The Ben Shapiro Show - Mamdani Can't LIFT...Plus Democrats Unleash Their 2028 CONTENDER?

00:00:00.000 Zoromon Dani apparently cannot lift like one of those shake weights.

00:00:04.000 And we now have a video of it and it's pretty impressive.

00:00:06.000 Democrats are starting to retail the person who they think is their front runner for 2028.

00:00:11.000 And all updates from Russia, Ukraine.

00:00:13.000 First, we've been rolling out a lot of new content over the Daily Wire Plus Journey to the UFC, Dr. Jordan Peterson's Answer the Call, Michael Molles' new documentary series The Pope and the Führer, the Isabelle Brown Show premiering September 8.

00:00:23.000 And now another announcement to mark a decade of the Daily Wire.

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00:00:48.000 We're on the show.

00:00:49.000 This is it.

00:00:49.000 No shape words, no moderator.

00:00:52.000 My original proposal had been that Nolan should be moderator.

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00:00:59.000 It's really true.

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00:01:03.000 This is enough small talk, I think.

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00:01:07.000 Oh my god.

00:01:08.000 I think we do need a moderator, just a programming note.

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00:01:25.000 Well, perhaps Democrats are learning that soy is actually not an amazing nutritional base for all things.

00:01:32.000 They might be learning this from Zoran Mombani, who is of course the likely next mayor of New York City.

00:01:38.000 Now, Democrats have been claiming that he's the hot new thing in the Democratic Party that Zoran Mombani is going to lead the way to a bright new socialist future for America, starting with the most powerful financial capital on planet Earth.

00:01:50.000 But if we're talking about power, we're talking about socialist strong men.

00:01:55.000 Zorin Mamdani, it's going to be, it's going to be hard pressed, no pun intended to actually be a strong man, pun intended.

00:02:02.000 Zorin Mamdani yesterday showed up at the annual Men's Day Open Streets event in Brooklyn on Saturday where a bunch of dudes were lifting apparently and the 33-year-old socialist, again, he's 33, which is like young in the prime of life.

00:02:16.000 He tried to bench.

00:02:18.000 Now, my dude, my dude, let me just say that if you're going to do something like this and you're a public figure, you have to know your limitations.

00:02:27.000 Like Zorin Mamdani must have at some point been in a gym.

00:02:30.000 I mean, I assume maybe not given how this video.

00:02:33.000 went.

00:02:33.000 But if you don't know how much you can bench, this is not a great time to try it out.

00:02:38.000 It's like in front of a giant crowd of people in the middle of a mayoral race.

00:02:42.000 So he shows up and he takes a couple of 45s, like two plates, and he stacks them on the bar.

00:02:51.000 So this is maybe 135 pounds total.

00:02:54.000 And now let's just be clear.

00:02:56.000 A decent bench for a man is his own body weight.

00:02:59.000 And that's like a decent bench for a man.

00:03:01.000 Zar Mandani, I assume weighs more than 135 pounds.

00:03:04.000 Maybe not, but I assume that he does.

00:03:06.000 135 pounds is not a lot of weight, like not a lot of weight at all.

00:03:11.000 I'm not a bench press enthusiast.

00:03:13.000 For the record, I maxed out at around 200 pounds.

00:03:16.000 I'm not like an amazing bench press connoisseur.

00:03:21.000 Even I can lift 135 pounds probably 15 times because that's not a lot of weight.

00:03:28.000 Zorin Mandani, it doesn't go well.

00:03:32.000 Here's how it went in Brooklyn.

00:03:38.000 He has to have this guy.

00:03:41.000 cheering him.

00:03:49.000 He gets, uh, he gets two very assisted, very, very assisted bench presses at 135 pounds.

00:04:00.000 So, um, that that's not, that's not great.

00:04:03.000 Well, Mayor Eric Adams and ex Governor Andrew Cuomo, both of whom lift pounced on the opportunity.

00:04:08.000 According to the New York Post, Mayor Adams went to the same exact event and then proceeded to just knock out a bunch of 135 pound lifts.

00:04:17.000 He then called him mom scrawny as opposed to mom Donnie.

00:04:21.000 The only thing he can lift is your taxes.

00:04:25.000 Andrew Cuomo said it's easy to talk.

00:04:27.000 It's hard to carry the burden.

00:04:30.000 He provided no evidence of his own bench press prowess in his expos, but you know, I assume that Andrew Cuomo can lift a little bit.

00:04:36.000 His brother Chris Cuomo is very big into into lifting.

00:04:40.000 Also, Mom Dani literally had to take off his designer boots to kick a stranger's soccer ball at an inflatable target. 1.00

00:04:49.000 So here, here's the thing.

00:04:51.000 Yeah, I think that for the vast majority of normal men, this is very, very embarrassing.

00:04:57.000 But the left has decided that they are done with male normality, like really done with it, that the future of the Democratic Party is apparently going to be an extraordinarily feminized party, not just because.

00:05:08.000 an outsized share of Democrats are now single women, but also because the kinds of men the Democratic Party wants to attract are not the kinds of men who lift heavyweights.

00:05:19.000 This is why you've seen over the course of the last several years a spate of articles talking about how lifting going to the gym has become Republican coded.

00:05:27.000 Well, there's no reason it should be Republican coded, except if you just mean that testosterone is Republican coded.

00:05:33.000 That the idea that you should stay healthy and that you should lift is Republican coded.

00:05:38.000 And that goes to why do you want a sort of weak and feminized America? 1.00

00:05:43.000 Why do you?

00:05:44.000 I mean, the media clearly do.

00:05:46.000 There's a piece from Axios that is kind of fascinating about the supposed redefinition of identity under President Trump.

00:05:54.000 And there's something very telling about it, how they see identity.

00:05:57.000 Cite, through immigration crackdowns and cultural purges, President Trump is wielding government power to enforce a more rigid, exclusionary definition of what it means to be American.

00:06:05.000 The MAGA movement's obsession with American identity and Western civilization is shaping federal policy far more than in Trump's first term, fueling a reckoning over who belongs and what history should be remembered.

00:06:16.000 So first of all, why shouldn't we all be a little obsessed with American identity and Western civilization?

00:06:22.000 I thought that's what America is about, like what it means to be American an American.

00:06:26.000 And a huge part of that is being the apoteosis of Western civilization.

00:06:31.000 And what are we supposed to represent?

00:06:33.000 Non-Western civilizations, third world civilizations, other civilizations, like what?

00:06:38.000 What is the implication?

00:06:40.000 According to Axios, however, in MAGA's telling, America is the heir to ancient European civilizations built on a Judeo Christian foundation of white identity, meritocracy, traditional gender roles and the nuclear family.

00:06:51.000 Notice how they just slide in white identity.

00:06:54.000 Right now, the idea of a Judeo Christian foundation of white identity is a bizarre amalgam of two exclusive beliefs.

00:07:02.000 A Judeo Christian identity is absolutely by definition not white identity.

00:07:08.000 By definition it is not.

00:07:09.000 Look at the history of the church.

00:07:11.000 Look at the history of the Catholic Church.

