The Ben Shapiro Show - Mamdani Leaves Homeless to FREEZE To Death

00:00:00.000 Homeless people in New York freezing to death because of the insane quote-unquote empathy of Zorhan Mamdani Plus. 0.57

00:00:06.000 More insane empathy causing more death up in Canada, where apparently pretending that boys can be girls actually does not prevent people from doing terrible, terrible things.

00:00:15.000 And we get into the latest on the economy.

00:00:17.000 The economy is pretty good.

00:00:18.000 So why are people feeling so down on it?

00:00:20.000 First, we just looked at what's trending on Daily Wire Plus right now, and there it is: the real history of slavery, episode one of Real History with Matt Walsh.

00:00:27.000 People are realizing that for decades, schools taught one version of the story, backed by institutions and Hollywood.

00:00:33.000 And a lot of what you were told was just not true.

00:00:36.000 All it took was one person to go back and actually check the facts.

00:00:38.000 That person is Matt Walsh.

00:00:40.000 All teachers should see it.

00:00:41.000 Classrooms should show it.

00:00:42.000 You can watch it right now.

00:00:43.000 Real history with Matt Walsh is streaming on Daily Wire Plus.

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00:01:08.000 You know, there's a professor named Gad Sad.

00:01:11.000 Gad Sad coined a term called suicidal empathy.

00:01:13.000 And the basic idea is that you're so empathetic to somebody that it ends up harming you.

00:01:18.000 So a great example would be the way that the West has approached immigration from third world countries.

00:01:23.000 You feel bad for people, you open your borders, lots of people come in, and then they harm your civilization.

00:01:27.000 But it seems like we are now moving beyond even suicidal empathy into homicidal empathy, by which I mean that your empathy for someone actually gets them killed.

00:01:36.000 Great example of that happening today over in New York City.

00:01:39.000 So Zorhan Mamdani, who promised, as producer Sarah points out, the warmth of collectivism.

00:01:45.000 Remember this?

00:01:46.000 We're going to move beyond the grittiness of individuality and we're going to bask in the warm embrace, the warm bath that is collectivism.

00:01:54.000 It turns out people are freezing to death in New York City.

00:01:57.000 They are freezing to death on the streets of New York City, despite all of his photo ops shoveling the snow.

00:02:02.000 He was out shoveling.

00:02:03.000 By the way, I was just in New York City.

00:02:06.000 All the snow ain't getting shoveled.

00:02:07.000 All the trash ain't getting picked up.

00:02:08.000 But here was Mamdani doing his level best to look as though he cares about shoveling snow.

00:02:13.000 That's a lot of snow, my dude.

00:02:14.000 I don't think you are going to be able to do that by yourself.

00:02:17.000 And also, for a man who cannot bench press 135 pounds once, it's going to be a long day shoveling snow for Zorhan Mamdani.

00:02:26.000 I don't think the people of New York can count on his shoveling skills.

00:02:28.000 He's usually shoveling horsecrap.

00:02:30.000 Anyway, here he is.

00:02:33.000 Do you feel safer?

00:02:34.000 Do you feel better in New York?

00:02:37.000 Exactly.

00:02:37.000 This Pete Booty Judge riding the bike.

00:02:40.000 This is, wow, everything is safe for now.

00:02:43.000 People are not slipping.

00:02:44.000 People are not falling.

00:02:45.000 The snow has ceased.

00:02:46.000 All is well.

00:02:48.000 The serious side of this is that, as the New York Post points out, Zor Mamdani has embraced a hands-off policy with regard to homelessness.

00:02:56.000 This was the policy in California.

00:02:58.000 It remains the policy in places like Los Angeles.

00:03:00.000 This hands-off policy that basically is empathetic toward the homeless to the point where you're killing the homeless.

00:03:05.000 You say that they should be able to live out on the streets, that it is a form of cruelty and intolerance to involuntarily commit people who are usually drug addicted or schizophrenic, serious mental illnesses, people who can't take care of themselves.

00:03:20.000 Somehow, it is more empathetic to leave them out on the streets to get scabies or to die in the cold.

00:03:25.000 This seems to be the way that the left-wing brain is working in Mamdani land and also out in California and other liberal areas of the country.

00:03:35.000 18 people have died in the cold snap that has hit New York City.

00:03:41.000 Brian Stedden, who served as a senior advisor to Mayor Eric Adams' administration, told the New York Post: quote: When a person is in imminent danger, there's no debate.

00:03:49.000 Whatever ideological divides we have should not have any impact on these policies during a code blue.

00:03:54.000 Apparently, there was a mumbling homeless woman who braved sub-Antarctic temperatures on the front cover of the Post on Monday. 0.77

00:04:05.000 According to the Post, the unidentified woman was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, slippers, and two blankets as she clipped her nails, put lotion on her hands, and talked to herself while hunkered down on East 34th Street across from the New York University Langone Hospital as temperatures neared zero degrees early on Sunday.

00:04:19.000 She then refused repeated offers for help from EMS workers and cops who explained to the Post that they had to leave the shivering vagrants in the extremely dangerous bone-chilling weather because she could answer basic questions, which again is Mamdani shtick is that if you can answer basic questions like what day of the week is it and what is your name, then they will leave you out on the streets to freeze, assuming that you are totally fine.

00:04:40.000 Again, those are literally the kinds of questions that she was asked.

00:04:42.000 According to a firefighter, she knew the year 2026.

00:04:46.000 She knew where she was in New York.

00:04:47.000 She knew who the president is. 0.97

00:04:49.000 Since she has mental capacity, there's nothing we can do.

00:04:52.000 We can't force her to go inside.

00:04:53.000 We can't kidnap her.

00:04:54.000 He said, some people survive.

00:04:56.000 Some people don't.

00:04:58.000 EMS workers said their hands are tied.

00:05:01.000 Well, Zorhan Mamdani did a presser over the weekend in which she said, yeah, we did have to force some homeless people inside because they weren't wearing enough clothes.

00:05:11.000 Stay warm.

00:05:12.000 Stay inside if you can.

00:05:13.000 And please stay safe.

00:05:15.000 Tonight, you've implored the people in the streets who don't want to feel more comfortable in the streets to come inside.

00:05:21.000 But what happens if they don't at this point?

00:05:23.000 I mean, you had said it, 20 minutes out in the cold could lead to a fatality.

00:05:27.000 So are you not using it as a last resort at this point to bring them inside and voluntary, remove them, even if it's just a few hours, doesn't lead to a placement?

00:05:36.000 So involuntary transport continues to be used in the same manner it was as the prior administration.

00:05:41.000 And thus far, we have seen clinical determinations of a number of New Yorkers who have been deemed to be a danger to themselves or to others.

00:05:48.000 And sometimes that designation comes from an assessment that a New Yorker is not adequately clothed given the weather that they are living through in that moment.

00:05:56.000 And that is going to continue to be part of the assessments that outreach workers are making over the course of tomorrow, the next day.

00:06:03.000 Okay, so again, the last resort policy under Momdani says that you can only be forced indoors if you are deemed a danger to yourself or others.

00:06:12.000 But the problem, of course, is that if you're a Zorhan Mamdani and you have spent your entire career ripping down cops and treating people as though they are committing a human rights violation by pushing people indoors, people might be a little hesitant to actually take responsibility for calling somebody a danger to themselves or others. 0.59

00:06:32.000 Down in Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scott, according to the New York Post, late last month called the cold a life or death issue and ordered the PD to take people off the streets, even if they were refusing services.

00:06:41.000 He said that direction order came from me because we can't allow folks to be out in this kind of weather.

00:06:48.000 And the fact that this has somehow become a matter of public controversy is totally insane, obviously.

00:06:55.000 Zorhan Mamdani apparently has so much sympathy for people.

00:06:59.000 I'm just going to put it out there.

00:07:00.000 If you are out on the streets sleeping on the sidewalk, that is not a housing problem in the middle of a cold snap.

