The Ben Shapiro Show - NEW TAPE: Pretti’s Not-So-Nonviolent ICE Protest Past

00:00:00.000 New tape emerges of Alex Predi, the man shot by Border Patrol.

00:00:03.000 This tape is from a few days before the shooting, and it does shed some light on what exactly went down just a few days later.

00:00:09.000 Plus, Marco Rubio goes in front of the Senate and speaks with a bunch of people who aren't particularly intelligent.

00:00:13.000 Plus, we have a brand new Pure Talk-sponsored segment, a mailbag segment with your voice.

00:00:18.000 You can ask me questions directly.

00:00:19.000 Listen, we love our friends over at Pure Talk.

00:00:21.000 Head on over to PureTalk.com/slash Apiro.

00:00:23.000 Make the switch today in as little as 10 minutes.

00:00:25.000 Again, talk, text, data for just 20 bucks a month.

00:00:28.000 That's puretalk.com/slash Apiro.

00:00:29.000 You'll save an additional 50% off your first month.

00:00:32.000 PureTalk is America's wireless company.

00:00:34.000 Also, as you may know, this week, almost the entire country got hit with an Arctic blast, which sounds like a lot more fun than it is.

00:00:41.000 But if you're stuck inside and trapped and looking for something to watch and to enjoy, well, we had something for you.

00:00:47.000 The Pendragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin, it has now dropped on Daily Wire Plus.

00:00:51.000 Episodes one and two are out, and fans are just ecstatic about it.

00:00:55.000 We love the comments from people who hate us also.

00:00:56.000 Like, I hate that I have to give the Daily Wire money to watch this, which honestly, I mean, that's a win for us.

00:01:02.000 Today, episode three of the Pendragon cycle is available.

00:01:04.000 Head on over to dailywireplus.com right now to join.

00:01:08.000 Well, folks, if you listen to this show regularly, you know that one phrase that comes up pretty often is two things can be true at once.

00:01:15.000 So, for example, ICU nurse Alex Predty could have been an agitator, a person who obstructed federal law enforcement, and also his shooting could have come under disputed circumstances and then been mischaracterized by both sides.

00:01:27.000 All that can be true all at once, but people have a very, very tough time with cognitive dissonance.

00:01:32.000 And so, what you end up with is two competing narratives.

00:01:35.000 On the right, you end up with the narrative that Alex Predty was a thoroughly bad person who totally deserved what happened to him.

00:01:41.000 And on the left, you end up with the narrative that Alex Predty was a saint of a human being and was totally innocent in his own demise.

00:01:48.000 Those are the two narratives.

00:01:49.000 They are the competing narratives.

00:01:50.000 And the problem is that reality is ugly and reality is messy.

00:01:55.000 And in reality, of course, Alex Predty was an agitator who routinely attempted to thwart law enforcement on the federal level from doing its job and ended up in an altercation with Border Patrol officers while attempting to obstruct the performance of federal law, resisted arrest, happened to be carrying a gun at the time, which obviously is going to raise the chances of a violent incident and ended up dead.

00:02:20.000 Those are the facts as we see them.

00:02:23.000 And because there is this lack of cognitive dissonance, because people can't stand it, that all these things are true, they end up in one of the two competing camps and the left camp, which is that Alex Predty was a sainted figure in the same way that George Floyd had to be a sainted figure, in the same way that Trayvon Martin had to be a sainted figure.

00:02:41.000 It can't just be that reality is ugly and messy and bad things happen, and then we have to apportion blame based on who actually is responsible for the actions.

00:02:50.000 Because we can't do that anymore, instead, there's this rush to turn Alex Predty into a person who is never a threat to law enforcement at any point.

00:02:59.000 And that gets messy when, again, it runs up against reality.

00:03:03.000 So just to take an example, Ana Navarro over on The View.

00:03:06.000 It's not enough for her to suggest that Alex Predi's shooting may have been unjustified on either a moral or illegal level.

00:03:13.000 Ana Navarro goes on CNN and she then says that everyone would want their daughter to date somebody like Alex Predty.

00:03:21.000 Here we go.

00:03:23.000 They chose to, they killed the wrong guy, right?

00:03:27.000 Because this is like the perfect guy.

00:03:30.000 Alex Predi is the guy you would want to date your daughter.

00:03:33.000 The guy you would want your son to grow up to be a decent human being who was serving humanity, serving sick veterans who is, you know, there is nothing that has been said about that man that isn't wonderful.

00:03:47.000 And so they can't malign him.

00:03:51.000 They can't malign him because we have the videos.

00:03:55.000 Now, again, it's not about maligning Alex Predi.

00:03:58.000 It's about telling the truth about the circumstances that ICE is facing on the ground.

00:04:03.000 So, new tape has now emerged that makes Anna Navarro not look particularly intelligent, which, again, is not a very difficult thing to do.

00:04:10.000 This is Alex Predty, January 13th.

00:04:12.000 So, a week and a half before he was shot to death by Border Patrol agents.

00:04:16.000 This is not a protest.

00:04:16.000 And here he was.

00:04:18.000 This is an attempt to obstruct federal law enforcement.

00:04:21.000 It is him assaulting officers.

00:04:24.000 It is him kicking an ICE vehicle and knocking out the taillights.

00:04:27.000 Here is the video, again, confirmed by the BBC.

00:04:31.000 This is a moment the news movement filmed on January 13th in Minneapolis, showing a man who appears to be Alex Predty interacting with federal immigration agents 11.

00:04:40.000 Yelling at maybe spinning at the border patrol shot and killed him.

00:04:44.000 Our footage was analyzed by BBC, whose facial red tail lights technology confirmed his identity to a 97% degree of accuracy.

00:04:54.000 And again, this incident, when you first look at it, it looks almost exactly like the later incident.

00:05:04.000 We arrived around 10:15 a.m.

00:05:07.000 We saw observers shouting at the agents as they walked back to their vehicles when they started driving away.

00:05:14.000 An agent then got out of the vehicle, grabbed him, and pushed him to the ground.

00:05:21.000 Okay, and as you can see, there are actually multiple agents who come over to secure him.

00:05:25.000 He's trying to resist arrest again during the altercation.

00:05:29.000 So this is a person.

00:05:36.000 So during this altercation, he does have a gun in his waistband and he doesn't end up shot.

00:05:41.000 He does not end up shot in this particular circumstance.

00:05:43.000 Okay, so what does this tape tell us?

00:05:45.000 It tells us a few things.

00:05:46.000 One, there's some information that ICE may have been aware of Alex Predi before he was shot on January 24th, as in he had a history with law enforcement.

00:05:54.000 The question should be raised here.

00:05:56.000 The man damaged federal property.

00:05:59.000 He was resisting arrest.

00:06:00.000 Why was he still out on the streets such that a few days later he was being shot to death?

00:06:06.000 That is a failure of local law enforcement.

00:06:06.000 Why?

00:06:09.000 That is, by the way, a failure of federal engagement with local law enforcement.

00:06:14.000 Why was Alex Predi out doing the exact same thing a few days later, obstructing federal officers from doing their job?

00:06:23.000 Okay, so again, reality is messy.

00:06:26.000 This was not a person who just spontaneously decided one day that he was going to go to a protest and then something terrible happened.

00:06:32.000 This is a person who's routinely going to altercations with federal officers.

00:06:36.000 I mean, the report was that apparently his rib was broken during this encounter.

00:06:41.000 So he had made a habit out of going to these altercations and obstructing federal law enforcement and carrying a gun while doing it.

00:06:48.000 And so that does change the ICE officer's perception of the situation.

00:06:54.000 Now, does that mean that Alex Predty was a terribly evil human being or that he quote unquote deserved what he got?

00:07:01.000 Put aside the moral for a second.

00:07:03.000 There's going to be a full legal investigation by the federal government about what agents knew, when they knew it, how that shooting unfolded.

00:07:12.000 But the point is this: life is a lot more complex and nuanced than people would like it to be.

00:07:18.000 So why does the left have to make it not nuanced?

00:07:20.000 Why couldn't they just say everything that I've just said?

00:07:21.000 Yeah, Alex Predty was a person who routinely was agitating, who is apparently pretty frequently going to ICE operations in an attempt to obstruct them, and he was also wrongfully shot.

