The Ben Shapiro Show - August 05, 2026


Stop Cosplaying the 1850s


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

206.06

Word count

3,218

Sentence count

260

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Transcript

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Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 So listen, grocery prices are too high and we all know it and we all get it.
00:00:03.000 They're up about 35% since 2019, which is because of COVID and then Joe Biden's inflationary policies.
00:00:09.000 And then inflation slowed and they're up about 2.7% year on year right now.
00:00:14.000 So let's start with a few things.
00:00:15.000 First, grocery prices are never coming back down to where they were in 2019.
00:00:21.000 The only way for them to do that would be for us to experience an actual serious deflationary episode, which generally means economic depression.
00:00:29.000 So we can talk about ways to moderately decrease The price of groceries, or to flatline them, or to slightly increase them.
00:00:34.000 That's all fine.
00:00:35.000 We'll do that today.
00:00:36.000 But we have another far worse and more serious problem in the United States the problem of unrealistic, inflated utopian expectations.
00:00:44.000 A problem that's really about a black pilled sense of where we are at in the United States right now. 0.91
00:00:48.000 I'll get to that in just a second.
00:00:50.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:57.000 All right.
00:00:58.000 So Republicans are about to experience the possibility of a blue tsunami in the fall.
00:01:04.000 That's largely because Republicans are really, really, really depressed.
00:01:06.000 And so are independents.
00:01:07.000 They don't like what the administration has been doing, and the polls are showing it.
00:01:10.000 Here was Harry Enton on CNN laying this out yesterday.
00:01:14.000 So, you know, we often talk about, oh, that conservative base, that MAGA base.
00:01:18.000 But how about where the other GOP lives?
00:01:21.000 That is moderate Republicans, Kate Baldwin, moderate Republicans. 0.99
00:01:26.000 And in a word, yikes.
00:01:28.000 Yikes is the word.
00:01:29.000 Take a look at this.
00:01:29.000 Okay.
00:01:30.000 The moderate GOP on Trump.
00:01:32.000 This includes leaners.
00:01:32.000 This is about 30 to 40% of the party, depending on how you exactly look at versus Kamala Harris.
00:01:37.000 Trump easily was winning amongst them by 69 points back in October of 2024.
00:01:42.000 Come over to this side of the screen.
00:01:44.000 Look at this decline in the Lake Erie.
00:01:46.000 I mean, right now we're talking about as they're talking about just a plus 10 net approval rate.
00:01:51.000 This is within his own party.
00:01:54.000 And when it comes to the economy, the numbers are even worse.
00:01:57.000 The president is barely above water with that segment of the GOP when it comes to the economy.
00:02:04.000 Now, again, part of that is because when you measure Trump against Kamala Harris, he looks great.
00:02:08.000 And when you measure Trump against a utopian vision of what could be, everybody looks terrible, but we should actually look at his approval ratings over time.
00:02:16.000 So look at this.
00:02:18.000 So you can see the president was underwater for the vast majority of his first term and he stayed underwater for pretty much all of the interim period.
00:02:27.000 And then the lines crossed in a positive direction right before the election and they stayed that way until, until Liberation Day.
00:02:35.000 Liberation Day is where the lines crossed.
00:02:37.000 And then the approval ratings just kept sliding.
00:02:40.000 As you can see.
00:02:42.000 Why?
00:02:42.000 Well, because the impression from the Trump administration is that they were not, in fact, focused predominantly on prices.
00:02:48.000 They were focused on something else.
00:02:50.000 Again, that's what tariffs are.
00:02:51.000 It is not a focus on prices.
00:02:53.000 It is a focus on something else.
00:02:54.000 It is a focus on fairness in the production process or on leveling the playing field with foreign countries.
00:02:59.000 But it is not a focus on consumer benefit.
00:03:03.000 That is not what tariffs are.
00:03:05.000 Now, again, food inflation started leveling out in 2023 while Joe Biden was still president, and then it continued at a relatively tepid clip until basically now.
00:03:14.000 But the impression is still there that the Trump administration isn't doing enough about inflation.
00:03:19.000 And it's there in part because of things like the tariffs.
00:03:22.000 But it is also there because we have inflated expectations of reality and what we deserve from it.
00:03:26.000 Politicians do this all the time.
00:03:26.000 I get it.
00:03:27.000 They say, well, the prices are going to come back down.
00:03:29.000 When President Trump said the prices are going to come back down, that was never going to happen.