00:07:07.000 That is a crazy problem if other options are given to you.

00:07:11.000 No sane and rational person, definitionally, who is not a danger to themselves is sleeping out on the street in zero degree weather.

00:07:20.000 That is not a thing that sane and rational people do unless they are Arctic explorers of some type.

00:07:27.000 And again, this comes down to Momdani's bizarro world empathy that legitimately gets people killed.

00:07:34.000 This sort of policy, when you apply it to crime, it leads to more criminals on the streets.

00:07:38.000 When you apply it to homelessness, it leads to more homeless on the streets.

00:07:41.000 The empathy that you have for the purported victim of America's evil, racist, abusive system leads to the very people you are supposedly trying to help sometimes dying.

00:07:51.000 Mamdani, by the way, had not actually budged on his plans, his last resort policy, as of last weekend.

00:08:01.000 On February 6th, for example, the New York Post reported that Zimdani was still refusing to clear homeless camps and forcibly remove people from the streets, despite a rising death toll and a fresh snap of deadly deep freeze.

00:08:12.000 Instead, he implored people to come inside, as you heard.

00:08:15.000 Well, I mean, imploring people to come inside ain't enough.

00:08:17.000 Again, if people are refusing to come inside in the middle of zero-degree weather, living on the streets, that is not going to be solved by you imploring them.

00:08:27.000 And to those who may consider themselves more comfortable on the streets, I want to speak directly to you, to employer, to come inside.

00:08:36.000 These temperatures are too low and too dangerous to survive.

00:08:40.000 Please wait out the cold in a safe place with a warm bed.

00:08:45.000 By the way, during last year's campaign, Mamdani, according to the City Journal, had promised to end a program initiated by his predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, that deploys clinicians backed by police officers to assess people's ability to care for themselves and, if necessary, to transport them involuntarily to a hospital for psychiatric treatment.

00:09:02.000 So that was a proactive move by Adams to determine whether somebody ought to be on the streets or not.

00:09:06.000 And Mamdani wanted to kill that because I guess the presumption is that unless they are in the throes of some sort of crime, they should never have an engagement with law enforcement.

00:09:18.000 He has disavowed dismantling homeless encampments.

00:09:21.000 The message that's being sent is basically, you have a right to live on the streets.

00:09:26.000 The message that is sent to public service workers, cops, and mental health professionals is that you're going to be called on the carpet if you make the mistake of bringing somebody in. 1.00

00:09:35.000 It's nuts and it's bad and it's stupid. 1.00

00:09:38.000 And again, it's indicative of a deeper brain rot that has set in on large parts of the left. 1.00

00:09:43.000 That empathy amounts to humoring people in their delusions, even at danger to them.

00:09:48.000 A lot of ugliness going on on planet Earth in New York and Canada, but there's still some nice things happening.

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00:12:18.000 So it has now been confirmed that the school shooter in British Columbia, Canada was, in fact, a boy who believed he was a girl, a transgender girl.

00:12:29.000 The media, of course, covered this up.

00:12:30.000 They knew this right away.

00:12:31.000 The media and the cops knew this right away.

00:12:33.000 We reported it as a quasi-rumor yesterday because it was basically being uncovered by places like Juneau News, but everyone knew this from the very beginning.

00:12:40.000 I mean, how could you not know it from the very beginning? 0.90

00:12:43.000 If the cops come upon a dead body and the dead body is dressed in a dress and has a penis, it is pretty clear what is going on. 0.98

00:12:50.000 But the cops covered that up yesterday. 0.52

00:12:54.000 They said that they were not going to provide details and, in fact, referred to the person as a gun person.

00:12:59.000 And the media did the same.

00:13:00.000 ABC News, quote, the person who carried out a school massacre is an 18-year-old woman with mental health issues, but she did not give a motive for one of the worst mass shootings in Canada's history.

00:13:10.000 What?

00:13:12.000 I'm sorry, you can't blame this one on the ladies, folks. 1.00

00:13:14.000 This was a man who had a mental health problem and pretended he was a woman.

00:13:19.000 And you, quote unquote, respecting the pronouns is part of the problem.

00:13:23.000 You are leading more people to engage in the delusion that their problems can be solved by quote unquote switching sexes.

00:13:30.000 And if society refuses to accept them, it's society's fault.

00:13:32.000 And now you are a victim of erasure, which means that if somebody tries to erase you, you must preemptively erase them.

00:13:38.000 It is a permission structure, actually, for violence and for mental degradation.

00:13:44.000 Nonetheless, you have an entire left-wing thought structure that has been established that says to people who are suffering from gender confusion and body dysmorphia, it tells them that we are so empathetic to you that we're going to pretend along with you.

00:13:58.000 And if we pretend along with you, that won't have any harm.

00:14:00.000 Well, it turns out it has massive harm.

00:14:02.000 Here are the Canadian police yesterday playing along with the gun man, was a man.

00:14:08.000 And we're not hiding it.

00:14:10.000 In fact, you're the first media to ask the question.

00:14:12.000 I will say this: we identify the suspect as they chose to be identified in public and in social media.

00:14:18.000 I can say that Jesse was born as a biological male who, approximately the information that I have approximately 60 years ago, began to transition to female and identified as female, both socially and publicly.

00:14:34.000 And then the cops said they would, quote-unquote, respect the pronouns.

00:14:37.000 Okay, first of all, human beings are not magical butterflies where they go into the gender cocoon and come out a different gendered butterfly. 0.99

00:14:45.000 That is ridiculous, is ridiculous and it is delusional and it is bad. 0.99

00:14:48.000 And yes, it has damage connected to it. 0.97

00:14:51.000 As I've said before, there is a permission structure that is deeply embedded in the entire argument of the trans identity movement, which is that if people refuse to acknowledge your version of fake reality, then they are a threat to you and they must be removed. 0.96

00:15:07.000 That is inherent in the entire ideology because it is rooted in the idea that society is harming you and is genocidally denying you what you are in your deepest recesses of self if they don't go along with the nonsense that you're spewing.

00:15:22.000 The shooter launched a horrifying attack, according to the New York Post, at a private residence in a remote community before continuing the carnage at a high school where authorities said he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

00:15:34.000 This person was known to authorities.

00:15:36.000 Police had visited the family home several times over the years over concerns about mental health.

00:15:41.000 But the beauty of this insane thought structure is that if you go there and you say, okay, this person has depression, suicidality, we can't connect it to, you know, the fact that the man is saying that he's a woman.

00:15:52.000 We have to pretend these are two completely separate issues.

00:15:56.000 In fact, we have to humor one part of the delusion while trying to clamp down on the depression and suicidal ideation that result.

00:16:03.000 Good luck with that.

00:16:05.000 Firearms had been seized from the home, according to the New York Post, but the lawful owner successfully petitioned to have them returned.

00:16:13.000 Six people were discovered dead inside the school.

00:16:16.000 Roughly 25 others were wounded during the chaotic shooting.

00:16:21.000 We have details about the family.

00:16:24.000 Again, you want to talk about suicidal and homicidal empathy.

00:16:28.000 A great example here is mom. 0.97

00:16:30.000 So, the mom of this person, who described herself apparently as a conservative leaning libertarian, in July 2024, unleashed a profanity-fueled rant on Instagram, yelling at people who refused to acknowledge boys becoming girls. 0.89

00:16:56.000 Quote, as a conservative-leaning libertarian who lives in the North and loves living in a small town, I really hope the hate I see online is just bored old people and not true hatred. 0.51

00:17:04.000 And then she urged people to evolve and do better and educate yourself before spewing BS online.

00:17:09.000 I normally don't say anything, and I normally don't go on bleep book to see the keyboard warriors.

00:17:13.000 And I know I can't control everything or shield my kids from everything, but please, for the love of F, can you get your bleep together so we don't have to bring our kids up in a world full of hatred?

00:17:21.000 Do you have any idea how many kids are killing themselves over this kind of hate?