00:07:12.000 Look at the history of Protestantism.

00:07:15.000 Look at the billions of Christians all over the planet Earth.

00:07:17.000 And you tell me, are they all white? 0.95

00:07:19.000 Are they?

00:07:20.000 Because I don't think so.

00:07:22.000 Judaism is a Middle Eastern religion.

00:07:24.000 It began in Israel.

00:07:27.000 Like what, what, what are you, what are you talking about?

00:07:29.000 How is a Judeo Christian foundation white identity? 0.85

00:07:34.000 Monoteistic religion is by its very nature non racially based.

00:07:39.000 It is bizarre to suggest that Judeo Christian religion is biblical values are somehow about racial identity, about whiteness or something like that is Axios fundamentally making a gigantic category error.

00:07:55.000 But in order to throw the baby out with the bathwater, they basically have to call all this racist.

00:07:58.000 Meritocracy also apparently is about racism.

00:08:01.000 You cannot simultaneously hold two beliefs, a belief one in meritocracy and two a belief in white identitarism. 0.73

00:08:06.000 Those two things are not compatible because if you are for a meritocracy that by definition means that the person who is most meritorious regardless of color is the person who should get the job, who should advance in society.

00:08:20.000 Meritocracy and white identity. 0.88

00:08:22.000 These two things mutually exclusive, biblical values, white identitarianism, mutually exclusive. 0.89

00:08:30.000 Now, traditional gender roles, that is a part of Judeo Christian foundations.

00:08:34.000 That is a true part of biblical belief.

00:08:35.000 It's also traditional gender roles, a foundational part of science, because it happens to be the case that men and women are different, which is why dudes this morning are making fun of Zoran Mamdani for not being able to lift as much as the pregnant lady would.

00:08:50.000 It's kind of funny, right?

00:08:52.000 There is something bizarrely effeminate about Mamdani's performance in.

00:08:56.000 governments in the New York mayoral primaries.

00:08:59.000 There just is and it's strange and it's weird and maybe democrats love it.

00:09:04.000 Maybe they're very into the sort of androgyny of the Zorn Mom Dani candidacy, but okay, that is a violation of traditional gender norms in many different ways.

00:09:14.000 And the nuclear family, I I was unaware that somehow this is bad. 0.56

00:09:17.000 Why, why is, why are, why is the nuclear family somehow bad? 0.94

00:09:22.000 American identity, you're telling me, has nothing to do with biblical values, meritocracy, traditional gender roles and the nuclear family.

00:09:28.000 That comes as a shock to literally every one of the founders, all of them.

00:09:33.000 These tenets, according to Axios, are cast as universal truths and mantras such as America is an idea or diversity is our strengths are dismissed as liberal fictions.

00:09:42.000 Well, hope up a second.

00:09:44.000 America is an idea is not mutually exclusive with biblical values, traditional gender roles, meritocracy and the nuclear family.

00:09:51.000 Those are all ideals.

00:09:53.000 Those are all ideas.

00:09:55.000 Those are things that we enact in our daily life, but look how Axios has to throw all of it to the wind, right?

00:10:00.000 That Axios is expressing the traditional left wing view of what it means to be an American.

00:10:06.000 Because the reverse apparently is what it means.

00:10:08.000 Apparently, no Judeo Christian foundations to our civilization.

00:10:12.000 No Western civilization at the foundation of America.

00:10:15.000 No meritocracy, no traditional gender roles and no nuclear family, which is kind of saying the quiet part out loud.

00:10:21.000 I mean, I did write an entire book on this.

00:10:23.000 Okay.

00:10:23.000 Lions and Scavengers is legitimately about the desire by so many to tear away at the fundamental foundations of a successful civilization.

00:10:32.000 And it is about tearing away traditional gender roles and the nuclear family and the meritocracy and biblical values.

00:10:38.000 That is what the book is about.

00:10:40.000 Okay.

00:10:40.000 So not that I was pressured, but like it's all in the book.

00:10:44.000 But this does speak to the Democratic Party and the move to the left that is being fostered by, again, this sort of a feat set of liberals at places like Axios or apparently in the New York City primary.

00:10:58.000 But by the way, the results of this are very clear.

00:11:01.000 If you get rid of things like biblical values, traditional masculinity, the nuclear family, what do you end up with?

00:11:07.000 You end up with a bunch of rootless and useless young adults already coming up.

00:11:11.000 Young American adults apparently are not getting married, they're not having kids, things are not going amazing.

00:11:16.000 Plus, Wes Moore, is he going to be the Democrats' 2028 nominee and President Trump is going to send troops into Chicago?

00:11:22.000 How's that going to work?

00:11:23.000 Get to all that in a minute.

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00:13:31.000 Axios, not apparently spoting the irony, same day has a piece titled America's Young People Are Delaying Adulthood Milestones.

00:13:38.000 Why, I can't imagine why young adults are pushing back the big milestones Americans have historically associated with growing up, moving out of your parents' house, getting a job, getting married and having kids.

00:13:48.000 Now, again, all of those things are associated with precisely the American values that Axios is condemning the Trump administration for promoting.

00:13:55.000 Biblical values involve, like as in the book of Genesis, you will leave your mother and your father and you will cling to your wife. 0.97

00:14:03.000 That is one of the fundamental hallmarks of becoming a man is you leave your parents and you leave their house.

00:14:09.000 and then you get married and you cling to your wife and you form your own family unit.

00:14:13.000 That's a biblical value.

00:14:14.000 It is also a traditional stepping stone of the meritocracy because it turns out that moving out of the house, getting a job, getting married, these are the ways that you elevate yourself in any free society.

00:14:28.000 Married people tend to make more money than single people.

00:14:30.000 For example, having kids is the way that you mature.

00:14:33.000 The nuclear family is the way that you build a next generation.

00:14:37.000 So when you tear away at the fundamental values of all of your institutions, of all of your ideas and ideals, what you end up with is a bunch of young adults who are completely absent atomized and useless.

00:14:49.000 You might say like Zoran Mumdani, who's a 33-year-old socialist who's never held a real job but soon will be the mayor of the financial capital of planet Earth.

00:14:57.000 According to Axios in 1975, about half of America's 25 to 34-year-olds had done all of those things, moved out of their parents' house, gotten a job, got married, and had kids.

00:15:05.000 Fifty years later, less than a quarter have, according to a census working paper out this month.

00:15:10.000 The way young people think about marriage and family is changing.

00:15:13.000 It used to be the first step of adulthood with financial security and an established career potentially coming after a wedding.

00:15:18.000 Now it's commonly the last step.

00:15:19.000 Young people want to find work, pay off debt, and live alone before looking for a partner. 0.99

00:15:23.000 And these goals are harder to hit than they were for previous generations.

00:15:26.000 Findings suggest young adults today prioritize economic security over starting a family, reflecting the rising burden of housing, food, gas and other costs.

00:15:33.000 Okay, this is such a horse.

00:15:35.000 It's horse manure.

00:15:36.000 This notion that young people today are wildly poor and that is the reason why they're not getting married and having children is a lie.

00:15:42.000 It is not true.