00:07:31.000 Why couldn't they say that?

00:07:33.000 That could be the left case.

00:07:34.000 But the answer is that if that's the left case, then that makes ICE's actions at least understandable, even if the left believes they're not justifiable.

00:07:42.000 And if that's the case, then you can't do what you really want to do, which is portray ICE as a bunch of Nazis.

00:07:47.000 In order to portray ICE as a bunch of Nazis, you have to portray everyone that ICE is seeking as an innocent victim.

00:07:53.000 You have to portray illegal immigrants as innocent victims, criminal illegal immigrants as victims, innocent victims, people who are obstructing federal law enforcement as innocent victims, people who assault federal officers as innocent victims. 0.76

00:08:07.000 You have to do all of that specifically in order to demonize ICE.

00:08:10.000 That is the goal.

00:08:12.000 You valorize one side in order to demonize the other.

00:08:14.000 That is the game that is currently being played by the left.

00:08:18.000 And that is how you end up with Stephen Colbert on national television contending that ICE is worse than the Nazis, worse than the Nazis.

00:08:26.000 This is insane, patently insane.

00:08:29.000 Stephen Colbert is a dullard.

00:08:32.000 There's a reason that his ratings are not particularly good.

00:08:34.000 He stopped telling jokes a long time ago and instead went for the claptor, meaning the applause of people who are like-minded.

00:08:42.000 And here he is, free to say exactly what he wants to say on a national network carried by hundreds of affiliates all around the country.

00:08:52.000 He is free to say exactly, you know, it's a thing that didn't happen in Nazi Germany that.

00:08:56.000 And here he is comparing ICE agents, the people who are charged with enforcing immigration law and keeping our streets safe from criminality.

00:09:03.000 Here he is calling them worse than the Nazis.

00:09:07.000 But Vino went on complaining.

00:09:09.000 Look, Dana, they're trying to portray Border Patrol agents and ICE agents as Gestapo, Nazi, and many other words.

00:09:18.000 Yes, do not compare ICE or Border Patrol agents to the Nazis.

00:09:21.000 That's an unfair comparison.

00:09:23.000 The Nazis were willing to show their faces. 0.87

00:09:27.000 Okay, that's insane.

00:09:28.000 That is an insane, insane statement by Stephen Colbert.

00:09:31.000 And honestly, whatever Jimmy Kimmel said that got him thrown off the air by affiliates, what Stephen Colbert said there is a thousand times worse, truly much, much worse than what Jimmy Kimmel said.

00:09:42.000 Okay, Stephen Colbert suggesting that ICE is worse than the Nazis not only degrades what the Nazis actually did, but also it turns our ICE agents into targets.

00:09:51.000 Because they're not just Nazis, they're worse than the Nazis. 0.61

00:09:53.000 And if you spot a person who is worse than the Nazis with guns in your neighborhood attempting to effectuate the unlawful detention or arrest of innocent people, what are you supposed to do?

00:10:05.000 That's why this language is really ugly and dangerous. 1.00

00:10:07.000 It's why when you have members of the Democratic Party calling ICE gestapo-like, when you suggest, as Tim Walz did, that illegal immigrants are basically like Ann Frank in Minneapolis right now, when you do that sort of thing, you are ramping up the temperature.

00:10:21.000 Now, again, acts of violence are on those who perform them, not people who say dumb things.

00:10:26.000 But saying dumb things ramps up the temperature and pretending that it has no impact on our public discourse or the actions of people like in Alex Preddy, who goes out and leaves his job as an ICU nurse that day in order to go and agitate and kick in the lights on vehicles or to quote unquote monitor federal agents and obstruct their operations and then resist arrest.

00:10:47.000 If you don't want those violent incidents to happen, perhaps you should stop lying to the American people about what ICE is doing and who they are.

00:10:55.000 And I understand the necessity for virtue signaling on the part of our celebrity class, but it's really damaging.

00:11:00.000 It is a massive problem because people imbibe this nonsense.

00:11:03.000 Coming up, Bruce Springsteen has a brand new song about ICE, and it is somehow worse than vanilla ice somehow, I know.

00:11:11.000 First, there's a lot of young people trying to navigate the dating scene these days.

00:11:14.000 As you're trying to find the right person for yourself, you should probably ask whoever you're seeing the important questions first, like, do you want kids in the future?

00:11:20.000 Or what are your thoughts on religion?

00:11:21.000 That's how you can get a better idea of whether that's the right person for you.

00:11:24.000 Well, when it comes to hiring, you also want the right questions asked and answered, which is why you need our sponsor, ZipRecruiter.

00:11:31.000 When you post your job, ZipRecruiter suggests screening questions to help you hone in on top candidates faster.

00:11:35.000 And today, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire.

00:11:39.000 ZipRecruiter's matching technology works fast to find candidates who actually fit what you're looking for.

00:11:43.000 The platform will suggest screening questions that help you zero in on the best applicants.

00:11:47.000 You can use filters to see who's been active recently.

00:11:50.000 All this has helped ZipRecruiter become the highest-rated hiring site on G2.

00:11:53.000 We here at the Daily Wire are hiring rapidly this year.

00:11:56.000 The tools that ZipRecruiter offers employers gives hiring managers a big head start to fill positions quickly with qualified candidates.

00:12:02.000 Ask key questions, hire faster with Zip Recruiter.

00:12:05.000 Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the very first day.

00:12:09.000 Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/slash daily wire.

00:12:12.000 That's ziprecruiter.com/slash daily wire.

00:12:15.000 Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

00:12:17.000 Bruce Springsteen, who hasn't written a great song in several decades at this point, actually released a new song about ICE and Minneapolis called Streets of Minneapolis.

00:12:26.000 Here's what it sounds like: King Trump's private army from the DHS, guns belted to the coast, came to Minneapolis to enforce the law.

00:12:26.000 It is not good.

00:12:42.000 Or so their story goes.

00:12:47.000 And there were bloody footprints where mercy should have stood. 0.98

00:12:56.000 And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets.

00:13:00.000 Alex Pretty and Renee could hear the bloody mist.

00:13:13.000 We'll take our stand.

00:13:15.000 This is really bad.

00:13:16.000 This land and the strands.

00:13:18.000 I'm sorry, wow.

00:13:24.000 Bloodiness.

00:13:27.000 I can't feel it for the words.

00:13:27.000 Rhymeski.

00:13:31.000 Also, it's oh, man.

00:13:33.000 Man, some artists are past their prime.

00:13:35.000 Bruce Springsteen is not just past his prime.

00:13:38.000 If he were a carton of milk, Bruce Springsteen would be fossilized cottage cheese at this point.

00:13:44.000 My goodness, he has past his expiration date.

00:13:47.000 But that sort of narrative that essentially have occupation armies that have settled on Minneapolis streets with the bloodied snow and their guns belted to their coats.

00:13:57.000 First of all, you don't belt a gun to your coat.

00:13:58.000 That would be a weird thing to do.

00:13:59.000 Why would you belt a gun to your coat?

00:14:01.000 Anyway, it's like that.

00:14:03.000 That sort of narrative is really, it does bleed down into the body politic.

00:14:09.000 And it leads to lines like this from Giancarlo Esposito, best known as Gus from Breaking Bad, suggesting that it's time for a revolution.

00:14:19.000 By the way, the revolution will not be led by people who wear glasses like this.

00:14:22.000 I'm just going to point out: if you're wearing these bizarro world glasses from the Incredibles, then I, and a scarf and a hat that looks like you picked it up in a blues club in 1962, if you're wearing Edna Modes glasses from the Incredibles, you're not going to be leading the revolution.

00:14:44.000 This is time for a revolution.

00:14:47.000 It's time for it.

00:14:48.000 And they don't even know that's what they're starting.

00:14:49.000 You know, some very rich old white men are exerting their power to suppress our own people, thus creating a feeling of civil war in the streets, preparing the hate, the haters to hate, teaching them how to shoot.

00:15:08.000 They're not even trained right to kill.

00:15:10.000 This is all a preparation for a very insidious problem that's happening in our world.

00:15:17.000 And for me, I have to speak out that we will not be iced out.

00:15:24.000 This is not going to happen.

00:15:25.000 They can't take us all down.

