The Ben Shapiro Show - MASTERSTROKE: Trump’s Venezuela Coup Ends The Iraq Syndrome

00:00:00.000 President Trump totally upends geopolitics with the arrest and extradition of Nicolas Maduro.

00:00:06.000 We examine what that means.

00:00:07.000 Is the Iraq syndrome finally dead? 0.86

00:00:09.000 Plus, Tim Walz is out as the third term possibility for governor in Minnesota.

00:00:14.000 Plus, a trans-identifying person possibly breaks into JD Vance's house in Cincinnati.

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00:00:52.000 Well, yesterday, Nicolas Maduro, the erstwhile dictator of Venezuela, who, of course, was extradited by the United States in a snatch and grab operation, shocking in its magnitude and competence, appeared in U.S. court for the very first time.

00:01:06.000 Again, unthinkable one week ago, and yet here we now are.

00:01:10.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, he pled guilty to narco-trafficking charges during his arraignment in federal court.

00:01:16.000 He said, I am innocent.

00:01:16.000 I'm not guilty.

00:01:17.000 I'm a decent man.

00:01:18.000 I'm still the president of my country.

00:01:21.000 Well, all of those things are not true.

00:01:23.000 He is, in fact, guilty.

00:01:25.000 He is, in fact, not a decent man.

00:01:26.000 He's responsible for the deaths of probably hundreds of thousands of his own compatriots, the exile of millions.

00:01:31.000 I'm still the president of my country.

00:01:33.000 He really is not.

00:01:34.000 He adds that he was a prisoner of war and had been kidnapped from his home in Caracas.

00:01:39.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Monday's hearing kicked off a legal battle with little precedence over a foreign leader in U.S. court.

00:01:45.000 The arrest of a head of state presents challenges for both the prosecutors and the defense, and it could be years before this thing goes to trial.

00:01:53.000 The judge interjected and told him that there would be a time and place to make the argument that he was wrongfully apprehended.

00:01:58.000 His wife sat at the same defense table.

00:02:01.000 Apparently, there were some signs of injury sustained during her capture.

00:02:05.000 And again, the charges include cocaine, importation, conspiracy, and possession of machine guns.

00:02:10.000 They're being detained at a Brooklyn federal jail, apparently to the great consternation of New York Mayor Zorhan Mamdani, who really should be happier about all this after all.

00:02:19.000 We just provided an illegal immigrant, Venezuelan drug dealer, with free housing in New York. 0.99

00:02:24.000 So he really should be quite happy about all of this.

00:02:27.000 The next hearing is set for March 17th.

00:02:30.000 Meanwhile, what is going on over in Venezuela?

00:02:33.000 Well, you have the vice president of Venezuela, a woman named Del Codriguez, who is, by all accounts, just as vicious, brutal, and Machiavellian as Nicolas Maduro.

00:02:44.000 She has been left in charge.

00:02:45.000 Her brother is the head of the Venezuelan Assembly, which, of course, is a puppet group, a puppet legislature.

00:02:53.000 The question is whether the United States will be able to exert enough pressure on Del Codriguez to get what we want, namely a reopening of the oil industry in Venezuela, a transition, you would hope, to some sort of actual democratic order that ends the socialist tyranny that has dominated Venezuela.

00:03:10.000 You would assume that the reason the United States did not just topple the regime outright is because we do not want tons of boots on the ground in Venezuela and that external pressure will force Del C. Rodriguez to essentially give up the ghost at an unspecified time in the future.

00:03:23.000 It'll have to be fairly short order, obviously, because President Trump only has three years left in office.

00:03:28.000 And I do not trust a Democratic successor or possibly a Republican successor to do the right thing here.

00:03:33.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Maduro's top lieutenant, Del C Rodriguez, was sworn in as the country's acting president on Monday.

00:03:39.000 Small groups of armed civilians known as collectivos, paramilitary units in support of the ousted president, sped around Caracas on motorbikes.

00:03:46.000 His loyalists are still very much in power.

00:03:49.000 Rodriguez immediately declared a state of external commotion, authorizing police to search for and arrest anyone who supported the raid by U.S. commanders who snatched Maduro and his wife.

00:03:58.000 Now, the question is whether some of this is for show, whether she's attempting to demonstrate that she really is a continuation of Maduro's regime while really sort of doing the bidding of the Americans, saying outrageous things, doing outrageous things simply to keep her loyalists in line while actually doing the work of the United States.

00:04:18.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Maduro hardliners in the legislature, including his own son, whose name is Nicolasito, took part in a ceremony on Monday to swear in the National Assembly for a term that is supposed to last all the way until 2031.

00:04:30.000 Apparently, armed men were performing spot checks in the Capitol on Monday, stopping drivers to check their vehicles, forcing people to unlock their cell phones for suspect messages.

00:04:38.000 At least seven journalists were detained.

00:04:40.000 Three of them were released.

00:04:41.000 Four of them remained apparently under arrest.

00:04:44.000 Apparently, many residents didn't believe they could go out into the streets.

00:04:49.000 One banking advisor in Caracas said there's no change at all.

00:04:52.000 We're going to remain in the same situation because it's the same people.

00:04:56.000 So the question, of course, is what comes next.

00:04:58.000 Stephen Miller, a special advisor to the president of the United States, he says, listen, we are setting the terms and conditions here, no matter what the Venezuelan government is currently saying.

00:05:07.000 We are in charge because we have the United States military stationed outside the country.

00:05:15.000 We set the terms and conditions.

00:05:17.000 We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce.

00:05:21.000 So for them to do commerce, they need our permission.

00:05:24.000 For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission.

00:05:28.000 So the United States is in charge.

00:05:30.000 The United States is running the country during this transition period.

00:05:33.000 If that's not true, obviously, that doesn't mean that President Trump is setting the bus fare schedule inside the country.

00:05:41.000 Okay, so the question is what that means.

00:05:44.000 How much pressure can we actually exert?

00:05:46.000 How much leverage can we exert on the Venezuelan government to do the things that we want to see done in Venezuela, meaning an actual change of regime?

00:05:54.000 Because let's be clear here, the goal here is not merely to get Del Codriguez to open up the oil industry.

00:05:59.000 No one is going to invest in a country in which the dictator can simply revert back to type the minute that President Trump is out of office.

00:06:07.000 This has been one of the major problems when it comes to investment in Latin and South America by major corporations.

00:06:12.000 If you've got a 10-year runway, for example, to get to the oil that you need, then how are you going to invest 10 years worth knowing that at any moment Del Codriguez could change her mind and simply nationalize the oil industry again when President Trump is out of office?

00:06:26.000 And so there has to be real effectuated change with serious commitment and the ability to carry out what needs to happen.

00:06:34.000 So who are the major players here?

00:06:35.000 Again, according to the Wall Street Journal, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino command Venezuela's police and military.

00:06:43.000 Those are the forces that kept Maduro in power for more than a decade with their deadly crackdowns on dissent.

00:06:48.000 And probably tens of thousands of people were imprisoned or killed by this regime.

00:06:53.000 And so you are talking about the functional military apparatus of Venezuela, which typically a dictator will ensure is loyal to him.

00:07:01.000 Something happened here that made clear that they were no longer loyal to Maduro and they were hoping that Trump would take his foot off the gas.

00:07:06.000 If Trump keeps his foot on the gas, and I mean that almost literally, if the United States continues to inhibit the flow of oil in and out of Venezuela to prevent exports, to control the airspace, it's going to make it very difficult for the Venezuelan regime to continue to buck President Trump's demands.

