The Ben Shapiro Show - RADICAL LEFT VIOLENCE: Man OPENS FIRE On Border Patrol

00:00:00.000 Already a stacked show today: a shooting incident at a border patrol station in Texas.

00:00:05.000 Where is that coming from?

00:00:06.000 Why are Democrats talking again about defunding ICE?

00:00:08.000 Plus, the latest on this awful Texas flood.

00:00:11.000 President Trump issuing new threats of trade barriers, and Tucker Carlson interviews the president of Iran Total Softball interview.

00:00:18.000 We'll get to all of it.

00:00:19.000 But first, the Daily Wire has officially joined forces with EveryLife to bring real tangible help to families in central Texas who are suffering devastating losses from historic flooding.

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00:00:52.000 All righty, folks.

00:00:53.000 So a terrible story out of Texas yesterday.

00:00:57.000 Aside from the obviously terrible story of the Texas flooding, which we'll get to in just a moment, there was a story in which a 27-year-old man with a rifle and tactical gear, according to CNN, was killed on Monday morning after exchanging fire with law enforcement officers at a Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas.

00:01:12.000 A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that the man, quote, opened fire at the entrance of the U.S. Border Patrol sector annex and that Border Patrol agents and local police helped to neutralize the shooter.

00:01:22.000 Two officers were injured.

00:01:24.000 One was shot in the knee.

00:01:26.000 The suspected shooter, we don't mention the names of mass shooters or attempted shooters on the show, unless they are still outlaws.

00:01:32.000 The suspected shooter apparently was connected to a Michigan address and a vehicle with Michigan tags.

00:01:37.000 And according to the chief, he was loaded for bear.

00:01:39.000 He had another rifle and another assault weapon that was found in the suspect's car.

00:01:44.000 And apparently he got off dozens of rounds before he was killed by federal agents.

00:01:48.000 Now, motive is still in question.

00:01:51.000 With that said, the suspect's vehicle was spray-painted with the phrase cordis die, which appears in a Call of Duty video game.

00:01:56.000 According to local law enforcement, apparently that Call of Duty reference is to some sort of anarchic globalist group that is on the left wing of the political spectrum.

00:02:06.000 And that's, of course, why you would show up at a Border Patrol station.

00:02:08.000 Now, the parents of the man said that this person had a mental deficiency.

00:02:13.000 That, of course, is not a gigantic shock because in a wide variety of cases of this sort, the person who does the shooting has some sort of mental problem.

00:02:22.000 With that said, we have seen a massive spike in the number of attacks on ICE agents over the course of the last six months.

00:02:29.000 Since President Trump took office and decided we were actually going to enforce our border, ICE has come under significant fire.

00:02:35.000 Tom Holman himself said attacks on ICE are up something like 700%.

00:02:40.000 Here was the borders are.

00:02:43.000 Look, you're the typical protesters that go from protesters to criminals.

00:02:48.000 The attack on ICE offers, you've covered it many times, is up nearly 700%.

00:02:52.000 Now, we were talking 500% a couple weeks ago, so it continues.

00:02:56.000 The Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks, he added that obviously left-wing anti-ICE red rick is having something to do with the uptick in violence.

00:03:05.000 We've seen our assaults go up dramatically.

00:03:07.000 And you know what?

00:03:07.000 These Border Patrol agents are out there doing their job.

00:03:10.000 They're enforcing the law.

00:03:11.000 They're protecting the communities.

00:03:12.000 We've got Border Patrol agents on the river right now in the Guadalupe assisting with rescue efforts.

00:03:17.000 These agents are outstanding Americans.

00:03:20.000 They're just trying to enforce the law.

00:03:22.000 But all of the rhetoric and the false information that's being put out by the left is just increasing violence against our agents, and it's just unacceptable.

00:03:30.000 Now, again, the left has been claiming for a very long time that if you use rhetoric that is too colorful, if you say things that are borderline, this can lead to quote-unquote stochastic terrorism.

00:03:41.000 This is an act of stochastic terrorism that essentially what you're doing is creating a permission structure for terrorism. 0.88

00:03:46.000 And as I've said before, unless you are actually excusing or inciting violence, you are not responsible for that violence.

00:03:52.000 With that said, when you raise the temperature, what that means is that there will be people who bubble over.

00:03:57.000 That doesn't mean that Bernie Sanders is responsible for the congressional baseball shooter, for example.

00:04:02.000 What it does mean is that when you keep saying over and over and over that Republicans are going to kill your kids when they take away Medicare or some such nonsense, if you say that sort of thing and then somebody goes and shoots a bunch of Republican congresspeople who are playing baseball, you at the very least should consider whether the kinds of language that you used were well calibrated.

00:04:20.000 And this is the problem.

00:04:21.000 The sorts of language that are currently being used with regard to ICE, with regard to border patrol by the left are extraordinary, extraordinary.

00:04:29.000 And they set up a permission structure that causes people who are unhinged to then take it to the next step in the same way that if you keep saying that President Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler, at some point someone might take you seriously and go and try to kill Hitler.

00:04:42.000 Well, this is the same sort of thing with Border Patrol agents.

00:04:44.000 Here is just a few examples of members of the high-ranking left going after ICE and Border Patrol in language that is completely unhinged.

00:04:54.000 Donald Trump's modern-day Gescapo is scooping folks up off the streets.

00:04:59.000 They're in unmarked vans wearing masks, being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons.

00:05:04.000 No chance to mount a defense, not even a chance to kiss a loved one goodbye.

00:05:08.000 I don't know of any police department that routinely wears masks.

00:05:15.000 We know that there are other groups that routinely wear masks.

00:05:19.000 It's felt like we're part of a grand experiment.

00:05:22.000 What happens?

00:05:23.000 How far will the public tolerate the federal government intervening and seizing power from a governor?

00:05:30.000 The combination of these Gestapo-like tactics with the fact that these are nonviolent, non-criminal immigrants doing things the right way.

00:05:41.000 I mean, in that last facility, I was not safe from the officers in that facility.

00:05:49.000 But when the nation, when these political factions divided the nation between slaveholders and slave catchers, when they made everybody, with the fugitive slave law, all of us had to, if someone escaped, all of us had to return that particular piece of property to these folks.

00:06:06.000 With ICE running around LA, forcing people to make choices, will they protect their friends, their neighbors, their family members?

00:06:14.000 You know, my dad served in the Second World War.

00:06:18.000 He fought the Nazis in Northern Africa.

00:06:21.000 He fought the Nazis on the Italian peninsula.

00:06:24.000 And I think he's looking down right now and he's happy that I'm fighting today's Nazis. 0.80

00:06:30.000 Okay, so as you can see, those are a lot of prominent Democratic figures.

00:06:33.000 I mean, there you're talking about Tim Molls, former vice presidential candidate, current governor of Minnesota, Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston, Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, Representative Dan Goldman of New York, AOC of New York, Eddie Gloud, who's over on MSNBC, and a representative Stephen Lynch.

00:06:46.000 Okay, that sort of language is going to have some sort of consequence.

00:06:49.000 Again, it doesn't mean they're responsible for a person trying to shoot Border Patrol agents if you keep increasing the temperature and if you keep excusing violence on the other end, which is the other thing that Democrats have been doing for quite a long while here, ranging from the sort of violence we saw during the BLM riots of 2020 to the excusing of the alleged murderous actions of Luigi Mangion on the streets of New York.

00:07:11.000 When you do that sort of stuff over and over and over, you're obviously going to lead to an uptick in violence.

00:07:17.000 I mean, this is really obvious.

00:07:19.000 And you may not like President Trump's immigration policy.

00:07:22.000 That is your prerogative.

00:07:23.000 It is also the law of the land that you are not allowed to cross our southern border illegally and just live here.

00:07:28.000 That is the law of the land.

00:07:29.000 If you don't like that law, maybe you should talk to your congresspeople.

00:07:32.000 If you don't like that law, perhaps you should try to change that law.

00:07:35.000 That's how it works in a democracy.

00:07:36.000 You don't get to simply call the people who are enforcing the law Nazis and Gestapo and then act all surprised when people attack the supposed Nazis and Gestapo in our midst.

00:07:47.000 There's a point made by Caroline Levitt over at the White House yesterday.

00:07:52.000 Does the White House expect Democrats to tone down their rhetoric in light of what we've saw today in the county, Texas?

00:07:58.000 We certainly call on Democrats to tone down their rhetoric against ICE and Border Patrol agents, who, again, are everyday men and women.

00:08:06.000 I would encourage AOC and other Democrats to actually meet with the United States Border Patrol.

00:08:11.000 These are honorable Americans who are just simply trying to do their job to enforce the law.

00:08:16.000 They go home to their families every night, just like we all do, and they deserve respect and dignity for trying to enforce our nation's immigration laws and to remove public safety threats from our communities.

00:08:27.000 All righty, coming up, an ice raid in LA, and LA's mayor is doing the performative work Democrats love to do.

00:08:33.000 First, you know, there's a lot of great stuff the administration is doing, ranging from actually enforcing the border to an excellent foreign policy, which we'll get to a little bit later on in the show.

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00:10:40.000 Okay, so all this culminated yesterday with a face-off between members of ICE and Board of Patrol agents and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles.

00:10:49.000 So yesterday, federal agents accompanied by members of the National Guard, according to Fox News, conducted an immigration raid in Los Angeles.

00:10:55.000 This is on Monday.

00:10:56.000 They did this in an area near MacArthur Park, which has a large immigrant population.

00:11:02.000 That part of the city is heavily Hispanic.

00:11:04.000 There's a lot of MS-13 in that particular part of the city.