00:15:28.000 If the whole world showed up on Putin's doorstep or on the Iranian doorship or in Washington, it would stop.

00:15:35.000 They'll kill a 550 million or however, but the rest of us would survive with a new we have. 0.94

00:15:42.000 This is time for a revolution.

00:15:44.000 It's time for it.

00:15:45.000 And they don't even know that's what they're starting.

00:15:48.000 I noticed he's not leading a violent revolution himself.

00:15:50.000 He's standing in Hollywood at some sort of premiere, again, wearing Edna Modes glasses and a hat that he took off of a hipster in 1962 and telling us that it's white men at the head of ICEC.

00:16:01.000 By the way, we should note at this point that Border Patrol and ICE are disproportionately Hispanic, just in terms of the actual agents.

00:16:07.000 Approximately 50 to 54% of Border Patrol agents are Hispanic, and at least 30% of ICE agents are Hispanic.

00:16:18.000 And another 15 to 17% are black.

00:16:20.000 So you picked the wrong agencies, my friend.

00:16:23.000 I also love the logic from people who will not actually do the hard work of starting the revolution.

00:16:27.000 Well, if all of us charge Putin all at once, it was not this kind of strategy that led to Gus Fring being good at his job and breaking bad.

00:16:36.000 If we all charge Putin's palace at once, it would probably be fine, is a hell of a take.

00:16:41.000 That is one hell of a take.

00:16:43.000 Okay, then.

00:16:43.000 But again, in order to drive this sort of stupidity, you have to have this binary narrative where everyone who's being sought by ICE is good.

00:16:51.000 Everyone who obstructs ICE is not just good and innocent, but a martyr to the cause.

00:16:56.000 And ICE agents then become Nazis.

00:16:59.000 Well, the Trump administration has been shifting tactics.

00:17:01.000 And so they sent Tom Homan from the Department of Homeland Security to the borders ours.

00:17:06.000 He doesn't actually have a secretariat.

00:17:07.000 He should.

00:17:08.000 It is my informed opinion that Christine Noam should go and Tom Homan should take her place.

00:17:12.000 In any case, Tom Homan was sent to Minneapolis to try to broker with the Minneapolis city government.

00:17:18.000 And he's attempting to reach some sort of agreement with the casually nutty Jacob Fry, the Minneapolis mayor.

00:17:26.000 He seems to have come to some sort of soft agreement on a couple of key terms.

00:17:32.000 Sanctuary cities are sanctuaries for criminals and endangers the residents of the community. 0.99

00:17:41.000 To be clear, we did not agree with Minnesota state and local officials that they would be involved in immigration enforcement.

00:17:50.000 I didn't ask them to be immigration officers.

00:17:53.000 I'm asking them to be cops working with the cops to help us take criminal aliens off the street. 0.89

00:18:00.000 What we did agree upon is not to release public safety respect in the community when they could be lawfully transferred to ICE.

00:18:10.000 I'll speak more about that.

00:18:13.000 I will highlight that the Minnesota state prison system under the Department of Corrections have been honoring ICE detainers.

00:18:22.000 And we appreciate that important collaboration, and we're going to expand upon that.

00:18:28.000 Okay, so number one, I just wanted to point out Tom Homan's affect because it's actually how law enforcement should typically approach their jobs in PR positions.

00:18:36.000 They shouldn't be out there making inflammatory statements.

00:18:39.000 They shouldn't be wearing costumes.

00:18:40.000 They should just walk out and they should casually explain how they are going to enforce the law.

00:18:43.000 Tom Homan is good at this.

00:18:44.000 Some of the other people who have been trotted out by the Trump administration are not.

00:18:48.000 And that does make a difference in ensuring public trust.

00:18:51.000 What he is saying there seems to be that they can agree with county officials, not local officials, but county officials, that if somebody is arrested on a state-level crime and goes to county jail, that those people at county will now inform ICE.

00:19:07.000 So that is a difference typically from sanctuary state policies in which county jails very often do not inform ICE, or they only inform ICE after the person has not only been arrested and jailed, but convicted and goes to prison.

00:19:21.000 That's what Homan is talking about at the end there, where he says that state prisons do coordinate with ICE, that if somebody serves out a sentence for, that at the end of that sentence, ICE is informed and the person is taken and then deported.

00:19:32.000 He's saying that now needs to be expanded to people presumably who are arrested and put in county jail awaiting trial.

00:19:37.000 Homan also went out of his way to suggest that actually the discussions are worthwhile, that when you have sides that are at odds, the best thing to do is to at least talk about it.

00:19:45.000 Here he was.

00:19:47.000 In my meetings with folks so far, and most importantly, the governor and the AG to Mayor Fry, we didn't agree on everything.

00:19:58.000 I didn't expect to agree on anything.

00:20:01.000 I've heard many people want to know why we're talking to people who they don't consider friends to administration.

00:20:07.000 Bottom line is you can't fix problems if you don't have discussions.

00:20:14.000 I didn't come to Minnesota for photo ops or headlines.

00:20:18.000 You haven't seen me.

00:20:20.000 I came here to seek solutions, and that's what we're going to do.

00:20:23.000 And we've come a long way, and we got some good wins for the people of Minnesota, I think, and for the administration and for the safety, security of this city.

00:20:36.000 I mean, slow clap for the professional in the room.

00:20:38.000 How about some more adults in the room?

00:20:40.000 That would be good on all sides of the aisle.

00:20:42.000 More adults in the room like Tom Holman would be a very, very good thing.

00:20:45.000 President Trump, for his part, suggested that Jacob Fry is playing with fire because the performance artist Minneapolis mayor, who spends all day trying to find protesters to whom to bow the continues to make a mockery of law and order in his own city.

00:20:59.000 President Trump put out a statement.

00:21:00.000 Surprisingly, Macob J.R. Fry just stated that Minneapolis does not and will not enforce federal immigration laws.

00:21:05.000 This is after having had a very good conversation with him.

00:21:08.000 Could somebody in his inner sanctum please explain that this statement is a very serious violation of the law and that he is playing with fire.

00:21:14.000 Now, again, Fry can say that it's not his job to enforce federal law because, of course, local and state authorities do not enforce federal law.

00:21:20.000 But that is not what Fry is doing.

00:21:22.000 What he is saying is that if somebody is arrested at the local level, they will not inform ICE.

00:21:26.000 Fry then came back at President Trump, quote, the job of our police is to keep people safe, not enforce Fed immigration laws.

00:21:32.000 I want them preventing homicides, not hunting down a working dad who contributes to MPLS and is from Ecuador.

00:21:37.000 It's similar to the policy your guy Rudy had in New York City.

00:21:40.000 Everyone should feel safe calling 911.

00:21:42.000 Now, again, Fry's statement there, which is that they shouldn't be enforcing immigration.

00:21:48.000 No one is calling on them to actually go out and arrest illegal immigrants.

00:21:51.000 That is ICE's job.

00:21:53.000 What they are saying is that if you arrest somebody in Minneapolis and they end up in the local jail, then somebody from the Huscow should call ICE and say, hey, this guy's an illegal immigrant.

00:22:04.000 Maybe you want to deport him.

00:22:07.000 So, by the way, his reference to Rudy Giuliani's policy is a little different.

00:22:13.000 Rudy Giuliani wanted there not to be reports from law enforcement to the feds if somebody had an interaction that was non-criminal in nature.

00:22:24.000 So they got pulled over for a speeding offense or something, or they reported a crime.

00:22:30.000 That was sort of the idea.

00:22:31.000 Not that somebody gets arrested for rape and now you just don't call the ICE.

00:22:37.000 Again, Giuliani allowed reporting to ICE if an individual was suspected of criminal activity, including misdemeanors.

00:22:44.000 So which will win out, the performative or the real?

00:22:47.000 That is the big question.

00:22:48.000 Now, in other localities, the performative seems to be winning out.

00:22:51.000 That is true, apparently, in New York as well as in Chicago.

00:22:55.000 So in New York, Mayor Zorhan Mamdani, who is here to take all of your money and also release all your criminals, and he's running out of money.

00:23:04.000 He says that ICE does nothing to serve the public interest.

