, part and parcel of Joe's comedic world is blackpilling.
00:04:26 This is, by the way, it's very common in comedy because comedy is about making fun of the world as it is.
00:04:32 It's not about offering solutions, it's not about trying to come to a consensus.
00:04:34 Comedy is about making fun of the world as it is.
00:04:37 Comedy is inherently sort of blackpilled.
00:04:39 You can't trust any of the systems, my bro.
00:04:42 Those systems are out to get you, dude.
00:04:43 Bro, have you seen how corrupt this is?
00:04:46 We're wild.
00:04:47 Now, there are basically three perspectives on the system, or any systems like banking, or the judiciary, or the electoral system, or the legacy media, or the universities, or our economy, or whatever.
00:05:00 Or whatever.
00:05:01 Perspective one every system is thoroughly corrupt.
00:05:04 You can trust none of the systems.
00:05:05 They are all corrupt, all of them.
00:05:07 Trust nothing. 0.99
00:05:09 Perspective two all the systems are great.
00:05:10 They're all pristine.
00:05:11 We should trust everything that they churn out. 0.67
00:05:13 And then there's perspective three some of the systems work basically okay, other systems suck.
00:05:19 The ones that don't work properly can sometimes be course corrected, and sometimes those systems need to be torn down to the studs.
00:05:24 Now, as you might guess from my characterization here, I think that perspectives one and two are ridiculous.
00:05:30 I also think that pretty much nobody actually believes them.
00:05:32 I think they Play well in podcast land because conspiracism is fun and profitable.
00:05:37 So, this is how you end up with a lot of podcasters who promote mutually exclusive propositions.
00:05:43 Like, for example, that the government is directed toward corruption, which is largely true.
00:05:48 And also that the government should run every aspect of our healthcare system and it'll be great and not corrupt, which again is not meshing with that first proposition.
00:05:56 But also the government doesn't have the power to regulate the internet.
00:05:59 So, we're all doomed to failure, which is like sort of half true.
00:06:03 All of which Joe said yesterday with all of his friends on the show, literally.
00:06:06 Yesterday.
00:06:06 So, for example, Joe Rogan said that Donald Trump has made billions in crypto.
00:06:10 This is true.
00:06:11 I'm highly critical of this.
00:06:12 I think it's corrupt.
00:06:13 I think it's a huge problem.
00:06:14 I've been calling it out since literally the first week of the administration.
00:06:17 So, what Joe says here is true.
00:06:21 This government has done some that no government has ever done before.
00:06:24 And one of them is the crypto stuff.
00:06:26 The crypto stuff's nuts.
00:06:27 What?
00:06:27 It's like Trump has made billions in crypto.
00:06:31 Look, government's so crooked.
00:06:31 Yeah, it's good.
00:06:33 And then you got his sons, and his sons are involved in all these weird business deals.
00:06:38 Where the business deals have to do with some things that Trump put, and then the sons are involved in these businesses.
00:06:42 And like, there's a lot of money flowing around that you could dig in and start arresting people.
00:06:50 Okay, so I totally agree, actually, with a lot of what he's saying there, because it turns out that a government that is gigantic and prone to corruption does bad things.
00:06:59 But then on the same show, he'll turn around with Shane Gillis and they'll talk about how free healthcare isn't communism.
00:07:07 In fact, you know what communism isn't?
00:07:09 When we treat the whole country like a community.
00:07:13 Which, I mean, there is a reason that communism and community have the same linguistic root.
00:07:22 Not because community is bad or something, but because the entire premise of communism is that as a member of a community, your individuality disappears and the community now gets to dictate what to do with your goods, products, services, and life.
00:07:34 Here they are explaining things that, again, are self contradictory, but here we go. 0.85
00:07:40 Communism's the gayest ever. 0.98
00:07:42 This is the worst. 1.00
00:07:44 Somebody needs to look into how gay communism is. 1.00
00:07:46 But isn't it crazy that it's making a comeback? 0.99
00:07:48 Yeah.
