The Ben Shapiro Show - MORE Epstein Emails DROP…What Are The Revelations?!

00:00:00.000 More Epstein emails drop and the media go insane, but is there any there?

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00:00:42.000 All righty, folks.

00:00:43.000 Well, it is a brand new day, and that means it's time for more Epstein revelations.

00:00:47.000 Now, the reason these Epstein revelations are happening is really because there was a discharge petition that was put forward late last night in the House of Representatives, signed on to by several stray Republicans, rogue Republicans, some of whom are very much oriented against the Trump administration, in order to shame President Trump by saying that there ought to be a widespread release of more documents.

00:01:08.000 And in a little while, we will get to what exactly this discharge petition would do, even if it were passed in the House and then passed again in the Senate, which, again, is likely to die in the Senate.

00:01:17.000 But Democrats had to chum the waters.

00:01:19.000 They had to make everybody interested in Epstein again.

00:01:21.000 So they decided to do this in their usual fashion, which is to selectively release three emails.

00:01:27.000 Three.

00:01:28.000 Now, Republicans then responded by releasing 20,000 emails, but Democrats released three.

00:01:33.000 And this was supposed to be a shame tactic directed at President Trump that was going to demonstrate full scale that he was in Jeffrey Epstein's pocket or that Jeffrey Epstein was blackmailing Donald Trump or that Jeffrey Epstein had untoward material about Trump, which is why Trump has been so reluctant to allow for the release of more materials.

00:01:52.000 Now, the reason that President Trump has said that he is not into the release of more materials is he says there are already tens of thousands of pages of materials out there.

00:02:00.000 And courts have already barred the release of an enormous number of these materials on the basis of victim protection.

00:02:05.000 And the FBI is doing the same.

00:02:07.000 And so you can yell and scream about it as much as you want, but these discharge petitions, these attempts to pry more documents out, they are likely to fail even on the court level.

00:02:16.000 So really what this is, is, according to President Trump, an attempt to, by implication, humiliate him.

00:02:23.000 And it really does feel like that based on what Democrats did yesterday.

00:02:26.000 So Democrats dropped three emails.

00:02:29.000 These three emails were, shall we say, less than edifying with regard to the broad conspiracy theories that have been put out there about Jeffrey Epstein.

00:02:40.000 Now, as I've said a thousand times, there are true, open, honest questions to be asked about Jeffrey Epstein.

00:02:45.000 How did he make all of his money?

00:02:47.000 Where'd all that money come from?

00:02:49.000 Why was one media mogul paying him something like $158 million to do his taxes and look for tax breaks?

00:02:58.000 Why was another mogul giving him access to a $70 million home in Manhattan?

00:03:02.000 These are very real questions that require very real answers.

00:03:05.000 Instead, the entire realm has been filled with the most outlandish speculation.

00:03:11.000 The sort of full case that you have heard retailed in public by many prominent figures is the idea that Jeffrey Epstein was running a child sex trafficking ring, not on behalf of himself, in which he prayed on underage girls.

00:03:22.000 That was the thing that Ghelaine Maxwell is in jail for. 1.00

00:03:25.000 The thing she's in jail for is that she helped Jeffrey Epstein procure underage girls for him to violate, for him to violate. 0.98

00:03:34.000 And not for Bill Clinton to violate or Donald Trump to violate or random public figures to violate for Jeffrey Epstein to violate.

00:03:41.000 That is why Ghelene Maxwell is in prison. 1.00

00:03:42.000 That's what she was convicted of. 0.97

00:03:43.000 That's what the accusations were.

00:03:45.000 That has been blown into a broader conspiracy involving the idea that Jeffrey Epstein brought in a bunch of underage girls and a bunch of prominent people and then blackmailed them after taking tapes of them and pictures of them.

00:03:57.000 There is no evidence to this effect.

00:03:59.000 Michael Tracy, who's been all over this for years, a journalist with whom I frequently disagree, has done a very good job digging into the details here.

00:04:07.000 And there's not evidence to the effect that that was happening, that he was trafficking on behalf of third parties as opposed to on behalf of himself.

00:04:16.000 Now, again, that doesn't answer the question as to where all this money was coming from from a couple of figures in particular.

00:04:21.000 Was he blackmailing those guys?

00:04:22.000 Sure, that could be.

00:04:24.000 But as far as Donald Trump or Bill Clinton, or any of the other wide variety of figures who have been mentioned in connection with this, unless you have evidence, it's very difficult to make claims about them.

00:04:37.000 And then that has been blown into an even bigger conspiracy theory that basically Jeffrey Epstein was a foreign agent acting on behalf of a foreign power, honeytrapping these guys in order to blackmail them to change policy.

00:04:50.000 And again, the evidence of that just doesn't exist.

00:04:52.000 If it did, Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, the president, the vice president, they would have an obligation to tell you that, but they're telling you the opposite.

00:05:01.000 And so, again, I ask, where is the evidence?

00:05:03.000 Speculation, you know, it's a free country.

00:05:04.000 You can speculate, but stop pretending that speculation is evidence.

00:05:08.000 Okay, so that's the backdrop of all of this.

00:05:09.000 So Democrats are trying to underscore allegations that basically Donald Trump was being blackmailed by Jeffrey Epstein by releasing three emails, three.

00:05:19.000 Republicans then responded by dumping 20,000 emails into the public view, some of which are embarrassing for people like Larry Summers, who had a weird relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, just kind of on a personal level.

00:05:30.000 But the supposedly embarrassing emails involving Donald Trump, there's no there there.

00:05:37.000 All right, we'll get into the exact content of the emails that have been released in just a moment.

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00:07:47.000 So, email number one was an email from Jeffrey Epstein, Apparently, to his lawyer, saying, I want you to realize that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump.

00:08:00.000 This is April 2nd, 2011.

00:08:01.000 So long before Donald Trump was even a gleam in the eye of American presidential politics in a serious way.

00:08:07.000 I want you to realize that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump.

00:08:09.000 Redaction, and then it says victim, spent hours at my house with him.

00:08:13.000 He has never once been mentioned, police chief, et cetera.

00:08:15.000 I'm 75% there.

00:08:17.000 Okay, so there is one major problem with this particular revelation.

00:08:22.000 What the Democrats did here is they redacted the name of the person because supposedly it was protection for the victim.

00:08:29.000 I mean, it literally says in the document, it's a redaction, so it's a piece of black marking.

00:08:34.000 And over it is printed victim.

00:08:36.000 Who's the victim?

00:08:37.000 The victim here is apparently Virginia Giufrey.

00:08:40.000 Virginia Giufrey was a very unstable person. 1.00

00:08:44.000 She passed away recently.

00:08:46.000 She was considered such an unstable personality, the prosecutors could not use her in the case against Jeffrey Epstein or Ghulane Maxwell.

00:08:54.000 Not only that, but in a sworn deposition, Virginia Giufre literally said that she was never mistreated by Donald Trump.

00:09:02.000 So if you just read that email out of context, it would sound as though Virginia Giufrey was trafficked to Donald Trump.