00:23:08.000 We keep making the case directly, directly to the president, directly to New Yorkers, to Americans, that these kinds of actions, they are the actions of a reckless agency that is operating with impunity, one that deserves to be abolished, frankly, and that they do nothing to actually serve public interest.

00:23:26.000 And that is, they do nothing, like literally nothing to serve.

00:23:30.000 I mean, I can think of somebody who does nothing to serve the public interest.

00:23:32.000 It might be the guy who's been mooching his entire life and somehow got elected mayor of New York, thereby to undermine every aspect of a working city.

00:23:42.000 Speaking of mayors who are doing that, Mayor Brandon Johnson in Chicago, who has an approval rating lower than colon cancer, he's out there praising Walls and Fry for disobeying federal law or failing to work with ICE.

00:23:57.000 The way the governor, the Attorney General, and the mayor have handled this situation and this brutality and cruelty is just absolutely remarkable.

00:24:11.000 And I know it's not easy for them.

00:24:13.000 You know, A.G. Ellis and Governor Walls and Mayor Fry, they have been firm in their position and their standing, and that's critical.

00:24:25.000 Speaking of which, he, like Anna Navarro, or like Stephen Colbert, or like half the rest of the Democratic Party, is now comparing Gregory Bovino of Border Patrol to Adolf Hitler.

00:24:36.000 As it relates to Gregory Bovino, we've seen examples of other forms of tyranny that have led to concentration camps and the annihilation or the attempt annihilation of people groups.

00:24:52.000 I only elevate that because I don't want my next response to not be associated with the severity of who he is.

00:25:04.000 And that's why, whether it's litigation, whether it's press conferences, whether it's legislation, the next step that we're going to have to try, and I'm committed to doing this, of how to set up a pathway for someone like Gregory Bovino to be prosecuted.

00:25:25.000 He said he wants Bovino prosecuted, wants everybody prosecuted.

00:25:28.000 By the way, you know who he doesn't want prosecuted?

00:25:29.000 Illegal immigrants. 1.00

00:25:30.000 He doesn't want them to be ejected at all.

00:25:32.000 In fact, he says the city of Chicago will go out of its way to protect illegal immigrants.

00:25:37.000 I leaned heavily on other cities' responses, like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass shared her experience governing while the city was in Trump's crosshairs.

00:25:48.000 We've been in regular communication, both at the executive level and the staff level, with cities like Minneapolis and Portland, Oakland, Boston, and Denver and Baltimore to learn from each other's experiences and develop strategies to protect our constituents.

00:26:05.000 One common thread is the importance of spreading know-your rights and family preparedness information so that communities understand what their legal rights are under the law regardless of their immigration status.

00:26:20.000 Now, again, if you wonder why places like New York City, places like Chicago, places like Minneapolis are going to have more confrontations with ICE, that's because if ICE just tries to do its job in these places, it is very likely there will be more confrontations.

00:26:33.000 Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are laying out their demand for an overhaul of immigration enforcement, including mandating the use of body cameras and ending roving patrols, according to the Wall Street Journal, days ahead of a deadline to pass a $1.3 trillion package of spending bills that would avert a partial government shutdown.

00:26:48.000 Democrats say they are willing to provide the votes needed to pass five of the six bills included in the package, but only if Republicans rework DHS funding.

00:26:57.000 They want these new restrictions in law.

00:26:59.000 Chuck Schumer is spelling out what he wants.

00:27:03.000 He says that he's perfectly willing to shut down the government overfunding for DHS here as the Senate Minority Leader.

00:27:11.000 Until ICE is properly reined in and overhauled, the DHS funding bill doesn't have the votes to pass the Senate.

00:27:17.000 Let me say that again so the White House hears it.

00:27:21.000 Until ICE is properly reined in and overhauled, legislatively, the DHS funding bill doesn't have the votes to pass the Senate.

00:27:32.000 Now, Leader Thune knows that.

00:27:35.000 And so I urge Leader Thune not to put all six bills, including DHS, on the floor, but rather split them so we can focus on what we can pass right now.

00:27:45.000 Time is short.

00:27:47.000 We shouldn't waste time on failed votes right now or else the government will shut down.

00:27:51.000 I know both sides recognize we need to act in response to the awful tragedies that have taken place in Minneapolis.

00:27:59.000 And senators, Democrat and Republican, are talking and sharing ideas.

00:28:03.000 But given how little time we have left before the funding deadline, the first right step for the Senate is for Leader Thune to split the funding bills and put the five bills on the floor, 96% of federal funding that can pass.

00:28:19.000 So again, their demands, apparently, are they want to end roving patrols, meaning ICE goes around, they see somebody who looks like an illegal immigrant, they're in a place where illegal immigrants congregate or whatever.

00:28:28.000 They want ICE not to be able to do that.

00:28:30.000 They want to tighten the rules governing warrants.

00:28:32.000 That's going to be a big one.

00:28:33.000 As we discussed, if their claim is that they are going to make it, so you can only arrest someone on the basis of a judicial warrant.

00:28:39.000 Basically, ICE actions all over the country come to a halt.

00:28:42.000 So we need serious clarification on that.

00:28:44.000 And they want to require that ICE coordinate with state and local law enforcement.

00:28:48.000 Well, I mean, the problem with ICE being forced to coordinate with state and local law enforcement is just as state and local law enforcement cannot be cudgeled into doing the work of ICE, ICE cannot be cudgeled into not doing its work because state and local law enforcement don't want them to do so.

00:29:03.000 They want federal agents to be held to the same use of force policies applying to other police forces and be held accountable through violations.

00:29:10.000 Now, again, that seems relatively benign.

00:29:13.000 And then they want agents to be prohibited from wearing masks.

00:29:16.000 Well, again, the reason that they're wearing masks is because of the targeting of the agents by the online mob right now.

00:29:21.000 Democrats really, again, this is performative.

00:29:24.000 In the NTHS, we'll be funded, but they want to score some points by yelling at ICE.

00:29:28.000 Elizabeth Warren, it is amazing how Elizabeth Warren morphed from a relatively interesting person back in the early 2000s when I knew her.

00:29:35.000 I was at Harvard Law School at the same time that she was.

00:29:38.000 And she was writing books that had kind of interesting takes.

00:29:41.000 And now she is just a rote left-wing radical. 1.00

00:29:45.000 And here she is saying, hell no on ICE funding.

00:29:49.000 This invasion by ICE is not making anyone in America safer.

00:29:55.000 And if we don't put a stop to it, these masked agents are going to kill more people.

00:30:01.000 Donald Trump wants us to write another check, hand it over to ICE, and let them keep rolling in the dough.

00:30:11.000 But here is my view.

00:30:12.000 I am a no.

00:30:13.000 I am a hell no.

00:30:16.000 We cannot give one more penny to Trump's ICE while its masked, poorly trained agents terrorize people all across this country.

00:30:31.000 Meanwhile, Raphael Warnock, senator from Georgia, he's openly telling protesters to keep it up.

00:30:37.000 And again, the line between the protesters and the agitators has blurred pretty significantly here.

00:30:43.000 They are shifting the narrative by continuing to stand day in and day out.

00:30:48.000 They are using the instruments of democracy, the voices of people.

00:30:53.000 They are bearing witness with cell phone cameras.

00:30:58.000 And it is making a difference.

00:30:59.000 Now, I'm not naive about what the Trump vans regime is up to.

00:31:05.000 They would like to make a small change here or gesture there, and they're hoping that the people will let up.

00:31:13.000 Well, I'm saying to the folks not only there, but all across the country, we cannot afford to let up.

00:31:19.000 We need the voices of the people now more than ever to pull us back from the brink and to make sure that we have a democracy here for our children.

00:31:32.000 I mean, again, this is Democrats ramping it up.

00:31:36.000 They're constantly ramping it up.

00:31:37.000 Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, might be Speaker of the House after the next midterm if those elections go the wrong way.

00:31:43.000 He says that even if Christy Noam at DHS is fired, that won't stop a shutdown.

00:31:48.000 Christy Noam being fired or removed from office is, of course, not enough.

00:31:52.000 It's a start.

00:31:54.000 Well, there's a variety of different things that have been put on the table.

00:31:57.000 First of all, there's the basic value and principle that taxpayer dollars can't be used to kill American citizens.