00:11:07.000 MacArthur Park, for anybody who used to live in Los Angeles, is not exactly the kind of place that you go to hang out with your kids like a normal weekday.

00:11:15.000 It may look that way because all the federal agents have shown up at this point, but very often you're looking at open-air crime, drug trade, gang members hanging out.

00:11:24.000 It's not a safe place, MacArthur Park.

00:11:25.000 This has been known in LA for a very, very long time.

00:11:27.000 In any case, U.S. Border Patrol agents were seen on horseback in the park.

00:11:30.000 Law enforcement military-looking vehicles were stationed in the area.

00:11:35.000 Nobody was actually arrested, but the minute that the cops showed up, everybody sort of ran away.

00:11:39.000 At that point, Mayor Karen Bass appeared at the scene and demanded to speak with the ICE leadership, saying they needed to leave right now.

00:11:45.000 They need to leave because this is unacceptable.

00:11:48.000 And she showed up to yell at the border patrol agents. 1.00

00:11:51.000 The border patrol chief, Gregory Bovino, told Fox News he got on the phone with Karen Bass and she demanded the raid be stopped.

00:11:58.000 And he said, I don't work for Karen Bass.

00:11:59.000 Better get used to us now because this is going to be very normal soon.

00:12:02.000 We'll go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.

00:12:04.000 And then she said, well, this is awful because minutes before there were more than 20 kids playing and then the military comes through.

00:12:11.000 Okay, so first of all, I'd just like to point out that the military were not going to shoot the kids.

00:12:15.000 They're not going to arrest the kids.

00:12:18.000 This very bizarre notion that exists on the left that anytime kids see a member of law enforcement, that that's some sort of traumatic event.

00:12:24.000 I just got to tell you, my kids see law enforcement all the time, all the time, really, because my kids go to a Jewish school, which means they're constantly surrounded by law enforcement.

00:12:34.000 The idea that if law enforcement or ICE shows up, that immediately some kid has been deeply traumatized, the military is coming through.

00:12:41.000 This is like Serbia or something.

00:12:43.000 Can you stop, please?

00:12:44.000 Really?

00:12:46.000 She said, there is no plan other than fear, chaos, and politics.

00:12:48.000 Home depot one day, a car wash the next, armed vehicles, and what looks like mounted military units in a park the next day.

00:12:54.000 What happened to the criminals, the drug dealers, the violent individuals who are in the park today?

00:12:57.000 Were children who was their summer day camp?

00:12:59.000 Those kids now have no activities.

00:13:00.000 Well, no, actually, they showed up for like an hour and then they left.

00:13:02.000 They were ushered inside so they didn't get exposed to the troops.

00:13:05.000 Wow.

00:13:06.000 I mean, God forbid that they should see a member of ICE.

00:13:09.000 Wow.

00:13:10.000 That would just be terrible.

00:13:11.000 As far as what happened to the criminals, the drug dealers, the violent individuals, well, I mean, what happened is that you declared yourself a sanctuary city and said you wouldn't work with ICE.

00:13:18.000 It turns out that cities that are working with ICE are generally, when they arrest people, turning them over to ICE after checking their immigration status.

00:13:26.000 But that's something that Los Angeles does not do.

00:13:30.000 Protesters then quickly began showing up in the area.

00:13:32.000 There are reports of a tire on a federal vehicle being slashed.

00:13:34.000 Objects were thrown at the vehicles.

00:13:37.000 Of course, Governor Gavin Newsom called the events at MacArthur Park a, quote, message from the polluted heart of President Donald Trump.

00:13:43.000 He said, I want folks to know that we have your back.

00:13:45.000 We'll continue to come back and do what we can to protect our diverse communities, to protect the spirit that defines the best of the city and our state, and to push back against this cruelty being perpetuated by the president of the United States.

00:13:55.000 And Karen Bass called this inhumane.

00:13:58.000 Okay, well, again, if you obstruct federal law enforcement, you should not be surprised when they do not ask for your permission or help when they go to a place like MacArthur Park to find MS-13 members.

00:14:10.000 But this is all part and parcel of the Democratic attempt to turn immigration enforcement into the actual crime.

00:14:18.000 It really is quite insane.

00:14:20.000 Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader who hopes to be Speaker after the 2026 midterm elections, he was asked about defunding ICE, and he wouldn't rule it out.

00:14:28.000 I mean, this is where Democrats have now gone.

00:14:30.000 By the way, immigration policy remains the most popular plank in President Trump's agenda right now.

00:14:37.000 Now, some Democrats, amid the criticisms of ICE right now due to these ICE raids, have started calling for defunding ICE.

00:14:43.000 Do you think that's effective going into the midterms and do you support those calls?

00:14:47.000 Well, I definitely think that we need aggressive oversight as it relates to the overly aggressive behavior that we've seen from ICE, from the Department of Homeland Security.

00:14:58.000 It's not what the American people actually, in my view, voted for.

00:15:03.000 So he's not ruling it out.

00:15:04.000 So maybe there will be defunding of ICE.

00:15:06.000 Who knows?

00:15:07.000 Who knows?

00:15:08.000 Well, again, the more the left pushes back against this, the more that is going to give President Trump room to run.

00:15:14.000 The borders are said, listen, rounding up and deporting 3,000 illegal immigrants per day, that's not going to be enough.

00:15:20.000 There are just too many criminal illegal immigrants in the country. 0.96

00:15:22.000 Here is Tom Homan.

00:15:23.000 And for those that say 3,000 a day is too much, I want to remind them, do the math.

00:15:28.000 We'd have to arrest 7,000 every single day for the remainder of this administration just to catch once Biden releasing the nation.

00:15:36.000 Meanwhile, in other news that is being, again, promoted by a left-wing media, and it's just not true, with regards to the Texas flooding, the left media refuses to move away from the lie that the National Weather Service was somehow cut or underfunded to the extent that this caused the death of all of these people, particularly children in Texas from these flash floods.

00:15:58.000 CNN's Juliet Kayem, she knows better, but she's still out there suggesting that she doesn't know if there's a direct line between these NWS cuts and flooding.

00:16:07.000 But you should not make the suggestion unless you have the data.

00:16:11.000 These sorts of unsubstantiated allegations are not good.

00:16:14.000 They are bad journalism.

00:16:15.000 And by the way, just bad practice as a human being.

00:16:19.000 These cuts to the National Weather Service, to NOAA, to FEMA, the potential elimination of FEMA, we will miss them when they're gone.

00:16:28.000 I think we need to say that now.

00:16:30.000 I don't know if there's a direct line between the National Weather Service and cuts and what happened, but this is what government's for.

00:16:39.000 It's to help people and prepare them for the damage and the devastation.

00:16:45.000 Again, just perpetuating the narrative, despite there being no evidence, this is the stock and trade of the left-wing media at this point.

00:16:50.000 Amisha Elsendor, who's a Washington correspondent for NBC News, she used one of my favorite tactics here, which is you accuse the Trump administration of something, and it's not true. 0.92

00:16:59.000 And the Trump administration pushes back.

00:17:01.000 Now they're being defensive.

00:17:02.000 How dare they be defensive?

00:17:05.000 The White House is also pointing to meteorologists that we've seen in Texas saying that there were staffing concerns, but that there were no staffing issues that led to ample warnings not giving out in the way that they were.

00:17:18.000 We at NBC News have also talked to some people, meteorologists and others, who say that the National Weather Service had the staffing that it needed.

00:17:25.000 Even though, again, that there were concerns about staffing.

00:17:27.000 We've also, of course, I'm sure Julian's going to tell us about the lawmakers that are now wanting this issue to be more investigated.

00:17:34.000 But the White House here taking a really defensive posture on the idea that anything that President Trump did hurt the people in Texas.

00:17:41.000 And the White House press secretary also saying that the president wants to give Texas any of the resources it needs in this moment.

00:17:48.000 So how dare they take a defensive posture when you accuse them of something totally false?

00:17:52.000 What are they supposed to do?

00:17:53.000 Sit there and say, okay, you're lying.

00:17:56.000 When you say things that are not true, of course they're going to take a quote-unquote defensive posture.

00:18:00.000 If you punch somebody and they tried to defend themselves, they didn't do anything wrong.

00:18:03.000 They're defending themselves.

00:18:04.000 Here's Caroline Lovitt ripping the fake news surrounding the National Weather Service staffing accusations. 0.99

00:18:10.000 These offices were fully staffed.

00:18:12.000 The San Angelo office was fully staffed with 12 forecast meteorologists.

00:18:16.000 There were no vacancies.

00:18:17.000 The San Antonio office was operating with 11 forecasters.

00:18:21.000 And as Brian said, the union themselves said that there was adequate staffing.

00:18:26.000 So I think those words speak for themselves and the numbers speak for themselves.

00:18:30.000 This was a once-in-a-century flash flood, a tragic natural disaster, and the administration is doing all that we can on the ground to help these families.

00:18:38.000 So again, is that defensive or is that just her telling the truth?

00:18:41.000 Meanwhile, no story in America can be complete without some sort of nonsense racial angle added to it. 0.51

00:18:47.000 A former Houston city official, appointee, mayoral appointee, has been raging apparently over the coverage of this girls' camp, Camp Mystic, which she says is only being covered because it's largely white. 0.97

00:19:02.000 As though if a bunch of black kids got washed away by a flash flood, that wouldn't be a story.

00:19:06.000 Okay, so I'm old enough to remember when a lot of that sort of stuff happened during Hurricane Katrina. 0.58

00:19:11.000 And actually, it was a much bigger story because of the race of the people who were being disproportionately killed in Hurricane Katrina, because then the president of the United States was accused of being a racist.

