The Ben Shapiro Show - OPEN BORDERS DEATH: Illegal Immigrant Truck Driver KILLS Three

00:00:00.000 An illegal immigrant who had a California driver's license allegedly kills three people. 0.96

00:00:04.000 The consequences for California governor Gavin Usum are actually quite serious.

00:00:09.000 Plus, the latest on Ukraine and Russia.

00:00:11.000 Will Vladimir Putin even come to the table?

00:00:13.000 And we'll get to an insane episode of the YouTube show Jubilee involving a woman who has a hip hop degree going up against a black conservative. 0.66

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00:00:58.000 Well, since 2015, President Trump has become obviously very popular because of his stance on illegal immigration.

00:01:05.000 He said the thing most people aren't willing to say, which is illegal immigrants should go home.

00:01:09.000 They don't have a place in the country.

00:01:10.000 And the left went nuts.

00:01:12.000 They are still going nuts over the fact that the president of the United States has single-handedly shut the Southern.

00:01:18.000 And this means that apparently he's bad and racist and all the rest.

00:01:21.000 The thing is most Americans don't actually believe that.

00:01:23.000 Most Americans look at things like illegal immigrant crime and they say, President Trump is right. 1.00

00:01:29.000 Case in point according to the Department of Homeland Security today, Governor Gavin Newsom, the Democratic Governor of California, and his continued support for sanctuary policies are to blame for an illegal immigrant trucker who was given a driver's license in California killing three Americans after making an illegal U-turn this month.

00:01:49.000 He was in Florida.

00:01:50.000 He'd come in illegally in 2018.

00:01:53.000 And then the state of California decided to give this person, this person's name is Harjinder Singh, an illegal alien from India, a driver's license.

00:02:01.000 And he was driving a semi in St. Lucie County, Florida, and he made an illegal U-turn that left three Americans dead.

00:02:07.000 Here is some video of the crash footage.

00:02:11.000 You can see him here turning, it's just a gigantic U-turn.

00:02:18.000 All the way across the road, breaking barrier, and you can see a car slams into the side of his truck.

00:02:25.000 Three people die.

00:02:28.000 So the governor of California is blamed.

00:02:31.000 He immediately comes back and says it's the Trump administration.

00:02:35.000 The problem, of course, is that he only had a commercial driver's license despite being a legal alien. 0.64

00:02:40.000 Thanks to a law passed in 2013 and then expanded by Gavin Newsom in 2022.

00:02:45.000 According to Breitbart, California officials had issued driver's licenses to more than illegal aliens since 2015.

00:02:51.000 DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin blamed Gavin Newsom for supporting the state's sanctuary policies that ultimately led to Singh getting that driver's license and allegedly killing three Americans in Florida.

00:03:02.000 Governor Newsom then claimed that actually the Trump administration was responsible for Singh securing that commercial driver's license in California.

00:03:10.000 McLaughlin of the DHS wrote back, Harjinder Singh is in the United States illegally, and his work authorization was rejected under the Trump administration on September 14, 2020.

00:03:19.000 It was later approved under the Biden administration, June 9, 2021.

00:03:23.000 The state of California issues commercial driver's license.

00:03:25.000 There is no national commercial driver's license.

00:03:29.000 It turns out that the illegal immigrant trucker responsible allegedly for all this failed an English language proficiency test and also failed to accurately identify highway traffic signs according to the Department of Transportation.

00:03:43.000 The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration launched an investigation into that deadly crash and during an interview with the dr driver, investigators administered an ELP assessment that is English language proficiency.

00:03:54.000 Singh apparently failed that assessment and only provided correct responses to two of twelve verbal questions and accurately identified one of four highway traffic signs.

00:04:04.000 Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, quote, If states had followed the rules, this driver would never have been behind the wheel and three precious lives would still be with us.

00:04:12.000 This crash was a preventable tragedy directly caused by reckless decisions and compounded by despicable failures.

00:04:17.000 Non enforcement and radical immigration policies have turned the trucking industry into a lawless frontier, resulting in unqualified foreign drivers improperly acquiring licenses to operate 40-ton vehicles.

00:04:28.000 And again, this is a gigantic failure of governments like the state of California, which have acted as a magnet to illegal immigrants. 0.98

00:04:35.000 There are an enormous number of illegal immigrants living in the state of California.

00:04:38.000 So I asked our sponsors over at Comet, how many illegal immigrants are in the United States?

00:04:42.000 How many in California?

00:04:43.000 How many illegal immigrants have California driver's licenses?

00:04:46.000 According to Comet, the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the United States as of May 2025 is approximately 14.8 million, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

00:04:57.000 Some organizations cite even higher numbers with estimates up to 18.6 million, but the 14.8 to 15.8 million range is most frequently referenced in government and research reports.

00:05:07.000 There are not current precise figures for figures for California, but as of 2023, California was home to more than 10.6 million immigrants in total, that's documented and undocumented, accounting for about 22% of all immigrants in the United States.

00:05:20.000 Previous authoritative estimates have placed California's undocumented immigrant population in the range of 2 million.

00:05:26.000 2 million.

00:05:27.000 As far as driver's licenses, California has, of course, since 2015 allowed illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses.

00:05:34.000 By 2023, the California Department of Motor Vehicles had issued nearly 1.2 million original AB60 driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants.

00:05:44.000 That's crazy.

00:05:45.000 So 1.2 million illegal immigrants are roaming around the United States with California driver's licenses.

00:05:51.000 But this is part and parcel of a broader democratic policy that suggests that somehow illegal immigration is a positive good for the United States and you are inhumane or bad if you say that illegal immigrants should not be in the United States.

00:06:03.000 And I think in essence, this comes down to a question that's increasingly being asked online.

00:06:08.000 What ought an American to be? 1.00

00:06:10.000 What is an American?

00:06:11.000 Now, if you go all the way back to the founding, the definition of an American was, of course, a natural born citizen of the United States.

00:06:19.000 There are real holes in the citizenship definition because it didn't include, for example, black slaves in the South.

00:06:24.000 But the basic predicate for citizenship was that you were assimilating to the dominant culture of the United States and Anglo-American culture, that you abided by the applicable law in your state, that you were not a drain on the people around you.

00:06:41.000 Like if you were going to come to the country, there were no governmental welfare systems that were designed for you to take advantage of.

00:06:47.000 And so the history of the United States and successive waves of immigrants who were then assimilated into the dominant majority culture, those successive waves of immigrants could be welcomed because there was no facilitation of inability to speak English.

00:07:00.000 There was no facilitation of inability or unwillingness to assimilate to the dominant adherence to law.

00:07:08.000 My great great grandparents came to the United States in the early 20th century.

00:07:12.000 They spoke Yiddish and they immediately stopped speaking Yiddish and their families stopped speaking Yiddish as fast as possible so that they could actually immerse in the American culture.

00:07:20.000 And that was true for the Irish, it was true for the Germans, it was true for the Italians. 0.50

00:07:25.000 It was true for many Hispanics. 1.00

00:07:27.000 And then something changed.

00:07:28.000 And what changed was a gigantic welfare system accompanied by a view of multiculturalism that suggested that not only ought you bring your home foods and some of your home traditions, but that your culture needs not in any way mesh or assimilate with dominant traditions of law, with dominant traditions of belief in things like freedom of speech or private property or the constitutional government of the United States.

00:07:54.000 That essentially the United States was to be the repository of any who wished to come here, even if those people were just coming here to take advantage of the system itself. 0.73

00:08:03.000 And what that means is lower rates of assimilation.

00:08:05.000 What that means is that you have people who come here, don't speak English, can't read road signs, are immediately entered into the stream of commerce and then do things like this, commit crimes.

00:08:14.000 And if you say no to this, if you say no, this is a problem.

00:08:17.000 What you actually want is people coming to the United St States and becoming part of the American experiment by accepting the American experiment, by learning the language, by becoming part of the culture, by actually believing in the creed of the Declaration of Independence.