00:17:25.000 Please stop the BS.

00:17:26.000 She was one of the people murdered by her own son.

00:17:29.000 So it turns out that the empathy materialized in treatment of her son as a quote-unquote daughter.

00:17:36.000 It did not in any way, obviously, alleviate the mental pain and suffering that this person was undergoing.

00:17:43.000 And she ended up the victim of her own empathy.

00:17:48.000 This is not how sane and rational societies behave.

00:17:52.000 This is bad adulting. 0.83

00:17:54.000 It is bad adulting, whether you are the mayor of New York or whether you are the mom of a person suffering from a mental illness.

00:18:00.000 It is bad adulting to pretend that empathy is manifested in treating people who have delusions or mental illness as though they are acting perfectly normally and they ought to be given every quote-unquote right to sleep on the streets in the freezing cold, or they have a right from the rest of the world to be told that they are, in fact, a member of the opposite sex.

00:18:21.000 It ends really, really, really badly.

00:18:24.000 Meanwhile, in general news here in the United States, the economic reports continue to be very healthy coming out of the Trump administration.

00:18:34.000 There's a lot of dyspepsia, as I've mentioned before, a lot of heartburn over the state of the economy.

00:18:40.000 January's numbers, the jobs numbers, were quite good.

00:18:43.000 The reality is that it's happening kind of differently in different sectors.

00:18:46.000 So if you look at the losers and winners in terms of change in payrolls, 2024, 2025, according to the Wall Street Journal, the big winners in terms of payroll have been healthcare, leisure, and hospitality.

00:19:00.000 Government has actually increased.

00:19:02.000 Trump has cut it a little bit, but it increased pretty significantly in 2024, obviously.

00:19:07.000 So the areas of the market that have really been growing hand over fist are the healthcare areas of the market, which is not a gigantic shock.

00:19:15.000 Number one, because Americans are using more and more healthcare, but also because healthcare does require hands-on actual treatment of people.

00:19:23.000 You're going to need more nurses, you need more doctors.

00:19:25.000 This is an area where there's high demand and where AI can supplement, but it cannot replace.

00:19:29.000 And so you're going to see that increase, I would assume.

00:19:33.000 However, all other private jobs sectors combined have actually shrunk, according to the Wall Street Journal, which is why I think people are a little worried.

00:19:43.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the past year was lackluster for many white-collar workers.

00:19:47.000 The financial activities sector, which includes banking and insurance in January, had about 25,000 fewer jobs than a year earlier.

00:19:52.000 Employment in the field has been basically unchanged since 2024.

00:19:57.000 Professional and business services sector fared worse, driven by a large decline in employment at temporary staffing agencies.

00:20:04.000 Meanwhile, manufacturing payrolls since January 2024 have dropped by almost 300,000.

00:20:10.000 The manufacturing sector, again, is being replaced by technology.

00:20:13.000 It is not going to come back simply as a result of tariff policy.

00:20:20.000 When it comes to construction payrolls, those have been going up in non-residential areas.

00:20:24.000 That would be AI data centers, for example.

00:20:26.000 Heavy construction, civil engineering, that is up.

00:20:30.000 Residential has been down.

00:20:32.000 That is because actually the rents are dropping.

00:20:37.000 The unemployment rate has remained essentially stable.

00:20:42.000 So this is why people are feeling a disconnect.

00:20:44.000 The economy continues to soar in terms of the stock market, but it is largely accreting to certain sectors of the job market.

00:20:50.000 And while wages are generally rising, there's not a lot of turnover in the job market.

00:20:55.000 People are basically keeping their jobs.

00:20:56.000 They're not leaving their jobs and opening up new jobs or any of the rest.

00:20:59.000 Now, President Trump seems to believe that some of this can be solved by injections of liquidity.

00:21:04.000 This is the reason why he is pushing very hard for lower interest rates from the Federal Reserve.

00:21:07.000 Here's President Trump talking about that.

00:21:11.000 Every point is $600 billion.

00:21:15.000 Think of that.

00:21:16.000 $600 billion.

00:21:17.000 All he has to do, if we went down two points, we don't have a deficit anymore.

00:21:22.000 And that's without cutting.

00:21:24.000 And it's just a paper charge.

00:21:25.000 When you think about it, it's a paper charge.

00:21:28.000 We should be the lowest interest rate in the world.

00:21:33.000 So he essentially would like for us to have a weaker dollar so that our deficit is not as large.

00:21:38.000 That essentially is the deal that he is attempting to make.

00:21:42.000 Now, it'll be interesting to see, again, what Kevin Warsh, as the new selected Fed chair, does once confirm, because he tends to agree with President Trump about lowering those interest rates, but simultaneously, he wants to sell off a bunch of assets owned by the Fed, which is somewhat deflationary because it draws money back into the Federal Reserve.

00:21:59.000 The case being met by Scott Besson is that the goal here is to put the jobs into the private sector economy.

00:22:04.000 And that is one of the things that's happening.

00:22:06.000 You have seen very significant private sector job growth, although, again, it is largely located in the healthcare sector overall over the course of the last year or so.

00:22:14.000 Look, this is what we've been setting the table for for all of 2025.

00:22:19.000 I've said that repeatedly.

00:22:20.000 We put the necessary ingredients policies into place, and now they're starting to pay off.

00:22:26.000 And what's more impressive here is the number that you just gave is the total jobs.

00:22:34.000 There were more than 170,000 private sector jobs, and there was about a 40,000 decrease in government jobs.

00:22:42.000 So as I've been saying since this administration came into office, we are reprivatizing the economy.

00:22:50.000 That is absolutely right.

00:22:52.000 Now, one of the beautiful things about being a socialist, like say a Bernie Sanders, is that you can always rip on the state of the capitalist economy and pretend that you have a solution, even if your solution basically involves collectivizing all of the economy.

00:23:04.000 It must be wonderful to be Bernie Sanders.

00:23:06.000 He has the intellect of a seven-year-old, truly.

00:23:08.000 He stands around and he rails against things that he thinks are unfair cosmically about the universe without any real solutions to offer other than the government will solve it if you give us enough money.

00:23:18.000 And, you know, somehow people resonate to this, I suppose. 0.99

00:23:23.000 You wonder whether Trump is completely crazy and delusional or just a pathological liar. 0.95

00:23:30.000 But the idea that anybody would believe that this is a great economy when 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, when the cost of the health care is going up, people can't afford housing. 0.97

00:23:45.000 People can't afford their basic groceries.

00:23:47.000 Childcare system is dysfunctional.

00:23:49.000 People can't afford to go to college.

00:23:52.000 And if this is the greatest economy in the history of the world, God help us.

00:23:58.000 Well, I mean, what would he say was the greatest economy in the history of the world?

00:24:02.000 Truly, like I want a comp.

00:24:04.000 He never has asked for that comp.

00:24:06.000 It's always, you know, all the shortcomings that everyone feels.

00:24:09.000 And of course, everyone feels it in their pocketbook.

00:24:12.000 Everyone feels that costs are too high.

00:24:14.000 There has never been a point across my entire life, and I've earned many different amounts of money in a given year, where I've said, you know what?

00:24:19.000 Things are really, really affordable until your income goes up dramatically.

00:24:23.000 If you walk around to any middle-class person, you say, are things wildly affordable right now?

00:24:27.000 The answer is no, because you're middle class.

00:24:29.000 I mean, that's the way that it works.

00:24:32.000 And realistically speaking, when you talk about self-reported figures of people feeling like they live paycheck to paycheck, it doesn't necessarily mean they are living paycheck to paycheck, number one.

00:24:41.000 But number two, the reality is that virtually for as long as we have data, a huge percentage of Americans have said that they live paycheck to paycheck.

00:24:53.000 When it comes to hardship figures, you know, actual data, the number tends to drop.

00:24:58.000 The Bank of America Institute, for example, found in 2024 that about 25% of households were living paycheck to paycheck.

