The Ben Shapiro Show - Luigi Mangione and the Left's Murder Fantasy

00:00:00.000 Political violence is a growing problem in America.

00:00:03.000 Why?

00:00:03.000 Well, because it's being celebrated by a lot of people.

00:00:06.000 It's being helped out by liberal-minded judges, populist politicians, the absolute insanity of social media.

00:00:11.000 That's why alleged CEO killer Luigi Mangione is cleaning up in the courts and in the media, and why his alleged murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson is only the beginning of our political violence problem.

00:00:22.000 Plus, we'll get to the most hotly fought GOP primary in recent memory in Kentucky, starring gadfly and conspiracist Thomas Massey, a shooting At an Islamic center in San Diego, and why the call her daddy lady is suddenly cosplaying conservatism?

00:00:35.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:45.000 A society that greenlights political violence is likely to see more of it.

00:00:48.000 You subsidize it, you get more of it.

00:00:50.000 The Luigi Mangione case, which of course sprang up now about a year ago when Luigi Mangione allegedly shot to death United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, then went on a gigantic sort of media spree.

00:01:04.000 He ran all over the country and people were trying to find out who he was, and he had a whole fan base that emerged.

00:01:10.000 All of that leads to more political violence.

00:01:12.000 A society that greenlights political violence by essentially arguing, number one, that these systems you don't like, Are murderous systems.

00:01:20.000 And thus, people who participate in those systems must be murdered.

00:01:24.000 Any society that greenlights that is just greenlighting political violence.

00:01:28.000 And then when you have liberal systems that are set up to let criminals off the hook, it gets even worse.

00:01:33.000 So, there's a big trial update for Luigi Mangione.

00:01:36.000 Yesterday, a judge ruled that while the murder weapon was admissible at trial, a bunch of other evidence was suppressed.

00:01:43.000 So, a New York judge has now ruled that some key evidence that was seized from his backpack during his arrest at a Pennsylvania McDonald's is inadmissible at trial.

00:01:51.000 Some of it can still be shown to jurors.

00:01:54.000 The decision is a little bit complex.

00:01:55.000 It is also not particularly well founded.

00:01:59.000 So, essentially, the evidence that's been ruled admissible includes the gun, a 3D printed silencer, and a red notebook that allegedly contains a bunch of damning writing.

00:02:09.000 The evidence to be suppressed, however, includes a phone, Mangione's passport, loaded magazines, a wallet, and a computer chip.

00:02:16.000 The judge in this particular case said he agreed with the defense argument that the search of Mangione's backpack at McDonald's without reading him his rights.

00:02:24.000 Was unconstitutional because it had been moved away from arm's reach.

00:02:27.000 So, why?

00:02:28.000 Well, New York law is super duper duper weird.

00:02:32.000 Hey, first of all, it's unclear why New York law should be applied, even though the entire search happened in Pennsylvania.

00:02:37.000 The judge wrote Defendant is being tried in New York for a crime that occurred in New York.

00:02:41.000 Under these circumstances, it is clear that New York is the forum state and that New York has a paramount interest in the application of the law.

00:02:47.000 Suppression issues, procedural issues, and evidentiary issues are governed by the law of the forum state.

00:02:51.000 Okay, that's super duper weird.

00:02:53.000 It really is.

00:02:54.000 And the reason it's strange is if he'd been caught in California, Why exactly would the cops in California have to know New York law in order to properly do their job?

00:02:54.000 It's strange.

00:03:05.000 Well, in any case, New York's laws on this sort of stuff are insane.

00:03:09.000 First of all, the federal law with regard to search and seizure is totally crazy.

00:03:13.000 Under a case called Mapp versus Ohio, which is one of these critical criminal law cases you learn in law school year one, Mapp versus Ohio established the so called exclusionary rules.

00:03:23.000 So, believe it or not, for the vast majority of American history, if there was an illegal search and seizure, somebody broke into your house, the cops broke into your house, and they found evidence of a crime.

00:03:31.000 That evidence was still admissible in court.

00:03:34.000 The cop might be punished.

00:03:35.000 There might be a lawsuit against the cop.

00:03:37.000 But Mapp versus Ohio established the so called exclusionary rule, which said that if your Fourth Amendment rights are violated, then we can't even use the evidence in court. 0.93

00:03:46.000 Now, the reason this is particularly stupid is because it is penalizing the general public for the failures of the cops. 0.69

00:03:51.000 So the cops failed to fully follow the Fourth Amendment. 0.99

00:03:55.000 And now criminals have to be let out on the street.

00:03:58.000 Unless they quote unquote redo your rights. 1.00

00:04:00.000 I know we all take this for granted now because we've watched a bunch of episodes of Law and Order, but it really is quite stupid. 0.95

00:04:05.000 The idea that you have to be read your Miranda rights. 1.00

00:04:07.000 Again, another ridiculous case.

00:04:09.000 Somebody has to inform you of your right not to self incriminate, for example.

00:04:13.000 Otherwise, we'll take the evidence and throw it out of court. 0.96

00:04:15.000 Really, really, really dumb and means that lots more criminals get off and end up on the streets. 0.87

00:04:21.000 Well, in this particular case, New York law goes even further. 0.95

00:04:24.000 New York law has something called the exigency exception.

00:04:27.000 Okay, so what that means is that you are allowed to search somebody without a warrant or without any warning if there's threat of exigent danger, right?

00:04:37.000 There's imminent danger.

00:04:39.000 There's a guy who's running away from you and he's firing a gun at you.

00:04:42.000 You tackle him and you search his pockets and you come up with drugs.

00:04:45.000 So that would be the exigent circumstance.

00:04:47.000 In this particular case, they say that the property must be within the suspect's immediate control or grabbable area, but the backpack was moved away from him to a table about nine feet away, at which point it was now no longer in his control.

00:04:59.000 And so they therefore could not search it without having the evidence excluded.

00:05:04.000 However, later they also searched the backpack after they had seized all the property and they had a proper warrant and they had already read him his rights.

00:05:13.000 The officers didn't search the backpack itself at McDonald's.

00:05:18.000 So they did have sort of an independent source.

00:05:21.000 And so typically, under the law, even if there's a Fourth Amendment violation, if there's an independent source of the information, then you're still allowed to use it.

00:05:29.000 So let's say, for example, that you're arrested before somebody reads you your Miranda rights, you immediately blurt out that you did the crime.

00:05:36.000 You haven't been informed of your rights, you just blurt out that you did the crime.

00:05:40.000 That may be inadmissible.

00:05:41.000 But after they read your rights, if you repeat that, it's now admissible.

00:05:44.000 So I'm unclear.

00:05:44.000 As to why some of this evidence is being thrown out.

00:05:48.000 But the bottom line is that so much of our criminal justice system has been twisted in favor of the perpetrator and against the victims, that is part and parcel of a broader effort over the course of the last 70 or 80 years in American law to grant outsized rights to perpetrators as opposed to defending the general public from those perpetrators.

00:06:09.000 But that's not the really big issue here.

00:06:10.000 The really big issue when it comes to Luigi Mangione, of course, is the fact that he has a lot of supporters.

00:06:15.000 There's been an entire permission structure that's been set up largely by the left that says if you don't like the systems of American life, those systems are intractable, they're unchangeable, and people who participate in the systems are guilty.

00:06:27.000 Now, this is nothing new.

00:06:29.000 I'm old enough to remember because I'm more than 15 years old.

00:06:32.000 I'm old enough to remember the Occupy Wall Street protests.

00:06:36.000 Occupy Wall Street was a movement that came up in the aftermath of the Great Recession 2009, 2010.

00:06:40.000 And there are a group of people on the left who, instead of protesting the government's involvement with Wall Street, decided to protest Wall Street itself.

00:06:48.000 The idea was.

00:06:49.000 That Wall Street was inherently evil.

00:06:52.000 Now, that was a completely misdirected use of mental and emotional resources because, after all, the members of Wall Street are not answerable to the general public.

00:07:00.000 They're operating in the private sphere.