00:07:49 It always does.
00:07:50 It's a cycle.
00:07:51 There's a cycle.
00:07:52 The problem is if we cannot call it communism, if we get free health care, that would be a good move.
00:07:57 That would help a lot.
00:07:58 We're calling everybody communist that wants to be free.
00:08:00 Socialist communist.
00:08:01 Free health care is cool.
00:08:02 Yeah. 0.55
00:08:03 We should have that.
00:08:04 It's normal.
00:08:05 That's not communism.
00:08:07 Communism is normal.
00:08:08 You should treat the entire country like it's a community.
00:08:11 If you have a community, would you want the sickest person to.
00:08:15 Die, who could be very valuable if you could, like, take care of them?
00:08:18 And do you have the resources to take care of them?
00:08:20 Of course, you should.
00:08:21 We're a rich country. 1.00
00:08:23 Communism is terrible and gay. 0.98
00:08:26 Also, we should treat our entire body politic like a community. 0.98
00:08:30 And maybe that should be dictated by the thesis from each ability according to his ability to each according to his need.
00:08:40 Okay.
00:08:41 Now, again, I'm not really going to blame Joe for any of this sort of stuff.
00:08:44 One of the things that makes Joe such a successful podcaster is that.
00:08:47 He is kind of sort of a tribune for the people, meaning that he contains multitudes, including a variety of totally conflicting viewpoints, right?
00:08:54 I don't think Joe himself would say that he has some sort of thoroughgoing theory of politics or a thoroughgoing worldview.
00:08:59 Again, his politics are a journey and they move all over the place.
00:09:05 And the general schtick of the show, again, is sort of caveman explores world by talking to humans.
00:09:09 Okay, fine.
00:09:11 There's only a couple of problems that come up with this.
00:09:13 One is there are a bunch of young men who use Joe Rogan as a sort of political litmus test, which is pretty weird.
00:09:18 Or as Joe might say, wild, right?
00:09:20 Joe himself would probably argue that you shouldn't follow him that way because Joe himself would say that he's not fully formed on much of this stuff at all.
00:09:27 But people do that anyway.
00:09:28 Again, that's not Joe's fault, it's just a reality.
00:09:31 You know, it turns out that young men will follow pretty much anybody.
00:09:34 I mean, hell, a bunch of young men are using the alleged sex trafficking tape brothers as a moral litmus test.
00:09:40 We'll get to another group of manosphere people who are just widely worshipped.
00:09:40 Are you coming up?
00:09:45 I mean, they're scam artists, but here is the thing you don't like scams.
00:09:50 You want the thing that matters.
00:09:51 I'll tell you the thing that has mattered for literally all of human history, and that thing is gold.
00:09:55 So here's an idea for the next time you have to buy a graduation gift, a bar mitzvah gift, a birthday gift for a niece or a nephew, whatever it is.
00:10:01 Don't be the dad or uncle who puts cash in an envelope.
00:10:03 Upgrade that gift game.
00:10:03 Give them a gold or silver coin.
00:10:05 It's memorable.
00:10:06 It's something they can actually keep.
00:10:07 More importantly, it gives you an excuse to teach them something about sound money.
00:10:11 Again, if you give a kid today like 20 bucks, like in cash, first of all, he could probably spend it.
00:10:16 But second of all, within about three years, that 20 bucks is going to be worth, I don't know, not all that much money.
00:10:21 Well, this is actually part of what I like about physical gold, silver, or any precious metal.
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00:10:57 And you hear what are the Tate fans outside a jail in Miami doing push ups? 1.00
00:11:17 God made too many stupid people on this planet. 1.00
00:11:19 This is my main critique of God. 1.00
00:11:20 Okay, well, it turns out, by the way, that Andrew and Tristan Tate had a giant cache of passports under aliases, including with a Bond villain name, according to the New York Post.
00:11:31 Tristan Tate had a Mexican passport with his photograph and date of birth, but under Vladimir Scorpius.
