The Ben Shapiro Show - Stop Giving Your Money To Crappy People

00:00:00.000 Well, folks, a lot of news happening.

00:00:01.000 A fire hose of news.

00:00:03.000 In fact, conflagrations racially at home.

00:00:05.000 Conflagrations in the Middle East.

00:00:07.000 Media conflagrations.

00:00:08.000 Tons of stuff going on.

00:00:09.000 But here at Daily Wire Plus, we are not just watching.

00:00:11.000 We are leading.

00:00:12.000 We are on the front lines with hard-hitting investigations, explosive exposés, daily shows, and commentary from the most trusted voices in conservative media delivering the facts first.

00:00:20.000 This is your moment.

00:00:21.000 Join the fight at dailywireplus.com.

00:00:24.000 All right, so...

00:00:25.000 We have now fallen into a bizarre and terrible cycle in the United States in which one side does something bad and the other side then does something similarly bad and then points to the fact that the first side did something bad as an excuse for doing it.

00:00:38.000 This is a problem.

00:00:39.000 We used to call this whataboutism.

00:00:41.000 Now, people have misapplied the term whataboutism over and over and over in the political context.

00:00:45.000 It is not whataboutism to point out double standards.

00:00:48.000 Whataboutism is when you do something wrong and instead of you saying, yes, I did the thing wrong, But a double standard is being applied.

00:00:56.000 It's when you say, I didn't do anything wrong at all, and it doesn't matter if I did do something wrong because the other side did it.

00:01:01.000 So, for example, if Hunter Biden is super-duper-duper corrupt, and then somebody on the right side of the aisle does something super-duper-duper corrupt, and then they're called on it, and they say, well, yeah, but Hunter Biden did something super-corrupt.

00:01:12.000 That's whataboutism.

00:01:13.000 Because it's a non-sequitur.

00:01:15.000 You can say there's a double standard being applied by the media that was willing to ignore and cover up Hunter Biden's activity for years, but now they're going after, say, Team Trump.

00:01:23.000 They can say that the media have been disproportionate in their coverage of corruption.

00:01:27.000 That is a fair point.

00:01:29.000 It is not a fair point to say that corruption on one side of the aisle is justified by corruption on the other side of the aisle.

00:01:34.000 If you do that sort of stuff, then you end up in a bottomless spiral.

00:01:38.000 That bottomless spiral gets worse and worse because everybody just reacts against the last bad thing that the other side did and justifies what they are doing now.

00:01:46.000 And then the other side comes back and says, yeah, well, you just did something even worse, and so I'm going to do something even worse than that.

00:01:51.000 The reality is that calling out double standards is a good thing if you wish to uphold a standard.

00:01:57.000 Calling out double standards as an excuse for doing bad things is not, in fact, calling out a double standard.

00:02:02.000 It is just justifying doing bad things.

00:02:05.000 The reason I'm bringing this up today is because one of the big stories that has now taken over the world of the social media is this story of one named Shiloh Hendricks.

00:02:13.000 So Shiloh Hendricks is a woman, a white lady, who was caught on camera this week.

00:02:20.000 Calling a five-year-old boy the N-word.

00:02:23.000 So allegedly, according to the New York Post, she allegedly caught this five-year-old boy rifling through her bag at a playground in Rochester, which is about 90 minutes south of Minneapolis.

00:02:32.000 And she allegedly calls this five-year-old kid the N-word.

00:02:36.000 And then a black man confronts her, films the incident, starts yelling at her.

00:02:41.000 And when she is asked if she called the kid the N-word, she says, yeah. 0.99

00:02:46.000 And she says, he took my son's stuff.

00:02:48.000 Okay, so.

00:02:49.000 A few things are happening in this particular story, just from the very beginning.

00:02:53.000 First of all, it's bad that a five-year-old kid is rifling your stuff.

00:02:56.000 Second of all, five-year-old kids are five, like very little, and do bad things all the time.

00:03:00.000 I have a five-year-old girl.

00:03:01.000 She's wonderful, and she's also extremely naughty and troublesome. 1.00

00:03:05.000 And this sort of stuff with small kids, unfortunately, they do bad things all the time. 0.91

00:03:10.000 Calling a little black kid the N-word, I think we can agree, is a bad thing to do.

00:03:15.000 Okay, now. 0.85

00:03:16.000 If you have trouble with that statement, that calling a little black kid the N-word is a bad thing to do, I'm not sure why.