00:09:07.000 If you wanted to read that totally out of context, but that's not what the email says, and that's not what the email means.

00:09:15.000 And we have counter evidence with regard to this particular person.

00:09:18.000 And again, very cynical move by Democrats to redact the name there and then put victim.

00:09:23.000 Not because Virginia Giufrey wasn't a victim of someone.

00:09:26.000 She may very well have been victimized by Prince Andrew.

00:09:29.000 But because we know who she is publicly, also, she's dead.

00:09:33.000 So there's no more victim protection.

00:09:36.000 So according to, again, a deposition, this is a deposition with Virginia Giufre.

00:09:44.000 She said, Donald Trump was also a good friend of Jeffrey's.

00:09:47.000 That part is true.

00:09:48.000 He didn't partake in any of any sex with us, but he flirted with me.

00:09:51.000 It's true he didn't partake in any sex with us, but it's not true that he flirted with me.

00:09:55.000 Donald Trump never flirted with me.

00:09:56.000 This is Virginia Giufrey, the purported victim from this email with Epstein.

00:10:02.000 Okay, so again, like the basic idea here, which is that Donald Trump was somehow victimizing Geoffrey, that's not true.

00:10:11.000 Democrats put out the email cynically and then redacted the name of the victim to make it look like there was a victim here who is not Virginia Geoffrey, victimized by President Trump.

00:10:19.000 Okay, second email is an email from Jeffrey Epstein to the execrable Michael Wolf, who, by the way, it should be noted, was basically doing PR on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein.

00:10:19.000 Not true.

00:10:30.000 Michael Wolf is the author who is constantly writing these extremely sleazy and half-accurate tomes about what's going on in the Trump administration or the White House or whatever.

00:10:39.000 And you can never believe what he has to say because he does make things up on a fairly routine basis, it appears. 1.00

00:10:45.000 Well, he was doing defense for Jeffrey Epstein, which shows you what kind of a human he is because Jeffrey Epstein was a piece of shit. 0.98

00:10:51.000 Well, Jeffrey Epstein apparently wrote to Michael Wolf, victim, Mar-a-Lago, redaction. 0.97

00:10:58.000 So redaction, Mar-a-Lago, redaction.

00:10:59.000 Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever.

00:11:02.000 Of course, he knew about the girls as he asked Ghelan to stop.

00:11:07.000 So if he asked Ghelane to stop, I don't understand why that's bad for Trump.

00:11:12.000 So they released this email to make it sound like Trump knew about the girls.

00:11:15.000 He knew about, well, I mean, this email is 2019, January 2019.

00:11:21.000 So Donald Trump, according to Trump, threw Epstein out of his club because he knew that he was acting in nefarious ways.

00:11:29.000 Now, Donald Trump was not a criminal prosecutor, so I'm not sure what exactly that proves precisely because he cut off his relationship with Epstein.

00:11:37.000 So is that supposed to be indicting of Trump?

00:11:40.000 If so, in what way?

00:11:42.000 Okay, then there was an email from Michael Wolfe.

00:11:45.000 This is December 15th, 2015.

00:11:46.000 These are the only three emails the Democrats released.

00:11:48.000 And again, they released them in order to sort of imply things about Trump without actually saying them.

00:11:54.000 And this is one of the things that's deeply annoying about our current politics is that people are never asked to actually say the thing they appear to be saying.

00:12:02.000 Instead, they just sort of imply and then they back away and then they imply some more and then they back away.

00:12:06.000 If you want to say it, just say it.

00:12:09.000 Seriously, it's a free country.

00:12:10.000 You can say it.

00:12:10.000 And then we can all judge you by what you are actually claiming.

00:12:13.000 So Democrats put out this third email from December 15th, 2015.

00:12:18.000 Michael Wolf wrote, I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you, either on air or in scrum afterward.

00:12:25.000 And Epstein wrote back: if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?

00:12:30.000 And Wolf wrote back, I think you should let him hang himself.

00:12:33.000 If he says he hasn't been on the plane or to the House, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. 0.94

00:12:38.000 You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you.

00:12:42.000 Or if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.

00:12:45.000 Of course, it is possible that when asked, he'll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.

00:12:52.000 Okay, so the proof here, supposedly, is that Michael Wolf, who is a purveyor of many untruths, said to Jeffrey Epstein, not the other way around, said to Jeffrey Epstein, that you should hold over Trump's head the idea that maybe he's been on the plane or to the House.

00:13:10.000 So you should blackmail Trump, basically.

00:13:13.000 Again, I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove.

00:13:16.000 Like, what exactly does this prove?

00:13:20.000 Okay, so Democrats released these three emails and it was supposed to be terrible for Trump.

00:13:24.000 Oh, my gosh.

00:13:25.000 And then you read them, you're like, I don't see it, man.

00:13:28.000 I just don't.

00:13:29.000 So Republicans on the House Oversight Committee then decided to swamp Democrats by saying, listen, you want to release three or at least 20,000.

00:13:38.000 So the emails released by the Republicans include an exchange in which Epstein wrote, I know how dirty Donald is, but what he is saying in that email has to do not with Virginia Giufrey or any of the other purported victims.

00:13:54.000 It has to do with what Donald Trump did with regard to Stormy Daniels.

00:13:58.000 That's the context.

00:14:01.000 So what?

00:14:03.000 Is this a revelation that Donald Trump was doing catch and kill stories with the National Inquirer with regard to people like Strong?

00:14:10.000 Like, what's the revelation?

00:14:11.000 We've known all of this.

00:14:12.000 Is there anything new here?

00:14:13.000 The answer is no.

00:14:17.000 This is an email exchange between one Kathy Rumler and Epstein, in which Epstein wrote, quote, I think he makes the argument it was Trump's money making it not illegal, though he also said he only found out afterwards.

00:14:32.000 And the fact, according to the indictment, was billed as services rendered and grossed up.

00:14:35.000 I'm sure his account has flipped anyway. 0.63

00:14:37.000 I did talk in detail to Ken Starr yesterday, re-indictments, how Trump can make a deal, special counsel, Clinton's trash can.

00:14:43.000 Yes, Starr gave me more.

00:14:44.000 Yuck. 0.98

00:14:46.000 And then he replied to Kathy Rumler saying, You see, I know how dirty Donald is.

00:14:51.000 My guess is that non-lawyers, New York business people, have no idea what it means to have your fixer flip.

00:14:56.000 So he's talking just about the fact that Michael Epstein was basically Trump's fixer, which we already knew, of course.

00:15:02.000 So again, I'm not sure where is the there?

00:15:06.000 Where is the there?

00:15:07.000 Okay, then there's another exchange that, again, was released by the Republicans.

00:15:11.000 There's another exchange here in which Epstein revealed that he had photos of Trump with bikini-clad young women in his kitchen and named a couple of them.

00:15:18.000 The couple of them that he named are overage, meaning they're adult women. 0.99

00:15:22.000 So is the revelation that Donald Trump likes to be around adult women in bathing suits in the 1990s?

00:15:28.000 What is the revelation here?

00:15:29.000 We know all of this.

00:15:30.000 There is nothing new here.