00:07:22.000 Right now, Cabello and Padrino are displaying unity with Rodriguez, but they represent a wildcard for President Trump's bet that the remnants of the regime will fall in line to avoid Maduro's fate.

00:07:33.000 For now, Cabello and Padrino appear to be playing ball after that large-scale strike that took out Maduro's personal security apparatus and led to his capture.

00:07:42.000 So if the regime falls, then both of them are in serious trouble.

00:07:45.000 They might find themselves in jail.

00:07:46.000 You could see a world in which they end up having to go into exile.

00:07:50.000 They also may not have a hell of a lot of choice because, again, the United States demonstrated its full-scale dominance militarily over whatever the Venezuelan military thinks it is doing.

00:08:00.000 In a moment, we will get to President Trump's demands for Venezuela's new government first.

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00:09:13.000 So, what exactly are the demands?

00:09:16.000 According to Politico, the Trump administration is demanding that Venezuela's interim leader take several pro-U.S. actions.

00:09:22.000 Her predecessor refused if she wants to avoid also finding herself in court in the United States.

00:09:27.000 Officials have told Del C. Rodriguez they want to see at least three moves from her: one, cracking down on drug flows. 0.98

00:09:32.000 Two, kicking out Iranian, Cuban, and other operatives of countries or networks hostile to Washington.

00:09:37.000 And three, stopping the sale of oil to U.S. adversaries, according to a U.S. official familiar with the situation and a person familiar with the administration's internal discussions.

00:09:46.000 U.S. officials also expect Rodriguez to eventually facilitate free elections and step aside, but the deadlines for those demands are fluid and U.S. officials stress there are no elections imminent.

00:09:56.000 This, by the way, is not a personal thing.

00:09:58.000 There are a lot of members of the media right now who are trying to suggest that the reason that President Trump is not putting in place the woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize, Machado, that the reason for that is because he has some sort of personal animus that she won the Nobel Peace Prize.

00:10:14.000 That's really, really silly.

00:10:15.000 That is not what's going on.

00:10:16.000 The actual thing that is happening is that she has no ability to govern because she does not have forces on the ground, Maria Corina Machado. 0.98

00:10:25.000 If she were in charge of military or something, then there would be the ability to put her in place.

00:10:31.000 But if you just say she's in charge now, there is no way to actually effectuate that absent serious boots on the ground. 0.72

00:10:38.000 This is why when Representative Maria Salazar says that Machado should leave the country, when there's an election, she should. 1.00

00:10:43.000 The problem right now is how do you make that happen?

00:10:46.000 How do you get from point A to point B?

00:10:47.000 Here was Maria Salazar making the case for Machado. 0.99

00:10:51.000 Marco Rubio said it.

00:10:53.000 It's been 48 hours.

00:10:54.000 Let's give us a few months until we create the stability.

00:10:58.000 And I'm sure that Maria Corina Machado, who is the leader of the opposition of the Democratic opposition, will go back in, be able to put together the process so you can have free and fair elections with international observers.

00:11:11.000 I'm sure she will be the nominee that Maduro did not allow her to be, the presidential nominee.

00:11:16.000 I'm sure she's going to win.

00:11:19.000 Now, again, the question of how we get to an election is the big question here.

00:11:23.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the CIA had concluded that Machado would not have the ability to actually effectuate a shift in power in Venezuela at this time.

00:11:31.000 She doesn't have the support base, not among the people, but with the actual people who have the guns.

00:11:35.000 And it turns out that the people who have the guns typically make the rules.

00:11:38.000 According to an intelligence report cited by the Wall Street Journal, it said that Rodriguez and two other top Venezuelan regime figures would be possible interim rulers who could keep order.

00:11:49.000 The two hardliners, again, who we've mentioned, that would be Cabello and Patrino, could undo any efforts at a transition, both face U.S. criminal charges similar to those filed against Maduro.

00:12:00.000 They are seen as unlikely to cooperate with Washington, but they may be a little bit more likely now that their boss got defenistrated and brought to the United States for trial.

00:12:10.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, last year, the CIA cultivated a source within Maduro's inner circle who provided information on his whereabouts.

00:12:17.000 The spy agency's close tracking of Maduro's location, which leveraged other surveillance elements, including stealth drones, allowed the army's Delta Force to nab him and his wife during the raid, people familiar with the operation said.

00:12:29.000 So, what exactly is going to happen next?

00:12:33.000 Well, the better course is likely to compel Rodriguez to initiate a transition of power.

00:12:38.000 Presumably, economic discontent, identifying people maybe even lower down on the military infrastructure ladder who have now been elevated thanks to the moves against Maduro, might be a way to effectuate almost a second coup.

00:12:51.000 But the threat is out there and it exists very clearly.

00:12:55.000 Now, this may not be the end of the story.

00:12:57.000 Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says that given the fact that Venezuelan oil is propping up the Cuban regime, Cuba may be next.

00:13:06.000 You just wait for Cuba.

00:13:08.000 Cuba is a communist dictatorship that's killed priests and nuns.

00:13:13.000 They've preyed on their own people.

00:13:16.000 Their days are numbered.

00:13:17.000 We're going to wake up one day.

00:13:19.000 I hope in 26, in our backyard, we're going to have allies in these countries doing business with America, not narco-terrorist dictators killing Americans. 0.79

00:13:32.000 Okay, well, you know, again, he is not wrong about this.

00:13:35.000 Having Venezuela back in Cuba and then Venezuela no longer being able to support Cuba means that Cuba is in danger of falling as well.

00:13:42.000 The other country that has come up a lot is the country of Colombia, where Gustavo Petro, who is a radical far-left socialist, is the leader.

00:13:50.000 Now, he was only inaugurated in 2022, so he's not been in power for all that long.

00:13:57.000 There is a one-term limit for presidents in Colombia.

00:14:01.000 And it turns out that many of the politicians who have actually run Colombia in the past were right-wing or center-right.

00:14:10.000 So Petro is a difference.

00:14:12.000 He doesn't actually require a coup.

00:14:15.000 There is due to be another election this year in Colombia.

00:14:19.000 So he can talk all he wants.

00:14:20.000 As long as there's a legit election, he probably loses in Colombia.

00:14:22.000 He's very unpopular.

00:14:23.000 Here's Petro trying to shout at President Trump.

00:14:30.000 He says, Don't threaten me.

00:14:31.000 I'll wait for you here if you want.

00:14:34.000 I do not accept invasions.

00:14:36.000 I do not accept missiles.

00:14:37.000 I do not accept assassinations.

00:14:39.000 I accept intelligence.

00:14:41.000 Come here to speak intelligently.

00:14:44.000 And we receive you.

00:14:45.000 And we talked one-on-one and with real figures, not lies.

00:14:48.000 Stop lying.

00:14:49.000 Okay, first of all, let's be real.

00:14:52.000 If the United States fires a missile, he will be accepting the missile.

00:14:54.000 He doesn't have much of a choice about it, but it's not necessary.

00:14:58.000 Petro is not eligible to run for re-election.

00:15:01.000 Right now, if you look at the polling in Colombia, it's wide open.

00:15:05.000 You have somebody from Petro's group named Ivan Cepeda, who's of the left.

00:15:11.000 You have a candidate of the right, sort of populist figure, sort of Trumpian figure.

00:15:15.000 You have another, sort of more classical conservative figure.

00:15:20.000 By August, there will likely be a different regime in place in Colombia.

00:15:24.000 So the idea that we need to effectuate some sort of regime change in Colombia is not even true.

00:15:28.000 And that's just Petro railing against the machine.