00:11:36 That is the name of the main villain in the 007 spy novel Scorpius, according to court documents.
00:11:41 Tristan also posted an online video of himself on a ship declaring, I'm Vladimir Scorpius and a registered UK company called Scorpius Limited.
00:11:51 Andrew Tate, meanwhile, openly bragged on social media about having eight lives, eight licenses and passports, and evading authorities in multiple countries.
00:11:58 I do have to give you an update for all of the Tate followers who are trying to define their lives by following the genius of Andrew Tate.
00:12:05 I think it is time for our latest episode of Deep Thoughts with Andrew Tate here.
00:12:08 Because, again, as long as we're just tracing the people who young men are following, Just a couple of samples.
00:12:15 Because again, the mark of being brutally violated in prison is that you have access to X. Quote Grief passes through life like weather.
00:12:23 Confinement keeps the air still and forces you to remain in the room with a storm.
00:12:30 It's a thinker.
00:12:32 Sounds a thinker.
00:12:33 But we have more.
00:12:35 Life is kaleidoscopic.
00:12:38 At first, it looks random.
00:12:39 With focus, you see patterns.
00:12:42 A dazzling infinity, colorful chaos.
00:12:44 But truthfully, It's always beautiful.
00:12:52 Wow.
00:12:52 Wow.
00:12:53 These are words to live by.
00:12:55 A couple more.
00:12:56 Disappointment is finite.
00:12:58 Hope is infinite.
00:13:02 Ah, man, I'm.
00:13:04 He's opening new vistas, new horizons to me that I'd never thought about before.
00:13:09 And finally, God doesn't return what is lost, He answers loss by allowing you to find the loss in something new.
00:13:17 Father to son, to son to son.
00:13:23 Indeed.
00:13:24 Indeed, Andrew Tate.
00:13:26 Indeed, Vladimir Scorpius.
00:13:29 These are deep thoughts.
00:13:30 Why am I talking about this?
00:13:31 Because again, there are a lot of young men who are following these people.
00:13:34 And let's be real about this. 1.00
00:13:35 Following these people is stupid. 1.00
00:13:36 If you're not doing it for fun, if you're using them as political guides rather than gossipy buddies with whom to share DMT or something. 1.00
00:13:42 But even that's not really the problem.
00:13:44 The real problem, the problem that I have again, it's not the people who listen to Joe Show or listen to Tate or whatever.
00:13:51 Okay.
00:13:51 It's a free country.
00:13:52 I may think that you're wasting your time on certain broadcasts, but you know, free country.
00:13:57 The big problem is when our political leaders decide to follow this crew, which takes us to.
00:14:02 The modern GOP.
00:14:04 So, top members of the GOP, most prominently the vice president, think the path to victory, political victory, lies in winning over the Rogan bros.
00:14:12 And the vice president has made this pretty clear over and over and over.
00:14:14 So, the New York Times reported just a few weeks back, quote, Vance made clear to colleagues he feared losing some of the so-called low-propensity voters, the young men who are not traditional Republicans, but who had voted for the Trump Vance ticket in 2024.
00:14:26 This was an audience tuned into the Manosphere podcasters like Joe Rogan, and it was worrisome that the podcast hosts themselves were now rebelling.
00:14:33 And of course, the vice president has recommended that everyone ought to listen to the benighted musings of Theo Vaughn, a double digit IQ comedian whose discernment is on par with that of a brick.
00:14:47 Here was the vice president of the United States at TPUSA a few months back.
00:14:52 You know, I think if you want a good laugh, I love Theo Vaughn.
00:14:55 Like, he's one of my favorite.
00:14:56 He's just incredible.
00:14:57 And he's got one of these senses of humor where, like, 30% of the time it goes completely over my head.
00:15:03 And 70% of the time he's the funniest person imaginable.
00:15:06 But I think Theo has a good heart, and that's one of the reasons why I really like listening to his show.
00:15:13 So much great stuff in Theo Vaughn.
00:15:14 Things like, you know, his usual spate of conspiracy.