00:15:34.000 So, again, all of this is much ado about nothing, at least the stuff that has been released thus far.

00:15:42.000 But the idea here was to sort of chum the waters in order to generate support for the idea that hiding behind the next documentary corner, the next tranche, the next trench will be the thing.

00:15:52.000 It's starting to feel a lot like Russia Gate, where CNN was running a breaking Russia Gate story every single day.

00:15:56.000 The next thing that happens, well, you will get the smoking gun that Donald Trump was paid by Vladimir Putin.

00:16:02.000 And so now Democrats and some rogue Republicans who do not like Trump and want to hurt his administration, they are joining forces in order to try and drive down his approval ratings with the suggestion unevidenced that Donald Trump engaged in illegal activities with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:16:16.000 And that's the reason why Trump doesn't want these documents released.

00:16:19.000 Now, again, there could be nefarious reasons why Trump doesn't want the documents released.

00:16:23.000 Could be that there's something in there that he knows is bad or embarrassing for him or embarrassing to a friend.

00:16:28.000 Maybe that's the reason.

00:16:30.000 Okay, but you have provided zero evidence.

00:16:32.000 Again, there are tens of thousands of documents here.

00:16:34.000 You have provided zero evidence to the effect that Donald Trump did anything illegal here.

00:16:40.000 And in fact, you've provided some evidence that he and Epstein had a falling out.

00:16:44.000 And yet somehow this was the big headline yesterday.

00:16:47.000 The big, big headline.

00:16:50.000 Epstein, by the way, was trying to find any way that he could to basically monetize his one-time relationship with Trump.

00:16:59.000 Apparently, he wrote in a June 24th, 2018 email to a former prime minister of Norway, quote, I think you might suggest to Putin that Lavrov can get insight on talking to me.

00:17:10.000 That if you want to understand Trump, you can talk to me.

00:17:13.000 But that does not mean that he was going to offer them some sort of compromat on Trump.

00:17:19.000 Again, there's just no they're there so far.

00:17:22.000 Caroline Levitt, she was at the White House yesterday.

00:17:25.000 She said, again, there's no evidence Trump did anything wrong.

00:17:28.000 She's not wrong. 0.92

00:17:29.000 That's true.

00:17:31.000 These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.

00:17:37.000 And what President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach and so was Jeffrey Epstein. 0.88

00:17:42.000 Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep. 0.82

00:17:52.000 Okay, so again, that is true. 0.90

00:17:55.000 That is true.

00:17:55.000 President Trump responded on Truth Social.

00:17:58.000 He put out a statement saying, quote, the Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein hoax again because they'll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they've done on the shutdown and so many other subjects. 1.00

00:18:08.000 Only a very bad or stupid Republican would fall into that trap. 0.95

00:18:12.000 The Democrats cost our country $1.5 trillion with their recent antics of viciously closing our country while at the same time putting many at risk and they should pay a fair price. 1.00

00:18:20.000 There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else.

00:18:22.000 And any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our country and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats.

00:18:29.000 Alrighty, coming up, who exactly is targeting President Trump and why on all of this?

00:18:33.000 Why are some Republicans going after President Trump?

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00:20:43.000 Let's get back to the table.

00:20:45.000 Now, again, the real problem for President Trump here is that most people, I think, when they look at this sort of stuff, their immediate response is, why didn't you just let them release everything?

00:20:55.000 Just let them release everything.

00:20:56.000 And the response of the DOJ and the FBI has been, we have released pretty much everything.

00:21:00.000 There's not much more to release.

00:21:02.000 And the stuff that has not been released is under court seal, which again is true.

00:21:07.000 And here is where we get into the vagaries of the discharge petition.

00:21:10.000 So yesterday, after the House of Representatives reopened, Representative Adelita Grijova of Arizona became the 218th and final signature on the discharge petition.

00:21:22.000 She joined all the other Democrats, as well as four Republicans, including two who hate President Trump and would like to destroy his presidency.

00:21:29.000 That would be Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mays.

00:21:35.000 Grahova signed the petition on the House floor immediately, and two Epstein survivors looked on from the gallery.

00:21:42.000 Later on Wednesday, Speaker Johnson said he would bring the Epstein bill for a vote in the House next week.

00:21:48.000 Without cooperation from GOP leadership, the earliest vote would have happened under the discharge petition process was early December due to waiting periods under the process.

00:21:55.000 So he's basically saying we know it's going to pass.

00:21:57.000 We may as well just bring it up right now.

00:21:59.000 And then it will go to the Senate.

00:22:00.000 And very likely in the Senate, it will die.

00:22:04.000 Because, again, the Senate has no interest. 1.00

00:22:07.000 The Republicans in the Senate have no interest in playing this kind of dumb game. 0.76

00:22:11.000 So the reason I say it's a dumb game is because we have to ask what this just discharge petition would actually do. 0.73

00:22:17.000 Would it actually free up documents?

00:22:18.000 Would anything happen if, in fact, the bill being pushed by Rokana and Thomas Massey of Kentucky actually got their way?

00:22:26.000 According to Rokana, he's the hero of the story, Rocana, the California congressman.

00:22:29.000 Here he was yesterday saying, we have the votes.

00:22:33.000 Well, look, we're going to get the 218th signature today.

00:22:36.000 That means by early December, we're going to get a full vote on the Epstein files.

00:22:42.000 And today there were bombshell emails that came out showing that Jeffrey Epstein and Glenn Maxwell had emails about Donald Trump's knowledge of what was going on.

00:22:53.000 So we need a full release of the files.

00:22:55.000 Finally, that's going to happen. 0.96

00:22:58.000 Okay, so this is cynical crap. 0.97

00:22:59.000 The reality, when he says that we now know that he had knowledge of what was going on, okay, of course he did. 0.99

00:23:05.000 He literally kicked him out of his club.

00:23:07.000 He said that himself.

00:23:09.000 So here I refer to Michael Tracy, who again, Michael Tracy and I have significant disagreements on a wide variety of policies.

00:23:15.000 But Michael Tracy has been in the guts of this story for literally years.

00:23:19.000 He is not a latecomer to the story.

00:23:22.000 And one of the points that he makes is that this bill doesn't actually do anything.

00:23:29.000 He says, for example, that their bill will fail to satisfy the legions of internet commenters clamoring for further investigation of Epstein's purported intelligence ties.

00:23:39.000 The bill permits certain records to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy if Pam Bondi determines that is what must be done.

00:23:46.000 This means any records which bear on the involvement of intelligence agencies could be perpetually hidden per even the criteria set forth by Rocana and Thomas Massey.

00:23:54.000 It's silly.

00:23:55.000 This bill would not give people the disclosure they want.

00:23:57.000 In fact, it would provide additional justification for the government to continue thwarting disclosure.

00:24:04.000 He says to learn how to actually achieve the disclosure, people say they want, you have to actually dig into the details.

00:24:09.000 You have to understand a huge portion of relevant materials are being concealed by order of federal judges in New York and Florida on the grounds of preserving the privacy rights of purported victims, as well as the privacy rights of people whom these victims, mainly GUFRI, have accused of sexual misconduct almost certainly falsely.