00:15:43.000 Your grandparents were much poorer than you and they got married at twenty and then they had a bunch of kids and then they ended up paving the way for a better America.

00:15:51.000 If you are twenty five years old and unmarried living in a five thousand dollar a month apartment in New York City, that is a you problem.

00:15:59.000 That is your fault.

00:16:00.000 Okay, the rent is not your fault..

00:16:02.000 The rent is the fault of New York, which refuses to build any more housing because of all their crazy regulations.

00:16:07.000 But your life decisions are your fault.

00:16:10.000 I mean, this should be just baseline, rudimentary morality.

00:16:14.000 The decisions you make in your life are your problem.

00:16:19.000 That's not mean there can't be systemic change in ways that make your decisions easier.

00:16:24.000 But the vast majority of problems in your life in the freest country in the history of the world where you have the most wealth in the history of the world, stop blaming other people for that.

00:16:34.000 But again, when you tear away things like Judeo Christian morality and expectations of traditional gender roles like get married., being a husband, being a father.

00:16:42.000 What you end up with are useless young people. 1.00

00:16:45.000 And then those useless young people vote for other useless young people. 0.76

00:16:48.000 Again, like Zoran Momzani in 2024, 28% of young adults lived on their own with jobs.

00:16:54.000 But the combination of moving out, marrying and having kids no longer ranks among the top five most common milestone patterns.

00:17:00.000 By the way, that is a priority issue.

00:17:03.000 Because if you ask young people what they want out of life, they are not prioritizing these important things. 0.87

00:17:10.000 Why?

00:17:10.000 Well, because you on the left decided that somehow it was white identitarian to talk about biblical values, meritocracy, traditional.

00:17:19.000 family units and traditional gender roles, somehow that was white supremacy. 1.00

00:17:24.000 Well, the result of that is precisely what we are seeing today.

00:17:28.000 Well, I do think, I do think that at some point, Democrats are going to have to steer back towards sanity because they can't do this.

00:17:35.000 I mean, they can do it in fits and starts.

00:17:37.000 They can elect a Zoran Mandani in New York or they can elect a Brandon Johnson in Chicago, the least popular mayor in America.

00:17:45.000 You can elect an AOC in a borough of Brooklyn or something.

00:17:48.000 You can do those things.

00:17:49.000 But on a national level, do most Americans want that?

00:17:52.000 Is that a thing most Americans want?

00:17:54.000 I think the answer is no.

00:17:55.000 And so it's fascinating to see as Democrats start looking for their legitimate 2028 candidate.

00:18:00.000 Now I know that Gavin Newsom's been making a big splash, so I asked our sponsors over at Comet, Perplexity's new web browser.

00:18:06.000 I asked what is the order of the Democratic primaries in 2028, because it makes a very big difference in terms of who the 2028 Democratic nominee is.

00:18:11.000 So if you recall back in 2024, Joe Biden in an attempt to stack the primaries so he would have no real competition, he was afraid that if he allowed Iowa and New Hampshire to be first in the nation for the Democrats, he might get some sort of insurgent candidacy from Bernie Sanders again or some other left wing member of the Democratic Party.

00:18:30.000 And so he stacked it.

00:18:30.000 He put South Carolina first.

00:18:32.000 That of course was a call back to his 2020 race where he lost Iowa and New Hampshire, but then won South Carolina and basically swept the rest of the primaries.

00:18:39.000 While the current order still retains South Carolina at the head of the primaries, however, the DNC is currently debating the calendar.

00:18:46.000 Strong competition is emerging among states like South Carolina, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Nevada to obtain or reclaim early voting status.

00:18:53.000 The DNC's rules and by laws committee will determine the order.

00:18:56.000 A decision is not expected until at least late 2025, possibly 2026.

00:19:02.000 New Hampshire is fighting very hard to restore its long held first in the nation status.

00:19:06.000 But the bottom line is this.

00:19:08.000 The most important state for the Democratic Party primaries is South Carolina.

00:19:11.000 So if I ask, comment then, what percentage of the 2024 South Carolina Democratic Party primary electorate was black in 2024.

00:19:20.000 The answer was 56 percent of 2024 South Carolina Democratic Party primary voters were black in 2016.

00:19:27.000 By the way, that number was 61 percent.

00:19:30.000 So how do you think Gavin Newsom is going to do with that crowd?

00:19:33.000 I mean, maybe he will do somewhat better than Bernie Sanders or Pete Buttigieg would do, but he's not going to blow it out of the park, which means the Democrats are looking to another face.

00:19:42.000 Who is that other face?

00:19:43.000 That face is Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland.

00:19:46.000 So Wes Moore has been the person who I'm hearing a lot about from my friends in the Democratic Party.

00:19:50.000 I hear his name come up a lot that a lot of people were very hot on Wes Moore.

00:19:54.000 He, of course, is the governor of Maryland.

00:19:56.000 Here was George Clooney talking up Westmore recently with Jake Tapper on CNN.

00:20:02.000 But who I think is who I think is levitating above that is Westmore.

00:20:07.000 I think he is the guy that has handled this tragedy in Baltimore beautifully.

00:20:14.000 He's two tours of duty in Afghanistan, active duty.

00:20:19.000 He speaks sort of beautifully.

00:20:21.000 He's smart.

00:20:22.000 He ran a hedge fund.

00:20:23.000 He ran the Robin Hood Foundation.

00:20:26.000 He's a proper leader.

00:20:28.000 And Democrats, you know, the thing is we say Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line, although I think Republicans have fallen in love a little bit.

00:20:37.000 I like him a lot.

00:20:38.000 I think he could be someone we could all join in behind.

00:20:43.000 We have to find somebody rather soon.

00:20:47.000 Now, again, his background, Westmoore, is pretty interesting.

00:20:50.000 Westmoore is very young, right?

00:20:54.000 Westmoore is 46 years old right now, which for the Democratic Party is, again, very, very young.

00:20:58.000 He was born in Maryland.

00:21:00.000 His dad died when he was very young.

00:21:02.000 His mom moved him to the Bronx.

00:21:05.000 He got involved apparently in petty crime as a youngster, and he ended up enrolled in Valley Forge Military Academy..

00:21:12.000 And then he completed requirements for the U.S. Army's early commissioning program.

00:21:16.000 He became a second lieutenant to military intelligence in the Army Reserve.

00:21:19.000 He went to Johns Hopkins University.

00:21:21.000 He's got his BA from there.

00:21:23.000 He played wide receiver for their football team for a couple of seasons.

00:21:27.000 And then he interned at the Department of Homeland Security under Tom Ridge.

00:21:32.000 He ended up going to Wolfson College in Oxford as Rhodes Scholar.

00:21:36.000 And then served in the 82nd Airborne Division and was in Afghanistan 2005 to 2006.

00:21:42.000 And he ended up leaving as captain.

00:21:45.000 He was a White House Fellow in February 26 under Under Secretary of State Connolly to Rice, he worked at Deutsche Bank in Manhattan, Citibank from 2007 to 2012.

00:21:56.000 And then he ended up, of course, running for office.

00:21:59.000 He became sort of a TV producer for a while.