00:15:22 Our entire society has been firmly lobotomized.
00:15:24 It's amazing.
00:15:25 Here is Theo Vaughn, you know, with Joe Rogan.
00:15:28 Again, just rapping on the conspiracy theories.
00:15:33 People are like, we'll elect the Democrats next time. 1.00
00:15:35 It's like, but it's all the same shit. 0.99
00:15:37 Has been happening forever. 0.99
00:15:39 They haven't been helping anybody forever.
00:15:41 They're letting politicians slurp on kids. 0.80
00:15:44 All of our money goes to Israel and they're using it to genocide people.
00:15:47 It's like everybody is scared out of their wits right now. 0.70
00:15:50 It's like our religious leaders are afraid to speak out. 1.00
00:15:54 It's a time where it's like Satan is amongst us and our religious leaders are talking about bullshit. 1.00
00:15:59 It's just like, what is going on? 1.00
00:16:01 We got to get you off those antidepressants, son.
00:16:01 I don't know, man.
00:16:03 You're losing your marbles.
00:16:05 Come hang out with us.
00:16:05 You think I am?
00:16:06 Just chill out.
00:16:07 I'm here. 1.00
00:16:10 Again, the blackpelling, this is what you need more of. 1.00
00:16:12 You need more of the blackpelling, more of the conspiracism. 1.00
00:16:14 It's what you need. 0.97
00:16:16 You need a guy who tells you that news stories are actually created by actors.
00:16:20 That's what you really need, says the guy who literally acts for a living.
00:16:25 Right, but I think that this starts to happen.
00:16:27 News stories get created, right?
00:16:28 Yeah.
00:16:29 Things get, whether they're fiction or whatever goes on, you don't even know a lot of times what's news stories.
00:16:34 You can send actors out to create a scene, you see a video, you believe it, and then they make movies.
00:16:39 Must have been done before.
00:16:40 Right.
00:16:41 It's been done before.
00:16:41 Oh, yeah.
00:16:42 There was, but then you see movies and stuff come out later about it.
00:16:46 So it's like you're almost creating your own news to then make like a, based on a real story.
00:16:52 You know what I'm talking about?
00:16:54 I can see why the vice president is recommending this genius level talk. 1.00
00:16:57 It is definitely, you know, I think, edifying for the young male population of the United States to listen to people who may be borderline retarded talking about politics. 1.00
00:17:09 Now, listen, I think that this particular strategy is flawed for four particular reasons for the vice president, all of which I've expressed publicly. 1.00
00:17:17 One, you have to build your own coalition.
00:17:19 You can't just duplicate President Trump's.
00:17:21 I know the vice president of the United States thinks that if he just keeps Trump's coalition, he wins in 2028. 1.00
00:17:25 This is wrong, and it is also politically stupid. 0.99
00:17:28 No politician can duplicate. 1.00
00:17:30 The coalition built by another politician.
00:17:32 That is not the way that this works.
00:17:34 If you take Donald Trump's coalition and you map JD Vance onto that coalition, JD Vance loses participants in literally every area of that coalition.
00:17:43 He wins fewer women, fewer Hispanics, fewer blacks, fewer blue collar voters, because it's not possible to outcompete President Trump with blue collar white voters.
00:17:53 He does worse with the manosphere.
00:17:56 He wins fewer of everyone, pretty much.
00:18:01 He has to create his own coalition.
00:18:03 And if you just try to grab Trump's coalition, it's going to fade away on you. 0.94
00:18:06 Hillary Clinton tried to do this with Barack Obama and it totally failed.
00:18:09 You just can't do it.
00:18:09 Okay.
00:18:10 Second reason the people, if you try to follow the people around, right?
00:18:13 Let's say this is Vox Populi.
00:18:15 Okay.
00:18:15 You follow the people around.
00:18:16 The people are fickle.
00:18:18 Joe Rogan, for example.
00:18:21 Trump has been in three elections.
00:18:22 Joe Rogan voted for Donald Trump this many times.
