The Ben Shapiro Show - Musk, Trump Team Up To KILL Pork Bill

00:00:00.000 Alrighty folks, as you can see, complete chaos has now broken out in the Congress of the United States.

00:00:05.000 Conflict between Speaker Mike Johnson, President Trump, Elon Musk.

00:00:08.000 So what the hell is going on here?

00:00:10.000 Let me begin with this.

00:00:11.000 Politics is a battle between principle and pragmatism.

00:00:15.000 The things that you want and the things that it is possible to get.

00:00:18.000 Anybody in my job who tells you that pragmatic considerations are simply a lack of will or a betrayal of principles does not understand politics or is lying to you.

00:00:28.000 There are a lot of people who are doing that today.

00:00:29.000 People who suggest that any time Congress cuts any sort of deal, that is a violation of principle.

00:00:34.000 And if only they'd acted with Nietzschean willpower, they could have gotten 100% of the things you wanted.

00:00:40.000 That's a lie.

00:00:41.000 Now, on the other side, anybody who tells you that pragmatism ought to lead to complete abandonment of principle is also lying to you.

00:00:48.000 Anybody who says, listen, I had to give away the store because otherwise you wouldn't have gotten anything.

00:00:52.000 Those people are generally lying to you also.

00:00:54.000 So the art of politics and the difficult thing about politics, elective politics, is finding the balance between what you want, principle, and what you can get.

00:01:03.000 Pragmatism.

00:01:03.000 And that's what's happening in the House over the course of the last 48 hours.

00:01:07.000 So right now, a continuing resolution is currently being considered.

00:01:11.000 So what exactly is a continuing resolution?

00:01:13.000 Basically, it's stopgap funding.

00:01:15.000 Well, because Congress is unable to pass a real budget with Chuck Schumer as the head of the Senate and with a very, very slim House majority for the Republicans.

00:01:15.000 Why?

00:01:24.000 And remember, Joe Biden is still technically the president.

00:01:26.000 One of the things that I've been enjoying is the entire media suggesting that actually Elon Musk is the president.

00:01:30.000 So they are off by, what, two orders of magnitude?

00:01:35.000 So Joe Biden's the actual president.

00:01:36.000 Trump isn't the president yet.

00:01:37.000 And then they say Trump isn't the president.

00:01:39.000 Elon is the president.

00:01:40.000 Right now, the actual president of the United States is the senile dotter who Democrats refused to oust as the actual president, despite the fact he doesn't have a working brain.

00:01:49.000 But that dude can still stand in the way of anything Republicans pass in the House, and he can veto legislation if he doesn't like it.

00:01:55.000 That is still a thing he can do.

00:01:57.000 So what is the actual position right now with regards to the continuing resolution?

00:02:01.000 Well, the Wall Street Journal editorial board suggests correctly, in lieu of passing a real budget, the House and Senate have agreed on another continuing resolution or CR that will extend through March 14th in the new year.

00:02:12.000 The only virtue here is the government won't shut down if the continuing resolution passes, and it will give the new GOP Congress a chance to use budget rules to pass a reconciliation bill next year with 51 Senate votes, which means Chuck Schumer won't be able to extort more spending if Republicans want at least some of their priorities to pass.

00:02:28.000 But Schumer is going out with a CR bang, and the GOP is once again forced to take it.

00:02:33.000 Some Republicans want to blame Speaker Johnson for getting too little in exchange.

00:02:37.000 But as long as they refuse to vote for a continuing resolution, then the Speaker is going to have to go to Democrats in order to pass a continuing resolution or you get a government shutdown.

00:02:44.000 And this is how Schumer likes it.

00:02:46.000 The GOP House actually passed nearly half of all of their appropriations bills this year.

00:02:50.000 Susan Collins and Patty Murray passed almost all the Senate bills through the Appropriations Committee And then Schumer refused to bring all that to the floor because he likes these giant omnibus crammed down packages.

00:03:00.000 That's how you end up with these giant omnibus packages.

00:03:02.000 Now, what is actually in this package?

00:03:04.000 Well, yes, a bunch of pork.

00:03:06.000 So they could have passed a clean CR, a clean continuing resolution, which just continues the discretionary spending at prior levels.

00:03:13.000 Basically, up until Donald Trump takes office.

00:03:16.000 We've gotten us through the next few weeks.

00:03:17.000 That's what they could have done.

00:03:18.000 They didn't do that.

00:03:19.000 Instead, they decided that they were going to load in a bunch of stuff, including about $100 billion for disaster relief funds, which is overkill, and $10 billion in farm pork.

00:03:30.000 And by the way, this is something that many Republicans wanted, was this farm pork bill, including Donald Trump, J.D. Vance.

00:03:36.000 They both wanted that farm bill spending in there.

00:03:39.000 So, we should point out at this point the conflicting interests between the parties who are involved in this negotiation.

00:03:46.000 Donald Trump's mandate is to do things.

00:03:48.000 He wants to clear the decks before he becomes President of the United States.

00:03:51.000 So he would like a few things.

00:03:53.000 He would like, for example, the debt ceiling increased.

00:03:55.000 So that way, he can actually spend more money.

00:03:58.000 And in the way that the government calculates things, tax cuts are spending money, which of course is really silly, but that is how things are done.

00:04:05.000 In terms of congressional appropriations and ability to take out additional debt and all the rest.

00:04:09.000 So Trump would love to enter office with all of the spending off the books for him so he doesn't get blamed for it and also an increase in the debt ceiling.

00:04:17.000 Mike Johnson's mandate is to try to get most of the things that Trump wants and if that means giving up some concessions he has to do that and he has to do that by negotiating with his own caucus.

00:04:26.000 This idea that Mike Johnson just has the singular ability to pass a bill himself ignores the fact he has an incredibly slim majority in Congress.

00:04:33.000 And I just want to show you this graphic from 538 because it's fairly accurate.

00:04:36.000 It shows the breakdown of the House in terms of the various constituency groups inside Congress.

00:04:43.000 So you have basically three groups of Democrats.

00:04:45.000 You have the Progressive Democrats, the Core Democrats, and the Moderate Democrats.

00:04:47.000 And then you have five different groups of Republicans, as 538 labels it.

00:04:52.000 And again, this isn't totally inaccurate.

00:04:55.000 Moderate Republicans.

00:04:56.000 There are about 39 of them.

00:04:57.000 These would be people in purple districts who tend to vote for bigger spending and who also tend to vote for lax social policy, for example, or might be squishes on the border.

00:05:07.000 Those are moderate Republicans, and there are 39 of them.

00:05:10.000 And then on the other side, you have what 538 calls far-right obstructionists.