00:25:07.000 The Federal Reserve estimates that it's 37 to 40% of people who are living paycheck.

00:25:11.000 Again, these are not wonderful.

00:25:12.000 There could be better numbers, you would assume.

00:25:14.000 But Bernie Sanders sort of claiming that the economy is somehow down in the dumps when you have a 4.3% unemployment rate, Dow Jones industrial average over 50,000, and rising wages, like real rising wages under President Trump, and the inflation rate down at 2.5%, 3%.

00:25:32.000 It's a pretty good economy, historically speaking.

00:25:35.000 So if the economic numbers are so solid, then why are people feeling so bad about them?

00:25:41.000 And they are feeling bad about them.

00:25:42.000 I mean, that just is the reality.

00:25:43.000 According to Axios, one year in, President Trump has squandered a bunch of political advantages.

00:25:50.000 Apparently, a new Harvard Caps poll shows that 51% of registered voters say Trump is doing a worse job than Biden.

00:25:58.000 According to Rasmussen, 48% of likely voters say Biden did a better job compared with 40% who chose Trump.

00:26:04.000 According to YouGov, 46% of U.S. adults say Trump is doing a worse job than Biden, compared with 40% who's saying that he's doing better, and another seven who say he's doing about the same.

00:26:13.000 Those are not resounding numbers for President Trump, obviously, when it comes to issues including immigration and on economy.

00:26:20.000 He has lost some serious steam.

00:26:22.000 His net approval on the economy is at minus 18, which is 26 points lower than it was at this point in his first term.

00:26:29.000 And young voters have moved away from Trump in large numbers.

00:26:32.000 YouGov polls show that Trump is at negative 42 among 18 to 29 year olds.

00:26:37.000 That is a 51-point swing from his plus nine at the start of the presidency.

00:26:41.000 So what exactly is going on?

00:26:44.000 I will theorize that one of the things that is going on is that what people actually want at this point, it has been many years in American politics since we've had any level of quietude.

00:26:53.000 Truly, I said in 2024 that Trump's victory was the normie revolution.

00:26:59.000 It was people looking at Joe Biden and saying, none of this is actually normal.

00:27:02.000 You have a brain dead president who is promoting extraordinarily radical policies, and then he's replaced at the last minute by another befuddled politician who is only there because she was selected for certain pre-existing characteristics.

00:27:16.000 And then she is pledging more radicalism.

00:27:18.000 We don't need any of that.

00:27:19.000 What we need is sort of the normie middle, just like a normie policy president.

00:27:23.000 And the thing that's happened with President Trump is in many areas, he has delivered a normie policy.

00:27:29.000 And in some areas, and these are the areas where he is the most loud, he's delivered a very not normie policy.

00:27:34.000 So I think that, you know, regardless of how you think the tariffs have gone, and I think it's pretty obvious the tariffs have not done nearly the amount of damage to the American economy that I, for one, thought they might do.

00:27:44.000 And maybe that bleeds in, maybe it doesn't.

00:27:45.000 But so far, President Trump's tariff policy, while not fulfilling the promises that he suggested that it would make, I mean, it hasn't brought back manufacturing by leaps and bounds, for example.

00:27:55.000 His tariff policy hasn't created the economy, clearly.

00:27:58.000 But that is also the thing that he talks the most about.

00:28:02.000 He talks about it incessantly.

00:28:04.000 And it also happens to be the area of his economic program that is the most unpopular by the polls.

00:28:09.000 So when President Trump suggests that he is raising Switzerland's tariffs because, for example, he just doesn't like how they talk to him, that is not the sort of solid, normal, quiescent presidency that I think people are actually looking for.

00:28:22.000 They just want the good policy and they don't want the feeling of chaos.

00:28:27.000 So I put on a 30% tariff, which is very low.

00:28:31.000 Still, we were having a big deficit, but it was half the deficit.

00:28:36.000 Then I got an emergency call from, I believe, the prime minister of Switzerland, and she was very aggressive, but nice, but very aggressive.

00:28:45.000 Sir, we are a small country.

00:28:46.000 We can't do this.

00:28:47.000 We can't do this.

00:28:48.000 I couldn't get her off the phone.

00:28:50.000 We are a small country.

00:28:52.000 I said, you may be a small country, but we have a $42 billion deficit with you.

00:28:57.000 No, no, we are a small country.

00:28:59.000 Again and again and again, I couldn't get off the phone.

00:29:01.000 So it was at 30%.

00:29:04.000 And I didn't really like the way she talked to us.

00:29:06.000 And so instead of giving her a reduction, I raised it to 39%.

00:29:13.000 And then I got inundated by people from Switzerland.

00:29:18.000 And I figured, you know what?

00:29:20.000 We'll do something that's a little bit more palatable, at least now.

00:29:25.000 I mean, this sort of vacillating, variable policy based on how he feels about a particular nation's leader at a particular time, that is not the sort of sort of solid, steady leadership that Americans are looking for in a time that's very chaotic.

00:29:36.000 We have a very chaotic time.

00:29:37.000 Again, a lot of the policy coming out of the administration is excellent, but if it's retailed as up and down and all around, people are going to feel a little bit unbalanced.

00:29:47.000 That is not the way that you retail this policy, which brings us to Pam Bondi.

00:29:51.000 So yesterday, the Attorney General of the United States, who I think has done truly a poor job as the Attorney General, I think that her victories have been limited and her losses have been many and myriad on PR level.

00:30:04.000 Most obviously with regard to the Epstein files and the rollout of the Jeffrey Epstein case, I said this from literally the day that they did this, at the rollout of the announcement, there would be no further prosecutions in the Epstein case and that there was no foreign intelligence intervention and that there's no evidence that he was trafficking minors to other people.

00:30:23.000 That you can't just put that out as a written statement on a random day and not explain that to the American people after all the rumors fostered by many in the administration.

00:30:33.000 You can't do that.

00:30:34.000 But you actually owe it to the American people to be transparent.

00:30:36.000 So what they did is they were very non-transparent at the beginning about their thought process.

00:30:41.000 And then over time, the pressure built.

00:30:42.000 And then they basically just vomited into the public view millions of documents, leading to the crowdsourcing of terrible ideas.

00:30:49.000 And all of that blew up onto the internet.

00:30:51.000 Some of the information that came out, I think, is fascinating and interesting.

00:30:54.000 We've talked about that with regard to, again, some of the people in the British government.

00:30:58.000 We talked about it with regards to Steve Bannon.

00:31:00.000 And there are a bunch of figures who are mentioned, and it's interesting.

00:31:03.000 But it also has meant the revealing, for example, of some of the alleged victims' names.

00:31:08.000 It has led to the revealing of people's names who are not actually accused of a crime.

00:31:13.000 And it has led to the crowdsourcing of pretty much every tip in there. 0.98

00:31:16.000 And a lot of those tips are trash, like truly trash. 0.93

00:31:20.000 So Pam Bondi appeared on The Hill yesterday. 0.99

00:31:25.000 She showed up in front of the House Judiciary Committee and Democrats went after her largely. 0.96

00:31:31.000 A few Republicans went after her as well.

00:31:34.000 And the reason that this is not good for the Trump administration is because, again, what you need, it's true for immigration policy as well.

00:31:40.000 You know what was really bad?

00:31:41.000 Christy Noam's rollout of our immigration policy.

00:31:44.000 Very, very bad.

00:31:45.000 Our immigration policy as a country under the president is to deport criminal, illegal immigrants and shut the border. 0.91

00:31:51.000 And Christy Noam was flying on down to El Salvador to tour detention facilities wearing a cowboy hat in tailored clothing.

00:31:59.000 We don't need that.

00:32:01.000 You need Tom Holman there calmly explaining how policy works.

00:32:04.000 When it comes to the economy, you don't need Howard Luttnick, the commerce secretary on TV talking about how we are going to solve the entire national debt with tariffs.