00:08:32.000 If you say those things, then many members of the left will say that's wrong, that's bad, that's racist, because what you actually need are segmented populations that don't actually believe in the American experiment, that not just bring their food and their customs, but also reject the dominant customs and heritage and legal framework of the United States.

00:08:57.000 And what that has led to is an identity politics on the left, and that has led to a concomitant rise of a new identity politics on the right, which says, okay, well, if we are going to do various ethnic clicks in a quote unquote multicultural country, then what we really ought to do is have a white ethnic clique in a dominant culture in the United States.

00:09:16.000 And so the very basic idea of it, yes, in America, there is a dominant culture.

00:09:20.000 Yes, in America, there's a dominant heritage of Anglo-American law.

00:09:23.000 Yes, in America, there are dominant customs.

00:09:25.000 And you're supposed to assimilate to those things.

00:09:27.000 That very idea.

00:09:29.000 has now been put aside by the entire left and increasingly parts of the right that say that if you insist on a segmented society, well, our segment.

00:09:39.000 should be the dominant one. 0.62

00:09:40.000 It shouldn't be your segment.

00:09:42.000 As opposed to, here is the broader vision to which people actually can assimilate.

00:09:47.000 And this is leading to all sorts of fractures within the American body politics.

00:09:50.000 Obviously, it is caused by the left and its unwillingness and inability to accept the basic notion of law, the basic notion of assimilation and the basic idea that people who come here do have a duty to the country to assimilate and that they ought to do things like learn English and abide by the law.

00:10:07.000 And that it is not, in fact, racist to say that people should not illegally immigrate here and then take advantage of the system.

00:10:13.000 And yet the left continues to push.

00:10:14.000 Here is Boston mayor Michelle Wu again just yesterday suggesting that her sanctuary city policy was an inherent good.

00:10:23.000 Unlike the Trump administration, Boston follows the law.

00:10:30.000 And Boston will not back down from who we are and what we stand for.

00:10:39.000 We will not back away from our community that has made us the safest major city in the country and a leading example of why cities around the country make this country safer, healthier and more prosperous for all Americans.

00:10:55.000 I'm sorry, but sanctuary city policies do not make cities safer and more prosperous for all Americans.

00:11:00.000 They don't.

00:11:01.000 They involve violation of the law.

00:11:03.000 They involve undercutting the wage base.

00:11:05.000 They involve the violation of basic standards of adherence to the common customs and culture and law that make America actually function.

00:11:17.000 And this is why the Trump administration is fighting back against this as well.

00:11:20.000 They should already come up.

00:11:22.000 We'll get to President Trump reactioning up pressure on Vladimir Putin over Ukraine plus an amazing debate on Jubilee in which a Columbia educated hip hop master's degree holder.

00:11:32.000 just gets owned by a bunch of black conservatives first. 0.93

00:11:35.000 Did you know your internet provider watches every move you online?

00:11:38.000 They track all your clicks and the time spent online.

00:11:40.000 They build a profile and then they sell that to the highest bidder, which sounds illegal and it should be, but it really isn't.

00:11:44.000 Why?

00:11:44.000 Well, because the government benefits as well.

00:11:46.000 It creates a loophole around your fourth amendment rights.

00:11:48.000 Normally, the government needs a warrant to collect your information without consent.

00:11:51.000 Instead, they just buy it from the data brokers and now it's completely legal.

00:11:54.000 No warrant required.

00:11:55.000 Well, data brokers erode our freedoms as Americans.

00:11:58.000 Well, there's a solution I use, ExpressVPN.

00:12:00.000 With ExpressVPN, all my online activity travels through secure encrypted servers.

00:12:04.000 Nobody, not even my internet provider, can track my movements or infringe on my rights.

00:12:08.000 I use ExpressVPN legitimately all the time on the right.

00:12:11.000 road.

00:12:11.000 I'm using public Wi-Fi.

00:12:13.000 I don't want any hackers or anybody just watching what I'm doing.

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00:12:26.000 If someone tries using your social security number right now, you can get an extra four months for free when you use my special link.

00:12:31.000 Go to ExpressVPN dot com slash Ben, get four extra months of ExpressVPN.

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00:13:47.000 So yesterday, for example, it was revealed by Axios that citizenship reviews US customs and immigration services are now considering the positive attributes of immigrants seeking US citizenship rather than just the absence of misconduct.

00:14:00.000 They're saying, listen, it's not enough for us to look at your record and say, okay, you didn't actually commit rape back in your home country.

00:14:06.000 You have to show us why you ought to enter.

00:14:09.000 Now again, in a culture that naturally did that, in a country that naturally did that, because there were no gigantic welfare nets, because there was no concept that multiculturalism was in and of itself a positive good, because the idea was you come here and you integrate.

00:14:23.000 Because of that, you didn't need this, but now you absolutely do.

00:14:26.000 According to Axios, good moral character is not a new requirement for naturalization, but under the USCIS memo, officers are instructed to put greater emphasis on an applicant's positive attributes and contributions.

00:14:37.000 These can include factors like community involvement, family caregiving, and educational attainment.

00:14:41.000 The memo says going forward, USCIS officers must account for an alien's positive attributes and not simply the absence of misconduct.

00:14:47.000 In other words, you have to show us why you ought to be here.

00:14:50.000 The memo also calls for heightened scrutiny of disqualifying behaviors.

00:14:55.000 These include permanent bars to good moral character, like, of course, murder, aggravated felonies, genocide, and also other offenses like gambling and drug-related violations.

00:15:02.000 But the memo also stipulates that other disqualifying actions could include behavior that is technically lawful, but is, quote, inconsistent with civic responsibility within the community, like, for example, habitual traffic infractions or solicitation, which, again, yes.

00:15:15.000 We don't need people here who are constantly violating the law.

00:15:18.000 That is a problem.

00:15:20.000 The policy allows for the applicant to show genuine rehabilitation, like rectifying.

00:15:25.000 overdue child support or past due taxes.

00:15:29.000 Also, apparently, USCIS said that they had expanded the types of requests that will receive social media vetting, and that will include searches for anti-American activity.

00:15:38.000 A Tuesday memo says USCIS considers the endorsement, support or promotion of the views of an anti-American or terrorist organization or group to be an overwhelmingly negative factor in USCIS discretionary analysis.

00:15:51.000 Well, this apparently is making the left insane.

00:15:54.000 Apparently, that is a serious problem.

00:15:56.000 How dare you screen for anti-American ideology in determining whether people ought to come to the United States or not?

00:16:02.000 Or not.

00:16:04.000 The fact that it's taken so long for us to actually make this part of the law or for this to be applied is totally insane.

00:16:10.000 Of course we should screen to see if people hate America, if they support terrorist groups, if they're Al Qaeda supporters, if they're big fans of Trend Aragua, then yes, they should not be allowed to enter the country. 0.68

00:16:22.000 Why is this even remotely controversial?

00:16:23.000 It's only remotely controversial because the left view of Americanism is if you make an end, you're an American, which is why they use idiotic terms like undocumented citizens as opposed to illegal immigrants.

00:16:35.000 USCIS spokesman Matthew Tregessar in a press release said, quote, America's benefits should not be given to those who despise the country and promote anti-American ideologies.

00:16:43.000 US Citizenship and Immigration Services is committed to implementing policies and procedures that root out anti-Americanism and supporting the enforcement of rigorous screening and vetting measures to the fullest extent possible.

00:16:54.000 This is obviously something that we should be doing.

00:16:56.000 This should not be controversial in any way.

00:16:58.000 And if the Democrats wish to take the minority position and say that anyone who wants to get in should get in, no matter what insanity they support ideologically, well, good luck to you, because I don't think most Americans believe that.

00:17:09.000 I don't think even most Democrats believe that.

00:17:12.000 That anyone who wants in should simply get in, because that doesn't just mean they're going to have people who shouldn't be here committing crimes as you saw in this horrible traffic accident.

00:17:21.000 It means you'll have people here who undercut the very foundations of America, that common culture, that common legal jurisprudence, that common adherence to what it means to be an American that allows us to all live together in a society without fragmenting.

