Prince Andrew is apparently arrested on charges that we ll explore in just a moment, thanks to the revelations in some of Epstein files. We ll also get to a litany of fake victims ranging from James Tallarico, the Texas Democrat Senate candidate, to Tucker Carlson.
00:00:00.000Prince Andrew is apparently arrested on charges that we will explore in just a moment, thanks to the revelations in some of the Epstein files.
00:00:08.000We'll also get to a litany of fake victims, those fake victims ranging from James Tallarico, the Texas Democrat Senate candidate to, yes, Tucker Carlson.
00:00:16.000First, all week, we have been telling you episode six of the Pendragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin, is the big one, and now it is here.
00:00:23.000Honestly, if you haven't started the series yet, you should start with this episode.
00:00:26.000Everyone who has seen this episode says it is their favorite.
00:00:29.000Even Tom Sharp, the dude who plays Merlin, called and said he would do whatever it takes to make sure people watch this episode.
00:00:34.000The fight scenes go toe-to-toe with anything Hollywood makes.
00:00:37.000The love story is going to own the group chat.
00:00:38.000The ending launched us straight into the finale in the most ridiculous, epic way possible.
00:00:42.000It is streaming right this very moment only on Daily Wire Plus.
00:00:45.000One rule, you should find the biggest screen you can find.
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00:00:52.000Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, Prince Andrew, as he is known in the UK, although he was stripped of his formal title, has now been arrested.
00:01:00.000He is being held in custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
00:01:04.000This is based on apparently revelations in the release of all of the Epstein papers, all the Epstein files.
00:01:11.000Our standard when it comes to literally any case should be evidence.
00:01:14.000I know this has fallen out of public favor because we have this thing called X, where people sort of just find one page of a thing and then take it out of context or obscure certain data or simply misinterpret.
00:01:24.000And then that becomes the story of the day.
00:01:25.000But actual evidence is the standard when it comes to making actual legal allegations about people.
00:01:30.000And if we don't do that, then we got kind of a problem with regard to both public information and also equal rule of law.
00:01:38.000When it comes to the evidence in this particular case, we now have 3.5 million pages that have been released into the public.
00:01:43.000If you, like an individual human being, were to try to read those pages 24-7, no sleeping, no eating, no breaks.
00:01:53.000And let's say that you are reading it carefully.
00:01:56.000Let's say you're doing like 25 pages per hour.
00:01:58.000It would take you like 16 years to read through that.
00:02:01.000So I understand that the internet is sort of group sourcing this thing, but that doesn't mean that everybody is reading everything, nor does it mean that the analysis is in any way truly methodical.
00:02:13.000The only point that I'm making is when you're talking about somebody who actually gets arrested, it would probably behoove us to find out for what he was arrested and what the best available evidence suggests about that arrest.
00:02:23.000With that said, everyone who committed a crime, every single person, obviously, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
00:02:33.000Prosecutions ought not be based on speculation on X rooted in non-evidentiary allegations.
00:02:39.000They ought to be based on the evidence.
00:02:40.000I know this is a very strong standard that we ought to actually prosecute Andrew for the crimes he committed, not for the crimes you think he committed based on the stuff that you read by some rando anon account on X.
00:02:52.000But that's actually how functional civilizations are supposed to work.
00:02:56.000He's been charged again with misconduct in public office.
00:02:59.000That is a relatively vague and complex charge in Great Britain.
00:03:03.000Dominic Caschiani is the home and legal correspondent for the BBC.
00:03:07.000And he says that essentially that charge boils down to an allegation that someone who was doing a job on behalf of the British public did something seriously wrong, knowing it to be wrong.
00:03:17.000And there are four elements that the police actually have to fulfill in order to arrest somebody.
00:03:21.000First, the police have to establish whether the person they are investigating was a public officer and the incident in question was plausibly part of those duties.
00:03:29.000And then if you breached that duty, then you look for evidence that the suspect willfully neglected to perform the duty or willfully misconducted themselves in some other way.
00:03:39.000And then the question is whether this amounts to an abuse of the public trust.
00:03:42.000And finally, police need to examine whether the person under investigation acted without reasonable excuse or justification.
00:03:51.000So I think that a lot of the speculation right now around Prince Andrew is that he is being arrested based on his activities, his nefarious activities, apparently, with Virginia Giufre, who is one of the alleged victims in the Epstein case.
00:04:03.000She, of course, is the most famous of the alleged victims in the Epstein case.
00:04:07.000She was not used by prosecutors anywhere because she was an unreliable witness.
00:04:11.000And it turns out that many of the details that she gave didn't match actual timelines.
00:04:15.000That does not mean that she wasn't victimized.
00:04:17.000Obviously, Prince Andrew paid her a pretty sizable settlement in a civil suit.
00:04:21.000It doesn't mean that she didn't have a horrible and terrible life in which she was treated just horrifically.
00:04:28.000It does mean that if we are attempting to elicit information on what exactly happened, you have to base that on the most verifiable possible evidence, generally speaking, with any case.
00:04:39.000In 2001, there's a very famous photo, of course, of Virginia Giufrey at Ghalen Maxwell's home in London with Prince Andrew.
00:04:46.000Andrew flew on Epstein's private planes.
00:04:50.000Giufrey alleged abuse, and eventually she filed a civil suit against then Prince Andrew.
00:04:56.000He settled that with her in 2022 and he paid her millions of dollars, possibly up to $16 million to settle that lawsuit.
00:05:05.000Andrew was photographed walking with Epstein in December 2010.