00:03:32.000 We were never going back to 2019, 2020 grocery prices.
00:03:36.000 It was never going to happen.
00:03:37.000 But it is also true.
00:03:39.000 That a lot of young people have a completely broken set of expectations about life right now.
00:03:44.000 So, Andrew Colvitt over at TPUSA tweeted out today one of our TPUSA college students gave me his take on affordability.
00:03:51.000 A burrito shouldn't cost 20 bucks.
00:03:53.000 Yeah, a lot of this is a hangover from COVID and Biden era inflation, but the lived experience is the same.
00:03:57.000 It just feels like basic things cost too much.
00:04:01.000 So, obviously, I agree.
00:04:02.000 Things cost more than they should, but let's start from the beginning here.
00:04:06.000 A burrito for 20 bucks?
00:04:08.000 That's where we're starting.
00:04:09.000 A burrito for 20 bucks.
00:04:11.000 There is literally only one way in the United States of America.
00:04:14.000 In this year, 2026, for a burrito to cost $20, you went to a kind of expensive restaurant.
00:04:19.000 A burrito at Chipotle probably tops out about $13.
00:04:23.000 A top shelf burrito option at Taco Bell, we have been informed by our intrepid Daily Wire Taco Bell correspondent, Brad Bishop, runs $5.99 plus tax for the Avocado Ranch Crispy Chicken Burrito, which he also reports is jaw droppingly delicious.
00:04:38.000 But let us also pretend that you're just a poor young student, as I once was, or say you're a dude who is just starting his work life and wants some upward mobility, like I once was.
00:04:48.000 Here's what you do if you want a burrito.
00:04:50.000 You head on down to the supermarket.
00:04:51.000 I'm going to give you today's prices via Instacart.
00:04:55.000 You buy some tortillas for about four bucks for a package of 10.
00:04:58.000 You also grab a can of refried beans for a couple of bucks fifty.
00:05:02.000 And then you grab some cheese, some salsa, maybe an avocado.
00:05:06.000 And then you microwave some of that stuff.
00:05:08.000 Boom.
00:05:09.000 You're talking a burrito that's pretty good for less than two dollars, like one tenth of the price that that student is talking about.
00:05:14.000 One tenth, two dollars.
00:05:16.000 So what the hell are we even talking about here?
00:05:18.000 But unfortunately, this has become the mode for a lot of young people.
00:05:21.000 Why can't I afford what my parents could afford when they were my age?
00:05:24.000 Spoiler alert, when it comes to groceries, you can.
00:05:26.000 And in areas, By the way, for housing where deregulation has been the rule, you still can.
00:05:31.000 In fact, you have today more restaurant options, your food costs less of your disposable income, and it is probably significantly better.
00:05:39.000 Back in 1950, your grandparents were consuming on average about 1,000 calories less per day than you do now.
00:05:46.000 And as far as food expenditure as a share of family disposable income in the United States, look at this.
00:05:52.000 Basically, that has been flatlined since the mid 90s at well under 10%.
00:05:57.000 If you go back to when your parents were doing this, it was like 13, 14, 15%.
00:06:02.000 But we're constantly being told that we can't even afford food, which is a wild exaggeration.
00:06:07.000 We are, if anything, a very overweight country.
00:06:10.000 And it is yet another form of black pilling.
00:06:12.000 Things can get better.
00:06:13.000 There are things we can do with government to get government out of this business.
00:06:16.000 And we should.
00:06:18.000 But insane, outsized expectations of reality end up wrecking politics.
00:06:21.000 Because if both parties are promising you something that can never be achieved via politics, you will inevitably be annoyed.
00:06:29.000 And then you will swivel over to the other side.
00:06:30.000 And then they'll fail and you'll swivel back to the first side.
00:06:33.000 Here is the deal here in the United States of America we are fatter.
00:06:36.000 Richer, have nicer houses, nicer cars, and the food we eat is much, much better than it was for our parents in general.
00:06:43.000 Our parents probably would have considered a 450 burrito at Del Taco a gourmet meal.
00:06:48.000 And then there are secondary distortions that follow from that.
00:06:51.000 Oh, you know what?
00:06:51.000 We need to go back to the way it was.
00:06:53.000 Our food system is broken.
00:06:55.000 We need to go totally domestic.
00:06:56.000 We're talking like chicken coops in the backyard.
00:06:58.000 Listen, I, okay, fine.
00:06:59.000 I suppose it's charming for some people.
00:07:00.000 And I will admit, I am a city boy.
00:07:03.000 I grew up in LA and now I live in South Florida.
00:07:06.000 I've never lived on a farm.
00:07:08.000 And I will also freely admit that I have a relatively adversarial relationship with living in nature.
00:07:17.000 I think that civilization was basically developed so we don't have to camp.
