The Ben Shapiro Show - NBA Player RELEASED For Expressing Traditional Christianity

00:00:00.000 Folks, here are some things you can do and still not get waived from your team in the NBA.

00:00:06.000 You can wield the gun while drunk at a strip club. 0.50

00:00:09.000 You can knock up every woman in a four-mile radius of every NBA stadium. 1.00

00:00:13.000 You can get arrested for alleged felony assault after concussing and strangling your girlfriend.

00:00:18.000 What is the one thing you absolutely positively cannot do, especially during Holy Week?

00:00:23.000 I'll explain in a moment.

00:00:24.000 Welcome back to the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:34.000 All right, so Jaden Ivey, NBA guard out of Purdue.

00:00:37.000 He used to score about 17 points, grab 4.9 rebounds as a sophomore.

00:00:41.000 So he was drafted fifth overall in 2022 by the Detroit Pistons.

00:00:46.000 He posted 16 points and five assists and four rebounds in his rookie year.

00:00:46.000 He's a good player.

00:00:51.000 And then in his second season, he scored 16 points per game.

00:00:54.000 And then he was up to almost 18 points per game.

00:00:56.000 And he got hurt in his third season.

00:00:58.000 And then he was traded to the Chicago Bulls.

00:01:00.000 And that is where the trouble began.

00:01:02.000 So this week, Jaden Ivey posted a video about the NBA's Pride Month.

00:01:07.000 This, of course, is the month where the NBA and pretty much all the NBA teams have nights dedicated to LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign. 0.81

00:01:15.000 And Jaden Ivey got himself in trouble because he posted on Instagram a video talking about NBA's Pride Month.

00:01:21.000 He is a converted, newly religious Christian.

00:01:26.000 They proclaim Pride Month and the NBA.

00:01:30.000 They proclaim it.

00:01:34.000 They show it to the world.

00:01:36.000 They say, come, come, come, join us for Pride, for Pride Month to celebrate unrighteousness.

00:01:48.000 They proclaim it.

00:01:52.000 So that seems like fairly traditional Christian belief right there that you should not actually celebrate pride in what is considered a sin by the vast majority of the religious world.

00:02:04.000 Well, the immediate response of the Chicago Bulls was to can him.

00:02:07.000 They announced that they had waived him due to conduct detrimental to the team.

00:02:12.000 Apparently, it was very, very bad for the team that he put out an Instagram video proclaiming the same thing that churches all over the country say all the time.

00:02:22.000 The Chicago Bulls had coach Billy Donovan was asked about all of this.

00:02:26.000 It was suggested that Ivy seems to be spiraling. 0.92

00:02:28.000 Now, Ivy has reported depression in the past.

00:02:31.000 It is unclear whether he's in the midst of some sort of mental issue or not.

00:02:37.000 But if you're going to cite evidence of a mental issue, this is not the best evidence.

00:02:41.000 And him just saying traditional religious belief that you shouldn't celebrate pride in what is considered a sin, that is not a spiral.

00:02:50.000 Here was the Bulls head coach trying to explain.

00:02:53.000 I know some of the things that were put out there.

00:02:57.000 You know, I think it's a situation for him where, you know, it's on his own personal Instagram.

00:03:03.000 I don't want to get into what he put out there, but certainly I hope for him, you know, he's okay.

00:03:10.000 I don't know, you know, like I've had conversations with Jaden and stuff, and he's been always about who he has me and trying to bribe and want to play.

00:03:19.000 But I think organizationally, there's certain standards I think we want to have as an organization to try to move up to those each and every day.

00:03:27.000 So, again, not a ringing rebuke there from the coach.

00:03:32.000 Nonetheless, the Bulls let him go because, of course, you cannot say anything that violates the precept of full-scale wokeness on these sorts of issues.

00:03:41.000 So, Jaden Ivey then went to Instagram Live to defend himself.

00:03:44.000 He was at the airport.

00:03:46.000 They said my conduct is detrimental to the team, right?

00:03:51.000 Why didn't they just say we don't agree with his stance on LGBTQ?

00:03:57.000 Why didn't they say that?

00:03:59.000 How is it conduct detrimental to the team?

00:04:01.000 What did I do to the team?

00:04:03.000 What did I do to the players?

00:04:05.000 I did nothing but practice with them, play with them, pass the ball to them, good teammate to them.

00:04:11.000 Said, good job, good shot.

00:04:16.000 I said, good job, good job, good pass, way to play, bro.

00:04:21.000 Right?

00:04:22.000 I said these things to my teammates.

00:04:25.000 It was never detrimental to them.

00:04:28.000 So why is it that the NBA and the Chicago Bulls say that I'm detrimental to the team?

00:04:33.000 How?

00:04:35.000 Because I believe in the truth?

00:04:38.000 Because I know Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

00:04:43.000 I mean, again, he has a point.

00:04:46.000 The team could have just said, we disagree with his comments.

00:04:48.000 Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

00:04:50.000 By the way, in the UFC, this happens all the time.

00:04:52.000 And Tana White routinely says this about people that he disagrees with in the UFC who say things that are actually quite morally bad.

00:04:59.000 And he will say, you know, you're allowed to say what you want to say.

00:05:02.000 I disagree with it, but it's not my job to sort of police the speech of other people.

00:05:06.000 But the Bulls just cut Ivy. 1.00

00:05:08.000 They just waived him, which is kind of incredible.

00:05:10.000 Well, Ivy also went off on Steph Curry. 1.00

00:05:12.000 And the reason he's going off on Steph Curry is because Steph Curry is frequently brought up by critics of traditional Christianity in the league, apparently, as sort of the example of what Christianity should look like.

00:05:22.000 Meaning that you sort of cite the vaguest verses from the Bible while ignoring actual sort of traditional moral practice.

00:05:29.000 So here is Ivy talking about Steph Curry. 1.00

00:05:33.000 That's why you got Steph Curry and he not even surrendered.

00:05:36.000 And y'all believe he's a Christian.

00:05:39.000 Y'all believe he's a Christian because he wrote Philippians 4.13.

00:05:44.000 Y'all think he's a Christian.

00:05:49.000 But he's cursing just like the world.

00:05:51.000 We are not about Freddy Sigo, so please take your seats back to your Tico.

00:05:54.000 Friendship with the world is enmity with God.

00:05:56.000 He's friendship with the world.

00:05:58.000 He don't know Jesus.

00:06:00.000 And I pray he comes to the truth.

00:06:04.000 That him and his family would be saved in Jesus' name.

00:06:06.000 Because all that stuff is not going to matter on Judgment Day.

00:06:09.000 All them rings he got.

00:06:13.000 Now, again, I'm just wondering precisely what Ivy said here that merits being waived. 1.00

00:06:20.000 I mean, let's be real about this.

00:06:22.000 If he were saying the opposite, that Pride Night is the best. 0.89

00:06:24.000 In fact, if he came out as gay today, he would be celebrated by the league.

00:06:27.000 He'd be touted as one of the most important basketball players alive if that happened.

00:06:32.000 The NBA has a political bent, without doubt, and they are putting at risk an entire Christian audience and traditionalist audience that look at this and say, hold up.

00:06:40.000 You get waived for saying that you don't believe that Pride Night ought to be celebrated?

00:06:45.000 Not even because you did anything wrong, just because you said that you don't agree with the league's stance on these issues.

00:06:52.000 Back in January 2025, Ivy talked about how he had become a Christian.

00:06:56.000 He sort of explained the story.

00:06:58.000 And again, here he was giving his testimony.

00:07:02.000 My testimony is that, you know, when you're away from Jesus, when you're not, when you're not close to him, and when you have a relationship with him, you're going to, like, Satan is there.

00:07:19.000 He wants to just steal, kill, and destroy.

00:07:21.000 That's all he comes here to do. 0.99

00:07:23.000 He doesn't want to give you peace.

00:07:26.000 He wants to make your life hell.

00:07:28.000 And that's what I dealt with, you know, most of my life.

00:07:32.000 And when I came to know Jesus, my life, my life ain't like did a whole 360.

00:07:41.000 And I have that peace.

00:07:42.000 I have that joy that I've been searching for my entire life.

00:07:51.000 Now, again, recall that the NBA had to have an entire controversy engulf it surrounding whether they should have a night honoring a strip club in Atlanta.

00:08:00.000 Remember this.

00:08:01.000 And that required the NBA to actually step in after weeks of consternation about whether or not that should happen.

00:08:07.000 But apparently, the minute you sound off and you say, hey, Pride Night, it's got some connotations that are anti-Christian.

00:08:13.000 The minute you say that, gone.

00:08:16.000 That's an insane tactic from a league that wants to maximize its fan base, not minimize it.

00:08:21.000 And again, during Holy Week for Christians, it's a kind of astonishing stance by the league.

00:08:26.000 I'm hopeful that some other team will give Jaden Ivey another chance.

00:08:31.000 Because man, the Chicago Bulls really screwed up here in a major, major way.

00:08:35.000 In just a second, we'll get to a domestic terror attack as we now know that it was not only a terror attack, but a foreign-driven terror attack.

00:08:42.000 And we'll get to the latest on the war in Iran.

00:08:44.000 Plus, Bishop Barron will stop by to talk about the Pope and about Holy Week first.

