The Ben Shapiro Show - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

00:00:00.000 Folks, we have a ton to get to today on the show.

00:00:02.000 Stephen A. Smith attacking yours truly, over claiming that Derek Chauvin should be pardoned by President Trump on federal charges.

00:00:08.000 We'll get into the possibility of a recession.

00:00:10.000 President Trump is not ruling one out.

00:00:13.000 And we'll get into the chaos in Syria.

00:00:15.000 First, the media would love you to believe that President Trump is a criminal and that Elon is unhinged and all of the rest.

00:00:20.000 Here is the truth.

00:00:21.000 There's a lot of winning that is happening right now.

00:00:23.000 The left's flies are unraveling and their narrative is crumbling and the tears are falling.

00:00:26.000 And that's why The Daily Wire is here to cut through the noise and bring you the facts that others won't.

00:00:30.000 Uncensored, ad-free daily shows, investigative journalism, live chats, breaking news first, no filter, no corporate leash, and no nonsense.

00:00:35.000 The Daily Wire is where the real story lives.

00:00:38.000 Head on over to dailywire.com and join the fight today.

00:00:41.000 Okay, so a lot of people have been asking why we're focused in here at the Ben Shapiro Show on the pardon of Derek Chauvin.

00:00:47.000 After all, he's convicted on both federal charges as well as state charges.

00:00:50.000 Well, there are a few reasons.

00:00:51.000 The first and most obvious reason is that there is a likelihood he serves less time if you relieve the federal charges.

00:00:56.000 The reason for that is because while federal inmates can earn good time credit that reduces sentences, that happens at a much lower rate than it happens at the state level.

00:01:06.000 So when you're talking about Derek Chauvin's concurrent sentences, Sentence on state charges and 21 on federal charges, but under Minnesota state sentencing structure, inmates usually serve about two-thirds of their sentence behind bars and one-third under supervised release.

00:01:21.000 So he would serve like 15 years of the 22 and a half year state sentence in actual confinement under the state charges.

00:01:28.000 So he'd get less time in jail is the short answer.

00:01:30.000 But the other answer is that when you believe a person who is not guilty is languishing in prison, that is the time when the president of the United States ought to either commute a sentence or pardon.

00:01:40.000 That is like the perfect example.

00:01:42.000 And as we're going to lay out over the course of coming weeks, I'm going to lay out in full detail why I believe that Derek Chauvin is not guilty in the killing of George Floyd.

00:01:53.000 That is the real reason, because it is immoral to allow people who you believe are innocent to languish in prison.

00:01:58.000 This should not be a particularly arguable issue.

00:02:01.000 And just because that person was made into the face of American racism based on literally zero evidence that has been provided that Derek Chauvin...

00:02:08.000 Killed George Floyd based on race.

00:02:11.000 Derek Chauvin was made the face of American racism before his trial.

00:02:15.000 Every media outlet in the country decided he was guilty.

00:02:18.000 The governor of Minnesota decided he was guilty.

00:02:20.000 The mayor of Minneapolis decided he was guilty.

00:02:23.000 The presidential candidates on the left side of the aisle, at that time it was Joe Biden, decided he was guilty.

00:02:29.000 And it was very necessary for the jury to convict him in order for an entire narrative structure to be created.

00:02:36.000 And that was wrong.

00:02:37.000 There are many people who object to all this.

00:02:40.000 One of those people is Stephen A. Smith.

00:02:41.000 Bizarrely enough, Stephen A. Smith, who is a loudmouth jackass on ESPN. That's what he does.

00:02:46.000 And when I say loudmouth, I mean the man does not have a volume that goes below 8 on the Spinal Tap scale.

00:02:53.000 I'm not sure that there is such a thing as a normal Stephen A. Smith voice.

00:02:56.000 And I say this as a longtime watcher of ESPN. Every time Stephen A. Smith comes on the TV, you've got to turn down your volume significantly.

00:03:03.000 So Stephen A. Smith is very angry.

00:03:05.000 That I've suggested that Derek Chauvin ought to be pardoned.

00:03:09.000 And here he was on his show trying to explain.

00:03:14.000 Would you have taken that position if George Floyd was a Jewish person?

00:03:20.000 A white Jewish person?

00:03:25.000 If a black cop had his knee on a white Jewish person for over nine minutes, Ben Shapiro, would you have called for that individual to be would you have called for that individual to be pardoned?

00:03:44.000 OK, so first of all, let's start with this.

00:03:50.000 I don't know why he believes that it would be important, even for his stupid example, for it to be a quote-unquote white Jewish person, as opposed to just a Jewish person, right?

00:03:58.000 His claim is that I am a tribal identitarian, and thus...

00:04:01.000 I would be very fine with the prosecution of a cop wrongfully if a Jew died under the knee of that cop, even if the cop was not responsible. 0.94

00:04:11.000 If the fact patterns were exactly the same, but George Floyd had been named Harold Bernstein or something, and the cop was named George Floyd, was a black guy.

00:04:19.000 Okay, that is intensely stupid.

00:04:21.000 It's intensely stupid for a variety of reasons.

00:04:23.000 Why don't we begin with the first?

00:04:24.000 This would not have been a national news story if that were the case.

00:04:26.000 The reason this entire story was national news is because of the race of the people involved.

00:04:31.000 In fact, when black people were routinely beating up Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, it was covered up by the New York Times.

00:04:37.000 It was not a national story.

00:04:39.000 The reality is that this was made a national story specifically because the media had a pre-existing narrative of race in America, and this fulfilled their narrative even if the facts didn't match.

00:04:50.000 Two, if in fact the facts had matched, and let's say that this was a Jewish person.

00:04:55.000 A Jewish person had been arrested for counterfeiting, for passing counterfeit bills.

00:05:00.000 And then had been high on fentanyl and had a pre-existing heart condition and then had died under the knee of a cop.

00:05:07.000 Would I have said that the cop was innocent?

00:05:09.000 Yes, because if the cop is innocent, the cop is innocent.

00:05:13.000 That's the way this works.

00:05:15.000 The race or religion of the pseudo-victim is irrelevant to the question of whether this person was in fact murdered or not.

00:05:25.000 Stephen A. Smith He's one of the deepest racial identitarians in our society.

00:05:29.000 He does it all the time.

00:05:31.000 All the time.

00:05:32.000 He does it when he talks sports.

00:05:33.000 It happens literally all the time.

00:05:35.000 If you're talking about Nikola Jokic, the greatest center of our generation, he'll talk about how Nikola Jokic should not be included in conversations for MVP, specifically because of his race.

00:05:44.000 The reason Stephen A. Smith is saying this kind of stuff is because he is projecting.

00:05:47.000 He is projecting a racial conversation where none exists.

00:05:51.000 Here, for example, with Stephen A. Smith just a couple of years ago, I'm a Celtics fan.

00:05:55.000 So this one sprang to mind.

00:05:57.000 A few years ago, Danny Ainge was the chief of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics, and Brad Stevens was elevated to fill his position.

00:06:05.000 Now, it turns out Brad Stevens is a really, really good president of basketball operations.

00:06:09.000 How do we know this?

00:06:10.000 Well, the Celtics won an NBA championship last year, and he's been one of the most successful NBA executives in all the NBA over the course of his tenure.

00:06:17.000 But Stephen A. Smith was firmly convinced the only reason that Brad Stevens had been elevated is because of his race.

00:06:23.000 It's moments like this where I get on people's nerves, particularly white America and the NBA community specifically, because I point out it's beautiful to be a white guy.

00:06:38.000 It's just beautiful.

00:06:40.000 You know, you're a question mark as a coach in some people's eyes, including in Boston.

00:06:48.000 But somehow, someway, you're moving upstairs.

00:06:53.000 By the way, worth noting that it's beautiful to be a white guy in America has not precluded Stephen A. Smith from a $100 million five-year contract for ESPN, a failing network where the ratings are going down.

00:07:07.000 The reason that Stephen A. Smith is exercised over the George Floyd situation is specifically because of a racial narrative that is not predicated on facts.

00:07:15.000 And then he's projecting that into me being some sort of racist for suggesting that the racial narrative should not predominate.

00:07:21.000 This is the whole reason that Black Lives Matter was such a mistake and such a fail, because it was racializing of a question that was not, in fact, racial. 0.78

00:07:28.000 And this is, again, it's just more evidence that what I'm saying about Chauvin is true, that the reason that Derek Chauvin is in prison right now is because he was the wrong race and George Floyd was the wrong race. 0.61

00:07:37.000 And because of that, Derek Chauvin is in prison right now.

00:07:39.000 Because here's the dirty little secret.

00:07:42.000 It never would have been a national news story if the races had been reversed or if both people had been white or if both people had been black.

00:07:48.000 It would not have been a national news story.

00:07:50.000 And that means that the officer would have been assessed on the facts of the situation rather than on the racial narrative people like Stephen A. Smith were propagating.

00:07:59.000 Meanwhile, again, this is part and parcel of a broader left-wing failure when it comes to narrative.

00:08:03.000 The left-wing narrative has failed on so many fronts.

00:08:07.000 Senator Alyssa Slotkin, who is from Michigan and she was supposed to be the Trump response. 1.00

00:08:12.000 Well, she said, listen, we're on our heels.

00:08:14.000 And she's right.

00:08:14.000 The Democrats are on their heels because in pretty much every narrative area, they're on their heels.

00:08:19.000 I don't think it's a secret that Democrats have been on their heels since Trump won the election.

00:08:23.000 I don't think that's something hidden.

00:08:27.000 And I think it's on us to be clear about not only leadership, and there's lots of leaders in both parties, but also a strategy, right?

00:08:36.000 And I think that's something that, as Trump has been successful in flooding the zone and just like every day 15 things happening, we are still finding our footing.

00:08:46.000 And I think you can't get better until you admit you have a problem.

00:08:53.000 Okay, so she will not admit the problem, however.

00:08:56.000 She was asked about the fact that Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, is moving away from the men should play in women's sports routine, and she won't even address it.

00:09:05.000 So you can't say that you admit you have a problem, but then not admit what the problem is.

00:09:10.000 But for me, it's like, let the local community figure this out, right?

00:09:14.000 In Michigan, we have a process in place where if someone who's born a boy wants to play in women's sports, you have to get a waiver.

00:09:20.000 We've had it happen two times in our entire state.

00:09:24.000 So let the local communities, just like everything with schools, handle that issue.

00:09:28.000 For me, though, I think, you know, this issue is being sort of brought up in order to make sparks and see sparks fly.

00:09:37.000 Okay, well then it would be very easy for you to avoid the sparks flying by simply saying the obvious thing, which is that boys should not play in girls' sports.

00:09:45.000 Get some more on that in a moment.

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00:11:44.000 Democrats have lost the thread here.

00:11:46.000 And so many of them are just doubling down on the most extreme elements of their agenda.

00:11:50.000 So, for example, MSNBC host Melissa Murray asked Representative Al Green, you'll remember him from being ejected during the pseudo-State of the Union address, if the Democrats were being too conciliatory with President Trump.

00:12:02.000 Do you think your colleagues in the Democratic Party are being too civil during this time when American rights and freedoms are literally on the line?

00:12:11.000 Well, thank you for having me.

00:12:13.000 I think we're at a point where we're making decisions as to how we should move forward.

00:12:18.000 I believe that we have to move forward with righteous incivility.

00:12:22.000 This is what we engaged in when we sang We Shall Overcome and what I engaged in when I stood and indicated that the president didn't have a mandate to cut Medicaid.

00:12:34.000 Yes, they're not they're not being loud enough.

00:12:41.000 They need righteous incivility.

00:12:43.000 Okay, good luck with that.

00:12:44.000 Now, there are dangers to the Trump administration.

00:12:46.000 I've been saying this for weeks now.

00:12:47.000 The main danger to the Trump administration is the economy tanking.

00:12:51.000 That is the number one danger to the Trump administration.

00:12:54.000 One of the things that's for sure going to affect the economy is impending talk of a government shutdown.

00:12:58.000 So the government must be funded in very near term or we're going to get a government shutdown.

00:13:02.000 Democrats, of course, are not going to help out with that.

00:13:04.000 Some Republicans are saying that they are willing to undergo a government shutdown in order to lower spending.

00:13:10.000 Thomas Massey, again, is sort of the guy who's constantly Leroy Jenkins-ing every sort of fiscal negotiations.

00:13:17.000 Just assume he's a no, always and forever, because he thinks spending is bad.

00:13:22.000 Agree, spending is bad.

00:13:23.000 Also, you're not doing anything useful right now.

00:13:24.000 In any case, this has become a very contentious issue on the right side of the aisle.

00:13:30.000 One of the reasonable members of Congress, who is in fact a deep fiscal conservative, is Representative Chip Roy, who joins us on the line.

00:13:36.000 He, of course, represents Texas' 21st Congressional District, one of the strongest fiscal conservatives in Congress.

00:13:41.000 Chip, thanks so much for joining the show.

00:13:42.000 I really appreciate it.

00:13:44.000 Great to be on, Ben.

00:13:44.000 I hope you're well.

00:13:46.000 So let's talk about this continuing resolution.

00:13:49.000 There, I think, are several different caucuses, obviously, on the Republican side of government.

00:13:54.000 There are people who will kind of go along with any spending bill.

00:13:57.000 And then there are people like you who are actual fiscal conservatives but wish to live in a world in which reality applies.

00:14:02.000 And then there are a couple of people who I think are more interested in shouting at the wind.

00:14:06.000 Than actually doing anything.

00:14:08.000 So when it comes to this continuing resolution, as one of the most fiscally conservative members of Congress, why should conservatives go along with this continuing resolution?

00:14:15.000 The argument from the sort of shouting against the wind type says, well, we always say we're going to live to fight another day, but we never fight another day.

00:14:23.000 Why on this one aren't we just, you know, fight, fight, fighting?

00:14:26.000 Yeah, Ben, look, I'm not a huge fan of the kick the can down the road continuing resolution as the best form of government, how we fund our government.

00:14:36.000 But what I do believe is that you've got to figure out how to empower President Trump and Elon to continue to keep the lights on, to carry out Doge, to identify the cuts and the waste that we've been identifying, in a mere six weeks, by the way, to add on to what we'd already started doing as fiscal conservatives two years ago through the Speaker's fight, you remember with Kevin McCarthy, where we forced a bunch of votes on amendments and started to change this place.

00:14:59.000 Now's our chance to finish the job.

00:15:02.000 This bill freezes spending.

00:15:04.000 It's actually, I think, a slight reduction.

00:15:06.000 I'm still combing through it.

00:15:07.000 We got it Saturday.

00:15:08.000 I think it's a slight reduction, give or take, but it's a spending freeze.

00:15:11.000 It's less than 100 pages or fewer than 100 pages.

00:15:14.000 It has no earmarks.

00:15:16.000 It doesn't allow the defense hawks, who really wanted a whole bunch more money, to screw up the whole process by throwing a bunch of money in it, and then the non-defense Democrats want more money.

00:15:26.000 So this is a win to keep the lights on for six months for Elon.

00:15:30.000 The Democrats have threatened to shut down.

00:15:32.000 So they can stop Elon.

00:15:34.000 So this puts them in a box.

00:15:36.000 It's the most fiscally responsible thing we can do at this moment.

00:15:39.000 But then we'll have to do our job in the appropriations process for this next cycle, which, by the way, this appropriation cycle ends on September 30th.

00:15:47.000 So we've got to get all that passed for FY26 by September.

00:15:51.000 So we should focus on that and then get reconciliation done, which is where we deal with mandatory spending and tax policy.

00:15:58.000 So it's a win.

00:15:59.000 I think the president wants it.

00:16:00.000 We want it.

00:16:01.000 There's a handful of holdouts that are saying, oh, it's not good enough.

00:16:04.000 Guys, this is a win to free spending and to give them power to continue to find cuts and doge.

00:16:11.000 And I think the reality is that people in my industry, the sort of conservative media industry, it's always in our interest to claim that it's just insufficient fight on the part of Republicans that leads to all of this stuff, which ignores, of course, all the incentive structures as to how Congress actually works.

00:16:25.000 There are a bunch of Republicans who are in purple districts.

00:16:26.000 There are a bunch of Republicans who are even in blue districts.

00:16:28.000 And the fact is that when you have a majority that is as slim as the majority Republicans are currently working with, the idea that under this Congress, you're going to restructure Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

00:16:37.000 So it's to solve the national debt.

00:16:39.000 I mean, I'm wondering how we're supposed to get from point A to point B.

00:16:42.000 You kind of get the best that you can get.

00:16:43.000 Yeah.

00:16:45.000 And look, and I think and I'm always weary as you are and should be.

00:16:49.000 We both should be of the excuses in this town.

00:16:52.000 There's always an excuse not to deliver.

00:16:54.000 What I would push back on people right now is we're delivering.

00:16:58.000 A spending freeze in an inflationary environment is a huge win.

00:17:02.000 Trust me.

00:17:03.000 We budgeted for a freeze in our budget that we passed out a few weeks ago.

00:17:08.000 If you hold spending flat for four years, for example, and while the economy is growing and we grow out of it, you save a trillion dollars over 10 years.

00:17:17.000 In other words, freezing spending and doing our job to get tax policy and regulatory policy to allow, for example, Marco Rubio, just this morning, there's a report that says they're going to cut 83% of the USAID contracts.

00:17:30.000 So I've got conservatives going, why are we going to fund USAID? Guys, we're not.

00:17:35.000 We've got funding in there, but they're going to stop the contracts.

00:17:38.000 So we can get that money, and then Russ Vogt can impound that money through the Office of Management and Budget.

00:17:44.000 We think that's constitutional.

00:17:46.000 We'll have to fight that through the courts.

00:17:48.000 But you've got to give us time.

00:17:49.000 You've got to give the president time.

00:17:50.000 You've got to give Russ Vogt time.

00:17:52.000 You've got to give Elon time.

00:17:53.000 This is a win.

00:17:56.000 So Chip, when it comes to impoundment, obviously you say it's going to get hashed out by the courts.

00:18:00.000 If the courts come down the other way on impoundment, then there's been talk that Congress might consider rescission.

00:18:05.000 There might be a move to basically, with 51 votes in the Senate, you don't actually have to overcome a filibuster, rescind much of the spending that's being impounded right now.

00:18:14.000 Do you see that as a viable option?

00:18:16.000 I do.

00:18:17.000 First of all, for your listeners out there, impoundment I do believe is constitutional.

00:18:21.000 I think Congress overstepped its bounds in limiting the president's authority as the chief executive to not spend every dollar.

00:18:28.000 There's no constitutional requirement that he has to spend every dollar a certain way.

00:18:31.000 He's the executive.

00:18:32.000 Secondly, if that fails, if the courts kill that, I don't believe they will.

00:18:37.000 Then, in addition to, there's rescission authority.

00:18:40.000 Now, we can start rescission, but then that requires 60 votes in the Senate.

00:18:44.000 Or the White House can send us rescissions, and then it can go through the House and the Senate at a majority vote, 51 in the Senate.

00:18:51.000 So they're working on that plan.

00:18:52.000 There are other tools that I'm not going to get into right now.

00:18:55.000 I'm not going to get in front of the administration on some of these things that they can do to carry out spending restraint.

00:19:00.000 And then finally, in reconciliation, we have the power to do a lot at a 51-vote threshold.

00:19:07.000 That's why we passed the budget, Jody Arrington, to get Medicaid reform and the things that we need to do.

00:19:12.000 To save money while people can maintain benefits, but we can save hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars if we do our part in that.

00:19:19.000 So this is all a part of the process.

00:19:22.000 Well, Chip, really appreciate the insight.

00:19:24.000 I know that everything is high-pitched these days.

00:19:27.000 I really appreciate your rational perspective on these things.

00:19:30.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:19:31.000 God bless you.

00:19:31.000 Appreciate being on.

00:19:32.000 Now, in order for the economy not to tank, you need predictability and you need reliability.

00:19:37.000 I'm not just hearing this from people who are on the left or in the center.

00:19:40.000 I'm hearing this from business people who are on the right.

00:19:42.000 And as a business person who is on the right, you know what I want in my economy?

00:19:46.000 I want a sense of predictability.

00:19:47.000 So certain things that President Trump is doing do give that sense of predictability.

00:19:51.000 So, for example, we know there's going to be a move to maintain taxes at current rates.

00:19:54.000 That's great.

00:19:55.000 That means I know exactly what to expect in terms of my taxes.

00:19:58.000 We know that regulations are likely to become less onerous.

00:20:00.000 That's wonderful.

00:20:01.000 I know precisely what to expect.

00:20:03.000 When it comes to the tariffs, the tariffs are incredibly chaotic.

00:20:07.000 And the way they've been rolled out so far, which is sort of like a hokey pokey, we'll put a tariff in, we'll take a tariff out, we'll put a tariff in and we'll move it all about.

00:20:13.000 Like that particular approach disquiets markets.

00:20:16.000 It means that you don't know whether to invest in a particular contract.

00:20:20.000 If you have inputs from foreign countries, you don't know whether to re-sign that contract.

00:20:24.000 And you also don't know whether you are going to want to sign a domestic contract because maybe the tariff doesn't go into place and now you're paying twice what you otherwise would have paid.

00:20:32.000 This sort of uncertainty is not good.

00:20:34.000 For the broader business community, which is why you see the Dow Jones Industrial Average giving up all of the gains since President Trump's election.

00:20:40.000 So President Trump was asked about this over the weekend, and he said that he doesn't need to be clearer on tariffs.

00:20:47.000 Will we have clarity?

00:20:48.000 You'll have a lot, but we may go up with some tariffs.

00:20:52.000 It depends.

00:20:52.000 We may go up.

00:20:53.000 I don't think we'll go down, but we may go up.

00:20:57.000 But they have plenty of clarity.

00:20:59.000 They just use it.

00:21:00.000 That's like almost a soundbite.

00:21:02.000 They always say that we want clarity.

00:21:05.000 Well, that's not a soundbite.

00:21:07.000 That's a reality.

00:21:08.000 And again, I'm supporting President Trump here.

00:21:10.000 I want Trump's economy to boom.

00:21:12.000 And I can say as a business person with hundreds of employees, I want to know what comes next because that's how I game for how I spend and how I save and how I invest.

00:21:22.000 And that's true for every major or minor business person in the country.

00:21:27.000 Now, President Trump, to his credit, He's being cautious about his predictions.

00:21:32.000 Howard Lutnick, his Commerce Secretary, was on the Sunday shows and he said, don't worry, no recession is coming.

00:21:37.000 And, you know, his mouth to God's ears.

00:21:40.000 Should Americans brace for a recession?

00:21:45.000 Absolutely not.

00:21:47.000 Anybody who bets against Donald Trump, it's like the same people who thought Donald Trump wasn't a winner a year ago.

00:21:53.000 Donald Trump is a winner.

00:21:55.000 He's going to win for the American people.

00:21:57.000 That's just the way it's going to be.

00:21:58.000 There's going to be no recession in America.

00:22:00.000 Okay, now again, I hope that's true.

00:22:05.000 And I generally believe that that is true.

00:22:07.000 However, uncertainty is in fact uncertainty.

00:22:11.000 President Trump was asked the same exact question about an hour later, and he said, listen, I'm not going to make any predictions about the economy, which, by the way, is the smart response on this.

00:22:17.000 President Trump has a good feel for this.

00:22:18.000 A smart response is, I don't know what's going to happen, because the problem is, if you say there's going to be no recession, and then there is one recessionary quarter, it's all over the TV for the next three years.

00:22:26.000 This is the lesson that should have been learned during the Biden administration, when the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve called inflation transitory, and it's now four years later, and inflation is not transitory.

00:22:36.000 Are you expecting a recession this year?

00:22:41.000 I hate to predict things like that.

00:22:43.000 There is a period of transition because what we're doing is very big.

00:22:48.000 We're bringing wealth back to America.

00:22:50.000 That's a big thing.

00:22:52.000 And there are always periods of...

00:22:55.000 It takes a little time.

00:22:58.000 It takes a little time.

00:23:00.000 But I think it should be great for us.

00:23:02.000 I mean, I think it should be great.

00:23:05.000 Okay, now, again, if the idea here is that we are ratcheting up pressure to then ratchet back down the tariffs, okay, if the idea is that we're trying to pry winds out of other countries, okay, I'm there.

00:23:15.000 If the idea is that tariffs themselves are going to be good for the country, I have yet to see a situation in which that is true that is not from the 19th century.

00:23:25.000 When trade internationally was significantly more limited, and spending, by the way, was significantly more limited, domestically speaking, as we spoke about last week.

00:23:34.000 The reality is that while we are subsidizing a lot of businesses elsewhere through global trade in our markets, everybody else is subsidizing our welfare state by buying our bonds.

00:23:43.000 That is a reality.

00:23:45.000 And meanwhile, the question is whether these tariffs are being put on in order to drive, again, an ancillary outcome.

00:23:51.000 It's not about the economy.

00:23:52.000 It's about, for example, fentanyl.

00:23:54.000 That was the case that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was making over the weekend, that this is all about fentanyl.

00:23:59.000 It really is about fentanyl.

00:24:01.000 It really is.

00:24:02.000 And I think the president obviously wants a strong economy, obviously wants better trade deals as well.

00:24:07.000 But this is about fentanyl and what we can do to stop the cartels from partnering with Chinese officials, laundering money, and bringing a poison into our country that is specifically designed to kill the next generation. 0.54

00:24:19.000 Okay, so again, if the idea is let's make Canada arm up the border and militarize the border, all right, fine, okay.

00:24:27.000 The problem is that the metrics that are being used, like, I want the deliverable, because that way you get a win, right?

00:24:32.000 If President Trump says, I want Canada to do X, and if Canada does X, the tariffs go back down, I'm fine with it.

00:24:37.000 But it's very difficult to make that argument about, for example, fentanyl, when you are not saying the thing you want from the Canadians.

00:24:43.000 This is a point that was made by Ambassador Kirsten Hillman.

00:24:45.000 She says, listen, less than 1% of all fentanyl that's being seized coming into the United States is coming from Canada.

00:24:50.000 Last year, 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized coming from Canada.

00:24:53.000 Now, you can make the argument that that's because we have a wide open border with Canada.

00:24:57.000 But we had a wide open border with Mexico and 22,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the wide open border with Mexico last year under Joe Biden.

00:25:04.000 Here's Kristen Hillman, the Canadian ambassador to the United States.

00:25:08.000 Canadians are frustrated with...

00:25:11.000 Our neighbours, you know, the country that we feel closest to, the country that is partners, allies, often family, that we've gone to war with, that we've died with, that we come to each other's aid, most recently in L.A., but obviously 9-11.

00:25:24.000 You've come to our aid over the years so many times.

00:25:27.000 And we feel, Canadians feel, Under attack.

00:25:33.000 Under economic attack.

00:25:34.000 And that is causing some challenges for sure across Canadian society.

00:25:39.000 Fentanyl is a very serious problem in Canada too.

00:25:42.000 On some days we have more deaths per capita than you have here in the United States.

00:25:46.000 So we take this very seriously.

00:25:49.000 It is not a big issue.

00:25:51.000 Between our two countries, less than 1% of the fentanyl that is seized in the United States is coming from Canada.

00:25:57.000 But every ounce can kill families and people.

00:26:00.000 So we're taking it very seriously.

00:26:03.000 Again, if there's a deliverable, great.

00:26:05.000 And force Canada to the wall to get the deliverable.

00:26:07.000 However, all of this is having an impact on domestic politics in Canada.

00:26:10.000 So if you don't like Justin Trudeau and his party, then why exactly are you doing the things that are going to ensure that they remain in power?

00:26:16.000 So before all this trade war stuff, the runaway winner.

00:26:20.000 In the Canadian polling was Pierre Poliev, who's terrific.

00:26:23.000 Pierre Poliev is the leader of the Conservative Party.

00:26:25.000 He's one of the most articulate Conservative leaders of our generation.

00:26:28.000 He's terrific.

00:26:29.000 And he has now fallen behind in the polling to Mark Carney, who is the leader of the Liberal Party in Canada, who will maintain all of the policies of Justin Trudeau, except without the dumb face.

00:26:41.000 So Mark Carney just won the race to succeed Justin Trudeau as Canada's Prime Minister, and he vows to win the trade war with the United States and President Donald Trump.

00:26:48.000 He's the former governor of the Canadian Central Bank and Bank of England, according to the BBC. He is a green revolution guy.

00:26:57.000 He's never served in elected office.

00:27:00.000 His replacement of the minority government means that he is the new leader of the party that is competitive.

00:27:08.000 According to the BBC, the governing liberals have seen a remarkable political turnaround since Trudeau's exit, as Canadians have been galvanized by President Trump's trade threats and support for annexing their country.

00:27:16.000 At the beginning of the year, Pierre Poliev was ahead 20 points in the election polls.

00:27:22.000 Today, he is tied with the Liberals.

00:27:25.000 So are you going to get more from Canada with Pierre Poliev as the Prime Minister than you're going to get from Mark Conrad?

00:27:31.000 The answer is yes.

00:27:32.000 It turns out that politics has a lot of downstream effect.

00:27:35.000 In the end, listen, I trust President Trump on this stuff because I think in the end, as I've said a thousand times, he's a results-driven guy.

00:27:40.000 He said over the weekend he wants a dynamic economy and a dynamic country.

00:27:44.000 The way to do that is to provide a steady, understandable economy for investors that reduces regulations and taxes.

00:27:50.000 It makes it easier to do business in the country for Americans.

00:27:53.000 That's the way.

00:27:54.000 Here's President Trump.

00:27:56.000 Well, I want a dynamic country where the private enterprise carries the day, not the government.

00:28:03.000 And I want a strong country militarily.

00:28:06.000 We need that nowadays.

00:28:07.000 You can see that probably better than ever before.

00:28:12.000 Okay, I agree with him, and I think that that is the way that he's going to move, and if the results are bad, I think he's going to change tactics.

00:28:18.000 We'll get some more on this in a moment.

00:28:19.000 First, you know, one of the things I love about working in the news industry is that every day I get to connect with millions of listeners and share breaking stories and work with incredible talent, or just as passionate about the political sphere as I am.

00:28:28.000 There's nothing quite like the energy and thrill of creating content that not only informs, but also resonates with people around the country.

00:28:34.000 If you're doing what you love to do, there's nothing better than being surrounded by people who love it the way that you do.

00:28:38.000 And if you own your own business, you want to hire employees who love what they do to boost the overall success of your business.

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00:29:13.000 Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire.

00:29:16.000 ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire. 0.73

00:29:18.000 Also, there's a lot going on in my life, which means I need to make sure I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with family, even with the busy work schedule.

00:29:26.000 When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on willpower and caffeine.

00:29:29.000 I learned pretty quickly, peak performance requires peak nutrition, and that means eating enough veggies.

00:29:34.000 Well, I don't like veggies, and so I'm very thankful to have Balance of Nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days.

00:29:39.000 Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day.

00:29:41.000 That sounds miserable and time-consuming.

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00:29:53.000 You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and then your body knows precisely.

00:29:57.000 What to do with them is kosher, which means I can pop it right into the protein smoothie and keep that gun show going strong. 0.93

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00:30:19.000 Okay, meanwhile, there's been...

00:30:22.000 Chaos breaking out in Syria since the takeover of HDS. This, of course, is perfectly predictable. 0.94

00:30:26.000 HDS is, in fact, a terror group.

00:30:28.000 They're a Sunni Islamist terror group. 0.97

00:30:30.000 And they're backed by Turkey.

00:30:32.000 You'll recall that Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy group, had been attacking Israel for decades.

00:30:38.000 And then they escalated their attacks after October 7th.

00:30:42.000 And then Israel, in October of last year, went after Hezbollah and basically defenestrated their entire leadership.

00:30:48.000 With everything from the beeper attacks to...

00:30:50.000 The attacks killing Hassan Nasrallah and all the rest.

00:30:53.000 And they hit Hezbollah so hard that Hezbollah was no longer able to support and Iran was really no longer able to support the Assad regime in Syria, which was a terrorist genocidal regime on its own.

00:31:04.000 There are no good guys in the Syrian fight except for some of the Druze and the Kurds and the Christians. 0.98

00:31:09.000 That is a complete list of all of the good parties in Syria right now in terms of the domestic parties in Syria.

00:31:17.000 Turkey intervened on behalf of HTS.

00:31:19.000 HTS basically just ran down the road unopposed and took over the country.

00:31:22.000 And the media decided this was a wonderful, unalloyed wonder, wonderful thing.

00:31:26.000 I said at the time, it was not a good thing for HTS to take over.

00:31:31.000 HTS is in fact a terror group.

00:31:32.000 And I mentioned that there would be some really, really awful downstream effects, including presumably their targeting of Christians.

00:31:38.000 Assad's regime had not been wonderful to Christians.

00:31:41.000 Presumably HTS would be worse.

00:31:45.000 knowing that HTS was a terrorist regime, then moved into The south of Syria, the other side of the Mount Hermon region, and they have now formed a basic coalition with many of the Druze in the south who were also afraid of being targeted by HTS. And Israel also proceeded to blow up pretty much every weapons depot in Syria as all this was happening.

00:32:01.000 Israel did that to deny vast stockpiles of weaponry to HTS, a terror group backed again by Turkey.

00:32:07.000 If you don't like HTS, blame Turkey because that's Turkey.

00:32:11.000 After all this happened, HTS has been proclaiming to the rest of the world that it was moderate.

00:32:15.000 It was never moderate.

00:32:17.000 Again, there were salutary effects to Assad falling.

00:32:19.000 One of them was that the Iranian crescent that stretched from Iran through Iraq, through Syria, into Lebanon, and then curved all the way down into Yemen, into the Gaza Strip, and all the rest of that.

00:32:29.000 That was broken.

00:32:30.000 That was a salutary effect.

00:32:31.000 A downside effect is that a bunch of terrorists took over, right?

00:32:33.000 Not a lot of great solutions in the Middle East, as it turns out.

00:32:37.000 Okay, well now, a sort of Alawite reconstitution took place over the course of the last week.

00:32:43.000 There were some battles that happened between the Alawites, who were...

00:32:46.000 Ethnically associated with the Assad regime and HTS. Battles broke out and then HTS decided what a great opportunity to slaughter a bunch of Alawites and some Christians along for the ride. 0.97

00:32:58.000 And so there are an enormous number of people who were killed over the course of last week.

00:33:03.000 Some thousand people were killed.

00:33:04.000 The United States put out a statement.

00:33:07.000 From the State Department, from Secretary Rubio, quote, Okay, the reality is everybody ought to be gaming for the evil of HTS and for the Turks. 0.98

00:33:32.000 The Turks are members of NATO. The Turks are the biggest single backers of HTS. Bar none. 0.82

00:33:38.000 Bar none.

00:33:38.000 That is what is happening right now.

00:33:39.000 And again, it is horrifying.

00:33:41.000 It is unsurprising and it is horrifying.

00:33:44.000 So, here is some of the video of what HTS was doing.

00:33:48.000 They're literally making Alawites and apparently some Christians crawl like dogs. 0.99

00:33:51.000 They were shooting people.

00:33:52.000 It just, it turns out evil Islamist terrorists are evil and Islamist. 0.98

00:33:56.000 So you can see these terrorists who are beating up civilians, presumably Alawites and or Christians.

00:34:20.000 Alawites and or Christians. 0.90

00:34:27.000 Okay, and they're just beating people up and slapping them and all the rest of this.

00:34:30.000 Again, terrible people, HDS. No question.

00:34:34.000 No question.

00:34:35.000 Okay, so...

00:34:37.000 This has now led to, again, not blaming Turkey and not blaming HDS, but somehow people blaming American quote-unquote neocons or blaming Israel or blaming Jews.

00:34:48.000 Okay, there are no Jews in Syria.

00:34:50.000 The only Jews in Syria right now are the Israelis in the South who are literally protecting the Druze from the slaughter of HDS. At the request of the Druze, by the way. 0.99

00:34:59.000 The Christian community has been targeted in Syria for a decade or more.

00:35:06.000 The truth is that Syria, which used to be a Christian country, if you go all the way back, Syria was a Christian country.

00:35:12.000 That's why so many of the sites mentioned in the New Testament are in fact in Syria.

00:35:16.000 The Syrian population had already been devastated by Islamic takeover and Islamic rule.

00:35:22.000 They didn't have it great under Bashar Assad.

00:35:24.000 They did better than they had it in, say, Iran.

00:35:27.000 They didn't have it amazing under Bashar Assad.

00:35:29.000 There were about 1.5 million Christians living in Syria before the Syrian civil war in 2011. That number is now as few as 300,000 Christians.

00:35:41.000 And the major challenges existed under Assad.

00:35:44.000 The replacement of Assad by HDS was going to be bad for Christians.

00:35:47.000 The attempt to turn this, however, into a story about the evils of the West as opposed to Assad being an evil dictator who was replaced by people who were completely evil in a different direction.

00:36:03.000 If you're...

00:36:04.000 Sort of bizarre supposition is that this is because of America as opposed to because the Middle East happens to be a long chain of terrorist tyrannies following one another with different enemies.

00:36:16.000 I don't think that you've been following Middle Eastern history very long.

00:36:19.000 Tucker Carlson has been on tour in the Middle East.

00:36:23.000 He was over hanging out with the leader of Qatar.

00:36:27.000 And in the middle of that, he tweeted out, quote, As predictable as this is, it's still infuriating to see it.

00:36:32.000 For decades, Bashar Assad protected minority religious communities in Syria, including the country's large Christian population.

00:36:39.000 Okay.

00:36:39.000 Those protections were limited at best.

00:36:42.000 Pretty limited, as it turns out.

00:36:44.000 And the downstream effect of Bashar Assad attacking, for example, Kurds.

00:36:49.000 Bashar Assad repressing his people to the extent that he did was going to be a blowback that was very bad for many of the people living in the area during the Syrian civil war.

00:36:59.000 To pretend that Assad is somehow...

00:37:01.000 Completely not responsible for what happened in Syria.

00:37:03.000 Well, he was dictator in Syria is kind of wild.

00:37:05.000 No one in the United States was allowed to notice this.

00:37:09.000 I'm pretty sure, actually, we were all allowed to notice this.

00:37:11.000 And many people did notice this, actually.

00:37:13.000 And commented upon it when Assad fell, actually.

00:37:17.000 And anyone who did was immediately denounced by neocons as a dangerous extremist.

00:37:21.000 Barry Weiss declared Tulsi Gabbard monstrous and an Assad toady for noticing.

00:37:25.000 But it was true. 0.98

00:37:26.000 Well, actually, that is...

00:37:28.000 I disagree with Barry Weiss about Tulsi Gabbard, but actually what she was condemning was the idea that Bashar Assad was an ally of the West, which was something that Tulsi Gabbard was sort of promoting a little bit back in 2011, 2012, 2013. The weaker Assad was, the more Christians died.

00:37:42.000 During the years that neocons in the West backed the war against Assad, the percentage of Christians in Syria went from 10% to 2%.

00:37:48.000 Now that Assad has been driven from power, many of the remaining Syrian Christians are being slaughtered and their holy places desecrated.

00:37:53.000 Barry Weiss and John Bolton haven't said a word about it, but no one who's paying attention can be surprised it's happening.

00:37:57.000 Neocon projects in the Middle East invariably destroy ancient Christian communities from Iraq to Gaza and in many places in between.

00:38:04.000 Can this be an accident?

00:38:04.000 You wonder.

00:38:05.000 Again, this is a bizarre and twisted reading of history at best.

00:38:11.000 I'm not going to attribute motives because that's not something that I like to do.

00:38:14.000 I will say that this is so ahistorical.

00:38:17.000 The idea that chaos in the Middle East has not targeted Christians is ignorant of literally all Christian history in the Middle East.

00:38:26.000 Was Constantinople before it was Istanbul.

00:38:29.000 The notion that Christians have generally been targeted by neocons in the West, in the Middle East, is a complete reversal of how history actually has worked in this area.

00:38:41.000 I have suspicions as to what Tucker means by quote-unquote neocons.

00:38:45.000 But again, the idea that Christians, who can live safely in the Middle East, by the way, in about one country, which is Israel, Not a lot of Christians who are living safely in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi.

00:38:59.000 These are not places with large Christian populations.

00:39:03.000 Many of these places are places that Tucker is busy defending this week.

00:39:06.000 And what's going on in Syria, which is a horror show, is not the fault of the Turks, who are literally backing the regime that is murdering people, including Christians. 0.66

00:39:13.000 It's somehow the fault of the neocon warmongers.

00:39:16.000 It's a wild supposition.

00:39:19.000 But, again, this is part and parcel of some of the stuff that...

00:39:24.000 Tucker seems to be pushing lately, which again is the idea that all conflict in the Middle East is the fault of an evil cadre of Americans who are pushing conflict in the Middle East.

00:39:33.000 No one in the Middle East apparently has any agency.

00:39:34.000 Iran has no agency.

00:39:36.000 Hezbollah has no agency.

00:39:37.000 Qatar certainly has no agency.

00:39:39.000 Tucker spent this weekend over in Qatar doing a bit of propaganda work on behalf of the Qatari regime.

00:39:46.000 And again, this is not an attribution of motive to Tucker.

00:39:48.000 I'm not going to claim, I see some people online claiming Tucker's in the payout.

00:39:51.000 Tucker doesn't need their money.

00:39:52.000 I don't think that's right.

00:39:54.000 I think that Tucker's worldview suggests that apparently the only actors in the Middle East who have any agency at all are the United States, Israel, and pretty much no one else, apparently.

00:40:07.000 And so everything bad that happens in the Middle East is the fault of those people, and no one else has any agency at all. 0.98

00:40:14.000 So, Iran has been growing closer and closer to a nuclear weapon.

00:40:18.000 Iran is the chief sponsor of terror. 1.00

00:40:20.000 Not only in the region, but all over the world.

00:40:21.000 Iran has its tentacles all the way down in South America. 0.96

00:40:25.000 Iran's proxies in Hezbollah, the Houthis, all these people have been engaged in terrorism that affects American interests ranging from the Red Sea to the murder of literally thousands of American soldiers in Iraq by Iranian terror-supporting groups to the murder of 241 Marines at the U.S. Marine barracks bombing back in the 1980s.

00:40:43.000 And while Iran has been growing more and more loud, they are currently holding joint military drills with China and Russia.

00:40:49.000 Right now.

00:40:51.000 Iran also happens to be super vulnerable.

00:40:54.000 Their nuclear regime could be ended basically today by a single sortie. 0.81

00:40:58.000 Despite all of that, President Trump is trying to give them an off-ramp, which is the right path, right?

00:41:02.000 He's trying to give them an off-ramp.

00:41:03.000 And then if they won't take the off-ramp, there has to be a fist inside the velvet glove.

00:41:07.000 Here's President Trump talking about Iran.

00:41:10.000 Now, well, there are two ways Iran can be handled, militarily or you make a deal. 0.74

00:41:15.000 I would prefer to make a deal because I'm not looking to hurt Iran.

00:41:18.000 They're great people.

00:41:19.000 I know so many Iranians from this country.

00:41:22.000 Well, not the leadership.

00:41:23.000 No, not the leadership.

00:41:24.000 The people.

00:41:25.000 They're very evil people.

00:41:26.000 No, but the people of Iran are great people.

00:41:29.000 But they had a tough regime, and they'd meet and they'd be shot in the streets.

00:41:34.000 I mean, it was a tough deal.

00:41:37.000 But I would rather negotiate a deal.

00:41:41.000 I'm not sure that everybody agrees with me, but we can make a deal that would be just as good as if you won militarily.

00:41:49.000 Okay, so if you can get that deal, great.

00:41:50.000 And if you can't, then there's a threat.

00:41:52.000 So, Tucker has decided, again, that the only two options, and this, again, is a false binary, the only two options here are either you concede to the Iranian nuclear program or full-scale war with Iran, which, again, is not a reality.

00:42:05.000 Iran's skies are clear.

00:42:07.000 Right now, a single B-2 sortie would take out their nuclear facilities.

00:42:11.000 But Tucker tweeted out, Fox News is wall-to-wall with dead-eyed politicians.

00:42:15.000 Again, these sort of...

00:42:16.000 Bizarre physical description of people that you disagree with is pretty ugly.

00:42:20.000 I'm not a fan of this sort of stuff.

00:42:23.000 Fox News is walled walled with dead-eyed politicians.

00:42:25.000 They're all dead-eyed.

00:42:26.000 If they don't agree to Tucker, you're dead-eyed.

00:42:27.000 Telling you that Iran is a dangerous sponsor of terror.

00:42:30.000 He puts that in scare quotes.

00:42:31.000 Iran is a dangerous sponsor of terror. 1.00

00:42:33.000 I literally just named you hundreds and thousands of Americans who have been killed by Iranian terror groups.

00:42:39.000 It says softening up the base for a war.

00:42:41.000 Again, there is no war with Iran.

00:42:43.000 Nobody wants a war with Iran.

00:42:45.000 Was it a war with Iran when America launched a strike at Qasem Soleimani, killing their military leader?

00:42:49.000 There was not.

00:42:50.000 But what exactly does that phrase mean, and how does it apply to the United States?

00:42:53.000 Here's one measure.

00:42:54.000 Over the past 20 years, how many Americans have been killed by Iran on American soil? 0.94

00:42:59.000 Try to find...

00:42:59.000 Notice that qualifier, on American soil.

00:43:01.000 Well, I mean, an American in Iraq is still an American, as it turns out. 0.61

00:43:04.000 So is an American in Lebanon.

00:43:07.000 Try to find that number, and then compare it to the number of Americans killed by drug ODs, or suicide or illegal aliens, or carjackings, diabetes, and the COVID vaccine.

00:43:14.000 Still think Iran is the greatest threat? 1.00

00:43:15.000 How about we focus on our own country for a minute?

00:43:17.000 And this is, again, a false binary.

00:43:19.000 It turns out that there are, in fact, foreign threats to American interests ranging from shipping in the Red Sea to oil supply coming from the Gulf.

00:43:26.000 And also, all the things that he mentioned are really bad.

00:43:29.000 I noticed that for a guy who is very concerned about illegal aliens, carjackings, diabetes, and the COVID vax, he's spending an awful lot of time in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Russia lately.

00:43:41.000 And this is not an argument.

00:43:44.000 In favor of quote-unquote endless war.

00:43:46.000 This is an argument in favor of reality.

00:43:49.000 And living in the realm of reality is a healthier perspective on foreign affairs than the sort of bizarre melange of claims that are made about dead-eyed people that you disagree with or people who want perennial war.

00:44:00.000 How about argue with the argument as opposed to arguing with the phantom that you are creating in your own mind without ever actually coming to grips with the nature of the argument.

00:44:10.000 Now speaking of spending time abroad, Tucker Carlson, of course, was in Qatar, where he was interviewing the Prime Minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

00:44:19.000 Now, it should be mentioned at this point that Qatar is, in fact, effectively a front state for Iran.

00:44:23.000 They sort of try to play a middle role between the United States and Iran.

00:44:27.000 Whenever there's a negotiation with a terrorist group, it always happens in Qatar.

00:44:29.000 This is where the United States negotiated with the Taliban, sort of America's emissary to the terrorist world. 0.94

00:44:35.000 But there's no question that Qatar is, in fact, a malign force in international politics. 0.98

00:44:40.000 They supply literally billions of dollars in funding to Hamas.

00:44:43.000 They've provided literal support to terrorist groups all over the region.

00:44:48.000 They have provided significant financial relief to Iran itself.

00:44:53.000 They have huge ties with Iran because they share a giant oil field.

00:44:57.000 Qatar, for example, over the last few years has transferred almost $2 billion to Hamas.

00:45:01.000 They host Hamas operations. 0.65

00:45:03.000 All of their leaders, Hamas' leaders, were in Qatar, obviously.

00:45:07.000 They also have a history of terror financing allegations ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood to even ISIL. There is also an American airbase in Qatar.

00:45:15.000 So again, they try to play both sides.

00:45:17.000 It is also worthwhile noting here that Qatar is a major donor to America's universities.

00:45:21.000 So if you don't like America's universities and you think they're trash, one major reason would be Qatar, which has spent, I kid you not, over the course of 2001 to 2021, $4.7 billion.

00:45:34.000 On American higher education.

00:45:36.000 Those are donations from a country that has 400,000 citizens of almost $5 billion to American universities.

00:45:43.000 So if you don't like the wokeism, you don't like the anti-Americanism at America's universities, it turns out that the money is flowing from Qatar and has been flowing from Qatar for decades at this point.

00:45:55.000 So here is Tucker Carlson with the Prime Minister of Qatar.

00:45:59.000 Again, kind of soft peddling.

00:46:01.000 Qatar, it's ties to terrorism. 0.67

00:46:03.000 It's malign actions in the region.

00:46:05.000 It's partnership with Iran.

00:46:06.000 And he asks, why do people hate you?

00:46:09.000 And of course, it turns out the only reason that people hate Qatar is because it turns out Qatar is so peaceful and wonderful.

00:46:14.000 Your country has been in the American media sporadically recently.

00:46:19.000 And it's under attack for reasons I don't fully understand.

00:46:24.000 One of the reasons I wanted to come here was to understand why people are mad at you.

00:46:29.000 I think you've got the biggest overseas U.S. airbase right near here.

00:46:33.000 So you're clearly a U.S. ally.

00:46:35.000 But I keep reading reference to Qatar as anti-American or pro-Islamist or a threat to the United States somehow.

00:46:44.000 Where do those attacks come from, do you think?

00:46:48.000 Look, as a country, we always want to do the right things.

00:46:52.000 And basically the right things, not only for our people, but for our people, for our region, and for our friends.

00:47:01.000 And when you are trying to do the right things, sometimes you change your mind when you hear this kind of criticism.

00:47:12.000 But it wasn't really in our culture, because we believe that it serves the real cause behind all these efforts.

00:47:21.000 is to bring peace.

00:47:22.000 They're very peaceful.

00:47:24.000 Peace for the people, peace for the regions.

00:47:27.000 Okay, we can stop it.

00:47:28.000 Again, the notion that we have an airbase in Qatar, therefore Qatar is an ally of the United States.

00:47:33.000 First of all, Tucker said just a few weeks ago he doesn't even know what an ally is to Piers Morgan.

00:47:37.000 Because Piers Morgan asked if Israel was an American ally.

00:47:39.000 He doesn't even know what an ally is.

00:47:41.000 What is an ally?

00:47:43.000 So apparently Qatar is an ally, but not Israel because he doesn't know what an ally is.

00:47:47.000 Other places, by the way, where American troops are stationed, and we just heard in that tweet from Tucker that apparently...

00:47:53.000 If an American troop dies abroad in, say, Jordan, an American ally, by the way, or in Iraq, or anywhere else in the Middle East, that doesn't count.

00:48:02.000 That doesn't matter if Iran funds their murder. 0.86

00:48:04.000 All these things are in conflict.

00:48:06.000 All these ideas are in conflict with one another.

00:48:08.000 We currently have troops everywhere from Estonia to Lithuania to Turkey.

00:48:13.000 Is Turkey an American ally?

00:48:16.000 None of this holds together.

00:48:18.000 The reason this matters with regard to Qatar...

00:48:21.000 It's because Qatar, as we say, has been funding enormous, enormous chaos at America's universities.

00:48:30.000 And so one of the things the Trump administration has quite properly been doing is pulling money from universities that are, in fact, not enforcing civil rights law with regard to Jews.

00:48:40.000 Because it turns out a lot of these major universities are perfectly fine with Jew hatred on their campus in a way that they wouldn't be anti-black hatred.

00:48:47.000 We're anti-Hispanic hatred or anything else.

00:48:48.000 Now, again, you can argue with the civil rights law on anti-discrimination, and I'll hear that argument.

00:48:52.000 But the notion that Jews are exempt from those civil rights laws while other groups are not is a bizarre one.

00:48:56.000 The Trump administration doesn't take that seriously.

00:48:58.000 And so the Trump administration on Friday said it was pulling $400 million from Columbia University, canceling grants and contracts because of what the government describes as the Ivy League school's failure to squelch anti-semitism on campus.

00:49:09.000 So again.

00:49:10.000 When it comes to Middle Eastern politics and all the rest of it, a lot of bad things can be happening simultaneously.

00:49:15.000 That does not mean that America is the bad actor or that actual American allies that, you know, are against terrorism are the bad actors.

00:49:22.000 And thinking in that way tends to facilitate the actions of the actual bad actors, including, yes, Iran, which is not a peace-loving state, an Islamic Republic that has murdered thousands of American troops in places like Iraq, spread terrorism all over the region.

00:49:36.000 And this is not a case for us to go to, quote, full-scale war, hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground.

00:49:41.000 No one, literally no one is arguing this.