00:15:31.000 Meanwhile, again, one of the big purposes here for the United States is to reopen the Venezuelan oil industry in a productive way that is directed toward the West and mostly directed away from Iran and China, cutting out the legs from underneath the oil support base for our geopolitical opponents.

00:15:48.000 Right now, China gets an enormous percentage of its oil from Russia and Iran, but it also gets a not insignificant percentage from Venezuela.

00:15:55.000 And so if China were to be deprived of that, that would do China pretty significant damage.

00:15:59.000 By the way, Chinese weapons were on the ground in Venezuela.

00:16:02.000 They didn't do much of a difference against the United States military.

00:16:06.000 Right now, Chevron is trying to figure out whether or not to invest serious dollars in the Venezuelan oil industry.

00:16:12.000 Energy stocks jumped yesterday on the assumption that the United States would not have taken Maduro if it did not have a plan for a transition to a privatized oil industry in Venezuela.

00:16:22.000 According to the New York Times, President Trump has now allowed Chevron to continue operating in Venezuela.

00:16:28.000 The company is in prime position to benefit after U.S. forces captured Maduro over the weekend.

00:16:34.000 That remarkable turnaround is due in part to a spirited lobbying effort that included several conversations over the past year between President Trump and Mike Worth, Chevron's mild-mannered chief executive.

00:16:44.000 So Chevron stayed active in the Venezuelan area, and now they look like they are the company most likely to benefit from a reopening of Venezuelan private oil drilling.

00:16:56.000 For Chevron, the rationale for staying in Venezuela was simple, apparently.

00:17:00.000 Under a new contract in 2006, the company received an ownership stake in a key Venezuelan project rather than being paid a fee to produce oil there.

00:17:08.000 Chevron apparently saw that if oil prices rose in the future, then they were taking the upside.

00:17:12.000 So Chevron is still there.

00:17:14.000 Chevron may benefit from all of this.

00:17:15.000 Listen, cheaper energy, a Venezuela that is not directed at support of China or is barred from support of China is a win for the United States.

00:17:23.000 Does that get us everywhere that we'd like to see Venezuela go? 0.76

00:17:26.000 No.

00:17:27.000 But there will be, I would assume, a transitional plan here towards something better for Venezuelans, even if it is not in the immediate term.

00:17:33.000 And of course, what President Trump is attempting to do is to effectuate the will of the American people to serve the interests of the American people without getting involved in a large-scale occupation of Venezuela.

00:17:45.000 Meanwhile, the DHS Assistant Secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, she's saying that Venezuelans who are here on temporary protected status can now go home because Maduro isn't in charge.

00:17:54.000 Well, I mean, we may be a little bit away from that, given the fact that, again, the regime is still in power, is still Mizuro's regime.

00:18:02.000 It's all of his remnants.

00:18:05.000 I'm not seeing any changes to our posture on this.

00:18:08.000 I think the great news for those who are here from Venezuela on temporary protected status is that they can now go home with hope for their country, a country that they love, that there is going to be peace, prosperity, and stability.

00:18:22.000 Tommy, you know, we can hope that that's going to emerge very soon.

00:18:27.000 It's not quite there yet.

00:18:28.000 We are in phase A of whatever happens in Venezuela.

00:18:32.000 Now, the left's reaction has been exactly what you would predict.

00:18:35.000 Some of it is just pure anti-Americanism.

00:18:37.000 Internationally, you can see all the enemies of the United States very, very upset.

00:18:41.000 So, for example, the representative of Colombia at the United Nations, Leonor Zalabada Torres, had this to say.

00:18:49.000 Colombia condemns categorically the events that occurred in the early morning of the 3rd of January in Venezuela, where we saw multiple explosions and air activity over Caracas and other areas of the country as part of a military attack carried out by the United States.

00:19:12.000 States, which included bombings of civilian and military infrastructure, creating panic amongst the population.

00:19:21.000 All of this represents clear violations of the sovereignty, political independence, and the territorial integrity of Venezuela.

00:19:33.000 Other representatives condemning the United States included the Russian Federation as well as China, of course.

00:19:38.000 Here is the Chinese representative, Sulei, at the UN, condemning the United States for its actions against Nicolas Maduro.

00:19:46.000 On January the 3rd, the United States blatantly launched large-scale military strikes against Venezuela, forcefully seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife and took them out of the country.

00:19:59.000 It claimed that it will run Venezuela and even didn't rule out launching a second round of military operations on an even larger scale.

00:20:08.000 China is deeply shocked by and strongly condemns the unilateral illegal and bullying acts of the U.S. Our ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, he, of course, had the proper response, which was, who gives a flying bleep what Russia and China and Colombia think of all of this?

00:20:27.000 These are not exactly human rights-oriented nations.

00:20:32.000 If the UN and the United Nations and this body confers legitimacy on an illegitimate narco-terrorist and the same treatment in this charter of a democratically elected president or head of state, what kind of organization is this? 0.81

00:20:55.000 And the answer is the United Nations is a garbage organization.

00:20:57.000 And I would hope that on his way out of office in three years, President Trump defunds the United Nations entirely, uses eminent domain to take control of the building and builds a Trump Tower there.

00:21:07.000 Because honestly, the United Nations is not only useless, it is wildly counterproductive on every available level.

00:21:13.000 And meanwhile, protesters in New York City have already gathered in favor of Maduro, according to the New York Post.

00:21:19.000 These protests have been organized by the hardcore left-wing group, the People's Forum, which wait for it, wait for it, wait for it.

00:21:24.000 They have close ties to China, to China.

00:21:27.000 The People's Forum put out a press release saying this war is not about drug trafficking.

00:21:31.000 It's not about democracy.

00:21:32.000 It's about stealing Venezuela's oil and dominating Latin America. 0.64

00:21:35.000 I think one of the great interviews that I've seen recently was an interview with a person on the streets of Venezuela who's asked about this.

00:21:41.000 And he said, well, hold up.

00:21:43.000 I mean, Iran, Russia, China, are they here because they're looking for the recipe for Arepas?

00:21:48.000 Or are they also here for the oil?

00:21:50.000 Like, let's be clear about how foreign relations works.

00:21:54.000 Nonetheless, members of the left have been searching for an angle here.

00:21:59.000 So naturally, you have Representative Ted Liu of California saying, this is terrible, because now that we have done this to Maduro, what's to stop China or Russia from making aggressive actions in the world?

00:22:09.000 Madud, check a calendar.

00:22:11.000 Russia has been taking aggressive actions since the invasion of Georgia during the Bush administration under Vladimir Putin.

00:22:18.000 And what are you talking about?

00:22:19.000 China has been building military islands in the middle of the Pacific.

00:22:23.000 They've been threatening Philippines and Taiwan, obviously.

00:22:27.000 What are you talking about?

00:22:29.000 Do they need a handwritten invitation from the United States in order for them to feel emboldened or something?

00:22:33.000 Like, what nonsense?

00:22:37.000 Certainly, this illegal action by the president does also take away the moral argument that the United States had against China and Russia with respect to their aggressive actions towards other places and other countries.

00:22:54.000 Give me a break.

00:22:55.000 I mean, really, truly a stupid take there.

00:22:57.000 Meanwhile, Sonny Hostin, who can always be trusted as a lawyer to give the best legal take over on the view, she says that the kidnapping is illegal, in her humble opinion.

00:23:06.000 It's not legal to do this.

00:23:08.000 It tells people why not.

00:23:10.000 Well, it's not legal because it violates international law, right?