00:24:24.000 In other words, should certain of these materials be made public, it would wrongfully impugn certain individuals as perpetrators of sex crimes against minors.

00:24:32.000 Now, Michael Tracy says, I would argue the extreme public interest in this matter, as well as the attendant political implications, override whatever privacy interests the wrongfully accused individuals might have to keep the records hidden in perpetuity, but it's still an ethically fraught calculation.

00:24:46.000 As to records in the possession of the executive branch rather than the judiciary, similar issues apply.

00:24:51.000 Grand jury materials, by dint of statute, can't be released willy-nilly.

00:24:55.000 I wish this weren't the case, but it is.

00:24:58.000 So what is the ultimate purpose of the Conamasse legislation, says Michael Tracy, if it won't compel the release of records that could be intertwined with information relating to the purported victims?

00:25:07.000 And it will continue to allow the government to conceal records, which could illuminate any ties Epstein might have had to intelligence agencies.

00:25:13.000 Unfortunately, it looks like the purpose of the legislation is mostly to give RoConna and Thomas Massey a salient political issue to portray themselves as bold crusaders.

00:25:22.000 I say this is unfortunate because Conn and Massey are rare members of Congress I have any respect for whatsoever.

00:25:27.000 Here's where he part ways.

00:25:28.000 I have very little respect for either of those Congress people.

00:25:31.000 But the reality is that this is an attention grab.

00:25:35.000 It is yet another over-promise and underdeliver.

00:25:39.000 That is what this discharge petition is.

00:25:42.000 Now, again, the Trump administration is in fact engaging in what we used to call the Streisand effect.

00:25:49.000 And there's a very famous story where Barbara Streisand, a photographer, took a picture of the California coastline.

00:25:54.000 It included Barbara Streisand's house.

00:25:56.000 She didn't want that picture in the public.

00:25:57.000 So she tried to get it taken down.

00:25:59.000 And the fact that she tried to get it taken down put more attention on it. 0.96

00:26:02.000 I think there's some Streisand effect going on in the Trump administration trying to, for example, kill the discharge petition.

00:26:08.000 So yesterday, it was reported that the Trump administration had called Representative Lauren Boebert to go to the White House situation room and talk with Pam Bondi, among others, about her attempt to pass the discharge petition.

00:26:23.000 According to the New York Times, Boebert went to the White House situation room with Attorney General Bondi and the FBI director Kash Patel to discuss her demand to release the files.

00:26:35.000 Caroline Lovitt confirmed the meeting took place.

00:26:37.000 Here she was explaining.

00:26:40.000 Doesn't it show transparency that members of the Trump administration are willing to brief members of Congress whenever they please?

00:26:48.000 Doesn't that show our level of transparency?

00:26:50.000 Doesn't that show the level of transparency when we are willing to sit down with members of Congress and address their concerns?

00:26:56.000 That is the defining factor of transparency.

00:27:02.000 Now, again, there is a bit of a bit of a Streisand effect going on here.

00:27:07.000 Now that it's passing in the House, there'll be a big fight in the Senate.

00:27:10.000 Presumably it'll get killed in the Senate.

00:27:11.000 And then people will say that Trump is trying to kill it because he doesn't want the documents released.

00:27:15.000 It seems to me that as a piece of political strategy, President Trump should probably just say, fine, release everything.

00:27:19.000 I don't care.

00:27:20.000 And whatever the courts say we can't release, we won't.

00:27:23.000 And whatever the FBI says we can't release, we won't.

00:27:26.000 That basically holding by the law here for legal purposes is not exactly a political move of genius.

00:27:37.000 Yeah, I think that's where this is probably going to go in the end anyway.

00:27:40.000 Listen, I'm for as many documents being out in public as humanly possible.

00:27:44.000 Really?

00:27:45.000 I think that we ought to see everything.

00:27:46.000 I think this drove out pretty much all of these supposedly politically secret areas.

00:27:53.000 With that said, I think that the president, I understand the president's frustration with this. 0.75

00:27:57.000 I do, because he's saying, I'm busy being president and you're bringing me this Epstein crap in order to distract from the things I'm trying to do. 0.92

00:28:04.000 And the people who are trying to do it are, in fact, the people who are attempting to destroy his presidency. 0.90

00:28:09.000 And that includes people inside the House.

00:28:12.000 Okay, that includes people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has spent the last two months going out and campaigning against President Trump every way she can.

00:28:19.000 So after President Trump, for example, had this much ballyhood interaction with Laura Ingram over high-skilled foreign workers, which we talked about at length yesterday on the show, Marjorie Taylor Greene then put out a tweet that was absolutely directed at Trump.

00:28:34.000 Quote, I'm solidly against you being replaced by foreign labor, like with H-1Bs. 1.00

00:28:38.000 I am solidly against allowing foreign students into our colleges and universities. 1.00

00:28:41.000 I'm against foreign aid, foreign wars, sending a single dollar to foreign countries.

00:28:44.000 I'm against bringing any foreign leader that is a terrorist or overseas killing innocent people into our country and into the Oval Office.

00:28:50.000 I'm elected to represent my district and the American people.

00:28:52.000 So she, Marjorie Taylor Greene has 20, 28 aspirations.

00:28:55.000 She is now trying to claim she is more America first than Donald Trump. 0.99

00:28:58.000 At some point, President Trump probably should make it publicly clear that she's a clown backbencher Republican who is out there on the view only in order to tear him down. 1.00

00:29:08.000 She is a ridiculous figure. 1.00

00:29:10.000 She has flipped many of her political opinions. 0.99

00:29:13.000 She will say many things to many different crowds.

00:29:15.000 And there, I think, is a reason why she is signing on to this discharge petition.

00:29:18.000 I do not think it is because of her deep and abiding interest in the Epstein case.

00:29:22.000 Thomas Massey, very similar, because it's not just that Massey is attacking the Trump administration over the Epstein stuff.

00:29:29.000 Yesterday, he was attacking the FBI over supposed unwillingness to go after January 6th information.

00:29:39.000 Massey put out a letter on Twitter suggesting that the FBI was covering up the J6 pipe bomb investigation.

00:29:47.000 Dan Bongino then took to X to respond.

00:29:50.000 Quote, Congressman Massey, when Director Patel and I entered on duty in our leadership positions in the FBI, we had our hands full, but we were happy to be part of the president's team and we still are.

00:29:58.000 Despite the multitude of challenges we faced, one of our first initiatives was to aggressively pursue a new strategy to investigate the January 6th pipe bomb terror attack.

00:30:06.000 We brought in new personnel to take a look at the case.

00:30:08.000 We flew in police officers and detectives working as task force officers to review FBI work.

00:30:13.000 We conducted multiple internal reviews, held countless in-person and SVTC meetings with investigative team members.

00:30:19.000 We dramatically increased investigative resources.

00:30:21.000 We increased the public award for information in the case to utilize crowdsourcing leads.

00:30:26.000 When I spoke with you yesterday, a little after 8 a.m. Eastern, I offered you an in-person brief on our work.

00:30:31.000 We spoke for 10 minutes.

00:30:32.000 I called you back a bit after 7.30 p.m. Eastern to make that offer.

00:30:35.000 You didn't answer and have yet to call me back.

00:30:37.000 Despite this, you continue to imply the director and I are targeting investigators in the case.

00:30:41.000 This is disgusting, even by the low standards many have for politicians.

00:30:44.000 You know my number. 0.89

00:30:45.000 You're free to call me anytime, but it's easier to tweet and throw BS bombs.

00:30:49.000 Yes, our leadership team will be meeting with FBI team members today.

00:30:52.000 We will avail them of all whistleblower resources they need to disclose any evidence of malfeasance in the prior administration.

00:30:59.000 But a week of near 24-hour work on recent open leads in the case has yet to produce a breakthrough.

00:31:04.000 And some of the media reported regarding prior persons of interest is grossly inaccurate and serves only to mislead the public.

00:31:10.000 So what is Mongino saying?

00:31:11.000 He's saying, listen, I called Thomas Massey to try and clear this up.

00:31:13.000 I offered him a private briefing and he ghosted me and then went online to yell about it.

00:31:19.000 Because again, there are people who just want to smear the Trump administration.

00:31:22.000 And yes, many of them are really not looking what the Trump administration is doing right now.

00:31:26.000 They don't like what the Trump administration is doing.

00:31:28.000 What they're trying to do is undermine the Trump administration so as to create a new direction away from Trump for MAGA.

00:31:35.000 That is, in fact, the goal.

00:31:37.000 Again, when I see MTG and Thomas Massey joining with people like Jasmine Crockett, you have to wonder whose side they're on.

00:31:42.000 Here, for example, is Jasmine Crockett yesterday attacking President Trump over the Epstein stuff.

00:31:47.000 Listen, they will do and say anything to cover themselves.

00:31:50.000 You know, I will admit that Donald Trump has been investigated more than the normal, but he just happens to be more corrupt and more criminal than any other president than we've had.

00:32:01.000 I will point out he is the only president who has been convicted of 34 felony convictions that we've ever had in the Oval Office.

00:32:09.000 So while we don't know exactly what crimes he may or may not have committed, just think of it this way.

00:32:16.000 If you know that you didn't do anything, then why is it that you would be twisting members of your own party's arms, trying to get them not to release it?

00:32:24.000 This would be exonerating.

00:32:25.000 If you know that you are free and clear, then why not say, you know what, release the files?

00:32:32.000 Now, again, Thomas Massey and Jasmine Crockett are saying the same thing.

00:32:35.000 So you have to start wondering like whose side people are on at this point.

00:32:40.000 Now, there's some collateral damage in some of the Epstein file release.

00:32:43.000 So according to some of the Epstein emails, Jeffrey Epstein, this is the New York Post reporting, ended his friendship with Bill Clinton because he believed the former president was a liar, according to new emails that disgraced financiers estate handed over to Congress on Wednesday.

00:32:57.000 The emails also show a chummy relationship between Epstein and Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president.

00:33:04.000 That is awkward to say the least.

00:33:08.000 But bottom line here, is there anything new about Trump that has emerged?

00:33:11.000 No.

00:33:12.000 Is there likely to be anything new about Trump that emerges?

00:33:14.000 No.

00:33:15.000 Is the bill that is now going to pass the House, is that bill going to end with the release of revelatory new documents?

00:33:22.000 Is there any evidence that the revelatory new documents even exist?

00:33:22.000 No.

00:33:26.000 No.

00:33:27.000 So what I ask is, what is happening here?

00:33:30.000 And that's where you have to wonder if President Trump isn't in fact right and that the outsized focus on Epstein is really a distraction created by political opponents in order to harm his presidency.

00:33:41.000 All righty, it's time for some fast facts.

00:33:46.000 So President Trump has now signed a spending bill ending the longest U.S. shutdown in American history, a shutdown that happened for literally no reason other than Democrats wanted some sort of campaign issue going into some special elections.

00:33:58.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the GOP-led House passed a spending package reopening the government.

00:34:02.000 President Trump signed it into law late on Wednesday, drawing to a close a record-long 43-day shutdown driven by Democrats' demands to extend expiring health care subsidies.

00:34:11.000 The House approved the measure 222 to 209, largely along party lines a couple of days after the bill cleared the Senate.

00:34:17.000 So the package will extend funding for the federal government through January 30th.

00:34:21.000 It also includes full-year funding for the Ag Department, military construction, and the legislative branch.

00:34:25.000 Presumably that includes SNAP because the Agriculture Department oversees SNAP.

00:34:29.000 The bill also includes language guaranteeing the reversal of federal layoffs that the Trump administration had initiated during the shutdown, as well as a moratorium on future cuts.

00:34:39.000 The House passed it quite quickly.

00:34:41.000 Democrats, of course, are very upset about this shutdown having ended.

00:34:45.000 Here was Alexander Ocasio-Cortez very angry at Chuck Schumer for allowing the shutdown to end.

00:34:51.000 Democrats love people.

00:34:52.000 They love people so much they want them to be deprived of their SNAP benefits so that, and then just fill in the blank because nobody knows what they were actually attempting to achieve.

00:35:00.000 They were never going to achieve that which they sought.

00:35:04.000 I think it's important that we understand that this is not just about Senator Schumer, but that this is about the Democratic Party.

00:35:12.000 Senator Schumer, there's no one vote that ended this shutdown.

00:35:16.000 We are talking about a coordinated effort of eight senators with the knowledge of leader Schumer voting to break with the entire Democratic Party in exchange for nothing.

00:35:30.000 Of course, she's attempting to promote herself as a possible presidential candidate. 1.00

00:35:35.000 Attacking Schumer is a great way to do that.

00:35:37.000 She might want to run against Schumer in a Senate primary in New York. 0.97

00:35:40.000 Attacking Schumer is a smart way to do that as well.

00:35:42.000 One of the tropes of politics that has become ever more common is that if you actually wish to be president of the United States, you must first attack your own party and then go on to attack the other party.

00:35:51.000 This seems to be the strategy on both sides of the aisle these days.

00:35:55.000 Hakeem Jeffries, he agreed that he's disgusted by the Republican spending bill.

00:35:59.000 Now, again, it is just a continuing resolution, guys.

00:36:03.000 This was just continuing to fund the government at the levels already funded.

00:36:06.000 This is nothing new.

00:36:07.000 He can be disgusted by the one big, beautiful bill.

00:36:09.000 That's fine.

00:36:10.000 It's his prerogative. 0.97

00:36:11.000 But the idea that anything new and magical happened yesterday is silly.

00:36:16.000 House Democrats are strongly opposed to this partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people.

00:36:25.000 We've said from the very beginning that we want to find a bipartisan path forward, that of course we want to reopen the government, but that we need to decisively address the Republican health care crisis.

00:36:35.000 And that begins with extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

00:36:41.000 Okay, now, again, maybe they'll have that fight and maybe they will have some impact politically, but they're not going to win that fight.

00:36:47.000 The ACA tax credits are a massive, massive government spending boondoggle.

00:36:53.000 That's what they are.

00:36:54.000 That's why Democrats put them in place. 0.97

00:36:56.000 The entire goal of the ACA eventually was for it to fail and then lead to nationalized health care.

00:37:00.000 That was the entire goal, was to get people so dependent on the government dime that eventually people threw up their hands and said the government should just nationalize the entire system.

00:37:08.000 That was Obama's original goal that has really not changed in any significant way.

00:37:12.000 Meanwhile, GOP Representative Tom Emmer points out that it's kind of gross that Democrats are lamenting the end of the shutdown, and they talk about how the shutdown was worth it.

00:37:20.000 In what way?

00:37:21.000 Nothing was achieved.

00:37:24.000 Wow, they know it wasn't worth it.

00:37:26.000 Frankly, the answers are disgusting. 0.98

00:37:28.000 The behavior is even more disgusting.

00:37:30.000 Literally, we're going to be voting on a CR that came over from the Senate.

00:37:35.000 Martha, it's the exact same CR that House Republicans sent to the Senate back on September 19th with only one change.

00:37:46.000 Well, I mean, he is right about all of that.

00:37:49.000 Now, does any of this solve the looming economic problems for the Trump administration?

00:37:53.000 The answer is no.

00:37:54.000 The stock market continues to just churn.

00:37:56.000 People want to invest.

00:37:57.000 The Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently above 48,000.

00:38:02.000 The S ⁇ P 500 is currently at approximately 6,800.

00:38:08.000 I mean, these are historically high numbers.

00:38:10.000 These are very, very good numbers.

00:38:12.000 Most of it is accruing to the top end of the spectrum.

00:38:14.000 And this leads some people to be a little bit concerned about the possibility that this is an AI boom and that it's going to turn into an AI bust.

00:38:23.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, perfect isn't good enough.

00:38:25.000 Any sign of weakness is a disaster.

00:38:27.000 Justified or not, that's the current mood in the markets about the AI boom.

00:38:30.000 Recent history suggests the gloom won't last, but the shakeup serves as a strong reminder that the early years of AI pose a challenge for investors accustomed to measuring returns on a 12-month time horizon.

00:38:40.000 Generative AI services require massive data centers and state-of-the-art chips and server racks that don't come together quickly.

00:38:46.000 The companies at the heart of AI are now talking about years of major investments still ahead, which means that probably the stock market will continue to rise because they're going to continue to churn more money into AI.

00:38:57.000 And if the returns don't pay off right away, well, they'll just churn more money into AI.

00:39:01.000 One of the things that's happening here is that many of these big companies are investing in each other.

00:39:06.000 So Oracle will toss a bunch of money at OpenAI, which will toss a bunch of money at Meta.

00:39:12.000 And you will see the money kind of swirl around the system because, again, everybody is trying to invest at the top end of the market because they think that the real growth in productivity and tech development is going to be at the AI end.

00:39:24.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the latest episode of fragility started last week when shares of some of the sector's leading lights lost ground.

00:39:31.000 After a broad-based recovery Monday on news of a possible end of the government shutdown, AI exposed stocks fell again on Tuesday.

00:39:36.000 NVIDIA lost 7% last week and slipped another 3% on Tuesday, leaving it well shy of its $5 trillion market cap milestone last month.

00:39:44.000 Meta has shed nearly 17% since its solid third quarter report two weeks ago.

00:39:49.000 Palantir is down about 8% since its respectable earnings last Monday.

00:39:55.000 Now, again, that's because right now the price of the stock is not connected to the earnings.

00:39:58.000 You can have a good earnings quarter, but that doesn't actually change what people think about the upward trajectory of the company.

00:40:04.000 If Tesla has a really, really good quarter in terms of sales, their PE ratio is totally disconnected.

00:40:11.000 The price of the stock on Tesla is like 300 plus times the earnings.

00:40:11.000 Right?

00:40:14.000 So even if the earnings go up a little bit, that's not going to change that.

00:40:17.000 When people invest in Tesla, they're not investing in the self-driving car business.

00:40:21.000 They're investing in the AI business.

00:40:23.000 That is what's happening.

00:40:24.000 Open AI says it's planning to spend $1.4 trillion in the next eight years, but currently it's only pulling in around $20 billion of annual revenue today.

00:40:33.000 And it's unclear how exactly they're going to reach the hundreds of billions of dollars it needs within the next few years to keep that spending growth going.

00:40:40.000 Open AI projects losses that will swell to $74 billion in 2028.

00:40:45.000 So again, people are freaking out a little bit, but they also are not feeling as though they have a tremendous choice but to invest in the top of the market if they wish to invest at all.

00:40:56.000 So there's a lot of uneasiness.

00:40:58.000 And some of that uneasiness is connected to jobs because, of course, AI will cause jobs dislocations.

00:41:03.000 There's no question that will happen.

00:41:05.000 AI is going to replace a bunch of predominantly white-collar jobs.

00:41:08.000 And there will be transitional moments in the economy.

00:41:11.000 Jobs will come back in other areas.

00:41:13.000 But that's what happens when you have a major tech change, obviously.

00:41:16.000 It makes it harder to tell what's going on when you don't have data.

00:41:19.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, two major government reports on inflation and the labor market for October are likely never to be released, according to the White House press secretary.

00:41:28.000 Caroline Levitt told reporters on Wednesday regarding the Federal Reserve: all of that economic data will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers of the Fed flying blind at a critical period.

00:41:38.000 She blamed the government shutdown.

00:41:40.000 The BLS, Bureau of Labor Statistics, hasn't yet said when it is likely to start catching up on the backlog of important economic reports or which ones might be compromised by a shutdown.

00:41:50.000 So that data, I guess, is just in the wind, and we really don't even know what's going on.

00:41:55.000 Meanwhile, President Trump's approval ratings on the economy have begun to slide.

00:41:58.000 According to the most recent poll from YouGov and The Economist, Trump has a 33% unfavorable rating.

00:42:06.000 Joe Biden, at kind of the last days of his term, was down to 31%.

00:42:12.000 So, again, 40% of Americans now approve of Trump's job performance, according to the CNN aggregate.

00:42:18.000 59% disapprove.

00:42:21.000 And when it comes to the economy, that is where things are really dicey for President Trump.

00:42:25.000 Only 39% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the economy.

00:42:28.000 38% approve of his handling of trade.

00:42:30.000 34% approve of his handling of immigration.

00:42:34.000 So, again, his handling of immigration has been fine.

00:42:37.000 It's just that when you get dragged down on the economy, it drags everything else down too, which means that now the administration is swiveling to talk affordability.

00:42:46.000 That's not a surprise.

00:42:48.000 After Zorn Mamdani's win in New York, affordability is the word of the day.

00:42:52.000 And as we discussed at length yesterday and yes, the day before, the way that you actually increase affordability, the way to make products cheaper is to make them more plentiful.

00:43:01.000 If you go to a store and there's one stake and there are 100 customers, that stake will be very expensive.

00:43:06.000 If there are 200 stakes and 100 customers, the stake will be very cheap.

00:43:10.000 Increase the supply, retain the same demand, the price goes down.

00:43:14.000 It's a very simple formula.

00:43:16.000 If you wish for affordability, you must increase supply.

00:43:20.000 And if you wish for cheaper products, that means also increasing the supply of the inputs into making the product.

00:43:24.000 So if you're making a car and it costs a lot of money to make the engine, the overall car will be more expensive.

00:43:31.000 If you lower the cost of the inputs, meaning the cost to make the engine, then the car will be less expensive.

00:43:36.000 All this is very, very basic stuff.

00:43:38.000 But for some reason, politicians have a very difficult time with understanding this because it mostly means get the hell out of the way.

00:43:44.000 And politicians are constantly called on to take their hands and shove them in the economic pie and start moving them around all weird.

00:43:51.000 And what that does is it creates uncertainty and it doesn't actually end with broader-based economic growth.

00:43:58.000 So it seems that the Trump administration is kind of, they're trying to retail policies that are designed to appeal to specific economic groups.

00:44:07.000 So President Trump the other day, he kind of threw up against the wall the idea that there would be a tariff rebate because he understands that actually the tariffs are not great for everybody.

00:44:14.000 That tariffs actually in certain industries have increased the prices, that it's made it harder to do business, and that the tariffs haven't even felt their full impact yet in the economy because of all of the vacillation around what they are, what the rates are, who's going to pay it.

00:44:27.000 Will the Supreme Court strike them down?

00:44:29.000 Yesterday, the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besant, he said not everybody will get that tariff rebate that President Trump had suggested, a $2,000 tariff rebate.

00:44:36.000 Which, again, if everybody got a $2,000 tariff rebate, that's inflationary.

00:44:40.000 That's just a stimulus package.

00:44:41.000 So if you want to lower prices, that's actually the wrong way to do it.

00:44:46.000 Well, there are a lot of options here.

00:44:48.000 The president's talking about a $2,000 rebate.

00:44:53.000 And that would be for families making less than, say, $100,000.

00:44:58.000 Have you decided on that yet?

00:45:00.000 We haven't.

00:45:03.000 Okay, so, you know, again, is that going to solve the problem?

00:45:06.000 The answer is no.

00:45:07.000 Meanwhile, will the Federal Reserve lower the interest rates?

00:45:11.000 So there's a lot of talk about we need more affordability.

00:45:13.000 Affordability will come in the form of the Federal Reserve lowering the interest rates.

00:45:17.000 Well, the problem is that will make more affordable mortgages, but it will also increase the price of everything because that's just injecting more money into the economy.

00:45:24.000 That's all that is doing.

00:45:26.000 Over on Calci, Calci is a sponsor of the program.

00:45:30.000 If you go back to late October, there's about an 85% shot on Calci that the Fed would cut by 25 basis points, 0.25%, the overnight rates, the overnight Fed rates.

00:45:43.000 Now, that is all the way down to almost at even.

00:45:46.000 We are now down to approximately 55%, 56% of people saying that they'll cut and 40% of people saying not.

00:45:54.000 So things are evening out very, very quickly over there because, again, there's a feeling like the inflationary economy is continuing and the Federal Reserve does not want to be an additional factor in that.

00:46:06.000 Meanwhile, there's talk now about, again, these sort of sporadic attempts to just throw policy against the wall and see what sticks.

00:46:14.000 I do not think that they are doing, I do not think that they are going to be beneficial to the economy broad scale.

00:46:20.000 The Trump administration is now, they promoted the idea of 50-year mortgages.

00:46:23.000 We talked about this yesterday.

00:46:24.000 We talked about the fact that 50-year mortgages have never been taken up by the private market because they're kind of insane.

00:46:30.000 Because that is a bet that someone will never default for 50 years.

00:46:34.000 And for consumers, if I have the choice between taking a low-interest mortgage for 15 years or a slightly lower interest mortgage for 50 years, I'm going to take the 15-year mortgage because otherwise I'm paying interest until I die.

00:46:46.000 So 50-year mortgages, not the solution.

00:46:49.000 Other solutions that are not the solution, portability of mortgages.

00:46:52.000 They're talking about mortgage portability.

00:46:55.000 On Wednesday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte said the administration is actively evaluating so-called portable mortgages.

00:47:02.000 So I asked our sponsors over at Comet, a project of perplexity: what is a portable mortgage?

00:47:08.000 Why are they uncommon in the free market?

00:47:10.000 And Comet explains a portable mortgage is a type of loan that allows borrowers to transfer their existing mortgage and its terms, like the interest rate, to a new property when they move, instead of closing out their mortgage and applying for a new one.

00:47:22.000 So normally, let's say that you wanted to sell your house and buy a new house.

00:47:26.000 Let's say you have a $500,000 mortgage still remaining on your million dollar house.

00:47:30.000 And so you sell your house for a million dollars.

00:47:32.000 You pay off the $500,000 mortgage.

00:47:34.000 You take your $500,000 in profit, and then you go and apply for a new mortgage for a $1.3 million house.

00:47:40.000 You pay whatever you have to pay down.

00:47:41.000 You take a new mortgage at the current rate.

00:47:43.000 That's normally how it works in the United States and pretty much everywhere else.

00:47:46.000 A portable mortgage would be that instead of you doing that, you would simply go to the bank and say, I want the new house.

00:47:52.000 Take that same $500,000 loan.

00:47:54.000 Instead of me paying it off to you right now, I want you to take that loan and just apply it to the new mortgage.

00:48:00.000 Just move it right on over. 0.98

00:48:01.000 Now, why exactly has that not happened?

00:48:03.000 Why don't banks typically do this?

00:48:05.000 There are a bunch of reasons banks don't typically do this.

00:48:07.000 One, the U.S. market generally relies on long-term fixed rate mortgages that lack prepayment penalties.

00:48:14.000 So there's very little pressure on borrowers to keep their current mortgage because refinancing historically has been pretty easy and attractive, particularly when the rates drop.

00:48:22.000 So if the rates drop, you don't want to port your mortgage over.

00:48:24.000 You got a 5% interest rate on your old mortgage, and now you can get a 3% interest rate.

00:48:28.000 You want to pay off the 5% and get a new 3%.

00:48:31.000 But the real reason is because if you are a lender, and let's say that I want to buy a more expensive house now, right?

00:48:37.000 Let's say I sell my million dollar house and instead of me paying you the 500 grand, I take the 500 grand on top and I take that new, I take that old $500,000 loan at 2% and I move it over to a $2 million house.

00:48:52.000 How am I going to pay for that?

00:48:54.000 So I'll take some of the money I just made on my old house, sure, but I also am going to have to take a second mortgage.

00:48:59.000 I'm going to have to take supplemental mortgages in order to increase the amount that I can pay for a house.

00:49:05.000 And now my original lender is on the hook.

00:49:08.000 Now my original lender is signed up for a thing they didn't sign up for.

00:49:11.000 Maybe they don't think that I'm going to be able to pay off a mortgage on a $2 million house.

00:49:16.000 Maybe they wouldn't have signed off on a 2% mortgage on a $2 million house for me.

00:49:21.000 That's not what they said.

00:49:21.000 They signed up on a $500,000 mortgage on a million dollar house for me.

00:49:25.000 When you change the terms surrounding the loan, you change the nature of the loan, which is why banks haven't done this in the free market.

00:49:34.000 As pointed out by Comet, if the borrower's new home is more expensive, they must find additional financing for the difference, which adds to complexity and potential cost.

00:49:43.000 Also, transferring a mortgage from one property to another is a legal and logistical problem because when you take a mortgage, what is the security for your mortgage?

00:49:51.000 I take a mortgage on my house.

00:49:53.000 If I default, then the lender takes the home.

00:49:57.000 If I port the mortgage over, is it secured against the new house or against the borrower?

00:50:01.000 Legally speaking, how do you even do this?

00:50:03.000 So there are a bunch of problems with this.

00:50:05.000 In essence, what you will end up with is the same kind of problem of inflation in the prices of the housing market.

00:50:12.000 Just like every other government intervention, it will make things slightly more affordable in the very, very near term, and then it will make things much more expensive.

00:50:21.000 This, by the way, is also true about proposals that I have heard for banning corporations from buying single-family homes.

00:50:27.000 Okay, so you ban corporations from buying single-family homes.

00:50:30.000 You're right.

00:50:30.000 That removes a large competitor in the single-family home market.

00:50:33.000 And right now, in the very short term, there will be more inventory available to people who are not that corporation.

00:50:38.000 Clearly, I mean, you're getting rid of a class of possible consumer in the corporation.

00:50:43.000 Here's the question.

00:50:44.000 Who is going to build more houses? 0.93

00:50:47.000 Who's going to build more houses? 1.00

00:50:50.000 If Blackstone stops buying houses in Texas, yes, you will be able to get that same house for cheaper.

00:50:55.000 But also, it is because Blackstone is buying houses in Texas that people are selling their houses to Blackstone and then purchasing new homes.

00:51:03.000 And also, it is the reason why developers are developing new developments because the price is up because Blackstone also is buying, not out of the evil of their heart, but because they believe they will make a profit.

00:51:14.000 They believe that the demand will be maintained.

00:51:17.000 So if you take a chunk out of the market, what you will end up doing is temporarily lowering the price by removing a possible consumer because less competition in the market, less demand.

00:51:28.000 But you will also end up cratering the supply because with less demand, people generate less supply.

00:51:35.000 So that's a reality too.

00:51:37.000 Every government intervention has costs and has benefits, and pretending they don't is a bad way of doing economics and policy.

00:51:44.000 Speaking of which, socialists have now taken Seattle.

00:51:47.000 Seattle's been moving in this direction for a very long time.

00:51:47.000 That's not a shock.

00:51:51.000 According to Yahoo News, a progressive activist appears to be on the cusp of winning her bid for mayor of Seattle in a narrow victory that has echoes of the race to lead New York City.

00:52:00.000 Katie Wilson leads Mayor Bruce Harrell by just over 1,300 votes.

00:52:04.000 The incumbent led by more than 10,000 votes the day after the election, but then the mail-in ballots started and they're still counting over there.

00:52:10.000 Harrell has not conceded, but it's unlikely he'll make up the difference.

00:52:14.000 Wilson is a self-described socialist focused on affordability.

00:52:19.000 She wants a capital gains tax to raise revenue, meaning that more businesses will flee Seattle. 0.98

00:52:25.000 Seattle happens to be a market that is heavily dependent on a few very large corporations.

00:52:31.000 So, once again, the socialists will win and then they will drive these cities to the brink, presumably.

00:52:37.000 Zora Mamdani, for his part, says that he needs to call President Trump and he needs to get him on the hook for paying some of New York's bills.

00:52:44.000 Here was Zora Mamdani yesterday.

00:52:47.000 I will be reaching out to the White House as we prepare to actually take office because this is a relationship that will be critical to the success of the city.

00:52:54.000 So it wasn't just a hypothetical scenario on our debate stage.

00:52:57.000 We're actually going to call him.

00:52:59.000 What will you say?

00:53:00.000 Well, I'll say that I'm here to work for the benefit of everyone that calls the city home and that wherever there is a possibility for working together towards that end, I'm ready.

00:53:08.000 And if it's to the expense of those New Yorkers, I will fight him.

00:53:12.000 So he's going to fight President Trump, but he'll call President Trump.

00:53:14.000 He'll try to make friends with President Trump.

00:53:16.000 Good luck to you, sir.

00:53:17.000 Good luck to you.

00:53:18.000 Just like every other socialist, he's perfectly happy to spend other people's money and other people's political capital in the case of Governor Kathy Hochul, who is now stuck between the socialist rock and the electoral hard place.

00:53:31.000 We'll see how it works out for her.

00:53:33.000 And meanwhile, Michelle Obama, she has a brand new book, and it is a coffee table tome called The Look.

00:53:41.000 It is a glossy photo book full of fashion.

00:53:44.000 And according to the New York Times, it is the story of the expectations that were heaped upon the first black first lady.

00:53:50.000 It is the third installation of a trilogy of books by Mrs. Obama that focus on self-realization, including her memoir, her advice book on overcoming adversity, and this time, a meditation on the power of clothes.

00:54:02.000 Wow.

00:54:03.000 So exciting.

00:54:04.000 Here was Michelle Obama talking about her look book.

00:54:07.000 Here we go.

00:54:09.000 And we have to start educating people about all kinds of beauty.

00:54:14.000 Yes.

00:54:14.000 And our beauty is so powerful and so unique that it is worthy of the conversation and it's worthy of demanding the respect that we're owed for who we are and what we offer to the world.

00:54:31.000 Absolutely.

00:54:32.000 Absolutely.

00:54:35.000 Yeah.

00:54:37.000 Well, apparently she's a victim, as always, Michelle Obama.

00:54:40.000 And her book is really about the sufferings of a lady who was the first first lady, according to the New York Times ever, to have a stylist or valet on the East Wing payroll.

00:54:49.000 One employed to help define the visual strategy of the first lady for every occasion, from public hula hooping to major moments of pageantry.

00:54:56.000 So before the Obamas were there, then there were occasional designers who would come in for specific events, but she had like a full-time stylist.

00:55:04.000 And then that became the norm.

00:55:05.000 Melania and Joe Biden each employed a full-time stylist as well.

00:55:11.000 But according to the New York Times, her new book lays bare in an unprecedented way how a wardrobe was transformed into a vehicle of soft political power.

00:55:20.000 Wow.

00:55:20.000 Soft political power.

00:55:23.000 How impressive.

00:55:24.000 Truly amazing.

00:55:25.000 Well, as always, Michelle Obama can do no wrong.

00:55:28.000 She's the Oprah Winfrey of our time who constantly talks about how terrible her life is while being one of the most privileged people ever to walk planet Earth.

00:55:36.000 All righty, coming up, we'll jump into controversy emerging around some moves by the Catholic Church.

00:55:42.000 First, remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:55:44.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:55:45.000 Use code Shapiro.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - November 13, 2025

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