00:18:25 I'm holding up one finger one time.
00:18:27 He is now endorsing James Tellurico for Senate in Texas.
00:18:30 The notion that if you just go on Joe Rogan's show, And you kind of mirror his conspiratorial musings and blackpill super hard the way that JD Vance actually did on Joe Rogan's show that all the Joe Rogan's voters will end up with you. 0.79
00:18:42 That's silly.
00:18:44 The people can change their mind. 0.97
00:18:44 That's silly. 0.97
00:18:46 The people are fickle. 0.98
00:18:46 Joe Rogan is fickle. 0.98
00:18:48 Theo Vaughn is fickle.
00:18:49 All these people are fickle because they don't have any consistent worldview.
00:18:52 So if you just try to follow them around, there's a very good shot they will run away from you, just on a pragmatic level.
00:18:58 Third, successful leaders lead and the coalitions follow in their wake.
00:19:03 Politicians who tend to pander, meaning they just kind of run around chasing the crowd.
00:19:07 It tends not to work.
00:19:09 This is where President Trump is actually quite unique.
00:19:11 President Trump doesn't go on Joe Rogan and just sort of mirror what Joe Rogan is saying.
00:19:16 President Trump says whatever President Trump wants to say, and then whoever follows him kind of wants to follow him.
00:19:20 That's how it works.
00:19:22 Trump is the same dude everywhere.
00:19:25 He doesn't change what he is saying because he's on Joe Rogan or Theo Vaughn or my show or anybody. 0.98
00:19:29 All right, coming up, we'll get to the fourth reason why it is stupid to chase around Joe Rogan's audience as a politician. 0.94
00:19:36 First, we have obviously reached a strange point in American life. 0.90
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00:19:41 You call a company and an actual human being answers the phone.
00:19:44 Good customer service, a reasonable price.
00:19:45 That's like the bare minimum, but you don't even get that these days.
00:19:49 Our standards for customer service have gotten ridiculous, right?
00:19:52 You call someplace up, you spend 25 minutes listening to elevator music.
00:19:55 Finally, somebody gets on and they have no idea what in the hell you're talking about.
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00:20:39 Fourth, and most importantly, it is immoral and wrong as a leader to forego truth in favor of popularity.
00:20:46 I know this is a thing that has fallen out of favor.
00:20:48 We're supposed to just believe that our politicians, that their job is to chase the people around with a butterfly net.
00:20:55 And that is wrong. 0.99
00:20:56 It is morally, it's politically stupid, but it is also morally wrong. 0.99
00:21:01 It's very funny. 0.98
00:21:02 There are a bunch of people, purportedly on the right now, who say things like vox populi, vox de, right?
00:21:08 Meaning the voice of the people is the voice of God. 1.00
00:21:10 That is stupid and it is nonsense. 0.99
00:21:12 And it actually comes from an eighth century letter to Charlemagne in which the author called that idea and crowds, following crowds around, madness. 1.00
00:21:20 It turns out the people are often an idiot. 0.99
00:21:22 The people are often wrong. 1.00
00:21:23 This is why we have a constitution.
00:21:25 Why?
00:21:26 Because you wouldn't need a constitution.
00:21:27 If the people were awesome all the time, always right, you wouldn't need a constitution.
00:21:31 The founders feared and despised the mob.
00:21:33 They wanted a constitution because they knew certain rights had to be put off limits so that the people could not run roughshod over them.
00:21:39 That's why checks and balances exist.
00:21:41 That is why they are there.
00:21:43 Now, over the course of the last century and a half, we in all of our great wisdom decided to basically dismantle many of those checks and balances in pursuit of a far more activist and centralized government that does things.
00:21:53 But that's had some pretty bad side effects.
00:21:56 Now, here's the thing I believe that the truth always wins, eventually.
00:22:01 Because reality always wins, eventually.
00:22:03 But the key word there is eventually.
00:22:05 So listen, I get the logic as to why politicians pander and why they lie and why they always follow the people around with the butterfly net.