00:07:02.000 If you wish to protest public policy, we have a whole city called Washington, D.C., where federal public policy gets made.

00:07:09.000 But that's not what the left is protesting.

00:07:10.000 They're not protesting government involvement in industry, they're not protesting government's heavy hand.

00:07:17.000 They're protesting that government, they say, is actually not doing Enough to be involved.

00:07:21.000 They are protesting the existence of the private sector itself.

00:07:24.000 And so if they don't like the systems, they blame members of the private sector for participating in those systems.

00:07:30.000 And you can see this throughout left wing politics.

00:07:33.000 In soft version, you see it in Zorhan Mamdani saying ridiculous and insane things about the nature of how the world should work.

00:07:43.000 All righty, coming up, we'll get into the left's agenda, their permission structure for violence.

00:07:47.000 Plus, Gad Sad will join the show, and we'll get into the Thomas Massey primary in Kentucky.

00:07:51.000 A ton of stuff still coming up first.

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00:09:09.000 So, Zorhan Mamdani, the New York City mayor, who again is wonderfully clear about exactly what it is that he believes.

00:09:18.000 I mean, I will give him points for clarity.

00:09:21.000 Yesterday, Mamdani was doing an event and he was talking about Reagan's most terrifying words in the English language.

00:09:28.000 The most terrifying words Reagan said were, I'm from the government, I'm here to help.

00:09:32.000 Mamdani says, no, no, no, no.

00:09:33.000 Most terrifying words in the English language come when the government is not involved.

00:09:38.000 You need more government involvement.

00:09:39.000 It's the private sector that has everything wrong.

00:09:42.000 Here is Zorhan Mamdani modifying the Reagan nine most terrifying words.

00:09:48.000 Standing here this morning, I cannot help but think of the words of our 40th president, Ronald Reagan.

00:09:55.000 He famously said, The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

00:10:02.000 It's a good quote, but I disagree.

00:10:05.000 I think nine more terrifying words are actually, I worked all day and can't feed my family.

00:10:14.000 We are going to use the power of government to lower prices and make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table.

00:10:22.000 When government understands its purpose as serving the very working people that it has left behind time and again, it can make a difference in the most pressing struggles facing our city today.

00:10:35.000 Again, the entire left wing thought structure is that failures are attributable to the private sector.

00:10:41.000 So, if you're a person who's in the private sector and you're paying somebody a wage that they wish to accept from you, you are therefore responsible for all the problems of their life.

00:10:51.000 Government is the fix.

00:10:53.000 Government is always and forever the fix.

00:10:55.000 And so, for example, if you don't like the healthcare system, it is not that the healthcare system in the United States is heavily regulated and heavily subsidized, all of which is true.

00:11:03.000 The United States healthcare system is a mess, but one of the reasons it is a mess, the biggest reason it is a mess, is because of the heavy hand of government involved in everything.

00:11:12.000 But according to the left, The people involved in the private sector are bad.

00:11:15.000 The people involved in the public sector are good.

00:11:18.000 And this creates a phenomenon that they like to call social murder, which justifies violence.

00:11:23.000 So if, for example, you're Brian Thompson, a father, a person who raised himself up from not particularly wonderful economic circumstances in his youth to become the head of United Health, one of the biggest insurers in America.

00:11:36.000 And if it turns out that you operate within the law and that the law itself is flawed, but you operate within it, you are responsible for death. 0.98

00:11:44.000 And thus, you may deserve to die.

00:11:46.000 So, yesterday, outside of the trial of Luigi Mangione, some self proclaimed Mangionistas named Abro Rios, Ashley Rojas, and Lena Weisbrot showed off passes that they had received, according to the New York Post, from Mayor Zorhan Mamdani's administration. 0.98

00:12:04.000 And they got press passes, apparently for their content following the Mangione trial.

00:12:10.000 But they're pretty clear, these so called reporters, about their beliefs about Mangione, which is that he was justified in murdering allegedly.

00:12:16.000 Brian Thompson.

00:12:18.000 Here are Rojas and Weissbrot making that case. 0.67

00:12:23.000 If you guys are okay with someone like Ryan Thompson being around and that being a part of our society, that's more about you as a person because you look absolutely monstrous.

00:12:37.000 Defending someone like that would be super difficult.

00:12:40.000 He participates in social murder.

00:12:41.000 That's what we have.

00:12:42.000 Mass social murder. 0.97

00:12:44.000 He's responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden. 0.93

00:12:46.000 And I remember Americans celebrating when Osama bin Laden was killed. 0.67

00:12:52.000 It's not like we don't understand heroic violence or like when violence is good, that's like as American as America gets.

00:13:01.000 Now, again, this is psychotic stuff.

00:13:03.000 Brian Thompson responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden because he ran an insurance company, and that insurance company sometimes denied claims.

00:13:11.000 And if you believe that they were unjustifiably denying your claim, then you would take them to court.

00:13:14.000 Again, this isn't to say that our systems are wonderful when it comes to health insurance.

00:13:18.000 Again, health insurance largely at this point is simply health coverage because it turns out. that you're not insuring against the possibility of future risk.

00:13:25.000 You are very often covering people who have conditions you know about in advance.

00:13:29.000 But that's to get into the complexities of the system.

00:13:31.000 The idea that Brian Thompson, by being the CEO of a major insurance company, was somehow like Osama bin Laden, who literally ordered the flying of planes into buildings in New York is psychotic, but is an increasingly popular view with people on the left who, again, believe that the private sector is responsible for all of the ills of society and that all the systems that they don't like Are run by people who are attempting to do things like murder.

00:13:57.000 Here are Ashley Rojas and Weisbrot again saying that they actually liked Brian Thompson's murder.

00:14:02.000 I said what I said.

00:14:07.000 I don't give a flying.

00:14:08.000 His children are better off without him.

00:14:09.000 They need to learn to not be like their dad and enjoy the blood money, kids.

00:14:13.000 Was that.

00:14:15.000 What was that?

00:14:16.000 I didn't get that, what you said.

00:14:17.000 I'm standing on business with Brian Thompson.

00:14:21.000 I don't give a flying.

00:14:23.000 Millions of Americans.

00:14:24.000 I liked it.

00:14:29.000 Okay, these people are saying they literally liked the murder, and his kids, Brian Thompson's kids, are better off without him.

00:14:35.000 Now, lest you think that I'm just nut picking here, I'm just taking some nuts off the tree and then pointing them out.

00:14:39.000 Hassan Piker was talking about quote unquote social murder with regard to Mangione to the New York Times like a couple of weeks ago, and this guy is considered a mainstream political commentator by the left, up to and including people like Ezra Klein and John Favreau.

00:14:53.000 Again, this was with the New York Times, him saying the same kind of nonsense. 0.50

00:14:58.000 Engels.

00:14:59.000 Wrote about the concept of social murder.

00:15:04.000 And Brian Thompson, as the United Healthcare CEO, was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder, the systematized forms of violence, the structural violence of poverty, the for profit, paywalled system of healthcare in this country, and the consequences of that are.

00:15:30.000 Tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths.

00:15:35.000 And that was a fascinating story for me because Americans are very draconian about crime and punishment.

00:15:43.000 They're very black and white on this issue.

00:15:45.000 And yet, because of the pervasive pain that the private healthcare system had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place.

00:16:04.000 If you want more political violence in the United States, the left will bring it to you.

00:16:08.000 They will bring it to you.

00:16:10.000 There's a reason why a quarter of young people on the left totally approve of political violence because it is part and parcel of the system of thought that they have built up.

00:16:18.000 When you start treating private sector activity as quote unquote social murder because it has externalities that you don't like, but meanwhile, the government regulatory systems that drive that activity are somehow good.

00:16:30.000 And what you actually need is top down government tyrannical control.

00:16:33.000 So if you're a member of the government, you're never answerable to the American public.

00:16:36.000 But if you are a member of the private sector, you're answerable in terms of possibly being murdered because people like Hassan Piker.

00:16:42.000 Are you talking about how you have committed social murder?