00:32:11.000 You need Scott Besson, a calm and collected presence to actually explain how the economy works to people.

00:32:16.000 And when it comes to the law and the effectuation of the law, you need a calm presence to explain how the law is being impartially implemented, equal justice before the law, and why you make the decisions you're making.

00:32:29.000 What you don't need is performative TV theatrics that are almost certainly designed to earn more kudos from the president who watches these sorts of hearings and looks for the clips.

00:32:41.000 And the more militant you are, particularly if you are praiseworthy of President Trump, the more President Trump likes that.

00:32:46.000 That might help President Trump and it might help his cabinet officials who are managing up with him, but it doesn't help the Trump administration as a whole, but the broader American public.

00:32:55.000 Now, again, not everything that Pam Bondi said is wrong.

00:32:58.000 I think some of the things she said were right.

00:33:01.000 But as per usual arrangements, many of the things that were right were obscured by the things that were wrong.

00:33:05.000 So there was a bit of good Bondi, bad Bondi going on yesterday.

00:33:08.000 So Pam Bondi was asked about the idea that Trump was covering things up with regard to the Epstein case.

00:33:14.000 And she said President Trump has been the most transparent president in history, vomiting out all this information into public.

00:33:19.000 That is true.

00:33:22.000 The American people need to know this.

00:33:24.000 They are talking about Epstein today.

00:33:27.000 This has been around since the Obama administration.

00:33:30.000 This administration released over 3 million pages of documents, over 3 million.

00:33:37.000 And Donald Trump signed that law to release all of those documents.

00:33:43.000 He is the most transparent president in the nation's history.

00:33:50.000 Now, again, I don't know that he's the most transparent president in all of American history, although there's a case to be made that given the fact that his thoughts are constantly in the public view and he talks to the press all the time, that that's the case.

00:34:01.000 The manner that she says this stuff matters, however.

00:34:04.000 Remember when I said calm and cool and collected, making people feel a sense of steadiness?

00:34:11.000 That is not what is happening right there.

00:34:13.000 So even the content that she's delivering that I think is largely true is being delivered in a non-useful fashion, a non-utilitarian fashion.

00:34:22.000 Representative Jerry Nadler, who is, again, I've appeared in front of this committee.

00:34:25.000 I mean, I know a lot of the people on this committee.

00:34:28.000 Representative Jerry Nadler was going after her on Russia, and she went after him on the Russian collusion hoax.

00:34:35.000 And again, what she's saying here is not wrong.

00:34:37.000 It's just that the way she says it is so performative that it sort of undercuts the point she's making.

00:34:43.000 First, he brought up the president saying they indicted me twice.

00:34:47.000 They sure did.

00:34:48.000 They tried to impeach him twice.

00:34:50.000 And you, Mr. Nadler, were one of the leads on the impeachment.

00:34:54.000 I was on the other side.

00:34:55.000 I lived that with you.

00:34:56.000 During impeachment, you said the president conspired, sought foreign interference in the 2016 election.

00:35:04.000 Robert Mueller found no evidence, none, of foreign interference in 2016.

00:35:10.000 Have you apologized to President Trump?

00:35:13.000 Have you apologized to President Trump?

00:35:16.000 All of you who participated in those impeachment hearings against Donald Trump.

00:35:20.000 You all should be apologizing.

00:35:24.000 Again, performative, performative, performative.

00:35:27.000 I don't disagree with the stuff she's saying, but the performative nature of it does not make the American people feel as though there is a professional in charge of the Justice Department.

00:35:37.000 So Eric Swalwell questioned her.

00:35:39.000 Eric Swalwell, man, that dude, the representative from California who wants to run for governor over there.

00:35:46.000 He asked her about political violence, and here was her response.

00:35:50.000 Congressman, I completely agree with you.

00:35:53.000 I know about several of those personally involving you.

00:35:58.000 I believe one has been charged publicly, and there's something I would be happy to talk to you about off camera.

00:36:07.000 But I can assure you that they are very serious.

00:36:10.000 They are being looked into, and I can give you more details on those.

00:36:15.000 None of you should be threatened ever.

00:36:17.000 None of your children should be threatened.

00:36:20.000 None of your families should be threatened.

00:36:22.000 And I will work with, you can come into my office any day.

00:36:26.000 I will work with all of you on both sides of the aisle if you are ever threatened.

00:36:30.000 And I'll gladly talk to you after this hearing about your cases.

00:36:36.000 Okay, so again, this is actually like the high point of her testimony.

00:36:39.000 Then we got to the stuff that was really the problem.

00:36:41.000 So as I said before, when it came to the revelation of what exactly the DOJ was doing on Epstein, I know for a fact from people who were in the DOJ at the time, there needed to be, the DOJ, the FBI, there needed to be a full-scale explanation with full Q ⁇ A with the revelation of particular documents to demonstrate why the DOJ was doing what it was doing.

00:37:02.000 That's the thing that needed to happen.

00:37:04.000 So when you show up, you should at least be able to do that in sort of a calm, collected fashion.

00:37:09.000 This is again why I think that William Barr, who was AG under President Trump the first time, Bill Barr, was a very good AG.

00:37:15.000 I do not think the same of Pam Bondi.

00:37:17.000 I do not think she is good at her job.

00:37:19.000 So here is Pam Bondi. 0.97

00:37:20.000 This was the most awkward moment by far.

00:37:23.000 So she was asked about Epstein, and she promptly started doing a cable news spot about how no one should ever mention Epstein again.

00:37:34.000 They should only talk about the stock market, which, again, listen, I generally agree that the coverage of Epstein, given the evidence that we have, far exceeds the claims made about Epstein, far exceed the evidence that we have, and thus the coverage of Epstein far exceeds the actual evidentiary claims.

00:37:53.000 With that said, I'm not sure the attorney general's job is to go out there and be like, why are you even covering this?

00:37:58.000 The Dow Jones is doing great.

00:38:00.000 This was not great here.

00:38:02.000 Not great at all, Bob.

00:38:04.000 The Dow right now is over.

00:38:07.000 The Dow is over $50,000.

00:38:10.000 I don't know why you're laughing.

00:38:11.000 You're a great stock trader, as I hear, Raskin.

00:38:14.000 The Dow is over $50,000 right now.

00:38:18.000 The S ⁇ P at almost 7,000.

00:38:21.000 And the NASDAQ smashing records.

00:38:24.000 Americans' 401ks and retirement savings are booming.

00:38:29.000 That's what we should be talking about.

00:38:32.000 We should be talking about making Americans safe.

00:38:35.000 We should be talking about, what does a Dow have to do with anything?

00:38:39.000 That's what they just asked.

00:38:40.000 Are you kidding?

00:38:43.000 I mean, it's kind of a good question.

00:38:46.000 I mean, you're being asked questions.

00:38:47.000 I mean, that's not a crazy question.

00:38:49.000 What does the Dow have to do with anything?

00:38:51.000 I mean, like with Epstein, not a ton, actually, as it turns out.

00:38:51.000 I mean, it has something.

00:38:58.000 Again, not a good showing by the Attorney General.

00:39:01.000 She went up against Thomas Massey.

00:39:03.000 Listen, I think Thomas Massey has been grandstanding on this.

00:39:05.000 I think that Thomas Massey believes and has propagated stories about the Epstein evidence that go well beyond what the facts show at this point.

00:39:15.000 Still, I don't think she did a great job handling him.

00:39:17.000 She suggested that Massey has Trump derangement syndrome, which, again, I don't think she's wrong.

00:39:22.000 It's just this is not particularly useful.

00:39:25.000 Within 40 minutes, you asked me a question.

00:39:28.000 Within 40 minutes, Wexner's name was added back within 40 minutes of me catching you red-handed.

00:39:35.000 Red-handed.

00:39:36.000 There was one redaction.

00:39:38.000 There he's listed as a coach.

00:39:41.000 And we invited you in.