00:17:38.000 By the way, one aspect of this should include the recognition that just because something is economically beneficial to the United States does not mean that people should get into the country.

00:17:48.000 I'm a big free market capitalist, obviously.

00:17:51.000 But when it comes to immigration, it can't just be that we let you in because you are quote unququote good for the economy.

00:17:58.000 You have to show why you would be a good American citizen, why you belong here in the United States.

00:18:03.000 Because any country with borders has to be more than just a place where random people come and go, leaving their cultural imprint on the society.

00:18:15.000 This is why it is correct when Mike Gallagher says that Harvard should send home Chinese students. 1.00

00:18:21.000 He is correct.

00:18:22.000 Mike Gallagher, of course, the former congressman from Wisconsin and was chairman of the select committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

00:18:28.000 He's now head of defense for Palantir.

00:18:30.000 He says President Trump began his second term by picking a fight with an unaccountable leftist dictatorship that is hostile to American values, accustomed to taking advantage of American wealth and actively abetting genocide in Zhangzheng. 0.76

00:18:41.000 I refer, of course, to Harvard.

00:18:42.000 For decades, Republicans and Democrats agreed our universities were crowned jewels of American exceptionalism and Harvard shone brightest of all.

00:18:48.000 Mr. Trump, however, has an uncanny knack for exposing rotten shibbolists and recent years have seen top universities unmasked as global far-left patronage networks using research as a smokescreen to prevent scrutiny of campus hate as they aid adversaries like China. 1.00

00:19:02.000 Mr. Trump deserves credit for addressing the corrupt and immoral links between universities like Harvard and the Chinese Communist Party, but his recent deals with Columbia Brown and other schools don't go far enough. 0.92

00:19:13.000 These settlements consist of impressive but ultimately immaterial fines and vague promises to abide by current law, but there is a better way.

00:19:19.000 Drastically reduce the number of Chinese nationals enrolled in American universities, especially those studying technology.

00:19:25.000 Roughly thirty percent of Harvard's student body is foreign.

00:19:28.000 At Columbia, that share approaches forty percent.

00:19:31.000 Our elite universities need a change of mindset.

00:19:34.000 They should make priority of educating exceptional Americans and citizens of our partner nations, not our adversaries.

00:19:40.000 Of course, because an enormous number of these Chinese students then go back to China and act in the interest of China. 0.57

00:19:48.000 As Gallagher says, blindly embracing academic cooperation with a geopolitical rival is absurd.

00:19:52.000 Nobody suggests we should train Iranian nuclear scientists or Russian ballistics engineers.

00:19:57.000 The US wouldn't have been better off collaborating more with Nazi Germany in the 30s or with the Soviets during the Cold War.

00:20:02.000 Why make an exception for a nation dedicated to surpassing the US in emerging technologies?

00:20:08.000 Now, the reason, by the way, universities really like Chinese students is because they pay the full freight, right? 1.00

00:20:13.000 Everybody else in the United States gets some sort of subsidized loan.

00:20:16.000 That is not the case with these Chinese students, but that's the Communist Party paying for it. 0.97

00:20:21.000 So Gallagher is right about all this.

00:20:23.000 Why is all of this even remotely controversial?

00:20:25.000 That remains a question for Democrats to answer.

00:20:28.000 Okay.

00:20:29.000 Meanwhile, speaking of foreign conflict.

00:20:32.000 Negotiations continue over the end to the war in Ukraine.

00:20:36.000 The United States and her allies, we are attempting to determine right now what kind of security guarantees would be necessary to secure Ukraine's future, even though Ukraine is being asked to give up some territorial concessions.

00:20:47.000 And much of the territory that Ukraine is being asked to give up is some of its most fortified territory.

00:20:51.000 So the security guarantees are going to have to be basically ironclad for Ukraine to sign on and for the Europeans to sign on, by the way.

00:20:58.000 Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump signaled on Tuesday, the United States is prepared to use air power to support a European security force in Ukraine, but ruled out deploying American ground troops.

00:21:08.000 Planning of the multination force to be sent to Ukraine if a peace settlement is reached accelerated on Tuesday, a day after President Trump discussed the idea at the White House with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and other European leaders.

00:21:18.000 After Trump's summit with his Russian counterpart in Alaska, the president tasked Air Force General Dan Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Razin Kane, to develop options for NATO-like security guarantees for that force, according to a Western official.

00:21:31.000 Apparently, Kane was set to meet in person on Tuesday with military chiefs from nations that participated in the White House meeting in Ukraine a day earlier, including Britain, France, Germany, and Finland.

00:21:40.000 And again, the goal was to refine military options for the political leaders.

00:21:43.000 Now, none of these military options are going to involve American boots on the ground.

00:21:47.000 That is something President Trump said yesterday on Fox News.

00:21:50.000 Here he explained.

00:21:53.000 What kind of assurances do you feel like you have that going forward and, you know, past this Trump administration, it won't be American boots on the ground defending that border?

00:22:06.000 Well, you have my assurance.

00:22:07.000 You know, I'm president and I'm just trying to stop people from being killed, Charlie.

00:22:12.000 Look, they're losing from five to seven thousand people a week in that ridiculous war that should have never happened.

00:22:23.000 So his claim that we're not going to put boots on the ground, that was backed up by Caroline Lovettett, who of course underscored this at the White House yesterday.

00:22:31.000 The President has definitely stated US boots will not be on the ground in Ukraine, but we can certainly help in the coordination and perhaps provide other means of security guarantees to our European allies.

00:22:42.000 The president understands security guarantees are crucially important to ensure a lasting peace, and he has directed his national security team to coordinate with our friends in Europe and also to continue to cooperate and discuss these matters with Ukraine and Russia as well.

00:22:58.000 Now, President Trump, he says that his goal here is to actually, believe it or not, get to heaven, meaning he was asked what is his sort of drive to get this done.

00:23:06.000 And I actually believe him here.

00:23:07.000 He says that he just thinks it's a good thing to do.

00:23:11.000 I want to end it.

00:23:12.000 You know, we're not losing American lives.

00:23:14.000 We're not losing American soldiers.

00:23:15.000 We're losing Russian and Ukrainian, mostly soldiers, some people as missiles hit wrong points or get lobbed into cities like Kiev and towns.

00:23:26.000 But, you know, when if I can save seven thousand people a week from being killed, I think that's pretty I want to try and get to heaven if possible.

00:23:34.000 I'm hearing I'm not doing well.

00:23:36.000 I'm really at the bottom of the totem pole.

00:23:39.000 But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.

00:23:45.000 We have a lot of sense of humor there that is some funny mary margaret who's our white house correspondent she asked caroline leavitt about president trump's spiritual motivations here i know the president said on fox news this morning that he's partially seeking peace in order to get to heaven was he joking or is there spiritual uh motivation behind his peace deals here i think the president was uh serious i think the president wants to get to heaven as i hope we all do in this room as well Already coming up.

00:24:13.000 How's Russia going to respond to all of this?

00:24:16.000 We have yet to find out.

00:24:17.000 Plus, we'll get to an astonishing episode of Jubilee where a famous actress just gets owned by black conservatives first. 0.90

00:24:23.000 I love movies about real heroes who have the courage to stand up against evil and protect people.

00:24:27.000 We need those stories today.

00:24:29.000 That's exactly why the incredible story told in Artist at War caught my attention.

00:24:32.000 The film opens September 26.

00:24:34.000 You can visit baomovie.com to see the trailers.

00:24:37.000 Artist at War tells the remarkable true story of Joseph Bow, a gifted artist and forger who risked his life to save others during the Holocaust.

00:24:43.000 There he found not only the strength to survive, but unexpected love with Rebecca.

00:24:47.000 It's a gripping story of survival, love, and courage.

00:24:50.000 It really is a powerful story.

00:24:52.000 It's a really well-made movie.

00:24:53.000 It's not just another Holocaust movie.

00:24:55.000 It's really a movie about how art and love can save lives literally and spiritually.

00:24:58.000 Joseph Bow was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp.

00:25:01.000 He forged documents to help other people.

00:25:03.000 He was also a poet and animator and a romantic.