00:16:45.000 It's a form of self defense to murder CEOs at this point.

00:16:49.000 And then you wonder why people are increasingly being shot over politics.

00:16:52.000 This would be the reason.

00:16:54.000 Joining me on the line is Gad Sad.

00:16:56.000 He's a Lebanese Canadian evolutionary behavioral scientist and professor of marketing.

00:16:59.000 And he has a brand new book out called Suicidal Empathy, which of course is a massive bestseller.

00:17:04.000 Gad, thanks so much for the time.

00:17:04.000 Really appreciate it.

00:17:06.000 Oh, good to be with you, Ben.

00:17:09.000 So let's talk about this concept, suicidal empathy.

00:17:11.000 Obviously, I've mentioned it on the show before.

00:17:14.000 Basically, the idea seems to be.

00:17:16.000 That your levels of empathy at a certain point may lead you to do things that actively harm you because you care so much.

00:17:24.000 You care so much about people who actively hate you that you're willing to do things that end up putting you in harm's way.

00:17:31.000 Maybe you can explain where this concept comes from, how you came up with it.

00:17:34.000 Exactly.

00:17:35.000 So, look, empathy is a wonderful virtue to possess.

00:17:39.000 We are a social species.

00:17:40.000 For you and I, Ben, to have a meaningful conversation, I need to put myself in your mind and vice versa.

00:17:46.000 That's called cognitive empathy or theory of mind.

00:17:49.000 But Aristotle explained to us several millennia ago in his Nicomachean Ethics everything in moderation.

00:17:56.000 Too little of something is not good.

00:17:57.000 Too much of something is not good.

00:17:58.000 And much of life is about finding that sweet spot.

00:18:01.000 And that exact principle applies to empathy.

00:18:04.000 If I have no empathy, I'm likely to be a psychopath.

00:18:07.000 If I have too much empathy, if empathy hyperactivates in the wrong situations toward the wrong targets, you end up with suicidal empathy.

00:18:19.000 So, yeah, this manifests in a bunch of ways.

00:18:21.000 Most obviously, It manifests, as you talk about in your book, with sort of an open immigration protocol on the part of the West.

00:18:26.000 People care so much and they're so empathetic to people outside the West that they say, Come on in, enjoy all of the benefits, all the goodies.

00:18:33.000 We don't vet people. 0.86

00:18:33.000 They come in, they take advantage of our civilization. 0.86

00:18:35.000 And that's how you end up with hundreds of thousands of people marching for Hamas on the streets in London. 0.95

00:18:41.000 Exactly right.

00:18:42.000 So, in my previous book, In the Parasitic Mind, I talk about how many parasitic ideas can hijack our ability to reason.

00:18:49.000 So, take, for example, cultural relativism, which is a parasitic idea.

00:18:53.000 It basically says that you're not allowed to Draw any negative, pejorative judgments of other people's cultural beliefs, religious beliefs, and so on. 0.98

00:19:02.000 So, if they wish to engage in honor killings, shut up, racist. 1.00

00:19:06.000 If they wish to engage in female genital mutilation of five year old girls, shut up, racist. 1.00

00:19:11.000 So, that then renders you impotent when you're standing there deciding on what type of immigration policy you should have. 0.99

00:19:18.000 You then argue in a suicidally empathetic way that it is wrong for you to argue that not all immigrants are equally likely to assimilate within the American ethos.

00:19:29.000 Everybody should have a chance, and therefore, your inability to discriminate between one set of cultural values and another leads to the disaster we see today.

00:19:39.000 So, again, I have a concept that I've posited before when I'm talking about your idea, extending it a little bit further, which is this concept that I've called homicidal empathy, which is basically the idea that you empathize with a group of people, and your empathy with that group of people is so strong that you yourself join them in their murderous ideas.

00:19:56.000 And I think you see this an enormous amount in the West.

00:19:58.000 We were talking a moment ago about the people who are sympathetic to Luigi Mangione.

00:20:02.000 And so their basic idea is, and Hassan Piker has said this, that he is so empathetic toward people who have suffered under the American healthcare system that actually the people who are running that system, the people who are in the insurance companies, those people are guilty of what he calls social murder.

00:20:16.000 So his empathy for people who are supposed victims of the insurance system is so strong that actually it's probably okay to murder healthcare CEOs because that's also coming from empathy.

00:20:27.000 It's empathy for one group leads to murderous hatred of another group.

00:20:32.000 Right.

00:20:32.000 And here, I mean, we Can invoke the 10 commandments that say it's a deontological rule.

00:20:37.000 You cannot murder someone.

00:20:39.000 Deontological ethics is an absolute statement.

00:20:43.000 It's never okay to lie, would be a deontological statement.

00:20:46.000 If you were to say it's okay to lie to spare someone's feelings, that's a consequentialist statement.

00:20:51.000 So the ones who, as you say, are suffering from homicidal empathy are applying a consequentialist ethic to murder.

00:21:00.000 It's okay to murder that guy because otherwise the world would be much darker.

00:21:04.000 So, therefore, murder is allowed for that guy. 0.96

00:21:07.000 It's a very, very dangerous way to think.

00:21:12.000 So, again, in your book, Suicidal Empathy, obviously, I think you're taking a pretty kind view of many of the people who dislike Western civilization.

00:21:20.000 And so, I wonder if you think that the empathy is really sort of the biggest problem here, or do we actually have something that's happening in the United States and Europe that may be even deeper, which is not even that this is driven by empathy.

00:21:32.000 People maybe want to flatter themselves and believe that it's driven by empathy, but actually, what it's driven by.

00:21:36.000 Is envy and actually dislike and hatred of particular groups, particularly people who are successful or civilizations that are more successful.

00:21:44.000 And so it may not be that, for example, left wingers in Europe and in the United States want mass migration because they're so sympathetic to what third worlders are claiming.

00:21:53.000 It may be that they actually want to bring people in because they themselves hate the civilization and believe that the civilization is bad.

00:21:58.000 Are the revolutionaries, in other words, being driven by empathy or are they being driven by envy that is masquerading as empathy?

00:22:05.000 I mean, I think it's a bit of both.

00:22:06.000 So take, for example, communism, right?

00:22:09.000 The idea is that it is inherently existentially unfair that some of us make a lot more money than others.

00:22:15.000 And so here comes the empathetic overlords who are going to equalize income distribution.

00:22:22.000 So it may be that they have other nefarious reasons, including pathological envy, but it is instantiated through an appeal to envy, right?

00:22:31.000 I mean, communists don't say we're going to confiscate your private property because we're mean.

00:22:36.000 They invoke this idea that, you know, it's inherently unfair.

00:22:40.000 That person A has less than person B. Let me take from person B, redistribute it via an appeal to empathy.

00:22:48.000 So let's talk about solutions here.

00:22:50.000 Obviously, very, very difficult to convince someone out of what they believe is a moral virtue.

00:22:55.000 A lot of people believe that empathy itself is a moral virtue.

00:22:59.000 And as you say, not in a sort of moderate way, the more empathetic you are, the better a person you are.

00:23:03.000 And so when you're confronting someone politically, when you're talking about politics and public policy, and you say, listen, the empathy that you're expressing right now is not.

00:23:10.000 Is not actually ending up with good public policy that helps the greatest number of people.

00:23:15.000 It's actually ending up with some pretty horrible results. 0.59

00:23:19.000 You're speaking in a language that people don't actually believe.

00:23:21.000 You mentioned deontological ethics versus consequentialist ethics.

00:23:25.000 For a lot of people who speak in terms of empathy, they actually are speaking in the language of deontological ethics.

00:23:31.000 They think that more empathy equals good.

00:23:33.000 And so it's very hard to shake that by pointing to consequentialism.

00:23:36.000 How do you argue people out of the idea that their empathy is some sort of absolute good?

00:23:41.000 That's a great question.

00:23:43.000 And depending on which side of the bed I wake up on, I'm either optimistic that it can be resolved or I'm pessimistic and it becomes an intractable problem.

00:23:51.000 One of the things that I've become quite adept at doing is when I'm engaging an interlocutor, I gauge whether they are flippable or not.