00:32:06.000 Taxpayer dollars are not being used to kill American citizens.

00:32:10.000 When there's a disputed circumstance in which someone obstructs federal law enforcement, that is not taxpayer dollars being used to subsidize pure murder.

00:32:17.000 Pure murder is prosecuted in this country.

00:32:20.000 Again, the only sane Democrat seems to be, as always, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania.

00:32:25.000 Here he was yesterday saying, hey, you know, maybe we should stop comparing ICE agents to Nazis.

00:32:30.000 That's gross.

00:32:31.000 And I absolutely condemn that.

00:32:33.000 Absolutely.

00:32:34.000 Do not compare anyone, anyone, to Nazis.

00:32:38.000 Don't use that kind of rhetoric.

00:32:39.000 You know, that could incite violence.

00:32:42.000 And now that's, I strongly reject that and condemn that kind of language in the strongest terms.

00:32:48.000 You know, members of ICE are not Nazis.

00:32:50.000 I don't compare anyone to Gestapo and those things.

00:32:53.000 You know, this is one of the reasons why I think we should stand down in what's happening in Minneapolis.

00:32:58.000 You know, we all have to reduce the temperature.

00:33:01.000 We have to turn it down.

00:33:02.000 And using that kinds of rhetoric, you know, again, I can't ever support that.

00:33:07.000 And I have a basic rule in politics: don't compare anyone to Nazis.

00:33:12.000 I don't care.

00:33:14.000 You just don't do that.

00:33:15.000 These are not Nazis.

00:33:18.000 Why this basic rational perspective is now being ignored by wide swaths of people is absolutely beyond me, except for, again, people require their black and white political narratives.

00:33:28.000 And anything that messes with that makes them very, very uncomfortable.

00:33:32.000 Well, speaking of stupid people in the Senate, many of them decided to make a spectacle of themselves yesterday when they had Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the Hill.

00:33:42.000 So he's giving congressional testimony about Venezuela before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

00:33:47.000 Secretary Rubio is very, very good at his job.

00:33:50.000 So many of the senators are not.

00:33:53.000 One of the amazing things about American politics is how many Americans believe that there are true conspiracies operating at a high level in American politics on the regular.

00:34:01.000 All you have to do is meet our senators and congresspeople on the regular in order to know how dumb this is.

00:34:07.000 The reason being politics is significantly more like VEEP than it is like House of Cards.

00:34:11.000 The notion that there are people behind closed doors pulling off sophisticated plans, pretty rare, pretty rare, because most people are not particularly smart.

00:34:20.000 And that apparently is even more true in the United States Senate.

00:34:23.000 Well, the hearing kicked off with the usual round of protesting and screaming.

00:34:27.000 Here is one protester getting up and yelling at Marco Rubio and then being escorted from the room.

00:34:35.000 All right, here we go.

00:34:39.000 You know the drill.

00:34:40.000 Off to jail.

00:34:45.000 Anyone who is a persistent violator will be banned for three years.

00:34:49.000 So I don't know whether the guy falls in that category.

00:34:52.000 Looks like it.

00:34:52.000 I hope after three years, he'll find a more productive means for corner.

00:34:58.000 And by the way, I do have to enjoy that there is a protester who's saying hands off Venezuela, hands off Cuba.

00:35:03.000 I mean, man, you have lost your mind when you are protesting in favor of the Venezuelan communist regime and the Cuban communist regime, which have reduced literally tens of millions of people to penury, poverty, and death.

00:35:14.000 Just genius level stuff right there.

00:35:16.000 Well, Tammy Duckworth, who is not one of the sharper tools in the drawer over in the Senate, she had a bit of a tete-a-tete with Secretary of State Rubio on whether war needed to be declared in order to perform strikes on drug boats in the Caribbean. 0.64

00:35:36.000 These non-state actors who possess state-like capabilities in terms of their weaponry pose a grave danger to the United States.

00:35:42.000 I don't think any American would be all of the other laws when it comes to warfare.

00:35:51.000 I mean, you're saying that he can invoke this wartime power.

00:35:58.000 No, I'm saying, you're asking me, I'm here to discuss foreign policy and what's in the realm of the Department of State.

00:36:04.000 I think your question is better directed at the Department of Justice.

00:36:05.000 You don't think we're invoking the Alien Enemies Act, which is a wartime, which is something that...

00:36:08.000 Yeah, but you're asking me questions that can be invoked during wartime.

00:36:11.000 It's only been invoked during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II.

00:36:15.000 You're asking me.

00:36:16.000 It's been invoked three times, and this president is invoking it.

00:36:19.000 Okay, you're asking me a question about the domestic application of a law that's best directed at the Department of Justice.

00:36:24.000 No, it is because you're asking me something to opine on something that's in the realm of the Department of Justice in terms of its domestic application.

00:36:31.000 I can tell you that the United States is most certainly confronting terrorist and criminal organizations operating in our hemisphere that pose a grave danger to the United States.

00:36:40.000 Anyone who believes that gangs that flood our country with fentanyl or cocaine are not threats to the United States is not living in reality and certainly does not reflect the opinion of most Americans.

00:36:50.000 Man, owned, owned, Tammy Duckworth trying to go after him with domestic application of law. 1.00

00:36:57.000 He's the Secretary of State, clearly.

00:37:00.000 Again, not the brightest contingent over in the Senate.

00:37:03.000 Meanwhile, Senator Chris Van Holland, who is just a mockery.

00:37:07.000 And every time you see him, you're like, this guy, it's not possible for him to become more of a cucumber with eyeballs.

00:37:12.000 And yet there he is becoming more of a cucumber with eyeballs straight from the garden.

00:37:17.000 Senator Chris Van Holland of Maryland, who when he is not spending his free time hanging out with alleged domestic abusers in El Salvador, is in the Senate asking dumb questions.

00:37:26.000 Here he was suggesting that it was oil executives pushing the change in Venezuela.

00:37:32.000 Mr. Secretary, simple yes or no question.

00:37:35.000 Were you with President Trump during any of those conversations he had with people with oil interests in Venezuela about the possibility of deposing Maduro?

00:37:45.000 That's not a simple yes or no question, but I can answer it quickly.

00:37:49.000 And that is the president always elicits opinions from all sorts of people, including, for example, Chevron has an act of license in Venezuela.

00:37:56.000 They operate in Venezuela.

00:37:57.000 They've been doing so even when the sanctions were in place.

00:38:00.000 So of course you would ask Chevron, what is your opinion of Del Codriguez?

00:38:03.000 What are your opinions of their economy and of their prospects?

00:38:06.000 But the notion that somehow the president authorized this challenge at the urging of oil executives is absurd.

00:38:11.000 That never happened.

00:38:12.000 Mr. Secretary, I'm asking whether you were with the president.

00:38:15.000 That never happened.

00:38:16.000 I couldn't be with him because it never happened.

00:38:18.000 The oil executives were not involved whatsoever in any of the planning on this matter.

00:38:25.000 And there he is being a cucumber, Senator Chris Van Holland.

00:38:29.000 Again, if you're going to ask a question to which you don't already know the answer, you're doing it wrong.

00:38:34.000 That is the first rule of lawyering.

00:38:35.000 Don't ask questions which you don't already know the answer.

00:38:39.000 Secretary of State Rubio went on to make clear that criminal organizations are endemic to the Caribbean, Central America, South America.

00:38:49.000 We have a real reality in our region of these transnational criminal terrorist organizations that in many cases possess weapons that you ascribe to a nation state, not to a gang, who pose a grave threat to the national security of the United States, but also to the stability of the region.

00:39:07.000 If you walk through the region, what is the primary threat in Colombia?

00:39:09.000 Transnational criminal organizations.

00:39:11.000 What is the threat to Mexico?

00:39:12.000 What is the threat to the Caribbean basin?

00:39:14.000 These groups have to be confronted.

00:39:15.000 They have to be confronted forcefully.

00:39:17.000 What's the threat in Haiti to systemic collapse?

00:39:20.000 And that is these criminal gangs that basically control territory and threaten the ability to even form a government there in that regard.

00:39:26.000 So it's endemic throughout the region, and it ultimately impacts the United States through mass migration, through drug trafficking, and other related criminal organizations.