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00:26:37.000 Meanwhile, the question becomes whether Russia is actually serious about anything of this.

00:26:41.000 Obviously, the downside of negotiations that it allows Russia to continue to push forward militarily.

00:26:46.000 According to the New York Post, Vladimir Putin ordered the largest drone strike on Ukraine in a month on Monday night, just as he hung up the phone with President Trump in a call discussing next steps for peace as Trump celebrated.

00:26:57.000 his significant progress towards ending Russia's war on Ukraine, in White House meetings with Vladimir Zelensky and European leaders, Moscow launched 270 drones and 10 missiles into the war torn neighbor's territory.

00:27:07.000 It came after at least 14 civilians were killed and more than 50 others were injured in a similar Russian strike ahead of the Monday meeting.

00:27:13.000 Among the dead was an entire family, including two kids, one aged 1 and 15.

00:27:17.000 Their parents and grandmother, according to the Ukrainian government, they were at home in Kharkiv, which is roughly 15 miles from the Russian border in the middle of the night when the fatal blast happened.

00:27:26.000 And of course, Russia has been firing drones and missiles.

00:27:29.000 at Kiev for months.

00:27:31.000 When we were in Kiev having an interview with Vladimir Zelensky, the night that we went in, there was a drone alert.

00:27:37.000 The night after we left was the biggest.

00:27:39.000 attack of the war.

00:27:40.000 So Russia has really been uping the ante.

00:27:42.000 And the question is going to be, how far is the West willing to be pushed?

00:27:46.000 Is there a real offramp here?

00:27:48.000 Does Putin actually want anything?

00:27:50.000 And that remains the biggest open question here.

00:27:51.000 It is not what Zelenskyy wants.

00:27:53.000 We know what Zelenskyy wants.

00:27:54.000 He just wants the war to end without giving up enormous swaths of territory and without guaranteeing a future Russian invasion.

00:28:00.000 The question is what Putin is willing to accept.

00:28:02.000 And right now, it appears the answer is not much.

00:28:05.000 Now Vladimir Putin may be stringing along the United States and the West.

00:28:08.000 And if that's the case, then what comes next is the question.

00:28:11.000 As the Wall Street Journal points out, if Putin agrees to meet with Vladimir Zelenskyy, he will come face to face with the man he has spent three and a half years excorating as an illegitimate leader and puppet.

00:28:20.000 Negotiating directly with Zelenskyy would run sharply counter to the narrative Putin has carefully constructed and sold to Russians in an effort to justify his 2022 invasion of Ukraine that the war is part of a broader conflict with the West in which Zelenskyy and his country are mere pawns.

00:28:33.000 Trump's call for a meeting puts Putin in a bind.

00:28:35.000 If he declines, he risks angering President Trump.

00:28:38.000 Sitting down with Zelenskyy could damage him politically with the Russian elite and the broader public.

00:28:42.000 So, you know, again, does Putin actually want anything here?

00:28:46.000 The early signs are no.

00:28:47.000 According to Politico, Moscow moved on Tuesday to cool expectations of a long-awaited face-to-face summit between Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and Russia's Vladimir Putin despite much excitement following President Trump's White House meetings with top European leaders on Monday.

00:29:01.000 During an interview with state controlled TV channel Russia 24 on Tuesday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow does not refuse talks with Ukraine, but crucially insisted any summit would have to be prepared step by step gradually starting from the expert level and then going through all the necessary steps.

00:29:16.000 So in other words, it sounds very much like the Russian government is stringing along the West. 0.65

00:29:21.000 Now President Trump has put Putin directly on the spot.

00:29:23.000 He placed a call directly to the Kremlin while the European leaders and Zelensky were still in the White House.

00:29:28.000 President Trump said I think he wants to make a deal, but the Russians said.

00:29:32.000 said that no, no, no, no.

00:29:34.000 So Kremlin assistant Yuri Ushakov said, quote, President Putin and Trump discussed the idea of raising the level of direct Russian Ukrainian negotiations, adding that both spoke in favor of continuing direct negotiations between the delegations of the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

00:29:48.000 Zelenskyy, of course, is trying to make clear to the president and to the rest of the West that Putin has no intention of actually meeting.

00:29:54.000 So he's saying, listen, I'll meet you.

00:29:55.000 Sure.

00:29:56.000 I'm not going to meet you in Moscow where you're probably going to kill me, but I'm happy to meet you pretty much anywhere else.

00:30:00.000 And meanwhile, Putin, who has already avoided a meeting with Zelenskyy in Turkey, continues to stall.

00:30:05.000 So what happens if Vladimir Putin does not actually come to the table?

00:30:08.000 The answer presumably will be more sanctions.

00:30:11.000 That is something that is already being discussed by the Trump administration.

00:30:14.000 Now, are sanctions alone going to be able to do the job?

00:30:16.000 I don't think the answer here is yes.

00:30:18.000 Economic sanctions have become sort of the all purpose tool of artificial war for the last several decades.

00:30:25.000 There's a great book that came out recently called Choke Point that really talks up the effect of these sorts of sanctions.

00:30:33.000 It's called American power in the age of economic warfare by Edward Fishman.

00:30:39.000 The problem, of course, is that alternative pathways of economics have been created.

00:30:43.000 So the sanctions on Russia have weakened its economy, but it has forged new ties with India.

00:30:47.000 It has forged new ties with China.

00:30:49.000 There's still a lot of places in Europe that are buying Europe is buying more Russian oil in terms of billions of euros than it is actually taking out of the Russian economy via sanctions.

00:30:58.000 So they're still subsidizing the very people who are fighting Ukraine.

00:31:01.000 The truth is what the United States really should do if they want to fight the economic war is they should make a deal with Europe that actively ships much more LNG from the United States to Europe, gets Europe weaned off of Russia's LNG and oil.

00:31:16.000 And that cuts off an enormous amount of commerce with the Russians.

00:31:21.000 That's something the United States should be doing would also, by the way, benefit our domestic oil industry, our fracking industry and all the rest, if you're talking in terms of economics.

00:31:29.000 But it turns out that economic sanctions don't generally achieve what they seek to achieve.

00:31:35.000 They don't do enough.

00:31:36.000 They weaken the country, but not so much that it falls.

00:31:39.000 It is extremely rare in world history for economic sanctions, unaccompanied by a sort of military blockade, to actually effectuate what they seek to effectuate.

00:31:49.000 That goes, goes all the way back to Napoleon's continental system and the British attempting to blockade Napoleon, not supremely successful.

00:31:56.000 Right.

00:31:57.000 So what in the end, what the United States will have to do, if the United States wishes for Vladimir Putin to stop, is up the antimilitarily.

00:32:03.000 And that means giving newer, better weapons to the Ukrainians to allow them to fight. 0.97

00:32:07.000 With that said, sanctions are the first step toward that.

00:32:09.000 Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, he says the President Trump had Putin on his heels in Alaska, which is certainly partially true. 0.57

00:32:16.000 Now, I don't know if it's totally true because we don't know what Putin's going to do yet, but certainly he backfooted Vladimir Putin by essentially saying, get in a room with Zelensky.

00:32:25.000 And now Putin is kind of stuck a little bit.

00:32:29.000 President Trump had a great meeting with President Putin.

00:32:32.000 My take was he had President Putin on his heels for most of the event after the flyover.

00:32:38.000 And then yesterday, a fantastic meeting with Zelensky, then with the Europeans, and then back in the Oval, he had a call with.

00:32:47.000 President Putin, and I'm very optimistic they'll be able to have a bilateral meeting.

00:32:54.000 So we'll see if that in fact comes to fruition.

00:32:56.000 Meanwhile, Scott Bessens is saying it's unacceptable that India is purchasing oil from Russia.

00:33:02.000 Now, again, it seems to me that if we are going to put sanctions on anybody for the purchase of Russian oil, it should really be China.

00:33:08.000 India is a country we should be trying to woo, and we really need not just use sticks with India.

00:33:12.000 We need to use carrots because India is going to be a geopolitical powerhouse for the foreseeable future. 0.99

00:33:17.000 They have the world's largest population at this point.