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00:09:59.000 This breaking news, by the way, is brought to you by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

00:10:03.000 Visit benforthefellowship.org.

00:10:05.000 So speaking of breaking news, yes, there are, in fact, internationally driven terrorists who are living among us.

00:10:11.000 They're living in the United States. 0.64

00:10:12.000 They're ready to commit acts of violence against Americans. 0.68

00:10:16.000 There's new information that is now emerging about a terrorist named Ayman Khazali.

00:10:20.000 That would be the radical Muslim who attacked the Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan on March 12th.

00:10:25.000 So according to 6 ABC, apparently, Ghazali 41 of Dearborn Heights sat in the parking lot for a few hours on March 12th before smashing his pickup through closed doors and into the hallway of an early childhood education area, striking a security guard.

00:10:40.000 And then he exchanged gunfire with another guard and then he shot himself.

00:10:44.000 That's what the FBI said at the time.

00:10:45.000 That Ford F-150 was stocked with commercial-grade fireworks and jugs of gasoline.

00:10:49.000 And of course, it caught fire during the confrontation.

00:10:52.000 Well, here is the FBI's Jennifer Runyon, the head of the Detroit Bureau, describing the video that Ghazali left before the attack, in which he basically acknowledges full scale that he is a member of Hezbollah, or at least an adjunct member of Hezbollah.

00:11:08.000 Approximately 10 minutes before the attack, he sends his sister two final videos.

00:11:13.000 In Arabic, he records himself saying with this screenshot, this is the largest gathering of Israelis in the state of Michigan, in the United States.

00:11:22.000 I have booby trapped the car. 0.99

00:11:24.000 I will forcibly enter and start shooting them. 1.00

00:11:27.000 God willing, I will kill as many of them as I possibly can. 1.00

00:11:32.000 He sends a quick three-second video with the same screenshot shortly after and types the message, a special operation. 0.99

00:11:41.000 Now, again, we know that his siblings in Lebanon were, in fact, members of Hezbollah.

00:11:47.000 Remember, the entire media on the left and some people on the horseshoe right reported that he was only doing this because his family had somehow been victimized in Lebanon.

00:11:55.000 His family were literal members of a terrorist group.

00:11:59.000 James Gorgon, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, he says, listen, this was not some guy who was self-radicalized or something.

00:12:05.000 He was a Hezbollah agent.

00:12:09.000 Do not be misled.

00:12:11.000 This terrorist acted on behalf of Hezbollah. 0.87

00:12:15.000 And he intended to kill others, not just himself. 0.93

00:12:19.000 He could have done that in a garage or in his basement. 0.96

00:12:25.000 He did not need to plan for days, arm himself, and try to take dozens of Jewish American children with him. 0.99

00:12:35.000 His death was just a means or a tool to kill as many Jews as he could. 0.99

00:12:42.000 That's why his last statements were that he was on a special operation to kill as many of them as he possibly can. 0.97

00:12:52.000 As Gorgon expressed, it's not that Ghazali was some sort of lone wolf, that he was just reading stuff on the internet. 0.64

00:12:56.000 He was an actual adjunct member of Hezbollah.

00:12:59.000 And Hezbollah is an Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group that has been targeting Israel for destruction for literally decades.

00:13:06.000 They're also responsible for the murder of hundreds of Americans back during the Beirut barracks bombing in the early 1980s.

00:13:12.000 Here is Gorgon saying that Khazali was not, in fact, a lone wolf.

00:13:15.000 He was a terrorist living on American soil, and we allowed him to enter. 1.00

00:13:20.000 I've seen some odd attempts to explain away or even lessen this terrorist attack by claiming that he was an isolated lone wolf.

00:13:33.000 But that is misleading.

00:13:36.000 Terrorist propaganda is designed to activate the so-called lone wolf to act on behalf of the terrorist organization. 0.91

00:13:46.000 And it makes no legal difference if the current leader of Hezbollah himself, Naeem Qasem, called this man and told him to attack Temple Israel, or whether he simply heeded Hezbollah's call to kill Jews and, in his words, burn their world. 0.50

00:14:07.000 Again, this is exactly right. 0.96

00:14:08.000 We need fewer people immigrating to America who are terrorists. 0.99

00:14:11.000 I know this may be controversial to some, but I don't know.

00:14:13.000 I feel like that one is pretty commonsensical.

00:14:16.000 We also could use fewer elected officials who agree with actual honest to God terrorists.

00:14:21.000 So, this person, this terrorist, came from Dearborn, Michigan. 0.96

00:14:24.000 Michigan, of course, has a very, very large radical Muslim population. 0.77

00:14:27.000 One of those radical Muslims is a man named Abdul El-Sayed.

00:14:31.000 He is a candidate in Michigan.

00:14:34.000 And according to the Washington Free Beacon, he said they've discovered audio of him saying that he needed to stay silent about the killing of Ali Khamenei, who would be the leader of the Iranian regime.

00:14:46.000 He literally told staffers he didn't want to say anything about it at all because there were too many people in Dearborn who were sad about it.

00:14:54.000 In fact, here is the audio of Abdul El-Sayed admitting full scale that Dearborn, again, this is a major city in the United States, is distraught over the killing of the leader of a terrorist regime responsible for the death of hundreds, if not thousands of Americans over the last 47 years.

00:15:13.000 Again, this guy is running for Senate.

00:15:15.000 Here he was.

00:15:17.000 I also want to remind you guys that there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today.

00:15:22.000 So like, I just don't want to comment on Khamani Khamenei at all.

00:15:28.000 I don't think it's worth even touching that.

00:15:31.000 Like, they're going to try, this is what we practice, but like, isn't Is Al Khamenei a bad guy?

00:15:35.000 Isn't it great that he's dead?

00:15:36.000 Well, my first amendment was 86 years old. 0.70

00:15:38.000 He was going to be dead sometime soon anyway.

00:15:40.000 Second, that doesn't justify the fact that he was a bad man does not justify our breaking of international law and unilateral action outside of wartime.

00:15:49.000 Like, this is a bigger question about the United States' responsibility to international law, and we have been breaking it wantonly.

00:15:55.000 This is the second leader that we've gone after in a matter of months.

00:15:59.000 We are not the world's policeman, and that's not what he got elected to do with.

00:16:03.000 Okay, but again, the key there is him saying that people in Dearborn are sad. 0.91

00:16:07.000 Who the hell? 0.95

00:16:08.000 Do you want in America who is literally sad over Khomeini's death, like truly sad over the killing of this terror master and murderer? 0.98

00:16:17.000 And then, again, this tape is pretty astonishing, and kudos to the Free Beacon for uncovering it. 0.93

00:16:23.000 Abdul El-Syed, who again is likely to be the Senate nominee in Michigan for the Democrats, he says that if somebody brings up Khomeini or if somebody brought up the sadness in Dearborn over Khomeini, that he would just misdirect over to pedophilia and claim that President Trump is a pedophile, basically.

00:16:39.000 Understand the op.

00:16:40.000 Understand the op.

00:16:42.000 And the grievance party, meaning people from Abdul El-Syed to the Tucker Carlson right, who all wink hands in this sort of stuff, they are using exactly the same tactics.

00:16:50.000 And those tactics, by the way, are being promoted by Iran directly.

00:16:53.000 You have literally the foreign minister of Iran who is doing what Abdul El-Syed is doing, saying that the United States is violating international law.

00:17:01.000 And by the way, Epstein, it is an op, meaning it is not a normal thing that normal people do. 0.90

00:17:06.000 It is being driven top down by engagement whores and by actual dedicated anti-Americans, many of whom are inside America's borders. 0.98

00:17:15.000 This guy is going to likely be the Michigan Senate Democrat candidate. 0.99

00:17:19.000 Insane.

00:17:21.000 They are going to go super hard on trying to get you to sympathize with the regime.

00:17:28.000 Like, that's what the conservatives and even some of our moderate enemies are going to try to get you to do.

00:17:34.000 And I can say, I've got no love lost for the ISO media, just like I've got no love lost for Donald Trump's best friend, Mohammed bin Sadaz.

00:17:42.000 I've got no love lost for any of them.

00:17:43.000 You know who I care about?

00:17:44.000 People back home in Michigan who still struggle to afford their groceries and their housing.

00:17:49.000 Those problems are bigger than Donald Trump, and he's unwilling to actually address them.

00:17:55.000 And I'm just going to go straight to pedophilia, frankly.

00:17:57.000 I should be like, President Pride decides that he doesn't like the front page news, so he decides to take us into another war.

00:18:02.000 There was a time when you all were talking about America first.

00:18:06.000 This seems to be to be America last.

00:18:10.000 Amazing.

00:18:11.000 Now, El Syed is currently engaged, as we say, in a hotly contested Senate primary.

00:18:11.000 Amazing.

00:18:15.000 He is campaigning with sleazy limousine communist Hassan Piker.

00:18:19.000 So, according to the New York Times, Abdul El-Syed is meeting with Piker and doing a rally with Piker.

00:18:27.000 Well, Piker's huge young following has made him an appealing ally for progressive Democrats.

00:18:31.000 Some have called Mr. Piker the Joe Rogan of the left.

00:18:34.000 And people have pointed out that Hassan Piker is an insane radical who says the United States deserved 9-11, supports a wide variety of communist dictatorships, a wide variety of Islamic terror groups.