00:23:13.000 And this sort of represents this new, I mean, I've never seen it before, the president of the United States to kill, I believe he killed over, the U.S. government killed over 100 people, including civilians and military, in Venezuela during this kidnapping and capture.

00:23:33.000 And international law doesn't allow it unless there is unless Congress declares war.

00:23:41.000 Violates international law.

00:23:42.000 Tell us more about international law, Sonny Hostin.

00:23:45.000 Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York, he went after Marco Rubio, suggesting that Rubio had been deceiving Congress.

00:23:53.000 In the lead up to the war in Iraq, the same things were said about Vietnam when comparisons were made in a similar way.

00:24:00.000 It is such chicken hawk BS from Rubio, who's not served a single day in uniform, to dismiss that as a phobia.

00:24:09.000 You want to tell that to my friends on this bracelet that I lost in combat?

00:24:14.000 You want to tell that to the innocent Iraqis that were killed?

00:24:17.000 You want to tell that to the Venezuelan people who are saying, we're glad Maduro's gone, as am I, but what the heck is the plan afterwards?

00:24:25.000 And are we just going to hand this to another dictator who's going to do the will of our increasingly authoritarian president in Donald Trump?

00:24:33.000 Again, the argument that somehow Rubio lied is ridiculous.

00:24:38.000 What is he supposed to do?

00:24:39.000 Disclose secret operations that could be blown at any moment?

00:24:43.000 That is not going to happen.

00:24:44.000 It never has happened in the modern history of the United States post-World War II.

00:24:48.000 Meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries, he's hanging his hat on the idea that the future of the Venezuelan people should be decided by Venezuelans.

00:24:56.000 Yes, it's a step-by-step process.

00:24:58.000 The first step is to get rid of the guy at the top, and then we'll move to phase B.

00:25:04.000 The future of the Venezuelan people should be determined by the Venezuelan people, not by Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, or Stephen Miller.

00:25:18.000 Are you kidding me?

00:25:19.000 These people don't even know how to run the United States of America.

00:25:25.000 So I do have a question here, which is Maduro was running it until five seconds ago.

00:25:30.000 So the choices were not the Venezuelan people or Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio and President Trump.

00:25:36.000 The choices were Nicolas Maduro or a transitional plan that moves toward democracy presided over by a tutelary power in the United States.

00:25:45.000 Leave it to Senator John Fetterman, apparently the last same Democrat to just say the quiet part out loud and the obvious part, which is this is a good thing and we should salute our military for what they just did.

00:25:56.000 I think I don't know why we can't just acknowledge that it's been a good thing what's happened.

00:26:00.000 I mean, I mean, I've seen the speeches from whether it's leader Schumer or kinds of past tweets from President Biden.

00:26:08.000 You know, we all wanted this man gone and now he is gone.

00:26:12.000 I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here.

00:26:16.000 And I think we did just as I've salute our military, what they've done.

00:26:20.000 That was really surgical and precise and very efficient.

00:26:24.000 So why we can't celebrate these kinds of things?

00:26:28.000 Yeah, good for Senator Fetterman.

00:26:30.000 By the way, Ana Navarro, you know, credit to strange new respect for Ana Navarro over at The View, who occasionally, apparently will say the right things. 0.89

00:26:36.000 Here she was.

00:26:38.000 I think you can criticize and ask questions and have concerns about the way it was done and what this means in the future.

00:26:45.000 Right.

00:26:45.000 And I think you can still celebrate that this murderous, corrupt, sadistic son of a is out of Venezuela.

00:26:53.000 He has, I think, there's 8 million Venezuelan exiles all over the world.

00:26:58.000 People have fled from this man's tyrannical rule.

00:27:04.000 Okay, she is right about that, obviously.

00:27:07.000 Okay, so the real question in all this is, where does the United States stand?

00:27:10.000 What has happened here?

00:27:11.000 And something important has happened here.

00:27:13.000 There's an attempt to minimize what's happened here because we don't know exactly what's going to come next.

00:27:17.000 Again, you have to imagine that the pressure tactics are not over.

00:27:20.000 The administration is saying that over and over.

00:27:22.000 But something more important has happened here, and that is that President Trump has substantively killed the Iraq syndrome, the Iraq syndrome, the syndrome that arose in Americans' minds about our role in the world arising from the failure of the Iraq war and subsequent occupation.

00:27:40.000 So you have to go back in history to understand this.

00:27:43.000 aftermath of the disastrous Vietnam War, America's foreign policy establishment fell into disarray.

00:27:48.000 According to a lot of the experts, the Vietnam War hadn't been lost because of a combination of terrible war strategy and domestic discontent.

00:27:55.000 Instead, the new conventional wisdom said, the Vietnam War never should have been fought in the first place.

00:27:59.000 Not only that, but America had to fundamentally rethink its role in the world.

00:28:04.000 The new conventional wisdom suggested that the U.S. should stop engaging in aggressive foreign policy in its own interests.

00:28:10.000 Instead, The United States ought to pursue a more dovish or isolationist foreign policy in order to avoid quagmires.

00:28:17.000 This conventional wisdom came to be known as Vietnam syndrome.

00:28:20.000 Undergirding the Vietnam syndrome was very, very often a thinly veiled anti-Americanism, the belief that America was in fact not good, but a malign force on planet Earth.

00:28:31.000 As former Princeton professor Richard Fawkes said at the time, quote, I love the Vietnam syndrome because it was the proper redemptive path for American foreign policy to take after the Vietnam defeat.

00:28:39.000 In other words, America is at root guilty, and we learned that in Vietnam, and now we ought to withdraw from the world and acknowledge our guilt. 0.55

00:28:46.000 The Vietnam syndrome in the real world came with really serious costs.

00:28:50.000 As it turns out, a world without a strong America is a far worse world.

00:28:54.000 An America dedicated to self-castration on the international stage ushered in the Cambodian genocide, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran, among other foreign policy tragedies. 0.58

00:29:05.000 Well, by the mid-80s, Ronald Reagan had decided that it was time for America to move beyond the Vietnam syndrome.

00:29:10.000 In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened to depose a Marxist government in Grenada, a successful intervention that cost few American lives and restored that small island nation to freedom.

00:29:21.000 And just a few months later, Reagan's defense secretary, a man named Caspar Weinberger, spelled out six standards to be met prior to a military intervention.

00:29:29.000 First, a vital interest had to be at stake.

00:29:31.000 Second, the United States had to be prepared for outright victory.

00:29:34.000 Third, America needed to have clear political and military goals.

00:29:38.000 Fourth, America had to be willing to adjust its strategy continuously.

00:29:42.000 Fifth, public support had to be maintained.

00:29:44.000 And sixth, all other options had to be exhausted.

00:29:47.000 And the Reagan administration and the subsequent H.W. Bush administration ended the Vietnam syndrome with the Weinberger Doctrine.

00:29:54.000 In 1989, the United States intervened in Panama to arrest dictator Emmanuel Noriega, restoring democracy to that nation.

00:30:00.000 We talked about that yesterday.

00:30:01.000 In 1991, President George H.W. Bush initiated Operation Desert Storm to eject Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

00:30:09.000 That intervention was specifically designed to fulfill Caspar Weinberger's criteria.

00:30:14.000 And so the Vietnam syndrome was basically dead.

00:30:17.000 And then, of course, came the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War, which revived it. 0.98

00:30:21.000 Both wars began with specific missions.

00:30:24.000 The Afghanistan war was designed to depose the Taliban regime and prevent the installation of another regime friendly to Al-Qaeda.