00:33:20.000 They are a nuclear armed country.

00:33:21.000 They're economically developing very quickly, and they could be very pro-America.

00:33:25.000 In fact, the relationship between Trump and Modi in India was actually quite warm until some of these sanctions went into place.

00:33:30.000 But here's Bessant ripping on India. 0.99

00:33:33.000 If you go back and look now, I believe India had less than 1% of their oil, 1%, and now I believe it's up to 42.

00:33:43.000 So India is just profiteering. 0.96

00:33:49.000 They are just profiteering.

00:33:50.000 They are reselling.

00:33:51.000 They've made $16 billion in excess profits, some of the richest families in India.

00:33:57.000 So this is a completely different thing.

00:34:01.000 This India, what I would call. 0.99

00:34:03.000 call the Indian arbitrage, buying cheap Russian oil, reselling it as product, has just sprung up during the war, which is unacceptable.

00:34:12.000 Okay.

00:34:13.000 I mean, that's fine.

00:34:14.000 But if we are going to take that perspective, then we certainly should be taking that perspective with China as well.

00:34:18.000 I will note that the Trump administration has now decided to go on TikTok as opposed to doing what they are supposed to do statutorily, which is, you know, ban TikTok, which absolutely should be forced to the mat.

00:34:27.000 TikTok is a Chinese op.

00:34:29.000 It has always been a Chinese op.

00:34:30.000 And the idea that the administration continues to sort of forestall the use of its legislative tools in order to ban TikTok and instead is now engaging with TikTok while simultaneously going going after India, I don't really understand that very much.

00:34:43.000 With all that said, the left-wing charge that President Trump is somehow bending over backward for Putin is false.

00:34:48.000 CNN's Aaron Burnett was trying to retell that line yesterday.

00:34:52.000 A warmth and decent feeling.

00:34:54.000 I mean, it is almost it's almost as if he's writing some sort of late night Do those still exist scripts?

00:35:00.000 I mean, this is Putin that Trump is talking about, the same dictator who invades other countries, jails and assassinates his rivals, poisons them, poisons anyone in the opposition, engages in mass murder of civilians.

00:35:11.000 This is the same person that the world has seen in action for decades.

00:35:15.000 And yet Trump is bending over backward right now for Putin.

00:35:20.000 I don't understand what she means by bending over backwards.

00:35:22.000 By bending over backwards, does she mean that Trump is actually now offering security guarantees he wasn't offering before?

00:35:27.000 Because that doesn't seem like that very much.

00:35:29.000 I will say that the absolute radical disconnect between our left wing media and reality, it's astonishing.

00:35:35.000 So Chuck Todd was on CNN and he was lamenting that President Trump sees the world as the rule of the jungle.

00:35:43.000 Welcome to reality where geopolitics is the rule of the jungle, always has been the rule of the jungle.

00:35:47.000 The lie that there is some sort of international law to which everyone is answerable is a bunch of bull.

00:35:52.000 Everybody who engages in international politics except for idiots on CNN knows this.

00:35:56.000 Everyone knows this.

00:35:58.000 If the United States were not there to back everybody's play, there would be no international law.

00:36:02.000 It is the rule of the bully in geopolitics that is you just hope the bully is on the right side.

00:36:06.000 And here's Chuck Todd sort of lamenting Trump.

00:36:09.000 Trump, as I've said a thousand times, lives in the world of reality.

00:36:12.000 The reality is that bullies run the world.

00:36:15.000 You just hope that the bully is the United States and not China. 0.96

00:36:18.000 Look, this is a worldview issue, right?

00:36:20.000 Donald Trump believes in the rules of the jungle.

00:36:22.000 The bigger are in charge, the smaller have to, even if you're, even if you have the moral ground, doesn't matter.

00:36:30.000 You don't have the strength here.

00:36:31.000 So this is a case where I think this is why some people, while we all may, people may have mistaken his support of Russia in some sort of nefarious way when it's he just views it as well Russia and China are the big people and we have to deal with them differently than you do the others which doesn't sit well with people that believe in constitutional republics that's ridiculous that's ridiculous I believe in a constitutional republic I like constitutional republics I think that China and Russia are enemies not just our geopolitical opponents are enemies and and

00:37:02.000 I also understand that geopolitics doesn't work the way that you wish that it worked in which everybody gets in a room and they're all friendly to one another and there are agreed rules of the game.

00:37:10.000 That is not how any of this works at all, at all.

00:37:15.000 Ridiculously enough.

00:37:16.000 enough that the person who understands this apparently is Stephen A. Smith, just Stephen A. With whom I will say that we've had friendly talks in the past publicly.

00:37:25.000 He says that it's Democrats in office that caused this.

00:37:27.000 He ain't wrong.

00:37:29.000 We ain't going to act like he caused this now.

00:37:33.000 It's Democrats in office.

00:37:35.000 It was Biden in office when a full-fledged war against Ukraine took place courtesy of Russia's instigation, no matter what they try to say to Trump.

00:37:45.000 It was Russia that invaded Crimea and that was under the Obama administration.

00:37:51.000 It was Clinton in office when you made a deal that disarmed the ukraine and therefore weakened them leaving them dependent on the united states and now here they are having to beg for support that they're old because of what we promised them as a nation we promised them this i mean he is not totally wrong he's not totally wrong Already coming up, the United States looks like it might be a military face-off with Venezuela.

00:38:22.000 We'll get into what's going on there.

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00:39:26.000 Joining us online is Senator Eric Schmidt, sixth generation Missourian and currently represents the people of Missouri in the United States Senate.

00:39:31.000 He's a member of the Armed Services Committee, the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee.

00:39:37.000 He has a brand new book outtitled The Last Line of Defense, How to Beat the Left in Court.

00:39:41.000 Senator Schmidt, thanks so much for the time.

00:39:43.000 Really appreciate it.

00:39:44.000 It's great to be with you, Ben.

00:39:47.000 So let's talk about.

00:39:49.000 the law fair that is currently being waged on the Trump administration, the law fair that the left has used so successfully over the course of the last decade and a half, several decades actually, in order to promote their agenda.

00:40:00.000 What are they doing and how can we fight that?

00:40:02.000 Well, I think first of all, we have to understand the terrain that we're dealing with, right?

00:40:05.000 I think for a long time conservatives thought that that was what democrats did and you had this nonsense about a living constitution and we seeded a lot of ground.

00:40:13.000 And part of the reason why I wrote the book, The Last Line of Defense, How to Beat the Left in Court is when I was Attorney General in Missouri, the job I had before this, we were successful, right?

00:40:21.000 We saw the vaccine mandate.

00:40:22.000 We took that to the Supreme Court.

00:40:24.000 We won.

00:40:24.000 We won on the student loan debt forgiveness scam.

00:40:26.000 I brought the Missouri v.

00:40:27.000 Biden censorship case, right?

00:40:29.000 Where we exposed this vast censorship enterprise even before Elon Musk had bought Twitter.

00:40:33.000 So there's a lot of lessons learned, but as it relates to right now, we've got to stand up and we've got to fight.

00:40:37.000 And what you're seeing is, I think, a different mentality.

00:40:39.000 One of the great gifts President Trump has given, I think, to conservatives is this willingness and confidence to fight back.

00:40:45.000 And actually, the Solicitor General of the United States, John Sauer, was my Solicitor General in Missouri, and he's winning a lot of these big cases as they make their way up.

00:40:53.000 I think a lot of people will see a district court decision here or there in some jurisdiction.

00:40:58.000 But as they make their way up, by and large, President Trump has been successful in defending his ability to control personnel, programming and deportations.

00:41:07.000 That's been kind of the center of the ring.

00:41:09.000 So they've been successful.

00:41:10.000 And also, if you remember, the Supreme Court just a couple of months ago knocked down this nationwide injunction nonsense that had kind of riddled the courts too.

00:41:16.000 So I think we're fighting back and winning, but it's an ongoing fight.

00:41:19.000 There's no doubt about that.