00:22:11 Why they're always chasing the parade.
00:22:12 This has always been true.
00:22:13 There is nothing new about this.
00:22:14 This is what demagoguery is.
00:22:16 We have an entire political class following the dictum of a 19th century French politician named Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin.
00:22:23 He said, there go the people.
00:22:25 I must follow them for I am their leader.
00:22:29 That's where we are.
00:22:30 And here's the thing.
00:22:31 If you try to follow the people, you probably won't catch up with them.
00:22:34 Especially if what you're doing as a Republican is just pitching a softer version of what Democrats are hard selling.
00:22:40 Even if you do win on that platform, you'll lose the country because running that car toward the cliff at 60 miles per hour is only marginally better than running that car at the cliff at 90 miles per hour, which brings us to the actual uniparty that has formed in this country.
00:22:54 That's the uniparty that hates free markets, the uniparty that does not like private property, the uniparty that thinks government is the solution, and that does not give a damn about the fact that we are now $40 trillion in debt.
00:23:07 I'm the only host, so far, there are a few others probably.
00:23:11 I'm the only major host, so far as I'm aware, or one of the only ones, who legitimately talks about the things that would stop that, like restructuring mandatory entitlement programs.
00:23:19 No one will do it.
00:23:22 Our debt is driven primarily by mandatory entitlement programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, that represents 50 to 60% of our national debt.
00:23:32 And then there's the interest on all of that.
00:23:34 Nobody in any party will ever touch that stuff.
00:23:36 Why?
00:23:37 Well, because they're following the people around, right?
00:23:39 The people don't want to hear it.
00:23:40 Because the people want all the benefits and none of the drawbacks, which means that our political class, by following the people, will help run us right over the fiscal cliff.
00:23:49 And this is what is going on in the actual world.
00:23:52 According to Reuters, the U.S. federal budget deficit for July jumped to $432 billion, a record for the month, as higher outlays and more negative tariff revenues also brought the 2026 fiscal year's budget gap to $1.8 trillion, topping the full fiscal 2025 deficit with two months left in the fiscal year.
00:24:10 Last month's budget gap.
00:24:13 Was the largest monthly deficit since March 2021.
00:24:15 There have been only two other higher monthly deficits $864 billion in June 2020, which was the middle of the pandemic, and $738 billion in April 2020, also in the middle of the pandemic.
00:24:29 So you've got the GOP, and the basic idea of the GOP is what if we just say all the things that people want us to say?
00:24:35 So if DSA is hot with the podcast bros, if quasi communism is hot, what if we just say soft communism?
00:24:42 That's the thing that we're going to do.
00:24:42 Right?
00:24:43 We're going to follow the people.
00:24:44 Now, again, the GOP strategy on all this stuff.
00:24:47 Has now turned into running us off the cliff at 60 miles per hour in order to forestall someone running us off the cliff at 90 miles per hour.
00:24:55 So now, key members of the GOP are basically selling a softer version of big government solutions that Democrats have been pumping for decades.
00:25:03 The GOP's plan apparently is to win over the people by telling them that the American dream is precisely what I told you yesterday.
00:25:09 It is not a bunch of stuff you deserve.
00:25:11 Remember, the American dream is the idea, as I expressed yesterday, that if you do things in a wise, good, prudent manner, if you make good, wise, virtuous decisions, you will do better than your parents.
00:25:22 And if your kids do the same, they will do better than you.
00:25:24 And that dream is very much still alive despite all of the obstacles thrown up By statists right and left.
00:25:29 It's a process.
00:25:30 It's a process.
00:25:31 It's not a list of products.
00:25:32 The American dream isn't a house.
00:25:33 It isn't the car.
00:25:34 It isn't the college degree.
00:25:36 It is the process by which you achieve those things through good, responsible decision making.
00:25:40 And if you don't make those good and responsible decisions, you don't get those things.
00:25:44 Because there is a correlation in the American dream between work and wisdom and virtue and innovation and drive and grit and success, right?