00:07:21.000 Because camping is basically living outdoors and crapping in the woods, you know, as most of humanity did for tens of thousands of years.
00:07:28.000 And it wasn't great.
00:07:29.000 So we developed these things called houses, and then we developed energy sources, and then we developed toilets, and it's way, way, way better.
00:07:36.000 My idea of like an amazing vacation would be to.
00:07:38.000 Experience the four seasons outdoors and then go back to my hotel and experience the four seasons indoors.
00:07:44.000 That'd be like a great vacation.
00:07:45.000 I get it.
00:07:46.000 For some people, nature is like their thing.
00:07:47.000 Fine.
00:07:49.000 Okay.
00:07:50.000 But in reality, if you're talking about like the fate of hundreds of millions of people, I much prefer that we eat foods sourced from 100 different places by driving over to the local supermarket.
00:08:00.000 Frankly, I think our ancestors would have laughed at us trying to cosplay the 1850s when it turns out that if we had lived in the 1850s, we all would have been miserable and smelly and crapping in a hole in the backyard.
00:08:10.000 Like, lifestyle was not great back then at all. 0.99
00:08:13.000 In fact, if you take people from poorer countries today and you bring them to the United States, they're not complaining about the status of our food supply.
00:08:21.000 That's more on this in a moment. 1.00
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00:09:26.000 There's a woman that we know from the Philippines.
00:09:28.000 She's wonderful. 0.97
00:09:29.000 And she just brought her mom over from the Philippines.
00:09:32.000 She grew up in a shack, pretty much a shack in the Philippines with no actual floor, with like 10 siblings.
00:09:41.000 And when mom came over, she walked into an American supermarket and it blew her mind.
00:09:44.000 Because, again, for most of the world, the luxury that we experience on a daily basis here in the United States is utterly unthinkable, totally unthinkable.
00:09:44.000 Why?
00:09:51.000 It's why when that guy Freddie from Germany was traveling the United States and just marveling at the basic things in the US that are considered luxuries everywhere else, like AC, It's a real thing.
00:10:01.000 But okay.
00:10:03.000 There are a bunch of people who are very into Back to the Land.
00:10:03.000 But okay.
00:10:06.000 And honestly, I think some of it's a cosplay.
00:10:09.000 One of the great ironies of the Back to the Land stuff is that it's actually quite expensive.
00:10:13.000 So, my friend Alibeth Stuckey, for example, went to the vice president's house in D.C. and toured his chicken coop.
00:10:20.000 Here's what that was like State of the art chippy feet, a little bit bigger than my little triangle chicken coop.
00:10:27.000 Amazing.
00:10:32.000 That is a magnificent chicken.
00:10:34.000 That is nicer than most houses.
00:10:37.000 Okay, I don't know if it's the right chicken or what, but I want to cry.
00:10:41.000 How cute they are.
00:10:42.000 I think we want to get chickens like right now.
00:10:44.000 These are the vice presidential chickens.
00:10:46.000 So cute.
00:10:47.000 I wonder if they've all been named.
00:10:49.000 That's much better.
00:10:54.000 Oh my gosh.
00:10:55.000 So fun.
00:10:56.000 Listen, I can only hope that one day the vice president gets his kids out back and just starts chopping off chicken heads for dinner.
00:11:01.000 I think that would be funny.
00:11:01.000 But I will admit that I'm with the vice president here.
00:11:04.000 His opinion about the chickens.
00:11:08.000 The big question is always whenever you get an animal, whether it's a dog, a cat, or chickens in this case, it's like, how much are the kids actually going to do?
00:11:14.000 So we have a nine year old, six year old, and four year old.
00:11:17.000 And it turns out they love chickens, like almost weirdly.
00:11:20.000 Like I'm worried they're going to be like weird chicken people now because they obsessively want to go and just hang out with the chickens and sit in the chicken coop and it stinks and there's poop everywhere.
00:11:28.000 So they're really into them, which I guess is better than the alternative.
00:11:34.000 Okay.
00:11:34.000 So again, I'm kind of with the VP here, but can we grow up with the like back to the land?
00:11:38.000 All the chicken coops will outdo our food supply chain nonsense.
00:11:41.000 Back to the land is shockingly expensive.
00:11:44.000 Farms and chicken coops, pretty expensive.
00:11:46.000 To grow and produce your own food requires a tremendous amount of time and energy.
00:11:49.000 It can cost up to like 3,000 bucks to build a chicken coop and then another $100 a month to maintain it.
00:11:54.000 You know what's cheaper?
00:11:55.000 Going to the supermarket.
00:11:57.000 Our system is not broken.
00:11:58.000 It is working really, really, really efficiently.