00:05:14.000 Now, again, I think that is a mislabeling, but these are people who, for example, would rather shut down the government than green-light discretionary spending.

00:05:21.000 I don't think that's far-right obstructionism.

00:05:23.000 I think that's actually quite principled in some cases, but it does make it very difficult to work a coalitional bill through.

00:05:29.000 When you have 39 people on one end who are in purple districts and who basically just want to get by, Or those seats turn Democrat and you don't have any power.

00:05:37.000 And on the other side, you have people who are like, I'm not going to vote come hell or high water for anything that increases debt levels in the country.

00:05:44.000 Well, how do you put all of that together?

00:05:46.000 And the answer very often, especially with a very slim majority, is that Mike Johnson, in order to get the things that Trump wants, has to trade away some of the things that Republicans would like.

00:05:55.000 Again, this is not specific to Mike Johnson.

00:05:56.000 This was true of Kevin McCarthy.

00:05:58.000 This was true of Paul Ryan.

00:05:59.000 One of the most annoying things about the way, again, that people in my position, you know, commentators on politics, people who try to shape public opinion, one of the most annoying things that people in my position very often do...

00:06:10.000 It's once again suggesting that the person who is charged with leading a coalition of widely disparate interests can single-handedly ram things through.

00:06:19.000 That is not how the legislature works.

00:06:20.000 It is not how the legislature has literally ever worked.

00:06:24.000 In fact, the only time in my lifetime that you had a leader who was able to do that on the Republican side was Newt Gingrich.

00:06:30.000 He was able to do it for about two years, and then his own Republican caucus basically ousted him.

00:06:34.000 By 1998, Gingrich was on the ropes.

00:06:36.000 The Republican Revolution happened in 94, and within four years, Gingrich was on the ropes.

00:06:41.000 So, again, this is typically not how coalitional politics works.

00:06:44.000 So, I'm just pointing out all these interests because, again, politics is the art of balancing principle and pragmatism.

00:06:50.000 So, on the one hand, you have President Trump who wants the things that he wants.

00:06:53.000 So, he wants the continuing resolution.

00:06:55.000 He wanted the farm spending.

00:06:56.000 He did.

00:06:57.000 He also wanted the disaster relief spending.

00:07:00.000 He does want those things.

00:07:01.000 Now, he's not in office yet, but he has, of course, an enormous amount of sway with the Republican caucus.

00:07:06.000 And then you have Johnson, who wants to do the things that Trump wants him to do, but who's actually going to be the guy who has to negotiate the deal.

00:07:13.000 Johnson, in this sort of iteration, he is more like an agent of the president, Donald Trump, than he is like a principled leader who is standing for the thing.

00:07:23.000 That's not his job.

00:07:24.000 His job is to cobble together the coalition to get 70% of the loaf of bread.

00:07:28.000 So he sort of represents pragmatism in this particular situation.

00:07:32.000 In this particular mode of thinking.

00:07:34.000 And then you have the person who's representing principle, which would be Elon.

00:07:37.000 So Elon was set up at Doge, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, to go through all of these bills and point out where there is pork.

00:07:46.000 Now, here's the thing.

00:07:47.000 Every single bill that Congress ever negotiates is going to be filled with pork.

00:07:51.000 It is just a question of how much.

00:07:52.000 And so it's very good that Doge is there to point this sort of stuff out.

00:07:55.000 However, what you can easily end up with, and this is actually what happened in this situation, is a bill that had been basically pre-negotiated between Trump, Johnson, Vance, Congress, congressional Republicans, few congressional Democrats.

00:08:09.000 Everybody knows what's in it.

00:08:10.000 Everybody knows there's a bunch of crap in it because, again, to get 70% of the loaf means 30% excrement.

00:08:15.000 And again, this is not a defense of the bill.

00:08:17.000 I would not vote for this bill were I in Congress because I'd probably be labeled one of the far-right obstructionists by 538. I would look at this bill.

00:08:23.000 I wouldn't want the farm spending.

00:08:24.000 I don't like farm subsidies.

00:08:25.000 I think they are a waste of money and I think they make industry significantly less competitive and efficient.

00:08:30.000 I would not vote for a giant disaster relief package because frankly, I think that much of the disaster relief stuff should be done at the state level.

00:08:38.000 I, for example, don't see why California needs to subsidize Florida or Florida subsidize California.

00:08:43.000 You know who agrees with me?

00:08:44.000 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and our home state here in Florida has been hit with a multiplicity of hurricanes over the last couple of years.

00:08:51.000 And so I wouldn't vote for this package.

00:08:53.000 I I think it's a bad bill.

00:08:54.000 But let's be clear about what happened here.

00:08:56.000 The bill was pre-cleared and pre-negotiated between the White House and Congress.

00:09:01.000 And then Elon, whose job is to go out and say the principle, came along and said the principle and created all sorts of backlash.

00:09:10.000 And that backlash has been directed at Mike Johnson.

00:09:12.000 But that, I think, again, is a misdirection of the backlash.

00:09:15.000 This is all a complicated negotiation that happens when you have disparate interests involved.

00:09:21.000 So again, a lot of the heat has been brought to Johnson.

00:09:23.000 I'm just telling you.

00:09:24.000 You can yell at Mike Johnson.

00:09:26.000 It's fine.

00:09:27.000 He's a politician.

00:09:28.000 He's used to taking it.

00:09:29.000 He's the one who took the Speaker of the House position, which is legitimately the worst position in American government.

00:09:34.000 I'm just going to tell you right now the same thing that I've said about Johnson and McCarthy and Paul Ryan and John Boehner going back years and years and years and years, which is anybody who tells you that any of these leaders has the capacity to single-handedly ram through all of the things you want without giving up any of the things you don't want. which is anybody who tells you that any of these Those people are lying to you.

00:09:54.000 If somebody ever tells you that the real problem in politics is just that no one has principles, no one has principles, that's a bit of a fib.

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00:12:27.000 So here's how this actually went down.

00:12:29.000 So, yesterday, Mike Johnson was on Newsmax, and he was explaining, listen...

00:12:34.000 This bill came about because there are struggling Americans who need disaster relief.

00:12:38.000 This would be particularly Hurricane Helene in North Carolina.

00:12:40.000 There are also farmers who require subsidies.

00:12:43.000 Again, these are things that the Trump administration, the Trump team, would like to see.

00:12:47.000 Here he was explaining.

00:12:50.000 This was the conservative play call.

00:12:52.000 We don't normally like what's called a continued resolution, a CR, but in this case it makes sense because if we push it into the first quarter of next year, then we have a Republican-controlled Congress and President Donald J. Trump back in the White House will be able to have more say over the funding decisions for 2025. Now that would have been an easier thing to do, but then we had circumstances outside of our control.

00:13:12.000 We had these emergencies that are required.

00:13:14.000 So we had, as you know, a record hurricane season.

00:13:16.000 We had Helene and Milton, and they just did massive destruction across our red states, frankly, in the southeast and the eastern side of the country. 0.87

00:13:25.000 And then we have farmers who are in jeopardy of permanently going under.

00:13:29.000 They've had three lost years in a row because of Bidenomics and inflation and other circumstances outside of their control.

00:13:35.000 And so when you cobble those two things together, There's a desperate need for that aid, and that's what adds another hundred plus billion dollars to the bill, and that's why everybody's uncomfortable with it.

00:13:45.000 I am, too.

00:13:46.000 We have a massive deficit and debt problem, of course, in this country.

00:13:51.000 We can begin to address that and shrink the size and scope of government in January with Republican control.

00:13:57.000 But we've got to bridge the gap to get there, and we cannot leave our small farms and ranchers and our inner people who are devastated by the hurricanes out in the meantime.

00:14:05.000 So that's the difficult part about this.

00:14:07.000 That's what people are really struggling with.

00:14:09.000 And I am too, but we have a responsibility here, and that's legislative.

00:14:13.000 Now again, because there are a lot of people like me in the Congress who wouldn't vote for this bill, that means that Johnson then had to go to Democrats and negotiate something to get the things that Trump and Johnson and Vance all wanted.

00:14:22.000 And a lot of those things are absolute crap, right?

00:14:24.000 They are bad.

00:14:26.000 Make no mistake about it.

00:14:27.000 And Vivek Ramaswamy, whose job it is, along with Elon Musk, to go through these kinds of things and point out the bad things, they pointed out the bad things today.

00:14:34.000 And there are, in fact, a lot of bad things.

00:14:36.000 So as Vivek points out, keeping the government open until March 14th will cost $380 billion by itself.

00:14:42.000 But the true cost of this omnibus is far greater due to new spending.

00:14:45.000 Renewing the farm bill for an extra year, $130 billion.

00:14:48.000 Okay, now again, that's something that I oppose.

00:14:50.000 I'm not sure that Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Mike Johnson oppose that because they would like the farmers to get the subsidies.

00:14:57.000 Disaster relief, $100 billion.

00:14:59.000 Stimulus for farmers, $10 billion.

00:15:01.000 And again, I disagree with the enormous amount of the spending.

00:15:03.000 I'm not sure that's true of, for example, President Trump.

00:15:06.000 The legislation will end up hurting many of the people it purports to help, says Vivek.

00:15:09.000 Debt-fueled spending sprees may feel good today, but it's like showering cocaine on an egg.

00:15:13.000 It's not compassion, it's cruelty.

00:15:15.000 Farmers will see more land sold to foreign buyers when taxes inevitably rise to meet our obligations.

00:15:19.000 Our children will be saddled with crippling debt.

00:15:21.000 Interest payments will be the largest item in our national budget.

00:15:23.000 These are all points that Vivek is making.

00:15:26.000 And then he suggested that people call their congressmen and tell them to reject the bill.

00:15:29.000 Here was Vivek yesterday.

00:15:30.000 Again, Vivek and Elon are the ones who are running Doge.

00:15:34.000 Congress is about to pass a bill that blows away your taxpayer money, but they made it over 1500 pages long so you wouldn't read it.

00:15:40.000 I did you a favor.

00:15:41.000 I read it for you.

00:15:42.000 It's supposed to be about keeping government operations open and providing disaster relief aid to hurricane victims, which I'm sympathetic to.

00:15:49.000 But if you read the bill carefully, it contains pay raises for members of Congress, and I'm not making this up, an expansion of their federal health benefits.

00:15:57.000 It contains all kinds of special interests and pork funding, including opening up a new stadium in Washington, D.C. It renews the Global Engagement Center, which is a key node of the censorship industrial complex.

00:16:09.000 And the worst part is, they didn't want you to know about any of it, and that's why they made this a last-minute jam job.

00:16:16.000 The reason I'm co-heading Doge is I think we need outsiders to bring actual accountability to Washington, D.C. So feel free to call your congressman and let him know how you feel about it.

00:16:25.000 So again, there's a bunch of stuff in the bill that is pretty terrible, including, for example, a short-term funding bill that includes more funding for the so-called Global Engagement Center, which is an organization, it's part of the State Department, that we at The Daily Wire are suing, right?

00:16:37.000 We don't want that organization to be in existence.

00:16:39.000 It is a terrible organization.

00:16:41.000 It basically works with groups like, for example, NewsGuard in order to target, quote-unquote, disinformation and suppress American speech.

00:16:49.000 So, I would very much like for that agency to disappear.

00:16:53.000 This bill, for example, keeps the agency alive.

00:16:55.000 And there's a bunch of stuff in the bill that is just like that.

00:16:58.000 A bunch of actual nonsense in the bill.

00:17:01.000 That is true.

00:17:02.000 And Vivek's doing his job.

00:17:03.000 And Elon is doing his job.

00:17:05.000 So Elon Musk then signed into chat.

00:17:07.000 And Elon really started ramming through all sorts of objections to the bill.

00:17:13.000 Which again, in his job as head of Doge, that's the job to do, is to look at the bills and say, here's all the pork, here's all the problems with the bill.

00:17:19.000 Some of the things he was saying were true and absolutely necessary.

00:17:22.000 Some of the things he was retreating were sort of not true.

00:17:25.000 So again, all sorts of bad stuff in there.

00:17:28.000 Potentially up to $2 billion in funding to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

00:17:32.000 $69,000 pay bump for lawmakers was suggested, but that's not actually real.

00:17:37.000 The thing that is actually happening in terms of the pay bump for lawmakers, just to be perfectly accurate as to what exactly is happening, the pay raise that is happening is a part of the cost of living adjustment freeze that is now being unfrozen.

00:17:50.000 So, members of Congress have not had a raise to their $174,000 salary since 2009. The pending CR does not include a colifreeze.

00:17:58.000 That would not result in a 40% boost in pay.

00:18:01.000 That would result in a potential 3.8% increase in pay thanks to cost of living adjustment from 2009 in terms of inflation.

00:18:08.000 It's an increase of about $6,600, not an increase of $69,000, as was implied by many of the people who are sort of putting out this information.

00:18:15.000 There was also some bad information put out suggesting that $3 billion in federal money would be put forward for a new NFL stadium in Washington.

00:18:21.000 That's not true.

00:18:22.000 The bill just transfers control of the site from the federal government to the D.C. local government for redevelopment.

00:18:28.000 So some of the stuff that was put out was not true, but a lot of it was.

00:18:32.000 I mean, there's a lot of bad nonsense that is in this particular bill.

00:18:35.000 And again, it is the job of Doge to go through all of those things.

00:18:38.000 However, this does create a rather large conflict because, once again, it is not as though Mike Johnson went about this deal by himself.

00:18:46.000 He was working with President Trump and J.D. Vance the whole time.

00:18:49.000 Okay, here was Johnson pointing this out.

00:18:52.000 He says, I was on the phone the entire time with Trump and with Elon.

00:18:56.000 I was in constant contact with President Trump and his team, the chief staff and all the domestic policy advisors.

00:19:02.000 They know exactly what we're doing and why.

00:19:04.000 And I was on a text chain last night with Elon and Vivek about Doge, because I'm super excited about that.

00:19:10.000 And I said, guys, these are the necessary things.

00:19:11.000 They don't like spending either.

00:19:13.000 They said, we know this is not you personally, Mr. Speaker, and we've got to get through this.

00:19:18.000 So, look, everybody understands the necessity.

00:19:20.000 It is not palatable.

00:19:21.000 This is the sausage-making part of legislation that nobody likes.

00:19:25.000 We're governing.

00:19:26.000 And we'll pick it up in January and start a brand new day for America.

00:19:30.000 Okay, again, that is the pragmatic side of the equation that we are talking about.

00:19:34.000 And it's not as though Trump was not involved.

00:19:37.000 It's not as though Johnson was sort of negotiating this thing on his own without any reference back to what Trump would want.

00:19:43.000 That would be a very stupid move by Johnson, frankly.

00:19:44.000 If he were to start go freelancing, making bills on his own, how's that going to go?

00:19:49.000 I mean, really?

00:19:50.000 And Johnson is not a stupid man.

00:19:51.000 You may not like Mike Johnson.

00:19:52.000 He's not stupid.

00:19:54.000 Okay, but here's Johnson saying, listen, this is the least of all the bad options.

00:19:57.000 Now, again, maybe that's not true.

00:19:59.000 Maybe he could get a better deal.

00:20:00.000 But that's a question of incremental better deal.

00:20:04.000 Okay, the reality is if you want all the things that you want to get in politics, you're going to have to give up a bunch of stuff that you don't particularly like.

00:20:10.000 And then it's just a question of that balance.

00:20:13.000 We've tried to navigate this as best as possible and chosen the least of the bad options in front of us.

00:20:19.000 No one wants to spend $110 billion, but when you have emergencies that are actually, you know, as they're legally called, acts of God, these are not man-made disasters.

00:20:29.000 They're outside of our control, and there's a certain principle that the federal government has some role to play.

00:20:34.000 So we don't like that.

00:20:35.000 We don't like spending money.

00:20:36.000 But in a case like this, you know, to be frank, it would be the red states that are left out.

00:20:41.000 It would be the rural areas.

00:20:43.000 Democrats don't have a big priority on the agriculture community because they don't have that in their districts.

00:20:47.000 These are Republican states and Republican districts, and we'd be derelict in our duty if we didn't take care of them.

00:20:53.000 So that's the part of this that is uncomfortable for people.

00:20:55.000 We don't like spending money, but we have to do it responsibly.

00:20:58.000 Okay, so Elon, of course, then saw the bill, and he had been apprised of the fact that a compromise had to be made, but he didn't like the actual compromise that was made.

00:21:06.000 So he started rage-tweeting about this yesterday.

00:21:08.000 And again, I agree with a huge number of his criticisms.

00:21:10.000 He called the bill criminal, an insane crime against the American people, an outrage, terrible, and madness.

00:21:15.000 I should point out at this point that for all the talk about the overspending in this particular CR, literally yesterday, the same day that this happened, the Senate passed a bill that's going to cost way more money than anything that we are talking about right now.

00:21:29.000 A Social Security bill passed the Senate that effectively pays more to public sector employees for Social Security that they wouldn't have got anyway.

00:21:38.000 The bill is quite properly opposed by Senator Rand Paul, who points out that the Social Security reforms are going to cost $200 billion.

00:21:45.000 Nobody's noting that.

00:21:46.000 And this part of the problem with sort of the eye of Sauron approach to federal debt and federal spending is that you can sporadically get interested in the thing that's on the table.

00:21:57.000 But in the meantime, something is happening in the back room that is that is really, really much worse.

00:22:02.000 The reality is the systemic drivers of debt in the United States of America are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and all the discretionary welfare programs attached to them.

00:22:11.000 And those are precisely the things that the Trump administration is very unlikely to tackle.

00:22:15.000 So some of this is just arguing over incremental differences in the national debt without touching the actual substructure that drives the national debt.

00:22:22.000 Again, that's not to say we shouldn't talk about discretionary spending.

00:22:25.000 We absolutely should.

00:22:26.000 It is just worth pointing out that...

00:22:28.000 There's sort of a whack-a-mole approach being taken to the national debt and all this.

00:22:32.000 Now, folks, if it feels like the government spends with one hand and then stops the spending with the other, that's because there's a lot of dishonesty constantly happening.

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00:24:37.000 That's balanceofnature.com, promo code SHAPIRO. Okay, so Elon goes off on this.

00:24:42.000 Elon suggests he is going to fund a primary for anyone who votes in favor of this bill.

00:24:48.000 And as soon as that happens...

00:24:50.000 Trump and Vance, President Trump and Vice President Vance, who, again, were part of the negotiation.

00:24:55.000 It's not as though they were absent from all of this talk.

00:24:58.000 They signed into the chat and they started to saw off the limb behind Speaker Johnson.

00:25:02.000 So they put out a statement that said, quote, The most foolish and inept thing ever done by congressional Republicans was allowing our country to hit the debt ceiling in 2025. It was a mistake and is now something that must be addressed.

00:25:12.000 Meanwhile, Congress is considering a spending bill that would give sweetheart provisions for government censors and for Liz Cheney.

00:25:17.000 The bill would make it easier to hide the records of the corrupt January 6th committee, which accomplished nothing for the American people and hid security failures that happened that day.

00:25:23.000 This bill would also give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas.

00:25:28.000 Increasing the debt ceiling is not great.

00:25:29.000 We'd rather do it on Biden's watch.

00:25:30.000 If Democrats won't cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration?

00:25:35.000 Let's have this debate now.

00:25:36.000 And we should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn't give Chuck Schumer and Democrats everything they want.

00:25:41.000 Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025. The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill without Democrat giveaways combined with an increase in the debt ceiling.

00:25:51.000 Anything else is a betrayal of our country.

00:25:53.000 Republicans must get smart and tough.

00:25:55.000 If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, call their bluff.

00:25:58.000 It is Schumer and Biden who are holding up aid to our farmers and disaster relief.

00:26:01.000 This chaos would not be happening if we had a real president.

00:26:03.000 We will in 32 days.

00:26:05.000 That is a statement that is pointed out jointly by President Trump and Vice President Vance.

00:26:09.000 So the options that are basically left on the table are these.

00:26:13.000 One, what they probably should have done in the first place, a clean continuing resolution without the Farm Bill, without the disaster aid.

00:26:18.000 Just put that forward, get through the first few weeks of the new year.

00:26:22.000 Trump's president, you have a Republican Congress, you have a Republican Senate, and now you can actually have an honest conversation about how Republicans should vote.

00:26:29.000 Remember, right now, Chuck Schumer is still in charge of the Senate, and Joe Biden is still the president of the United States.

00:26:34.000 But, again, it turns out that Trump, Vance, and Johnson don't actually want a clean continuing resolution.

00:26:41.000 So, President Trump put out a statement yesterday, quote, If Republicans try to pass a clean, continuing resolution without all of the Democrat bells and whistles that will be so destructive to the country, all it will do after January 20th is bring the mess of the debt limit into the Trump administration rather than allowing it to take place in the Biden administration.

00:26:56.000 Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this should and will be primaried.

00:27:00.000 Everything should be done and fully negotiated prior to my taking office on January 20th, 2025. So now, Trump and Vance are adding a new wrinkle.

00:27:06.000 They don't just want to pass the clean CR. They also want to pass an increase in the debt ceiling.

00:27:11.000 The debt ceiling is what allows the government, gives permission to the executive branch to go and take out more debt.

00:27:16.000 We have this debate every year, every six months in the Congress.

00:27:20.000 The increase in the debt ceiling, and usually that is used as a lever to get the government to spend less money by Republicans.

00:27:26.000 President Trump put out a statement saying, Also,

00:27:53.000 the Communist Global Engagement Center, a project of crooked Hillary Clinton, should not in any way, shape, or form be extended, and the shielding of the very corrupt J6 Unselect Committee of Political Losers and Thugs would be suicidal for a new Republican approving it. 0.54

00:28:03.000 Likewise, this is not a good time for Congress to be asking for pay increases.

00:28:06.000 Hopefully you'll be entitled to such an increase in the near future when we make America great again.

00:28:11.000 Okay, so, what exactly does all that mean?

00:28:13.000 It means that now, they are no longer asking just for a clean CR, which again, would have been the best plan.

00:28:19.000 Just get for a few more weeks of spending, that's it.

00:28:21.000 Get Trump in office, get the Republicans in office, and then negotiate all this stuff out.

00:28:25.000 President Trump would love for the debt ceiling to go away, so when he comes into office, Republicans can pass the new tax bill, for example, or pass a border bill, without having to worry about the debt ceiling.

00:28:35.000 So the question is this, how?

00:28:38.000 Again, this is where the principle and the pragmatism meet.

00:28:40.000 How?

00:28:41.000 How do you get all those things?

00:28:42.000 So, the only way you're going to get all those things is by, wait for it, giving concessions to Democrats because Republicans do not run the Senate.

00:28:49.000 Because Republicans probably don't have enough votes in the House to get something like that across the finish line.

00:28:54.000 There are a lot of Republicans who don't want to increase the debt ceiling and sort of sign a blank check.

00:28:59.000 Why exactly would Democrats vote to increase the debt ceiling to help Republicans in the future?

00:29:02.000 That doesn't make any sense.

00:29:03.000 They're not going to do that.

00:29:05.000 This idea that Democrats are desperate to increase the debt ceiling on behalf of Trump and the Republicans taking office, that is not how politics works.

00:29:12.000 And Democrats are already pointing this out.

00:29:14.000 So, for example, Chris Murphy, the execrable senator from Connecticut, Democrat, he put out a statement, quote, Remember what this is all about.

00:29:20.000 Trump wants Democrats to agree to raise the debt ceiling so he can pass his massive corporate and billionaire tax cut without a problem.

00:29:27.000 Shorter version, tax cut for billionaires or the government shuts down for Christmas.

00:29:31.000 So, Democrats are now opposing a clean continuing resolution.

00:29:36.000 House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries suggested Wednesday, Democrats will oppose any federal spending bill that strays from the deal that was announced the day before because they understand that they sort of have Republicans boxed in.

00:29:45.000 Politically speaking, what they believe is that if the government shuts down, Republicans will be blamed.

00:29:49.000 Why?

00:29:49.000 Because Republicans were perfectly willing to back the bipartisan deal until Elon Musk pointed out the flaws in the deal.

00:29:55.000 And then Donald Trump and J.D. Vance didn't like the public blowback on the deal and decided to walk back the deal.

00:30:00.000 And so Democrats are like, why would we help you out?

00:30:01.000 What exactly would be the purpose?

00:30:03.000 So, if there is a government shutdown, who will be blamed is sort of the question.

00:30:06.000 I think that on the right side of the aisle, there's a generalized perception that the left will be blamed.

00:30:11.000 That if Republicans, for example, pass a continuing resolution...

00:30:15.000 And still, somehow, are able to pass an increase in the debt ceiling, and then Democrats refuse all those things, Democrats will be blamed for the continuing resolutions failure.

00:30:25.000 Democrats will be blamed for the ensuing partial government shutdown.

00:30:28.000 Again, government shutdown in the end of the world.

00:30:29.000 We've done it before.

00:30:30.000 It's not that big a deal.

00:30:31.000 When I say it's not that big a deal, it is for the people who are furloughed, but typically they don't last all of that long.

00:30:36.000 And also, all of these sort of essential services, meaning social security checks, for example, those continue to go out on time.

00:30:42.000 So, what would the actual political result of this be?

00:30:45.000 Well, it would be a battle that President Trump would have to inherit immediately on taking office.

00:30:50.000 The next month, because it's still a month until he's president, the next month would be taken up with conversation in the media about why is the government shut down?

00:30:57.000 Why didn't Donald Trump just let the Republicans pass the continuing resolution?

00:31:01.000 Why are government workers not getting paid for Christmas?

00:31:03.000 And all the rest.

00:31:04.000 And maybe that makes no difference.

00:31:06.000 Maybe it turns out that Trump comes into office, passes some funding, and everything is hunky-dory.

00:31:11.000 Okay.

00:31:12.000 Great.

00:31:12.000 But that is the risk.

00:31:14.000 And so understanding that risk is, again, a question of pragmatism versus actual principle.

00:31:18.000 What does that risk look like?

00:31:20.000 But if President Trump is counting on Democrats to vote for an increase in the debt ceiling and Joe Biden to sign that in order to help him in his first year, I don't think that's going to happen.

00:31:30.000 So how far are Republicans going to take it?

00:31:32.000 And then, really, how far is Trump going to take it and own it?

00:31:36.000 How far will President Trump and J.D. Vance and Elon Musk take it and say, yes, we're the ones who said no to this bill because we thought that the extra pork was not worth the squeeze?

00:31:46.000 That's always how these government shutdown battles go.

00:31:48.000 They rarely result in exactly what Republicans would like them to result in.

00:31:52.000 And the question of who receives the blame, maybe it doesn't matter to Republicans, but in a very closely divided Congress where you have a bunch of members who are fighting for their seats.

00:32:00.000 Remember, Republicans are almost certainly going to lose seats in the Congress in 2026, which means they lose the majority in 2026. So there are a lot of Republican Congress people who are fighting for their seats who might not go along with any of this because, frankly, they don't want to be out of their jobs.

00:32:16.000 These are the complex dynamics of the politics.

00:32:19.000 Again, Democrats, I don't think are going to save Republicans from this one.

00:32:22.000 Democrat Jasmine Crockett, who is quite a terrible congresswoman, she's reveling in the Republican dysfunction. 1.00

00:32:28.000 What is happening in the House of Representatives?

00:32:33.000 Like, this was supposed to be just, you know, a pro forma exercise, they're gonna pass the CR, and it has turned into an usher debacle with people openly calling for Speaker Johnson to be thrown out of the Speaker's office.

00:32:46.000 How are Democrats looking at this?

00:32:50.000 Listen, we're looking at this like this is their problem.

00:32:53.000 We have seen this play out over and over in the entire two years that I've been in Congress.

00:32:57.000 We know that they had a problem picking a speaker when I first got to Congress, and I thought since they held on to the speaker a little bit longer than they held on to McCarthy, That I could go into January knowing that Mike Johnson would be the speaker, but now they're calling for his ouster.

00:33:12.000 And remember, this is not like one of the most senior members, right?

00:33:16.000 So basically, he had not burned enough bridges, and so they had to go way, way down in seniority to find someone that they could come to a consensus on.

00:33:25.000 We have seen this over and over, and I'm just going to sit back and sip my tea and wait on them to figure it out.

00:33:31.000 Or maybe sip something stronger.

00:33:33.000 I'm just saying it.

00:33:34.000 I mean, this is why you see Democrats are very, very happy about all this.

00:33:37.000 Now, why is any of this important?

00:33:38.000 In the end, some sort of continuing resolution will be passed.

00:33:41.000 In the end, the government is going to shut down forever.

00:33:43.000 Even if it lasts until President Trump becomes president and Republicans pass some sort of funding bill, it's going to get passed.

00:33:48.000 The reason this is important is because it is a good precursor to what the dynamic could be When Trump takes office.

00:33:54.000 When President Trump takes office.

00:33:56.000 And that could be a problem.

00:33:57.000 What you need is a Republican caucus that moves in almost machine-like fashion in order to promote its highest priorities.

00:34:04.000 They actually need to stick together, for example.

00:34:07.000 And that does mean that if Doge is making points from the outside and putting public pressure from the outside, it has to be on particular members on particular issues, not just shooting down pre-written legislation.

00:34:20.000 It depends.

00:34:21.000 I mean, if Doge is truly sort of an independent body who's going to be calling out everything, then maybe that's their job.

00:34:26.000 But that means that President Trump and J.D. Vance and team might have to push back against Doge from time to time.

00:34:31.000 That may not be the dynamic that they're looking for.

00:34:34.000 If you want President Trump's priorities to pass, there is going to be some stuff that you don't like because that is the necessity of pragmatic politics.

00:34:41.000 That is the reality.

00:34:43.000 And so the kind of dream of everybody being on the same page, that is not how incentive structures work.

00:34:47.000 In just one second, we'll get to the people who I think are fibbing about some of this.

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00:36:30.000 Now, again, there are a lot of people in my position in conservative media or in politics who I think there's always an interest in telling the public that if everyone were just more pure, that if Mike Johnson were just a stronger person, then you would have gotten everything you could possibly want.

00:36:46.000 And that's just...

00:36:48.000 I think the people who say this know that that's not true.

00:36:50.000 I think that they know that.

00:36:52.000 I think it is a form of demagoguery, frankly, to suggest that every politician who doesn't do everything that you want is doing it because they're some sort of sellout or cuck.

00:37:00.000 Sometimes they are.

00:37:01.000 But this idea that every single House Speaker of my lifetime has been a sellout or a cuck, and it's not just a matter of incentive structures, is wrong.

00:37:09.000 Thomas Sowell once suggested that the art of politics is not getting the right person in the right place.

00:37:13.000 It's making the wrong person do the right thing through incentive structures.

00:37:18.000 That is the whole goal.

00:37:19.000 If Republicans, for example, had a 40-seat majority in the House, rather than like a two-seat majority in the House, you'd be able to get a lot more done.

00:37:26.000 If Republicans were not on the verge of losing the House in 2026, you'd be able to get a lot more done.

00:37:32.000 If they controlled the Senate already, incentive structures mean an awful lot when it comes to politics.

00:37:37.000 And I know that that creates a lot of frustration for people who want to see their politicals done.

00:37:41.000 They want to see their priorities.

00:37:42.000 I get it.

00:37:43.000 I totally get it.

00:37:44.000 But the reason you have checks and balances in the United States, the reason that the processes are arcane, the reason you have coalitional politics, is because this is a big, unwieldy country.

00:37:52.000 And it requires a government that actually has to go through the motions of compromise.

00:37:56.000 And you don't get everything that you want all the time.

00:37:59.000 Now, I'm going to push for everything that I want.

00:38:01.000 I'm going to say that members who don't give me what I want ought to lose their primaries.

00:38:04.000 I'm also not going to suggest that the Speaker of the House, or Donald Trump for that matter, that their job is the same as my job.

00:38:12.000 Because it is not.

00:38:13.000 Their job is to get 70-80% of the loaf.

00:38:16.000 Because it turns out, the incentive structure still exists in government.

00:38:18.000 We still have checks and balances.

00:38:19.000 We still have another party in this country.

00:38:21.000 And if we don't like it, then we should vote out more Democrats.

00:38:24.000 That would be the actual solution to structural underlying change.

00:38:28.000 Again, there's this weird idea that goes about in Congress that just is really sort of distasteful.

00:38:33.000 Just get rid of John. 0.87

00:38:34.000 Just get rid of McCarthy. 0.91

00:38:35.000 Just get rid of Ryan. 0.98

00:38:36.000 Just get rid of Boehner.

00:38:36.000 Just get rid of anything.

00:38:37.000 And then everything will be hunky-dory.

00:38:39.000 It ain't gonna work that way.

00:38:40.000 It's not.

00:38:41.000 So Steve Bannon, who again, Steve is a very colorful figure for sure, but Steve is constantly on the sort of bandwagon of anyone I don't like is a cuck.

00:38:50.000 And so here is Steve Bannon now suggesting that Mike Johnson is a Democrat, which I'm sorry, that's just ridiculous.

00:38:56.000 It's just ridiculous on its face.

00:38:57.000 Mike Johnson is one of the most conservative members of the House by his career voting record.

00:39:02.000 But again, Steve always has an interest in suggesting that if you don't get what you want 100% of the time, it's because some politician has sold you down the river, has sold you out.

00:39:11.000 Which, this sort of game, I think, is pretty ugly.

00:39:17.000 Johnson's a Democrat.

00:39:19.000 He's a Democrat.

00:39:20.000 He holds the Bible.

00:39:22.000 He's got the New Testament wrapped up tight.

00:39:24.000 He can talk happy talk on a handful of social issues.

00:39:27.000 You know, checking his son's website.

00:39:29.000 I don't know.

00:39:30.000 All this crazy nonsense.

00:39:31.000 He does all that.

00:39:32.000 He goes down there.

00:39:33.000 He's a big, deep Christian.

00:39:36.000 Except when it comes to showing courage.

00:39:41.000 I'm sorry, that's gross.

00:39:42.000 Suggesting that Mike Johnson is not a committed Christian because he is not able to get more of the loaf that, by the way, Donald Trump wanted?

00:39:51.000 Again, this bill didn't emerge from nowhere.

00:39:53.000 This sort of stuff is pretty distasteful.

00:39:56.000 Thomas Massey, who again is very consistent in terms of wanting smaller government, but now he's blaming Mike Johnson.

00:40:01.000 And let's be clear about this.

00:40:02.000 Thomas Massey will never at any point be happy with any Speaker of the House because any Speaker of the House is going to have to do things that Thomas Massey does not like in the same way that Ron Paul was a purist about spending.

00:40:11.000 And it turned out that he never had a Speaker of the House that he liked.

00:40:15.000 Ron Paul also happened to kind of like bringing the pork back home to his own district.

00:40:18.000 But here's Thomas Massey.

00:40:20.000 I have a person in mind, but I'm not going to say that name.

00:40:23.000 Can you give us a hint for Christmas?

00:40:25.000 It is Christmas coming up.

00:40:27.000 Just a gift hint.

00:40:28.000 Just a little hint.

00:40:30.000 Kona, silence.

00:40:30.000 We'll keep it here.

00:40:31.000 I know in my family we always had one present you could unwrap on Christmas Eve.

00:40:36.000 Can that be ours?

00:40:37.000 No, this is not that present.

00:40:42.000 I tried, everybody.

00:40:43.000 I tried.

00:40:44.000 But listen, the reason I'm doing that is to protect that person.

00:40:47.000 Okay, that makes sense.

00:40:49.000 That makes sense.

00:40:49.000 Okay, I can promise you right now that anybody that Thomas Massey suggests is not going to speak to the House.

00:40:53.000 Not because they're a bad person or anything, just because, as I pointed out at the top of the show, look at that Republican caucus again, and you will notice there are many people who do not agree with Thomas Massey in that caucus.

00:41:04.000 It's a coalitional job.

00:41:06.000 Understanding the dynamics of politics allow for a little bit more...

00:41:11.000 I would say sanguinity when it comes to the ugliness of the sausage making.

00:41:15.000 I think so much of frustration in modern American politics is driven by people believing that if only there were people who were just committed enough to the principles, then magically all of my principles would manifest in real life.

00:41:28.000 People who sell you that bill of goods are lying to you.

00:41:30.000 And very often they're lying to you because they want to appear to be quote-unquote the most principled.

00:41:34.000 Let me be clear.

00:41:35.000 My spending principles are very, very similar to Thomas Massey's spending principles.

00:41:39.000 Yeah, I do not like spending.

00:41:41.000 I think spending is quite bad.

00:41:42.000 In fact, I think that we ought to completely restructure an enormous amount of the American entitlement state, which is something that the Trump administration is not going to do and is not interested in doing for electoral reasons.

00:41:52.000 Why?

00:41:52.000 Is that because Donald Trump loves Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid as they currently stand?

00:41:56.000 No, it's because he understands those are popular programs and touching them is a third rail.

00:42:00.000 Does that mean Trump is unprincipled?

00:42:01.000 No, it means he is a politician who's doing pragmatic things.

00:42:04.000 It's important to note this going forward because I promise you every single bill that Republicans bring while Trump is president are going to have compromises in them.

00:42:12.000 And if the basic idea is that every compromise is a sellout, And not an attempt to grab 70-80% of the loaf.

00:42:18.000 You're going to be a very unhappy camper with President Trump, which is unfair to President Trump.

00:42:22.000 It's unfair to J.D. Vance.

00:42:23.000 It's unfair to Mike Johnson.

00:42:25.000 They're in a different position than I am.

00:42:27.000 They're in a different position than Steve Bannon.

00:42:29.000 By the way, they're even in a different position than a normal congressperson whose job it is to vote their principal, and then all that gets hashed out by the leadership.

00:42:36.000 That's why the structure is the way that it is.

00:42:39.000 Okay.

00:42:39.000 By the way, this is why, in the end, you would hope President Trump has been going to UFC events with Mike Johnson.

00:42:46.000 They are not at odds.

00:42:48.000 This kind of idea that's now trying to be trotted out, that Johnson is the bad guy and all this, that Trump and Johnson are at odds, is not true.

00:42:56.000 Jamie Comer, who is one of the more conservative members of Congress, he says, listen, if it comes down to a fight with Johnson with regard to the speakership, Trump is going to back Johnson.

00:43:05.000 That is likely true, and it should be true, because who else is Trump going to find who's going to do better than Johnson on this?

00:43:12.000 I think the only way Mike Johnson does not get re-elected speaker is if Donald Trump came out and said he preferred someone else.

00:43:19.000 Then we'd have to go through the process again.

00:43:22.000 It's very difficult to get practically every member to agree because I think We could lose two votes on the speaker's race.

00:43:30.000 If two Republicans vote against whoever the speaker nominee is, then it can still pass.

00:43:36.000 If three vote against him, then it fails to get the minimum number.

00:43:40.000 So we've been through that before.

00:43:42.000 I don't think many of us want to go through that again.

00:43:44.000 So we'll see what happens.

00:43:46.000 But right now, I think because of President Trump's strong support, I think Mike Johnson will be reelected speaker.

00:43:53.000 You think so?

00:43:54.000 Maybe not.

00:43:54.000 Who knows?

00:43:55.000 Who knows?

00:43:57.000 Politics is a lot dirtier a game and a lot more complicated a game than I think a lot of people want to make it out to be.

00:44:02.000 Meanwhile, the House Ethics Committee is set to release its report on former Congressman Matt Gaetz this week.

00:44:07.000 That is a reversal for the panel.

00:44:09.000 According to the Washington Post, the last month voted along party lines not to release the results of the long-running investigation into Matt Gaetz.

00:44:16.000 That was a turnaround.

00:44:17.000 It was a culmination of a contentious debate over whether to release the report in the first place.

00:44:22.000 The 10-member panel actually voted to table the report after Trump named Gates his Attorney General pick, and then he submitted his resignation to Congress.

00:44:30.000 The Congress suggested, Speaker Johnson said, there's no need to release the report.

00:44:34.000 He's no longer a member of Congress.

00:44:36.000 However, that all sort of fell apart in the House Ethics Committee.

00:44:40.000 The House Ethics Committee then voted in order to release the report.

00:44:44.000 Matt Gates says that maybe he'll come back in and create a bit of havoc.

00:44:48.000 He's responded to the news about the release of the report.

00:44:51.000 Categorizing his own behavior as embarrassing but not criminal.

00:44:54.000 And then he suggested that perhaps he would come back into Congress because he retired from the current session.

00:44:59.000 That he might come back into Congress in order to dump out a bunch of other dirt on everybody else in Congress and then retire again.

00:45:06.000 So...

00:45:08.000 You know, it's never a dull day in Congress.

00:45:12.000 Joining me online is Kristen Wagner.

00:45:14.000 She serves as CEO, President and General Counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom.

00:45:18.000 And as censorship regimes rise all over the globe, ADF is launching a new litigation team called the Center for Free Speech.

00:45:24.000 Kristen, thanks so much for joining the show.

00:45:25.000 I really appreciate it.

00:45:26.000 Thanks for having me.

00:45:27.000 So let's talk about why you guys decided to launch the Center for Free Speech and what the mission is.

00:45:31.000 What are your first battles?

00:45:33.000 Well, our first battles are to defeat the censorship industrial complex.

00:45:37.000 Those are three big words, but they pack a powerful punch, and the Daily Wire's very aware of that, I know.

00:45:42.000 For many years, we've had the privilege of partnering with you as you've had different cases come up on campuses and defending rights on campuses to speak freely.

00:45:51.000 But more and more, we're seeing this insidious development of collusive Actors and government, private people colluding together to censor speech, and we're determined to use the tools at our disposal to stop it.

00:46:04.000 And I think that there's no greater moment and opportunity, but also no greater threat right now to where we're headed in the next season.

00:46:11.000 We have to take this on and take it on now.

00:46:14.000 It's pretty incredible to see how many states, left-wing states, particularly California, trying to crack down on elements that are clearly free speech.

00:46:21.000 You have a case in which you guys are representing the Babylon Bee because California is basically now trying to ban satire or parody, it seems.

00:46:30.000 And these are tools that we haven't seen states necessarily use in the past as such overt censorship.

00:46:35.000 So we have three cases right now that the center's already started on, which include laws that are trying to stop satire and parody like the Babylon Bee, but also even large platforms that are essentially turned into snitches on those who would post content that the government might disapprove of.

00:46:52.000 We also have a case right now involving stage publications where peer-reviewed, published articles that are used in litigation and in academic journals are being rolled back, essentially depublished in breach of contract in an attempt to censor views that the left ideologues don't like any longer.

00:47:11.000 In this particular case, the case involves chemical abortion drugs, and it happened during the chemical abortion cases.

00:47:17.000 But I just want to emphasize, I think that One piece of this is also just ensuring there's essentially transparency.

00:47:25.000 And as the Daily Wire sued the Global Engagement Center and the things that are happening in the Texas lawsuit, we need to have more of that because we're seeing the government fund censorship and then hide behind private actors to do its dirty work.

00:47:38.000 I mean, I think this is a really important point.

00:47:40.000 One of the things the government has been doing for a long time has been essentially using backdoor pressure to get private entities to engage in censorship.

00:47:48.000 So given the Supreme Court's ruling in the last term that, for example, the Biden administration pressuring Facebook to take down particular content didn't amount to a violation of free speech.

00:47:58.000 What do you make of that?

00:48:00.000 Do you think that that is going to change going forward?

00:48:03.000 What sort of violations do you think would be necessary in order to have that very broad-based judgment at least curbed around the edges?

00:48:11.000 I think that the facts matter.

00:48:13.000 You know that in terms of how a court's going to litigate a case.

00:48:16.000 And we just have to keep trying.

00:48:18.000 The one thing you have to do to litigate at the Supreme Court is have a lot of patience.

00:48:21.000 They move in incremental steps.

00:48:24.000 That ruling that you're referring to, Murthy, was based on standing.

00:48:27.000 And it essentially said there wasn't enough proof in the record to say that Facebook would have done these things on their own, that they wouldn't have done these things on their own, that they wouldn't have engaged in censorship on their own.

00:48:37.000 And there were a few other nuances to it.

00:48:39.000 But I think a case that's squarely presented will come back again.

00:48:43.000 And we intend to help bring those cases back to the court because as the dissent in the case continues, There is great danger here that the NRA case is another Supreme Court case that was in the same term where that direct coercion or collusion between the government and a private entity was more transparent and visible.

00:49:02.000 And in that case, the court said it was wrong.

00:49:04.000 So we've got to unearth this stuff.

00:49:06.000 We have to ensure that there's transparency through FOIAs and public records requests, and then we have to make them pay.

00:49:12.000 We have to ensure that the platforms that are engaging in this collusive relationship have a reputational cost and stake in place, but also that we're using all the legal tools we can to protect speech.

00:49:24.000 Well, that is Kristen Wagoner, she's CEO, President and General Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom.

00:49:28.000 They're doing amazing work.

00:49:28.000 You can go check out all that they do at adflegal.org.

00:49:32.000 Kristen, thanks so much for the time.

00:49:33.000 Really appreciate it.

00:49:34.000 Thank you.

00:49:35.000 All right, guys, coming up, the former CDC director Robert Redfield admits some things about the COVID vaccine.

00:49:40.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - December 19, 2024

Musk, Trump Team Up To KILL Pork Bill

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