00:18:46.000 The New York Times asked him about all of this, and he responded, why is it only now that people are getting very frustrated by it?

00:18:51.000 I assume it's because there is a power center in the party that is worried about losing its grip, losing its relevancy. 1.00

00:18:57.000 Well, I mean, listen, if Democrats want to keep embracing the radicalism and the stupid, and yes, the anti-Semitism, because Hassan Piker, all he does, he does a stupid game. 1.00

00:19:05.000 His stupid game is he means to say Jew and he just says Zionist. 1.00

00:19:08.000 That's all. 1.00

00:19:09.000 That's his game.

00:19:11.000 In any case, podcaster Jonah Platt, he pointed this out on CNN, and he is not wrong.

00:19:17.000 What Piker does that a lot of people of his ilk do is they try to inoculate themselves against claims of Jew hatred by pointing it out in places that aren't them.

00:19:28.000 He's been very clear pointing things out on the right.

00:19:30.000 Oh, that's anti-Semitism.

00:19:32.000 These are the tropes they use.

00:19:34.000 And then he'll use the exact same tropes and just sub-Jew for Israel.

00:19:40.000 Yeah, that happens to be correct.

00:19:42.000 That happens to be correct.

00:19:43.000 Well, coming up, we'll get to the latest in Iran, what's happening over there, plus Cuba.

00:19:47.000 Plus, Bishop Barron and Arthur Brooks are stopping by.

00:19:49.000 So, a lot going on today.

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00:21:01.000 Okay, so back to the Middle East.

00:21:03.000 Where do things stand right now?

00:21:04.000 Well, according to Channel 14, in Israel, they have now obtained an exchange between the Iranian president Mahmoud Pazeshkian and the IRGC's Ahmed Vahidi.

00:21:14.000 Pazeshkian would be the quote-unquote moderate in this scenario.

00:21:16.000 And Vahidi, of course, is a radical.

00:21:18.000 He's the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

00:21:20.000 Those are the quote-unquote hardliners.

00:21:21.000 So Pazeshkian apparently said, quote, I want to be involved in the negotiations with the U.S. Without a quick deal, our entire economy will collapse in three weeks.

00:21:28.000 So first of all, that is accurate.

00:21:30.000 They do not have an economy.

00:21:32.000 This is the great worry of the Iranians right now.

00:21:34.000 Right now, they're still being allowed to move oil out of Iran to the tune of a couple of million barrels of oil per day.

00:21:40.000 If that stops, their economy does not exist.

00:21:43.000 It does not exist.

00:21:44.000 The IRGC chief, Vahidi, he said, that's exactly why you can't be involved.

00:21:48.000 You'll give up everything for a deal, which shows you where the IRGC is.

00:21:52.000 Apparently, according to Channel 14 in Israel, after the call ended, the report says the Iranian president told his companions he feels like a hostage, quote, I'm unable to resign.

00:22:00.000 I can't make my own decisions.

00:22:01.000 All I can do is read from a script I'm given.

00:22:03.000 Yeah, fair.

00:22:05.000 So, where are the American people right now?

00:22:07.000 Well, if you watch again, all the online traffic, the American people are desperately upset about what's going on.

00:22:12.000 Well, not so much, actually.

00:22:14.000 Brand new Harvard Harris poll.

00:22:16.000 It shows 51% support for the airstrikes in Iran.

00:22:20.000 In fact, it shows, according to this polling data, do you think it is in the U.S.'s interests or not to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon?

00:22:29.000 74%, yes, including 69% of independents.

00:22:34.000 Is it important to restrain the global influence of China and Russia?

00:22:37.000 66%, yes, including 63% of independents.

00:22:42.000 Again, these are not numbers that suggest that the American people are desperate, desperate to stop this right now.

00:22:49.000 Three-quarters of all voters, according to this poll, say that winning the war is important and also that the United States is in fact winning.

00:23:00.000 Two-thirds agree that Iran is the leading source of instability, terrorism, and that the Iranians do not support the Ayatollahs.

00:23:09.000 67% of people believe, again, that Iran is the big source of instability and terrorism in the region.

00:23:16.000 So this begs the question, why is President Trump lagging in the polls?

00:23:19.000 Because his approval ratings are down.

00:23:20.000 I mean, the answer really is because of the economy, as always.

00:23:23.000 Right now, a lot of dyspepsia about the economy.

00:23:26.000 And because of the war, the stock market is down and gas prices are up.

00:23:30.000 46% of Americans, according to the same poll, think inflation is the most salient issue.

00:23:35.000 53% say the economy is worse than it was under Joe Biden.

00:23:39.000 Now, again, we keep hearing that MAGA Republicans are abandoning President Trump.

00:23:42.000 That's actually not true.

00:23:43.000 What is happening is that Democrats and independents who jumped on the Trump bandwagon, largely because they didn't like Kamala Harris, some of those people are dropping off.

00:23:51.000 Kristen Soltis-Anderson, who's an excellent pollster, writes in the New York Times, she says, my polling shows MAGA thinks Trump got it right when it comes to Iran.

00:23:58.000 When I separate Republican respondents on whether they think of themselves as a Trump supporter or a Republican Party supporter first, I find more than nine in 10 Trump first Republicans support the Iran strikes compared with 72% of party first Republicans.

00:24:10.000 So in other words, the Republican Party is on board and it is a fringe of the Republican Party who are not.

00:24:15.000 Why?

00:24:16.000 Well, because they are more aligned, frankly, with sort of dispossessed Democrats.

00:24:20.000 Again, these are the people who are upset with Trump.

00:24:22.000 And this is why when you see columnists suggesting that like Joe Rogan or Theo Vaughan defines MAGA, kind of like saying that Kerry Prejond defines Catholicism.

00:24:33.000 The late-breaking decider who jumps on a bandwagon to effectuate his or her own values rather than, you know, joining in order to facilitate the values of the central institutions, those are typically not the people who define the institution.

00:24:46.000 Because here is the thing.

00:24:47.000 President Trump has been talking about all of this forever, forever.

00:24:52.000 We've played this clip before, but yesterday, Trump truthed it out himself.

00:24:56.000 This is from 1987, talking about taking Iran's oil.

00:25:01.000 Why couldn't we go in and take over some of their oil, which is along the sea?

00:25:06.000 How would you do that?

00:25:07.000 Would you send in the Marines?

00:25:08.000 Would you take a chance in a war?

00:25:10.000 Let them have Iran. 1.00

00:25:11.000 You take their oil.

00:25:12.000 That's what I mean.

00:25:13.000 How?

00:25:14.000 I mean, do we want a war?

00:25:15.000 Take their oil.

00:25:15.000 What do we mean?

00:25:16.000 You go in.

00:25:17.000 How do we go in?

00:25:18.000 You're going to have a war by being weak.

00:25:20.000 Okay, how do we go in?

00:25:21.000 What do we?

00:25:22.000 Excuse me.

00:25:23.000 You're going to have a war, and it's going to start in the Middle East. 0.80

00:25:26.000 What if the Soviet Union said, you do this to Iran?

00:25:29.000 We're going to come in.

00:25:30.000 I don't believe they'd do it.

00:25:31.000 The next time Iran attacks this country, go in and grab one of their big oil installations. 0.98

00:25:37.000 And I mean, grab it and keep it and get back your losses because this country has lost plenty because of Iran. 1.00

00:25:46.000 That is a very young Donald Trump saying the exact same thing he says today, and he is correct.

00:25:50.000 He is correct about that.

00:25:51.000 Meanwhile, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is explaining the state of play and what exactly are our objectives in Iran.

00:25:58.000 I hear a lot of talk about we don't know what the clear objectives are.

00:26:01.000 Here they are.

00:26:01.000 You should write them down.

00:26:02.000 Number one, the destruction of their air force.

00:26:05.000 Number two, the destruction of their navy.

00:26:07.000 Number three, the severe diminishing of their missile launching capability.

00:26:12.000 And number four, the destruction of their factory so they can't make more missiles and more drones to threaten us in the future.

00:26:17.000 All of this so that they can never hide behind it to acquire a nuclear weapon.

00:26:22.000 That was our objective from the beginning.

00:26:23.000 That remains our objective now.

00:26:25.000 We are on pace and, in fact, ahead of schedule in some of those things.

00:26:29.000 And we are going to achieve those things in a number of weeks, not in a number of months.

00:26:33.000 Now, what about the Strait of Hormuz?

00:26:35.000 The Secretary of State talked with Al Jazeera, which, again, man, what a waste Al Jazeera is.

00:26:40.000 He talked about what will happen with the Strait.

00:26:44.000 When this operation is over, it will be open and it'll be open one way or another.

00:26:48.000 It will be open because Iran agrees to abide by international law and not block the commercial waterway, or a coalition of nations from around the world and the region with the participation of the United States will make sure that it's open.

00:27:02.000 Okay, so we'll get more into that in a moment.

00:27:03.000 First, Rubio says he's asked about negotiations.

00:27:06.000 He says, listen, we're negotiating, but we're not going to tell you who we're negotiating with because, again, as we have seen, a lot of different opinions inside the Iranian government right now as their entire economy is in a state of collapse.

00:27:18.000 Who is this new and more reasonable regime?

00:27:20.000 Is the United States in direct contact with them?