00:22:02.000 He was CEO of a charitable organization that was designed to alleviate childhood poverty.

00:22:08.000 So again, this is the guy who has sort of the classic political resume.

00:22:12.000 And so Democrats are very into this.

00:22:14.000 And the big thing right now for Westmoore is that as he's watching Gavin Newsom garner all the attention, he wants to jump in.

00:22:20.000 He understands the primaries now start earlier than ever and he's starting to jump in already coming up.

00:22:24.000 President Trump talking about sending federal troops to Chic Chicago, Democrats going nuts, plus a lot more.

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00:24:36.000 President Trump has said that he was interested in sending the National Guard into Baltimore to quickly clean up crime.

00:24:43.000 This is a follow on to his use of the National Guard in order to quash crime in Washington, DC.

00:24:48.000 Now, legally speaking, the President of the United States has awfully much more authority in Washington, DC, which of course is a federal district than he does in a city like Baltimore, which is just a city in the state of Maryland, right?

00:24:58.000 States typically have police power.

00:25:00.000 It is not the federal government that enforces state law.

00:25:02.000 He has to either cite state law or basic criminal law in the states.

00:25:05.000 That is the job of the state.

00:25:07.000 It is the job of the locality.

00:25:09.000 Typically, legally, in order for the president of the United States to utilize the National Guard in these particular areas, he has to either cite the insurrection act, right?

00:25:17.000 He has to say that there's some sort of riot that's taking place or he has to send in the National Guard to help federal forces effectuate federal laws.

00:25:24.000 That's what he did in Los Angeles.

00:25:26.000 He said that the federal government was unable to effectuate immigration law and the National Guard was brought in in a support capacity for ICE.

00:25:34.000 So it's not clear what legal authority President Trump would be citing in sending the National Guard to a place like Baltimore.

00:25:40.000 Now, Baltimore has been a high crime area for a very, very long time, obviously.

00:25:44.000 And the reason that The Wire took place, the HBO show, terrific show, took place in Baltimore is because Baltimore has been sort of the epicenter of American crime for decades and decades and decades, going all the way back to when David Simon was writing about it in his book Homicide.

00:25:58.000 But President Trump threatened, he said, if Wes Moore needs help like Gavin Newscomb did in LA, I will send in the troops, which is being done in nearby DC, and quickly clean up the crime.

00:26:06.000 Well, this is nothing excites a Democrat more than being attacked by President Trump at this point.

00:26:10.000 Now, this is a difference.

00:26:12.000 Very early on in President Trump's presidency, Democrats seem to kind of want to make nice with him.

00:26:17.000 You saw this from Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan.

00:26:19.000 You also did see this from West Moore last December after President Trump became president, elect Trump again.

00:26:25.000 West Moore greeted him in the basement of the Army Navy game.

00:26:28.000 Here's what that looked like.

00:26:30.000 President, welcome back to Maryland, sir.

00:26:33.000 Welcome back to Maryland.

00:26:34.000 It's good to see you.

00:26:35.000 It's a good person, too.

00:26:36.000 Thank you, sir.

00:26:37.000 Great to see you.

00:26:38.000 Great to have you back here.

00:26:39.000 Thank you, sir.

00:26:42.000 Thank you, sir.

00:26:43.000 Thank you.

00:26:45.000 So this is a great moment for West Moore to finally declare war on the president of the United States because, of course, if you wish to run for that 2028 Democratic nomination, you have to basically run against Trump first before you get to whoever the Republican nominee will be, whether it's JD Vance or Marco Rubio or, or someone else.

00:27:01.000 So here was Westmore jumping on the opportunity talking about how President Trump needs to get the name of Baltimore out of his mouth.

00:27:10.000 I do want to be very clear.

00:27:12.000 If you are not willing to be part of a solution, keep our names out of your mouth.

00:27:17.000 Specifically, Donald Trump, if you are not willing to walk our communities, keep our name out of your mouth.

00:27:27.000 Yeah.

00:27:27.000 Well, I mean, again, that that sort of, you know, ridiculous notion that President Trump, if you're not, I mean, he is willing to be part of the solution.

00:27:34.000 That's why he's talking about sending the National Guard there.

00:27:37.000 But it's not about that the performative.

00:27:39.000 The Democrats have to first pass the bar of the performative before they can get to the substantive.

00:27:44.000 On CNN on Friday, he said it's because they haven't walked our streets.

00:27:48.000 He said many of the comments that are being made from the White House come off as so, so toned off and so ignorant about fighting crime.

00:27:53.000 They haven't been in our communities.

00:27:54.000 They're more than happy just making these repeated tropes about us, but not actually working with us to be able to make sure that our streets are safe and that people can have a real opportunity to feel safe in their own neighborhoods.

00:28:03.000 Now, to be fair, it is pretty clear that the democratic rule in Maryland has not been particularly beneficial for people wishing to avoid crime in Baltimore.

00:28:18.000 remains extremely, extremely high.

00:28:20.000 Homicide has down over the course of the last year or two.

00:28:23.000 With that said, it remains significantly higher than the rest of the country.

00:28:27.000 President Trump responded as president, I would much prefer he clean up this crime disaster before I go there for a walk.

00:28:33.000 Well, yeah, I mean, again, the crime rates in Baltimore are extremely bad.

00:28:38.000 It is the fourth most dangerous city in America according to some recent studies.

00:28:45.000 It has consistently high crime rates.

00:28:47.000 There's significant problems with drugs.

00:28:51.000 President Trump targeting it on the basis of it being incredibly criminal.

00:28:55.000 He's not wrong to do that.

00:28:56.000 But again, this does give Westmoore the opening to basically now run against Trump, which is the thing that he wants to do more than anything else.

00:29:03.000 Westmoore then sent a letter to President Trump basically inviting him to walk the streets.

00:29:07.000 And President Trump said, I'll walk the streets after I clean up the crime.

00:29:10.000 That seems safer for me.

00:29:10.000 But Westmoore said, Dear President Trump, last week you responded to my concerns about the deployment of National Guard personnel for municipal police in Washington, DC by insulting me personally from the Oval Office.

00:29:20.000 So I wanted to write in order to clarify the root of my frustration and extend an invitation to you to visit Maryland where we can discuss strategies for effective public safety policy.

00:29:28.000 There is no higher priority for me as the governor of my state than the safety of my people.

00:29:31.000 This is an issue of both professional and personal significance.

00:29:34.000 I grew up in and around communities left behind by people in power who sought to weaponize the pain of their constituents through hollow talking points that never changed the reality on the ground.

00:29:42.000 From the day I became Maryland's chief executive, I've sought a different path.

00:29:46.000 We've taken an all of the above approach to public safety that addresses the root causes of crime, mobilizing state resources, building strong partnerships with local jurisdictions, prosecutors, public defenders, police officers and advocates, and ensuring greater coordination and data sharing to deliver staggering drops in violent crime.

00:30:01.000 His homicides in Maryland are down statewide by twenty percent since my inauguration two and a half years ago in the first six months of 2025.