00:39:43.000 This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. 0.98

00:39:45.000 He needs to get you're a failed politician.

00:39:48.000 We need you to get a lot of people.

00:39:49.000 I want you to watch that.

00:39:50.000 Chairman, please restore his time.

00:39:54.000 Okay, so again, like, I think that she's actually right on this, and I think that Massey is wrong on this, but there's a good way to do this, and there's a bad way to do this.

00:40:03.000 And she was not doing this the good way.

00:40:05.000 Jamie Raskin, I think, is one of the most scruulous members of Congress, the Congressman from Maryland. 0.99

00:40:10.000 He went after Pam Bondi, but it turned into her just saying that she was a washed-up loser. 0.98

00:40:16.000 Like, who are you winning over? 0.96

00:40:18.000 Who's the audience for this?

00:40:19.000 The audience is the base.

00:40:20.000 I get it.

00:40:21.000 The audience is President Trump.

00:40:22.000 I get it.

00:40:23.000 But if, again, the thing that the Trump administration is seeking right now is a feeling of quiet, steady success, which is the thing that you need in a second term if you wish to have a successor who wins a third.

00:40:36.000 This is not the stuff that's going to get it done.

00:40:39.000 You can let her filibuster all day long, but not on our watch.

00:40:42.000 Be clear.

00:40:43.000 Not on our time.

00:40:44.000 No way.

00:40:45.000 And I told you about that, Attorney General, before you started.

00:40:47.000 You don't tell me.

00:40:48.000 Oh, I did tell you because you saw what you did in the Senate.

00:40:55.000 I think this just goes to my general point here, folks. 0.99

00:40:58.000 Open congressional hearings are the dumbest thing in the world. 1.00

00:41:00.000 They're truly stupid. 1.00

00:41:01.000 Nothing happens of any value other than political gamesmanship, opportunism, and all the rest. 1.00

00:41:08.000 There was one headline that emerged from all of this, aside from the Attorney General's behavior, and that was apparently there was a photo of a black binder that Bondi had at the hearing showing the words Jayapal Pramilla search history with a list of documents whose numbers coincided with the number of Epstein files.

00:41:28.000 So what it looks like right there, what Jayapal is accusing her of, is having a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails she searched.

00:41:39.000 I mean, obviously, not a great look.

00:41:41.000 I'm not sure exactly why the DOJ should be monitoring Congress people as they go through the Epstein files or the documents.

00:41:51.000 That doesn't seem like a smart thing to do.

00:41:54.000 The DOJ did not immediately respond to CNBC when asked if Bondi had a printout of the Congresswoman's search history, why she had it, or if the DOJ kept track of searches by other members of Congress.

00:42:02.000 But again, there's another area where the alleged cover-up or the purported cover-up or the dumb behavior of members of the administration is significantly worse than the thing that they are supposedly covering up.

00:42:15.000 They've revealed 3.5 million pages of documents into the public view, and they're still being accused of cover-ups because, again, of the poor botchery that is the PR rollout.

00:42:25.000 And that goes to the professionalism of some of the people in charge of particular agencies.

00:42:31.000 Joining me on the line to discuss the latest on the economy is Professor Jason Furman, Harvard Professor of Economics.

00:42:36.000 Professor Furman, thanks so much for the time.

00:42:37.000 Really appreciate it.

00:42:39.000 Great to be with you.

00:42:41.000 So why don't we start with the obvious?

00:42:43.000 The economic numbers that are coming out right now appear to be pretty good.

00:42:46.000 I mean, we obviously have a 4.3% unemployment rate.

00:42:48.000 We had a pretty good jobs report in January.

00:42:50.000 The revisions down from last year basically mean that hiring was flat, but it certainly didn't decline.

00:42:57.000 And real wages seem to be going up.

00:42:58.000 But American dyspepsia about the economy is very, very high right now.

00:43:03.000 Where do you think the disconnect is?

00:43:04.000 And what could the Trump administration theoretically do to reverse that?

00:43:08.000 Yeah, I don't know exactly where the disconnect is coming from.

00:43:12.000 If you look, wages are outpacing inflation by about one to one and a half percentage points.

00:43:19.000 That's been true for a couple of years now.

00:43:21.000 The unemployment rate has basically stabilized.

00:43:25.000 Overall economic growth is very good.

00:43:27.000 I do think people at the very top are doing even better than people in the middle, but people in the middle are doing better than they were a year ago.

00:43:38.000 So when you look at what President Trump has been talking about doing, a lot of it is sort of for show.

00:43:44.000 I mean, when he's talking about freezing credit card rates, which he can't do unilaterally from the White House, or when he's talking about barring corporations from buying single-family homes, none of this is actually going to change systemically the direction of the economy, just as tariffs were unable to change the directionality with regard to manufacturing jobs in the United States.

00:44:02.000 Some of the things that I think are weighing here are the general American nervousness about AI and also the fact that the president talks so extensively about some of the least popular things in his platform like tariffs.

00:44:15.000 Let's start with AI there.

00:44:16.000 There's a lot of worry about what AI is going to do to jobs markets.

00:44:19.000 Pretty much every college graduate that I know is worried about what the job market will look like when they get out.

00:44:24.000 I think there are a lot of white-collar people who are worried that AI is going to wipe out their job.

00:44:27.000 What do you think about where we are going with the jobs market and AI as productivity increases?

00:44:34.000 So first of all, I absolutely agree with you.

00:44:34.000 Yeah.

00:44:37.000 Every college student I talk to is either terrified about AI, thrilled about AI, or often some combination of the two.

00:44:46.000 So far, it doesn't appear to have taken a lot of jobs.

00:44:50.000 And so far, it doesn't appear to be showing up very much in productivity growth.

00:44:54.000 In fact, the main way it's showing up in the jobs numbers is the people being hired to build data centers to run these models.

00:45:03.000 But I do think that that's going to change in the coming years.

00:45:06.000 And just really big question that no one knows the answer to is to what degree does it complement people's skills and enable them to be better workers and paid more or substitute for those skills and lead them to be more dispensable and paid less.

00:45:20.000 Historically, technology was much more about complementing and raising wages.

00:45:24.000 I'd place a soft bet on that for AI too, but with a huge amount of uncertainty and a certain amount of dread about the downside here.

00:45:34.000 So to go back to sort of the second point that I was making with regard to tariffs, it seems to me that one of the problems is that President Trump actually himself expresses a fair bit of upset at various factors in the economy, up to and including his attacks on, for example, Jerome Powell and his open statements that he wants the interest rate lowered, which seems to, again, express that there's a lack of liquidity in the economy, which I really don't think is the case right now.

00:45:57.000 I don't think that the problem is liquidity.

00:45:58.000 I think the problem is, if there is a problem, is sort of uncertainty.

00:46:01.000 It seems like all of the investors that I know have been stacking their investments at the top end of the market.

00:46:07.000 The MAG7 have been growing by leaps and bounds.

00:46:10.000 The rest of the market is up, but certainly not by that same sort of margin.

00:46:15.000 What do you think the president could be doing differently in terms of PR, how he addresses these issues?

00:46:20.000 Yeah, look, I mean, we've said that the economy is getting better for most people.

00:46:24.000 The question, though, is, would it be doing even better but for President Trump?

00:46:30.000 And when it comes to the tariffs, I think that is certainly true.

00:46:33.000 Prices are probably about a half a point, maybe even a percent higher than they otherwise would be because of the tariffs.

00:46:41.000 Economic growth would be even better were it not for the tariffs.

00:46:45.000 And in some sense, I think the president understands this because when it comes to certain politically sensitive ideas, he's taken the tariffs off of it.

00:46:53.000 You know, things like coffee, he's taken the tariffs off.

00:46:55.000 He's tried to reduce them on other countries.

00:46:57.000 He's delayed some of the tariffs on furniture.

00:46:59.000 So tariffs are so good.

00:47:01.000 And if they're being paid by foreign countries, why would we be dropping them on certain sensitive consumer goods?