00:25:54 That's the process.
00:25:56 But now the GOP's plan is to say that the American dream is the same thing that Democrats say it is a list of things you deserve.
00:26:03 Not a process because the process has sold you out or black pilled on the process, but stuff you deserve.
00:26:08 So the vice president was selling that yesterday.
00:26:13 And I guess I would say to that young person that you, as an American citizen, deserve to have a good life in this country and you deserve to have a government that is making it easier for you to start a family, for you to afford to get a good education, for you to have a good job, for you to afford a home.
00:26:29 And what I would also say is that whilst these things sometimes take a little bit of time, We are already seeing the positive results come from the president's economic policies.
00:26:38 We're seeing trillions of dollars of new investment into this country, which means good middle class jobs for young people, middle income people, all across our country.
00:26:50 Now, again, it's the beginning of what he says that's sort of fascinating because what he says there is that what Republicans ought to say, what he would tell young people is you deserve, as an American, a good education, a good job, a good home, meaning you just get those things, right?
00:27:04 It's a list of things that you get, not the process.
00:27:07 Now, what I would say to Americans is you deserve the opportunity to achieve as ends those things if you actually participate in the process.
00:27:16 That's what we're doing.
00:27:16 Right?
00:27:16 We're getting the government as an obstacle out of your way so you can succeed.
00:27:20 That's the thing.
00:27:22 We want it to be easier for you making good, wise, virtuous, responsible decisions to afford a home.
00:27:30 But the way that we do that is by getting out of your way and by getting government out of your way so you can actually do those things.
00:27:30 Right?
00:27:36 That's what we do.
00:27:36 Right?
00:27:37 But it's not a list of products because once you say you just deserve, you deserve.
00:27:42 A college degree, a job, a home.
00:27:46 You deserve that stuff.
00:27:48 Based on what?
00:27:50 Based on what?
00:27:52 I can wish all those things for you, but deserve is a very particular word.
00:27:55 Deserve says that someone owes it to you.
00:27:59 That's what deserve means.
00:28:01 If you deserve your salary, it's because you worked this week.
00:28:03 If you deserve your private property rights, that's because it adheres to you as an individual human being.
00:28:07 If I say you deserve a home, someone is supposed to now provide you the home.
00:28:11 That's how that works.
00:28:13 So again, American dream as a list of things that the government is going to provide you is not, in fact, a conservative principle.
00:28:19 All right, coming up, we'll get to the vice president's comments on socialism and how to stop it.
00:28:24 Plus, we'll get to a crazy surrogacy story that reminds us why God made the system the way he kind of made the system.
00:28:30 First, back to school season is here.
00:28:31 That means the kids have new backpacks, new teachers, new schedules.
00:28:34 And approximately four days from now, somebody in your house will have a runny nose because sending kids back to school, you're sending them into a gigantic germ exchange program.
00:28:42 I mean, honestly, we're already hitting it.
00:28:43 We are already hitting it.
00:28:44 The minute we send our kids to a place with a bunch of other kids, someone comes down with a cold.
00:28:49 I have five kids.
00:28:50 It happens like all the time.
00:28:51 And then mommy gets it. 0.99
00:28:52 It sucks. 0.94
00:28:53 It's literally happening to my life right now. 0.96
00:28:56 This right now is the time of year when I'm especially conscious of what we need to eat.
00:28:59 You want the fruits, you want the veggies, you want everybody eating well.
00:29:02 And then reality intervenes.
00:29:03 This is why Balance of Nature fits so easily into my routine.
00:29:06 It's simple, it's consistent.
00:29:07 During back to school chaos, I'll take every good habit I can get.
00:29:10 Go to balanceofnature.com today, subscribe to the whole health system or any of their other subscriptions, and receive an additional 10% off with promo code Shapiro.
00:29:17 Plus, with my code Shapiro, Balance of Nature will also send you a free guiltless snack.
00:29:21 That's balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro.
00:29:24 Again, Balance of Nature.
00:29:26 Promo code Shapiro.