00:30:30.000 The Iraq War was designed to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

00:30:32.000 Both of those objectives were achieved in the early going.

00:30:35.000 But then the aftermath in both countries turned into an exercise in large-scale nationbuilding, a project that lasted years and cost over a trillion dollars and cost the blood and lives of thousands of American troops.

00:30:46.000 And ever since, critics of American foreign policy have basically revived the Vietnam syndrome in the form of an Iraq syndrome.

00:30:52.000 The idea that every single conflict in which the United States is involved must become Iraq or will become Iraq. 0.68

00:30:59.000 Not, contrary to the usual definition, a justified skepticism of intelligence findings or fear of nationbuilding, but again, a full-scale restoration of the Vietnam syndrome. 0.54

00:31:08.000 Every single foreign policy intervention is supposed to become Iraq or Afghanistan.

00:31:12.000 You hear this repeated ad nauseum from the horseshoe left and the horseshoe right.

00:31:17.000 And unsurprisingly, just like with the Vietnam syndrome, the Iraq syndrome ushered in a period of American retreat and international chaos, led by Barack Obama and Joe Biden predominantly.

00:31:27.000 Withdrawal from Iraq led to the rise of ISIS under Barack Obama.

00:31:30.000 And Iranian proxies around the region grew, and that eventually resulted in the cataclysm of October 7th, 2023. 0.97

00:31:36.000 Joe Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and prompted, at least in part, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

00:31:45.000 China looked at the United States and the world and decided that it was going to spread its tentacles throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. 0.64

00:31:52.000 Well, now, on the tail end of Joe Biden's catastrophic foreign policy presidency, again, in Iraq syndrome presidency, just as Ronald Reagan once did, President Trump has now put the Iraq syndrome to bed.

00:32:03.000 Trump has done so with what could be called the Trump doctrine.

00:32:07.000 That's a term that I defined back in November 2024 with the following criteria.

00:32:11.000 One, America's interests are paramount and they include a lot of things from freedom of the seas to the strength of American allies in contentious regions to yes, oil interests.

00:32:20.000 Second, America's interests must be carefully calibrated to our investment in them.

00:32:25.000 So big interest means big investment.

00:32:27.000 Small interest, smaller investment.

00:32:29.000 Third, all measures and means necessary to achieve America's interests are on the table from diplomacy to military interventionism.

00:32:36.000 And fourth, all of this should be made very public all the time.

00:32:40.000 The threat should be on the table.

00:32:42.000 The threat of the gun should always be on the table.

00:32:44.000 Well, President Trump has done this.

00:32:46.000 Again, I said this was his doctrine in November 2024.

00:32:49.000 And now in the last year, he has done it twice.

00:32:52.000 First, he did so with the June 22nd, 2025 B-2 strikes on Iran's nuclear reactor at Fordo, reestablishing America's deterrence power in the Middle East, reshaping the geopolitics of the region in dramatic fashion.

00:33:05.000 Despite all of the caterwalling from his supposed allies declaring that World War III would break out, because again, they had been captured by Iraq syndrome. 0.96

00:33:13.000 President Trump is not.

00:33:14.000 Well, now President Trump has done the same with the ouster of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

00:33:19.000 In pursuing these actions, Trump has reestablished American deterrence globally.

00:33:23.000 He's made clear America's enemies are on notice, FAFO.

00:33:26.000 And he's demonstrating that such action doesn't need to lead to a quagmire or to a full-scale nationbuilding exercise draining America's attention and resources.

00:33:36.000 Iraq syndrome should be dead. 1.00

00:33:38.000 And if it is, it died at the hands of President Trump.

00:33:41.000 America is indeed once again feared on the global stage, which is an incredible accomplishment given where we were just one year ago. 0.85

00:33:48.000 This is what many of us voted for, at least those of us who actually would like to make America great again in the world.

00:33:56.000 Well, meanwhile, a lot closer to home, JD Vance's home in Cincinnati was apparently broken into and vandalized, according to the New York Post.

00:34:04.000 The deranged hammer-wielding alleged vandal is reportedly the son of a prominent millionaire family who is wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, trans-identifying. 0.52

00:34:13.000 Oh, you mean that people who identify as members of the opposite sex might have other problems sometimes?

00:34:19.000 I am shocked.

00:34:20.000 Color me, absolutely shocked.

00:34:22.000 William DeFour, 26, was arrested early Monday after allegedly shattering four windows at Vance's home.

00:34:27.000 Apparently, he was attempting to break into the home around midnight.

00:34:31.000 It's unclear whether this person identifies as transgender or non-binary, but he recently appeared to be posting under the name Julia DeFour.

00:34:40.000 This person, again, appears to have some serious difficulties.

00:34:43.000 He is the son of a pediatric urologist and apparently, again, a fancy family, longtime Democratic Party supporters.

00:34:56.000 The reality of mental illness is quite shocking and pretending it away and also creating moral structures whereby if you quote unquote challenge the identity of a person who is clearly engaging in a delusion, you must be threatening them in some way and thus counteraction is justified, which has been the sort of excuse making with regard to everything from the murder of Charlie Kirk to the assault on Covenant Catholic.

00:35:24.000 Now, that entire thought process has to be ended.

00:35:28.000 It has to be curtailed.

00:35:29.000 The thought process is wrong and it is damaging and it is dangerous.

00:35:33.000 In bigger news, apparently Tim Walz has now dropped out.

00:35:37.000 We reported this late-breaking news yesterday.

00:35:40.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Governor Tim Wallace has dropped his bid for a third term amid a massive welfare fraud scandal, a remarkable fall for a politician who had ascended to the national stage in 2024 as the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

00:35:51.000 Once again, it is astonishing to me that Kamala Harris chose the goofball from Minnesota, who is presiding over legitimately hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud over, for example, the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, just because Shapiro happened to be Jewish. 0.55

00:36:03.000 Pretty astonishing move by Kamala Harris.

00:36:05.000 Worked out well for her.

00:36:06.000 Senator Amy Klobuchar is seriously considering running for governor.

00:36:10.000 She would be the frontrunner, obviously.

00:36:14.000 Speaking to reporters Monday in St. Paul, Wallace said it became clear to him he could not run a 2026 campaign and do the work needed to respond to the crisis.

00:36:21.000 He, of course, claimed that he is a victim in all of this.

00:36:24.000 Here he was.

00:36:25.000 He did a press conference yesterday, at which, of course, he took no questions from the press after presiding over hundreds of millions of dollars in bilked taxpayer money.

00:36:34.000 Here he was yesterday, ripping the people he calls conspiracy theorists.

00:36:37.000 Now, again, he can focus in on the Nick Shirley video and say that it was not substantiated well enough, but there were large-scale contemporaneous reports from CNN, from the New York Times, from Chris Rufo, from a wide variety of sources pointing out the extraordinary fraud taking place in the Somali community in Minnesota.

00:36:55.000 Here is Tim Walz trying to chalk it all up to conspiracy theories.

00:36:58.000 If it were that much of a conspiracy theory, Madud, you should debunk it and continue to campaign.

00:37:02.000 The reality is you're a terrible governor.

00:37:04.000 You never should have been a vice presidential nominee.

00:37:06.000 And it just goes to show you that hanging out with Kamala Harris doesn't put much of a shine on you, as it turns out.

00:37:13.000 We've got conspiracy theorist right-wing YouTubers breaking into our daycares, demanding access to our children. 0.95

00:37:22.000 We've got the president of the United States demonizing our Somali neighbors and wrongfully confiscating funds that Minnesotans rely on.

00:37:31.000 It's disgusting and it's dangerous.