00:47:07.000 But we need to drop them on everything.

00:47:11.000 And then, as you said, they're not even achieving one of the goals they had, which is to add manufacturing jobs.

00:47:16.000 We've lost jobs almost every month since Liberation Day.

00:47:21.000 And, you know, in part, that's because we're raising the price of steel.

00:47:24.000 That's not good for American automakers.

00:47:28.000 So one of the things the president is also focused on is weakening the dollar.

00:47:31.000 So he's talked a lot about lowering the interest rates.

00:47:34.000 He's saying openly that he thinks a weak dollar will be good in terms of rectifying deficits.

00:47:38.000 What do you make of the case that he's pushing for the weaker dollar?

00:47:43.000 You know, here I actually don't mind so much.

00:47:46.000 The dollar has still been at the strong end of its historical range for the last couple of years.

00:47:51.000 Even with the weakening we've seen, it's still on the relatively strong side.

00:47:56.000 So I don't think it's so bad.

00:47:57.000 I do think it actually might be politically harmful to him.

00:48:00.000 So I think he might be making a political mistake because a weaker dollar makes it more expensive for Americans to buy stuff.

00:48:06.000 Historically, you look at other countries, governments can even be toppled when their currency weakens too much.

00:48:13.000 But for the long run rebalancing of the U.S. economy, it may not be so bad.

00:48:19.000 And one of the other things that has come up a lot here is his pick of Kevin Warsh as Fed chair.

00:48:23.000 Kevin Warsh has some very interesting theories about exactly what the Federal Reserve should do.

00:48:28.000 On the one hand, he wants to offload a bunch of assets that the Federal Reserve, he thinks, is overinvested into.

00:48:33.000 I tend to agree.

00:48:34.000 And then he wants to, at the same time, lower the interest rates in order to present more liquid opportunities for banks and financial institutions.

00:48:42.000 What do you make of that sort of strategy?

00:48:44.000 And what do you think of Warsh as pick for Fed chair?

00:48:47.000 So I'm happy about the Worsch pick.

00:48:50.000 He should be confirmed.

00:48:51.000 He's smart.

00:48:52.000 I believe he'll be independent.

00:48:54.000 That being said, I plan to handle him the same way I've handled the Fed, which is respectfully to disagree when I disagree and explain what I disagree about.

00:49:02.000 In particular, his desire, as you just said, to dramatically shrink the balance sheet would mean selling off a lot of the bonds the Fed holds.

00:49:11.000 That would drive up mortgage interest rates.

00:49:14.000 I don't think we need dramatic interest rate cuts in our economy, but I don't think we need dramatic interest rate increases either.

00:49:21.000 My guess is in the seat, he'll end up being pragmatic.

00:49:24.000 And some of the ideas that make less sense, like that one, will end up being, you know, facing reality and being dramatically scaled back when you see what the data says.

00:49:34.000 But to me, that's going to be the most important test for Warshaw.

00:49:37.000 Two must more tests.

00:49:38.000 One is, is he independent?

00:49:39.000 And two, can he change his mind when the data changes?

00:49:45.000 I mean, his theory there is pretty interesting, which is basically that the United States government is overinvested in particular areas, like, for example, the mortgage market, and that it would be better if the private sector were to, we should shift essentially the air in the balloon over to the private sector and away from public investment in its own bonds.

00:50:01.000 What do you make of the actual generalized theory there?

00:50:05.000 There's a lot of people in financial markets that think that, and a lot of economists disagree with that.

00:50:10.000 And I guess I'm part of my tribe on this one.

00:50:13.000 I'll be with the economists, which is I don't think it's distorting the market that much.

00:50:20.000 The market basically wants interest rates to be where they are now.

00:50:23.000 That's roughly what's balancing supply and demand, roughly consistent with the inflation rate that we want.

00:50:30.000 And if the Fed dramatically sold off a lot of these assets, we'd get interest rates in a place we'd rather not have them.

00:50:37.000 The other thing to understand is the Fed has a lot of assets, but it also has an equal set of liabilities.

00:50:42.000 Those liabilities are bank deposits with the Fed.

00:50:45.000 They're called reserves.

00:50:47.000 And that adds a lot of liquidity and safety to the system that wasn't there before the financial crisis.

00:50:52.000 And I think is actually a good thing to have.

00:50:57.000 Well, that's Professor Jason Furman, Harvard Professor of Economics.

00:50:59.000 You can check his workout via his X account and also in various publications ranging from the free press to the New York Times.

00:51:06.000 Professor Furman, thanks so much for the time and insight.

00:51:09.000 Thank you.

00:51:10.000 In cultural news, James Vanderbeek, who many people of my generation know, of course, from Dawson's Creek, he died on Wednesday at the age of 48.

00:51:20.000 Apparently, there's a GoFundMe page up for his family.

00:51:23.000 He had six kids with his wife, Kimberly Vanderbeek.

00:51:27.000 He had financial difficulties because of the cost of coverage with regard to the stage three colorectal cancer that he was diagnosed with.

00:51:36.000 It's truly a sad story.

00:51:38.000 He put out a video March 8th, 2025, talking about what it means to be a human being looking death right in the face.

00:51:45.000 It's actually quite moving.

00:51:46.000 I wanted to play it.

00:51:49.000 Today's my birthday, and it has been the hardest year of my life.

00:51:54.000 And I wanted to share something that I learned with y'all.

00:51:59.000 When I was younger, I used to define myself as an actor, right?

00:52:04.000 Which was never really all that fulfilling.

00:52:07.000 And then I became a husband, and that was much better.

00:52:09.000 And then I became a father, and that was the ultimate.

00:52:12.000 I could define myself then as a loving, capable, strong, supportive husband, father, provider, steward of the land that we're so lucky to live on.

00:52:24.000 And for a long time, that felt like a really good definition to the question: who am I?

00:52:29.000 What am I?

00:52:32.000 And then this year, I had to look my own mortality in the eye.

00:52:39.000 I had to come nose to nose with death.

00:52:43.000 And all of those definitions that I cared so deeply about were stripped from me.

00:52:47.000 I was away for treatment.

00:52:49.000 So I could no longer be a husband that was helpful to my wife.

00:52:53.000 I could no longer be a father who could pick up his kids and put them to bed and be there for them.

00:52:57.000 I could not be a provider because that wasn't working.

00:53:00.000 I couldn't even be a steward of the land because at times I was too weak to prune all the trees during the window that you're supposed to prune them.

00:53:11.000 And so I was faced with the question: if I am just a too skinny, weak guy alone in an apartment with cancer, what am I?

00:53:28.000 And I meditated and the answer came through: I am worthy of God's love simply because I exist.

00:53:40.000 And if I'm worthy of God's love, shouldn't I also be worthy of my own?

00:53:46.000 And the same is true for you.

00:53:49.000 And as I move through this healing portal toward recovery, I wanted to share that with you because I think that revelation that came to me was due in no small part to all the prayers and the love that have been directed toward me.

00:54:01.000 So I offer that to you, however, it sits in your consciousness, however it resonates, run with it.

00:54:07.000 And if the word God trips you up, I certainly don't know.

00:54:12.000 I can't even know what God is or explain God.

00:54:15.000 My efforts to connect to God are an ongoing process that is a constant unfolding mystery to me.

00:54:22.000 But if it's a trigger, it feels too religious.

00:54:24.000 You can take the word God out and your mantra can simply be, I am worthy of love because you are.

00:54:38.000 Thank you for the love and prayers, everyone.

00:54:40.000 Have a blessed day.

00:54:42.000 I mean, it's quite a beautiful message.

00:54:44.000 Obviously, he doesn't want you to take God out of that.

00:54:46.000 And I think that, you know, in the throes of true pain and suffering, you know, reliance on the understanding that in the end, you're beloved of God is really, really important.

00:54:55.000 Joining me on the line is Senator John Cornyn, the Republican senator from Texas.