00:27:23.000 Well, I'm not going to disclose to you who those people are because it probably would get them in trouble with some other groups of people inside of Iran.

00:27:29.000 Look, there's some fractures going on there internally.

00:27:32.000 And at the end of the day, I think that if there are people in Iran who now, given everything that's happened, are willing to move in a different direction for their country, that would be great.

00:27:42.000 Now, again, maybe negotiations are happening.

00:27:46.000 But the bottom line is the president is still engaged in a very high level of strategic ambiguity, right?

00:27:46.000 Maybe they're not happening.

00:27:51.000 He doesn't want our enemies to know exactly what we are doing.

00:27:54.000 Yesterday, he posted a video of an explosion in Isfahan.

00:27:58.000 This explosion is astonishing.

00:27:59.000 It is almost certainly the destruction of a major missile facility underground.

00:28:03.000 I mean, look at this.

00:28:04.000 Look at that secondary explosion.

00:28:06.000 A secondary explosion is where you hit a target, and then there is another explosion where a bunch of stuff blows up.

00:28:12.000 That's what you see in the movies, right?

00:28:13.000 Where a car blows up and then the entire building blows up because there was a bunch of flammable in it.

00:28:18.000 Well, that's that in Isfahan.

00:28:19.000 My goodness.

00:28:20.000 Reports are now suggesting that perhaps President Trump would be willing to end the war without actually opening the Strait of Hormuz and instead just leave it to the Europeans.

00:28:28.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump told AIDS he's willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran, even if the strait remains largely closed, according to administration officials, likely extending Tehran's firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for a later date.

00:28:43.000 In recent days, according to the journal, Trump and his aides assessed a mission to probably open the choke point would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks.

00:28:52.000 He decided that the United States should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran's Navy and missile stocks, wind down current hostilities, and pressure Tehran diplomatically.

00:28:59.000 And if that failed, then Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the Strait.

00:29:04.000 President Trump did put out a statement on Truth Social yesterday telling the Europeans, hey, you know, if you don't like what's going on, maybe you should go get your own oil.

00:29:12.000 Quote, all of those countries that can't get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the U.K., which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you.

00:29:19.000 Number one, buy from the U.S.

00:29:21.000 Number two, build up some delayed courage, go to the strait and just take it.

00:29:21.000 We have plenty.

00:29:25.000 You have to start learning how to fight for yourself.

00:29:27.000 USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us.

00:29:29.000 Iran has been essentially decimated.

00:29:31.000 Go get your own oil.

00:29:31.000 The hard part is done.

00:29:33.000 Now, again, on principle, he's not wrong, but the reality is that's unlikely to happen.

00:29:38.000 The president knows that the Strait of Hormuz, if left in Iranian control, would allow for the Iranian government to rebuild and strengthen.

00:29:44.000 And let's be real about this. 0.97

00:29:45.000 The whores of Europe, meaning the leadership class over there, would basically just try to bribe the Iranians. 1.00

00:29:51.000 Hell, they might build them a nuclear facility just to allow the oil to move through. 0.99

00:29:55.000 These are the same Europeans who are happy to use Russian oil while simultaneously claiming the United States ought to defend Ukraine. 0.61

00:30:02.000 So what is the most likely scenario here?

00:30:04.000 Probably major action to reopen the strait, to grab Kharg Island, to throttle the Iranian regime by cutting off its lifeline to the global economy. 0.99

00:30:11.000 Because again, let's be real.

00:30:12.000 The Iranian economy is non-existent.

00:30:15.000 And if the oil flow goes away, they can't pay their boys.

00:30:19.000 All of their IRGC and Besiji friends are going to go without paychecks. 1.00

00:30:25.000 As Stephen Moore points out, the change over there is not a long-term prospect.

00:30:29.000 It is a short-term prospect.

00:30:30.000 Here's Stephen Moore yesterday on Fox Business.

00:30:33.000 Let the market work here.

00:30:35.000 As soon as we get the straits open, I'm going to predict on your show we're headed right back down to $50 a barrel.

00:30:41.000 Dean Broulette may not agree with me on that, but I think the world is awash in oil.

00:30:45.000 This is a very temporary situation.

00:30:47.000 And the only last thing I'll say is, look, I'm in favor of U.S. controlling the Venezuela and the Iran oil, but let's give the money to the citizens of Iran.

00:30:57.000 Let's give the money to the Venezuelans so that they have a future. 0.77

00:31:03.000 Now, the president is suggesting that as far as the costs that we have incurred, our Arab allies will help defray that cost because, again, he's not wrong. 0.99

00:31:12.000 The idea that we ought to actually get something from the Arab Gulf nations who have not yet dropped a single offensive bomb, makes some sense. 0.93

00:31:24.000 Here's Caroline Levitt at the White House yesterday.

00:31:27.000 Who's paying for the cost of this war?

00:31:30.000 Will those Arab countries step up to do this that?

00:31:33.000 Well, I think it's something the president would be quite interested in calling them to do.

00:31:37.000 I won't get ahead of him on that, but certainly it's an idea that I know that he has and something that I think you'll hear more from him on.

00:31:47.000 Well, President Trump, again, is readying all potential tactics in the arsenal.

00:31:50.000 He put out a statement on Truth Social yesterday.

00:31:52.000 He said the United States is in serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime to end military operations in Iran.

00:31:58.000 Great progress has been made.

00:31:59.000 But if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately open for business, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plans, oil wells, and Harg Island, and possibly all desalinization plans, which we have purposefully not yet touched. 0.66

00:32:17.000 Now, of course, this is making all of the members of the legacy media very, very, very dyspeptic.

00:32:21.000 They're very upset.

00:32:22.000 They're getting some heartburn.

00:32:24.000 Reporter from NBC said, why is Trump threatening a potential war crime?

00:32:30.000 The president posted this morning about his threat that on leaving Iran, he said we might be blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, Harg Island, and possibly all desalinization plans.

00:32:44.000 Under international law, striking civilian infrastructure like that is generally prohibited.

00:32:48.000 Why is the president threatening what would amount to potentially a war crime with the U.S. military?

00:32:54.000 And how do you square that with the administration repeatedly saying that the U.S. does not target civilians?

00:32:58.000 Look, the president has made it quite clear to the Iranian regime at this moment in time, as evidenced by the statement that you just read, that their best move is to make a deal, or else the United States Armed Forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination, and the president is not afraid to use them.

00:33:17.000 Now, again, they keep saying war crime, war crime.

00:33:19.000 Here's the thing.

00:33:20.000 It is not explicitly unlawful or automatically a war crime to attack an enemy's electrical grid, according to John Spencer, the executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute.

00:33:29.000 Meaning it can be, but it isn't just by definition.

00:33:32.000 Under the law of armed conflict, such targets can be lawful if they provide a military advantage, and every single strike has to be adjudicated under proportionality, distinction, and precaution.

00:33:42.000 So what do those things mean?

00:33:44.000 Well, distinction means that the target has to be a military objective, not directed predominantly at civilians.

00:33:49.000 And again, it is not in the interest of the administration to target the civilian population of Iran, which we correctly believe to be on our side.

00:33:56.000 Proportionality means that the expected damage can't be excessive in relation to concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

00:34:04.000 So in other words, you're not allowed to blow up an entire city block in order to take out one terrorist in general.

00:34:11.000 And finally, precaution includes ensuring that civilian casualties actually be minimized.

00:34:15.000 So it's not clear whether this would violate any of those prescriptions.

00:34:19.000 The bottom line here is that the Iranians are living on borrowed time. 1.00

00:34:23.000 And as always and forever, all they can rely upon is people to undermine the war effort and make President Trump stop short.

00:34:30.000 That is all they can rely upon.

00:34:31.000 All right, in just a second, we're going to get to the situation in Cuba where we're actually allowing oil to flow into Cuba.

00:34:36.000 Not sure what's going on there.

00:34:37.000 Plus, we'll talk about some comments by the Pope about the war.

00:34:40.000 Bishop Barron will stop by.

00:34:42.000 Isabel Brown versus the View.

00:34:43.000 Tons coming up on today's show.

00:34:44.000 First, Passover is almost here, a sacred time to remember God's deliverance.

00:34:48.000 This year, many in Israel are going to mark the holiday under the shadow of war.

00:34:52.000 Obviously, I'm talking to a lot of my friends in Israel.

00:34:54.000 They're literally setting up their Seder in bomb shelters right now.

00:34:59.000 This is why the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is on the ground right now, delivering food, equipping shelters, caring for Israel's most vulnerable.

00:35:06.000 IFCJ is doing great work for vulnerable people on the ground.

00:35:09.000 People have been living in a state of war for a couple of years at this point.

00:35:12.000 Your Passover gift declares that the story of deliverance lives on through faith, through action, and through you.

00:35:16.000 Visit benforthefellowship.org to rush your life-saving gift.

00:35:20.000 Again, that is one word, benforthefellowship.org.

00:35:22.000 That's benforthefellowship.org.

00:35:26.000 Now, again, Marco Rubio, he is pointing out that the people of Iran are incredible.

00:35:31.000 Again, the goal is not to harm the people of Iran.

00:35:36.000 The people of Iran are incredible people.

00:35:39.000 The people who lead them, this clerical regime, that is the problem. 0.53

00:35:42.000 And if there are new people now in charge who have a more reasonable vision of the future, that would be good news for us, for them, for the entire world.