00:29:27 And when you subscribe to their whole health system or any of the other subscription packages, you get an additional 10% off when you use promo code Shapiro.
00:29:33 JD Vance, again, a lot of the right now is doing this routine where they believe that the best way to defeat socialism is by being socialist in our language.
00:29:43 That socialism, the reason socialism is on the rise is because the free markets have failed.
00:29:49 Got to burn down the free markets in order to save the free markets.
00:29:53 And here's JD Vance yesterday.
00:29:56 And my warning to my fellow Republicans, Will, would be if we don't get this right, don't blame young people for being sympathetic to socialism.
00:30:04 We've got to blame ourselves.
00:30:06 And I think what is so unique and refreshing about Donald Trump's economic policies is that it's not the same old economic ideas that you would have heard 30, 40 years ago.
00:30:17 He's talking about rebuilding our industrial base, rebuilding the heartland, making our streets safer, making it possible for young people to afford to buy a home.
00:30:27 This is how you stop socialism.
00:30:29 You don't stop socialism by throwing slogans at people about the free market.
00:30:33 As much as I love the free market, you stop socialism by making people's lives better.
00:30:39 And that's what we're trying to do every single day.
00:30:42 Okay.
00:30:43 You stop socialism by government making people's lives better is not a free market proposition.
00:30:47 When he says he loves the free market, by the way, you should read his autobiography.
00:30:49 He clearly does not.
00:30:50 I mean, if you read Communion, which is his new book, he really, really does not like the free market at all.
00:30:55 But again, this is the stop.
00:30:59 So Republicans have basically decided we're going to follow the crowd.
00:31:01 They're pissed off.
00:31:02 And so, what we're going to do is we are now going to repeat to them a bunch of Democratic stuff, but watered down just a little bit.
00:31:09 If Democrats are giving you 100 proof, we're going to give you like 80 proof.
00:31:14 Now, here is the reality.
00:31:16 What you actually have to sell to the American public is opportunity, right?
00:31:21 That's the thing that you got to protect the process of the American dream.
00:31:24 And that government is inhibiting the American dream.
00:31:26 This is what Reagan sold.
00:31:27 The difference between what's being sold now and what was being sold by Reagan, you would never hear the language that Ronald Reagan used in 1980 used now.
00:31:27 Okay.
00:31:34 And it's funny.
00:31:35 You have people on the right like, What did Reagan ever accomplish other than destroying the Soviet Union, creating two decades of uninterrupted economic growth and completely reshaping American government?
00:31:44 Aside from that, what did he accomplish?
00:31:46 The dead hand of Reaganism.
00:31:48 Well, I mean, he did win 49 states and then he bequeathed a third term to George H.W. Bush, one of the most uninspiring politicians ever to hold the presidency with again, like 48 states, I believe, against Michael Dukakis.
00:32:04 So there's that.
00:32:06 Okay.
00:32:06 Why?
00:32:06 Because capitalism and free markets are the only economic force that have ever generated prosperity and innovation over any serious amount of time.
00:32:14 Free markets have made our lives better.
00:32:16 Positing that free markets, we need something besides free markets to make lives better.
00:32:20 The idea that if we spend up the wazoo and hand you things, then we'll win over the people.
00:32:23 You're not going to be able to outbid the Democrats on this.
00:32:26 You just won't because it's not possible.
00:32:28 If you start from the framework that you're here, you're breathing, it doesn't matter what decisions you make, it doesn't matter if you make wise, good, virtuous decisions at all.
00:32:36 You deserve X, Y, and Z paid for by somebody else.
00:32:40 You will lose to the Democrats because they are promising X, Y, Z, and also A through W, all paid for by somebody else.
00:32:51 This is what Democrats are doing right now.
00:32:53 So, you know, Republicans are busy laughing at the DSA platform because the DSA platform basically makes the case that they are going to pay for literally everything that people do throughout their lives.
00:33:03 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:33:05 Wasn't that amazing?
00:33:06 Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.