00:30:07.000 The Baltimore PD continued to see a double digit reduction in gun violence, including a 22% decrease in homicides and a 19% decrease in non-fatal shootings the year before.

00:30:14.000 This is basically a press release.

00:30:15.000 I mean, Westmoore sends President Trump a press release and he says, if there's anything Maryland has proven over the last two years, it's that we can achieve performance without being performative.

00:30:24.000 I'd like to invite you formally to attend our next public safety walk in September at a date of your choice.

00:30:31.000 So again, I think that this is all about Westmoore trying to wrest control of the microphone away from Gavin Newsom.

00:30:38.000 And frankly, he does have an advantage.

00:30:39.000 And Westmoore is black. 0.96

00:30:40.000 So that's going to make a awfully big difference in South Carolina in 2028.

00:30:45.000 If South Carolina is the first primary state, Westmoore has a heavy advantage going in.

00:30:49.000 He just does.

00:30:50.000 That is just a reality.

00:30:52.000 And pretending it is not so is foolish right now.

00:30:56.000 If you had to draw odds on favorite for the nomination for the Democratic Party right now, Westmore is probably it.

00:31:02.000 Again, it's not going to be hard for him to get money from people like George Clooney.

00:31:05.000 He does have a moderate effect, even though his policies are not particularly moderate in the state of Maryland.

00:31:12.000 He's obviously well spoken.

00:31:15.000 He seems to be politically adept.

00:31:17.000 Now, can he fall into radicalism?

00:31:19.000 Absolutely.

00:31:20.000 So for example, he doesn't need to do this.

00:31:21.000 Once Trump has attacked him over Baltimore, he should just stick to that.

00:31:24.000 Westmore instead is attacking Trump for sending troops to DC.

00:31:28.000 That's foolish.

00:31:29.000 It's unconstitutional.

00:31:30.000 It's a direct violation of the Tenth Amendment.

00:31:32.000 And for a party that talks about state rights, it's amazing how they're having such a big government approach in the way they're conducting public safety.

00:31:42.000 Again, it is not unconstitutional for the president to send troops to Washington, DC.

00:31:47.000 That is fully in line with the Constitution of the United States.

00:31:49.000 President Trump responded to Governor Wes Moore, who invited him to walk the city.

00:31:54.000 In a post on Truth Social, Trump criticized the Maryland Governor's record on crime.

00:31:58.000 He said if Baltimore needs assistance, he will send in the National Guard, like he did to LA and Washington, DC.

00:32:03.000 He also noted he had given Moore a lot of money to repair his demolished bridge, adding he might have to rethink the decision.

00:32:08.000 Governor Westmore of Maryland, he said, has asked in a rather nasty and provocative tone that I walk the streets of Maryland with him.

00:32:14.000 I assume he's talking about out of control crime in Baltimore.

00:32:17.000 As president, I'd much prefer he clean up this crime disaster before I go there for a walk.

00:32:23.000 He says Westmore's crime record is a very bad one unless he fudges his figures on crime like many of the other blue states are doing. 0.74

00:32:28.000 But if Westmore needs help like Gavin Newscomb did in LA, I will send in the troops, which is being done in nearby DC, and quickly clean up the crime.

00:32:36.000 Now, again, it seems to me that the reactionary nature of our politics is leading everybody into some box canyons politically.

00:32:43.000 Hey, the reality is that the president of the United States does not have the unilateral authority.

00:32:47.000 again, unless he somehow declares that an insurrection is taking place to simply send in the National Guard to local cities to clean up the crime.

00:32:55.000 And there's a reason for that.

00:32:56.000 We do not want the federal government in the business of enforcing local law.

00:33:00.000 At that point, states cease to exist.

00:33:02.000 That is a problem.

00:33:03.000 If you're on the right side of the aisle, that is a problem for you.

00:33:06.000 Imagine Westmoore as president of the United States.

00:33:09.000 Imagine Joe Biden just a couple of years ago as president of the United States sending in troops to enforce local law in places like Florida or Texas picking which laws to enforce.

00:33:20.000 You'd be upset about that.

00:33:21.000 And you'd have a right to be upset about that.

00:33:23.000 That is not how the constitution.

00:33:25.000 This is why I am less than enthused about the idea of now deploying troops to Chicago.

00:33:31.000 Again, there is a difference between deploying troops to LA to enforce immigration law, federal immigration law, and deploying troops to Washington, DC, which is in fact a federal district.

00:33:40.000 Now apparently the Pentagon is planning a military deployment in Chicago.

00:33:44.000 According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon has for weeks been planning a military deployment to Chicago as President Trump says he wants to crack down on crime, homelessness and undocumented immigration in a model that could later be used in other major cities.

00:33:56.000 Officials familiar with the planning said.

00:33:58.000 The planning, which has not been previously disclosed, involves several options, including mobilizing at least a few thousand members of the National Guard as soon as September.

00:34:05.000 It's what is the third most populous city in the United States.

00:34:09.000 The mission, if approved, would have parallels to the polarizing and legally contested operation Trump ordered in LA in June.

00:34:15.000 The Chicago effort would further expand Trump's use of military force domestically, even when state and local authorities call the idea unwelcome and unwarranted.

00:34:22.000 Now, again, it is quite possible that a state or local authority can say they don't want to enforce federal immigration law and they obstruct federal immigration law.

00:34:29.000 Then you have a good excuse to send in the National Guard to help actually enforce the law.

00:34:34.000 But if what you're talking about is there are too many murders in the city of Chicago, so you're sending in the National Guard.

00:34:39.000 Again, unless you have some sort of legal basis for it.

00:34:42.000 This is a problem.

00:34:43.000 President Trump is not wrong about Chicago.

00:34:45.000 He said, Chicago's a mess.

00:34:47.000 You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent.

00:34:49.000 We'll straighten that one out probably next.

00:34:51.000 That'll be our next one after this and it won't even be tough.

00:34:54.000 Now, as they say, they probably will use ICE as sort of a bootstrap for putting troops on the ground in Chicago.

00:35:00.000 However, it seems to me that if Chicago wishes to keep voting for awful, awful people for their politicians, that they do in fact have the right to vote for terrible politicians and live with the consequences of those terrible politicians.

00:35:13.000 The way that people learn not to elect bad people is by having twenty years, thirty years of crime like they did in New York City before they got the Rudy Giuliani treatment.

00:35:21.000 And it seems like New Yorkers don't learn.

00:35:22.000 And so they'll go right back to the well on that one.

00:35:25.000 Mayor Brandon Johnson, in response to President Trump's threats to send National Guard into Chicago, he put out a statement.

00:35:34.000 He says, quote, we take President Trump's statement seriously, but to be clear, the city has not received any formal communication from the Trump administration regarding additional federal law enforcement or military deployments to Chicago.

00:35:43.000 Certainly, we have grave concerns about the impact of any unlawful deployment of National Guard troops to the city of Chicago.

00:35:48.000 The problem with the President's approach is that it is uncoordinated, uncalled for, and unsound.

00:35:53.000 Unlawfully deploying the National Guard to Chicago has the potential to inflame tensions between.

00:35:57.000 residents and law enforcement when we know that trust between police and residents is foundational to building safer communities.