00:35:49.000 But we also have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the probability, that that is not the case.

00:35:56.000 Okay, so we'll have to see what happens.

00:35:59.000 Suffice it to say, I do not think that the president is going to give up the ghost right now, not while he has the Iranians on the ropes, contrary to all the legacy media trash coverage. 0.78

00:36:07.000 Now, meanwhile, when it comes to Cuba, the Cuban regime is also on its last legs, deprived of Venezuelan oil.

00:36:12.000 They're basically just bleeding along.

00:36:15.000 That's all that's happening here.

00:36:18.000 Well, according to, again, the New York Times reporting on all of this, the United States Coast Guard is allowing a Russian tanker full of crude oil to reach Cuba, delivering a critical supply of energy to the island nation after months of an effective oil blockade by the Trump administration, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter.

00:36:39.000 Well, that is, it's weird that we would let the Russian ship through for sure.

00:36:42.000 That is definitely a strange move by the Trump administration.

00:36:46.000 Basically, President Trump is saying, you know what, it's temporary.

00:36:48.000 We don't want people to starve.

00:36:49.000 And let's be real about that.

00:36:51.000 The real answer is that we need to finish one thing before we get involved in another.

00:36:54.000 Here was the president yesterday.

00:36:57.000 There's a report that the U.S. is going to let a Russian oil tanker go to Cuba.

00:37:01.000 Is that true?

00:37:02.000 Well, we have a tanker out there.

00:37:03.000 We don't mind having somebody get a boatload because they need to survive.

00:37:08.000 That report is true as far as you know.

00:37:10.000 Well, I would say I told them if a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem with it.

00:37:17.000 Do you worry about that concern?

00:37:19.000 Whether it's Russia or not, what?

00:37:20.000 Do you worry that that helps a lot of merciless enough?

00:37:23.000 Doesn't help him much.

00:37:24.000 If he loses one boatload of oil, that's all it is.

00:37:26.000 It's fine.

00:37:29.000 Okay, again, I think the real thing here is that initiating some sort of full-scale blockade on Cuba in the middle of the conflict in the Middle East is probably a distraction.

00:37:38.000 And as the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio says, Cuba's been having blackouts all of last year.

00:37:43.000 They're having blackouts the year before.

00:37:44.000 This is not going to alleviate much.

00:37:47.000 Cubans were having blackouts all of last year, all the year before.

00:37:52.000 There isn't a naval blockade surrounding Cuba.

00:37:54.000 The reason why Cuba doesn't have oil and fuel is because they want it for free. 0.55

00:37:59.000 And people don't give away oil and fuel for free on a regular basis, unless it was the Soviet Union subsidizing them or Maduro subsidizing them.

00:38:06.000 They just don't do it.

00:38:09.000 Well, meanwhile, more on the international front.

00:38:13.000 Yesterday, Pope Leo gave a Palm Sunday homily in which he made some comments about war.

00:38:21.000 It seemed to be a veiled reference to the United States' war in Iran, although he was, I say, somewhat unclear about what exactly he was saying.

00:38:28.000 Here is some tape of the Pope.

00:38:33.000 And he did not arm himself or defend himself or fight any war.

00:38:37.000 Speaking of Jesus, he revealed the gentle face of God who always rejects violence.

00:38:41.000 Rather than saving himself, he allowed himself to be nailed to the cross, embracing every crossborn in every time and place throughout human history. 0.63

00:38:47.000 Brothers and sisters, this is our God, Jesus, King of peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.

00:38:53.000 He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying, Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.

00:38:58.000 Your hands are full of blood.

00:39:02.000 And so we don't have to continue to play the rest of the statement in, I believe that's in Italian or Latin.

00:39:07.000 My languages are not particularly good here.

00:39:10.000 It's definitely a strange statement.

00:39:12.000 And I got to be honest, I'm not sure what the Pope means by this.

00:39:14.000 Obviously, the notion that God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, I assume here that he's talking about unjust war, because otherwise it makes no sense.

00:39:23.000 I mean, otherwise, there are some problems just historically and also textually here.

00:39:28.000 Obviously, the Old Testament is filled with figures who both prayed to God and went to war.

00:39:32.000 Moses, Joshua, Barack and Deborah, Gideon, Samuel, King David, who wrote entire psalms to God while at war, Hezekiah.

00:39:40.000 And there are lots of popes, it turns out, historically, who have initiated full-scale crusades or blessed them.

00:39:45.000 For example, Pope Urban II, who initiated the first crusade with these words, quote, this land our Savior made illustrious by his birth, beautiful with his life, and sacred with his suffering, he redeemed it with his death and glorified it with his tomb.

00:39:57.000 This royal city is now held captive by her enemies and made pagan by those who know not God. 0.91

00:40:02.000 She asks and longs to be liberated.

00:40:04.000 And an incomplete list of other popes who blessed crusades or other forms of war, that would include, obviously, everyone from Eugenius III to Gregory VIII to Innocent III to Boniface IX to Nicholas V to Clement V. So, I mean, again, this is why I don't think that the Pope means what people think he means there.

00:40:24.000 I would assume that he means unjust war, not all war, because otherwise we sort of have to ignore the entirety of the Old Testament and pretty much all of Catholic history.

00:40:31.000 And just to clarify that, I did talk to my friend Matt Fratt of Pines with Aquinas, who knows way more about this than I do in terms of Catholic doctrine.

00:40:37.000 And he pointed me to the works of both Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, who point out when war is justified.

00:40:43.000 So, again, if Pope Leo wants to make the case that the war in Iran is unjustifiable, he should make that case.

00:40:49.000 I'm not a fan in general of when leaders use inartful and broad language that can be deliberately misinterpreted by members of the legacy media.

00:40:57.000 Joining me on the line to discuss this, the rest of current events, and of course, it's Holy Week, is Bishop Robert Barron.

00:41:02.000 He, of course, is the bishop of the Diocese of Winona, Rochester, and is one of the most prominent Catholic voices in modern media.

00:41:08.000 And he, of course, is the head of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

00:41:10.000 Bishop Baron, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:41:12.000 Really appreciate it.

00:41:13.000 Ben, good to see you, as always.

00:41:17.000 So let's do some news of the day, and then we'll talk about Holy Week more broadly.

00:41:20.000 So, obviously, made a lot of headlines yesterday or the day before when the Pope made this statement.

00:41:25.000 A lot of people interpreted that as a slap at the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, or a slap at the Presidents of the United States.

00:41:31.000 How should people interpret that?

00:41:33.000 Again, my own take is that he's using language that I think is inartfully broad there, because I assume he's talking about unjust war.

00:41:40.000 Otherwise, he'd be in conflict with, from my understanding and from my Catholic friends, Catholic doctrine itself.

00:41:46.000 No, I think that's the right distinction, the one you made.

00:41:48.000 And of course, Pope Leo is an Augustinian.

00:41:51.000 So he's shaped by the Augustinian intellectual and spiritual tradition.

00:41:56.000 And it was Augustine, as you suggest, who was the first major figure in Christianity to give us a just war theory.

00:42:02.000 Now, mind you, Augustine was very strong on peace and that the God revealed in Jesus Christ crucified is a God of peace and nonviolence.

00:42:11.000 Augustine held to that.

00:42:13.000 He held to a critique of Rome that was predicated upon the constant use of violence.

00:42:18.000 So Augustine is no war monger, but he also recognized in a finite, fallen, conflictual world, sometimes the only way to oppose deep injustice is through the violence of warfare.

00:42:29.000 And then he gave us these criteria.

00:42:31.000 Thomas Aquinas amplified them and so on.

00:42:34.000 So I think that's the right distinction.

00:42:36.000 The Pope is certainly critiquing an unjust war or someone who's invoking God to support an unjust war.

00:42:43.000 And I furthermore agree with you that he's not referring specifically or precisely to the Iran war.

00:42:50.000 And if you want to look at a situation, look at it in light of the seven criteria that determine whether war is just or unjust.

00:42:58.000 And, you know, right, if you say simply God does not hear the prayers of warriors, well, then Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

00:43:08.000 So I think what he meant, I think you're making the right distinction.

00:43:11.000 It's the prayers of those who are seeking his sanction for an unjust war.

00:43:18.000 You know, Bishop Baron, one of the things that I think is driving me a little crazy about the current sort of online dynamic is the unwillingness to grant any sort of favor or credibility to the most obvious explanations of things and the leap to the sort of most extreme interpretation of events.

00:43:34.000 I think that's happening here where people are immediately jumping to he must mean a condemnation of President Trump or the Secretary of Defense.

00:43:40.000 I think that's also what happened on Sunday, on Palm Sunday, in Jerusalem, where it seems fairly obvious to me that there was a pretty terrible misunderstanding between Cardinal Hisabella over in Jerusalem, where he wanted to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

00:43:53.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:43:54.000 But forgive me the pronunciation.

00:43:56.000 And he goes to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Israeli authorities, the home front authorities, have basically shut down the entirety of the old city.

00:44:04.000 I mean, they shut down the Western Wall.

00:44:05.000 They shut down the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

00:44:07.000 That is because they have rules there that basically, in the middle of missile attacks, if you have a site that is, in fact, not protected from missile assault and it is not within walking distance or quick access to what's called the mamad in Hebrew or a safe room or a bomb shelter.