00:39:34.000 And so we need to have a force posture that can confront that.

00:39:39.000 Senator Rand Paul, on the Republican side of the aisle, he is a thoroughgoing isolationist, and he went after Marco Rubio over the Venezuela operation, calling it unconstitutional.

00:39:48.000 And Secretary of State Rubio rebuffed him pretty strongly.

00:39:52.000 If a foreign country bombed our air defense missiles, captured and removed our president, and blockaded our country, would that be considered an act of war?

00:40:02.000 Well, I think your question is about the, and I will acknowledge you've been very consistent on all these points the entire career.

00:40:09.000 So let me, let me, no matter who the, who's in charge.

00:40:12.000 So I will point to two things.

00:40:14.000 The first is it's hard for us to conceive that an operation that lasted about four and a half hours and was a law enforcement operation to capture someone we don't recognize as a head of state, indicted in the United States, wanted with a $50 million bench.

00:40:26.000 The question would be if it only took four hours to take our president, very short, nobody dies on the other side, nobody dies on our side.

00:40:33.000 It's perfect.

00:40:35.000 Would it be an act of war?

00:40:36.000 We just don't believe that this operation comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition of war.

00:40:40.000 But would it be an act of war if someone did it to us?

00:40:43.000 Nobody dies, few casualties, they're in and out.

00:40:46.000 Boom, it's a perfect military operation.

00:40:48.000 Would that be an act of war?

00:40:49.000 Of course it would be an act of war.

00:40:51.000 I'm probably the most anti-war person in the Senate, and I would vote to declare war if someone invaded our country and took our president.

00:41:00.000 So I think we need to at least acknowledge this is a one-way argument.

00:41:04.000 One-way arguments that don't rebound, that you can't apply to yourselves, that cannot be universally applicable are bad arguments.

00:41:13.000 Okay, well, the reason that his argument is bad is because who cares whether Venezuela considers it an act of war?

00:41:19.000 The question is whether constitutionally you require a declaration of war in order to do this thing.

00:41:24.000 Is it a war for the United States to perform a law enforcement grab and snatch of a person we do not recognize as the legitimate rightful leader of a country?

00:41:34.000 Do we need to declare war in America?

00:41:36.000 Who cares what Venezuelans think about it? 1.00

00:41:38.000 I don't care what Nigerians think about it. 0.98

00:41:39.000 I don't care what Israelis think about it. 1.00

00:41:41.000 I don't care what anybody thinks about it.

00:41:42.000 The American Constitution applies.

00:41:42.000 We're Americans.

00:41:44.000 So the question that ought to be asked is not whether we would consider it an act of war if somebody did it to us.

00:41:50.000 If we did, by the way, we would then have to wait for it, go through the constitutional mechanisms of declaring war, right?

00:41:57.000 That's what the question is about, is not whether what we just did to Venezuela is an adversarial action.

00:42:03.000 Of course, it's an adversarial action.

00:42:04.000 The question is, constitutionally speaking, do you have to declare war in order to do this thing?

00:42:09.000 Not whether in some random platonic universe, this is considered a definitional, quote-unquote, act of war.

00:42:16.000 And that's the point Rubio is making.

00:42:18.000 Make me the case that that operation constitutes a war under the definition of war in the Constitution, as opposed to a policing action or a law enforcement action.

00:42:28.000 It's a cheap rhetorical trick, what Senator Paul is doing there.

00:42:31.000 And meanwhile, Rubio is asked about Cuba.

00:42:34.000 And he says they're not going to involve themselves in sort of an act of change in Cuba, but they would, of course, love to see the regime fall.

00:42:41.000 Will you make a public commitment today to rule out U.S. regime change in Cuba?

00:42:47.000 Regime change?

00:42:47.000 Yes.

00:42:48.000 Oh, no.

00:42:48.000 I think we would love to see the regime there change.

00:42:50.000 We would like to, that doesn't mean that we're going to make a change, but we would love to see a change.

00:42:54.000 There's no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime.

00:43:01.000 But you know what we mean by regime change?

00:43:02.000 We don't mean I wish someone else were in charge.

00:43:05.000 When we talk about regime change, we're talking about using the power of the United States, usually kinetic power, but often other kinds of coercion.

00:43:15.000 And I'm not even saying that that's always not in our interest.

00:43:18.000 I'm just saying I'm not asking you whether we would prefer a different kind of government.

00:43:24.000 I'm asking whether you are trying to precipitate the fall of the current regime.

00:43:28.000 Yeah, but that's statutory.

00:43:29.000 The Helms-Burton Act, the U.S. embargo on Cuba is codified.

00:43:33.000 It was codified in law, and it requires regime change in order for us to lift the embargo.

00:43:40.000 And, you know, again, correct.

00:43:43.000 Well, Senator Tim Kaine and the long-forgotten vice presidential candidate for Hillary Clinton, he went after Secretary of State Rubio because Donald Trump supposedly said Iceland and not Greenland in his Davos speech.

00:43:55.000 And somehow this is a criminal offense in some way.

00:44:00.000 We're not mad at Iceland.

00:44:01.000 They haven't cost us any money.

00:44:02.000 The president just mistook the two countries for each other, correct?

00:44:06.000 Yeah, he meant to say Greenland, but I think we're all familiar with presidents that have verbal stumbles.

00:44:11.000 We've had presidents like that before.

00:44:13.000 Some made a lot more than this one.

00:44:14.000 Nice try.

00:44:15.000 Thanks.

00:44:16.000 I thought he did well.

00:44:19.000 Ond, ouch, odu.

00:44:23.000 Secretary of State Rubio has also asked about Iran and again pointed out that the people of Iran deserve better than current leadership.

00:44:30.000 And the core problem they face, unlike the protests you saw in the past on some other topics, is that they don't have a way to address the core complaints of the protesters, which is that their economy is in collapse.

00:44:41.000 And the reason why there's economies in collapse is because they spend all their money and all their resources building weapons and sponsoring terrorist groups around the world instead of reinvesting it back into their society.

00:44:52.000 And as a result, have taken on massive global sanctions, which has isolated their economy and their country.

00:44:57.000 And so that's what the Iranian people are demanding, is that they stop doing that and start caring about them and get these sanctions off them.

00:45:03.000 And this regime is unwilling to do it.

00:45:05.000 So the core challenges, the protests may have ebbed, but they will spark up again in the future because this regime, unless they are willing to change and or leave, have no way of addressing the legitimate and consistent complaints of the people of Iran who deserve better.

00:45:21.000 And again, we'll keep an eye on what the Trump administration intends to do with Iran.

00:45:25.000 The United States has put forward a number of demands of Iran, including denuclearization, as well as shutting down their ballistic missile program and ceasing to support terror groups across the region and the globe.

00:45:35.000 Iran's not going to do any of that.

00:45:37.000 It'll be interesting to see what happens with regard to Iran.

00:45:40.000 Meanwhile, the big economic story of the day is the Trump administration announcing the launch of so-called Trump accounts.

00:45:46.000 These are accounts that are open to anybody up to the age of 18.

00:45:50.000 Essentially, they are tax-deferred accounts where you can take some money, you can put it in, it's capped every year, you can put that money in, and then you can invest it in the stock market.

00:45:57.000 That's the goal of the Trump account is to get Americans invested in the stock market, building wealth that way.

00:46:03.000 This is sort of what George W. Bush had tried to support in 2005 when he was talking about privatizing Social Security, although the Trump accounts are not connected to Social Security.

00:46:12.000 And the idea here is if you have the American people investing in the markets, that is a better thing than simply taking their money in a pyramid scheme.

00:46:20.000 And it's also an antidote to the idea that government is supposed to support you as opposed to being reliant on free markets that become more efficient and more productive over time.

00:46:28.000 Brad Gerstner, the investor extraordinaire, was one of the moving forces behind all this.

00:46:33.000 He was at the White House championing this.

00:46:37.000 But the most important and transformational part about the idea is I said, Michael, this isn't a government program.

00:46:42.000 This isn't coming to bended knee to the government where the government controls the account and then we're dependent, increased dependency on government.

00:46:50.000 It's the exact opposite of UBI.

00:46:52.000 This is the antidote to socialism.

00:46:55.000 The antidote to socialism is more capitalism.