00:36:02.000 Unlawful deployment would be unsustainable and would threaten to undermine the historic progress we have made in the past year alone.

00:36:07.000 We have reduced homicides by more than thirty percent robberies by thirty five percent shootings by almost forty percent.

00:36:12.000 We continue to invest in what is working.

00:36:13.000 Okay.

00:36:14.000 So I mean, first of all, this is the wrong tack for Brandon Johnson to take and for any of these blue state democrats to take.

00:36:20.000 The answer is not we're doing an amazing job on crime.

00:36:23.000 The answer is the president doesn't have the authority to do this, right?

00:36:26.000 Sure, we can do a better job on crime.

00:36:28.000 Everybody can do a better job on crime in a city in America that can't do a better job on crime.

00:36:32.000 But the National Guard being deployed to the city is a violation of the constitutional order would actually be.

00:36:39.000 the argument that should be made by Brandon Johnson, but he doesn't really care much about that, of course, because he is very much in favor of the crime on sort of a general level.

00:36:49.000 Senator Tammy Duckworth, she also issued a statement condemning the president of the United States.

00:36:54.000 She said it comes as no surprise Donald Trump is once again attacking Chicago, but that doesn't change the Trump's continuing pattern of politicizing and misusing our nation's military for his own partisan gain and to crush dissent is deeply disturbing as unamerican and has no place in any of our cities.

00:37:08.000 We know this isn't about law and order because Trump is once again refusing to coordinate with state and local officials.

00:37:12.000 Now again, President Trump would say, listen, if I coordinate with you, you're just going to thwart the actual.

00:37:16.000 ability to police crime.

00:37:18.000 That's what happened in Los Angeles.

00:37:21.000 Again, the Democrats, the Democrats have a unique way, a truly unique way of taking the wrong side of any argument, even when they might be constitutionally correct.

00:37:30.000 It's kind of amazing.

00:37:31.000 What they should be arguing is the president does not have legal authority under the constitution of the United States to enforce local law by the military.

00:37:39.000 That is not, that is not what the military is for.

00:37:41.000 Instead, they take the perspective that actually crime is okay and it's racist of Trump to offer this and it's misuse of our military and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

00:37:51.000 And so it looks like they're pro crime, which is a really dumb way to do this.

00:37:55.000 Well, here was governor, governor JB Pritzker.

00:37:58.000 He also put out a tweet suggesting that Trump was trying to manufacture a crisis.

00:38:02.000 Cite, Donald Trump is trying to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform and continue to abuse his power to distract from the pain he's causing families will continue to follow the law, stand up for the sovereignty of our state and protect Illinoisans.

00:38:14.000 Okay, so the the last line there is closer to correct from from JB Pritzker.

00:38:19.000 But again, this kind of notion that Trump is manufacturing a crime crisis when again crime in Chicago, there are shootings pretty much every weekend in Chicago that obviously is untrue.

00:38:31.000 Here was Brandon Johnson trying to rebut claims that his city is basically run like trash.

00:38:37.000 This is who Chicago really is.

00:38:40.000 What's being painted by the federal government is false.

00:38:43.000 We love one another.

00:38:44.000 We support one another.

00:38:46.000 We put our arms around one another.

00:38:50.000 Okay, and then he continued by suggesting that actually the people of Chicago would participate in a uprising against President.

00:38:58.000 So what, you're going to riot to show that crime is bad?

00:39:00.000 That would be a really stupid move, Mayor John, but then again, he is a very stupid man.

00:39:05.000 So, you know, look, the city of Chicago, one of the most diverse economies in the world.

00:39:12.000 Again, you know, a city that has been, you know, founded and established on the values of working people.

00:39:18.000 We're not going to surrender our humanity to this tyrant.

00:39:20.000 I can tell you this.

00:39:22.000 The city of Chicago has a long history of standing up against tyranny, resisting those who wish to undermine the interests of working people.

00:39:30.000 We're not going to back down.

00:39:31.000 We're not going to cower.

00:39:32.000 We're not going to bend.

00:39:33.000 We're not going to break.

00:39:34.000 We are Chicago.

00:39:35.000 We are the soul of America.

00:39:36.000 And we will maintain that posture from now until.

00:39:43.000 Yeah, I don't even know what he means by that.

00:39:45.000 What does he mean?

00:39:46.000 That we're not going to we're going to resist.

00:39:48.000 What is that resistance like look like?

00:39:49.000 Seriously, it is amazing how many of these people are playing directly into President Trump's hands on the radical left.

00:39:57.000 With that said, President Trump moving federal troops into Chicago that is a very fraught constitutional move at the very best.

00:40:03.000 Now, there are moves that President Trump can make on crime that are pretty fascinating.

00:40:06.000 So one of the ones that he is making, according to an exclusive for the New York Post, is that he's going to sign an executive order today ending cashless bail across the country, essentially attaching strings to federal funding for jurisdictions that continue to do cashless bail, which is essentially the idea that we'll just release criminals on their own recognizance around the country.

00:40:23.000 Attorney General Pambandi will provide Trump with a list of no cash bail jurisdictions that could end up targeting states like New York, cities like Washington, DC, or other localities with lax bail policies.

00:40:33.000 A White House memo on the executive action says, Cit, cash bail policies allow dangerous individuals to immediately return to the streets and further endanger law-abiding hard-working Americans because they know our laws will not be enforced.

00:40:44.000 Arresting repeat offenders for new crimes after they've already been freed without bail is a waste of public resources and an obvious threat to public safety.

00:40:50.000 The memo also notes.

00:40:52.000 And so the president does have the ability to attach strings to federal funding in many ways.

00:40:57.000 This has been done for decades.

00:40:58.000 There's nothing new about that.

00:41:00.000 Now going after jurisdictions that are releasing criminals onto the streets.

00:41:04.000 That is within his view.

00:41:05.000 So again, I have no problem with the president fighting crime.

00:41:07.000 I just want to make sure that he does it in the most legally bulletproof way so it doesn't get shot down by a court at the first available opportunity.

00:41:14.000 Now speaking of matters legal, on Friday, the DOJ released the testimony of Ghislaine Maxwell, the transcript of her interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

00:41:27.000 It's about 300 pages.

00:41:29.000 The audio is about six hours or so.

00:41:32.000 Not a lot of big takeaways.

00:41:34.000 The big takeaway is that according to Ghislaine Maxwell, there were people who were clamoring for her to talk.

00:41:38.000 She was going to name the names.

00:41:40.000 She was going to spill the beans.

00:41:42.000 She was going to break this thing wide open where it turns out that suddenly the Trump administration was covering for a gigantic child sex trafficking ring on behalf of foreign intelligence agencies, specifically according to many of the Jews. 0.65

00:41:53.000 In any case, all of that seems to not be true.

00:41:56.000 So either she's lying, in which case there's no evidence that that allegation is true, or she's telling the truth, in which case there's no evidence that that allegation is true.

00:42:04.000 As I've been saying from the beginning, suspicions without evidence, maybe they're true, but at some point you do need to show, you know, the evidence.