00:37:35.000 Well, again, this is very, very industrial-scale fraud, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:37:40.000 We are talking about billions and billions and billions of dollars in fraud nationally and certainly hundreds of millions of dollars inside the state of Minnesota, ranging from food programs built to child care programs built.

00:37:54.000 Here was Tim Walz attacking President Trump for all of this.

00:37:56.000 Again, it wasn't Trump who did it, Madud.

00:37:58.000 It was you.

00:37:58.000 You're the governor.

00:38:01.000 I don't want to mince words here.

00:38:03.000 Donald Trump and his allies in Washington and in St. Paul and online want to make our state a colder, meaner place.

00:38:10.000 They want to poison our people against each other by attacking our neighbors. 0.95

00:38:15.000 And ultimately, they want to take away much of what makes Minnesota the best place in the country to raise a family.

00:38:21.000 They've already begun trying to withhold funds that were meant to help families afford child care, and they have no intention of stopping there.

00:38:30.000 Now, again, it is not just Nick Shirley.

00:38:33.000 Okay, the Minnesota Star Tribune documented more than $200 million in fraudulent meal and housing programs, Medicaid services, and more.

00:38:41.000 Federal prosecutors and President Trump say that the number could be actually in the billions, and they have frozen a bunch of child care funding to Minnesota after those allegations of fraud involving daycare centers that were highlighted in Nick Shirley's video.

00:38:54.000 Now, again, not everything in the Nick Shirley video is fully substantiated.

00:38:59.000 Some of these places presumably had kids in them, but an enormous number of them had massive violations.

00:39:08.000 And again, they are still awaiting further investigation on a lot of these child care facilities.

00:39:15.000 According to the Associated Press, Minnesota officials have until next week to hand over information on providers and parents who receive federal child care funds.

00:39:22.000 The Trump administration contends have been fraudulently used or risk losing their own federal funding.

00:39:29.000 Now, there's some state officials saying that some of these places have been operating as expected, but an enormous number of them also have gigantic failures in terms of their compliance issues.

00:39:40.000 Quality Leadering Center, for example, as we discussed yesterday, is a child care center that had something like 121 different problems with it over the past three years.

00:39:51.000 Here, in fact, is the manager of Quality Learning Center, who said that Nick Shirley came outside operating hours.

00:39:56.000 They've been open for eight and a half years.

00:40:00.000 You don't come outside of outside, outside of operational hours, and then say they're using taxpayer money.

00:40:05.000 That was completely false.

00:40:06.000 As you can see, we're open Mondays through Thursdays, 2 to 10 p.m.

00:40:10.000 He was here earlier.

00:40:11.000 I don't see him right now.

00:40:13.000 So it's like, are you trying to record that we're doing fraud or are you trying to put the Somali name and their fraud in the same sentence? 0.72

00:40:21.000 That's what really hurt us the last couple of days.

00:40:23.000 We're open.

00:40:24.000 We've been open.

00:40:25.000 We've been open for eight, eight and a half years now.

00:40:25.000 We haven't closed it.

00:40:28.000 We haven't closed once during that period.

00:40:31.000 Okay, with 121 violations in three years.

00:40:34.000 Okay, which does raise the question of how many violations does it take to get you canceled off the welfare programs in the state of Minnesota.

00:40:41.000 Meanwhile, one of these Somali-run daycare centers came out and said that they did have documents demonstrating their legitimacy, but they were broken into and stolen, which seems kind of weird.

00:40:49.000 Why that would be the thing that a thief would steal.

00:40:54.000 Yesterday morning, I was called by the owner because unfortunately someone came in to our daycare.

00:41:03.000 We looked and saw what happened, and we saw that the suspect came in from the back, broke in from the back kitchen, and he also destroyed the wall to come in.

00:41:16.000 As we walked around the daycare, we saw that our office doors were broken into as well.

00:41:23.000 We saw that, unfortunately, we saw that there was important documentation, enrollment of the children, and also employee documentation that was gone.

00:41:34.000 There were also checkbooks that were ripped from our checkpapers that were from our book.

00:41:42.000 This is devastating news, and we don't know why this is targeting our Somali community as one video made by a specific individual made this all happen.

00:41:56.000 Again, not, I have questions.

00:41:58.000 Like, if you're a thief, is that the first thing you go for?

00:42:00.000 Is the employment records at a daycare center?

00:42:02.000 Is that really what you go for?

00:42:04.000 Again, this is a major ongoing problem.

00:42:06.000 The New York Times had a piece back in November 2025 titled How Fraud Swamped Minnesota's Social Services System on Tim Walz' watch.

00:42:13.000 Walls answered zero questions as he walked out of his presser.

00:42:17.000 Tomorrow, I'll be back with you.

00:42:19.000 I'll give you an update on America's best paid family medical leave program that is now a week into it.

00:42:24.000 And at that time, I'll take all your questions.

00:42:26.000 Thank you all.

00:42:30.000 Appreciate it.

00:42:31.000 Thank you.

00:42:32.000 Just we'll slide out the back door without answering any questions.

00:42:35.000 Well, I do not think that that is the end of the Tim Walz scandal.

00:42:39.000 I do not think that Tim Walz' declaration that he will not run again is going to end all of this.

00:42:44.000 You might call some of this the warmth of collectivism.

00:42:47.000 It turns out that when you confiscate vast amounts of taxpayer dollars and you redistribute them to all of your friends, when you regulate people to death, but then for your friends, you alleviate those regulations.

00:42:59.000 You might call that the warmth of collectivism.

00:43:01.000 I'm using this phrase because, of course, last week, Zarm Montani was officially sworn into office in New York City and gave an astonishing speech in which he announced that socialism was the order of the day in New York City.

00:43:11.000 The Reds are in charge.

00:43:13.000 Here he was promising the end of rugged individualism in a city about which Frank Sinatra once saying, if you make it here, you can make it anywhere.

00:43:20.000 Now, I guess the slogan of New York City is: if you can stay here, we'll give you free stuff on somebody else's dime until we're all bankrupt.

00:43:26.000 It's a little longer and doesn't fit on a bumper sticker.

00:43:29.000 Here is Mamdani talking about the warmth of collectivism, by which I assume he means the warm embrace of Big Brother.

00:43:35.000 There's a great ex-post, I can't remember who put it up, talking about the actual warmth of collectivism, referring to Moscow's centralized heating system under the Soviet Union.

00:43:46.000 They built this gigantic centralized heating system under Moscow in the early days of the Soviet Union, and it was utterly inefficient because it turned out they tried to set the temperature for hundreds of thousands of people.

00:43:56.000 And so if it was too hot in your apartment, you opened the windows, wasting energy.

00:43:59.000 And in other parts of the city, you couldn't get heat.

00:44:02.000 But there was the warmth of collectivism.

00:44:04.000 You did feel the collectivism.

00:44:06.000 Apparently, the cost of heating in Moscow, thanks to this idiotic centralized heating system, was greater than the cost for heating all of France.

00:44:14.000 So we can look forward to more of that sort of wonderful policy under Zorhan Mamdani.

00:44:18.000 Here he was.

00:44:19.000 And if for too long these communities have existed as distinct from one another, we will draw this city closer together.

00:44:28.000 We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.

00:44:35.000 Yeah, well, I'm really excited about the death of rugged individualism in a city that is mostly famous for Wall Street.

00:44:40.000 That is exciting stuff.

00:44:41.000 We'll see how it works out for him, Cotton.

00:44:43.000 Meanwhile, Mamdani also added that the era of big government is here and it's here to stay.