00:05:08.000That was after he pled guilty on that charge of sex trafficking of a minor.
00:05:13.000He even offered to have Epstein to Buckingham Palace.
00:05:17.000Now, Andrew has never been criminally charged for the allegations with regard to Virginia Giufrey.
00:05:23.000In October 2021, London's Metro Police said they did not have sufficient grounds to prosecute him in the UK.
00:05:29.000When the DOJ investigated Epstein back in the late aughts, they didn't end up charging Andrew.
00:05:36.000So what is he being arrested based upon?
00:05:39.000If you had to guess, and of course, at this point, we're waiting for more information.
00:05:43.000If you had to guess, it is very, very likely that he is being prosecuted for the same sorts of activities for which Peter Mandelson, the former ambassador from Britain to the United States, is now being investigated.
00:05:55.000That is to say, he was probably passing financial and insider information to Jeffrey Epstein.
00:06:01.000The police have not made clear yet exactly what the specificity of the charges is.
00:06:07.000Their statement says, quote, as part of the investigation, we have arrested a man in his 60s from Norfolk on suspicion of misconduct in public office and are carrying out searches at addresses in Berkshire and Norfolk.
00:06:17.000The man remains in police custody at this time.
00:06:21.000We will not be naming the arrested man as per national guidance.
00:06:23.000Please also remember that this case is now active, so care should be taken with any publication to avoid being in contempt of court.
00:06:29.000So, I mean, no details being provided at all.
00:06:32.000What we do know, however, is that emails that were revealed in the correspondence between Epstein and Andrew in that latest tranche of Epstein files suggest that Prince Andrew shared confidential UK trade reports and official itineraries with Epstein while he was Britain's special representative for international trade.
00:06:52.000This, I would guess, is the locus of these charges because it fulfills the elements that we're talking about.
00:06:57.000One, he was holding an actual public office at the time.
00:06:59.000It wasn't just a member of the royal family.
00:07:03.000Two, he was sharing confidential UK information, allegedly, with Epstein.
00:07:08.000And this is why I'm comparing it to the Peter Mandelson scandal.
00:07:10.000Peter Mandelson, of course, was the British ambassador to Washington, but years and years and years ago, when he was working in actual official facilities with the UK government, he was apparently passing inside information about UK government decisions to Epstein, who then may have traded on that information.
00:07:30.000And evidence ought to be our standard whenever we adjudicate these cases, either in the court of public opinion or when it comes to an actual court of law.
00:07:38.000What we do know is that he was engaged in high-level financial impropriety.
00:07:42.000That's the stuff where there really is a fair bit of evidence that he was engaged in financial impropriety.
00:07:45.000The New York Times, as we've talked about at length on the show, did a full-scale rundown of what he did during his early years to get rich.
00:07:51.000And the answer is some pretty scurvy stuff.
00:07:55.000He was bilking billionaires out of their money.
00:08:06.000There's actually tons and tons of evidence of financial impropriety and financial law breaking with regard to Jeffrey Epstein.
00:08:12.000And of course, there's evidence that he was trafficking minors to himself and that he was trafficking in overage women to himself.
00:08:20.000But the evidence that he was trafficking minors to other people, that evidence is in short supply at this point.
00:08:26.000That doesn't mean that it won't ever emerge or that people won't uncover it or anything like that.
00:08:30.000I'm just giving you the state of the evidence as it currently stands.
00:08:34.000And speculation is not a substitute for evidence.
00:08:37.000Well, some of this came to a head yesterday when billionaire former Victoria's secret CEO Lex Wesner testified before the House Oversight Committee.
00:08:45.000He actually testified that he was conned by Jeffrey Epstein.
00:08:49.000Wexner, of course, has been under fire over his many appearances in the DOJ records on Epstein.
00:08:54.000He denied allegations that he was Epstein's co-conspirator.
00:08:58.000There have been allegations with regard to Wexner in some of the documents that the FBI considered him a secondary co-conspirator with Epstein, but it was never made clear in those documents why they said that or what they meant by that.
00:09:09.000Did they mean that he was funding Epstein's lifestyle?
00:09:11.000Did they mean that he himself was trafficking?
00:09:13.000None of that was evidenced in the actual papers that have been released so far.
00:09:18.000In his prepared statement, he told lawmakers he never witnessed nor had any knowledge of Epstein's criminal activity.
00:09:23.000And in fact, he claimed essentially that he was victimized by Epstein to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
00:09:29.000Wexner, in his prepared statement, said, I have done nothing wrong.
00:09:32.000I completely and irrevocably cut ties with Epstein nearly 20 years ago when I learned that he was an abuser, a crook, and a liar.
00:09:37.000And let me be crystal clear, I never witnessed nor had any knowledge of Epstein's criminal activity.
00:09:44.000A video and transcript apparently are soon to be released.
00:09:48.000Representative Robert Garcia of California told reporters during a break in the deposition that Wexner was trying to downplay how close his relationship with Epstein was.
00:09:56.000Garcia said there would be no Epstein Island.
00:09:59.000There'd be no money to traffic women and girls.
00:10:01.000Mr. Epstein would not be the wealthy man he was without the support of Lex Wesner.
00:10:04.000Now, again, what's interesting about even that statement from Garcia suggests that this is mostly about the money passing from Wexner to Epstein, not about specific evidence allegations of Wexner engaging in sexual impropriety.
00:10:18.000Man, maybe he did, but the evidence actually has to be presented at a certain point.
00:10:23.000I know that we live in a world in which asking for evidence for propositions is considered passe, and that if you even ask for evidence, then this makes you a co-conspirator in whatever gigantic theory people have constructed.