00:42:13.000 Well, Ghislaine Maxwell did the six hour interview.

00:42:16.000 She testified that President Trump had never engaged in any inappropriate conduct that she saw with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:42:23.000 She added that she didn't believe that Epstein killed him.

00:42:24.000 that she didn't believe that Epstein killed himself.

00:42:25.000 And again, there is the best case here is probably Alan Dershowitz' case, who again was Maxwell's and was Epstein's lawyer.

00:42:34.000 Dershowitz says that there's a good shot that Epstein did kill himself, but basically he paid the prison guards to allow him to kill himself.

00:42:39.000 I mean, that is certainly a possibility.

00:42:42.000 She said that Bill Clinton was very close with her, but not with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:42:46.000 Todd Blanche had asked her repeatedly about her and Epstein's relationships with Bill Clinton.

00:42:50.000 By the way, we know how close Epstein and Glaine Maxwell were to Clinton, particularly Glaine Maxwell, because as it turns out, according to CNN, Glaine Maxwell was actually given an honor at a prestigious Clinton event years after abuse allegations actually surfaced, which is definitely weird.

00:43:10.000 It's a weird thing to do.

00:43:12.000 So for all those who are saying it's a cover up by Trump to protect Trump, maybe it's a cover up by Trump to protect Hillary Clinton.

00:43:18.000 I don't know.

00:43:19.000 Maxwell said President Clinton liked me, we got along terribly well.

00:43:22.000 I never saw that warmth or however you want to characterize it with mister Epstein.

00:43:25.000 Maxwell said there's no client list of people who associated with Epstein.

00:43:30.000 She said that there's no list that she was aware of.

00:43:34.000 She said also that there was no link to any intelligence agency.

00:43:37.000 Now again, maybe she's lying about all this.

00:43:39.000 That's that's certainly possible.

00:43:40.000 She is, of course, a criminal derelict who sexually abused minors. 1.00

00:43:44.000 So that is certainly a possibility.

00:43:48.000 However, the absence of evidence does not strengthen your case.

00:43:53.000 One of the amazing things about large-scale conspiracy theories is when no evidence emerges to support the theory, the lack of evidence is in itself evidence that conspiracy theory is true.

00:44:03.000 It's the magic of a conspiracy theory.

00:44:05.000 And it is the difference between a actual conspiracy and a conspiracy theory.

00:44:08.000 As I've said many times, a actual conspiracy involves evidence of conspiratorial activity to achieve a goal.

00:44:14.000 A conspiracy theory is based on speculation that such a thing is going on without any evidence.

00:44:19.000 And the beautiful thing about that is that you just keep getting to use the absence of evidence as evidence that your theory is true, which is always quite delicious.

00:44:28.000 Jim Jordan, representative from Ohio, he rightly points out that the Maxwell interview, again, confirms what most people were saying, which is that Trump was not involved in any way in Epstein Island shenanigans with minors.

00:44:40.000 What I know is they didn't release parts of the transcript.

00:44:43.000 They released the whole transcript.

00:44:45.000 And, and, you know, so you can go through the whole thing.

00:44:48.000 And of course, this confirms what we all knew.

00:44:50.000 If the Democrats, if President Trump had done something wrong, you don't think the Democrats would have released that?

00:44:55.000 I mean, it was their Justice Department who handled all this.

00:44:59.000 You don't think the Garland Justice Department and the Chris Ray FBI would have released information.

00:45:03.000 We knew President Trump didn't do anything wrong here.

00:45:06.000 He said that repeatedly.

00:45:07.000 This transcript is the whole transcript and it confirms that.

00:45:11.000 So I think this is, there's, there's nothing there.

00:45:14.000 It seems based on what we got from the interview of Miss Maxwell.

00:45:22.000 Right.

00:45:22.000 Again, he's not wrong about that.

00:45:24.000 And if...

00:45:29.000 That's fine.

00:45:29.000 You can do that.

00:45:30.000 You should just acknowledge that there's no evidence to actually back the conspiracy theory at this point.

00:45:35.000 And meanwhile, JD Vance did a sort of fascinating interview yesterday.

00:45:39.000 with Kristen Walker over at NBC on the situation with regard to Russia Ukraine.

00:45:44.000 Now the Trump administration, President Trump in particular, has been taking the correct line on this.

00:45:49.000 He got Putin to go to Anchorage, then he went to the Europeans and he said, listen, I'm willing to do some form of security guarantee.

00:45:55.000 Ukraine really has to be on board with making some territorial concessions.

00:45:59.000 They're the ones who are going to have to negotiate all that.

00:46:01.000 And then the president implied very late last week that offensive weaponry should actually be used by Ukraine against Russia.

00:46:08.000 That if Russia won't come to the table, you really have only one other choice and that's to ratchet things up.

00:46:13.000 Well, two things are happening that are sort of fat one russia has rejected everything russia continues to reject everything they're totally intransigent sergey laurow the foreign minister of russia the guy who again showed up in anchorage wearing a usr shirt just to demonstrate what his priorities were sergey laurow he also was on with kristen walker and he proceeded to say that there was in fact no meeting planned between vlodimir zelensky and vlodimir putin there is no meeting planned and

00:46:43.000 i am not challenging this but you you cannot uh cannot i think understand what i am saying putin is ready to meet with zelensky when the agenda would be ready for a summit and this agenda is not ready at all.

00:47:06.000 Okay, so again, he has no plans at this point.

00:47:09.000 So despite all of the talk about how we were moving on to the next step, trilateral meetings and all the rest, in the end, it was always going to be about what the Russians want from the negotiation.

00:47:16.000 We know what the Ukrainians want. 0.95

00:47:18.000 A end to the war, security guarantees, insurance that they're not going to be invaded again.

00:47:22.000 Full scale guarantee of their independence.

00:47:23.000 That's what they want.

00:47:25.000 What Russia wants is Ukraine. 0.84

00:47:27.000 They want to ingest Ukraine. 1.00

00:47:28.000 And so Lavrov continues to claim that Zelensky is illegitimate.

00:47:31.000 Well, that makes it kind of difficult to negotiate when you're saying that the leader of the person on the other side is illegitimate.

00:47:37.000 And by the way, the only quote-unquote legitimate leader that Russia would ever accept is somebody who's friendly to Moscow, of course.

00:47:44.000 Irrespective of when this meeting might take place, and it must be very well prepared, the issue of who is going to sign the deal.

00:47:53.000 on the Ukrainian side.

00:47:54.000 So you're saying you don't see President Zelensky as the legitimate leader of Ukraine.

00:47:59.000 President Putin doesn't recognize him as the legitimate leader of Ukraine.

00:48:03.000 No, we recognize him as de facto head of the regime.

00:48:07.000 And in this capacity, we are ready to meet with him.

00:48:12.000 But when it comes to signing legal documents, now you want to have the entire picture, just part of it, which suits you.

00:48:20.000 When we come to a stage when you have to sign documents, we would need a very clear understanding by everybody that the person who is signing is legitimate.

00:48:33.000 And according to the Ukrainian constitution, Mr. Zelensky is not at the moment.