00:44:48.000 I have to admit, I'm kind of eager for this.

00:44:50.000 I would love to see all the institutions of New York government be allowed to run their full course under Zorhan Mamdani.

00:44:57.000 I want to see what his socialist utopia looks like.

00:44:59.000 I want to see all the promises that he's making made manifest.

00:45:03.000 If people vote for dystopia, let them have their dystopia.

00:45:05.000 Democracy is the theory that the people ought to get what they voted for, good and hard.

00:45:09.000 And Zor Mamdani looks like he's ready to give it to the people of New York good and hard.

00:45:13.000 And they did vote for this.

00:45:14.000 And listen, I have a lot of friends living in New York.

00:45:16.000 As I have suggested, come on down to Florida.

00:45:19.000 Weather here is nice.

00:45:20.000 Here's Mamdani.

00:45:22.000 To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this.

00:45:28.000 No longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers' lives.

00:45:36.000 Wow.

00:45:36.000 So the era of big government is here, and City Hall is here to help.

00:45:40.000 He's from the government.

00:45:40.000 He's here to help.

00:45:41.000 And he's going to govern as a Democratic socialist, which is exciting for everyone.

00:45:45.000 Again, you guys broke it.

00:45:46.000 You bought it.

00:45:46.000 Congrats to you.

00:45:47.000 And man, look at that lineup.

00:45:48.000 Oh, boy.

00:45:49.000 I'll have Kathy Hochul and Tish James and AOC and some lady I don't recognize. 0.98

00:45:57.000 Maybe that's Bernie's wife. 1.00

00:45:58.000 And then Bernie Sanders, looking increasingly like a meme of Bernie Sanders.

00:46:03.000 These are your leaders, gang.

00:46:04.000 Choose your fighters.

00:46:06.000 New York.

00:46:07.000 Here is Mamdani.

00:46:09.000 I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist.

00:46:21.000 I will not abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical.

00:46:27.000 As the great senator from Vermont once said, what's radical is a system which gives so much to so few and denies so many people the basic necessities of life.

00:46:39.000 Well, I guess that he will.

00:46:42.000 We'll see how that works for them.

00:46:43.000 Bernie Sanders is very excited.

00:46:44.000 He says, don't worry.

00:46:45.000 He's not a communist.

00:46:46.000 Also, everything will be free.

00:46:49.000 Yes.

00:46:49.000 Yes, you should definitely trust a man, the most useless man in American politics for decades upon decades.

00:46:54.000 You should trust him when it comes to governance, a man who has never produced a single thing of value his entire life.

00:46:59.000 His entire life, this man has never produced a single thing of worth.

00:47:03.000 But he's going to tell you how the greatest city on planet Earth ought to be run.

00:47:08.000 All of us have heard how Zaran's opponents have called the agenda that he campaigned on radical, Communistic in the richest country in the history of the world.

00:47:28.000 Making sure that people can live in affordable housing is not radical.

00:47:36.000 Providing free and high-quality child care is not radical.

00:47:44.000 And making sure that every family in the city, regardless of income, has access to decent quality food and an accordable affordable cost is not radical.

00:47:58.000 One of my favorite things about the socialists is they just declare that people should have a bunch of free stuff and it's not radical.

00:48:05.000 Okay, your declaration in and of itself is quote unquote not radical.

00:48:08.000 It's the things you have to do to try to effectuate that that make it radical.

00:48:12.000 Because it turns out the best way for people to get widespread healthcare is called capitalism, which has increased the longevity and lifespan of human beings on planet Earth by decades while socialism has killed literally hundreds of millions of people.

00:48:26.000 Free everything.

00:48:26.000 Why not?

00:48:27.000 In fact, free World Cup tickets.

00:48:29.000 Zor Mandani said yesterday, I'm not even kidding.

00:48:31.000 This is hysterical.

00:48:32.000 He said yesterday he was going to work to ensure that everyone in New York got a free World Cup ticket.

00:48:38.000 Why the hell not?

00:48:39.000 Why not?

00:48:40.000 Let's just do this thing, man.

00:48:42.000 I had a New Yorker the other day come up to me and asked me if there was any way I could help him get World Cup tickets because he was saying that the cost that he saw for a game was $600, right?

00:48:51.000 This is increasingly out of reach.

00:48:53.000 We have made what used to be a working-class game into a luxury experience.

00:48:58.000 And there are too many for whom it doesn't matter where the World Cup is being played in the world, they know where they're going to watch it.

00:49:03.000 It's TV.

00:49:04.000 And we want to ensure that there are more experiences available.

00:49:08.000 What in the world?

00:49:10.000 What?

00:49:13.000 He's going to get over a free World Cup ticket.

00:49:16.000 All right.

00:49:16.000 Okay.

00:49:17.000 Sure.

00:49:18.000 Why not?

00:49:18.000 Also, he's going to apparently be holding rental ripoff hearings within the first 100 days.

00:49:23.000 Now, it's hilarious about all of this is that a huge percentage of New York real estate is rent controlled.

00:49:28.000 One of the reasons that people are not getting the sort of services they want from their landlords is because of rent control.

00:49:33.000 When you reduce the profit margin down to zero, it actually becomes ineffective for landlords who take care of their tenants.

00:49:40.000 You want to know why service is really great at luxury apartments?

00:49:43.000 Because people are paying an awful lot of money for the luxury apartments.

00:49:46.000 So he both wants low rent forced by the government and to force the landlords to do things at loss to them.

00:49:53.000 And then he's going to yell at them a lot.

00:49:55.000 Man, again, New Yorkers, you did this.

00:49:58.000 It was you.

00:49:59.000 You were warned.

00:50:01.000 I am also proud to announce that I will be signing an executive order directing HBD to work alongside the Department of Buildings, the newly invigorated mayor's office to protect tenants, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection,

00:50:16.000 and our newly created Office of Mass Engagement to hold rental rip-off hearings across all we will hold these rental rip-off hearings across all five boroughs within the first hundred days of this administration.

00:50:41.000 New Yorkers will be invited to participate and to share the realities that animate their daily lives.

00:50:47.000 I want these hearings to expose the ugly underbelly of our city.

00:50:53.000 Man, this was so much better in the original Russian.

00:50:56.000 You know, what if we just had people's courts?

00:50:58.000 That'd be great.

00:50:59.000 We could set up some people's courts.

00:51:01.000 People could bring their landlords in, the Kulaks. 1.00

00:51:03.000 They could question them about the rental practices.

00:51:05.000 And then if they're really, really bad, I mean, we got a wall in the back.

00:51:08.000 I mean, we could make some things happen.

00:51:10.000 Zor Mamdani bringing the best of the 20th century back.

00:51:13.000 Wow, this is going to be fantastic.

00:51:15.000 And lest you think that I'm exaggerating the ideology of Zor Mamdani, let's meet. 0.93

00:51:20.000 C. Weaver, who is now going to be in charge of the New York City office to protect tenants, which is going to be great.

00:51:28.000 Let's meet her.

00:51:29.000 So she says that property is a collective good.

00:51:33.000 Yep.

00:51:34.000 Yep.

00:51:35.000 Can't imagine why so many real estate magnates I know pulled out of deals at the last minute in New York City thinking, hey, I'm not sure I want to work in this crazy hellhole.

00:51:45.000 I think the reality is that for centuries, we've really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good.

00:51:55.000 And we are going to, and transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently.

00:52:06.000 And it will mean that families, especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well, are going to have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have. 0.93

00:52:20.000 A different relationship to property.