00:41:22.000 So, you know, speaking of that ongoing fight, obviously one of the big cases that was filed in Missouri originally filed as Missouri versus Biden involved the First Amendment, the federal government and and its impact on social media, essentially pressure that was brought to bear by the Biden administration on social media.

00:41:36.000 And the Supreme Court basically refused to take up the case.

00:41:39.000 Were there any lessons learned from that?

00:41:40.000 What is the best way to approach these cases so that in the future, you know, those are actually cases that we can win at the Supreme Court level.

00:41:47.000 Yeah, what they kind of did is they punted on it.

00:41:49.000 I disagreed with it.

00:41:49.000 They said there wasn't standing.

00:41:51.000 They sent it back to the lower court.

00:41:53.000 But, you know, the district court level and even the appellate court level, those judges, I mean, not my words, their words saying that this was the biggest violation of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.

00:42:03.000 But what you because we took the deposition of Anthony Fauci and we laid that out in the book.

00:42:07.000 We took the deposition of Elvis Chan, who was the FBI agent who was prebunking the Hunter Biden laptop story with big tech companies, even though they knew it was real.

00:42:15.000 Brian Scully, who's that guy, when he was at CISA, they were in this too.

00:42:19.000 So you had this leviathan of government agencies really weaponized against conservatives to censor speech.

00:42:25.000 So it could have been the laptop.

00:42:26.000 It was also about COVID and whether or not vaccines were effective or masks were effective.

00:42:31.000 And so I think the lesson there is when we got the discovery, which was a big key strategic decision, we saw discovery before the injunction.

00:42:39.000 The judge granted it.

00:42:40.000 That's how we got to take the depositions and see the documents and the emails.

00:42:43.000 There are secret portals that existed.

00:42:45.000 I just think the expanse of this bin was shocking.

00:42:48.000 And we have to fight.

00:42:50.000 We have to not only uncover it, but we have to do things like if you're going to be a big tech company like that and you have protections as a platform, Section 230 protections, you got to actually be a platform.

00:43:01.000 You got to support that.

00:43:01.000 You can't be a publisher making editorial decisions throttling some people and not others.

00:43:06.000 So I think there's some things for us to do, but there's a lot of lessons learned there.

00:43:09.000 But uncovering, I think, this censorship enterprise was a big win.

00:43:14.000 And this was before Elon Musk had even bought Twitter.

00:43:18.000 Yeah, Senator Schmidt, one of the things that's been happening that I think is really salutary from the Trump administration is the focus on restaffing the administrative state.

00:43:25.000 So obviously much of what you talk about in the book is challenges to the administrative state on the judicial level.

00:43:30.000 But the reality is that unless the administrative state is completely redone, unless it's completely restaffed, things can go the other way.

00:43:36.000 I mean, court composition can change.

00:43:38.000 You could have a democratic president who decides to.

00:43:40.000 to replace a conservative justice with a very liberal justice.

00:43:44.000 And suddenly the power of the courts could be on the other shoe.

00:43:48.000 So what exactly should conservatives be doing on the nonjudicial level in order to ensure victory in the future?

00:43:53.000 Yeah, you hit the nail on the head.

00:43:54.000 We have a chapter in the book, Last Line of Defense, dedicated to this.

00:43:57.000 It really the progressive era, think of Woodrow Wilson, perhaps the worst president we've ever had.

00:44:02.000 And that's saying a lot concerning what we've seen the last decade or so with Biden and Obama.

00:44:06.000 But kind of began this administrative state, this sort of the rule of the experts, which is really antithetical to the mission of our country, which was about self government and about accountability, where you can send someone to Washington, you can send them home or you can send them to home or you can send them back.

00:44:19.000 These bureaucrats are not accountable to anyone, Ben.

00:44:22.000 You don't know who the deputy undersecretary of some agency is that wrote a guidance letter that destroyed your family farm.

00:44:28.000 And so it's, you're right.

00:44:30.000 It's not about changing personnel.

00:44:32.000 It's about dismantling this.

00:44:34.000 So I think one of the things that's really encouraging about the Trump administration, he put together a team of disruptors that are doing that.

00:44:40.000 And so a lot of the legal fights you're seeing right now, the left in their law fair to subvert the will of the people, they're trying to get back to a place where these unelected folks have a lot of authority they never were supposed to have.

00:44:52.000 Think of USAID, right?

00:44:53.000 So I handled the resisions package in the Senate., we were able to pull back billions and billions of that.

00:44:59.000 But I think ultimately having something like the Reigns Act to be specific, which is if there's going to be an agency that submits some rule that has an economic impact of X pick the number, Congress should have to approve it before it actually comes into effect.

00:45:13.000 And that way, people know, did Eric Schmidt vote on this one way or another, and they can hold you accountable.

00:45:18.000 Right now, the administrative state is not accountable.

00:45:20.000 We need structural reform.

00:45:23.000 Right now, obviously, the House, Senate and the presidency here are held by Republicans.

00:45:27.000 And so that means a sort of more loosey goosey relationship between Congress and the President of the United States.

00:45:32.000 But in the future, as different parties get elected, do you think it's important to restore the sort of balance of power between Congress and the executive branch because it does seem that over the course of the past several decades, the expansion of the prerogative of the executive branch has been dramatic and Congress has abdicated many of its duties in checking that sort of expansion.

00:45:51.000 That's right because Congress has played a role in this too, Ben, which is a lot of congressmen and women will say, look, I voted for the greatest bill in the world, but I can't believe what the EPA did.

00:46:00.000 We've got to get away from that because it just shifts responsibility to people that can never be held accountable.

00:46:04.000 So yes, reasserting the authority of the Article I branch in the rulemaking that effectively has the consequence of law, we've got to rein that back in.

00:46:13.000 There are core Article II powers, which again, why President Trump, I think, has largely been successful because he's the only he's the only person elected by the entire country to control the executive branch.

00:46:24.000 But from a legislative perspective, how it affects people's lives, the decisions that we make, we need to pull as much of that back into the Article 1 branch.

00:46:31.000 Actually, after the Chevron decision, there is an opening for that because what the Supreme Court said just a year ago or so, like, look, we're not going to like just give deference to the so called experts.

00:46:41.000 We're going to judge on what the law is.

00:46:43.000 So I think Congress needs to tighten up the language and do some things there to, again, sort of reign in that authority.

00:46:50.000 Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri, his new book is The Last Line of Defense, How to Beat the Left in Crisis.

00:46:54.000 the left in court just out a couple of days ago.

00:46:56.000 Senator Schmidt, thanks so much for your book and thanks so much for your hard work.

00:46:59.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:47:00.000 Thanks for all you do.

00:47:01.000 Meanwhile, the president of the United States is now unleashing some gunships to international waters to stop Venezuela. 0.62

00:47:08.000 from shipping drugs to the United States.

00:47:09.000 According to Fox News, U.S. military has sent destroyers and thousands of Marines toward Venezuela as President Trump doubles down on deadly drug cartels.

00:47:16.000 According to reports, at least three Aegis-guided missile destroyers, USS Gravely and USS Jason Dunham among them, are part of the mission, according to two U.S. officials who are talking to the Associated Press.

00:47:27.000 Another official told Reuters that deployment, which could arrive soon, involves around 4,000 Marines and soldiers over the course of several months backed by spy planes, warships and a submarine so that international waters and skies are covered.

00:47:39.000 Venezuela has, in response, mobilized something like 4.5 million people on the ground.

00:47:45.000 They seem to be afraid that Maduro is going to be assassinated.

00:47:49.000 He apparently has banned all sales of all drones because he's concerned that someone is going to launch a drone that kills him.

00:47:55.000 So Venezuela is quite paranoid that things are about to radically change.

00:47:59.000 In a televised address on Monday, Maduro vowed Venezuela would defend our seas, our skies and our land and righted US pressure as the outlandish bizarre threat of a declining empire.

00:48:09.000 Now again, there's really nothing nothing new about us deploying boats near Venezuela in order to prevent them from shipping drugs toward the United States.