00:49:43.000 No one.

00:49:44.000 Zero people.

00:49:46.000 But the sort of propaganda efforts on behalf of Iran or by its allies in Qatar is worth noting at this point in time, at the very least.

00:49:57.000 Now, meanwhile, in dumb news, apparently there's a show called Love is Blind.

00:50:02.000 I've been informed of this show by producers Savvy and Jessica.

00:50:06.000 Because, as you know, this is not my bad.

00:50:08.000 But, Love is Blind, there's a major controversy that broke out on this show, Love is Blind.

00:50:12.000 Why?

00:50:12.000 Well, because, apparently, there's a person named Sarah, and there's a person named Ben, and they were supposed to get married on Love is Blind.

00:50:19.000 And then, it all broke apart at the altar.

00:50:22.000 So, we begin this tragic story with their first date on episode two.

00:50:29.000 Ben was raised in a strong Christian household.

00:50:31.000 Sarah was no longer religious.

00:50:33.000 Ben apparently was upset about the church's stance on LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign issues.

00:50:38.000 And Ben goes to church every week.

00:50:41.000 And so here was one of their first dates or their first date.

00:50:43.000 I grew up in a very strong Christian household.

00:50:48.000 There's a lot of things that I believe about, like, the Bible, and I believe about, you know, the Christian faith, but it's all hard to obviously know for certain.

00:51:01.000 The main thing...

00:51:02.000 For me, that's really tough about religion is my sister, Lisa.

00:51:09.000 She's, like, my best friend.

00:51:09.000 She's gay.

00:51:10.000 Okay.

00:51:11.000 And she is my absolute number one.

00:51:15.000 Like, she's just, like, the best person ever.

00:51:19.000 And there's so much hypocrisy.

00:51:22.000 And I'm not saying all the time because there is good.

00:51:25.000 But for me, I find it really difficult to go to a church and, like, practice when...

00:51:31.000 It's like, love thy neighbor, but then it's also like, LGBT is going to go to hell. 1.00

00:51:35.000 And while the priest maybe has sexual allegations.

00:51:40.000 Like, I'm sorry, but no!

00:51:42.000 I hate the word religion.

00:51:43.000 I like using the word faith.

00:51:46.000 Oh, I love.

00:51:47.000 Okay, so like, would you go to Pride Weekend?

00:51:50.000 Yeah.

00:51:51.000 No discomfort around that community at all.

00:51:55.000 Okay, so first of all, his fault.

00:51:59.000 She's making her politics very clear, and at this point, he should be out.

00:52:01.000 So first of all, her politics are psychotic.

00:52:04.000 This bizarre notion that every church that says that homosexual activity is a sin is somehow evil and wrong and terrible.

00:52:11.000 I know this is a left-wing trope.

00:52:13.000 It's really stupid.

00:52:14.000 It's really stupid.

00:52:15.000 People sin all the time, every day.

00:52:18.000 Every person who's a church or synagogue or even mosque-going person that I know who's very religious understands that people sin. 0.99

00:52:24.000 All the time.

00:52:25.000 That does not mean that the church has to approve the sin, which is the shtick that she's doing.

00:52:29.000 She can't go to a church that won't approve all of her moral values or her friend's lifestyles.

00:52:34.000 Literally, the nature of religion is to try to set out an objective morality that is true whether you like it or not.

00:52:40.000 But in any case, apparently this all culminated at the end of Season 8 because Sarah decided that she was not in fact going to marry Ben based on his incompatible values.

00:52:48.000 And all I've got to say is you both knew this.

00:52:51.000 But honestly, he knew this more.

00:52:53.000 And, you know, I'm going to go against the grain here.

00:52:57.000 I'm going to say this is actually his fault.

00:52:58.000 She made very clear what her values were very early on.

00:53:01.000 He was sort of hiding the ball.

00:53:03.000 And I have no, I have no, she says she'll go to a gay pride priest.

00:53:06.000 I have no discomfort around that community.

00:53:07.000 Well, I mean, she could theoretically take away from that that he's, you know, perfectly fine with all aspects of all of this.

00:53:13.000 Anyway, she breaks up with him at the altar.

00:53:15.000 I just hope I made the right decision.

00:53:19.000 Hi, guys!

00:53:20.000 We love you guys, too.

00:53:23.000 It was a lot, but we're rolling with it.

00:53:26.000 I just want to talk to her.

00:53:27.000 Yeah.

00:53:29.000 Was it, like, the time frame?

00:53:31.000 I mean, I knew the whole time coming into this, the time frame.

00:53:34.000 Like, that's not...

00:53:35.000 Like, I feel like I know him.

00:53:37.000 Like, really.

00:53:38.000 Yeah.

00:53:38.000 Like, I remember, like, I asked him about, like, Black Lives Matter, and I'm no expert.

00:53:43.000 But, like, when I asked him about it, he was like, I guess I've never really thought too much about it.

00:53:47.000 That affected me, especially in our own city.

00:53:50.000 Like, how could it not?

00:53:51.000 How did it not make you think about something?

00:53:53.000 I asked him, too, like, what his church's views are, and he said he didn't know.

00:54:00.000 And so then I watched a sermon online.

00:54:05.000 From his church?

00:54:07.000 About, yeah, sexual identity.

00:54:08.000 Okay.

00:54:09.000 And it was traditional.

00:54:21.000 Everybody is all in, ripping on her.

00:54:24.000 I'm going to rip on him.

00:54:25.000 I think that he acted like an idiot here.

00:54:27.000 She made her politics very clear. 0.96

00:54:29.000 I've said this a thousand times with regard to dating and marriage.

00:54:31.000 Marry somebody who shares your value system because you need to build a life and a family with that person.

00:54:35.000 He knew her value system.

00:54:37.000 He was willing to go along with it anyway.

00:54:38.000 So people are going to say, well, she's being intolerant. 0.97

00:54:40.000 No, she's actually being smarter than he is.

00:54:42.000 He should have canceled this early on.

00:54:44.000 He should have been like, nope, we don't share a compatible system of values.

00:54:47.000 I'm out.

00:54:48.000 Again, I think our values are wrong, but I think that her take, which is our values are incompatible, is not wrong, actually.

00:54:56.000 So, it's definitely bizarre.

00:55:00.000 Ben suggested continuing their relationship.

00:55:02.000 Sarah found that disrespectful given the context of the show.

00:55:05.000 She felt that she couldn't commit to marriage.

00:55:06.000 Continuing to date would not be meaningful.

00:55:09.000 She's not wrong. 0.92

00:55:12.000 She's not wrong. 0.92

00:55:13.000 Ben later stated at the reunion he regretted not having deeper conversations.

00:55:17.000 Okay, well, I mean, again, his fault.

00:55:20.000 Totally his fault.

00:55:21.000 So I can totally disagree with her politics and also understand that actually the way that she approached this is more correct than the way that he approached all of this.

00:55:28.000 Alrighty, that's enough of that dumb news.

00:55:30.000 Coming up, we'll get into the latest in Ukraine.

00:55:34.000 Very, very hot topic.

00:55:36.000 The Trump administration is making some moves that...

00:55:39.000 Frankly, I'm skeptical that they're going to end with the kind of peace agreement that is going to be durable or lasting if this continues in this way.

00:55:46.000 First, you need to become a Daily Wire subscriber.

00:55:49.000 It's important because we are fighting the fight.

00:55:51.000 Now, there is such a thing as rationality and such a thing as decency, and there are increasingly few people who actually fight for those things.

00:55:57.000 We try to do that here at Daily Wire.

00:55:59.000 We have tons of material for you, ranging from Backstage Live to Morning Wire to Matt Walsh's wonderful movies to All Access Live.

00:56:05.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - March 10, 2025

Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!

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