00:52:21.000 That's so exciting.

00:52:22.000 What will that relationship be?

00:52:24.000 Well, according to her Twitter feed, which she has now scrubbed, quote, I don't know why we white people keep procreating. 0.95

00:52:30.000 Passing really strong rent control is a more effective way to shrink the value of real estate than reducing rezoning applications.

00:52:37.000 I wish I believed in God.

00:52:39.000 So I could believe that all men who take credit for women's work and all white men who take credit for the work of women of color would one day burn.

00:52:46.000 This seems like a delightful person.

00:52:48.000 I cannot imagine how things are going to go wrong here.

00:52:51.000 Quote, this country built wealth for white people through genocide, slavery, stolen land, and labor.

00:52:56.000 White supremacy built both the North and the South. 0.54

00:52:59.000 In fact, private property, including and kind of especially homeownership, is a weapon of white supremacy.

00:53:06.000 That lady is in charge of tenant policy. 0.97

00:53:09.000 Congrats, New York.

00:53:10.000 So glad that you decided to do this.

00:53:13.000 How will it possibly go wrong?

00:53:16.000 Now, this sort of insane leftism is meeting its match on a horseshoe right.

00:53:23.000 Now, the horseshoe right has not taken power.

00:53:25.000 The horseshoe right is sort of a splinter movement inside the right.

00:53:30.000 It has sort of an outsized punching weight online, but not in real life.

00:53:34.000 But there is one piece I want to focus in particularly for a moment.

00:53:38.000 That is a piece called Tyrannical Centralization by a person named Curtis Yarvin.

00:53:42.000 So Curtis Yarvin is widely read on sort of the fringe right.

00:53:47.000 Vice President of the United States, apparently, has been a fan of Curtis Yarvin in the past.

00:53:52.000 And he is a representative of a philosophy that is effectively a sort of right-wing fascism, a sort of right-wing response to left-wing centralization.

00:54:03.000 So you have the Reds, people like Zarm Mamdani, and then you have their right-wing fascist opposition, people like Curtis Yarvin.

00:54:10.000 And I'm using that terminology advisedly because in his latest piece, he basically just says the quiet part out loud, criticizing the Trump administration for not simply dismantling the American Constitution.

00:54:22.000 Quote, in an American regime change, take the American version of this L. Ron Council Kabuki, Tricorn Hats, Davy Crockett, or Harriet Tubman, Declaration, Constitution, even the Ancient and Holy Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, and treat it like an Arkansas miscarriage.

00:54:36.000 Chuck the plastic bag out the sunroof.

00:54:38.000 The possums will get to it first, just assume the sale and act with the energy of an occupying army, nationalize and rationalize. 0.93

00:54:45.000 Quote, besides absolute power, everything else is just a way to lose.

00:54:49.000 That's just where we are in history now.

00:54:52.000 The energy, says Curtis Yarvin, that made Trumpism possible is the energy of this illusion breaking down and conservatives breaking free from the cult of the Constitution.

00:55:02.000 He recommends the creation of a new kind of political party, which is actually an old kind of party, a hard party.

00:55:08.000 A hard party, says Yarvin, is a party designed to take unconditional control of the state.

00:55:12.000 A hard party is a party in which all members delegate 100% of their political energy to the party's command.

00:55:19.000 Joining a hard party is a political marriage, not an election night hookup with any random politician whose name on a lawn sign catches your eye.

00:55:26.000 A hard party is a legal private organization whose goal is to become the ruling party of the next government, like the CCP in China.

00:55:33.000 A one-party state?

00:55:34.000 Yes, we tried not having a one-party state.

00:55:37.000 We ended up with a one-party state right down to the DEI commissars in every office, public or private.

00:55:41.000 Neglecting, of course, that President Trump has been elected.

00:55:44.000 Republicans control a majority of state houses across the country.

00:55:48.000 He suggests that we can't have a paramilitary 1930s-style street militia.

00:55:55.000 Instead, get everybody organized on an app.

00:55:58.000 You should vote at the party's direction in every election for which you are eligible.

00:56:02.000 You don't need to pay attention to the names, platforms, ideas, etc.

00:56:05.000 You are not even supposed to.

00:56:07.000 Everyone in a hard party, says Kurvitz Yarvin, member, officer, donor, delegates all their political party power to the party.

00:56:15.000 As a member, you vote at the party's direction in every election for which you are eligible.

00:56:19.000 He says, Quote, they do not need to follow the news.

00:56:22.000 This would be the citizens.

00:56:23.000 They do not need to read about the issues.

00:56:24.000 They do not need to know about the candidates.

00:56:26.000 Voting is not some time-consuming, stressful Norman Rockwell exercise of deep moral choices.

00:56:31.000 They made one big vote joining the party.

00:56:34.000 Eventually, they will be relieved from the duty of filling out ballots.

00:56:40.000 So, the reactionary right-wing response to the Zoramdani communism of New York City, symbolized by the right-wing authoritarianism of Curtis Yarvin.

00:56:53.000 And it is worth noting only because, again, Curtis Yarvin does have his devotees.

00:56:58.000 They're mainly in the online space on the right, or people who sit around pondering whether their chair exists.

00:57:05.000 At the same time, they ponder about how to establish an integralist state in America absent the Constitution of the United States.

00:57:12.000 In the same way that the left ought to divide off from its communist-leaning splinter faction, the right needs to splinter off from this ridiculous neo-fascist trash.

00:57:26.000 It is silly, and humoring it is incredibly silly.

00:57:29.000 Not only silly, dangerous, because humoring authoritarian nonsense from people who are purportedly on your side is a great way to be co-opted by those splinter groups.

00:57:42.000 Alrighty, coming up, we'll get into a pseudo-controversy over Hilton hotels, which took up a lot of online space yesterday.

00:57:49.000 Remember, in order to watch, I have to be a member.

00:57:51.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:57:52.000 Use Coach Shapiro.

00:57:53.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

00:57:55.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

00:57:59.000 What was it like, Marlon, to be alone with God?

00:58:08.000 Is that who you think I was alone with?

00:58:14.000 Maradin, I knew your father.

00:58:16.000 I am yet convinced that he was not of this world.

00:58:21.000 All men know of the great Taliesi.

00:58:25.000 You are my father.

00:58:26.000 The gods should war for my soul.

00:58:29.000 Princess Garris, savior of our people.

00:58:35.000 I know what the bull got offered you.

00:58:37.000 I was offered the same.

00:58:39.000 And there is a new pirate work in the world.

00:58:42.000 I've seen it.

00:58:45.000 A god who sacrifices what he loves for us.

00:58:47.000 We are each given only one life, singer.

00:58:50.000 No, we're given another.

00:58:55.000 I learned of Yezu the Christ, and I have become his follower.

00:58:59.000 He's waiting on a miracle, and I think you can give him one.

00:59:03.000 Trust in Yezu. 0.87

00:59:04.000 He is the only hope for men like us.

00:59:07.000 Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the Great Light.

00:59:10.000 Great light, great darkness.

00:59:13.000 Such things mattered to me then.

00:59:15.000 What matters to you now, Mistress of Lies?

00:59:19.000 You, nephew.

00:59:24.000 The sword of the High King.

00:59:28.000 How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield?

00:59:35.000 Still clinging to the promises of a god who has abandoned you.

00:59:39.000 I cannot take up that sword again.

00:59:42.000 You know what you must do.

00:59:45.000 Great life, forgive me.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 06, 2026

MASTERSTROKE: Trump’s Venezuela Coup Ends The Iraq Syndrome

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