00:44:23.000 And again, the old city, you've been there.

00:44:24.000 I've been there.

00:44:25.000 It is a warrant.

00:44:26.000 I mean, all the streets are extremely narrow.

00:44:28.000 And so you can't get emergency vehicles in there.

00:44:30.000 And so that is why there have been significant restrictions on not only large-scale gatherings, but even small religious services in kind of historic sites that are not protected.

00:44:39.000 My guess is what happened is that there was an Israeli police officer stationed outside the church.

00:44:43.000 And the cardinal showed up and he said, I want to go in and perform Mass.

00:44:46.000 And the Israeli police officer said, my superior says no one is allowed to come in here.

00:44:50.000 And that turned into an international incident.

00:44:53.000 And quickly, everybody in a position of authority in Israel, from the prime minister to the president, immediately sounded off, said, We need to make some sort of provision so this doesn't happen again.

00:45:00.000 And yet this turned into some sort of gigantic critique of, I suppose, Jewish anti-Catholicism or something.

00:45:08.000 And that seems to me like the least likely scenario of what actually was happening there.

00:45:12.000 Yeah, I agree with that.

00:45:13.000 I mean, it got resolved pretty quickly.

00:45:15.000 And as you say, at the very highest levels.

00:45:17.000 And there's a photograph of Cardinal Pizzabala with an Israeli, I think, police official and they're shaking hands and smiling.

00:45:23.000 And I thought, okay, that really should put an end to it.

00:45:26.000 There was some misunderstanding or some interruption of a chain of command or something happened here.

00:45:31.000 But yeah, to construe that as some massive attack on Catholicism is unwarranted.

00:45:37.000 Christians have always been concerned about access to the holy places, of course. 1.00

00:45:40.000 And I think it's a difficult time right now and there's sensitivities on all sides.

00:45:45.000 But I think it got resolved pretty quickly.

00:45:47.000 So all's well if it ends well, I suppose.

00:45:51.000 So now let's talk more broadly about Holy Week.

00:45:53.000 Obviously, a lot of kind of bad stuff in the news recently, but this is an inspirational time.

00:45:57.000 For Jews, it's an inspirational time because Passover is coming.

00:46:00.000 It begins for those of us who are Jewish and celebrate Passover.

00:46:03.000 It starts Wednesday night.

00:46:04.000 But for Christians, obviously, this is one of the most critical times of the calendar.

00:46:08.000 For my listeners who may not follow the Christian calendar, the Catholic calendar, why don't you explain what goes on during Holy Week?

00:46:15.000 We recall the events just prior to the crucifixion of Jesus and then his resurrection on Sunday.

00:46:20.000 So beginning really with Holy Thursday, so when Jesus gathers with his disciples for the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane that night, then Friday, the day of the crucifixion, Saturday, we call it Holy Saturday when Jesus spends the day in the tomb and then Easter Sunday.

00:46:35.000 So we call that the Paschal mystery.

00:46:38.000 So the Passover mystery, Jesus passing from death to life.

00:46:43.000 It's the event by which we are saved from our sins.

00:46:46.000 And I'd say this too, Ben, in light of Jerusalem and such a focus now on Judaism, it's the fulfillment of Israel.

00:46:53.000 Christians are those who say that the great story of Israel, including temple and covenant and prophecy and promise, all of it is fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

00:47:04.000 That's what St. Paul or Rabbi Shaul, who studied the feet of Gamaliel and knew the Hebrew scriptures intimately, after he met the risen Jesus, he rethought his Judaism in light of the resurrection.

00:47:18.000 And it's also why when Paul went to these towns in the Eastern Mediterranean, he first went to synagogues because the Jews would understand his message, that the story of Israel has come to its fulfillment. 0.62

00:47:30.000 That's why, see, we are tied to Israel.

00:47:32.000 That's, you know, the recent popes have made that claim.

00:47:34.000 It's up and down the Christian centuries, despite a terrible history of anti-Semitism that pops up, you know.

00:47:40.000 But the great Christian truth is we're tied to Israel.

00:47:43.000 You cannot understand Jesus without reference to Israel because we see him as the fulfillment, as Paul said, yes to all the promises made to Israel.

00:47:52.000 So that's why anything like anti-Semitism from a Christian standpoint is intellectually incoherent.

00:48:00.000 Well, why do you think it is?

00:48:01.000 It does seem like there has been a resurgence of the Marcion heresy that is making new inroads at this moment.

00:48:06.000 And Marcion heresy being the idea that the Old Testament was actually nothing to do with the New Testament, that actually it's completely irrelevant.

00:48:13.000 Why do you think that's making such a comeback right now?

00:48:15.000 Because it does feel like it's making a comeback.

00:48:17.000 Yeah, no, it's a good question.

00:48:18.000 And Marcionism, you're right, it goes back to the second century, one of the oldest heresies and one of the most stubborn.

00:48:24.000 You know, I think part of it is that there's something that is simplifying about it.

00:48:29.000 So let's just get rid of the Old Testament. 0.63

00:48:32.000 We'll keep parts of the New Testament that present a God that we can find more acceptable.

00:48:37.000 It's sort of easier and cleaner intellectually.

00:48:40.000 But when you connect Christianity to Israel, the story becomes so much more interesting.

00:48:44.000 And it was Saint Irenaeus, second century figure, who said no to Marcionism.

00:48:49.000 You cannot understand Jesus apart from Judaism. 0.99

00:48:53.000 I don't know.

00:48:54.000 There's something that's intellectually repugnant about it and something morally repugnant too, because it gave rise to this deep rift between Christians and Jews. 0.77

00:49:02.000 Read Paul to the Romans chapters 9 through 11 is his great treatment of this problem.

00:49:07.000 And in a way, we've never improved upon Paul, Romans 9 to 11, as he's tried to tease out.

00:49:13.000 He says, look, I'm a Jew.

00:49:15.000 I'm the tribe of Benjamin.

00:49:16.000 I was a Pharisee by formation.

00:49:19.000 I was zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

00:49:21.000 And now I've met the risen Jesus and I'm trying to rethink it all in light of that.

00:49:27.000 So we've been wrestling with this problem from the very beginning, but Paul represents a very beautiful appropriation and retention of Judaism.

00:49:38.000 Well, Bishop Barron, I really appreciate the time.

00:49:40.000 I really appreciate the insight.

00:49:41.000 I hope that you really have a blessed and tremendous holy week and a wonderful Easter, obviously.

00:49:47.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:49:48.000 God bless you.

00:49:50.000 All righty, folks.

00:49:51.000 Well, in other news, shifting from things that are really worth talking about to things that are not worth talking about, but we have to talk about them anyway because we cover the news.

00:49:59.000 There is a brand new garbage conspiracy theory making the rounds.

00:50:03.000 This is regarding the trial of Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, whom all, I repeat, all evidence points to. 0.53

00:50:11.000 So the defense is now predictably throwing spaghetti at the wall and waiting to see what sticks.

00:50:16.000 So what are they doing here?

00:50:17.000 What they're really doing is they are chumming the waters with irresponsible media, hoping that the jury pool will end up being tainted.

00:50:25.000 That is the goal, to get somebody in the jury pool who is a conspiracist. 0.96

00:50:29.000 So there is a piece that was printed, and it never should have been printed in the UK Daily Mail because it's trash.

00:50:34.000 And the piece is headline, quote, bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did not match rifle allegedly used by suspect Tyler Robinson, new court filing claims.

00:50:42.000 Now, if you just read that headline, if you just read that headline, what you would assume is that there is a bullet that is identifiable and did not match the rifle, which would be groundbreaking stuff, right?

00:50:53.000 That's what the title suggests.

00:50:54.000 Bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did not match rifle.

00:50:58.000 Okay, that is missing a key piece of context.

00:51:01.000 A key piece of context here is that the bullet fragmented.

00:51:05.000 There is no whole bullet to match up with the rifle.

00:51:09.000 And when a bullet fragments the way this bullet apparently fragmented, it makes it unidentifiable because all of the striations that you'd normally see on the bullet that match it up with the chain, with the barrel of the rifle, those are not present.

00:51:20.000 You can't identify it.

00:51:22.000 That is an absence of evidence.

00:51:24.000 It is not evidence of absence.

00:51:26.000 It's not evidence that Tyler Robinson is innocent because the bullet fragmented.

00:51:31.000 And now you can't directly link the bullet to that rifle because you can't link that bullet to any rifle.

00:51:36.000 It's not like there's another rifle you can link it to. 0.97

00:51:39.000 But that's not how the Daily Mail wrote the story, which is trash. 0.97

00:51:41.000 And the Daily Mail should be ashamed of itself. 0.93

00:51:44.000 Again, bullet fragments are difficult to match to the original rifle.

00:51:50.000 This is sort of like making the case that if OJ's knife had somehow been discovered after the crimes and it had been tossed in a vat of hydrochloric acid and all identifying marks and DNA had been dissolved, that somehow the inability to connect that knife to OJ's DNA would not just not link OJ to the crime.

00:52:05.000 It would be exculpatory.

00:52:06.000 It would make it sound like he was innocent. 1.00

00:52:08.000 It's just trash. 1.00

00:52:09.000 It's stupidity. 1.00

00:52:10.000 It makes no sense at all. 1.00

00:52:12.000 None. 0.99

00:52:14.000 So just to dispense with that idiotic conspiracy theory, because of course your usual suspects, the Candace Owens of the world, are still trying to apparently get Tyler Robinson off on the basis of their own smooth-brained nonsense. 0.90

00:52:26.000 Before we move on to what's going on with Gen Z and our very own Isabel Brown, who was taken to task by the ladies of the view, let's take a question from a caller. 0.96

00:52:34.000 This segment is sponsored by PeerTalk.

00:52:39.000 Hi, Ben.

00:52:40.000 Do you think that within the remaining years of the Trump administration, it may be prudent to shift our battles with our foreign enemies to the enemy within our borders?

00:52:53.000 That is the growing anti-American radical leftists, seditious politicians, and the non-assimilating anti-American naturalized citizens who are abusing our bloated social welfare programs.

00:53:11.000 So, I mean, I think that we have to chew gum and walk at the same time.

00:53:13.000 It's a good question.

00:53:14.000 But I think one of the great lies about American politics is that we somehow, if we focus on the butter, we can't focus on the guns.

00:53:21.000 If we focus on the guns, we can't focus on the butter.

00:53:23.000 The idea being that we must spend resources that we would otherwise spend abroad at home.

00:53:29.000 These are separate departments of government.

00:53:30.000 We're spending more money than we have ever spent on anything.

00:53:32.000 We're spending $7 trillion a year, $7 trillion.

00:53:36.000 That is a lot of money, a lot of money.

00:53:38.000 And it turns out that the world continues to revolve whether or not we wish to be a part of the international scene.

00:53:44.000 That is just the reality of life.

00:53:46.000 And so if you quote unquote, draw within so that you can focus on immigration.

00:53:49.000 And meanwhile, Iran spreads its tentacles all over the Middle East, threatens all of our allies, threatens all of the shipping lanes, and basically grinds our economy under its boot heel, that's a problem too. 0.99

00:54:00.000 You got to handle all this at once.

00:54:01.000 This is the hard part of being president.

00:54:03.000 Okay, meanwhile, the Trump administration is now launching a new effort to hire members of Gen Z.

00:54:10.000 This is a thing that they are focused in on.

00:54:12.000 Kind of an interesting approach.

00:54:14.000 According to Fox News, the Trump administration is launching a new effort to make a government cool again by hiring Gen Z workers to rebuild the federal talent pipeline after a year of Doge cuts and to compete more aggressively with the private sector.

00:54:26.000 Now, again, part of this is probably related to the downturn in job expectations for Gen Zers.

00:54:32.000 Now, see if you can provide some jobs for the youngsters.

00:54:34.000 So some of it is likely political.

00:54:37.000 But when you talk about Gen Zers and the big problems with Gen Z, you got to say that there is a bigger problem with Gen Z than mere unemployment concerns. 0.96

00:54:46.000 So, for example, we should be somewhat concerned about the fact that there is a complete degradation of things like family formation with Gen Z, that the entire pathway from childhood to adulthood is being ignored or blocked off by members of Gen Z. According to a lot of the studies, more than one third of Americans, 15 up, have never married as of 2022. 0.95

00:55:07.000 That is up from 23% in 1950.

00:55:10.000 In the U.S., nearly 1.5 million more adults under 35 live with their parents than one decade ago.

00:55:16.000 And most importantly, there was a 2023 Pew survey of 18 to 34-year-olds, and it found that 57% of men said they definitely want children one day.

00:55:24.000 Only 45% of women in the same age range do.

00:55:27.000 That is a disaster area.

00:55:28.000 First of all, only 57% of men is already low.

00:55:31.000 A minority of women saying that they want children one day is crazy.

00:55:36.000 That's crazy.

00:55:37.000 So Isabel Brown, of course, she's one of our hosts here at Daily Wire.

00:55:40.000 She was at CPAC, and she spoke out about this.

00:55:43.000 It made the harpies of the View very, very upset. 0.99

00:55:45.000 Here was Isabel.

00:55:47.000 If you're not encouraging your children to grow up and have the courage to get married and have kids, more kids than they can afford before they think they're ready, it is high time to start.

00:55:57.000 It is these choices like deleting our dating apps and putting birth control pills and saying I do at the altar that ultimately trickle down into the political policies that we will see save our country.

00:56:10.000 So again, I'm wondering what's so controversial about that, telling people it is good to have kids and that you should get married and that you should have kids.

00:56:16.000 All thriving societies rely upon this, but of course, the ladies at the View are very upset, very upset. 1.00

00:56:22.000 They totally crashed out over this.

00:56:25.000 What?

00:56:27.000 What?

00:56:28.000 So my ultimate beef with this is that it wraps a woman's worth up in her ovaries in a way that for too long has happened.

00:56:37.000 The whole women's movement was not about bucking the trend of staying at home or loving tradition.

00:56:44.000 It was giving women a choice to do what they wanted. 1.00

00:56:47.000 And that's what this is too.

00:56:49.000 Marriage, children, it's a choice. 0.94

00:56:52.000 And by the way, be responsible for people.

00:56:54.000 Oh, no, but be responsible.

00:56:55.000 But the other thing is they act like people are sitting around just saying, yeah, no, I'm good.

00:57:00.000 Most women I know and some don't, but most women wanted to have children. 1.00

00:57:04.000 They don't have them for other reasons.

00:57:07.000 Okay, I'm just wondering what that Isabel said is anti-choice.

00:57:12.000 She's saying you should make choices.

00:57:14.000 She's saying we should not be morally indifferent as a society about whether women want to have kids, which of course is absolutely true. 1.00

00:57:20.000 We should not be morally indifferent.

00:57:21.000 What I'm confused about is why women would want to deny their biology is an important factor in who they are. 1.00

00:57:27.000 That's the part that's confusing to me.

00:57:30.000 And womanhood is a magical power. 1.00

00:57:31.000 It is.

00:57:32.000 My wife is pregnant with child number five.

00:57:34.000 It is a magical power.

00:57:35.000 It is incredible.

00:57:36.000 And again, the notion that my wife is somehow barefoot and pregnant at home in the kitchen, right now she's pregnant. 0.61

00:57:41.000 Sometimes she's barefoot and sometimes she's in the kitchen.

00:57:43.000 She is also a doctor.

00:57:45.000 This notion that you can't choose to do many things all at once or that you decide that you want to stay at home with your kids for a while and then work part-time.

00:57:54.000 Like these are all choices.

00:57:55.000 But to pretend that a society ought to be utterly indifferent about the choices you make, that it makes no difference to society whether you want to have kids or don't want to have kids, that to me is nuts.

00:58:05.000 That makes no sense at all.

00:58:08.000 How can any sort of society survive along that basis?

00:58:11.000 Of course we ought to have a preference for a morality that pushes childbearing and rearing. 0.96

00:58:16.000 But it is incredible how many people on the left seem to believe that if you say it's good for women to have kids, that this is somehow an order, like it's somehow a mandate.

00:58:28.000 No one is forcing anything.

00:58:30.000 Ana Navarro says, don't tell me what to do with my uterus. 1.00

00:58:32.000 I'm not telling you what you must do with your uterus. 1.00

00:58:34.000 I'm telling you that it is better for society when women have children than when they do not. 1.00

00:58:38.000 And it is better for women, as a general rule, when they want to have children than when they do not. 0.95

00:58:44.000 I don't know why that's remotely controversial, but I guess that's where we are.

00:58:47.000 Again, no one is denying anybody a choice.

00:58:49.000 We're just saying that some choices are better than other choices.

00:58:53.000 There is the call to responsibility for the men who make who help make these children, right?

00:58:59.000 I am, I don't know why it's always people lecturing women what they have to do or not to do.

00:59:07.000 Bottom line, if you're not paying my bills, you don't get to tell me what I do with my uterus.

00:59:15.000 No one's telling you what you must do with your uterus, but again, we teach our kids all the time what our values should be, what our values should be. 0.69

00:59:24.000 It makes no sense to me to treat Isabel's statement that we ought to teach our kids that it's good to want kids as some sort of assault, as some sort of offensive.

00:59:32.000 Sonny Hawson, of course, says that children are too expensive.

00:59:35.000 That's the real reason why people aren't having them.

00:59:36.000 Again, that is not the case.

00:59:38.000 Poor countries, all over the world, people have tons of kids.

00:59:41.000 In fact, there is a reverse correlation between the wealth of a society and the number of children that women are having. 0.99

00:59:48.000 In this country, there's this affordability crisis.

00:59:50.000 And for a two-person household, a married household, you need over $400,000 for child care, over $400,000.

00:59:58.000 Most people don't make over $400,000.

01:00:01.000 So she's advocating for people to be born into poverty, people not being able to feed those children, people not being able to educate those children, and people not being able to house those children at the same time when this government is cutting all of the services that would allow people to have families and big families.

01:00:19.000 And none of that, by the way, none of these women, if services were to massively expand for women, none of them would be saying anything different about what Isabel said.

01:00:26.000 If the government had broader services, no one on that panel would be saying, she's right, we should encourage women to have more kids. 1.00

01:00:34.000 Not a thing.

01:00:36.000 They just would not.

01:00:37.000 And it's silly to pretend otherwise.