00:46:59.000 And I said, Michael, This is a direct giving platform.

00:47:06.000 Michael Dell, of course, another massively successful investor, he says this could change the face of the country because the goal is to engage people in the markets in a way they might not otherwise.

00:47:18.000 And in not too many years, essentially every child in America will have savings invested in the greatest companies in this country.

00:47:30.000 And that will change the face of this country over the next 10, 20, 30 years.

00:47:36.000 We couldn't be more excited about this and the opportunity to make a difference.

00:47:41.000 You know, the best investment a country can make is in its people, especially in its children.

00:47:49.000 And this creates an incredible platform for that to occur at enormous scale.

00:47:55.000 And we're excited to see it all come together.

00:47:59.000 Now, again, these new $1,000 tax advantaged investments accounts, they're $1,000 for newborns.

00:48:05.000 Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, says 25 million Americans could be opening these accounts.

00:48:11.000 You can open the Trump account and then contribute to that up to $5,000 from family and friends.

00:48:17.000 Then employers can also contribute.

00:48:19.000 We're going to have many great American philanthropists who are contributing, Michael and Susan Dell, an astounding $6.25 billion.

00:48:28.000 Many employers who are going to announce today are contributing.

00:48:32.000 And then we think we're going to have up to 20 states.

00:48:34.000 So everyone with a child who is under 18 should open an account.

00:48:39.000 We think that there will be 25 million accounts.

00:48:41.000 We already had about 600,000 families sign up for them.

00:48:47.000 So again, a pretty major initiative here from the Trump administration.

00:48:51.000 There will be a $1,000 seed account that is set up for newborns by the Treasury.

00:48:56.000 But there are also matching accounts that are coming from places like JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Nikki Minaj, who announced yesterday that not only is she a Trump supporter, but also that she is going to be helping her Barbs, those are her fans, to actually co-invest.

00:49:10.000 Apparently, according to the New York Post, it could mean investments between $150,000 and $300,000 to her fans to help set up baby Barbs accounts.

00:49:18.000 The final number is currently in flux.

00:49:21.000 Here was Nicki Minaj, and obviously the Trump loves this kind of stuff.

00:49:24.000 So Nikki Minaj showing up at the White House in order to tout this is one of his jams.

00:49:29.000 He loves this kind of stuff.

00:49:32.000 I don't know what to say, but I will say that I am probably the president's number one fan.

00:49:46.000 And that's not going to change.

00:49:49.000 And the hate, well, what people have to say, it does not affect me at all.

00:49:56.000 It actually motivates me to support him more.

00:50:00.000 And it's going to motivate all of us to support him more.

00:50:03.000 We're not going to let them get away with bullying him and, you know, the smear campaigns.

00:50:08.000 It's not going to work.

00:50:10.000 Okay.

00:50:11.000 He has a lot of force behind him and God is protecting him.

00:50:18.000 Amen.

00:50:22.000 Okay, so I will say that I was, I was, as a fellow rapper, I was first on the Nikki Minaj bandwagon here in her rap battles with fellow artists like Cardi B.

00:50:33.000 And Nicki Minaj, I know, shares respect for those in the industry.

00:50:39.000 I know.

00:50:40.000 But listen, it's pretty wonderful for President Trump.

00:50:43.000 And again, there is a cultural change that's happening in the country, which is you're allowed to now say that actually you like President Trump or that you vote Republican or that you don't agree with the Democrats' agenda.

00:50:52.000 That's something President Trump really has changed in a way that it has never changed in my lifetime.

00:50:57.000 And that's an amazing thing.

00:50:58.000 Joining us on the line to discuss all of this is Isabel Brown, who was actually at the White House for the reveal of the Trump accounts yesterday.

00:51:04.000 Isabel, great to see you.

00:51:05.000 How was it?

00:51:07.000 It was fantastic, Ben.

00:51:08.000 Thanks for having me on.

00:51:09.000 And what an amazing initiative from our government.

00:51:12.000 I said this six or seven times to the media yesterday, but what we're watching through this is not just an investment into our future.

00:51:19.000 That's important, certainly, for our children, but it's also a huge paradigm shift in Washington.

00:51:24.000 I think very few people are talking about.

00:51:26.000 Typically, the financial status quo in this town is that you borrow from the financial future and sell them out from every next generation to keep lining the pockets of those who have been here in this town longer than twice the time my generation has been alive.

00:51:39.000 And now you're watching that script be flipped and literally placing money into the hands of babies the day they are born.

00:51:45.000 And I could not be more excited about it.

00:51:48.000 So the way the Trump accounts work is that if you are a newborn, Treasury puts $1,000 into an account for you, but that's obviously not the extent of it.

00:51:56.000 It's also essentially a tax-free account for investment that can be invested in by family, by your company, correct?

00:52:04.000 Yep, that's exactly correct.

00:52:05.000 If you have a baby that was born between January 1st of last year, 2025, and the end of 2028, so during Trump's term in office, you have basically a free deposit of $1,000 that goes into an investment account that you can choose to put further contributions into as that child's parents or even as an employer.

00:52:24.000 Many, many companies around the country, from Visa to Uber to so many others, announced they were going to be teaming up with this initiative and matching employee contributions and that $1,000 investment from the Treasury Department into baby accounts.

00:52:39.000 In the conservative movement, in particular, Turning Point USA, under the leadership of Erica Kirk, announced that every employee who has a newborn baby will receive an additional $1,000 into that account from the company, not just the Treasury Department.

00:52:52.000 So really interesting incentive from the employer side as well.

00:52:55.000 But the biggest contribution comes from parents, which you can deposit up to $5,000 into this account annually that then is deducted out of your taxes.

00:53:04.000 And if you look at the maximum contributions into the account and stock market averages over the past several decades, if you contribute the maximum amount every year, by the time your child turns 28 years old, they will have over a million dollars sitting in this account, which is absolutely incredible.

00:53:21.000 So obviously it was sort of a star-studded event.

00:53:23.000 Nikki Minaj made a big appearance wearing a shockingly amazing coat, apparently. 1.00

00:53:29.000 And she had the nails in the whole thing. 1.00

00:53:31.000 What was the mood in the room like when Nikki Minaj came in?

00:53:36.000 You know, it was incredible, Ben.

00:53:37.000 I was backstage for most of the event.

00:53:39.000 And when she came in, you're right, she was wearing an absolutely incredible coat.

00:53:43.000 But it was this excited, giggly feeling that you saw among the White House staff knowing that the America First MAGA coalition really is growing to this big tent that we never expected over the past couple of years, right down to Nikki Minaj, who is now not just the singer of Super Bass, she is super based.

00:54:02.000 And you saw her join the president on stage yesterday and even hold hands for a few minutes, which was so touching.

00:54:10.000 So obviously, the sort of big ideological pusher actually came from the capitalist community.

00:54:16.000 This is not a government sort of led initiative.

00:54:18.000 It is in the sense that obviously the government is going to deposit what is a fairly de minimis amount for babies when they are born.

00:54:24.000 But at the same time, it really is a bunch of capitalists who are matching, who are really pushing this forward because their general idea, and I've talked to Brad Gerstner, who's one of the people who was behind this initiative, their general idea is you get people either invested in capitalism or they find themselves invested in government handouts and government welfare.

00:54:40.000 And so this really is an Uber capitalist move to try and get people involved in the markets.

00:54:45.000 I could not have said that better myself.

00:54:47.000 In fact, many of the speakers were saying on stage yesterday that we are creating an entire generation of capitalists through this program.

00:54:54.000 And I know that's generally one of the pushback comments I'm hearing in the media that this is just another handout program or it's really rife for potential for fraud.

00:55:02.000 Certainly the Trump administration is doing everything they can to combat against fraud in some of these programs across the spectrum in the executive branch.

00:55:10.000 But what's interesting to me is what these accounts can be used for as soon as your child turns 18 years old, kind of similar to a 529 plan or a college savings account.

00:55:19.000 There are approved expenses that you can access the minute you turn 18, buying a home, for example, which I know the president touched on quite extensively in his speech, going to college and college tuition money, or even starting your own business.

00:55:31.000 And many of the people in attendance yesterday said they have children who are so excited, not just to go to college, but to become entrepreneurs and know that this is going to set up their capacity to do so once they become an adult.