00:10:37.000This is why, for example, Michael Tracy, who's actually been doing granular work going through these documents, is now being labeled speciously as somebody being paid off by foreign powers or something for the great sin of actually looking at the evidence.
00:10:49.000And again, Michael Tracy and I disagree on nearly everything politically, but Michael Tracy is actually looking at evidence.
00:10:54.000And I think that when we are looking at very, very large allegations, groundbreaking allegations, allegations that basically our entire society is run on the back of satanic pedophile cults, it behooves us, when there's an outsized allegation, to find outsized reams of evidence to support those allegations.
00:11:13.000And then if the evidence shows that's what's happening, then obviously that is something not only worthy of note, but worthy of panic.
00:11:19.000But this is why we ought to have evidence because otherwise you end up in a bizarre world in which allegations are tantamount to actual condemnation.
00:11:26.000Now, when regard to Andrew, allegations are now tantamount to criminal charges.
00:11:32.000And we'll have to see the nature of those criminal charges again based on the information we have and the evidence, the actual evidence in the Epstein files with regard to Andrew and the fact he was not prosecuted over Giufre and the allegations there for decades.
00:11:47.000My strong suspicion is he's being prosecuted over passing essentially inside information when he was a trade representative to Epstein.
00:11:54.000The reason I focus in on this is because once you have a standard that basically any allegation is tantamount to guilt, any allegation, that's how you end up with Representative Ted Liu, a complete dunderheaded moron, going out in Congress and suggesting that Trump is raping children.
00:12:12.000I mean, again, he has just as much evidence for this proposition as people have of evidence of a gigantic transnational conspiracy run by intelligence agencies to traffic underage people to prominent people and then blackmail them, which is to say none.
00:13:03.000And by the way, it is also ridiculous that Rokana did the same routine the other day.
00:13:07.000So you'll recall that I said that if Rokana and Thomas Massey had actual evidence of men trafficking in underage girls with Jeffrey Epstein, and they said that the names had been redacted and been hidden, they should actually just go and announce that on the floor of the House because you actually do have congressional privilege to be able to do that sort of stuff without being sued.
00:13:27.000And then Rokana actually went and did it.
00:13:29.000And we played it on the show, him naming all of these guys.
00:13:32.000Well, it turns out that there was only one problem, as it turns out.
00:13:35.000These six people that he named were not actually guilty of anything like what he sort of suggested they were guilty of.
00:13:43.000He admitted this in a tweet: quote: I appreciate reporting, confirming today that Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Michaladzi, Leonid Leonov, and Nicola Caputo were just part of a photo lineup and are not connected to Epstein's crimes.
00:13:55.000But that was after he literally went on the floor of Congress and read their names into the congressional record in order to imply that they were part of a sex trafficking scheme.
00:14:07.000And then he blamed the DOJ for adapting their names.
00:14:09.000Well, I mean, maybe the reason their names were redacted in the first place is because there was no evidence they'd done anything wrong.
00:14:14.000And when you unredact the names, it turns out that a bunch of people, like, for example, Rokana, are going to cynically play on that in order to slander people.
00:14:23.000And there is something that is peculiarly dangerous about the way that we are now approaching the release of the Epstein information.
00:14:30.000Not that the information shouldn't be released, but if the way that law enforcement now goes about its business is they gather millions of pages of documents on alleged crimes, and instead of guarding the people who they have no evidence of crimes being committed by, instead of guarding those people, instead of redacting that information, instead of actually protecting the victims, you just release everything into the public sphere.
00:14:53.000I wonder what you do about anything like the basic right to privacy for people who are not Jeffrey Epstein, but whose names are in the files.
00:15:48.000The gigantic release of millions of pages of documents into the public sphere without any real effort at fully redacting people who are innocent or any explanation of what was being released.
00:15:57.000That turns out to be a disaster area also.
00:16:00.000It's hard to spot a place here where there has not been a pretty significant misstep.
00:16:03.000All righty, meanwhile, we now have a spate of fake victims.
00:16:07.000Victimhood is in short supply in a free and prosperous West.
00:16:12.000There are people, obviously, who are victimized by systems, but the number of prominent people who claim to be victims of systems, let's just say that the supply is overwhelming.
00:16:22.000And it is certainly, it is basically a Gucci bag on the streets of New York.
00:17:29.000You will get 50% off your very first month of coverage.
00:17:31.000Again, that's PureTalk.com slash Shapiro and make that switch on over to PureTalk, PureTalk.com/slash Shapiro.
00:17:37.000Also, let's be honest, most of us have no idea what phytonutrients actually are, which is why our sponsor, Balance of Nature, makes getting them in your diet simple.
00:17:45.000Here's the thing about phytonutrients: they're these naturally occurring plant nutrients in whole foods that actually give fruits and veggies their color, taste, and smell.
00:17:52.000And honestly, if you're eating something with vibrant color and real flavor, that's a pretty good sign you're getting genuine phytonutrients.
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00:18:38.000Let us point out one Timu victim, James Tallarico.
00:18:41.000So James Tallarico, of course, has been making hay over the allegation made by Stephen Colbert that basically he was banned from CBS because the Trump administration couldn't stand him being out there in public.
00:18:53.000It turns out that the FCC gave an instruction to CBS that if James Tallarico appeared and was given a softball interview by Stephen Colbert, Jasmine Crockett would similarly have to be given a softball interview by Stephen Colbert under their equal times laws.
00:19:07.000Now, again, I think equal times laws are stupid and we should do away with them, but that is currently the law.