01:00:40.000 All right.

01:00:40.000 Well, joining us on the line right now is Arthur Brooks.

01:00:44.000 Arthur has a brand new book titled The Meaning of Your Life.

01:00:47.000 Arthur, of course, one of our great thinkers.

01:00:49.000 He's fantastic.

01:00:50.000 And he argues that today's unhappiness epidemic among young adults especially is basically a crisis of meaning.

01:00:55.000 Arthur, thanks so much for joining the show.

01:00:57.000 Really appreciate it.

01:00:58.000 Hi, Ben.

01:00:59.000 How are you?

01:01:01.000 You know, thank God.

01:01:02.000 How are you?

01:01:02.000 Doing well.

01:01:04.000 Buruch Hashem. 0.86

01:01:04.000 Good. 0.86

01:01:07.000 Well, you know, we just talked to Bishop Barron a little while ago about Holy Week.

01:01:11.000 Obviously, a lot of people finding spiritual meaning this week.

01:01:14.000 Your book is about how people find meaning in life.

01:01:16.000 And, you know, I was just talking a moment ago about Isabel Brown at CPAC saying that we should encourage young women to get married, to have children, and then women on the view being very upset about this.

01:01:25.000 Why are so many people upset about the idea that we ought to promote values that themselves provide meaning in life rather than, I suppose, indifference to those values?

01:01:35.000 We've lost, Ben, it's clear.

01:01:37.000 And, you know, this is a research project I've been working on in this book for the last five years.

01:01:41.000 We in our society, which is sadly a decline, have lost the ability to find meaning through the institutions that bring it.

01:01:48.000 And there's a lot of explanations for it.

01:01:49.000 I mean, we can talk about ideology and polarization, but fundamentally, this is about how we have used technology largely after 2008, somewhat before that.

01:01:58.000 But to the extent that everybody has a cell phone attached to their hand and they're scrolling their hours away, the average person looks at the cell phone 205 times per day, which literally makes us use our brains in the wrong way to find the meaning of life.

01:02:12.000 I mean, you go back a couple of generations and the things that you were talking about were not controversial.

01:02:17.000 And the reason is because everybody knew that an ordinary life filled with relationships and faith and friendship and love and family, these were the secrets to the meaning of life.

01:02:26.000 And we have lost that, not just because of ideological polarization, but because of technology, which has changed our brains.

01:02:34.000 So let's talk about that technology changing our brains.

01:02:37.000 So it is absolutely true that it's almost as though a hack has been performed on the human mind by a lot of the tech companies that have programmed for virality and by content providers who, of course, are attempting to maximize their exposure.

01:02:48.000 I mean, we do that here on the show in order to get more people to watch, to get more eyeballs.

01:02:52.000 But the reality is that it is as though we have found the most lizard-brained parts of ourselves and then maximized those and poisoned ourselves in the process.

01:03:02.000 Yeah.

01:03:03.000 I mean, humans are unbelievably ingenious and we will wipe out small problems and in the process create major crises.

01:03:10.000 It's just amazing when you think about it.

01:03:12.000 Let's see if we can wipe out a little bit of physical pain, which will turn into analgesics that become so incredibly dependency provoking that we have 100,000 deaths a year overdoses.

01:03:22.000 I mean, it's a classic case.

01:03:23.000 And again, I'm not a techno doomsayer.

01:03:26.000 On the contrary, I'm a techno optimist, but we have not learned how to use our technology appropriately.

01:03:32.000 And the result of it is that our brains, which are hemispheric, there's two sides to each brain.

01:03:37.000 This is all in my book, How This Works.

01:03:39.000 The right side is dedicated to mystery and meaning and love and happiness, and the left side is dedicated to solving technological and analytical problems.

01:03:48.000 And we've stopped using the right side of our brains, which is why people are depressed and anxious and lonely, and they'll lash out for all sorts of dumb activist reasons.

01:03:57.000 I mean, all of the activism and conspiracy theories, this are nothing more than a cry for meaning, a sense of coherence in life.

01:04:04.000 And the way to actually get that is to put down your device and go love your friends and family.

01:04:10.000 It's almost that simple.

01:04:11.000 Of course, it isn't because that's not ordinary anymore.

01:04:13.000 So this book is a six-part plan in real life with real hacks and real techniques to find the meaning of your life, just like the old days in the next six months.

01:04:24.000 So I don't want to spoil your book, The Meaning of Your Life.

01:04:27.000 Why don't you give us a couple of the hacks that people ought to be using in order to break all of this dependency?

01:04:33.000 Well, to begin with, you got to get clean.

01:04:35.000 You know, if we were talking about dependency on drugs and alcohol, I would say you actually can't go live a new, brand new, squeaky, clean, wonderful life if you don't actually get clean from the substances.

01:04:43.000 And so I have a whole chapter on actually how to break your neurochemical addiction to devices with all the latest research on how to do that.

01:04:52.000 And by the way, Ben, it's not that hard.

01:04:54.000 You just have to have a little bit of will, commitment, and discipline, and you can do it in about three weeks.

01:04:59.000 Then after that, there's a bunch of ways that people haven't thought about maybe in a long time.

01:05:04.000 Deep conversations.

01:05:05.000 I give a list of the kinds of questions that you could ask and talk about with your friends that will literally illuminate the right hemisphere of your brain where questions of meaning will actually find you.

01:05:16.000 I also talk about the importance of giving your heart away, falling in love, having kids.

01:05:21.000 I talk about how incredibly important it is to look upward to the divine, to actually practice a faith, practice it, notwithstanding your beliefs, and certainly notwithstanding your feelings.

01:05:30.000 I mean, you and I as traditionally religious people, me as a Catholic and you as an Orthodox Jew, I mean, we feel it sometimes, man, but we practice it every day.

01:05:40.000 And that turns out to be the secret to the meaning of life, right, Ben?

01:05:44.000 That's exactly right.

01:05:45.000 That's exactly right.

01:05:46.000 And again, you know, we were talking with Bishop Barron about Holy Week.

01:05:48.000 I mean, the fact that you practice in the world is the thing that makes you a religious person.

01:05:52.000 And it is living a religious life, not believing.

01:05:55.000 I think that we've also become very abstract in the way that we view life, way too abstract in some sense.

01:06:01.000 The idea that religious people sit around all day contemplating their navel and the existence of God is not correct.

01:06:06.000 I mean, people who are religious typically spend most of their day doing the same kinds of things everybody else does, but orienting themselves toward the idea that they're doing it for a godly reason.

01:06:14.000 It's the exact same kind of stuff.

01:06:16.000 It's just you're doing it for an actual bigger reason.

01:06:18.000 And in other people's lives who are not religious, they do it with their kids.

01:06:22.000 I mean, you can do it with your kids or with your spouse.

01:06:24.000 If you're doing things for a better, bigger reason, you're going to feel more fulfilled in your life than if you're doing it because your phone told you that it's important to be more famous or because some people were responding to you in your mentions on X or something.

01:06:36.000 That's exactly right.

01:06:37.000 And there's one more thing that a lot of young people have been taught that's quite incorrect.

01:06:41.000 Now, I actually think that young people have been quite victimized by our culture because they, you know, you and I, I mean, you're a lot younger than I am.

01:06:46.000 You're 20 years younger than I am, but you still remember the before times, as do I, you know, before we were attached to our phones to this particular extent.

01:06:53.000 But one of the things that the lies that has been perpetrated with a lot of young people today, leading to the kind of conversation that you just illustrated about this non-controversial idea that family makes you happy is because people are uncomfortable and they've been told that if they're depressed or anxious, that's evidence that they're broken and that their suffering must be eliminated.

01:07:13.000 The truth of the matter is, and I have a whole chapter on how never to waste your suffering.

01:07:17.000 I have the latest scientific techniques on how to use your inevitable suffering in life to find the meaning of your life, which is what, by the way, our religions have taught and our grandmothers have taught.

01:07:26.000 And I talk about the fact that when you believe that I'm sad and I'm anxious, I need to fix this thing.

01:07:34.000 Well, guess what?

01:07:35.000 Sadness and anxiety in life is evidence that you're alive and have a normally functioning limbic system, that your emotions are working the way that they're supposed to.

01:07:43.000 I tell my students at Harvard, by the way, when I've been working on this book, I say, look, if you study at Harvard, if you're not sad and anxious, you need therapy.

01:07:52.000 Because the truth is you're doing a hard thing and you're doing it on purpose.

01:07:57.000 And that's how you find the meaning of your life.

01:07:59.000 So this is six ways to find the meaning of your life.

01:08:01.000 That's what this book is all about.

01:08:04.000 Well, again, that is the title of the book, The Meaning of Your Life.

01:08:06.000 Arthur Brooks is the author.

01:08:07.000 All of his work is fabulous.

01:08:08.000 Go check it out right now.

01:08:09.000 Arthur, thanks so much for the time and congrats on the book, as always.

01:08:12.000 Thanks, Ben.

01:08:13.000 Great to see you.

01:08:15.000 You too.

01:08:16.000 All righty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.

01:08:18.000 We're going to answer your questions about free speech in the NBA, how to prevent your loved ones from being blackpilled, so to speak, and the straight of hormones.

01:08:25.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - March 31, 2026

NBA Player RELEASED For Expressing Traditional Christianity

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