00:19:21.000 So this is just false on the merits, but it also shows how race talk can just warp your brain.

00:19:27.000 I know I'm probably going to get canceled for this, but Camp Mystic is a whites-only girls Christian camp. 0.97

00:19:37.000 They don't even have a token Asian.

00:19:39.000 They don't have a token black person. 0.92

00:19:41.000 It is a all-white, white-only conservative Christian camp. 0.91

00:19:47.000 If you ain't white, you ain't right. 1.00

00:19:49.000 You ain't getting in, you ain't going, period.

00:19:52.000 And I think that context needs to be said in this matter.

00:19:58.000 It's not to say that we don't want the girls to be found, whatever girls that are missing or whatever right now, but you best believe, especially in today's political climate, if this were a group of Hispanic girls, especially with them being in East Texas, it should be most likely Hispanic.

00:20:17.000 If this were a group of Hispanic girls out there, this would not be getting this type of coverage that they're getting. 1.00

00:20:23.000 No one would give a f ⁇ .

00:20:25.000 She then went on to say that the parents of these little girls would be saying things like, they need to be deported.

00:20:29.000 They shouldn't have been here in the first place.

00:20:30.000 What is wrong with people?

00:20:31.000 Honest to God.

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00:22:32.000 That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro.

00:22:34.000 Again, policygenius.com slash Shapiro.

00:22:36.000 That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro.

00:22:39.000 Social media has just rotted brains.

00:22:41.000 It has created these echo chambers where you believe that you can say things that are completely specious and truly ugly, and that real people do not exist in the real world who will be upset about that. 0.99

00:22:52.000 And that's just unbelievably silly.

00:22:54.000 I mean, that is the line that links all of this together is this belief that what you say online has no real world consequences. 0.85

00:23:00.000 Obviously, it does.

00:23:02.000 Obviously, it does.

00:23:03.000 Now, again, that doesn't mean that you're responsible for terrible things happening if you say something terrible.

00:23:08.000 What it does mean is that being responsible about the language that you use and the ways in which you approach issue, that should actually be a prerequisite to being taken seriously in the world.

00:23:17.000 And that's really on us.

00:23:18.000 It's on everybody who's consuming.

00:23:20.000 It's on the audience to determine who to take seriously and who not to take seriously at this point.

00:23:25.000 Okay, meanwhile, President Trump has unleashed the tariff talk again.

00:23:28.000 He has sent a series of tariff letters to a bunch of countries on Monday, pairing new rates with an explicit warning that even those could change at any time.

00:23:35.000 This is according to Axios.

00:23:36.000 After months of threats, President Trump is abruptly re-escalating the trade war.

00:23:40.000 So he posted copies of the letters to Truth Social, starting with South Korea and Japan, both of which were hit with 25% tariffs.

00:23:46.000 Those are effective as of August 1st.

00:23:47.000 They have not kicked in again.

00:23:49.000 The idea is going to be that this is sort of a final push, final chance for them to get something done before those higher tariffs kick in.

00:23:56.000 Those tariff rates are similar to what the White House announced on the April 2nd Liberation Day before swiftly pausing the implementation for 90 days.

00:24:02.000 He then posted similar letters to Myanmar, 40% tariff, Laos, 40% tariff, Thailand, 36% tariff, Cambodia, 36% tariff, Serbia, 35, Bangladesh, 35, Indonesia, 32, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 30, South Africa, 30%, Kazakhstan, 25, Malaysia, and Tunisia, 25.

00:24:19.000 Many of those rates were slightly lower than April or unchanged.

00:24:23.000 Cambodia's rate dropped 13 percentage points from the original target.

00:24:27.000 According to the letter, quote, if you wish to open your heretofore closed trading markets to the United States, eliminate your tariff and non-tariff policies and trade barriers, we will perhaps consider an adjustment to this letter.

00:24:37.000 That's what the letters to the South Korean and Japanese leaders say.

00:24:41.000 Later, President Trump told reporters at the White House the August 1st deadline was firm, but now 100% firm, saying that he would be open to listening to offers.

00:24:51.000 He said, if for any reason you decide to raise your tariffs, whatever the number you choose to raise them by will be added onto the 25% charge that we will drop on you.

00:24:59.000 This, of course, caused a drop off in the S ⁇ P 500 because people got a little bit freaked out by all the tariff talk.

00:25:05.000 Although, honestly, I think it's all baked into the cake at this point.

00:25:07.000 People understand that Trump is going to threaten things.

00:25:09.000 He's going to back off some things.

00:25:10.000 Other things are going to happen.

00:25:11.000 Secretary Scott Bessant, he said, listen, we're going to announce a bunch of deals over the course of the next 48 hours.

00:25:16.000 And this is what is keep, as always, it is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant that is keeping the markets on an even keel here.

00:25:22.000 If it were Howard Luttnick talking, the markets would be going nuts right now.

00:25:26.000 We are going to have several announcements in the next 48 hours.

00:25:30.000 And Joe, I think what President Trump is concerned about is the quality of the deals, not the quantity.

00:25:38.000 My mailbox was full last night with a lot of new offers, a lot of new proposals.

00:25:44.000 So it's going to be a busy couple of days.

00:25:48.000 So I'm going to once again point out that what we are talking about here in terms of the tariffs that we are going to charge on Japan or South Korea, supposedly because how they've been going after American goods, these rates are nonsense.

00:25:59.000 I'm just going to point That out right off the top.

00:26:01.000 I checked with my friends and sponsors over at Perplexity.

00:26:04.000 What were the average effective tariff rates charged on American goods by Japan and South Korea as of January 1st, 2025?

00:26:10.000 Before any of this started, Japan, effective average tariff rate, approximately 1%.

00:26:16.000 This figure represents the ad valorem equivalent tariff rate across all industries as calculated by the World Bank and UNCTAD databases.

00:26:23.000 Most U.S. goods, especially industrial and manufactured products, face very low tariffs in Japan due to existing trade agreements.

00:26:28.000 Notably, tariffs on U.S. autos and auto parts are 0%.

00:26:31.000 Agricultural tariffs have been reduced to trade equivalent to the TPP agreement.

00:26:36.000 South Korea ranged somewhere between 0.19% and 2.87%.

00:26:41.000 According to trade data from the Korea Customs Service and analysis by the Korea Economic Institute, the effective weighted average tariff on U.S. imports in 2024 was within this range.

00:26:50.000 The vast majority of American goods, about 95%, entered South Korea tariff-free under the Koreas FTA, with most remaining tariffs affecting a narrow range of agricultural products subject to quotas.

00:27:01.000 Okay, so you might ask, what about non-tariff trade barriers, like subsidies to various products and goods in these particular areas?

00:27:09.000 Well, it turns out those are also pretty low.

00:27:12.000 According to, again, our sponsors over perplexity, the average non-tariff barrier rate for Japan against American goods is about 1%.

00:27:20.000 For automobiles, non-tariff barriers are notably higher with advalorem equivalents estimated at somewhere between 8% and 11%.

00:27:26.000 And those stem from regulatory requirements, non-recognition of U.S. safety standards, and distribution challenges.

00:27:31.000 Agricultural products, non-tariff trade barriers for vegetables are about 3%.

00:27:35.000 For seafood, they're close to zero.

00:27:36.000 Rice faces really, really high tariffs, about 400%, but U.S. rice often enters under duty-free quotas.

00:27:42.000 So the NCB impact is less pronounced for quota imports.

00:27:45.000 And again, the reason Japan is trying to protect its domestic rice industry is because that is a key food staple in Japan.

00:27:51.000 So it's almost a security issue for them in Japan.

00:27:54.000 In South Korea, the non-tariff barrier rate, well, there are significant non-tariff barriers in South Korea that include regulatory and emissions standards, approval processes, distribution requirements.

00:28:07.000 For agriculture, there are certain standards that American products supposedly do not meet.

00:28:12.000 Generally, again, according to our sponsors over at Perplexity, NTBs can add the equivalent of 3% to 10% to the cost of U.S. exports.

00:28:19.000 So if you're talking about total, they are nowhere near the 25% that President Trump has been talking about.

00:28:25.000 With all that said, this is why I expect that Secretary Besson is going to come up with some sort of win-win for President Trump or Trump is going to get to declare some sort of trade victory.

00:28:33.000 But we are going to avoid these gigantic tariffs that he is set to drop on a wide variety of countries, including Japan and South Korea.

00:28:39.000 As a general area of policy, we should not be dropping gigantic tariffs, particularly on countries that we are trying to ally against China.

00:28:46.000 Japan is threatened by China.

00:28:48.000 South Korea is threatened by China.

00:28:49.000 We should be trying to draw those people in, not trying to alienate them outward so that they are going to trade more with China.

00:28:55.000 If you wish to box in China, you have to set up a ring of trade fire around China. 0.73

00:29:00.000 And that would involve more free trade agreements, not fewer free trade agreements with places like Japan and South Korea.

00:29:06.000 Okay, meanwhile, in the most controversial story of the day, the Epstein files, there are none, apparently.

00:29:14.000 Now, again, a lot of people were shocked by this.

00:29:16.000 I'm less shocked by this than some.

00:29:19.000 The reason being, whenever there's this level of speculation without any sort of supporting evidence, it's not a shock to me when all that sort of falls apart.

00:29:27.000 Michael Tracy, a journalist with whom I frequently disagree on a wide variety of issues.

00:29:31.000 Michael Tracy has a thread on X where he explains, he said, the key Epstein victim who made the most sensational claims of being trafficked to powerful third-party individuals, Virginia Giufre, was not even called by prosecutors as a witness in the 2021 Ghislaine Maxwell criminal trial because her credibility was in such tatters.

00:29:48.000 The whole mythology around this case is largely based on the claims of one mentally unstable serial fabulist, Giufrey, who eventually had to admit in a civil settlement she had falsely accused Alan Tershowitz of depraved sexual crimes for nearly a decade.

00:29:59.000 Nonetheless, she was able to eventually extract a few million pounds from Prince Andrew, the only other third-party individual she actually sued, despite naming a huge array of prominent individuals over the year with zero credible evidence, and despite having the dogged assistance of some of the most high-powered attorneys in the world.

00:30:13.000 Prince Andrew, as Michael Tracy points out, was in the throes of a PR disaster after his infamous 2019 BBC interview.

00:30:20.000 So opting for a settlement with royal family funds rather than standing trial in the United States was probably the sensible course of action from his perspective.

00:30:27.000 This was the sole third-party settlement Giufre ever successfully reached, despite claiming she was trafficked to an extraordinary cross-section of prominent individuals, including George Mitchell, Bill Richardson, Marvin Minsky, etc.

00:30:38.000 None of the women who testified in the Maxwell criminal trial claimed they were trafficked to third parties.

00:30:41.000 Jiufre, clearly in the grips of a worsening psychological crisis, died earlier this year.

00:30:46.000 Unfortunately, but doesn't change the fact that so many of her wild, extravagant claims turned out to be totally baseless, despite serving as the evidentiary foundation for this blinkered Epstein mythology, which continues to persist despite an increasingly tenuous connection to any observable reality, having been egged on recently, playing to the fevered imaginations of right-wing social media.

00:31:04.000 The entire Epstein saga, says Michael Tracy, has long since turned into an enormous cash cow, with even J.P. Morgan settling for $290 million simply because Epstein was a former client.

00:31:13.000 The feeding frenzy litigation has been endless from every angle and is still ongoing.

00:31:17.000 We're supposed to believe that not one of these rich and powerful American men, to whom everyone assumes Epstein must have trafficked scores of children, could have been successfully sued at any point in the past 10 plus years and coerced into a generous settlement, particularly in the context of Me Too Mania, from which this affair gained such outsized cultural notoriety.

00:31:32.000 Epstein himself was clearly a dirtbag and openly confessed to a pathological obsession with procuring teenage girls for himself.

00:31:37.000 But the grander web of creepy conspiratorial intrigue that's enveloped this case and turned it into a weird, tantalizing, unfalsifiable mythology that won't go away is just an extension of the unhinged fabulism pioneered by the original accuser.

00:31:48.000 That seems to me the most obvious answer to what the hell was going on here.

00:31:52.000 And again, open questions are open.

00:31:56.000 But at a certain point, if the FBI and the DOJ not run by Democrats, first of all, we should point out Democrats running the FBI and the DOJ would have had a pretty large incentive, would they not, to have dumped an Epstein file on, say, Donald J. Trump?

00:32:13.000 Would they not?

00:32:15.000 I mean, we know for a fact that in 2016, the intelligence community coordinated to set up an entire op surrounding Donald Trump's supposed collusion with Russia.

00:32:24.000 Do you think that under the auspices of Joseph R. Biden and the rest of the Biden administration, if they had one single iota of evidence, for example, that Jeffrey Epstein had been trafficking underage girls to Donald Trump, that that wouldn't have been on the front page of every single newspaper in the world the next day, like the day after Joe Biden was elected.

00:32:45.000 Are we really to believe that?

00:32:47.000 Seriously?

00:32:48.000 It strings credulity.

00:32:51.000 And as far as the accusations about these other men, again, these are very prominent men.

00:32:54.000 Michael Tracy is making a good point.

00:32:56.000 The burden of proof in a civil trial is much lower than the burden of proof in a criminal trial.

00:33:00.000 All you have to do is win by preponderance of the evidence.

00:33:02.000 And when you're talking about young girls, now young women or middle-aged women suing powerful older men, the possibility of a settlement is very high.

00:33:11.000 So why weren't there any of those things?

00:33:13.000 A lot of that was studiously avoided during all of the Epstein talk, which again was spicy and interesting and fascinating because conspiracies are usually spicy and interesting and fascinating.

00:33:23.000 And of course, Epstein's death was suspicious.

00:33:27.000 And by the way, the memes were funny.

00:33:28.000 I mean, let's be real.

00:33:29.000 The memes were funny of Hillary Clinton sneaking into jail at night to get Bill Clinton off scot free because he was trafficking in girls. 0.97

00:33:36.000 And Jeffrey Epstein was a weirdo with pictures of Bill Clinton in a dress, aside from being a sick sexual deviant who should have been arrested and executed a long time ago for his crimes against children. 0.96

00:33:46.000 Okay, so put all of that aside. 0.98

00:33:49.000 What does this demonstrate?

00:33:50.000 Well, it demonstrates that once a conspiracy theory gets going, it becomes utterly unfalsifiable, utterly unfalsifiable.

00:33:55.000 And no matter how much evidence is provided, and even if the people you trust are put in charge, it's still even more unfalsifiable.

00:34:03.000 So listen, it's justifiable for people like J.D. Vance, who was the vice presidential candidate at the time before the election, to call for the release of an Epstein list because, frankly, people thought there was an Epstein list.

00:34:14.000 However, the evidence suggested there really was not an Epstein list if you were watching this case with any sort of eagle eye.

00:34:21.000 This is J.D. Vance before the election.

00:34:23.000 Everybody in politics has a vice that's much worse than alcoholism is the way that I put it.

00:34:29.000 But we release the list.

00:34:34.000 Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list.

00:34:36.000 That is an important thing.

00:34:37.000 Okay, so the problem is that when you feed this, when you feed this, when you feed this, at a certain point, it's going to blow back on you when it turns out that you open Al Capone's vault, like Geraldo Rivera, and there's nothing there, which is actually what seems to have happened right here.

00:34:51.000 The person who's receiving the most blowback on this, of course, is Attorney General Pam Bondi, because Attorney General Bondi back in February had suggested that the Epstein list was sitting on her desk.

00:34:59.000 Don't say this sort of stuff if you don't got the goods.

00:35:01.000 If you don't got the goods, don't say it.

00:35:04.000 Again, this goes to our social media-driven age where you are likely to score points and garner loyalty for making commitments that you can't actually cash in.

00:35:13.000 The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients.

00:35:18.000 Will that really happen?

00:35:19.000 It's sitting on my desk right now to review.

00:35:22.000 That's been a directive by President Trump.

00:35:25.000 I'm reviewing that.

00:35:26.000 I'm reviewing JFK files, MLK files.

00:35:29.000 That's all in the process of being reviewed because that was done at the directive of the president from all of these agencies.

00:35:34.000 And again, one of the things that's come out with regard to pretty much all of this stuff is that what we knew is what we knew, right?

00:35:39.000 There was nothing new in the JFK files.

00:35:41.000 Legitimately nothing new that was revelatory or even interesting about what was released in the JFK files.

00:35:47.000 It didn't matter.

00:35:47.000 The internet tried to spin it into a conspiracy theory anyway, because that's what happens.

00:35:50.000 Caroline Levitt was forced into the uncomfortable position yesterday at the White House of trying to retcon those comments from Pambandi. 0.99

00:35:58.000 According to the report, this systematic review revealed no incriminating client list.

00:36:05.000 So what happened to the Epstein client list that the Attorney General said she had on her desk?

00:36:11.000 Well, I think if you go back and look at what the Attorney General said in that interview, which was on your network on Fox News, John Roberts said, DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients.

00:36:21.000 Will that really happen?

00:36:22.000 And she said, it's sitting on my desk right now to review.

00:36:26.000 Yes, she was saying the entirety of all of the paperwork, all of the paper in relation to Jeffrey Epstein's crimes.

00:36:33.000 That's what the Attorney General was referring to, and I'll let her speak for that.

00:36:37.000 Okay, fine.

00:36:37.000 And I mean, fine.

00:36:39.000 That's not how it reads.

00:36:40.000 That's not how it sounds.

00:36:41.000 But okay.

00:36:42.000 I mean, I suppose that you could make that case.

00:36:44.000 Bottom line is this.

00:36:46.000 When everybody engages in outsized speculation, the outsized evidence better stack up at a certain point.

00:36:51.000 And if it doesn't, if your expectations of a gigantic conspiracy don't come true and you have no counter evidence, none except for your speculation, I'm sorry, but that's on you.

00:37:02.000 It is.

00:37:03.000 I mean, if you want to provide counter evidence, I'm happy to hear it.

00:37:06.000 Seriously.

00:37:08.000 If you want to provide me the actual, not just your speculation, not just your sort of suggestions, not your wild, outlandish theories, speciously based on nothing, right?

00:37:20.000 And all of that is open.

00:37:22.000 But I'm sorry, when you put Cash Patel and Dan Bongino in charge of the FBI, and we put Pam Bondi in charge of the DOJ, and then it turns out that there's nothing there, I don't know what more you expect.

00:37:33.000 What do you think?

00:37:33.000 They're all part of the conspiracy.

00:37:34.000 And the answer is, of course, yes.

00:37:35.000 That is always the next step.

00:37:37.000 You're seeing people online suggesting now that Cash Patel is being blackmailed by his girlfriend because his girlfriend works for PragerU.

00:37:45.000 I mean, like, give, and Prager and Dennis Prager is Jewish.

00:37:48.000 Of course, you can always go down the next conspiratorial rabbit hole.

00:37:51.000 That's the beauty of conspiratorial rabbit holes.

00:37:53.000 When one of them gets to both, you just dive right into the next conspiratorial rabbit hole and they all tie together in a gigantic bowl of spaghetti that is a global unifying world theory that in the end is about some sort of conspiratorial elite controlling your life.

00:38:05.000 Or maybe, or maybe fact and evidence should be necessary when you make outsized allegations.

00:38:12.000 Outsized allegations require outsized evidence.

00:38:14.000 Again, this doesn't mean that conspiracies never take place.

00:38:17.000 There was a conspiracy with regard to, for example, covering up the possibility of Wuhan lab leak.

00:38:22.000 That was a real thing that happened where Anthony Fauci and members of the health establishment attempted to legitimately silence people who made the case that COVID was leaked from a Chinese lab.

00:38:31.000 Those things happened, but here's the thing.

00:38:32.000 There's evidence that they happened.

00:38:34.000 There's evidence that they happened.

00:38:35.000 Before that, you could speculate maybe that was true.

00:38:38.000 And if you kept an open mind, you say, okay, if there's new evidence, I'll change my mind on that stuff.

00:38:41.000 Then when the evidence emerged, then you could say, hey, look, evidence.

00:38:46.000 This is why I've been asked before, are there any conspiracy theories that I believe?

00:38:50.000 And, you know, the question is to whether I believe a conspiracy.

00:38:53.000 There are conspiracy theories that could be plausible, but I don't believe in any conspiracy theory unless there's Actual evidence that makes it not a conspiracy theory anymore, just a conspiracy.

00:39:03.000 That's when you should believe in things, is when there's evidence of them that is at least plausible in nature.

00:39:08.000 But as you can see, the conspiratorialists are very, very upset with the Trump administration.

00:39:12.000 Now they believe the conspiracy goes even deeper.

00:39:14.000 So, Alex Jones, who has yet to find a conspiracy he doesn't believe in, is about to go throw up, which frankly might be good for his weight loss program.

00:39:23.000 I just got to the office.

00:39:24.000 I'm going to go throw up, actually.

00:39:25.000 And this only happens every few years when something really, really bad happens or something.

00:39:29.000 I mean, I'm physically going to puke probably right now.

00:39:32.000 My mouth is watering right now.

00:39:38.000 Because I have integrity.

00:39:40.000 And, you know, I just really need the Trump administration to succeed and to save this country.

00:39:47.000 And they're doing so much good.

00:39:49.000 And then for them to do something like this tears my guts out.

00:39:54.000 Guys, he has integrity.

00:39:55.000 In fact, he's been called by some a prophet.

00:39:58.000 Tucker Carlson literally called him a prophet on his program.

00:40:01.000 So actually, this is a person whose own lawyer made the case in a custody hearing with his ex-wife that he was a performance artist.

00:40:08.000 This wasn't even the Sandy Hook trial where he tried to make the same case.

00:40:10.000 His lawyers claim that this man of integrity is, in fact, a performance artist.

00:40:16.000 Quote, he's playing a character and is nothing like his online persona.

00:40:19.000 Attorney Randall Wilhite reportedly insisted in a Texas courtroom at a pre-trial hearing ahead of the right-wing Radio Jocks custody battle with ex-wife Kelly Jones.

00:40:28.000 Judging Jones by his Infowars performances would be like judging Jack Nicholson by his depiction of the Joker on Batman.

00:40:33.000 That's his own lawyer saying that.

00:40:35.000 His own lawyer is saying that he was a performance artist.

00:40:40.000 His wife was making the case that actually he's just unstable.

00:40:43.000 Quote, he's not a stable person. 0.58

00:40:44.000 He says he wants to break Alec Baldwin's neck.

00:40:46.000 He wants J-Lo to get his lawyer was like, no, no, no, he doesn't mean any of that.

00:40:50.000 He's a performance artist.

00:40:50.000 Okay, so those are your choices.

00:40:52.000 So I'd just like to point out once again, at this point, you can watch whatever you want.

00:40:56.000 It is a free country.

00:40:57.000 You can watch Alex Jones.

00:40:58.000 You can believe Alex Jones.

00:40:59.000 You can think Alex Jones is a pro.

00:41:00.000 You're entitled to any of those beliefs.

00:41:03.000 That's fine.

00:41:04.000 It's a free country. 0.99

00:41:05.000 On a moral and intellectual level, it is not so fine because it turns out that people who consistently traffic in conspiracy, it turns out that people who consistently traffic in trash, people who spend your time, your few brief breaths on this planet, filling your mind with stupidity, playing a WWE character.

00:41:25.000 Listen, if you want to watch Alice Jones in the same way that you watch WWE, because you know that the WWE is people who are fake jumping on each other and you find it dramatic and interesting, you know, more power to you. 0.99

00:41:37.000 But if you're watching WWE and you think it's real, that makes you the stupid person. 1.00

00:41:41.000 Don't do it. 1.00

00:41:43.000 Don't do it. 1.00

00:41:44.000 Seriously, it makes you dumber. 1.00

00:41:46.000 It just makes you in the end, you're responsible for the information that enters your brain and your independent judgment of that information. 0.99

00:41:53.000 But if people are consistently being inauthentic, if people openly acknowledge that what they're saying to you publicly and what they say privately are two different things on the same matters, well, then maybe you ought to take what they say with a grain of salt rather than suggesting that, for example, Donald Trump is lying to you about Jeffrey Epstein or Dan Bongino, with whom I am friends, is lying to you about Jeffrey Epstein, or Cash Patel, the head of the FBI, is lying to you about Jeffrey Epstein.

00:42:15.000 Because those are your only two choices here.

00:42:17.000 Either Alex Jones, as is usual, blew a conspiracy theory out of proportion, and so did the rest of the internet, or Dan Bongino and Cash Patel and Donald Trump are all lying to you.

00:42:26.000 Those are your choices.

00:42:26.000 There is no third choice.

00:42:28.000 President Trump, for his part, says, quote, the FBI, under the direction of Director Cash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, is back to the basics, locking up criminals, cleaning up America's streets.

00:42:36.000 We have the greatest law enforcement professionals in the world, but politics and corrupt leadership often prevented them from doing their job.

00:42:41.000 That is no longer the case.

00:42:42.000 And now they've been unleashed to do their jobs and they're doing just that.

00:42:45.000 Keep it up.

00:42:45.000 Make America safe again.

00:42:46.000 So that's President Trump defending the people that he selected for these jobs.

00:42:49.000 And again, I'm just going to point out for the thousandth time here, Dan Bongino and Cash Patel were both suspicious of the Epstein list stuff.

00:42:57.000 They were.

00:42:58.000 They were both into the theorizing.

00:43:01.000 And then they saw the evidence.

00:43:02.000 And like the honest people they are, they came to a conclusion about that evidence.

00:43:06.000 Period.

00:43:07.000 You may not come to that same conclusion, but now you should be forced to provide your evidence before you call people like Cash Patel and Dan Bongino.

00:43:14.000 And by the way, the president of the United States, liars on this matter.

00:43:18.000 So why is there such resistance?

00:43:20.000 Now, once the conspiracy is essentially exploded by people like Cash Patel and Dan Bongino and President Trump and Pam Bondi and all the rest, once that happens, why do people double down?

00:43:31.000 And the question has to be answered by looking at the mentality of people who do the doubling down.

00:43:36.000 Again, you can believe this stuff or speculate about this stuff, but once the evidence comes out, that's a different class of people who've decided to double, triple, quadruple down and look for a way to somehow weasel their way out of having to provide any evidence.

00:43:48.000 It's a worldview.

00:43:49.000 And that worldview basically says that there is always an elite that is controlling the events in your life.

00:43:54.000 And those elite are able to get away with literally anything.

00:43:58.000 They have almost godlike powers over your life.

00:44:01.000 And once those elites are unmasked, then suddenly the world will become a better place.

00:44:07.000 And so every time it turns out that a conspiracy theory is untrue, it undermines your case, unless you make the case that actually the elites got away with it again, in which case you are strengthening your case.

00:44:18.000 Actually, a conspiracy debunked in many cases for these folks actually strengthens their broader great conspiracy theory, which is that there is a group of small elites who are running every aspect of your life and they get away with everything.

00:44:28.000 And when they get away with this one, it actually makes you more passionate about the fact that they got away with it, as opposed to maybe taking a look at your core theory, which is, no, maybe there isn't this like small group of elite who's controlling every aspect of your life.

00:44:39.000 Again, this doesn't mean that every conspiracy is untrue.

00:44:42.000 There are conspiracies that exist and we don't even argue on them.

00:44:45.000 Alex Jones and I may agree that there was a conspiracy to silence the Wuhan Lab League theory.

00:44:49.000 The question is, why double down on theories that are already debunked? 0.97

00:44:52.000 Why double down on theories that are widely derided as dumb?

00:44:55.000 Why double down on theories that have no evidence to them? 0.87

00:44:57.000 And the answer is, those are precisely the theories you must double down on.

00:45:01.000 You must, because if there is a group of unanswerable, unpunishable elites, it excuses all of your day-to-day life.

00:45:08.000 It excuses your activities.

00:45:10.000 It excuses your failures.

00:45:11.000 It excuses why you're so angry at quote unquote the system.

00:45:14.000 And it requires no actual action from you other than railing at the moon.

00:45:18.000 All right.

00:45:18.000 Meanwhile, to the great disappointment of so many, President Trump lives in the world of reality.

00:45:22.000 Again, my common refrain with President Trump, he lives in the world of reality.

00:45:25.000 So remember all that talk by a wide variety of people inside and outside the administration About how Ukraine needed to be abandoned.

00:45:32.000 In fact, there were members of the administration, high-ranking members of the administration, who said they didn't care what happened to Ukraine.

00:45:37.000 And then there were realists, actual foreign policy realists, you know, people who believe in American interests abroad, who said, you know, what would be bad is Vladimir Putin taking the rest of Ukraine and ingesting it and then being on the borders of Hungary and being on the borders of Poland.

00:45:49.000 That would actually be quite bad.

00:45:51.000 Remember that?

00:45:52.000 Well, it turns out that now President Trump has come to the correct conclusion because reality was there and he acknowledged it.

00:45:59.000 And that reality is Vladimir Putin is not interested in a deal at this current time.

00:46:03.000 President Trump yesterday announced he would continue to provide weaponry and funding to Ukraine.

00:46:08.000 In fact, he might even up it, depending on how intransigent Vladimir Putin is being.

00:46:13.000 And are you planning to send more weapons to Ukraine?

00:46:16.000 We're going to send some more weapons.

00:46:18.000 We have to.

00:46:19.000 They have to be able to defend themselves.

00:46:21.000 They're getting hit very hard now.

00:46:23.000 They're getting hit very hard.

00:46:24.000 We're going to have to send more weapons.

00:46:25.000 You have defensive weapons, primarily, but they're getting hit very, very hard.

00:46:32.000 So many people are dying in that mess.

00:46:35.000 Okay, so again, great disappointment.

00:46:37.000 You can hear the wails, the gnashing of teeth from the people who called the president of Ukraine rat-faced and sweaty for the great crime of saying he didn't want to be invaded by Vladimir Putin.

00:46:49.000 Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, quote, at President Trump's direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops.

00:47:01.000 President Trump even told Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in a telephone call on Friday, according to the Wall Street Journal, he was not responsible for the halt in weapons shipments to Kyiv.

00:47:09.000 He said he had directed a review of Pentagon munition stockpiles after the U.S. struck Iran's nuclear sites last month, but had not ordered the department to freeze the arms deliveries.

00:47:18.000 So, you know, that does actually raise the question as to who in the Defense Department was telling the deliveries to stop.

00:47:23.000 That ought to be investigated because that should not happen unless the president of the United States gives a sign-off, which apparently he did not.

00:47:30.000 The call with Zelensky came shortly after Trump publicly said he was very disappointed and did not make any progress on a Ukraine peace deal in a separate call Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

00:47:39.000 He said, I'm disappointed, frankly, President Putin hasn't stopped.

00:47:42.000 He lives in the world of reality.

00:47:44.000 And in reality, it is not in America's interest for Russia to be treated as an ally of the United States while they invade a sovereign country, Ukraine, try to kill its leadership and take over the entirety of the country, which borders on multiple NATO countries.

00:47:58.000 This is perfectly obvious to President Trump.

00:48:00.000 It's the reason why he is now doing the thing that people like me have been suggesting that he do, which is, sure, of course, look for an off-ramp.

00:48:08.000 But if no off-ramp is available, because Vladimir Putin is not providing an off-ramp, you have to acknowledge reality.

00:48:13.000 It turns out that Vladimir Putin's interests are not the United States' interests.

00:48:17.000 That's what it turns out.

00:48:19.000 And meanwhile, speaking of which, it turns out that there are also countries all over the world, many countries all over the world that do not share America's interests, that have their own independent interests.

00:48:28.000 And those interests are very often at odds with the interests of the United States of America.

00:48:32.000 I know this comes as a shock to many, but it shouldn't because China, for example, has its own interests.

00:48:37.000 Those interests are adversarial to those of the United States.

00:48:40.000 Russia has her own interests.

00:48:42.000 Those interests include being a regional power.

00:48:45.000 In fact, not just being a regional power, being a global power, even if they don't have the capacity to do that.

00:48:50.000 Another country that has its own interests is Iran, which brings us to the much ballyhooed interview between Tucker Carlson and the president of Iran.

00:48:59.000 So the president of Iran is a man named Masoud Pezeshkian.

00:49:02.000 You haven't heard of him because frankly, the president of Iran is pretty much irrelevant.

00:49:05.000 He is selected by the Ayatollahs.

00:49:07.000 The only people who can run in the election are already pre-selected by the Ayatollahs because Iran, of course, is a Shia Islamic theocracy. 0.87

00:49:15.000 A radical Islamic theocracy that has spread its terror tentacles all over the Middle East is responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people ranging from countries like Iraq and Syria to Lebanon to the Gaza Strip to Yemen.

00:49:28.000 They've got their tentacles all over the globe in terms of sleeper terror cells all over the globe, according to every single major intelligence agency in the West.

00:49:36.000 Well, Tucker Carlson obtains an interview with President Pazeshkian, and Tucker explained that the reason he was doing this interview was not to get to the absolute truth.

00:49:47.000 He was not interested in getting to the absolute truth.

00:49:48.000 And this is the part that's sort of fascinating, not what Pazeshkian had to say, because of course he repeated a bunch of lies, easily demunkable lies that we will explain in a moment.

00:49:58.000 What is fascinating about this interview is Tucker Carlson's approach to the interview.

00:50:02.000 So Tucker has a particular approach to certain figures.

00:50:05.000 So we'll begin by showing you how he treated Ted Cruz.

00:50:10.000 This is how you would treat an adversarial interview.

00:50:12.000 Okay, so he treated Ted Cruz as an adversary because Ted Cruz was an advocate of the president of the United States striking the Iranian nuclear facilities, which, by the way, again, Tucker was directly at odds with the president of the United States over it.

00:50:25.000 He made a series of horrifyingly bad predictions.

00:50:27.000 Those predictions were predicated in a series of lies that he has told himself and his audience about the way that the world works, particularly in the Middle East.

00:50:34.000 That's why he was so wrong on that.

00:50:36.000 In any case, here is his approach when he decides to be adversarial with a guest.

00:50:41.000 Okay, here he was with Senator Cruz.

00:50:44.000 This, again, is, I think, two weeks ago, asking him about the population of Iran, as though this was the most relevant issue with regard to Iran.

00:50:52.000 How many people live in Iran, by the way?

00:50:54.000 I don't know the population.

00:50:55.000 At all?

00:50:56.000 No, I don't know the population.

00:50:58.000 You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple?

00:51:02.000 How many people live in Iran?

00:51:03.000 92 million.

00:51:04.000 Okay.

00:51:05.000 Yeah.

00:51:06.000 How could you not know that?

00:51:09.000 I don't sit around memorizing population tables.

00:51:11.000 Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government.

00:51:15.000 Why is it relevant whether it's 90 million or 80 million or 100 million?

00:51:19.000 Because if you don't know anything about the country.

00:51:21.000 I didn't say I don't know anything about the country.

00:51:22.000 Okay, what's the ethnic mix of Iran?

00:51:25.000 They are Persians and predominantly Shia.

00:51:28.000 Okay, this is not even.

00:51:29.000 You don't know anything about Iran.

00:51:31.000 So I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran.

00:51:35.000 You're a senator who's calling for the country.

00:51:37.000 You're the one who's the government.

00:51:38.000 You're the one who knows anything about the country.

00:51:40.000 No, you don't know anything about the country.

00:51:41.000 You're the one who claims they're not trying to murder Donald Trump. 0.75

00:51:44.000 You're the not saying that, who can't figure out a saying you need to kill General Suleimani, and you just said it was bad they're trying to murder Trump.

00:51:51.000 Yes, I did because you're not.

00:51:52.000 So again, this is what an adversarial interview looks like from Tucker Carlson, right?

00:51:56.000 Badgering people, asking them for very specific, Sometimes red herring statistics on matters.

00:52:03.000 By the way, the answer to whether the Ayatollahs ought to run the country does not lie in whether half the country is Persian or 75% of the country is Persian.

00:52:11.000 The answer is about 48%, by the way, but it doesn't really matter very much.

00:52:14.000 The reason being, it can turn out that an Islamic theocracy is not in the best interests of the United States. 1.00

00:52:19.000 If the Ayatollahs were to fall, whatever comes next is likely to be better than the current regime. 0.99

00:52:23.000 Okay, but put that aside, it is the way he's approaching the interview.

00:52:26.000 And again, this was the constant, this was the constant theme of the interview with Senator Cruz, was him badgering Senator Cruz, being incredibly adversarial.

00:52:33.000 So bottom line is when Tucker wants to grill people, he absolutely knows how to do it, but he saves his ire for Senator Cruz.

00:52:40.000 He does not save his ire for some of the worst leaders on planet Earth who hate America and literally chant about it.

00:52:46.000 So for example, another clip from that Cruz interview.

00:52:48.000 Here he was asking Senator Cruz about his biblical beliefs with regard to Israel.

00:52:54.000 Hold on, define Israel.

00:52:55.000 This is important.

00:52:56.000 Are you kidding?

00:52:57.000 This is a majority Christian country.

00:52:58.000 Define Israel. 0.91

00:52:59.000 Do you not know what Israel is?

00:53:01.000 That would be the country you've asked like 49 questions about.

00:53:04.000 So that's what Genesis, that's what God is talking about.

00:53:07.000 The nation of Israel, yes.

00:53:09.000 So is that the current borders, the current leadership?

00:53:11.000 He's talking about the political entity called Israel?

00:53:13.000 He's talking about the nation of Israel.

00:53:14.000 Yet nations exist, and he's discussing a nation.

00:53:17.000 A nation was the people of Israel.

00:53:18.000 Is the nation referring to in Genesis?

00:53:21.000 Is that the same as the country run by Benjamin Netanyahu right now?

00:53:24.000 Yes.

00:53:25.000 Yes.

00:53:26.000 Okay, so again, notice the attitude.

00:53:28.000 Okay, now, fast forward to his interview with Masood Pazeshkian.

00:53:32.000 Again, Tucker can interview whomever he wants.

00:53:34.000 It's not about who he interviews or whether you find his interviews interesting.

00:53:36.000 That's fine.

00:53:37.000 I mean, frankly, I think Tucker's a wildly talented guy and very intelligent.

00:53:40.000 With all of that said, if you cannot discern his worldview from the way he approaches these things, I don't know what to tell you.

00:53:47.000 So he leads off before the interview is even released.

00:53:50.000 He explains why he's interviewing and he says, we were not intending to get to truth, so I didn't ask him any tough questions effectively.

00:53:58.000 And there are all kinds of questions that I didn't ask the president of Iran, particularly questions to which I knew I could not get an honest answer, such as, was your nuclear program totally disabled by the bombing campaign by the U.S. government a week and a half ago?

00:54:11.000 There's no chance he's going to answer that question honestly.

00:54:13.000 I didn't bother to ask it.

00:54:14.000 The answer, in fact, from an American perspective, even from the CIA's perspective, is unknowable.

00:54:20.000 So we dispensed with those, and I asked him very simple questions, such as, what is your goal?

00:54:25.000 Do you seek war with the United States?

00:54:27.000 Do you seek war with Israel?

00:54:28.000 Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

00:54:29.000 Again, the purpose of this was not to get to the absolute truth.

00:54:32.000 That's impossible in an interview like this.

00:54:34.000 The purpose of the interview was to add to the corpus of knowledge from which Americans can derive their own opinion.

00:54:41.000 Learn everything you can, and then you decide.

00:54:43.000 That's the promise of America.

00:54:45.000 The promise of America is you asking absolutely unskeptical questions to the dictator of Iran, who has his people shouting death to America and recently tried to attack an American airbase in Qatar and is responsible for the death of thousands of Americans in Iraq and service people in Lebanon and the deaths of tens of thousands of people around the region.

00:55:02.000 You need absolutely unskeptical questions of the president of that country in order so that you can make up your mind, apparently.

00:55:08.000 So what did Pozheshkian do? 0.99

00:55:10.000 He just lied straight out to Tucker multiple times and Tucker had no follow-ups.

00:55:13.000 Now, when Tucker wants to ask follow-ups, he certainly knows how to do it.

00:55:16.000 So, for example, here was Pozheshkian saying, we never wanted a nuclear weapon.

00:55:22.000 It was Netanyahu, since 1984, has created this false mentality that Iran seeks a nuclear bomb.

00:55:35.000 And it has insinuated that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear bomb in the past.

00:55:43.000 And it has put it in the minds of every U.S. president since then, and to make them believe that we would like to have a nuclear bomb.

00:55:55.000 But the truth is that we have never been after developing a nuclear bomb, not in the past, not presently, or in the future.

00:56:06.000 Well, that's super, that'd be a super opportune time for Tucker to ask a series of very simple questions, as he put it.

00:56:11.000 Like, for example, just a quick question.

00:56:13.000 So why do you need nuclear energy?

00:56:14.000 We're in the most oil and natural gas-rich regions on the planet.

00:56:17.000 So why do you need nuclear energy?

00:56:19.000 Here's another question.

00:56:20.000 Why are you enriching to 60% uranium enrichment?

00:56:23.000 Why?

00:56:23.000 Because it turns out that actually you don't need that level of uranium enrichment for civilian nuclear purposes.

00:56:29.000 According to the Institute for Science and International Security, in front of the inspector's eyes, Iran is undertaking the near-final step of breaking out, converting its 20% stock of enriched uranium into 60% enriched uranium at a greatly expanded rate.

00:56:43.000 There is no, no actual civilian use for 60% enriched uranium.

00:56:49.000 You don't need to do that.

00:56:51.000 So why are you doing that?

00:56:53.000 These would be very basic follow-up questions.

00:56:55.000 No follow-up questions.

00:56:56.000 No questions, Your Honor.

00:56:57.000 None.

00:56:58.000 None.

00:56:59.000 Okay.

00:56:59.000 By the way, it was Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary.

00:57:03.000 Tucker, by allowing these lies to go unchallenged, and he won't challenge them on his show, I would imagine, by allowing these lies to go unchallenged, Tucker is directly at odds with the White House.

00:57:12.000 Here's Caroline Levitt, June 19th, saying that Iran has everything it needs to achieve a nuke.

00:57:16.000 All they need is a decision from the Supreme Leader.

00:57:19.000 When the president said a few weeks away, did he mean obtaining enough enriched uranium to start building a weapon?

00:57:27.000 Or did he mean Iran is a few weeks away from completing the production of a weapon?

00:57:33.000 I'm glad you asked that, Ouija.

00:57:35.000 It's an important question, and it's one, frankly, the media has been getting wrong.

00:57:38.000 Let's be very clear.

00:57:40.000 Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon. 0.90

00:57:44.000 All they need is a decision from the Supreme Leader to do that.

00:57:47.000 And it would take a couple of weeks to complete the production of that weapon, which would, of course, pose an existential threat, not just to Israel, but to the United States and to the entire world.

00:57:57.000 And that is something that the entire world, including countries like Russia, is in agreement with, that Iran should not and cannot obtain a nuclear weapon.

00:58:05.000 And that's why the president believes that, and he has believed that again, not just his political career, but frankly, his entire life.

00:58:12.000 Okay, so you may have noticed that that would make a good follow-up question that was not asked.

00:58:18.000 Well, then, Mazoud Pazeshkian suggested that actually the diplomacy was going amazing.

00:58:23.000 Israel just destroyed the diplomacy with its preemptive strike on the nuclear facilities.

00:58:28.000 And we were going to have the next Round of the talks very soon.

00:58:35.000 But in the middle of it, suddenly Israel torpedoed the negotiating table.

00:58:43.000 We were sitting at the negotiating table when it happened.

00:58:46.000 And by doing this, they totally ruined and destroyed diplomacy.

00:58:52.000 Well, that's weird because the Trump administration said over and over and over, actually, that Iran was basically jacking around the United States, that he gave them 60 days to negotiate, and then they didn't actually negotiate in good faith.

00:59:05.000 They kept saying over and over and over they would not give up their nuclear facilities, period.

00:59:08.000 Steve Woodkoff, who was very much biased toward a deal, was unable to make any sort of deal.

00:59:12.000 You can ask members of the administration this.

00:59:14.000 No follow-up questions, none.

00:59:15.000 Zero follow-up questions on this particular matter.

00:59:18.000 Well, how about the Iranians claiming that the IAEA had full access? 0.98

00:59:22.000 So Tucker asked about the IAEA, and here was the response.

00:59:27.000 There have been news reports that you believe your government believes that the IAEA was spying on the government of Iran and passing information to Israel.

00:59:39.000 Do you believe that?

00:59:40.000 And if so, do you have evidence that that's true that the world could see?

00:59:47.000 I would like to tell you that we were, yes, somehow pessimistic about the activities of the IAEA because somehow we realized that Israel could get information from the inspections which were carried out by the IAEA, but it never prevented the IAEA from carrying out their activities inside Iran.

01:00:11.000 And they had full access to supervise and to have surveillance over our nuclear facilities.

01:00:17.000 Okay, so first of all, this blows up a couple of Tucker's already existing narratives.

01:00:21.000 One is that there was no ongoing nuclear program and that Israel basically sold the lie to the United States to get the B-2 bombers to fly over Fordo.

01:00:28.000 Well, that is the president of Iran acknowledging, according to him, that the IAEA had full access, was leaking the intel to the Israelis who were then giving it to the Americans.

01:00:36.000 So actually, the intel came from on the ground in Iran, according to the Iranians.

01:00:39.000 But put that aside, he's lying when he says the IAEA had full access.

01:00:44.000 Here is a piece, March 9th, 2020, from the IAEA.

01:00:48.000 Quote, the agency has identified a number of questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at three locations that have not been declared by Iran, says IAEA Director General, Rafael Mariano-Grossi, calling on Iran to cooperate immediately and fully with the IAEA and provide prompt access to locations, which it has refused to let agency inspectors visit.

01:01:09.000 Just June 12, 2025, 19 of the 35 countries on the board of the IAEA backed a motion declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years.

01:01:21.000 So that doesn't sound very like, that would be a great point to, you know, maybe ask a follow-up, like a little bit of pushback.

01:01:26.000 Now, my favorite, I think, here is once Tucker asks about death to America.

01:01:32.000 And the president of Iran says, no, by death to America, it's just like when when, it's just like when Julius Malema in South Africa says killed the boar.

01:01:40.000 He says, kill the boar. 0.55

01:01:41.000 It's just figurative. 1.00

01:01:41.000 It's just a figure of speech, death to America. 1.00

01:01:45.000 When they say death to the United States, it doesn't mean death to, they don't mean death to the people of the United States or even to the officials of the United States.

01:01:59.000 They mean death to crimes, death to killing and carnage, death to supporting, killing others, death to insecurity and instability.

01:02:12.000 This is, have you ever heard that Iranian killing an American? 1.00

01:02:19.000 Have you ever heard that?

01:02:20.000 Or a terrorist that was Iranian and he carried out a terrorist attack against the Americans? 0.78

01:02:28.000 No, it was your president who confessed that the Americans created the ISIS in our region and they were responsible for this wrong image that is portrayed of religion or the Muslims in the world.

01:02:47.000 No pushback, none.

01:02:48.000 So the president of Iran literally just said that Iranians have never killed Americans.

01:02:53.000 Yes, they have. 0.54

01:02:54.000 Yes, they absolutely freaking have.

01:02:56.000 Yes, they have. 0.84

01:02:57.000 Iranian-backed militias Hezbollah in Lebanon murdered hundreds of American Marines.

01:03:05.000 Iranian-backed militias in Iraq killed thousands of people, including over a thousand Americans in Iraq.

01:03:12.000 Iranian militias all around the region have threatened Americans, including, again, Iran directly firing a missile.

01:03:18.000 I understand that they pre-coordinated it with the United States so the United States did not blow them away, but they did in fact fire a missile at a U.S. base two weeks ago in Qatar.

01:03:26.000 I remember because Tucker Carlson was almost crying about it on air, saying it was a tragedy for his friends in Qatar, his allies in Qatar.

01:03:34.000 He doesn't know what an ally is when it comes to Israel, but apparently Qatar is a deep and abiding ally.

01:03:38.000 By the way, again, this puts Tucker in his failure to ask any basic follow-ups at odds with the President of the United States here as President Trump, June 22nd.

01:03:47.000 For 40 years, Iran has been saying death to America, death to Israel. 0.96

01:03:53.000 They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs. 0.99

01:03:59.000 That was their specialty.

01:04:00.000 We lost over a thousand people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate, in particular.

01:04:11.000 So that might have made a good follow-up question.

01:04:14.000 Tucker also provided a forum for the president of Iran to suggest that there was no actual fatwa on Donald Trump, that they've not been trying to kill Trump at all, actually.

01:04:21.000 Of course, he sort of has to say that now that he suggested openly in his interview with Senator Cruz, that if people had attempted to kill Trump at the behest of the Iranian government, we'd have to nuke Iran.

01:04:33.000 Here is Tucker Carlson with the Iranian president.

01:04:36.000 To the best of my knowledge, they have not issued decrees or fatwas against any individual, against Donald Trump.

01:04:47.000 And first off, it has nothing to do with the Iranian government or to His Eminence, the Supreme Leader of Iran.

01:04:56.000 What they actually meant by the fatwa was In condemnation of an insult to a religion or religious personalities.

01:05:07.000 And they were actually saying that this is deplorable, this is unacceptable.

01:05:12.000 So it was not directed towards the U.S. president or any other individual.

01:05:20.000 Well, I mean, that's kind of weird because actually, here's a video of the IRGC commander in 2023 saying that, God willing, they'll be able to kill President Trump.

01:05:29.000 That's awkward a little.

01:05:30.000 But it would be awkward if he had been asked the question, but he wasn't asked the question because, of course, no follow-ups. 0.93

01:05:39.000 God willing, he'll be able to kill Trump or Pompeo or General McKenzie or the military commanders who gave the order. 1.00

01:05:44.000 Those are the ones who should be killed. 0.99

01:05:45.000 But regardless, they had taken military action. 0.99

01:05:47.000 We had to take military action in response.

01:05:49.000 And by the way, there are two separate actual fatwas that have been issued against President Trump.

01:05:54.000 One from Grand Ayatollah Makrim Shirazi, another from Ayatollah Hossein Nouri Khamedani.

01:05:59.000 And you may have noticed, as I said at the top, that Iran is an Islamic theocracy. 0.80

01:06:03.000 It is a dictatorship.

01:06:05.000 People are not issuing random fatwas in Iran on the basis of their own opinions.

01:06:09.000 That is not how any of that works.

01:06:11.000 So no follow-ups.

01:06:12.000 But it's the approach that's notable.

01:06:13.000 Notice the difference in approach between how he approached Senator Cruz and how he approaches an absolute fabulous serial liar on behalf of an enemy regime of the United States that declares death to America with the greatest, with the greatest of care.

01:06:28.000 Zero follow-ups, zero pushback.

01:06:31.000 And of course, that's not a shock.

01:06:32.000 He did the exact same thing with Vladimir Putin.

01:06:34.000 And when Tucker Carlson interviewed Vladimir Putin, everything that he did with regard to Vladimir Putin was designed to allow Vladimir Putin to basically tell lies unhindered.

01:06:45.000 Here, for example, was Tucker Carlson with Vladimir Putin again.

01:06:48.000 This is just a year and a half ago.

01:06:51.000 As soon as the political leadership decided to use the U.S. dollar as a tool of political struggle, a blow was dealt to this American power. 0.98

01:07:01.000 I would not like to use any strong language, but it is a stupid thing to do and a grave mistake. 0.75

01:07:08.000 Again, I would like to point out at this point that after Tucker's absolutely sycophantic interview with Vladimir Putin, and again, I don't blame Tucker for letting Putin talk for a very long time. 0.76

01:07:17.000 At the time, if you go back and listen to what I said, you know what?

01:07:19.000 I can't judge Tucker's motives.

01:07:20.000 I'm not sure exactly why he's doing what he's doing.

01:07:22.000 I think his motives have become rather clearer over time, which is that he's quite fond of regimes that do not like the United States.

01:07:29.000 He seems to be quite fond of those.

01:07:31.000 And I think that's because he has a view of the United States that is rooted in the idea that America has essentially perverted herself since World War II.

01:07:39.000 That is something that he has suggested openly multiple times on his pro.

01:07:42.000 Whatever the rationale, what he is doing is very clear.

01:07:46.000 I mean, right after that interview with Vladimir Putin, he did another interview, this one, I believe, in Dubai, in which he was asked why he didn't ask Vladimir Putin about tossing people out of third story windows.

01:07:56.000 And he said, well, listen, every leader kills people.

01:07:58.000 They all kill people. 0.93

01:08:01.000 Every leader kills people, including my leader. 1.00

01:08:03.000 Every leader kills people. 0.99

01:08:04.000 Some kill more than others. 1.00

01:08:05.000 Leadership requires killing people. 0.99

01:08:06.000 Sorry. 0.89

01:08:07.000 That's why I wouldn't want to be a leader.

01:08:09.000 That press restriction is universal in the United States.

01:08:13.000 I know because I've lived it.

01:08:14.000 I've, you know, asked my former, you know, I've had a lot of jobs.

01:08:17.000 And I've done this for 34 years, and I know how it works.

01:08:20.000 And there's more censorship in Russia than there is in the United States, but there's a great deal in the United States.

01:08:26.000 Again, that sort of moral equivalence, it is necessary in order to promote some of the world's worst regimes.

01:08:32.000 That sort of moral equivalence.

01:08:33.000 By the way, what did Vladimir Putin actually think of Tucker Carlson's interview?

01:08:36.000 Quote from Politico.

01:08:38.000 This was just last year, February 15th, 2024.

01:08:41.000 Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday said he didn't get complete satisfaction from his interview with Tucker Carlson.

01:08:46.000 He said he thought Carlson was a dangerous person because I honestly thought he'd be aggressive and ask so-called trap questions.

01:08:52.000 And I wasn't just ready for that.

01:08:53.000 I wanted it.

01:08:53.000 It would have given me the opportunity to respond sharply and kind, but he chose a different tactic.

01:08:58.000 So essentially, he said he couldn't believe that Tucker was that soft with him.

01:09:02.000 Now, again, I don't know explicitly what Tucker Carlson's motives are here.

01:09:06.000 All I can say is when Tucker wants to be aggressive, he's quite aggressive.

01:09:09.000 There's a reason he's not being aggressive with the president of Iran.

01:09:12.000 There's a reason he wasn't aggressive with the dictator of Russia.

01:09:15.000 There's a reason he's not aggressive with the Qataris.

01:09:19.000 There's a reason for that.

01:09:21.000 And none of that says to me, if you're being super generous with those people, but extremely aggressive with, say, Senator Ted Cruz, I'd love to see how that stacks up as America first.

01:09:32.000 Truly, I would love to see that.

01:09:34.000 And I'd love to see him explain to President Trump why it is that he is allowing the president of Iran, without any sort of pushback at all, to make claims like death to America is essentially an empty chant that just means we don't like bad things, or that they're not trying to kill President Trump, which is not true, or they're not trying to develop nuclear weapons, which is not true.

01:09:51.000 No pushback whatsoever.

01:09:53.000 Folks, how you consume information is your business.

01:09:55.000 It's a free country.

01:09:56.000 I'm not telling you not to listen to Tucker or enjoy his programming or recognize that he's a super talented guy, which obviously he is.

01:10:01.000 What I am telling you is you ought to take it with a grain of salt.

01:10:04.000 You ought to actually look at the things that are being told to you and wonder what are the motivations of the people who are telling them to you?

01:10:10.000 What is it that they are saying?

01:10:11.000 Are they actually being open, honest, and truthful about what they mean?

01:10:15.000 Are they saying something different behind closed doors than what they are saying publicly?

01:10:19.000 Those are all questions you should be asking.

01:10:21.000 It's a very dissolute informational environment.

01:10:24.000 Lots of information coming from a lot of different places all the time.

01:10:27.000 And that puts a greater onus on the audience to try to discern what's true from what's false.

01:10:31.000 But the answer for that is a stronger filter, not no filter at all.

01:10:35.000 All righty, coming up, we'll get to Elon Musk, who is now talking about a third party.

01:10:40.000 The show continues right now.

01:10:42.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:10:43.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - July 08, 2025

RADICAL LEFT VIOLENCE: Man OPENS FIRE On Border Patrol

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