00:48:16.000 In February, President Trump designated drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and imposed sweeping sanctions on Maduro.

00:48:25.000 So it'll be interesting to see how all of this plays out clearly.

00:48:30.000 Caroline Levitt over at the White House, she said, listen, the Maduro regime is a narcoterror cartel, which is true.

00:48:36.000 President Trump has been very clear and consistent.

00:48:38.000 He's prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice.

00:48:47.000 The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela.

00:48:50.000 It is a narco-terror cartel.

00:48:52.000 And Maduro, it is the view of this administration, is not a legitimate president.

00:48:56.000 He is a fugitive head of this cartel who has been indicted in the United States for trafficking drugs into the country.

00:49:04.000 So that doesn't mean that the United States is now going to engage in a boot on the ground attempt to overthrow Maduro.

00:49:09.000 What it does mean is that trying to box him in is a good move.

00:49:12.000 By the way, it just shows the evils of dictatorship that Maduro is still in power because Bolivia has said enough.

00:49:19.000 Apparently the pink tide, which is what we've actually been talking about on the show for several years, which is the upswing in socialist sentiment in Latin America is now receding.

00:49:27.000 It's receding in large part due to the leadership of people like Javier Mille in Argentina, as well as the leadership.

00:49:33.000 There's some other conservative leaders, by the way, in South America as well.

00:49:38.000 The president of Paraguay, for example, his name is Santiago Peña.

00:49:41.000 He is conservative.

00:49:42.000 Obviously, El Salvador has turned toward the right.

00:49:44.000 According to the Wall Street Journal in Bolivia, which had moved radically to the left, now socialism has been rejected.

00:49:53.000 Sunday's Bolivian presidential election rejected the movement toward socialism party.

00:49:59.000 It finished at a distance six with three percent of the vote.

00:50:01.000 Originally, he was elected in 2005, Evo Morales, who was the socialist strongman in 2005 with 53 percent of the vote and then he proceeded to nationalize nearly everything and destroy the economy and for two decades they basically were in power and then on Sunday voters said they had enough no candidate won a majority the top two finishers go to a runoff in October Rodrigo Paz a centrist Christian Democrat got under 32 percent of the vote and he'll face former president Jorge Quiroga a conservative who came away with 27 percent of the vote so again one of the evils of Venezuela not

00:50:31.000 having any electoral democracy is the fact that you can't get rid of these smacks and that's a major problem for the people of Venezuela that doesn't mean the United States will take an active role in toppling Maduro but it would certainly be good for the world if Maduro were no longer in charge of Venezuela and meanwhile, the President of the United States continues his quest to rid Washington, DC, of violent crime. 1.00

00:50:52.000 According to the Washington Post, President Trump's crusade against crime in the nation's capital has resulted in more than 450 arrests since August 7.

00:50:59.000 The White House announced on Tuesday morning.

00:51:01.000 These run the gamut of charges from murder and assault to driving under influence.

00:51:06.000 And of course, the left is catterwalling about this.

00:51:08.000 Still.

00:51:09.000 However, there's no doubt that bringing crime under control in DC is a worthwhile goal.

00:51:14.000 Not only that, the DOJ is now investigating whether the DC police manipulated data to make crime rates appear lower.

00:51:20.000 This has been a major issue in places like New York and LA for a very long time.

00:51:24.000 The reclassification of crime from a felony to a misdemeanor or from a misdemeanor to nothing in order to pretend that crime is actually going down.

00:51:31.000 And the criminal probe is going to be run out of the DC Federal Prosecutor's Office led by US Attorney Jeanine Pirro.

00:51:37.000 It's expected to examine the actions of multiple police officials.

00:51:40.000 According to three people familiar with the investigation, President Trump wrote on social media Monday night, DC gave fake crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety is a very bad and dangerous thing to do.

00:51:50.000 They're under serious investigation for doing so.

00:51:52.000 Until four days ago, Washington, DC was the most unsafe city in the United States, perhaps the world.

00:51:56.000 Now in just a short period of time, it's perhaps the safest and getting better every single hour.

00:52:00.000 Now, the usual superlatives there from President Trump.

00:52:03.000 However, he is right that much of the data has been manipulated here and lower end crime is something that the federal government has the capacity to do in Washington, DC.

00:52:12.000 Meanwhile, the Trump administration reorienting itself with regard to America's universities.

00:52:17.000 We've talked obviously a lot about President Trump pressuring America's universities to move away from their not only pathological racial discrimination, but also from their pathological leftism.

00:52:31.000 Apparently, President Trump is pushing for major payments from a lot of these universities.

00:52:37.000 The deal that he cut with Columbia University and a potential settlement.

00:52:41.000 involves apparently $200 million that would pass from Columbia University to the United States government.

00:52:49.000 According to the New York Times, critics have likened Mr. Trump's methods to extortion.

00:52:52.000 The White House has said the goal of extracting money from universities is to enhance trade schools, apprenticeships, and other real-world training.

00:52:58.000 Now, again, I'm totally fine with the federal government fining all of these universities for their violation of law.

00:53:04.000 What would be better is if these universities would change their procedures and their focus because let's just say our universities are not doing a very good job.

00:53:13.000 Here, for example, is a professor at the University of California.

00:53:18.000 Her name is Halle Froelich, who just recently suggested that she is fleeing the United States and she's starting a TikTok because she needs to study climate science elsewhere.

00:53:27.000 These are the kinds of people that are being churned out and hired by our universities.

00:53:32.000 I'm an associate professor at the University of California institution and I'm starting a TikTok because I'm going to flee the United States with my family to start a life.

00:53:46.000 and do my science, study climate change and sustainable seafood, do it somewhere else.

00:53:52.000 So, I don't know, I'm going to talk about my science, of course but really the adventures of the highs lows ups and downs of what this is going to look like because i'm leaving this image for something better um soy de channel wants her glasses and haircut back i'm not sure why um why we have the meaningful piano music in the background from this lady, 0.98

00:54:19.000 but these are the kinds of people who our universities are turning out by the hundreds and by the thousands.

00:54:25.000 They're also turning out people like apparently the actress.

00:54:29.000 I guess that's who this person is named Amanda Seals.

00:54:31.000 So Amanda Seals, who honestly, I was really not all that aware of.

00:54:36.000 She was also one of the co-hosts of the syndicated daytime talk show The Real.

00:54:50.000 Now, when I say that higher education turns out folks like Amanda Seals, I mean she graduated from SUNY Purchase and got a master's degree in African American studies with a concentration in hip hop from Columbia University. 0.96

00:55:01.000 Hard to think of a more useless degree than that, but somehow she has parlayed that into fame and fortune.

00:55:06.000 At least it hasn't hurt her.

00:55:07.000 It didn't educate her much because she really doesn't know much.

00:55:10.000 So she was on Jubilee.

00:55:11.000 Jubilee is kind of this fun YouTube channel.

00:55:13.000 I've done it before where you sit there and then you're surrounded by a bunch of people who disagree with you and they run in they disagree with you.

00:55:19.000 You have these kind of little short debates.

00:55:20.000 Some of them are fun.

00:55:21.000 Some of them are dumb.

00:55:22.000 Some of them are ridiculous.

00:55:24.000 But she did not acquit herself well.

00:55:27.000 She went up against a young man named Matt Nuclear who was talking about reparations and she clearly does not know what she is talking about.

00:55:37.000 You can give everyone here like a $50,000 check, especially people that are in the streets who are committing violent crimes consistently, a $50,000 check.

00:55:44.000 It's not going to fix anything.

00:55:45.000 It's not going to increase the median household income in the next ten years by ten percent or twenty percent.

00:55:50.000 For example, we have the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

00:55:52.000 We prevented Chinese people from getting citizenship and even entering the country, we discriminate against them and basically put them under apartheid, even here in the United States.

00:56:00.000 Yet they have the highest median household income.

00:56:02.000 How is that possible?

00:56:03.000 How come they don't complain and feel entitled consistently to beg for reparations and beg for this when they are killing each other ninety percent of the time, which is the rate that black people kill each other according to the FBI. 0.98

00:56:13.000 Oh, young Matt.