00:19:12.000And CBS said, instead of airing the Tallarico interview, and then that would force us to sacrifice airtime on Jasmine Crockett, the producers of the late show with Colbert, said, no, what we'll do instead is we'll just release the Tallarico interview on YouTube.
00:19:27.000Now, has that been like a horrifyingly terrible thing for James Tallerico?
00:19:47.000He has apparently raked in $2.5 million in fundraising in the aftermath of this pseudo-scandal.
00:19:54.000Tallerico crowed in a statement, quote, this is a campaign of, by, and for the people.
00:19:58.000So I'm proud that neighbors from all across our state and country stood together to defend free speech.
00:20:03.000He said, this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture, the kind that comes right from the top, a threat to one of our First Amendment rights as a threat to all of our First Amendment rights.
00:20:11.000Well, none of us have a First Amendment right to appear on Stephen Colbert's show.
00:20:17.000And also, it was the producers of the late show who made that call.
00:20:21.000CBS has flatly denied the Colbert version of the story.
00:20:27.000Jasmine Crockett, by the way, said, quote, the federal government did not shut down the segment.
00:20:32.000She said it's our understanding that either Colbert or CBS decided not to put the Tallarico interview on TV because of a fear that the FCC may say something to them and that there may have been advice to just have me on and they could clear the equal time issue.
00:20:45.000It was my understanding, says Jasmine Crockett, that someone somewhere decided we don't want to do that.
00:20:49.000Instead, we're just going to do it this way.
00:20:50.000So in other words, they wanted to have Tallarico on, but not Jasmine Crockett, disadvantaging Jasmine Crockett.
00:20:56.000And then they used that as a pseudo-scandal in order to fundraise for James Tallarico.
00:21:01.000This has not stopped the media from going hole hog against Trump.
00:21:04.000CNN's Nico Perino slammed Trump over the Tallarico controversy.
00:21:11.000I do think that the administration has come out for these late-night talk show hosts.
00:21:17.000Colbert, his run, I think, ends in May.
00:21:20.000And Brendan Carr has his marching orders.
00:21:22.000He attended government meetings with a pin of Donald Trump's face on it, a gold pin.
00:21:27.000And President Trump repeatedly truths out criticisms of these hosts.
00:21:32.000And these hosts are perceived to be left-wing.
00:21:35.000I think they probably are majority left-wing.
00:21:37.000And so that's why he's going after late-night and daytime talk shows and not conservative talk radio.
00:21:43.000Okay, so I mean, again, I think there's a strong case that we should get rid of the equal time rules altogether.
00:21:48.000They are a vestigial organ of free speech regulation.
00:21:52.000But pretending that somehow Tallerico was the victim in all this is really silly.
00:21:55.000This whole thing was basically ginned up by the late show's producers in order to benefit Tallarico.
00:22:01.000Precisely the opposite of what is currently being claimed.
00:22:04.000Meanwhile, FCC chair Brendan Carr, he is going after Colbert.
00:22:09.000I will say that the optics here for Brendan Carr, I mean, I don't know how many times Brendan Carr has to go after late night hosts before he sort of appears to be over his skis.
00:22:19.000I don't see the win here, particularly for Brendan Carr.
00:22:39.000It does not change the facts of what happened here.
00:22:40.000Now, if you want to talk actual cancel culture, how about the fact that Barry Weiss was supposed to give a lecture on the future of journalism at UCLA, and she actually was canceled, like full-scale canceled.
00:22:50.000Not like it happened and then it was broadcast to YouTube to the tune of millions of dollars raised.
00:22:55.000Nope, it was actually canceled amid student protests and online criticism.
00:22:59.000The annual lecture is held in remembrance of Daniel Pearl, that is the Wall Street Journal journalist who was beheaded by terrorists in Pakistan in early 2002.
00:23:07.000It will be rescheduled for some unspecified date.
00:23:11.000A reason was not provided for the cancellation.
00:23:14.000Code Pink, which allegedly receives foreign funding, organized a student action to cancel the event back in January.
00:23:24.000So again, the Heckler's veto taking shape.
00:23:26.000Meanwhile, other fake victims, James Tallrico, a fake victim.
00:23:32.000Democrats claiming that President Trump is a racist because he is apparently deploying help to clean up the giant poop spill in the Potomac.
00:23:42.000The Washington Post reported three days ago that federal authorities will respond to a major sewage spill that occurred four weeks ago in the Potomac River, which flows between Maryland, Washington, and Virginia.
00:23:53.000In a post on his social media network, Trump said that the federal emergency management agency would play a key role in a response involving management direction and coordination to protect the Potomac.
00:24:05.000Trump blamed local Democrat leaders for gross mismanagement in his post.
00:24:09.000He singled out Maryland governor Wes Moore, suggesting that he was incapable of handling the situation.
00:24:14.000Trump said, I don't like the fact he did a horrible job with the pipes.
00:24:17.000I'm going to have to get the federal government involved in getting it fixed because he can't fix anything.
00:24:23.000And then Wesmore tried to claim that it was actually the federal government's fault, which is weird because it actually is not under the federal government's.
00:24:33.000So here is Wesmore trying to run for president in 2028.
00:24:36.000I think that is a quixotic run by Wes Moore.
00:24:39.000I do not think that he has it, whatever it is.
00:24:42.000And he says he's a victim of President Trump now.
00:24:44.000Sure, it's his state that is pumping raw sewage into the rivers, but it is President Trump who is the real exploiter here.
00:24:54.000I think the president just seems to have a very real issue with the fact that I do not bow to him, and I will stand up to him because I will always defend my people.
00:25:06.000But the fact that I'm the only black governor in this country and the fact that he seems to have a real issue with me, I think that's an issue he's got to take up.
00:25:20.000Also, by the way, Wes Moore claims that President Trump may be a racist because he is, quote, assaulting employment opportunities for black women.
00:25:38.000If the claim by Wes Moore is that government employment has been cut in certain areas and that demographically this disproportionately affects black women, that does not mean that Trump is targeting black women in particular by cutting federal jobs.
00:25:51.000But here is Wes Moore doing the victimhood routine.
00:25:54.000Well, I mean, he also has spent the past year making a direct assault on scholarships for HBCUs, that the past year we have seen the greatest assaults on employment for black women that our country has ever seen.
00:26:07.000That he's spending his time attacking history and banning books.
00:26:14.000I honestly think that it's a question not just for the president, but frankly, I think it's also a question for white America if they are looking at his actions.
00:26:23.000And I think that's something that people need to wrestle with.
00:26:30.000Claiming victimhood on behalf of black women everywhere because President Trump is cutting federal jobs is truly silly, especially the same day that President Trump was celebrating Black History Month over at the White House.
00:26:42.000Here was our apparently incredibly racist president yesterday.
00:26:47.000Black Americans have stepped forward to defend the flag and to defend our country.
00:26:53.000Like few others, really, like few others.
00:26:56.000And you've never really been given the recognition that you should get for that.
00:27:58.000I'm going to get my team in that room to start going through the internet of radical Democrats throughout the years, Ed, who have accused this president falsely of being a racist.
00:28:08.000And I'm sure there's many people in this room and on network television across the country who have accused him of the same.
00:28:14.000In fact, I know that because I've seen it with my own eyes.
00:28:19.000That is Caroline Lovitt, of course, being asked about Trump's supposed racism.
00:28:23.000I mean, one D.C. resident gave a very live speech at this event at the White House.
00:28:29.000Her grandson was killed in violence in Washington, D.C.
00:28:33.000And here she was raving about President Trump.
00:28:34.000Again, so much racism just pouring out of President Trump here.
00:28:38.000And then we need National Guard and which we did years ago.
00:29:18.000Democrats also claiming, of course, victimhood on behalf of trans people everywhere.
00:29:22.000Pramila Jayapal, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, yesterday suggested that conservatives are jealous of trans people, which is that's a hell of a take.
00:29:33.000To trans people everywhere, I also want you to know this.
00:29:38.000Those people are threatened by your strength, by your joy in being fully who you are.
00:29:46.000Those who fight against trans people are just jealous of the freedom that they have taken to be fully who they are.
00:29:56.000And so those people just want to destroy that rather than imagine what it would be like to be fully who they are.
00:31:54.000And in honor of the fake victims of ICE, and here I'm speaking about people who are here in the country illegally who are now being deported.
00:32:01.000Zorn Mamdani has now appointed an abolished ICE radical as the New York City immigration chief.
00:32:11.000Listen, I will admit to a sick sort of enjoyment in the fact that Democrats voted for this and now they get it.
00:32:16.000According to the Daily Wire, New York City's Democratic Socialist Mayor Zorn Mamdani just tapped a new immigration officer to his administration who previously advocated to abolish ICE and has cozied up to radical figures and organizations.
00:32:28.000Mamdani announced on Tuesday he had appointed Faisa Ali as commissioner of the mayor's office of immigrant affairs.
00:32:36.000She says that she is the proud daughter of immigrant parents from Pakistan who came to New York City with courage, an unshakable belief in possibility and the determination to build a future here.
00:32:46.000Also, she called to abolish ICE in 2019 and she was arrested during a protest in 2018 where she also called for the end of ICE.
00:32:55.000So she is now going to be a special advisor on immigrants' affairs.
00:33:01.000Man, New York, you asked for it and you got it.
00:33:04.000I'd be remiss here if I did not name among the fake victims litany here, Tucker Carlson, who decided to Greta Thunberg himself, claim that he was basically kidnapped by the Israelis.
00:33:14.000So Tucker Carlson was invited by the ambassador of the United States to Israel, Mike Huckabee, to do an interview, quasi-debate.
00:33:23.000Apparently, that's supposed to be released sometime on Friday.
00:33:26.000And Tucker Carlson then flew into Israel and did not get off the tarmac, basically.
00:34:07.000But, you know, that would be silly enough.
00:34:10.000What was truly silly is that then he leaked to a man who used to work for him a completely false story, just a complete nonsense story.
00:34:20.000So a reporter named Philip Nieto, who literally used to work for Carlson, but now works for the Daily Mail, posted an exclusive, quote, Tucker Carlson detained in Israel.
00:34:30.000Journalist, quote, dragged into interrogation room as explosive interviews, sparks diplomatic firestorm.
00:34:40.000It is an absolute overt lie because Tucker is looking for some sense of victimhood from Israel because, of course, he despises the state of Israel, like truly despises it, clearly, which is why he lies routinely about it.
00:34:54.000In any case, according to this piece, Carlson exclusively told the Daily Mail, i.e., his former employee, that shortly after the interview, Israeli officials confiscated his passport and hauled one of his colleagues off to an interrogation room.
00:35:09.000Men who identified themselves as airport security took our passports, hauled our executive producer into a side room, and then demanded to know what we spoke to Ambassador Huckabee about.
00:35:16.000Carlson told the Daily Mail, it was bizarre.
00:35:55.000And when he says that someone took his passport, what they mean is you go to the counter and then they take your passport to check to make sure that it is in compliance with all national international law.
00:36:04.000And then they return your passport to you.
00:36:09.000As for the detention, what he means by detention is that apparently one of his producers, who may or may not have been in the VIP section, was taken aside and asked a few questions and then was let go.
00:36:54.000Even if you think they're nefarious, which they are not, you think that they attribute to them some modicum of intelligence at the very least.
00:37:06.000Apparently, Mike Huckabee then came out with his own statement.
00:37:10.000Quote, everyone who comes in and out of Israel, every country for that matter, has passports checked and routinely asked security questions, even me going in and out with a diplomatic passport and diplomatic visa because Tucker is a liar who lies a lot.
00:37:23.000It is also worth noting here that, by the way, Israeli security when it comes to airports is really high.
00:37:28.000Could it be there's a history of hijacking of Israeli airplanes?
00:37:32.000In fact, one of the factors that is very frequently used when passports are checked is what countries you have been to.
00:37:37.000If you have been to a wide variety of, for example, radical Muslim countries over the course of the last year, that might be a reason for them to check your passport.
00:37:45.000But again, nothing that Tucker is saying here is true.
00:37:48.000He is the Jussie Smollett of airport security.
00:37:52.000Apparently, two airport attendants from El Al came out and yelled, This is BB country.
00:37:58.000And then they hit him with bleach as he ate his kosher subway sandwich.
00:38:04.000The fact that people take this person intellectually seriously remains something beyond amusement.
00:38:13.000But fake victimhood is the order of the day.
00:38:16.000And meanwhile, in the Middle East, obviously a lot of talk about what's going on in Iran.
00:38:22.000The United States has mobilized exorbitant resources in the Middle East as Iran continues to stymie and stonewall on its nuclear program, ballistic missile program, and support for terrorism.
00:38:32.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Iran's leaders want to reach a nuclear deal with the United States, but they are also rushing to prepare for war in case talks between the countries fail.
00:38:40.000Tehran is deploying its forces, dispersing decision-making authority, fortifying its nuclear sites, and expanding its crackdown on domestic dissent.
00:38:47.000The moves reflect its leaders' beliefs.
00:38:48.000The survival of the regime itself is at stake.
00:38:51.000Domestically, the Islamic Republic is more vulnerable than it has been in decades.
00:38:55.000Its leaders are facing widespread popular discontent over worsening economic pictures and the mass killing of protesters last month.
00:39:03.000Apparently, according to Farzan Sabet, an analyst at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland, Iran is preparing for strikes by putting its security and political leadership on high alert to prevent decapitation and to protect its nuclear facilities.
00:39:17.000Iranian officials are still, again, stonewalling on their nuclear program.
00:39:23.000They're not going to kill their nuclear program.
00:39:24.000They're not going to kill their ballistic missile program.
00:39:26.000They're not going to kill their support for terrorism.
00:39:28.000It is literally the only thing that they can take back to their military infrastructure.
00:39:32.000Understand that when it comes to repressive authoritarian regimes, the number one thing you have to do is please your military apparatus.
00:39:38.000If you don't do that, you're out in your air.
00:39:41.000And so the Ayatollahs understand that money has to keep pouring into the military apparatus to keep bribing top-level military men to support the regime.
00:39:52.000And that means supporting terrorism abroad.
00:39:54.000It means supporting the development of these weapons programs.
00:39:59.000Iran's leaders are preparing for an attack that could disrupt its chain of command.
00:40:05.000Naval units of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard were deployed this week to the Strait of Hormuz.
00:40:09.000By the way, if the United States decided to sink that fleet, that would take approximately three minutes flat.
00:40:17.000There is strong evidence that Chinese are actually providing some surveillance apparatus to the Iranians.
00:40:24.000China, of course, is a support system for the Iranians.
00:40:29.000A Russian warship also arrived at the Strait of Hormuz and docked at the Iranian port town of Bandar Abbas ahead of a military exercise planned for Thursday.
00:40:37.000And those exercises are supposed to be taking place not far from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln sailing off the coast of Oman.
00:40:46.000Iran is also attempting to harden its nuclear sites because they're afraid that the United States will once again bomb those nuclear sites.
00:40:55.000According to CBS News and Jennifer Jacobs reporting, top national security officials have told Trump that the military is ready for potential strikes on Iran as soon as this weekend, but the timeline for any action is likely to extend beyond Saturday or Sunday, according to sources.
00:41:08.000Trump has not yet made a final decision.
00:41:10.000Over the next three days, the Pentagon is moving some personnel out of the Middle East region ahead of potential action or counterattacks by Iran.
00:41:18.000That doesn't necessarily mean that action is imminent.
00:41:22.000Apparently, one source says that the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is planning to visit Israel and meet with Netanyahu in about two weeks for further discussions.
00:41:31.000The United States currently has the most air power in the Mideast since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
00:41:37.000U.S. officials say that the firepower will give the U.S. the option of carrying out a sustained weeks-long air war against Iran instead of a one-and-done midnight hammer type strike.
00:41:49.000Unclear whether Trump is going to pull the trigger here.
00:41:52.000It seems to me that just on a geopolitical level, for Trump not to pull any trigger here would be an open sign to America's enemies that it is time to go.
00:42:03.000This is the box that the president has sort of created for himself geopolitically.
00:42:08.000The president came out and he said, if you shoot protesters in the streets, there will be serious consequences.
00:42:14.000Stay in the streets, help us on the way.
00:42:15.000If help is not forthcoming, and instead what ends up coming out of this is some sort of weak-style Obama deal in which Iran makes a bunch of pledges that are unfulfillable, and that prevents and forestalls Israeli air action against, for example, ballistic missile development, then not only will that be a historic foreign policy failure by the administration, but it will also be a green light to China to take Taiwan.
00:42:41.000So, one of the things President Trump frequently said is that the pullout, the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan in the style that Joe Biden did it, led directly to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
00:42:56.000It is clear that Vladimir Putin thought Joe Biden was weak, and so he made a move on Ukraine.
00:43:00.000Can you imagine what China and Russia will do if they see that the United States, the most powerful military force on planet Earth, makes overt threats to Iran, tried to eradicate its nuclear program back in June of last year, and then backs off after this gigantic military buildup and the Iranians get off the hook here?
00:43:46.000Iran does not have that sort of overwhelming capacity.
00:43:49.000The United States is already hardening its own defenses against the possibility of counter-strike.
00:43:54.000Presumably, any strike delivered by the United States would be, in the first run, delivered directly at the ballistic missile program to take out as many bases as humanly possible.
00:44:03.000Iranian air defenses remain non-existent at this point.
00:44:06.000You could essentially fly a biplane over Iran and drop TNT from your hands onto IRGC bases at this point.
00:44:18.000And so, in the face of that Iranian weakness and the threats that the president has already levied against the Iranians, if this massive mobilization of material, which is costing, I assume, tens of billions of dollars, it costs a lot of money to do what's being done right now.
00:44:31.000If that ends up being basically just a bluff and the Iranians end up negotiating their way out of this with a future for their nuclear program and a continuation of ballistic missiles and a continuation of terrorism and a continuation of the murder of protesters, if they're able to do that, the chances that China makes a strong move to blockade Taiwan inside the next two years are extremely high.
00:44:54.000Because would China believe that a country that is unwilling to fulfill the president's red line promises on Iran, which is eminently weaker than China, is willing to stand up to China over a country that is all the way around the globe in Taiwan and just a little ways from the coast of China?
00:45:14.000That's going to be the logic in Beijing.
00:45:17.000The logic in Russia, by the way, is going to be that the United States, if pressed hard enough, will simply back out of Ukraine and the Europeans don't have the capacity to ramp up fast enough.
00:45:27.000I think you are looking at, at this point, a serious conflagration on multiple fronts if the United States does not either achieve some sort of signal deal by which Iran surrenders pretty much all of its forward capacity nuclear program and starts to open up to the protesters, or you're going to end up with something that is really dangerous, a very dangerous geopolitical situation.
00:45:47.000And again, the signals that are being sent by the administration are pretty mixed because the reality is you have a mixed administration when it comes to its approach to things like China.
00:45:56.000So, for example, according to the Wall Street Journal, a major U.S. arms sale package for Taiwan is in limbo following pressure from Chinese leader Xi Jinping and concerns among some in the Trump administration that green lighting the weapons deal would derail President Trump's coming visit to Beijing.
00:46:09.000In a phone call earlier this month with Trump, Xi urged caution on U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
00:46:15.000Trump wants to avoid antagonizing China ahead of his visit.
00:46:20.000If in February, March, the United States backs off arms sales to Taiwan and caves to the Iranian regime, why in the world would China not make a move on Taiwan?
00:46:33.000Seriously, it's geopolitics is a zero-sum game in terms of power.
00:46:40.000When you create a power vacuum, somebody bad tends to fill the gap.
00:46:44.000That is the history of the United States in foreign policy.
00:46:48.000The same, by the way, I think will hold true in Russia-Ukraine.
00:46:51.000I think Russia is likely to significantly ramp up operations in Ukraine if nothing is done in Iran.
00:46:58.000Number one, it'll free up Iranian resources to ship more Shahid drones over to the Russians for use in Ukraine.
00:47:04.000But second of all, and the administration keeps claiming meaningful progress in these Russia-Ukraine negotiations.
00:47:10.000I would love to see some evidence for this proposition.
00:47:12.000Here's Caroline Levitt yesterday at the White House.
00:47:15.000I think the president would respond to that by saying he does not think it's fair that thousands of Ukrainians are losing their lives and Russians too in this deadly war.
00:47:24.000And that's why the president and his team have committed a tremendous amount of time and energy in bringing this war that is very far away from the United States of America.
00:47:32.000But nevertheless, this is a president of peace.
00:47:35.000And so he's committed a tremendous amount of time and energy to bringing this war to an end.
00:47:39.000Just yesterday, there was another round of trilateral talks between the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine.
00:47:44.000There was meaningful progress made in both parties.
00:47:48.000Both sides agreed to update their respective leaders and to continue to work towards a peace deal together.
00:47:53.000So there will be another round of talks in the future.
00:47:55.000But I think the president views this entire situation as very unfair, not just for Russians and Ukrainians who have lost their lives, but also for the American people and the American taxpayer who were footing the bill for this war effort before President Trump put a stop to it.
00:48:12.000So, again, we will have to see if any evidence emerges at all that the Russians have shown flexibility with regard to these negotiations.
00:48:19.000We've been going for months, over a year, on these negotiations.
00:48:23.000The Russians so far have shown zero flexibility.
00:48:46.000So you were in the White House press room, as you often are yesterday, when Caroline Levitt was asked about President Trump and racism.
00:48:54.000I have to say, it was a little bit funny to watch, considering that he was simultaneously holding an event paying tribute to black Americans at which Black Americans were praising him and hugging him.
00:49:03.000But what was the room in the, what was the press room like?
00:49:07.000Well, Ben, first of all, I was sitting in our seat because we now have a seat in the White House briefing room, which I'm very excited about.
00:49:13.000So I'm sitting there and I hear this reporter at the front of the room from CBS ask Caroline why people would suggest that the president has been called racist by Democrats.
00:49:25.000And Caroline just looked him in the eye and goes, you're joking, right?
00:49:28.000And a number of reporters in the room started laughing.
00:49:31.000And I don't think they were all conservative.
00:49:32.000It was just, it was a humorous moment because we all know and we've all heard the president be called racist by, in fact, some of the reporters who were in the room yesterday.
00:49:42.000And so, you know, she came back at him.
00:49:44.000And our social team I saw did a fantastic job compiling a list of these Democrats who have called the president racist.
00:49:51.000I mean, Ben, you and I have heard the president called racist ever since he came down that escalator to run for president in the first place.
00:49:58.000It's just one of the most common insults that he's received.
00:50:01.000But of course, in this instance, the legacy media would far prefer to suggest that that never happened and to gaslight us about that.
00:50:09.000And then I head into this Black History Month event with the president where I couldn't even see him because the attendees were so excited to see the president, to take photos of him, to applaud their friends and their family who were talking to him.
00:50:23.000Some of the speakers were very emotional and went up and praised the president, thanked God for putting him in the White House.
00:50:31.000So just a very emotional and excited ceremony.
00:50:34.000And of course, it was pretty ironic to be in such a great place and to see all these people applauding the president only a couple hours after a reporter in the front row of the White House press briefing room goes, who's called the president racist?
00:50:49.000So, meanwhile, obviously, the operations in Minneapolis from ICE have been drawn down.
00:50:56.000It seems as though the controversy around ICE is not going away because Democrats continue to claim that basic enforcement of law is somehow a violation of moral precepts.
00:51:05.000What is the feeling around the White House with regard to ICE and immigration policy right now, given the sort of chaos of the last few weeks?
00:51:12.000I think the feeling around the White House is mostly that Tom Homan has brought a sense of more calm, of more peace to Minneapolis.
00:51:19.000People are happy with the job that he's doing.
00:51:22.000He himself has, you know, when you see him in his press conferences, which he's done about once a week since he got there, he's very calm.
00:51:29.000He talks about the importance of working with local officials and also getting the job done, de-escalating.
00:51:35.000And then, meanwhile, on the DHS front, our colleague Jenny Terra has done some really good reporting showing kind of the drama that's been going down over there.
00:51:43.000You have reports in a lot of legacy outlets about concerns about Christy Noam and her relationship with Corey Lewin, all the different things that are going on in this side, this department.
00:51:53.000You have Tricia McLaughlin, who we've worked with many times, leaving DHS, going on to another role.
00:51:59.000They're filling her role with two other women who will be taking on the role of the DHS spokesman and assistant secretary.
00:52:06.000We're excited to work with them, hear what they have to say.
00:52:09.000And Tricia has not said where she's going next.
00:52:12.000There's been rumors floated that she could possibly fill in for Caroline when Caroline goes on maternity leave, since Caroline will be having a baby this early summer, late spring.
00:52:23.000So lots of different movement shifting parts.
00:52:26.000There's a lot of speculation about where Christy Noam stands with Trump.
00:52:30.000The president met with her and with Corey Lewandowski as all this drama was going on with Holman going to Minneapolis.
00:52:44.000They want her gone, but they also want a lot of other Trump officials to leave the administration.
00:52:49.000And the president hasn't really anyone yet in Trump 2.0.
00:52:53.000So we'll have to see how that plays out.
00:52:55.000But absolutely keeping an eye on Minneapolis and happy that the unrest seems to have died down a bit.
00:53:03.000Meanwhile, obviously a lot of eyes on Iran on the Middle East right now.
00:53:07.000The United States has deployed extraordinary resources to the Middle East as negotiations continue to go on between Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff and Abbasar Rachi, the foreign minister of Iran, sort of through channels.
00:53:18.000What are you hearing around the White House about the mood with regard to those negotiations and where we stand with Iran right now?
00:53:25.000So the White House is so incredibly cautious about what they share with the media about this move.
00:53:29.000And, you know, they are a very transparent administration.
00:53:33.000But when it comes to this sort of thing, they will not only not share, but they will kind of mock you for asking and assuming that the president would share this type of huge big deal situation with a mere reporter.
00:53:46.000You know, I'm not so lucky as to have a thing that got me slapped on national television, but I did kind of venture a guess to her one time to Caroline, and she said, as she said to many other reporters, basically, why would we tell you that?
00:55:23.000You know, maybe I could call it a fun girly endeavor that I get to go on tomorrow, where the First Lady will be donating her inaugural gown to the Smithsonian.
00:55:33.000So this is actually the second gown that she's donated to the Smithsonian, and they don't accept all gowns from all First Ladies.
00:55:41.000And it's particularly interesting because since she released her documentary earlier this year, there's a whole bit in the documentary about how she designed this dress and the designer and who she was working with.
00:55:52.000And she tries it on and they make alterations.
00:55:54.000And it's a very interesting little peek into the first lady's, her interactions with her designers and how much input she has on the dress that she wears and why she wants this color and that color.
00:56:04.000And, you know, we might think some of it is trivial, but at the end of the day, it does lend itself to her image, to the aura, you might say, of the first lady of the United States.
00:56:14.000And so she'll, I believe, be delivering remarks there.
00:56:17.000And I'm excited to hear what she has to say.
00:56:22.000It's Mary Margaret Olahan, our White House correspondent.