00:55:44.000 Well, that's Isabel Brown.

00:55:45.000 Go check out her show, The Isabel Brown Show.

00:55:46.000 And Isabel, glad you had a good time and that you know all the names of Nicki Minaj's songs, which is, of course, the most important thing.

00:55:53.000 I've been listening a lot the last few weeks, as you should too, Ben.

00:55:57.000 We should see a Ben Shapiro reacts to Nicki Minaj's lyrics episode here pretty soon.

00:56:01.000 Nicki Minaj and I, we are fellow, Nicki Minaj, we are in the same industry.

00:56:05.000 We are in the same industry and we have traded some good-natured compliments with one another.

00:56:05.000 I've pointed this out.

00:56:10.000 She does appreciate the verbal fluency of my rapping skill.

00:56:13.000 Isabel, appreciate it.

00:56:16.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:56:17.000 Well, folks, it's time for our first ever mailbag audio segment brought to you by Pure Talk because, of course, we want a clear connection with our fans.

00:56:25.000 Brian has the first question.

00:56:27.000 What is one story or book in the Bible that people overlook that they should study?

00:56:33.000 Hmm.

00:56:33.000 Okay.

00:56:34.000 A story that people overlook in the Bible that they should study.

00:56:36.000 Trying to think of some of the more obscure stories in the Bible that people tend to overlook.

00:56:41.000 The truth is, I feel like there are a lot of people who are not engaged enough.

00:56:44.000 You know, as a Jew, obviously, I'm going to say are not engaged enough with the Old Testament.

00:56:47.000 But there are a lot of sort of biblical stories that people ignore.

00:56:51.000 It seems to me that the story that doesn't get enough play in the Bible is what happens after Moses splits the tablets, right?

00:57:02.000 He brings the tablets down from Mount Sinai.

00:57:03.000 He sees that everybody is engaging in the golden calf.

00:57:06.000 And as a sort of shock tactic, he takes it and he shatters that stuff.

00:57:09.000 And then he goes back up the mountain.

00:57:11.000 And there's this unbelievably beautiful section of the book of Exodus where Moses asks God if he can see his face.

00:57:17.000 And God says, you can't see my face and live.

00:57:19.000 And then he hides him in a cleft of the rock.

00:57:21.000 And then it says that Moses is able to see God's back.

00:57:24.000 And it's this unbelievably beautifully written section of Exodus that, at least in Jewish tradition, is the closest that man pretty much ever gets to God himself.

00:57:33.000 And the question, of course, is why is it that human beings aren't capable of seeing God face to face and living?

00:57:41.000 And the answer is because obviously, if you were able to understand all of the necessities of the universe and how everything worked, then you wouldn't be human, right?

00:57:49.000 It's our human limitations that allow us the free will to operate in ignorance in the world.

00:57:54.000 But there's something else.

00:57:55.000 Why does God show him his back?

00:57:56.000 Why doesn't God just say no?

00:57:57.000 In the book of Job, the end of the book of Job, God says to Job, you don't understand anything.

00:58:00.000 And that's the end of the book.

00:58:02.000 But in this one, God says to Moses, you can see my back.

00:58:04.000 What does that mean?

00:58:05.000 Well, there are certain commentaries, and I've always thought that what it means is that it's very difficult to see God's presence in your life in any given moment.

00:58:12.000 When something is happening right in the moment, unless it's the birth of a child or something, very, very difficult to see God in your life.

00:58:18.000 It's only in the aftermath, right?

00:58:21.000 As God is walking away from you that you can see how God walked through your life.

00:58:24.000 You can look back over the course of your life and you can see how one thing that may have been bad led to another thing that ended up being tremendously transformational for you or how one choice that you made led to an entirely different strand of your life that may never have been accessed.

00:58:39.000 And you can see God in that decision making.

00:58:41.000 And so I think that that's an incredibly beautiful part of the Bible that I think people don't pay enough attention to.

00:58:50.000 Okay, next question is from Sarah.

00:58:53.000 Hey, Ben.

00:58:54.000 Love your show.

00:58:55.000 Quick question.

00:58:56.000 I was wondering what advice do you have for moms who want to work, but also want to be very involved in their kids' lives. 0.60

00:59:01.000 Thank you.

00:59:03.000 So, there's a phrase that I heard attributed to Midge Dector in which she said that women can have everything, but they can't have everything all at once.

00:59:10.000 Time is limited.

00:59:11.000 That's true for men too.

00:59:12.000 Time is limited.

00:59:13.000 You have to make decisions as to how you wish to spend your time.

00:59:16.000 The studies that I've seen tend to suggest that most women, particularly mothers, want to work part-time and spend time with their kids.

00:59:22.000 And so they just have to recognize that if you work part-time, the chances that you're going to make vice president of Chase Manhattan are far lower than they would be if you worked full-time.

00:59:31.000 And those are decisions that you're going to have to make based on finances and personal desire and all the rest.

00:59:36.000 Obviously, for moms and for dads, the kids come first, more important than your career, more important than your job.

00:59:42.000 But making sure that you have realistic and relevant expectations for what you want from a career, what's doable and where your priorities lie is going to lead you to be realistic so you don't feel dissatisfied with both.

00:59:53.000 Because very often, you have people who feel like I should be at home full-time with my kid.

00:59:57.000 And if I'm not, I'm disappointing them and myself.

01:00:00.000 Or I ought to be at work full-time.

01:00:01.000 And if I'm not, I'm disappointing myself and my employer.

01:00:04.000 Just be realistic about the fact that time is not infinite and that every hour of the day is the same for everybody.

01:00:12.000 And that means that you really have to decide in advance what kind of time you wish to spend where.

01:00:18.000 You know, for my wife, that meant that she was in medical school full-time for several years.

01:00:23.000 And then over the past couple of years, since we had our last baby, she's been at home with the kids and she's really been enjoying it.

01:00:29.000 And she may go back to work part-time afterward, but that's going to be a decision that she makes largely based on the schedule of our kids.

01:00:35.000 She's going to try and go during the hours that our kids are in school and be home by the time they're in school. 1.00

01:00:39.000 But that's a decision that you have to make.

01:00:41.000 Every decision, in other words, is an opportunity cost.

01:00:43.000 There are trade-offs to everything.

01:00:45.000 All righty, folks, the show is continuing for our members right now.

01:00:47.000 We'll get to the latest from Zoro and Momdani.

01:00:49.000 He has never lacked for excuses for why he wants your money.

01:00:53.000 And now he's got some new ones.

01:00:54.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:00:55.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

01:00:56.000 Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

01:00:59.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

01:01:03.000 What was it like, Myland, to be alone with God?

01:01:12.000 Is that who you think I was alone with?

01:01:18.000 Maradin, I knew your father.

01:01:20.000 I am yet convinced that he was not of this world.

01:01:25.000 All men know of the great Taliesin.

01:01:29.000 You are my father.

01:01:30.000 The gods should war for my soul.

01:01:33.000 Princess Garris, savior of our people.

01:01:39.000 I know what the bull got offered you.

01:01:41.000 I was offered the same.

01:01:43.000 And there is a new pirate work in the world.

01:01:47.000 I've seen it.

01:01:49.000 A god who sacrifices all he loves for us.

01:01:51.000 We are each given only one life, singer.

01:01:54.000 No, we're given another.

01:01:59.000 I learned of Yezu the Christ, and I have become his follower.

01:02:03.000 He's waiting on a miracle, and I think you can give him one.

01:02:07.000 Trust in Yezu. 0.87

01:02:08.000 He is the only hope for men like us.

01:02:11.000 Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the Great Light.

01:02:14.000 Great light, great darkness.

01:02:17.000 Such things mattered to me then.

01:02:19.000 What matters to you now, Mistress of Lies?

01:02:23.000 You, nephew.

01:02:28.000 The sword of the high king.

01:02:32.000 How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield?

01:02:39.000 Still clinging to the promises of a god who has abandoned you.

01:02:43.000 I cannot take up that sword again.

01:02:46.000 You know what you must do.

01:02:49.000 Great life, forgive me.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 29, 2026

NEW TAPE: Pretti’s Not-So-Nonviolent ICE Protest Past

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript