The Ben Shapiro Show - August 13, 2026


My Picks for the Next White House Press Secretary

Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Trump Alex Jones Caroline Levitt Steve Schenck Michael Malice Legacy Box Mary Margaret Olihan Karine Jean-Pierre Scott Jennings Salman Rushdie Damn Netanyahu Liz Wheeler Cenk Uyghur Sneeko
Look at This Before You Attack Capitalism The Surrogacy Dispute Tearing Reproductive Ethics Apart

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

207.71

Word count

1,904

Sentence count

158

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

19

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 There's no question Caroline Levitt has been very, very good at her job. 0.82
00:00:02 The White House will be worse for the wear without her.
00:00:05 There's some talk about who exactly is going to take over next.
00:00:07 And I have an off the board pick that might surprise certain of you.
00:00:11 It will definitely increase the ratings.
00:00:12 Plus, we have the latest on the White House press corps freaking out about President Trump's 007 plane switch maneuver.
00:00:19 Caroline Levitt is stepping down as press secretary.
00:00:23 She put out a statement saying, Serving as the White House press secretary over the past year and a half has been the honor and adventure of a lifetime.
00:00:28 I'm incredibly grateful to President Trump for granting me so many extraordinary opportunities, such as working in the West Wing and spending countless hours in the Oval Office.
00:00:35 Flying around the world and meeting foreign leaders and traveling across our beautiful country and meeting Americans from all walks of life.
00:00:41 She says, Being a mother and welcoming a new baby while working in one of the most demanding jobs in the world has been the most rewarding yet challenging season in my life, to say the least.
00:00:48 The truth is, since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House press secretary.
00:00:58 And that is why I have ultimately made the bittersweet decisions to depart the White House and embark on a new chapter in my life.
00:01:02 It's good for her.
00:01:03 I mean, she's saying that she wants to spend more time with her kids.
00:01:05 And I actually believe that she wants to spend more time with her kids.
00:01:07 It's not like when a football coach quits and says he wants to spend more time with his kids, which very often just means he wants to spend more time with his mistress.
00:01:14 I think that she actually means that. 0.73
00:01:16 It turns out that for a lot of working women, they like taking time off when they have kids. 0.99
00:01:20 My wife has done it multiple times. 1.00
00:01:22 Even now, she's taking time off because new baby. 0.98
00:01:25 Apparently, she's going to continue serving as a top advisor to President Trump on the outside.
00:01:30 She says, Our country is facing an existential threat from an increasingly extremist Democrat party that seeks to destroy everything great about America.
00:01:36 I believe it's incumbent upon all of us who care about this country to fight back against.
00:01:40 My fight is entering a new phase, but it is far from over.
00:01:40 That threat.
00:01:42 Okay, so a lot of talk about who exactly is going to be the next press secretary.
00:01:46 The president put out a very nice statement championing Caroline Lovett.
00:01:52 He says that she's been one of the best White House press secretaries in the history of the office.
00:01:55 She is very good at her job.
00:01:56 There's no question that she's been very good at her job.
00:01:58 Like the number of sort of.
00:02:00 She wasn't memeable the way that, say, Corinne Jean Pierre was, the worst press secretary in history. 0.68
00:02:07 She did a good job defending the president's policies in calm and measured fashion.
00:02:11 Honestly, very, very good at her job.
00:02:13 So, there's some talk about who's going to take over next.
00:02:15 Stephen Chung has been mentioned.
00:02:16 He, of course, is very active in the White House press office.
00:02:18 He's a top official over there.
00:02:20 Again, Stephen is very articulate, but I doubt he's quite the look that President Trump is looking for.
00:02:24 The president likes putting attractive faces from Fox News on the air.
00:02:29 So, you know, I think there's a shot for maybe a Liz Wheeler or somebody like that in that spot. 0.93
00:02:36 Mary Margaret Olihan, honestly, who is one of our reporters.
00:02:38 So, it's kind of a shift in job, but she's very camera friendly.
00:02:41 She's very articulate, obviously, very up on policy.
00:02:44 I hope that the president doesn't offer that a job because we need her.
00:02:47 As an actual White House press correspondent, not working for the White House, but MMO is very good at her job.
00:02:52 Michael Moles would be an amazing press secretary, honestly.
00:02:54 And that's not just my attempt to get him off our payroll, which, you know, I've been trying that for like 10 years.
00:02:59 But actually, Michael is really good at handling the press.
00:03:03 He would stay calm.
00:03:04 He's very, you know, sort of clever.
00:03:07 He likes the repartee.
00:03:08 It's almost Knowles' ideal job.
00:03:10 So, you know, that'd be amusing.
00:03:13 Watching Knowles play with the press would be fun.
00:03:15 Some other names.
00:03:16 Scott Jennings has been discussed.
00:03:17 I don't think Scott would be great at it.
00:03:19 I don't think Scott's going to do it from CNN.
00:03:22 And my off the board pick for most amusing White House press secretary, Alex Jones.
00:03:30 I would pay money for it.
00:03:31 Again, I think Alex Jones is just a nut job who believes a wide variety of either crazy or terrible things.
00:03:40 But Alex Jones mocking the press would be legitimately one of the great spectacles in the history of American politics. 0.53
00:03:46 Like Alex Jones doing to the press what he did to Sneeko is crossing his eyes and screaming at the top of his lungs while ripping his shirt off.
00:03:54 It would be must see TV.
00:03:56 So, if the president wants ratings, I highly suggest he hires Alex Jones as his press secretary.
00:04:01 We'll get to more on this in just a moment.
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00:05:04 Anyway, speaking of that White House press corps, the president obviously took significant precautions when he made a trip to Turkey last month.
00:05:12 When he left Turkey, he did not take Air Force One or backup Air Force One.
00:05:15 He took a third airplane because of alleged threats to his life.
00:05:19 Apparently, that intelligence came from Israel, which of course means that it must be that Israel is making up the idea that Iran wants to kill President Trump. 0.81
00:05:29 This is, of course, Cenk Uyghur, who, why he was ever allowed to become a citizen is beyond me, but you know. 0.74
00:05:36 Again, not great, Bob. 0.98
00:05:37 Anyway, he says, Guess where we got the bullshit intelligence about how Iran might assassinate Trump? 0.99
00:05:41 Nicaragua, joking, obviously, Israel. 0.99
00:05:43 All of their intelligence is always designed to get us to attack their enemies and is never true. 0.90
00:05:48 So, first of all, the president didn't have to believe them.
00:05:52 I mean, the American intelligence didn't have to believe that assessment.
00:05:56 And also, like, let's say that Israel got that intel.
00:05:58 Do you think that, how would it work out if Israel did not pass that intel because they put it at low confidence?
00:06:03 And then there was an actual attempt on the president's life.
00:06:05 How'd that go counter, you know, sort of counterfactually?
00:06:08 I mean, it is weird that Israel would say that Iran wants to kill Trump, considering they constantly want to kill Trump and say so openly and put up giant placards in the middle of Tehran claiming that they want to murder the president.
00:06:20 It is, I mean, it is a mystery wrapped in enigma how that intelligence would come to be.
00:06:25 Here's a quick montage of Iranian officials claiming that they would like to kill the president. 0.91
00:06:31 IRGC member saying there are a bunch of poor soldiers and killing them was not our goal. 1.00
00:06:39 We got a willing name to kill Trump. 0.99
00:06:42 The sources of religious authority have sanctioned the killing of that filthy creature, as one of the Ayatollahs. 0.98
00:06:50 But we must not let it become like the Imam's fatwa about Salman Rushdie, which ultimately was not carried out. 0.76
00:06:56 He got stabbed in the eye.
00:06:56 I mean, it was.
00:06:58 How come nobody is talking about blood vengeance, says an Iranian commentator?
00:07:03 The people have a right to this.
00:07:04 We have an eye for an eye in Islam. 1.00
00:07:08 Mr. Trump and Damn Netanyahu should know that they are murderers. 1.00
00:07:17 He committed murder, and the Islamic Republic has the right to kill him. 1.00
00:07:19 Yeah, it's a mystery. 0.93
00:07:21 How could anyone have come up with the conclusion that they might have actually wanted to kill Trump?
00:07:25 I mean, they're so subtle about it.
00:07:28 The president responded to the threats on his life, and here's what he had to say No, not surprised.
00:07:34 I have a lot of threats.
00:07:35 I have a lot of threats that you don't know about.
00:07:38 Any consequential president has a lot of threats.
00:07:42 Non consequential presidents don't get threatened.
00:07:45 And I think that I. Maybe the most consequential president.
00:07:51 There's nobody who's done more than me in a period of almost six years.
00:07:55 There's nobody.
00:07:58 So he is right about that. 0.98
00:08:01 He also commented on trusting Iran.
00:08:03 And, you know, again, there's all this talk about is he going to make a deal?
00:08:06 Is a deal in the offing? 0.83
00:08:07 And at the very least, the president at this point should know and apparently does that, you know, Iran is not the most trustworthy counterparty. 0.95
00:08:15 I don't trust Iran. 0.99
00:08:16 Why? 0.99
00:08:17 Are you saying I trust Iran? 0.93
00:08:19 I'm the last person that trusts Iran. 0.95
00:08:21 They've lied to me constantly. 1.00
00:08:22 We have total control over the Harmo Strait right now.
00:08:27 They don't have control.
00:08:28 We have total control.
00:08:29 We own it.
00:08:30 And at some point, maybe they'll do something and then they get blown away.
00:08:34 But we, right now, we're in a very good position. 1.00
00:08:37 We have a country that has been the bully of the Middle East for 50 years. 1.00
00:08:43 It's really 51 if you think about it, right? 1.00
00:08:45 We've been saying 47 for four years. 0.92
00:08:48 And they're no longer the bully of the Middle East.
00:08:50 Thank you very much, everybody.
00:08:54 Well, you know, again, I hope that the president keeps that in mind as he moves forward.
00:09:00 Along these lines.
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