00:54:59.000 Senator, thanks so much for your time.

00:55:00.000 I really appreciate it.

00:55:01.000 Great to be with you.

00:55:02.000 Thank you.

00:55:04.000 So, yeah, I want to start with the 2026 election.

00:55:07.000 Obviously, a lot of Republicans are looking at the map and they are looking at the House map, which looks not wonderful at the moment.

00:55:13.000 And they look at the Senate map and they say, okay, well, Republicans, they could afford to lose three seats, still retain a majority.

00:55:19.000 The three most vulnerable seats for Republicans right now in the Senate are North Carolina, Ohio, and Maine.

00:55:25.000 But the sort of firewall for Republicans is Texas, Iowa, Alaska.

00:55:31.000 Obviously, you're the senator from Texas.

00:55:32.000 You are now in a very hard-fought primary battle with the Attorney General of the state of Texas, Ken Paxton.

00:55:38.000 He has some endorsements that have recently come in.

00:55:41.000 Can you talk to me a little bit about the race?

00:55:43.000 How seriously should Republicans take the risk that possibly the Texas Senate seat turns blue if you're not the nominee in Texas?

00:55:51.000 Yeah, I think Republicans could blow it in Texas.

00:55:55.000 And, you know, Texas has always been the one state we could depend on to remain red.

00:56:00.000 Democrats have been working for years to try to turn Texas blue without success.

00:56:05.000 But unfortunately, if the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, is the nominee, it provides the opening they've been hoping and praying for for years.

00:56:16.000 And at the very least, if he were to win, which I think is in doubt, it would require hundreds of millions of dollars to try to salvage him.

00:56:25.000 He would not win by a substantial margin and would not be able to help with the down ballot races.

00:56:31.000 Conversely, in 2020, I won by 10 points.

00:56:35.000 And I think I could be a help to the president and his agenda for the last two years of his second term by helping carry some of these House seats.

00:56:44.000 And of course, the House majority is absolutely critical as well.

00:56:50.000 So for those who are unfamiliar with sort of your record versus Ken Paxton's record, Ken Paxton obviously is a very controversial figure in Texas.

00:56:59.000 You're a longtime senator in your state.

00:57:02.000 What are the sort of things that you can expect Democrats to attack Ken Paxton on were he to be the nominee?

00:57:09.000 Well, look at a website, crookedken.com, which is updated regularly.

00:57:15.000 But I think a lot of his baggage is notorious.

00:57:19.000 It's well known in some circles, but not universally.

00:57:23.000 And I think his impeachment by the Republican House, his $6.6 million judgment against Texas taxpayers by whistleblowers who turned him into the FBI for interfering with a federal investigation of a donor.

00:57:39.000 And then, of course, he's become so reckless, he's even blown up his family.

00:57:43.000 And I just don't think he's a trustworthy individual.

00:57:47.000 This is a job not for performance artists, not for people who just want to be famous and get the most clicks on social media and raise money, but serious people who actually want to do important work.

00:57:59.000 And I think that's, I'm that guy.

00:58:04.000 So, meanwhile, the Senate, you know, obviously there's important business that needs to be taken up in the Senate that includes the Save America Act, which has now passed the House.

00:58:11.000 A lot of talk in the Senate about whether or not the Senate majority leader is going to force a talking filibuster on the Save Act.

00:58:18.000 First of all, why don't you tell people what the SAVE Act is?

00:58:20.000 Second, do you think that the Senate is going to force a talking filibuster as opposed to the sort of the usual arrangement where people can claim a filibuster without actually having to get up there and jabber for 25 hours?

00:58:32.000 Well, the Save America Act is basically voter ID, which is a very popular, bipartisan issue.

00:58:41.000 And it seems like it should be a no-brainer.

00:58:44.000 But these days, everything is contested by the resistance on the Democratic side.

00:58:51.000 And so I would say there's almost universal support in the Senate.

00:58:56.000 I know the House has now passed the bill.

00:58:58.000 The challenge, as you mentioned, is, and typically in the Senate, you need 60 votes in order to proceed.

00:59:05.000 And I think regardless of the outcome, I still think we need to vote on this bill and put people on the record.

00:59:11.000 And then that needs to become one of the components of our campaign in the 2026 midterms.

00:59:17.000 But the talking filibuster is an innovation.

00:59:20.000 It's something new.

00:59:21.000 I know people who are of a certain age remember Jimmy Stewart and Mr. Smith goes to Washington, but that hasn't been the rule for a long time now.

00:59:31.000 And it requires 60 votes in order to proceed.

00:59:34.000 The idea, of course, is that there needs to be some place in America where there is deliberation on important issues that affect 330-plus million Americans.

00:59:44.000 And that place is the Senate.

00:59:46.000 And so there's not the votes right now.

00:59:48.000 As I know the Majority Leader Thune has told President Trump, there's not the votes now to change that.

00:59:54.000 So that's where we are.

00:59:57.000 Okay, meanwhile, one of the other bills that you've been promoting is the ICE Protection Act, which would apparently increase penalties for people who are attempting to resist law enforcement.

01:00:04.000 Where does that stand?

01:00:07.000 Well, we are at the early stages, but of course, this debate is raging on and it's not new.

01:00:12.000 Democrats are the party of defund the police.

01:00:15.000 That hadn't worked out too well for them.

01:00:18.000 And then they wanted to abolish ICE.

01:00:20.000 And the two tragic incidents in Minneapolis where people interfered with law enforcement activities and lost their lives, those are obvious tragedies.

01:00:32.000 But the lesson is, I think, two lessons.

01:00:35.000 One is sanctuary cities are dangerous because ICE had no real alternative but to arrest these people with final orders of deportation, criminal aliens in the street, where typically those handoffs occur in a county jail where the local government respects a federal detainer.

01:00:56.000 And so you don't have that problem in places like Texas.

01:00:59.000 But finally, I think one of the lessons that we should all know is to cooperate with law enforcement.

01:01:06.000 Don't try to interfere with an ongoing law enforcement operation.

01:01:10.000 These folks are professionals.

01:01:12.000 They're doing the best they can under very difficult circumstances.

01:01:15.000 And I stand firmly with President Trump and those who believe that we need to enforce our immigration laws.

01:01:23.000 Well, I mean, I will note at this point that you do have a 99.2% record of voting with President Trump's policy proposals, despite all sort of protestations to the contrary.

01:01:32.000 Senator Cornyn, thanks so much for the time.

01:01:33.000 Really appreciate it.

01:01:35.000 Thanks, Ben.

01:01:35.000 Good to talk.

01:01:37.000 All righty, folks.

01:01:38.000 As we continue, we'll bring you the latest on international news.

01:01:42.000 Apparently, we have now sent a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East.

01:01:46.000 We'll bring you the latest from there.

01:01:48.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:01:49.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

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01:01:53.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

01:01:56.000 This Valentine's Day, there's a new home for romance.

01:02:01.000 I was told this was a segment on Milton Friedman and the economics of gift giving.

01:02:05.000 He technically isn't a bachelor, but he sure is a professor of love.

01:02:10.000 Find out what happens when 30 contestants looking for feelings run into the wall of facts.

01:02:16.000 I don't trust anyone who says love is love.

01:02:19.000 That is not an argument.

01:02:20.000 That is a tautology.

01:02:21.000 Yeah, he's a real catch.

01:02:24.000 Get ready for bad advice.

01:02:26.000 Real fewer questions.

01:02:29.000 Ben destroys.

01:02:30.000 And the world's most famous millionaire matchmaker, Patty Stanger, who stops by to help us find that special someone on the year's most intimate day.

01:02:41.000 Guys, did anyone even try to clear this with me?

01:02:42.000 Hey, look on the bright side.

01:02:44.000 Dinner reservations are going to be easier to make for one.

01:02:47.000 Ben, after dark, love hurts.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 12, 2026

Mamdani Leaves Homeless to FREEZE To Death

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