00:12:01.000 We have one of the most efficient food production and delivery systems in the history of the world.
00:12:06.000 The cheapest in the history of the world.
00:12:08.000 According to the Foundation for Economic Education, the price of eggs declined 96% between 1919 and 2019.
00:12:16.000 That means that the unskilled laborer today could purchase 24 times as many eggs as an unskilled laborer was able to purchase for the same amount of work one century ago.
00:12:25.000 Now, does this mean everything is like perfectly ideal?
00:12:27.000 No, we could probably reduce the price of food by 5 to 10% right now.
00:12:31.000 All we would have to do is get rid of the tariffs. 0.65
00:12:34.000 Ramp up American oil production probably goes up.
00:12:36.000 It goes down slightly from there.
00:12:38.000 But that's the thing.
00:12:39.000 And this is kind of the broader point.
00:12:40.000 So much blackpilling, so much doom scrolling, so much America's terrible, everything's awful, no one can afford anything.
00:12:47.000 Now, again, none of this is to claim that everything is ideal, but there's no such thing as ideal.
00:12:52.000 Everything is comparative.
00:12:53.000 Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris, comparatively, Trump is way better.
00:12:57.000 America versus other countries, comparatively, America is way better.
00:13:01.000 America's living situation now versus your parents' living situation, comparatively, America is way better.
00:13:07.000 And we should also be clear economics is a study in trade offs.
00:13:10.000 That's what it is.
00:13:12.000 If you're going to spend all your day on the right complaining about the production side, what if all of our labor was both domestic and unionized and we got rid of technology?
00:13:20.000 And what if all of our food was produced in Iowa, totally organic?
00:13:23.000 You don't get to complain about the prices being too high.
00:13:25.000 All your inputs just doubled.
00:13:27.000 So if you actually want the prices to go down, end the tariffs, ramp up the incentives for innovation via the market, break useless unions, and the prices will go down.
00:13:36.000 Now, there's one kind of silly critique that I've heard here online.
00:13:39.000 What, what, we need to stop being distracted by foreign wars.
00:13:42.000 It's the foreign wars that are causing the food inflation.
00:13:44.000 No, it isn't.
00:13:46.000 The Warner on has had basically no impact on food prices in the U.S.
00:13:48.000 Now, as we'll get to, we can have arguments over the outcome of the war.
00:13:51.000 Was it worth it and all the rest, but that has nothing to do with grocery prices.
00:13:55.000 And this whole misdirect, where it's like, here's a thing I don't like. 0.51
00:13:58.000 Probably it was the war that did it.
00:13:59.000 It's just nonsense.
00:14:01.000 Here's the food inflation percentage increase, 2016 to 2026.
00:14:06.000 And as you will see, no, not there.
00:14:09.000 2023, 2.7, 2024, 2.5, 2025, 3.1, 2026, 3.
00:14:16.000 Okay, that is not a gigantic bump based on the war in Iran. 0.74
00:14:19.000 And by the way, if you actually would like for the prices to go up, probably what you should do is leave Iran in charge of the Strait of Hormuz so they can keep throttling up or throttling down our prices at whim based on oil shocks. 0.74
00:14:29.000 Losing wars to failed dictatorships, seeking nuclear weapons, turns out it's not brilliant trade strategy. 0.83
00:14:35.000 But put all that aside and go back to the larger point for a second.
00:14:37.000 The right is doom pilling, black pilling right now, and it is having an impact. 0.97
00:14:42.000 Everything in America does not in fact suck.
00:14:44.000 Things are in fact quite good by any historical standard and much better than if Kamala Harris had been president.
00:14:49.000 Now again, maybe that's not a winning message in 2026, but I can tell you what a losing message looks like. 0.99
00:14:54.000 America totally sucks under Trump. 0.99
00:14:56.000 And if you elect more Republicans, it will surely continue to suck. 1.00
00:14:58.000 What we need is a Tucker Carlson third party. 0.92
00:15:00.000 What we need is a common good conservatism third party that totally changes everything that spins on. 0.60
00:15:06.000 Elect Democrats, then it'll get better, or split the Republican vote, or whatever. 0.88
00:15:10.000 And this is what the Black Pillars are doing right now this sort of demoralization. 0.97
00:15:13.000 And here's another surefire losing message. 0.92
00:15:16.000 What if we just do the same things as the left, but we don't say we're doing it?
00:15:20.000 Okay, the left is not going to lower prices.
00:15:22.000 Their policies are not designed to lower prices.
00:15:24.000 That is not how any of this works.
00:15:25.000 And yet the horseshoe is very much alive.
00:15:28.000 What an amazing video you just watched!
00:15:30.000 Wasn't that amazing?
00:15:31.000 Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.