00:24:00.000 And if I think that the light of reason can enter them, I continue my engagement.

00:24:06.000 Otherwise, I walk away.

00:24:07.000 There is really no magic recipe, Ben.

00:24:10.000 You really have to get people to have the administration of the mind vaccine to them.

00:24:16.000 And hopefully, this book is one small step in trying to declutter people's minds.

00:24:22.000 But it is a very difficult problem.

00:24:26.000 Well, that's Gad Sad.

00:24:27.000 His book is Suicidal Empathy.

00:24:28.000 You can go pick it up right now.

00:24:29.000 It's a huge bestseller.

00:24:30.000 Really appreciate it.

00:24:30.000 Gad, thanks so much for the time.

00:24:32.000 Thank you, Ben.

00:24:33.000 Cheers.

00:24:34.000 A mass shooting at a mosque in San Diego, the Islamic center of San Diego, when two shooters who were openly Nazis, apparently, decided to shoot a bunch of people. 0.91

00:24:49.000 Three people who were innocent shot.

00:24:51.000 Two people died who were the shooters.

00:24:53.000 They shot themselves, apparently, inside a BMW, which again goes to show you the idea. 0.85

00:24:57.000 That political violence and crime are driven by people who are underclass, right?

00:25:02.000 People who are forgotten, the poor.

00:25:05.000 Very often it's not true.

00:25:06.000 Very often when it comes to political violence, political violence is driven largely by people who are upper middle class, actually.

00:25:11.000 Luigi Mangione was not poor.

00:25:13.000 He grew up as privileged as it's possible to be in the United States.

00:25:16.000 It sounds like these two shooters, same sort of thing.

00:25:19.000 According to the New York Post, anti Islamic writings were found in the suspect's vehicle.

00:25:23.000 Hate speech was written on the firearms used in the shooting, according to a source.

00:25:26.000 A shotgun and gas can with an SS sticker on the side were located at the scene.

00:25:30.000 Where the gunmen's bodies were discovered.

00:25:34.000 So, again, media are labeling this right wing violence.

00:25:38.000 It's Nazi violence.

00:25:39.000 People who obviously were, I would assume, radicalized online, because I don't think that in San Diego it's a hotbed of Nazi activity, traditionally speaking.

00:25:48.000 My guess would be, and again, it's speculative, that these are people who found common cause in online communities. 0.79

00:25:53.000 I'm sure we'll find this out with others who mimic Nazi cosplay. 0.77

00:25:57.000 This is why the Nazi cosplay online is not a victimless issue. 0.60

00:26:02.000 It turns out that when you emulate, Hitlerian nonsense and glorify it, crazy people might latch on to that and then go and do violence.

00:26:11.000 Not a shock, it's a permission structure for violence. 0.52

00:26:14.000 I mean, you're literally justifying one of the most violent movements ever to have existed on planet Earth. 1.00

00:26:20.000 The head of the Islamic Center of San Diego, a person named Taha Hussain, said it's outrageous to target a place of worship, which of course is true. 0.98

00:26:27.000 It is extremely outrageous to target a place of worship. 1.00

00:26:34.000 Our Islamic Center is a place of worship.

00:26:37.000 People come to the Islamic Center to pray, to celebrate, to learn.

00:26:45.000 Not only Muslims, but we have people from all walks of life.

00:26:49.000 Just this morning, earlier, a group of people, non Muslims, coming just to learn about our faith and our cultures. 1.00

00:27:00.000 So, this is something that we have never expected. 1.00

00:27:06.000 Okay, so I think the moral of the story Nazism bad, right?

00:27:09.000 I mean, this is not a very difficult moral. 0.93

00:27:11.000 Nazism bad.

00:27:12.000 Now, again, the media are trying to play all of this as quote unquote right wing violence, that these youngsters must have been some sort of right wing Republicans or something.

00:27:22.000 We don't know yet what they politically identified as, except for the Nazi writings.

00:27:26.000 But typically, this is what the media do.

00:27:28.000 Whenever there is an act of white supremacism or Nazi violence, that means that it's right wing.

00:27:33.000 Well, here is the problem with that. 0.50

00:27:35.000 Nazism as a movement was actually, in American terms, a left wing movement about centralized government and about racial supremacy and all the rest of it.

00:27:43.000 And it turns out that today's Nazis are pretty wide spanning politically speaking.

00:27:47.000 I mean, after all, you have a guy with a Nazi tattoo running for the Senate in Maine as a Democrat.

00:27:54.000 You have all of the Nazi supporters of today, people who support Hamas, which is effectively identical to Nazism in its approach toward Jews, for example, and the collective.

00:28:05.000 Fans of Hamas, one of them will be a Senate Democrat candidate in Michigan.

00:28:11.000 So it turns out, again, Nazism is not a right wing phenomenon in that sense. 0.58

00:28:16.000 And it turns out the right has actually been attempting to expel those who are Nazi adjacent.

00:28:22.000 From the party, with some exceptions on the woke right, who have been trying to embrace many of those people.

00:28:27.000 President Trump has obviously been trying to do all of that.

00:28:31.000 Already coming up, it is a hotly fought primary involving Thomas Massey and a Trump endorsed candidate, because Trump, of course, wants Massey gone.

00:28:38.000 We'll get to all of that.

00:28:38.000 Plus, a report from Brent Schur, our editor in chief on the ground in the district.

00:28:42.000 First, adult life, pretty stressful, especially when you're having car issues.

00:28:46.000 I mean, you don't need one of those, but it happens.

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00:30:14.000 Also, as I said yesterday on the show, AI is going to become one of the defining technologies of this generation.

00:30:19.000 The productivity gains are real.

00:30:21.000 The economic implications are huge. 0.92

00:30:22.000 Strategically, the U.S. cannot afford to lose that race to China, but there's a serious question everybody should be asking. 0.97

00:30:28.000 Who controls all the data that feeds the systems?

00:30:30.000 Because AI becomes exponentially more powerful when paired with massive behavioral profiles built from years of online activity.

00:30:36.000 Every search, every website visit, every purchase, every political opinion, every medical question.

00:30:41.000 Modern technology companies collect enormous amounts of that information already.

00:30:44.000 And once those systems mature, the incentives to use that data become very obvious.

00:30:49.000 Insurance companies assessing risk, employers evaluating candidates, advertisers predicting behavior, political actors who try to influence voters.

00:30:55.000 Technology itself is neutral, but the incentives are not.

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00:31:51.000 It turns out that it is not good for people on the right or on the left to hang out with Nazis, to hug Nazis.

00:31:57.000 It's a bad thing. 0.65

00:31:58.000 I think it should be an easy one, actually.

00:32:00.000 Well, apparently it's not so easy, which brings us to Thomas Massey.

00:32:04.000 He's the Kentucky congressman who is now in a political battle in his district. 0.97

00:32:08.000 That battle really doesn't have to do very much with sort of his wild conspiracism or his associations with people with, um, Nazi sympathies, although both of those things are true. 0.55

00:32:18.000 Right now, according to the Calci markets, and Calci, of course, is a sponsor, Massey is unlikely to win.

00:32:25.000 According to the Calci markets, he is in a primary against a guy named Ed Galrine.

00:32:31.000 Ed Galrine is a former Navy SEAL.

00:32:34.000 According to Calci markets, pretty consistently, Galrine is at about 55% shot of winning, Massey at 46% or so.

00:32:43.000 When I mention the Nazi associations, again, Thomas Massey is not being particularly shy right now.

00:32:47.000 He has embraced pretty much every conspiracy theory.

00:32:49.000 About Israel and Jews that it is possible to embrace at this point.

00:32:53.000 I mean, here he was literally a couple of days ago with well known Holocaust denier Ryan Mata. 0.65

00:33:00.000 The dude is literally, he's hugging a dude who's literally wearing a sweatshirt that says on it American Reich, which is a move.

00:33:00.000 He's at one of his rallies.

00:33:08.000 That's kind of strange.

00:33:10.000 Also, it is not a surprise that Massey's friends are all of the most conspiratorial anti Israel people on planet Earth. 0.80

00:33:19.000 That would include Cenk Uyghur.

00:33:23.000 If Representative Thomas Massey loses tomorrow, the Republicans will become Israel's party. 0.94

00:33:23.000 Who put out a tweet? 0.94

00:33:28.000 It's about Israel.

00:33:29.000 By the way, it's not about Israel.

00:33:30.000 I'll explain in a moment.

00:33:31.000 Republicans will give them as much of our money as possible and go to war for them whenever they ask. 0.84

00:33:34.000 Israel will 100% control the GOP because every member will be scared to death of opposing them. 0.64

00:33:39.000 Now, again, the reason why Massey is in hot water here has nothing to do with his stance with regard to Israel. 0.66

00:33:44.000 It has everything to do with his stance with regard to conspiratorial nonsense about Jeffrey Epstein and the fact that he has voted against a wide variety of President Trump's priorities in Congress.

00:33:53.000 He's sort of a Ron Paul figure who votes against large priorities of the Republican Party, which has ticked off President Trump pretty extraordinarily. 0.96

00:34:03.000 Massey is trying this dumb routine.

00:34:05.000 Massey himself is out there saying that Israel is trying to buy his seat in Congress. 0.96

00:34:09.000 Again, Medood. 0.99

00:34:13.000 This tactic is one of the dumbest tactics. 1.00

00:34:15.000 I just have to say it's such an incredibly, it's a tactic made for stupid people. 1.00

00:34:19.000 The reality is that people who are pro Israel do not like Thomas Massey because Thomas Massey has engaged in every conspiracy theory it is possible to engage in. 0.99

00:34:27.000 And has made common cause with the most anti Israel people.

00:34:29.000 That's true.

00:34:30.000 But the reason that Thomas Massey is actually in trouble is because the Trump administration has decided to oppose him on the basis of completely other issues.

00:34:38.000 And so the usual game that is now played right now on the right, in the very podcast to stand right, the game that is played is there will be a critique that has nothing to do with Israel.

00:34:47.000 And the first thing you do is you claim that it's about Israel in an attempt to gin up the crazier part of the Republican base.

00:34:55.000 Well, here's Thomas Massey doing precisely that.

00:34:59.000 I'm walking to an airplane to rejoin the most expensive congressional race in U.S. history.

00:35:05.000 Tell us about that.

00:35:07.000 Yeah, well, it's a referendum, really.

00:35:09.000 Unfortunately, it's turned into whether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress.

00:35:15.000 And what they found out is that my seat's really expensive.

00:35:19.000 They probably, when this is over, will have spent $20 million.

00:35:23.000 Well, I mean, very expensive for him as well.

00:35:27.000 And also the idea that Israel is not spending money.

00:35:30.000 In Thomas Massey's district. 0.92

00:35:32.000 The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, APAC, is all American Christians and Jews who fund it. 0.93

00:35:39.000 It is illegal for the state of Israel to spend money in elections in the United States, just as it's illegal for China or Qatar to do the same thing.

00:35:49.000 So that's, again, conspiratorial hogwash.

00:35:53.000 It is worth noting, as Dana Lash points out, that many of his biggest donations are coming from people who are pro Hamas.

00:36:01.000 One of his top donors, according to Dana, is the Jordanian born Mahrook family, who just happen to be huge donors of pro Hamas Democrats.

00:36:07.000 The Kiani family trust, led by Iranian born Joe Kiani, gave $100,000 to a Massey super PAC.

00:36:13.000 Keane has long been active in supporting Democrats.

00:36:16.000 He hosted President Biden in 2024 in his California home.

00:36:21.000 And so Democrats are coming out to support Massey.

00:36:24.000 He's about to be the beneficiary of Strange New Respect.

00:36:26.000 Ro Khanna, who again is as left as it's possible to get, and who joined Thomas Massey in his conspiracy theorizing over Jeffrey Epstein.

00:36:34.000 The idea from both Massey and Khanna is that President Trump has been engaged in this massive cover up of child sex trafficking because he himself was complicit.

00:36:42.000 Again, that's something that Massey himself has said.

00:36:45.000 He and Khanna joined forces in order to.

00:36:47.000 Force into the public view unverified and unverifiable nonsense coming into the FBI, like tip calls that made no sense.

00:36:54.000 Well, here's Ro Khanna putting up a tweet in support of Thomas Massey.

00:36:59.000 I will just say if the far left is supporting a Republican candidate, there's usually a reason for that.

00:37:03.000 Ro Khanna put out a tweet, quote, Thomas Massey is a man of character.

00:37:07.000 He's the type of congressman our founders envision.

00:37:09.000 I hope his constituents will see the courage, independence, and sincere love of country he brings to the job.

00:37:13.000 He is also endorsed by the co founder of Code Pink, who is a nut job herself, Medea Benjamin.

00:37:20.000 She put out a tweet endorsing Massey.

00:37:21.000 That is not because she enjoys his small government stylings.

00:37:25.000 Quote, I'm so glad Representative Massey is ahead in the polls in Kentucky, despite Trump's rants against him.

00:37:29.000 I don't agree with Massey on many domestic issues, but his positions on foreign policy and the Epstein files are terrific.

00:37:34.000 And of course, Candace Owens, who took a break from reading Der Sturmer, she says, Totally agreed.

00:37:42.000 Conservatives should support Massey because he's one of the few who practices America First beyond just preaching it.

00:37:48.000 The New York Times opinion is also coming out in favor of him.

00:37:51.000 Again, he's getting the strange new respect.

00:37:54.000 He's one of a dying breed in Congress.

00:37:55.000 America needs him now more than ever. 0.79

00:37:56.000 The strange new respect coming from all the same people MTG, Marjorie Taylor Greene, ousted from Congress for her own conspiratorial nonsense and uselessness.

00:38:05.000 She also urged people to get out in Kentucky.

00:38:09.000 And of course, Tucker Carlson put out a statement suggesting that Massey has refused to go along with the White House's abandonment of the America First principles that got the president elected.

00:38:18.000 So again, the idea is that it's because he's an isolationist.

00:38:21.000 But here's the thing Massey's been an isolationist his entire career.

00:38:23.000 I mean, like a full scale isolationist.

00:38:25.000 Like, cut all foreign aid to everyone, lower military spending, like wholesale.

00:38:30.000 That is not the thing that has put him in trouble here.

00:38:33.000 The thing that has put him in trouble is number one, that he decided to rant conspiratorially for legitimately a year and a half about the Epstein files, which he had no interest in until President Trump was reelected.

00:38:45.000 And two, he decided to oppose every one of President Trump's major legislative proposals.

00:38:50.000 And it's not me saying that, it is members of the administration saying that.

00:38:53.000 Here was JD Vance.

00:38:54.000 Again, JD Vance, you'd be hard pressed to say that JD Vance is a foreign policy hawk.

00:38:59.000 Who is strongly pro Israel.

00:39:01.000 But here is JD Vance going after Massey in October 2025.

00:39:07.000 Voting against the party on every single issue, you're eventually going to make too many enemies.

00:39:14.000 And that is the problem that Thomas has had.

00:39:16.000 It's not one issue, it's not three or four issues.

00:39:19.000 It's that every time that we've needed Thomas for a vote, he has been completely unwilling to provide it.

00:39:24.000 That is why the President of the United States has trained his ire on Thomas Massey.

00:39:29.000 It's because we can never count on him.

00:39:31.000 For some of the most difficult votes.

00:39:33.000 I wish that that weren't the case.

00:39:35.000 I say that as somebody who's known Thomas well before I got into politics, but politics is politics, and when you always vote against the party, you can't expect the party to actually back you.

00:39:46.000 Pete Hegg said the Secretary of Defense actually went to a Gal Ryan event, and he explained that Massey has been engaged in constant obstruction.

00:39:55.000 Because after you've led men in life and death situations, the games that are played inside the beltway start looking pretty small.

00:40:03.000 Now, contrast that with what we've gotten from Tom Massey.

00:40:08.000 At some point, being against everything becomes an excuse for accomplishing nothing.

00:40:13.000 At some point, constant obstruction is not leadership.

00:40:16.000 It's just commentary.

00:40:18.000 It's obstruction.

00:40:21.000 And Stephen Miller, top advisor to the president, he put out an entire video explaining Massey's voting record.

00:40:26.000 Again, that is the reason why Trump is ticked at Massey.

00:40:30.000 The single most important issue affecting the future of our country is ending the mass third world invasion of America and reversing that.

00:40:38.000 Invasion.

00:40:39.000 And on the most important issue, on the most important vote, on the most important bill, on the most important day, Tom Massey sided with every House Democrat, every Senate Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer against President Trump, against the American people, and against you and your family.

00:40:58.000 When the time came to vote for President Trump's signature border security and immigration enforcement bill, the bill to provide record funding for ICE and border patrol and mass deportation, Tom Massey voted no.

00:41:10.000 Tom Massey voted to kill.

00:41:12.000 The bill.

00:41:12.000 Tom Massey sided with the House and Senate Democrats over the sovereignty of this republic.

00:41:20.000 He voted against Trump.

00:41:21.000 He voted against the American people.

00:41:23.000 He voted against you.

00:41:25.000 He voted to kill the most important bill of his career.

00:41:28.000 And again, Massey has been lying in his district.

00:41:30.000 He's been putting out ads in his district suggesting that he is strongly pro Trump and he's a big Trump fan.

00:41:34.000 Well, then why is Trump actually the one calling the shots here in terms of the campaign against Massey?

00:41:40.000 Again, Massey has been engaged in a strange new respect crusade.

00:41:43.000 Strange new respect is the phenomenon that attaches to Republicans.

00:41:46.000 Who starts mimicking Democrat talking points?

00:41:48.000 If you start being a conspiratorial anti Republican, it doesn't matter what else you believe, they will start granting you strange new respect.

00:41:54.000 This is how Marjorie Taylor Greene, a person with not two neurons to rub together, somehow has become beloved of the left.

00:42:00.000 Just say those same things over and over, and they will love you.

00:42:02.000 Well, Massey started getting the strange new respect when he started mulling over Epstein.

00:42:08.000 So here is Thomas Massey in November 2025 accusing President Trump of an Epstein cover up based on nothing.

00:42:17.000 This might be a big smokescreen, these investigations, to open a bunch of them as a last ditch effort to prevent the release of the Epstein files.

00:42:26.000 I mean, it is extraordinary to hear him demand an investigation and only mention Democrats, only mention his political opponents.

00:42:34.000 But you're saying he doesn't really, he may not really even want any investigation.

00:42:38.000 He wants to prevent the release.

00:42:39.000 Why does he want to prevent this?

00:42:42.000 What is he afraid of?

00:42:45.000 You know, I've never said that these files will implicate Donald Trump.

00:42:49.000 And I really don't think that they will.

00:42:51.000 I think he's trying to protect a bunch of rich and powerful friends, billionaires, donors to his campaign, friends in his social circles.

00:43:00.000 And that's my operating theory on why he's trying so hard to keep these files closed.

00:43:07.000 Massey went into every single rabbit hole it was possible to go into with regard to Epstein.

00:43:13.000 And there's a reason why nutcases like Chank and Midia Benjamin are praising Massey today.

00:43:18.000 I have a basic rule of thumb. 0.98

00:43:19.000 If it turns out the entire left is defending you, like the entire left, Without qualification, is defending you the hardest left, most crazy people. 0.65

00:43:26.000 Probably you should not be in Congress representing the Republican Party. 0.76

00:43:30.000 All right, coming up, Brent Sher will join us from the road.

00:43:33.000 He's in the district and he will explain what's happening on the ground. 0.89

00:43:35.000 Plus, that caller daddy lady, you know, there's that lady who does the podcast all about how she has sex with lots of people and everybody should. 1.00

00:43:41.000 Well, now she's pregnant and happily married. 1.00

00:43:42.000 So the rules apparently apply to her. 0.89

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00:45:11.000 Well, joining us online is Brent Schur.

00:45:13.000 Brent, of course, is editor in chief of the Daily Wire, and he's been spending time on the ground in this district.

00:45:19.000 Really appreciate it.

00:45:19.000 Brent, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:45:21.000 Yeah.

00:45:22.000 Hi, Ben.

00:45:22.000 How are you?

00:45:24.000 You know, hanging in.

00:45:25.000 So tell me about the district.

00:45:27.000 What is the breakdown of the district?

00:45:28.000 Obviously, very competitive race.

00:45:29.000 Massey had been largely popular inside his district before this race.

00:45:34.000 What are you seeing?

00:45:34.000 You've been on the ground.

00:45:37.000 Yeah, I drove through the whole district yesterday.

00:45:39.000 And look, this is one of the most pro Trump districts in.

00:45:43.000 America.

00:45:44.000 It went by for Trump by, I think, 35 or 40 points last election cycle in the presidential.

00:45:52.000 And what we're seeing now is obviously it's Thomas Massey versus Ed Gallerine, but it's more of the whole Trump administration and Trump political machine versus Thomas Massey, who they're labeling an obstructionist and who has been, you know, just really one of the more difficult members to deal with in the House.

00:46:14.000 And yeah, when we were there, we went to a Thomas Massey event in his hometown last night in Vanceburg, Kentucky.

00:46:23.000 And it's a pretty big crowd, it's hundreds of people.

00:46:26.000 And in a small district like this, in really, really small towns, that's actually a big turnout.

00:46:31.000 And they're very confident.

00:46:33.000 We talked to some Massey voters yesterday who said the only way they're going to lose is because the other side cheats.

00:46:39.000 And I was like, I thought it was the Democrats who cheat.

00:46:43.000 And they just think, you know, anybody who's running against them, the only way that you could beat.

00:46:48.000 This grassroots Thomas Massey podcast support is if you have mass cheating.

00:46:56.000 So, meanwhile, on the Ed Galrine side of the aisle, it's really fascinating.

00:46:59.000 It's like they're running two separate races.

00:47:01.000 Galrine and the Trump administration are talking about Massey not voting in favor of their priorities. 0.52

00:47:06.000 Maybe they'll bring up Massey and his sort of bizarre quest to make everything about Jeffrey Epstein along with Ro Khanna.

00:47:12.000 But I'm wondering from the Ed Galrine perspective, it seems like very little Israel talk, but from the Massey perspective, nothing but Israel talk, it seems like. 0.72

00:47:21.000 Yeah, I mean, according to Thomas Massey, he is running this campaign against Israel.

00:47:26.000 And the only reason it's competitive is because Israel has, you know, dropped all this money against him.

00:47:32.000 Obviously, that's not true. 0.64

00:47:33.000 It's Jewish Americans who have dropped money against him because his policies are, you know, antithetical to anything a Jewish American would care about in this country.

00:47:43.000 But the message from the Trump administration is this is the guy who's making it hard to pass the Trump agenda. 0.64

00:47:50.000 We've been talking about this a lot, but Trump and Republicans only have a few seat majority in the House of Representatives.

00:47:57.000 And when you have one member who they view as an attention seeker and somebody who's, you know, Makes a big deal out of opposing things that they need to do to pass through the House of Representatives.

00:48:10.000 That's how they are framing Thomas Massey from the Trump campaign, from Pete Hegseth, who was there yesterday, from Stephen Miller, who posted a long video criticizing Thomas Massey last night.

00:48:22.000 They are talking about him obstructing the Trump agenda that is popular with all Trump voters.

00:48:29.000 And I mean, I think the most telling sign that Massey's in trouble.

00:48:34.000 In Kentucky, is that even though he's running this race against Donald Trump, all of his ads are tying him to Donald Trump.

00:48:44.000 He's not running ads to the mass public in the district talking about the Epstein files or his view on the Israel war.

00:48:52.000 He's talking about how he supports Trump's agenda, and he's actually the real Trump supporter.

00:48:57.000 He's more MAGA than Donald Trump.

00:49:00.000 You know, Donald Trump happens to be pretty good at winning these primary elections, and I just don't think it's going to work out for Thomas Masson.

00:49:10.000 You know, Brent, that last point is the one that really is telling is that it is sort of fascinating how Massey is unwilling to go up directly against Trump, even though Trump is going directly up against Massey.

00:49:19.000 The truth is that Massey has been attacking Trump incessantly for about the last year and a half.

00:49:23.000 It started with the Epstein files of it, claiming that President Trump was hiding the Epstein files, was engaged in some sort of deep, dark conspiracy.

00:49:30.000 And President Trump decided that he'd had enough of it, basically, and that he was going to go up against Massey.

00:49:34.000 And Massey is humping his leg.

00:49:35.000 I mean, Massey is in this district putting up ads saying, That he is the Trump guy and putting up pictures of himself with Trump.

00:49:42.000 Meanwhile, Trump is over there saying, dude, I want nothing to do with you.

00:49:44.000 In fact, I want you out of Congress.

00:49:46.000 And so Massey has to come up with some sort of misdirect as to why it is that the guy whose leg he is humping doesn't want to be part of his campaign.

00:49:53.000 In fact, he's actively campaigning against him.

00:49:56.000 And the way that Massey has come up with a way to square that circle is by saying, actually, it's not even about Trump.

00:50:00.000 It's not about Trump is not opposing me.

00:50:02.000 Really, it's people manipulating Trump who are opposing me. 0.97

00:50:05.000 Really, it's the nefarious Israelis who are manipulating President Trump, which is. 0.99

00:50:10.000 A pretty astonishing way of doing a campaign. 0.99

00:50:12.000 And we'll see if it works out for him.

00:50:14.000 And I mean, I'll just say we drove through district yesterday and every Ed Gallerine sign has Donald Trump's name just about as big as El Gallerine on the street signs over there.

00:50:14.000 Yeah.

00:50:27.000 And I'll just say the amount of ads that are on TV supporting Ed Gallerine, his name recognition has probably gone from zero to a lot in just a few months.

00:50:39.000 And all the polling, it's hard to really assess.

00:50:43.000 What's going to happen here?

00:50:45.000 Because look, there has never been a competitive primary here.

00:50:49.000 And there's definitely never been a competitive primary with dozens of millions of dollars dumped in.

00:50:55.000 So, for anybody who thinks that they're going to know what this electorate looks like or can do a poll that is going to accurately assess who's going to turn out for this, they're lying to you.

00:51:06.000 A lot of the polls have Thomas Massey losing by, you know, eight to 10 points.

00:51:12.000 I've seen some having him down in the double digits.

00:51:15.000 But again, it's going to be interesting because this is.

00:51:18.000 New territory because of just how unique this primary challenge is.

00:51:24.000 You know, Brent, one of the things that I think is fascinating about this is you pointed out that the TV ads, if you just watch the TV and you just looked at the internet, these are two completely different races.

00:51:33.000 If you look at the TV, basically you have Gal Ryan saying, I'm Trump's guy, and Trump saying, Ed Gal Ryan is my guy, and Massey saying, no, no, no, no, I'm Trump's guy.

00:51:41.000 And that's all the TV is about.

00:51:42.000 The TV, I mean, how many ads on the TV are really about Israel?

00:51:46.000 Probably very few.

00:51:47.000 But when it comes to the online conversation, the entire thing is about Israel and AIPAC money. 0.76

00:51:52.000 And about how actually Thomas Massey is being screwed by nefarious Jews and all this kind of stuff.

00:51:58.000 It is completely removed from the reality that most people in the district are actually seeing on their TVs. 0.72

00:52:03.000 It just shows you how the online world is totally different from the rest of reality.

00:52:08.000 And I'd also say that it seems like Thomas Massey is kind of buying into that.

00:52:08.000 Yeah.

00:52:13.000 Yesterday, he did an interview with Cenk Uyghur from the Young Turks.

00:52:17.000 I do not think that that is the best way to reach voters of Kentucky's fourth district.

00:52:23.000 You have podcasters who are really positive.

00:52:26.000 Popular on that, you know, horseshoe right segment of the country.

00:52:31.000 Again, this is not how you reach a mass audience in Kentucky Four.

00:52:36.000 It's probably through local news hits and a lot of events across the district.

00:52:42.000 It seems like he's almost preparing for a post Congress career more than actually to win this election today.

00:52:51.000 But again, he might win.

00:52:53.000 It's going to be very close.

00:52:54.000 Anybody who tells you it's not toss up is lying to you.

00:52:59.000 That's Brent Sherry.

00:52:59.000 He's editor in chief of the Daily Wire.

00:53:01.000 And obviously, you should subscribe to Daily Wire for all of our coverage.

00:53:04.000 We have people on the ground there.

00:53:05.000 We have a big story happening in Ohio today about our fraud, tons of stuff, our fraud investigation, tons of stuff that's been happening because of the reporting of the Daily Wire.

00:53:13.000 Brent, thanks so much for the time.

00:53:14.000 Really appreciate it.

00:53:16.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:53:19.000 All righty.

00:53:19.000 Meanwhile, in the polls, in the congressional generic polls, Republicans right now are getting shellacked.

00:53:24.000 They're getting shellacked, obviously, because of affordability issues.

00:53:26.000 According to a brand new New York Times Siena College poll, 50% of people now back the Democrats.

00:53:32.000 39% of people say they would pick the Republican.

00:53:35.000 That is largely because of affordability issues.

00:53:37.000 It's because the gas prices are up.

00:53:38.000 It's because inflation is up.

00:53:40.000 Now, here's the thing there are not that many competitive districts up for election this time because of the redistricting, according to the New York Times.

00:53:49.000 All 435 seats, of course, are up in November, but a fewer than a tenth of those races are likely to be competitive.

00:53:56.000 Presidential candidates won about 28% of congressional districts with fewer than 10 percentage points in 2008.

00:54:01.000 In 2024, that decreased to 20%.

00:54:05.000 So, again, the number of competitive districts is going down very, very, very significantly.

00:54:11.000 So, it is possible that even if Democrats outrun Republicans because of the redistricting, Republicans don't lose as many seats as they otherwise would.

00:54:19.000 But obviously, affordability remains a major issue for Republicans.

00:54:25.000 President Trump is trying to do things on affordability.

00:54:27.000 One of those things is that he has been pushing the so called Trump RX website, which is a way of being able to find generic drugs at cost.

00:54:37.000 He is doing that campaign across the aisle with Mark Cuban, who's been obviously extraordinarily critical of the president.

00:54:42.000 Here was Cuban at the White House talking with Trump.

00:54:46.000 I think, other than you, I've been the biggest proponent of TrumpRx.com.

00:54:51.000 And the reason for that is Republicans want cheaper drugs, independents want cheaper drugs, Democrats want cheaper drugs.

00:54:58.000 And together, I think we're going to do something special.

00:55:01.000 What makes Cost Plus Drugs different is that when you click through Trump RX to our site, not only will you see a great price, but you'll see our actual cost and that we only mark it up 15%.

00:55:12.000 And what makes this incredible, Mr. President, all the volume and all the people that are going to come from the site, as our volumes go up, our costs go down, which means we'll be ending up charging less to people over a period of time.

00:55:26.000 Again, one of the things that's kind of phenomenal about President Trump is that for all the crap that he takes from people, he is willing to work with them if they are willing to work with him.

00:55:33.000 Mark Cuban has been ripping him up and down. 0.82

00:55:35.000 For years at this point, if Trump thinks he can get something done with Cuban, then he will.

00:55:40.000 Now, Trump did make a joke about Cuban endorsing Kamala Harris.

00:55:46.000 It's pretty remarkable seeing you and Mark Cuban up there and the fact that obviously Mark endorsed Kamala Harris back in 2021.

00:55:52.000 Well, he made a mistake.

00:55:53.000 It was a big mistake.

00:55:58.000 Now, one of the ways, by the way, that you're going to be able to bring down prices overall is in fact AI because AI is going to make things more productive.

00:56:05.000 Ken Griffin, who's been ripped up and down.

00:56:08.000 By socialists like Zahra Manzani for the great crime of investing well.

00:56:12.000 Well, he is pointing out that if you actually want to bring prices down, you have to increase productivity.

00:56:16.000 And one great way to increase productivity is through AI efficiency.

00:56:20.000 He's pointing out how good the AI is getting, and it really is.

00:56:22.000 It's pretty extraordinary.

00:56:25.000 It has been really interesting to watch, to be blunt, work that we would usually do with people with masters and PhDs in finance over the course of weeks or months being done by AI agents over the course of hours or days.

00:56:43.000 So these are not mid tier white collar jobs.

00:56:47.000 These are like extraordinarily high skilled jobs being, I'm going to pick a word, being automated by a genic AI.

00:56:58.000 And I got to tell you, I went home one Friday actually fairly depressed by this because you could just see how this was going to have such a dramatic impact on society.

00:57:14.000 Right, but the dramatic impact on society is going to be that everyone is now going to be an expert in finance as opposed to just Ken Griffin.

00:57:20.000 And that's going to mean that prices go down.

00:57:23.000 It's going to mean that efficiencies go up.

00:57:25.000 All right, meanwhile, on the cultural front, the big cultural story of the last week has been the announcement by a woman named Alex Cooper, who is most famous for a show called Call Her Daddy.

00:57:36.000 That is where she has dumb political conversations with Kamala Harris, but also talks about promiscuity and how wonderful it is.

00:57:42.000 Well, she put out an image. 0.98

00:57:45.000 Of herself pregnant. 0.99

00:57:46.000 And it's a nice image.

00:57:47.000 It's her holding her belly and she's there with her husband.

00:57:50.000 You know, this normally, if she were wearing, you know, an entire shirt and not just revealing her belly, this normally would have been a sort of conservative coded image. 0.78

00:57:59.000 Whenever you see a woman, this is how far the left has moved. 0.92

00:58:01.000 When you see a pregnant woman who is happy, this is now a conservative coded image.

00:58:04.000 That's because the left has made a big deal out of the idea that pregnancy is not something to be happy about.

00:58:09.000 It's generally something that inhibits your life in some serious way.

00:58:13.000 Like if you were just to see this image without any context at all, you would assume.

00:58:16.000 That this was actually some sort of patriarchal, terrible conservative image.

00:58:21.000 A happy woman holding her pregnant stomach with her husband right there with his hand on her leg.

00:58:28.000 Obviously, that must be some form of sexism.

00:58:30.000 Now, what makes this all very rich is that Alex Cooper, of course, has spent her entire career promoting social liberalism totally at odds with the nature of these pictures.

00:58:39.000 Because here's the thing if you want this image to be part of your life, if you're a woman and you would like this image to be part of your future, there is a way to do that.

00:58:47.000 You get married, you get happily married, and then you get pregnant.

00:58:51.000 I know those are two things that the left has decided are actually bad.

00:58:55.000 Pregnancy is some sort of burden on a woman, and marriage is a patriarchal institution.

00:58:59.000 But as per our usual rules, as per what Rob Henderson calls the luxury beliefs of the left, they hold beliefs that they don't actually behave in accordance with.

00:59:08.000 And here is Alex Cooper talking about how you should have sex with people on the first date. 0.90

00:59:11.000 If you want to not have that picture, a great way to do that is for women to have sex with dudes on the first date. 0.99

00:59:17.000 And maybe I was just a little, you know, but I do believe I had it right on this one. 0.98

00:59:22.000 When people on TikTok are saying, no kissing, no kissing on a first date, No, I completely disagree with you.

00:59:30.000 I completely.

00:59:31.000 Also, no kissing on a first date.

00:59:31.000 How about this?

00:59:34.000 Well, sometimes I them on the first date.

00:59:36.000 How about that one, TikTok?

00:59:37.000 The first kiss at the end of the date is seriously what they write movies about and songs and books, okay?

00:59:43.000 And what I dream about because it's one of the most exciting romantic human experiences that you can possibly have.

00:59:47.000 You do not need to be denying yourself pleasure to prove some arbitrary point to be like, did you kiss him?

00:59:53.000 You're like, mm-mm.

00:59:55.000 They're like, good girl, good girl. 1.00

00:59:57.000 Get your fucking lips in there. 1.00

01:00:01.000 I mean, she's wearing a sweatshirt that says unwell while she's saying this, and I kind of agree with the sweatshirt. 1.00

01:00:07.000 First of all, a first kiss doesn't have to happen on the first date.

01:00:09.000 It turns out you could have it later. 0.96

01:00:11.000 And if you are making out with people or having sex with them on the first date, that is a very, very bad recipe, ladies, for getting married to those guys. 0.94

01:00:17.000 Statistically speaking, that is not how it works. 0.99

01:00:21.000 There's an old phrase that goes something like this Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?

01:00:26.000 It sounds kind of cynical, but it also happens to be true on a generic level.

01:00:33.000 And then she talks about having a body count and how that's how it's actually great to have a body count, meaning like sleep with lots of guys.

01:00:39.000 Again, if your intended endpoint, right, if the photo that you want at the end of your romantic journey is you as a woman pregnant with your husband, these are terrible pieces of advice that she is giving you.

01:00:52.000 It turns out that the best way to be married and pregnant is to not sleep with everyone in sight.

01:00:59.000 That is a again, this is not me speculating, this is the statistical evidence.

01:01:04.000 There's excellent social science data to back the point that I am making here.

01:01:07.000 This has nothing to do with just my moral precepts, which again, I think are true.

01:01:11.000 It has to do with practical, real world advice.

01:01:14.000 She's giving you bad advice.

01:01:16.000 This is bad advice.

01:01:20.000 I feel like every single girl has a list of the guys she's ever been with.

01:01:24.000 Like, how fun.

01:01:25.000 I just think it's so fun.

01:01:26.000 Like, I think mine, I have mine written in a book somewhere.

01:01:29.000 And then I also think I have one in my notes app.

01:01:31.000 It's fun.

01:01:32.000 You know, it's a fun little conversation starter when you're with your girls and you're like, wait, how many?

01:01:36.000 Wait, what?

01:01:37.000 It's fun.

01:01:38.000 It's life, okay?

01:01:40.000 I remember the men that have been inside of me, and I have a husband, and that's okay.

01:01:44.000 Like, I had a pass.

01:01:46.000 When I was with them, I didn't know my husband existed.

01:01:48.000 I have a question Does her husband think that that was like a wonderful thing?

01:01:53.000 How's she going to talk to her kids about this?

01:01:55.000 That kid that's inside her right now, how's she going to talk about that?

01:01:58.000 Of course, Alex Cooper is also as pro abortionist as possible to be.

01:02:01.000 And so that always makes these sorts of photos ironic.

01:02:03.000 Bottom line is this if the end of the journey, every comedy in Shakespeare ends with a wedding.

01:02:09.000 There's a reason for that because the romantic journey is supposed to end with marriage and having kids.

01:02:15.000 That is the nature of humanity.

01:02:17.000 You want to talk about human nature and what reality looks like?

01:02:19.000 That's what reality looks like.

01:02:21.000 And that's what reality should look like. 1.00

01:02:24.000 And so, giving bad advice to ladies is not a great way to do your business.

01:02:27.000 It really is not.

01:02:28.000 And it's sad.

01:02:28.000 If people follow that advice, they're much less likely to end up with the happy ever after photo that you get from Alex Cooper there.

01:02:37.000 You're much better off listening to Jordan Peterson about human relationships if you want that photo at the end of your romantic journey.

01:02:43.000 All righty, folks, coming up, we'll get into the latest on Iran.

01:02:46.000 But remember, as the show continues, you actually have to be a member.

01:02:50.000 So, go check out membership right now.

01:02:52.000 Become a member.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - May 19, 2026

Luigi Mangione and the Left's Murder Fantasy

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