00:56:14.000 Yet white people are the oppressors.

00:56:16.000 I'm not sure where your education came from, but they lied to you.

00:56:19.000 Stats don't lie though.

00:56:21.000 Statistics lie all the time.

00:56:23.000 So let's start there.

00:56:24.000 Particularly when the statistics are coming from the sources that gain from the statistics being shown in a different way.

00:56:30.000 So if you're going to start your argument on stat stats don't lie.

00:56:33.000 You've already lost the argument.

00:56:35.000 They lie.

00:56:35.000 They lie all the time.

00:56:38.000 Well, I mean, if you start from the argument that facts do lie, you can't even have a discussion, right?

00:56:44.000 If the argument is that all data are skewed, then you're just going to yell at each other because other, how do you even have a common basis in fact to have a discussion?

00:56:51.000 This is what she learned with her hip hop degree from Columbia University.

00:56:55.000 Very, very, by the way, just comments on the outfit.

00:56:58.000 What happens to the rest of her shirt?

00:56:59.000 She has a collar, but I'm not sure what happened to her shirt.

00:57:02.000 Very weird.

00:57:02.000 The cleaners did a bad job here.

00:57:03.000 In any case, she then continued with this young man.

00:57:07.000 And the question was, is there systemic racism against black?

00:57:10.000 She's talking about racism against black people.

00:57:11.000 And again, she just gets owned because she doesn't know what she's talking about. 0.58

00:57:16.000 Comparing Chinese people who are immigrants that made a choice to come to the United States and comparing the continued effort of black people to ground themselves in a nation that continues to make impediments for them to show and live and exist in their true citizenship is a false equivalency.

00:57:32.000 I don't believe that happens at all.

00:57:33.000 What, what, no one here is in.

00:57:35.000 Are you acting right now?

00:57:36.000 Do you believe?

00:57:37.000 I'm telling the truth.

00:57:38.000 There's no, there's no systemic racism that I've experienced here in America.

00:57:41.000 What system is racist?

00:57:42.000 I think the only racism that we've actually seen recently, systemic racism that we've seen, is the application of systemic racism against white people.

00:57:48.000 The University of Western Washington, for example, has been trying to segregate dormitories using black only dormitories because black people feel safer amongst each other, but they're more likely to kill each other than white people ever are ever to kill them. 0.97

00:58:00.000 That's just the truth.

00:58:01.000 You have King Von rapping about killing other black men.

00:58:04.000 Why should I think that the white man is the oppressor when black men are more likely to kill me?

00:58:07.000 Oh my God, this is scary.

00:58:10.000 You need to think about me as your mama.

00:58:12.000 Do not talk to me in that fashion.

00:58:13.000 So let's check that now.

00:58:16.000 Okay, so literally no response, just bizarre buzzwords in some way.

00:58:23.000 This is what our universities are turning out.

00:58:25.000 This is why President Trump is right to go after them..

00:58:27.000 The fact that somebody got a subsidized education to get an African American studies degree at Columbia University, masters with a with a specialty in hip hop.

00:58:35.000 Clearly that has not made anybody particularly smarter.

00:58:38.000 Well, what Oklahoma is doing to stop all of this is apparently they're going to test incoming teachers with an America First exam, which I think is just wonderful actually.

00:58:47.000 Apparently, according to the Washington Post, teachers from New York and California who apply to teach in Oklahoma will now have to answer questions meant to screen out woke indoctrinators with left-wing views.

00:58:55.000 The latest attempt by Oklahoma officials to push the state's education system rightward.

00:58:59.000 The test 50 questions will cover topics about the United States government, religion, and gender.

00:59:03.000 According to examples shared by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, teachers' unions have criticized the moves as a political stunt.

00:59:10.000 It will discourage applicants as Oklahoma faces a teacher shortage.

00:59:14.000 Okay, well, I think that's the goal, is to discourage left-wing applicants.

00:59:18.000 So apparently Prager University, which of course we have worked closely with, they're great, developed the exam.

00:59:26.000 Apparently, the requirement went into effect over the summer.

00:59:29.000 The test is currently being finalized.

00:59:31.000 So some of the questions are things like what are the first three words of the const choices is in God we trust, which is four words.

00:59:41.000 Why is freedom of religion important to America's identity?

00:59:44.000 And then the possible answers are it makes Christianity the national religion.

00:59:47.000 It bans all forms of public worship.

00:59:49.000 It limits religious teaching in public life.

00:59:50.000 It protects religious choice from government control, right?

00:59:53.000 Like if you can't get these questions, like these are basic factual questions.

00:59:55.000 If you don't get these questions right, you really shouldn't be teaching kids.

00:59:59.000 It's like, what are the two parts of U.S. Congress?

01:00:01.000 How many U.S. senators are there?

01:00:03.000 Why do some states have more representatives than others?

01:00:06.000 Right?

01:00:08.000 These are very basic questions and treating this as some sort of obscene attempt to prevent great blue state teachers from teaching.

01:00:17.000 That's just a lie and really, really silly.

01:00:19.000 And meanwhile, controversy has broken out over President Trump's attempt to rewrite some of the exhibits over at the Smithsonian.

01:00:25.000 Now, remember, the Smithsonian is incredibly left-winging.

01:00:28.000 We've talked about some of their exhibits before, including exhibits that suggested that it was a part of white culture to be on time and prompt, for example, or to believe that you should pull yourself up by your own bootstraps if you can. 0.60

01:00:42.000 Like, those things are white culture things.

01:00:45.000 So President Trump put out a statement yesterday that Twitter got very angry at.

01:00:51.000 He said the museums throughout Washington, but all over the country are essentially the last remaining segment of woke.

01:00:55.000 The Smithsonian is out of control where everything discusses how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was, how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been. 0.87

01:01:01.000 Nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future.

01:01:05.000 We are not going to allow this to happen.

01:01:06.000 I've instructed my attorneys to go through the museums and start the exact same process that has been done with colleges and universities where tremendous progress has been made.

01:01:13.000 This country cannot be woke because woke is broke.

01:01:15.000 We have the hottest country in the world and we want people to talk about it, including in our museums.

01:01:19.000 Okay.

01:01:19.000 So the thing people are picking out in this statement is where he says how bad slavery was.

01:01:23.000 President Trump is not saying that slavery was good or it was okay or not that bad.

01:01:28.000 What he is saying is everything discussed, right?

01:01:31.000 Read the whole sentence, everything discussed is how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was.

01:01:36.000 He's saying, yeah, we should discuss how bad slavery was, but in the context of a broader American story, including the fact that, for example, America expended hundreds of thousands of lives ending slavery.

01:01:46.000 The story of America is complex.

01:01:47.000 It has really, really dark areas, obviously.

01:01:52.000 But overall, the story of America is an incredibly good story for the world and for the nation, obviously.

01:01:57.000 And that's the point that President Trump is making.

01:01:59.000 People on the left, of course, are jumping over him for this, suggesting, oh, it's just terrible.

01:02:04.000 Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian, said, it's the epitome of dumbness to criticize the Smithsonian for dealing with the reality of slavery in America.

01:02:11.000 It's what led to our civil war and is a defining aspect of our national history.

01:02:15.000 And the Smithsonian deals in a robust way with what slavery was, but it also deals with human rights and civil rights in equal abundance.

01:02:21.000 Now, again, I really do not think that that is what President Trump is trying to do.

01:02:24.000 He's not wiping out the slavery exhibits at the Smithsonian, obviously.

01:02:28.000 But the goal here is, as always, for the left to lie about this sort of stuff and suggest that if you wish to teach American history in a complex, shaded way that upholds the essential goodness of America, then this somehow makes you a racist, somehow makes you terrible in some unspecified way.

01:02:44.000 Alrighty folks, coming up, we'll get to some shocking information about who exactly is funding public broadcasters.

01:02:53.000 I guess it's not all that shocking.

01:02:54.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:02:56.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - August 20, 2025

OPEN BORDERS DEATH: Illegal Immigrant Truck Driver KILLS Three

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