The Ben Shapiro Show - MORE WINNING: House GOP Passes BIG, BEAUTIFUL Budget!

00:00:00.000 Well, President Trump's winning streak continues.

00:00:02.000 It doesn't just continue because of President Trump.

00:00:04.000 It actually is continuing because Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is doing an extraordinary job in the House, where he has an unbelievably slim margin.

00:00:13.000 His margin in the House is somewhere between one and three votes, depending on who actually shows up for the vote.

00:00:18.000 And yet somehow, last night, he was capable of pushing through this gigantic House budget bill.

00:00:24.000 There are all sorts of problems with these gigantic bills.

00:00:26.000 The biggest problem, of course, is that no one in power ever has any interest in serious cuts to the things that matter in American government.

00:00:34.000 Instead, they sort of shuttle those cuts off down the road.

00:00:36.000 They make commitments to commit.

00:00:38.000 All of that has just been a regular feature of American government from Republicans and Democrats for as long as I've been alive, which is why the line in terms of national debt keeps going up and to the right.

00:00:50.000 What this budget bill does is it enshrines the Trump tax cuts of 2017. It provides additional funding to defense, which is necessary.

00:00:57.000 It provides additional funding to the border, which is necessary.

00:00:59.000 And it pledges to actually take a look at cuts that will offset some of the loss of tax revenue theoretically to be achieved by the Trump tax cuts.

00:01:09.000 And last night, there was all sorts of consternation about whether House Republicans would be able to get it together.

00:01:15.000 Originally, it seemed as though there were some House Republicans who were going to object to the House budget bill and who were not going to get on board with it because they believed that it didn't cut enough.

00:01:24.000 A lot of these were fiscal conservatives.

00:01:25.000 And again, I agree with them on principle.

00:01:27.000 I also understand that the only way a bill gets done here, where you have Republicans in purple districts and where you have such a slim margin, is with bigger spending than you would want.

00:01:38.000 This was Mike Johnson's entire proposal as Speaker of the House.

00:01:41.000 The reason that he pursued one big, beautiful bill is because he figured.

00:01:44.000 That if you separated all of these issues out, what you would get is a bunch of bills that would never pass because you'd have too many purists on too many issues who would be able to sink the boat.

00:01:53.000 So instead, wrap it up in one big ball and make people vote up or make people vote down.

00:01:56.000 That was the strategy here.

00:01:58.000 And if you don't like it, then maybe more Republicans should have been elected to Congress.

00:02:01.000 It turns out that if you have a very slim majority, the bill that comes out is likely to be more, quote-unquote, moderate in its approach.

00:02:08.000 Then if you had a much larger majority where you could lose a few moderates in the vote and still maintain a majority.

00:02:13.000 According to Politico, House Republicans approved a budget framework for President Trump's sweeping domestic policy agenda on Tuesday, a major victory for Speaker Johnson, who worked with Trump and fellow leaders in a chaotic last-ditch effort to win over naysayers within the Republican ranks.

00:02:27.000 And Republicans, again, were very split on this.

00:02:31.000 Democrats were already celebrating the prospective loss of this bill, and somehow Johnson cobbled it together.

00:02:35.000 For all this talk about how Mike Johnson, He's inexperienced at this position.

00:02:39.000 How Mike Johnson is simply a stand-in for Trump.

00:02:42.000 Mike Johnson is actually quite good at this.

00:02:44.000 He's very good at this.

00:02:44.000 And the reality is that Mike Johnson is also significantly more conservative on pretty much every policy issue than any Speaker of the House, probably since Newt Gingrich on the right side of the aisle.

00:02:54.000 So, originally last night, it appeared that the vote was going to go down to defeat.

00:02:57.000 And Democrats were preemptively celebrating.

00:02:59.000 Democratic Representative Pete Aguilar from California suggested that Republicans had been hiding from the vote.

00:03:04.000 As it turns out, he was wrong.

00:03:06.000 Republicans are hiding because they're terrified of voting against Trump's endorsed budget.

00:03:11.000 But their constituents are banging down their doors and demanding answers on why they care more about reducing costs for billionaires instead of working families.

00:03:22.000 Our challenge to House Republicans is after you pass this budget today, which cuts Medicaid by $880 billion, go home and have a town hall with your constituents.

00:03:35.000 See how they feel about what you just did.

00:03:39.000 If you're going to rip away healthcare from people, then you ought to be able to defend your vote directly to them.

00:03:45.000 But that would require the House Republican Conference growing a spine.

00:03:49.000 So we'll see.

00:03:50.000 Okay, but here's the reality.

00:03:53.000 $880 billion is not going to be cut from Medicaid.

00:03:55.000 The reason the Democrats are saying this is because, of course, they're going to claim that the most vulnerable will be hurt by this gigantic House budget bill.

00:04:05.000 Expends extraordinary amounts of capital.

00:04:07.000 I mean, the debt ceiling is going to have to be lifted by something like $4 trillion over the course of the next 10 years in order to pay for this budget bill.

00:04:14.000 So spending is not really the problem.

00:04:16.000 The reason that they are saying all of this is because this budget bill basically kicks back to a bunch of different committees an obligation to cut somewhere else in the budget in order to make up for the supposed lost tax revenue from the Trump tax cuts, among others.

00:04:32.000 According to NPR, in order to get the budget plan just to this stage, Johnson was forced to concede to demand from some conservative holdouts for $2 trillion in spending cuts.

00:04:39.000 Under the budget framework, the exact details of those cuts will be sorted out later by those individual committees in the House.

00:04:45.000 So the House Energy and Commerce Committee is responsible with coming up with $880 billion in the savings.

00:04:52.000 But the reason the Democrats are saying that's all coming from Medicare and Medicaid is because the House Energy and Commerce Committee presides over programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

00:05:01.000 So House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, he of course is suggesting that's exactly where all the cuts are going to come from.

00:05:06.000 They're going to come from Medicare.

00:05:07.000 They're going to come from Medicaid.

00:05:07.000 They're not going to come from Medicare.

00:05:09.000 President Trump does not want any cuts to Medicare.

00:05:11.000 Medicaid is a bit of a different story and we'll get into that in a moment because the truth is Medicaid is one of the great boondoggles in American public policy.

00:05:17.000 We expend literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

00:05:21.000 We expend literally hundreds of billions of dollars a year on Medicaid and the returns on Medicaid are truly atrocious just speaking in terms of public policy.

00:05:30.000 Speaking in terms of health outcomes, there's some good studies that actually demonstrate that Medicaid coverage is no better than you having no coverage and just going for emergency care to the hospital.

00:05:40.000 Why?

00:05:40.000 Because the reimbursement rates on Medicaid are so low that doctors don't even take Medicaid.

00:05:45.000 Good doctors don't like taking Medicaid because the reimbursement rates are pennies on the dollar of what they could earn from private insurance.

00:05:52.000 Medicaid is, in fact, a giant government make-work program that does not have particularly good outcomes.

00:05:58.000 But just as with every giant government make-work program, it has now become a third rail of American politics.

00:06:03.000 Hakeem Jeffries and Democrats are, of course, going to suggest that it's tax cuts for the 1%, and on the basis of that, it's going to be cuts for the poor.

00:06:10.000 Let's be realistic about this.

00:06:12.000 The only people paying taxes in the United States of America on an income level are the people in the top quintile.

00:06:18.000 In terms of net taxes paid, net of benefits received from the government, the only people paying any level of net income taxes in the United States are people in the top income quintile.

00:06:28.000 Everybody else is receiving on net money from the federal government.

00:06:32.000 So if you're going to cut taxes, who else presumably is going to have their taxes cut?

00:06:37.000 How would that work?

00:06:38.000 By the way, it also happens to be the case that the Trump tax cuts disproportionately affected people and actually the middle income quintiles.

00:06:44.000 Anyway, here's Hakeem Jeffries pushing the lie.

00:06:47.000 The Democrats are holding together.

00:06:49.000 We're holding together, for instance, on this reckless Republican budget, which is a betrayal of working class Americans.

00:06:56.000 And cuts to Medicaid, cuts to SNAP, cuts to veterans' benefits.

00:07:00.000 That's not theoretical.

00:07:02.000 That hurts real people that I represent and that every single member of the House Democratic caucus represents.

00:07:10.000 That's not a theoretical fight.

00:07:12.000 That's a real fight.

00:07:16.000 Okay, so we'll see if Democrats are able to play this off. 0.90

00:07:19.000 The only Republican who voted against the bill was, of course, Thomas Massey, who's basically just Ron Paul reincarnated.

00:07:25.000 As a congressperson from Kentucky, he of course says this is going to add to the national debt.

00:07:29.000 And the answer to that is, well, duh.

00:07:31.000 If you have an alternative anytime, it would be welcome, Congressman Massey.

00:07:36.000 Like, you know, an actual credible alternative that people will vote for.

00:07:40.000 I too would love a situation in which we eliminate vast swaths of the welfare state.

00:07:44.000 I would love that.

00:07:45.000 On principle, I don't disagree with Thomas Massey.

00:07:48.000 I just think that Thomas Massey's entire approach to governance seems to be standing aside and shouting at things.

00:07:53.000 And, you know, fine.

00:07:55.000 If that's what his constituents want, that's fine.

00:07:58.000 But I will say that his approach is not actually aimed at the sort of horse trading that you see in Congress in order to gain actual support for proposals.

00:08:07.000 It is aimed mostly at sort of virtue signaling on the basis of public policy.

00:08:12.000 And Massey, again, is sort of inconsistent in the sorts of public policy that he will sometimes back.

00:08:15.000 Sometimes he is perfectly in favor of things that increase the national debt.

00:08:19.000 For example, he wants to get rid of, quote-unquote, double taxation on Social Security.

00:08:23.000 Now, I agree with that, but let's be clear.

00:08:25.000 That does, in fact, increase the national debt because it lowers the tax expenditures taken in by the government.

00:08:31.000 In any case, 217 of the 218 Republicans who are present voted in favor of the budget yesterday.

00:08:37.000 Mike Johnson put out a statement yesterday after the passage of the budget.

00:08:43.000 His statement, along with Steve Scalise and the House GOP chairwoman Lisa McClain, Today, House Republicans moved Congress closer, delivering on President Trump's full America First agenda, not just parts of it.

00:08:54.000 This momentum will grow as we work with our committee chairs and Senate Republicans to determine the best policies within their respective jurisdictions to meet budgetary targets.

00:09:00.000 We have full confidence in their ability to chart the best path forward.

00:09:04.000 While there is still much more to do, we are determined to send a bill to President Trump's desk that secures our border, keeps taxes low for families and job creators, restores American energy dominance, strengthens America's standing on the world stage, and makes government work more effectively for all Americans.

00:09:17.000 It is very difficult to do Speaker Johnson's job.

00:09:19.000 It is.

00:09:20.000 It's very difficult to do the job of Congress.

00:09:22.000 Because, as I say, on principle, I agree very much with many of Thomas Massey's recommendations with regard to cuts.

00:09:28.000 Not with regard to the Defense Department, where I think he's delusional, but with regard to so many other parts of the government.

00:09:32.000 There is no American consensus.

00:09:34.000 Unfortunately, I wish there were.

00:09:36.000 There is no American consensus on restructuring the entitlement programs that are the systemic drivers of our national debt.

00:09:42.000 You can either recognize that, or you cannot recognize that.

00:09:46.000 Again.

00:09:46.000 I wish reality were not what reality is, but that is the reality.

00:09:50.000 That is a fundamental reality, by the way, that Donald Trump understands, which is why he and J.D. Vance ran on the prospect of never touching Social Security and Medicare, among other gigantic entitlement programs.

00:10:02.000 Those are systemic drivers of the national debt.

00:10:04.000 They're not touching them.

00:10:04.000 The reason they're not touching them is because they understand the American people don't want them touched.

00:10:08.000 Let's be clear about what's going to happen to America fiscally.

00:10:11.000 Over the course of the next 10 years, America is going to lurch toward precisely The same sorts of austerity measures that Europe had to put in place because the United States is lurching toward a national bankruptcy.

00:10:25.000 We are.

00:10:26.000 That's just what it is.

00:10:27.000 There are only two things you can do about that.

00:10:28.000 One, you can push outsized growth.

00:10:30.000 You can try to outgrow the debt.

00:10:32.000 You can essentially grow the economy so fast that as a percentage of GDP, the national debt shrinks.

00:10:38.000 I think that is one aim of Republicans.

00:10:40.000 Or theoretically, you can radically increase taxes, which is going to sink the American economy.

00:10:46.000 And probably won't solve the national debt.

00:10:47.000 You can't really tax your way out of a $37 trillion national debt right now.

00:10:52.000 It's going to get much larger over coming years.

00:10:54.000 Or you could restructure the entitlements.

00:10:55.000 All this government spending, not great, because, you know, it all cuts against freedom.

00:10:59.000 And this country was actually founded on freedom.

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00:13:15.000 The American people and their elected congresspeople always, forever, prefer to kick the can down the road on all this sort of stuff.

00:13:24.000 And so recognizing that inherent reality and that you can yell as much as you want, but if you're not getting elected, you don't got the power to do anything.

00:13:32.000 This budget is probably the best that you could do.

00:13:36.000 Now, it goes to the Senate.

00:13:37.000 The Senate has already voted for a couple of different bills that cover so much of this area.

00:13:43.000 There's going to be...

00:13:44.000 A plan to reconcile the Senate with the House bills, try and come up with some sort of workable compromise, and then we'll have to go back to the houses, the respective houses, for a revote.

00:13:53.000 But all the talk about how there was going to be an ineffective Republican majority in the House, Speaker Johnson has proved that wrong.

00:14:00.000 He's played this about as well as you could possibly play an incredibly difficult hand.

00:14:05.000 And in the Senate, I believe that the majority leader, Senator Thune, is going to do a good job of working with...

00:14:10.000 Speaker Johnson to come up with a bill that Donald Trump is then going to sign.

00:14:14.000 And that is going to provide some quiescence to the markets.

00:14:17.000 It is going to make people feel as though the tax regime is not going to change anytime in the near future, which is a good way of getting people to feel comfortable in their investments.

00:14:26.000 The last thing you want to do, as somebody who invests a lot of money, the last thing you want to do is put your investment into something knowing the government could change the rules literally tomorrow.

00:14:34.000 This bill is also, as we say, going to increase funding for border security.

00:14:39.000 This bill is going to change some of the rules with regards to immigration, which are necessary.

00:14:44.000 This bill is going to increase defense funding, not decrease defense funding, which is something that actually does need to be done.

00:14:49.000 We live in a rough world with aggressive enemies, and America's defense budget is actually not in line with our obligations globally.

00:14:58.000 And those are obligations that are good for the United States.

00:15:01.000 I think there are plenty of places in the world where we ought to go hands off and say, you know, do we have a real national interest here?

00:15:06.000 However, there are also a lot of places where a That significant American capacity to deter is absolutely necessary, and this bill does cover that stuff as well.

00:15:15.000 So as I said from the very beginning, when it came to this budget bill, if you have one giant crap sandwich, there will be more sandwich, but there will also be more crap.

00:15:23.000 However, it is a triumph for Johnson and for Trump to get this thing passed through such a narrowly divided Congress.

00:15:31.000 Okay, meanwhile, President Trump has achieved another victory with regard to Ukraine.

00:15:36.000 So apparently, Ukraine has now agreed to a mineral rights deal with the United States.

00:15:39.000 Now, you'll recall, the United States originally, reportedly, proposed a mineral rights deal in which pretty much all rare-earth minerals projects by the Ukrainian government would be split 50-50 with the United States in terms of upside.

00:15:53.000 The United States would invest in some sort of joint fund, and then all profits would be split 50-50.

00:15:57.000 That's not precisely the deal that is now emerging out of Ukraine because Zelensky had rejected that deal.

00:16:02.000 He said that's unfair to our country.

00:16:04.000 It takes $500 billion out of our economy and gives it back to the United States.

00:16:07.000 The United States has only paid in at $160 billion, $170 billion in terms of aid to Ukraine.

00:16:12.000 So even if you're trying to sort of redress the aid the United States has put into Ukraine, it's significantly more than that in terms of the mineral rights deal.

00:16:20.000 This mineral rights deal is a little bit more perspective just in terms of content.

00:16:24.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the United States actually dropped its previous demand for the right to $500 billion in potential revenue from the development of Ukraine's mineral resources.

00:16:33.000 The Ukrainian president said for months Ukraine's allies in the war against Russia could have access to the country's mineral resources, but he said he couldn't sign an agreement that did not include security guarantees for Ukraine.

00:16:45.000 And originally, the United States had demanded the right to up to $500 billion in revenue from mineral development.

00:16:52.000 So this led to conflict clearly publicly between Zelensky and President Trump.

00:16:58.000 The new text does not do that.

00:17:00.000 The new text does not overtly include security guarantees.

00:17:04.000 Under the terms of the agreement, Ukraine would pay some proceeds from future mineral resource development into a fund that would invest in projects in Ukraine.

00:17:12.000 So what does that mean?

00:17:13.000 It means that all the stuff that's already being developed in Ukraine, that stuff is not going to be subject to this joint American investment.

00:17:19.000 It's future development that is going to be subject to joint American.

00:17:23.000 Now, one of the big problems for the United States with this is that much of the rare earth material that we actually need is in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

00:17:31.000 So presumably, the United States is not going to gain access over all of that.

00:17:35.000 The size of the U.S.'s stake in the fund and joint ownership deals will be hashed out in future agreements.

00:17:41.000 President Trump did celebrate the actual deal, suggesting that this was the beginning of a security arrangement between the United States and Ukraine.

00:17:49.000 He said, listen, what this basically does...

00:17:51.000 Is it make sure that the United States is investing in the future of Ukraine?

00:17:54.000 And now we have a pretty strong interest in Ukraine actually not becoming just a Russian precinct.

00:17:59.000 With Ukraine and this mineral deal, what does Ukraine get in return, Mr. President?

00:18:05.000 $350 billion and lots of equipment and military equipment and the right to fight on and originally the right to fight.

00:18:14.000 Look, Ukraine, I will say they're very brave and they're good soldiers.

00:18:19.000 But without the United States and its money and its military equipment, this war would have been over in a very short period of time.

00:18:27.000 Now again, the New York Times is citing a draft document the U.S. would own the maximum amount of the fund allowed under American law, but not necessarily all of it.

00:18:34.000 And it appears that the sort of generalized change to the agreement does not require Ukraine to pay back some $500 billion in revenue from rare minerals.

00:18:49.000 And apparently, again, it doesn't include a firm security guarantee from the United States, but you can hear from President Trump's language that he is essentially pledging a continued security guarantee from the United States, which is the preliminary to an end to this conflict.

00:19:02.000 Everyone knows Ukraine is not going to come to the table unless there is a security guarantee provided to it by the West.

00:19:08.000 And by the way, Ukraine would be foolish to come to the table with anything short of that. 0.73

00:19:12.000 They'd be absolute idiots to do that.

00:19:14.000 After all, the United States...

00:19:15.000 And the West sold out Ukraine.

00:19:17.000 Let's be clear about this.

00:19:18.000 In the early 1990s, Ukraine had literally thousands of nuclear weapons on its soil.

00:19:22.000 In an attempt to denuclearize the area, the United States and its allies in Europe pledged security guarantees to Ukraine in return for them denuclearizing, getting rid of their nuclear weapons.

00:19:33.000 In retrospect, Ukraine never should have done that.

00:19:35.000 It was an idiot move.

00:19:36.000 And so now the Ukrainians are saying, listen, we are not going to give up our right to fight for our country unless somebody else is going to come in and guarantee this.

00:19:45.000 That is perfectly rational.

00:19:47.000 And I think President Trump knows that.

00:19:49.000 President Trump says Zelensky is actually coming to the United States on Friday for a joint signing ceremony.

00:19:54.000 Is it true that President Zelensky is coming on Friday to meet with you?

00:19:58.000 And is the mineral deal sorted out?

00:20:00.000 Yeah, I hear that.

00:20:02.000 I hear that he's coming on Friday.

00:20:03.000 Certainly it's okay with me if he'd like to.

00:20:05.000 And he would like to sign it together with me.

00:20:08.000 And I understand that's a big deal.

00:20:09.000 Very big deal.

00:20:11.000 And I think the American people, even if you look at polling, they're very happy because, you know, Biden was throwing money around like it's cotton candy.

00:20:20.000 And it's a very big deal.

00:20:23.000 It could be a trillion dollar deal.

00:20:25.000 It could be whatever.

00:20:26.000 But it's rare earths and other things.

00:20:31.000 OK, so in the end, we end up where we're basically supposed to be is the United States.

00:20:35.000 We're going to be able to make future rare minerals deals with Ukraine, which is great.

00:20:40.000 And we are also going to ensure that Russia doesn't walk into Kiev, which, as I've suggested all along, was never the policy of the United States.

00:20:45.000 There are some people who are associated with sort of MAGA world who'd be eager, apparently, to see Vladimir Putin walk into Kiev.

00:20:51.000 I do not think that President Trump is one of those people.

00:20:53.000 I do not think he actually wants that.

00:20:55.000 He wants the Europeans to pay up. 0.97

00:20:56.000 He wants the Europeans to staff the peacekeeping force.

00:20:58.000 He wants more redress for America's taxpayer dollars in Ukraine.

00:21:03.000 And it appears he's going to get all of those things.

00:21:05.000 So we are moving toward...

00:21:06.000 A speedy consolidation of position between, actually, the United States, the Europeans, and the Ukrainians.

00:21:12.000 And now the Russians need to get on board. 0.99

00:21:13.000 And I think that the American position with regard to Russia, which is, we'll stop saying mean words about you, but why don't you guys get on board?

00:21:19.000 That may bear fruit as well.

00:21:21.000 That remains to be seen.

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00:22:18.000 Right now, visit preborn.com slash ben or dial pound 250 and say keyword baby that's pound 250 and say baby.

00:22:25.000 Also, feeling like my best self means I'm energized, clear-headed, confident, balanced.

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00:22:55.000 The protein powder is so convenient for throwing in smoothies after gym recovery as well.

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00:23:33.000 Meanwhile, President Trump has made a new proposal with regard to immigration.

00:23:37.000 One of the big questions with regard to immigration is how do we bring the best immigrants here?

00:23:41.000 Very few Americans, right, left, or center, want to bar all immigrants from the United States.

00:23:46.000 There are some that is a very low number.

00:23:48.000 Most Americans do not want vast swaths of illegal immigration, people who are impoverished, who are coming to the United States, who are not going to actually adhere to American culture. 0.99

00:23:56.000 They're not going to assimilate. 0.96

00:23:57.000 They'll be dependent on welfare.

00:23:58.000 That's not something most Americans want.

00:24:01.000 However, what most Americans want is some way of finding the best immigrants and bringing them to the United States to enrich our economy and to make America stronger.

00:24:11.000 And again, this is a perfectly rational calculation.

00:24:15.000 The reality is, it's very difficult to make the case against full-scale, like any immigration at all, when President Trump has Elon Musk standing next to him.

00:24:23.000 Elon Musk is an immigrant.

00:24:24.000 If you look at the founders of the Magnificent Seven, the top stocks in the stock market, several of them.

00:24:31.000 The CEOs of these places are immigrants to the United States.

00:24:35.000 Again, this does not mean that there needs to be some sort of antipathy between domestically born Americans and immigrants coming to the United States.

00:24:43.000 Far from it.

00:24:44.000 One of the great strengths of the United States has been its status as a powerhouse commercial republic that basically draws like a magnet the most talented people here in a competitive global environment.

00:24:54.000 Of course, we want the smartest people coming here.

00:24:57.000 Well, President Trump actually understands this on a root level.

00:25:00.000 Again, there's all sorts of battles that sort of simmer underneath the lid of the pot in MAGA world between immigration restrictionists and people who are a little softer on immigration.

00:25:10.000 But the reality is that President Trump, in the end, is a business person.

00:25:13.000 And because he's a business person, he understands the implications of saying no more immigrants. 0.91

00:25:18.000 So one of the things that he's doing now is he's proposing that wealthy individuals pay $5 million for what he calls a gold card that would grant them permanent United States residency.

00:25:27.000 Ends an existing program that offers green cards to people who invest in the country.

00:25:31.000 He said, quote, wealthy people will be coming into the country by buying the card.

00:25:34.000 They'll be wealthy.

00:25:34.000 They'll be successful.

00:25:35.000 In other words, if you want to come here and invest like five million bucks to come to the United States, that seems like a pretty good investment in the American taxpayer.

00:25:43.000 Here's President Trump explaining.

00:25:45.000 We're going to be doing something else.

00:25:47.000 It's going to be very, very good.

00:25:49.000 We're going to be selling a gold card.

00:25:54.000 You have a green card.

00:25:55.000 This is a gold card.

00:25:57.000 We're going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 billion and that's going to give you green card privileges plus.

00:26:04.000 It's going to be a route to citizenship and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card.

00:26:10.000 They'll be wealthy and they'll be successful and they'll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people and we think it's going to be extremely successful.

00:26:22.000 Now, again, There's this sort of weird debate that was happening just a few months ago, you'll recall, about H-1B visas and foreigners coming to the United States to work in tech.

00:26:31.000 And it sort of devolved into the world's stupidest version of that debate, which was, there should be no immigrants at all, immigrants are bad, and we should involve everybody in the world in our immigration process.

00:26:41.000 And that's really a very stupid version of the debate.

00:26:44.000 There are many practical things you can do to make immigration more restrictive while drawing the best and brightest to the United States.

00:26:50.000 And it is in the interest of America, again, to do that.

00:26:53.000 Because while autarky sounds fun, meaning the idea that we can produce everything in the United States, the reality is that smart people are going to go somewhere, and if smart people don't go to the United States, they will go to countries that oppose the interests of the United States in all likelihood.

00:27:07.000 President Trump says that companies like Apple could pay $5 million to get approval for highly skilled workers to reside in the United States, and he estimated the United States could sell $1 million or more gold cards.

00:27:17.000 He says that it would replace the EB-5 system.

00:27:19.000 Which was launched in the 1990s to channel foreign investment into economically marginalized areas and create local jobs.

00:27:25.000 It offers green cards to people who invest at least $900,000 or $1.8 million, depending on the area, into qualified U.S. projects and show they've created at least 10 jobs.

00:27:33.000 Spouses of investors and their kids under 21 would also get green cards.

00:27:37.000 The program has had cases of fraud.

00:27:39.000 Obviously, this always happens.

00:27:40.000 I mean, any government program has a lot of fraud.

00:27:42.000 You have to do a better job of policing that, obviously, which is why you hope that Doge is going to do exactly that.

00:27:48.000 Under EB-5, Every country gets no more than 7% of the program's 10,000 visa annual quota, which creates long backlogs for countries with large numbers of applicants, especially China.

00:27:59.000 Now, again, that seems to me a really dumb way of doing it.

00:28:02.000 I'm not sure why we should have sort of quotas by country as opposed to individually looking at candidates and determining whether or not they should come in.

00:28:10.000 Why should there be a quota on, say, France or England or Germany or anywhere else as opposed to just doing it on the basis of merit?

00:28:19.000 Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was at the Oval Office on Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Journal, criticized that EB-5 program, pointing to fraud.

00:28:26.000 He said people who apply for the gold card would be vetted.

00:28:28.000 Quote, we're going to make sure they are wonderful, world-class global citizens.

00:28:31.000 Well, presumably the idea would be that they are wonderful, world-class global citizens who want to become American citizens.

00:28:38.000 Trump, he was asking about if Russian oligarchs would be eligible.

00:28:42.000 He said, I know some Russian oligarchs who are very nice people.

00:28:45.000 And then Lutnick started laughing and Trump said, they're not as wealthy as they used to be.

00:28:48.000 Now, again, it is unclear exactly how Trump would be able to, quote-unquote, unilaterally change this law, but the generalized approach that Trump is taking is draw money and investment to the United States, draw smart people to the United States.

00:29:01.000 That is not a bad approach.

00:29:02.000 That is not a bad approach.

00:29:05.000 Again, those who are arguing otherwise, if we're not talking about failures of cultural assimilation, I get that and I'm with you. 0.98

00:29:12.000 If somebody wants to pay $5 million to come into the United States and promote Qatari propaganda, for example, the answer should be no.

00:29:18.000 If somebody wants to come in from China and pay $5 million to end up stealing IP on behalf of the Chinese, the answer should be no.

00:29:24.000 If you are talking about somebody who will make an excellent American citizen, we go through vetting, and again, this is a very small program, it's like 10,000 people a year.

00:29:32.000 If you're talking about vetting those people, and they bring their money, and they bring jobs, and they bring their know-how, I fail to see how this is a terrible thing for the United States.

00:29:40.000 I think President Trump is correct about all this.

00:29:42.000 By the way, President Trump was having fun in the Oval Office.

00:29:45.000 Yesterday, he started handing out hats that read, Trump was right about everything.

00:29:48.000 "Give me all of them.

00:29:52.000 Look.

00:29:53.000 See that?

00:29:57.000 Trump was right about everything.

00:29:59.000 It just came in.

00:30:00.000 Somebody sent it.

00:30:01.000 I said, this was sent in by a fan.

00:30:04.000 I said, I think we should make some of them, right?

00:30:06.000 But we were, pretty much.

00:30:08.000 You want one?

00:30:08.000 I'll pass.

00:30:09.000 Are you allowed to take one?

00:30:10.000 Probably not.

00:30:11.000 He'll consider it.

00:30:11.000 I know him well.

00:30:12.000 He's sort of a stiff.

00:30:14.000 Brian, you're not a stiff.

00:30:16.000 He's sort of a stiff guy.

00:30:17.000 He'll take other things, but not a free hand.

00:30:20.000 Always say yes to the president.

00:30:22.000 Always say yes to the president.

00:30:23.000 Would anybody like one?

00:30:25.000 I mean, hilarious, hilarious stuff.

00:30:28.000 You know, again, look at the image of this.

00:30:29.000 And then he's got like a map behind him that says Gulf of America.

00:30:32.000 And Trump is a world-class troll.

00:30:34.000 He always will be.

00:30:35.000 The greatest troll in world history, probably, President Trump.

00:30:39.000 And second is the guy who's leading Doge, Elon Musk.

00:30:42.000 Speaking of which, Elon Musk's super controversial email, you know, the what did you do last week email, which seems not all that controversial to me.

00:30:49.000 It may not be the sort of most sophisticated way to determine Who is a good government employee and who is not?

00:30:57.000 Because you can just go to ChatGPT and type out five things you did last week.

00:31:02.000 Or possibly you're in a department where actually you can't say publicly what it is that you did last week.

00:31:07.000 But the idea that this is some sort of massive attack on the federal bureaucracy for people to actually explain what they did last week.

00:31:13.000 I mean, if I asked any of my employees, name me five things that you did yesterday, they would probably be able to name me five things that they did yesterday.

00:31:19.000 Just because you're on the taxpayer dime does not mean that you should be basically held, As some sort of immune person when it comes to accountability.

00:31:31.000 Apparently, over a million federal employees have already responded to last weekend's controversial email.

00:31:36.000 The White House, eager to present the email demand as part of its coordinated attempt to dramatically scale down the size of the federal government, made that announcement in Tuesday's press briefing, according to Politico.

00:31:44.000 Caroline Lovett, the White House press secretary, said all federal workers should be working at the same pace as President Trump is working and moving.

00:31:50.000 This is to ensure federal workers are not ripping off American taxpayers.

00:31:54.000 By the way, that is literally one-third of the federal workforce.

00:31:56.000 That is a big number.

00:31:58.000 Again, there's been a lot of confusion as to whether people are quote-unquote resigning.

00:32:01.000 Now, they could theoretically be fired.

00:32:03.000 Trump could theoretically fire them, but there are protocols and procedures for firing them.

00:32:06.000 The email said failure to respond to this email will be considered a resignation.

00:32:10.000 That's not how resignations work.

00:32:12.000 But again, the sort of general approach here, which is to make the federal bureaucracy scared for their jobs, seems to be a useful thing.

00:32:21.000 And in the absence, Of a large enough Doge department to go through every single one of those 3 million federal employees and determine who's a good employee and who's a bad employee, this is sort of a self-windowing process.

00:32:31.000 That is not a terrible idea.

00:32:34.000 Well, the Democrats are, of course, very, very upset about this.

00:32:37.000 Jasmine Crockett, who has taken the lead, she's sort of, I will say, she's sort of stolen AOC's thunder.

00:32:42.000 Remember that time AOC was so fresh and so faced, she was fresh-faced and had a fresh face and all that, and now she's just that kind of, you know, tired lady on Instagram who's...

00:32:51.000 Who's putting her face in ice water and babbling nonsensically about Bernie Sanders' proposals. 0.95

00:32:56.000 Jasmine Crockett is the hot new version of the resistance because she says spicy things on the TVs. 1.00

00:33:01.000 Here she was yesterday saying F off to Elon Musk.

00:33:06.000 If you could speak directly to Elon Musk, what would you say?

00:33:10.000 That's it.

00:33:14.000 Genius level stuff there from Jasmine Crockett.

00:33:16.000 That will certainly stop Elon Musk in his tracks.

00:33:19.000 No one has ever said that to Elon before.

00:33:20.000 Meanwhile, Rashida Tlaib, who is in a running gun battle with Ilhan Omar for most pro-terror member of Congress, she suggests that government spending being cut is a real, it's horrifying.

00:33:32.000 It's just horrifying because it affects the workers.

00:33:34.000 Now again, this demonstrates, it's amazing how disconnected Democrats are.

00:33:38.000 The argument you want to make, if you're going to make this argument, is cuts to government affect the people.

00:33:44.000 When you cut the government workers, that affects the people to whom the government workers are providing services.

00:33:48.000 You know who no one has sympathy for?

00:33:50.000 People on the taxpayers' time who whine about how they are going to lose their jobs.

00:33:56.000 Because it turns out that if you're in public service, the people who actually should matter are the people you are serving.

00:34:04.000 But again, Democrats do not get this on a fundamental level because the people who are cutting checks for their campaigns are, of course, the people in the federal government.

00:34:11.000 I want you all to know they're moving, of course, with these massive cuts to programs.

00:34:15.000 And I, you know, I talk about the $880 billion in cuts in Medicaid, but behind all those cuts is the person.

00:34:22.000 You know, it's not even saving organizations, it's saving lives.

00:34:27.000 Oh my gosh, these people, these people.

00:34:29.000 But again, this is a very highly popular program, Doge.

00:34:32.000 It's going to continue to be popular because most Americans do want this stuff rooted out.

00:34:36.000 In just a minute, we'll get to a wide variety of Biden-appointed judges who are now attempting to stop The Trump train.

00:34:42.000 The question that has everyone talking right now, however, is what did you do last week?

00:34:46.000 No idea why that causes so much drama, but fine.

00:34:48.000 Here's what we did at the Daily Wire last week.

00:34:50.000 The entire Daily Wire gang went back to D.C. for Backstage Live at CPAC. You heard Chris Ruffo on this show breaking big news, sharing tapes, exposing Department of Education contractors supporting sex tapes in schools.

00:35:01.000 Michael Mowles faced off against 25 LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign trans activists in Jubilee's most explosive debate yet.

00:35:07.000 Matt Walsh released clearing the air a behind-the-scenes look at the number one documentary of the decade, Am I Racist?

00:35:12.000 And that list is just us being compliant with Doge.

00:35:15.000 Well, it seems simple enough.

00:35:16.000 Don't miss a moment of the news, shows, and entertainment.

00:35:18.000 Become a Daily Wire Plus member now at dailywire.com slash subscribe.

00:35:22.000 Well, meanwhile, judge after judge appointed by Joe Biden is trying to slow the role of the Trump administration.

00:35:28.000 Yesterday, in less than 90 minutes, three separate Biden-appointed judges tried to put nationwide injunctions on President Trump's policy.

00:35:34.000 Now, again, this is a very controversial matter, legally speaking.

00:35:37.000 As to whether a local district judge has the capacity to stop nationwide a gigantic presidential action, for example, or say a piece of congressional legislation.

00:35:46.000 Why should some district court judge in California be able to block the enforcement of a piece of legislation or regulation or an executive order across, you know, all 50 states?

00:35:56.000 That's a wild proposition.

00:35:58.000 And in the past, up until the 1960s, it was never even requested.

00:36:01.000 Typically speaking, you could enforce an injunction.

00:36:05.000 Against the government with regard to the specific plaintiff.

00:36:07.000 But you wouldn't have a gigantic nationwide injunction.

00:36:11.000 And it really does break down the system of law and order when any judge anywhere can simply enjoin any action by the federal government wholesale over the entire 50 states.

00:36:20.000 That's a wild notion.

00:36:21.000 And yet three separate judges attempted to do it yesterday.

00:36:24.000 First, according to the Wall Street Journal, a federal judge in Seattle ordered the Trump administration to restart the refugee admissions program that legally resettles people from across the globe.

00:36:33.000 Trump had shut that down.

00:36:34.000 On day one, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden appointee, issued the injunction on Tuesday.

00:36:41.000 During a court hearing, he said that President Trump had acted outside his authority by shutting down the program completely.

00:36:47.000 Before leaving office, Biden had set up a program to take in as many as 125,000 refugees this year, and Trump halted the refugee admissions program through an executive order on his first day in office, part of a series of immigration actions meant to shut down the southern border.

00:37:00.000 And so a bunch of local refugee-serving agencies, left-wing NGOs, decided to sue the federal government.

00:37:06.000 And they argued that this overstepped the authority that was provided by Congress for the president to do this.

00:37:12.000 Now again, I'm finding it bizarre that the same people who are very much in favor of executive authority when it came to Joe Biden are suddenly turning around and saying that it doesn't apply as soon as the president's name is Donald Trump.

00:37:23.000 So in other words, you can use executive authority to completely ignore immigration law for years on end.

00:37:28.000 And let 10 million illegal immigrants through the border. 0.96

00:37:30.000 But the minute you reverse yourself and you say, no, no, no, hold up.

00:37:34.000 We're now going to enforce immigration law.

00:37:36.000 Then the NGOs and the judges step in.

00:37:38.000 So that was federal judge number one.

00:37:39.000 Then, again, this is all within 90 minutes.

00:37:41.000 Federal judge number two indefinitely blocked President Trump's freeze of federal funding.

00:37:46.000 U.S. District Court Judge Lauren Alicon, again a Biden appointee, enjoined the government from, quote, implementing, giving effect to, or reinstating under a different name.

00:37:54.000 The White House Budget Office's directive.

00:37:56.000 To freeze federal assistance while the court reviews the spending.

00:38:00.000 Ali Khan said defendants either wanted to pause up to $3 trillion in federal spending practically overnight or they expected each federal agency to review every single one of its grants, loans, and funds for compliance in less than 24 hours.

00:38:10.000 The breadth of that command is almost unfathomable.

00:38:12.000 Well, I have a question.

00:38:13.000 Why is that unfathomable?

00:38:14.000 We have 3 million federal employees.

00:38:16.000 What is it you would say you do around here?

00:38:18.000 What is it you would say you do?

00:38:20.000 Federal freezes?

00:38:21.000 Have been a common, long-standing part of American public policy in the executive branch, going all the way back to like Thomas Jefferson.

00:38:27.000 So you may not like the extent of the freeze, but the idea that it's unconstitutional to freeze federal spending for a defined period of time to review whether that spending is going to useful things under the auspices of actual legislation.

00:38:39.000 What's your legal case right there?

00:38:42.000 Now, the OMB had put out a memo.

00:38:45.000 The memo had suggested almost an indefinite freeze.

00:38:47.000 And so that seemed suitable because that was akin to basically the executive branch saying that they were going to never spend money allocated by the legislative branch.

00:38:56.000 But temporary freezes, again, are within the ambit of the executive branch.

00:39:04.000 Kevin Friedel, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said, quote, it's an administrative priority to end wokeness, and they're backing this with the cudgel of withholding billions, perhaps trillions, in funding.

00:39:13.000 On Tuesday, the judge said the plaintiffs had more than met their burden for further relief.

00:39:17.000 So that is number two.

00:39:18.000 So they've blocked President Trump's attempts to stop Biden-era resettlement programs that, again, were put in place by Joe Biden.

00:39:26.000 They were not put in place, my understanding is, by Congress itself.

00:39:28.000 It was Biden who put it in place.

00:39:29.000 But as soon as Trump strikes him out, then no.

00:39:31.000 The answer is no.

00:39:32.000 That's now congressional authority.

00:39:33.000 When it comes to the federal freeze, the idea is not a narrowly driven decision that says, well, you can freeze it, but only for so long.

00:39:40.000 Instead, it's just temporary injunction on the whole thing.

00:39:42.000 And then finally, U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali, again another Biden appointee, expressed frustration that the Trump administration was ignoring his two-week-old order to unfreeze dollars at USAID. The judge said, I don't know why I can't get a straight answer from you.

00:39:59.000 He apparently wants to make sure that $15.9 billion in foreign assistance grants get out the door so that we can't get them back.

00:40:07.000 Earlier this month, Ali ordered an end to the blanket freeze after grant recipients and foreign assistance organizations warned of catastrophic consequences.

00:40:14.000 Ali said the State Department freeze likely violated the law.

00:40:18.000 So the idea was that USAID could not be zeroed out.

00:40:20.000 Well, I mean, its spending could be transferred over to the State Department.

00:40:24.000 The State Department does have power over USAID. But again, these are all judges who are standing in the way of the will of the American people, not on the basis of constitutionality or balance of powers.

00:40:34.000 They're doing so.

00:40:35.000 Specifically because they don't like the decisions that Trump is making.

00:40:38.000 The job of the judicial branch is to enforce the separation of powers between Congress and the executive branch.

00:40:45.000 You can make a case that the Trump administration needs to be more specific.

00:40:50.000 That's not the case that's being made.

00:40:51.000 The case that's being made here is that they just don't like the policy implications of what Trump is doing, and so they're simply stopping it.

00:40:57.000 You want to undermine the credibility of the judiciary even further?

00:40:59.000 Great way to do it.

00:41:00.000 it.

00:41:00.000 Speaking of credibility, I got to say the media are just blowing out their credibility each and every day.

00:41:06.000 It truly is amazing.

00:41:07.000 Apparently it can now be said.

00:41:09.000 There's a new book out by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson titled Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.

00:41:17.000 I'm glad that we can do this now, you know, like four months after the election.

00:41:21.000 You know, I will never stop saying.

00:41:23.000 Joe Biden's collapse on stage was the death knell of the legacy media in this country.

00:41:28.000 Destroyed it.

00:41:29.000 Because for years, the legacy media said it was all cheap fakes.

00:41:32.000 It was all exaggerated.

00:41:33.000 Joe Biden was totally fine cognitively.

00:41:35.000 And then Joe Biden went out there and he crapped his pants on national television.

00:41:39.000 He looked as though he was staring into the open maw of death in an open televised national debate with Donald Trump.

00:41:47.000 He didn't just finish his own presidential candidacy at that point.

00:41:49.000 He finished off the legacy media who'd been lying to you because they all had access.

00:41:52.000 They all knew.

00:41:53.000 They all knew.

00:41:56.000 I've never met President Biden.

00:41:57.000 They all have.

00:41:58.000 I've never dealt directly with President Biden.

00:42:00.000 They all have.

00:42:01.000 And I could see, because I have retinas and a prefrontal cortex, exactly what was happening with Joe Biden.

00:42:05.000 And we'd all been calling it out since like 2019 when he first ran, saying this guy is obviously in a state of cognitive decline.

00:42:11.000 And that became even more obvious day after day after day when they were hiding him in the basement and then releasing him like the cryptkeeper from the coffin.

00:42:20.000 Creak open, he'd get out, he'd wobble on up, say a couple of nonsensical sounds from his face hole, and then they'd put him back in the coffin at night.

00:42:28.000 And we were saying this for years.

00:42:30.000 And the legacy media said that we were exaggerating.

00:42:32.000 It wasn't true.

00:42:33.000 He was fine.

00:42:34.000 Behind closed doors, he was doing handsprings and backflips and reciting all the numbers of pi up to a thousand digits.

00:42:42.000 And then it turned out that he was a senile old Doddard. 0.98

00:42:45.000 And the entire media knew it.

00:42:46.000 So when he exposed that on national TV, the entire media had to then shift into we're shocked mode.

00:42:51.000 None of them were shocked.

00:42:52.000 But they had to shift into, how could we have known?

00:42:55.000 And now they're reporting on their own failures.

00:42:57.000 Now they're reporting on...

00:42:58.000 Oh my gosh, you know, it turns out that he was always...

00:43:00.000 Yeah, we know, guys.

00:43:01.000 We know.

00:43:02.000 We are aware.

00:43:04.000 The human centipede that exists between the Democratic Party and the legacy media is the untold story of the last 50 years in American politics.

00:43:17.000 The insane conciliation between the media, which is supposed to be a watchdog, and the Democratic Party.

00:43:24.000 I mean, it's full scale.

00:43:25.000 It is just a revolving door at this point.

00:43:27.000 And this is why there's all sorts of controversy that is now broken out over the White House picking who is in the press pool.

00:43:34.000 According to the New York Times, the Trump administration said on Tuesday it would start handpicking which media outlets were allowed to participate in the presidential press pool.

00:43:41.000 That's the small rotating group of reporters who relay the president's stated-day activities to the public.

00:43:45.000 That change breaks decades of precedent and allows the White House to assert more control over which journalists can witness his activities up close and ask him questions.

00:43:53.000 Now, the White House Correspondents Association, a 111-year-old group representing journalists who cover the administration, has long determined on its own which reporters would participate in the Daily Pool.

00:44:02.000 But the White House is like, well, we don't trust you guys because it turns out that, for example, the White House Correspondents Association head is now apparently joining MSNBC. Eugene Daniels, the WHCA head and political reporter, is now headed on over to MSNBC. And so the Trump administration is like, why would we allow you, the staffers at MSNBC, to decide who covers the president?

00:44:28.000 When it comes to the White House Correspondents Association, they're not going to allow the Daily Wire to be part of the press pool, not going to allow Daily Caller or Breitbart to be part of the press pool, not going to allow the Free Beacon or the Examiner to be part of the press pool.

00:44:38.000 The only people they will allow are legacy media outlets that hate President Trump, obviously.

00:44:44.000 Caroline Lovett said, well, you know what?

00:44:46.000 I don't understand who exactly made, who died and made the WHCA. We want more outlets and new outlets to have a chance to take part in the press pool to cover this administration's unprecedented achievements up close, front and center.

00:45:05.000 As you all know, for decades, a group of D.C.-based journalists, the White House Correspondents Association, has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the President of the United States in these most intimate spaces.

00:45:19.000 Not anymore.

00:45:22.000 Okay, I mean, that seems perfectly reasonable to me.

00:45:24.000 If the White House doesn't want to designate that, then perhaps they should just poll the room.

00:45:29.000 Meaning, there are alternative ways where it's not the White House dictating who's part of the press pool, but it also isn't a corrupt organization run by Democratic acolytes who work for MSNBC. That might be a pretty good way of, you know, allocating responsibility for this.

00:45:42.000 Caroline Levitt said, we are giving power back to the people instead of to the press.

00:45:45.000 And of course, the press is like, no, no, that can't happen.

00:45:47.000 What you're really doing is consolidating power in the way.

00:45:49.000 Again, you're ignoring the elephants in the room.

00:45:53.000 The press have been the willing partners of the Democratic Party for as long as I have been alive.

00:45:58.000 They literally covered up Joe Biden's decline.

00:46:00.000 They were all complicit in it.

00:46:01.000 Joe Biden stood up there at the podium with actual note cards, with the faces and names of reporters from a variety of mainstream legacy institutions, all of which were part of the press pool.

00:46:12.000 And pre-printed questions from them.

00:46:14.000 And you were all complicit in it.

00:46:16.000 You were all complicit.

00:46:17.000 Now you have the balls to come back and say, oh my gosh, how can the objective media cover the administration if they're just going to pick?

00:46:25.000 You already did it.

00:46:26.000 The Biden White House was already picking who was part of the press pool via the WHCA, which basically worked for them.

00:46:33.000 And now you're complaining?

00:46:34.000 You blew it.

00:46:36.000 This is your fault.

00:46:37.000 If you didn't want to be treated as opposition media, I am proud to announce that we are going to give the power back to the people who read your papers, who watch your television shows, and who listen to your radio stations.

00:47:00.000 Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team.

00:47:05.000 Legacy outlets who have participated in the press pool for decades will still be allowed to join.

00:47:11.000 Fear not.

00:47:12.000 But we will also be offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility.

00:47:20.000 Just like we added a new media seat in this briefing room, legacy media outlets who have been here for years will still participate in the pool.

00:47:28.000 But new voices are going to be welcomed in as well.

00:47:33.000 Now again, WHCA is complaining about all of this.

00:47:37.000 Eugene Daniels.

00:47:38.000 Who's moving over to MSNBC, said, quote, this move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States.

00:47:42.000 It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president.

00:47:45.000 In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.

00:47:48.000 They have been for literally years, for years.

00:47:52.000 We know.

00:47:54.000 Utter insanity from the press.

00:47:56.000 That's how you got here.

00:47:57.000 That is how you got here.

00:48:00.000 Amazing stuff there.

00:48:01.000 Just true.

00:48:02.000 Slow clap for the media who destroyed their own credibility in order to save the Democrats, and now it turns out that no one actually cares whether they are allowed in the press pool or whether they're not allowed in the press pool.

00:48:14.000 This is your fault, guys.

00:48:16.000 You broke it.

00:48:17.000 You bought it.

00:48:20.000 FAFO. By the way, the sort of underlying theme here seems to be that President Trump is not transparent enough, that you need the media, like, in his private spaces in order to, with the press pool, in order to find out what he's doing.

00:48:31.000 President Trump is the most transparent president in American history.

00:48:34.000 It is not close.

00:48:35.000 President Trump answered in the first month of his administration, I'm not even kidding, 1009 questions from the press.

00:48:42.000 1009. President Trump loves it like nobody else.

00:48:46.000 Let me give you a contrast in numbers.

00:48:49.000 Joe Biden, in his first month, took 141 questions from the press.

00:48:53.000 Donald Trump, in his first month, the first time around, took 199 questions from the press.

00:48:58.000 Barack Obama took 161 questions from the press.

00:49:01.000 Donald Trump, in his first month, took 1,009 questions from the press.

00:49:07.000 1,009, as in like eight times higher than any of his predecessors, including himself last time around.

00:49:14.000 And they're complaining that there won't be enough access to him.

00:49:16.000 I'm pretty sure that access is not going to be the problem.

00:49:20.000 I really don't think that's it.

00:49:22.000 All right, coming up, we'll get to a hot debate on HBO between Bill Maher and John Lovett on the trans issue.

00:49:28.000 Plus, we'll get to...

00:49:30.000 President Trump tweeting out an amazing AI video of the Gaza Strip.

00:49:34.000 Mara Gaza, Gazalago, as it's said.

00:49:37.000 First, you need to head on over and become a subscriber.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - February 26, 2025

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