00:48:40.000 Okay, so what he's saying is, sure, we'll meet with Zelensky, but we'll call him illegitimate the whole time. 0.88

00:48:44.000 And then we won't allow him to actually sign the documents on the other side, which is a wild position to take given the fact that again if Russia wants a peace deal which they clearly do not at this point they feel they can continue to ratchet up the pressure if they wanted to do something they wouldn't be doing that okay meanwhile as I've said a thousand times the biggest barrier to an extra republican administration remains the economy so on Friday Jerome Powell signaled that he would in fact likely be lowering those interest rates come September that of course made investors pretty

00:49:14.000 happy investors were excited that finally the monetary supply would be loosened at least somewhat that there would be an ability to get to get easier loans that mortgage rates would go down and all of the rest.

00:49:28.000 However, the labour market continues to remain somewhat stagnant.

00:49:32.000 And there is ballast to the tariff policies that President Trump has been pushing.

00:49:36.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the labour market has moved front and center for the Federal Reserve, highlighting its fragility and risks to the economy.

00:49:41.000 The good news is that employment unemployment remains low.

00:49:44.000 Employers have not been all that interested in laying people off.

00:49:46.000 The bad news is that companies have not been all that interested in hiring either.

00:49:50.000 This precarious situation means even a relatively small increase in layoffs could lead the economy to start shutting jobs, a process that can be difficult to reverse once it starts.

00:49:58.000 Worries about that possibility have come to the fore at the Fed, especially after revisions included in that July employment report showed much weaker job growth in recent months than previously thought.

00:50:08.000 So on Friday, Fed chair Jerome Powell signalled that they were going to cut rates because of the risk of a deteriorating jobs market.

00:50:15.000 He said if those risks materialize, they can do so quickly in the form of sharply higher layoffs and rising unemployment.

00:50:21.000 We've already seen the pace of hiring slowing markedly.

00:50:23.000 In June, the hiring rate was just three point three percent according to the Labor Department, that was below three point nine percent in February 2020.

00:50:30.000 And it was much less than the four point six percent registered in November 2021 when the job market was coming back from the pandemic.

00:50:38.000 Companies were already adding new employees at a slower pace when President Trump came back into office.

00:50:43.000 Then we were going to do deregulation and lower taxes and all the rest.

00:50:47.000 It turns out the tariffs have thrown a wrench into all that.

00:50:50.000 So the Federal Reserve is going to try to apparently jog the markets by lowering those interest rates.

00:50:56.000 Meanwhile, the Trump administration has taken a $10 billion stake in Intel.

00:50:59.000 And again, I'm deeply uncomfortable with this.

00:51:01.000 This is not good laissez faire, free market policy.

00:51:04.000 It is not.

00:51:06.000 President Trump said Friday at the White House, I said, I think it would be good to have the United States as your partner.

00:51:10.000 The CEO of Intel agreed.

00:51:11.000 They've agreed to do it.

00:51:13.000 Commerce Secretary Harold Lutnick confirmed that deal in a post on Exxon Friday.

00:51:17.000 Cite, big news.

00:51:18.000 The United States of America now owns 10% of Intel, one of our great American technology companies.

00:51:23.000 Intel posted details of the pl plan soon after, saying the administration would make an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock paid for with Chip's grant money.

00:51:31.000 So basically the idea is that taxpayer money will be used to buy America a piece of Intel.

00:51:38.000 A bad investment.

00:51:39.000 I wouldn't be spending $9 billion to buy a piece of Intel, would you?

00:51:43.000 Because they've been in secular decline for quite a while because they've been mishandled.

00:51:48.000 The company said the stake would be funded with $5.7 billion in grants previously awarded but not yet paid and $3.2 billion from a separate Department of Defense program.

00:51:57.000 The CEO said we are grateful for the confidence the president and the administration have placed in Intel.

00:52:01.000 We look forward to working to advance US technology and manufacturing leadership.

00:52:06.000 So some Republicans are upset about this, including Senator Rand Paul.

00:52:10.000 He correctly points out that this is actually a violation of free market principles and that once you are a partner with the government, the government basically is in charge of your business and not only that, it's too big to fail.

00:52:24.000 So as Mike Schmidt and Todd Fisher write in the Wall Street Journal, the company's products business, which designs chips for computers and servers, is large and profitable, but not a national security priority.

00:52:34.000 That business underpins most of Intel's roughly $100 billion market cap.

00:52:38.000 What matters for national security is Intel'ss foundry, the manufacturing arm that could in theory produce chips for other companies as well as Intel's internal products.

00:52:46.000 And that foundry is struggling.

00:52:47.000 It lost more than $13 billion last year.

00:52:49.000 It has almost no external customers.

00:52:52.000 But a government equity stake does not solve that problem.

00:52:54.000 Intel can easily raise capital in public markets.

00:52:57.000 There is no need for taxpayer dollars to replace what private capital is already willing to do.

00:53:02.000 Unlike grants, equity comes at a steep cost to Intel.

00:53:05.000 Transferring grants into equity risks putting Intel at a cost disadvantage relative to other chip makers, which are manufacturing predominantly in low cost Asian countries and receiving direct incentives in the US and around the world.

00:53:16.000 And there are also practical risks because, of course, now it's polit politicized.

00:53:20.000 The biggest problem is that Intel's 18A process has failed to secure any meaningful external customers.

00:53:24.000 Intel CEO recently acknowledged that without external customers for its advanced 14A process technology, the company can't sustain leading edge manufacturing.

00:53:36.000 And again, this sort of thing here, not great.

00:53:40.000 It's just, it didn't.

00:53:42.000 Nationalization of American industries is a bad idea.

00:53:46.000 I understand that the Trump administration is trying to do as much as it can from the executive branch of the government.

00:53:50.000 They're doing it on crime.

00:53:51.000 They're doing it on immigration. 0.53

00:53:52.000 On immigration, they have plenary power on crime. 0.97

00:53:54.000 Not so much.

00:53:55.000 Doing it on the economy is not.

00:53:57.000 what the executive branch was designed to do.

00:53:59.000 It is not.

00:54:00.000 Congress should step in.

00:54:02.000 Congress is an independent branch of government.

00:54:05.000 The presidents of the United States should not unilaterally be making tariff policy.

00:54:09.000 That is not what the system was designed to do.

00:54:12.000 I don't like it happening, whether it is Democrat or Republican, and the grand centralization of nearly all power in the executive branch as a whole is a massive, massive institutional flaw in our Republic right now.

00:54:23.000 It also means that whenever we have a presidential election, it is tooth and nail because I guess if you grab the executive branch, then you basically run everything.

00:54:32.000 And that is a huge systemic problem that the founders never would have tolerated.

00:54:36.000 Already coming up, we'll get to.

00:54:38.000 Get to the raid on John Bolton's house plus Snoop Dogg speaking out against Disney.

00:54:44.000 Fascinating.

00:54:44.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:54:46.000 If you're not a member, become member.

00:54:47.000 Use code Shapiro.

00:54:48.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 25, 2025

Mamdani Can't LIFT...Plus Democrats Unleash Their 2028 CONTENDER?

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