00:03:23.000 That seems totally uncontroversial to me.

00:03:26.000 Whether you have broader concerns about racialized language in America, I don't see the necessity for having a debate over, for example, the use of the N-word in rap music, which is terrible, in order to say that it is bad for an adult white woman to call a five-year-old kid the N-word.

00:03:42.000 That just seems bad on its face.

00:03:44.000 Now, the reason this has become a national issue is because this woman was videoed, and people basically started going after her on social media.

00:03:53.000 The kid's parents said the boy is autistic.

00:03:56.000 The parents are from Somalia.

00:03:57.000 They're apparently supervising three other kids on the playground at the time of the incident.

00:04:02.000 So, apparently, Hendrix, this woman, apparently told the father and his wife that they shouldn't have more kids because they're a drain on the welfare system. 1.00

00:04:12.000 So she seems like a delight.

00:04:13.000 It just seems like a delightful person.

00:04:15.000 And the reason this has become a big issue is because after this video went viral on the internet, she claims that another person who has a history with law enforcement proceeded to record me and follow me to my car.

00:04:27.000 This is what she said.

00:04:27.000 He posted these videos online, which has caused my family and myself great turmoil.

00:04:31.000 My social security number has been leaked.

00:04:32.000 My address and phone number have been given out freely.

00:04:34.000 My family members are being attacked.

00:04:35.000 My eldest child may not be going back to school.

00:04:37.000 Even where I exercise has been exposed.

00:04:40.000 And she asked...

00:04:43.000 And within days, she had raised over half a million dollars, like $525,000 had been raised.

00:04:54.000 She herself has a troubled history with law enforcement, including DUI, disorderly conduct, and brawling.

00:05:00.000 Okay, so, again, a few things happening here.

00:05:03.000 If somebody calls you the N-word in public or anything else, running down the street with a camera and taping them, And then putting that on the internet and then exposing every aspect of their life, their social security number, their address to public scrutiny.

00:05:17.000 It is one thing to call people out for saying bad things, which is something that you should do.

00:05:21.000 If somebody you see in front of you uses the N-word, you should say, don't do that.

00:05:25.000 That's awful.

00:05:26.000 Why are you doing that?

00:05:27.000 Going to the extent of exposing social security numbers, following people home, trying to destroy their life, that is, I think, uncalled for.

00:05:36.000 With all that said, giving money in response to this...

00:05:40.000 Like raising half a million dollars.

00:05:42.000 That is not a good thing to do.

00:05:44.000 Now, why did this become such a scandal?

00:05:45.000 Not just because people were giving this amount of money, but because the way people were justifying giving this amount of money is by referring to the case of Carmelo Anthony, which is a case that we talked about at length on the show.

00:05:54.000 So Carmelo Anthony, you'll remember, is a 17-year-old black teenager from Texas.

00:06:01.000 And he allegedly stabbed to death.

00:06:03.000 I mean, he admitted it, but he allegedly stabbed to death another young person.

00:06:08.000 Whose name was Austin Metcalf.

00:06:11.000 And then he raised for his GoFundMe over half a million dollars for his defense fund.

00:06:17.000 Some of the funds were supposed to be toward paying for a secure location for the family to live.

00:06:21.000 So this has become sort of the go-to give-me-money tactic.

00:06:24.000 Is you end up on the wrong side of a social media mobbing.

00:06:28.000 And you say at that point, I need to move.

00:06:31.000 And so please everybody give me money.

00:06:33.000 Now, none of this stuff justifies each other.

00:06:36.000 None of these facts justify.

00:06:38.000 Step.

00:06:39.000 In order of priority of bad things in the world, because not all sins are created equal.

00:06:43.000 Alleged murder is the worst.

00:06:45.000 Alleged murder.

00:06:46.000 And then probably giving money to alleged murderers is probably second on that list.

00:06:52.000 And then third on that list would be using the N-word.

00:06:55.000 And then fourth on that list would be giving money to somebody who uses the N-word.

00:06:58.000 But none of these things justify each other. 0.97

00:07:01.000 And this is part of the terrible slide into the bottomless pit of garbage that the United States seems to be embroiling itself in.

00:07:07.000 The idea that you have to give money to Shiloh Hendricks because people gave money to Carmelo Anthony. 0.70

00:07:14.000 You don't. 0.53

00:07:15.000 The idea that you have to justify the use of the N-word for a five-year-old kid because a black kid killed a white kid in Texas.

00:07:22.000 No.

00:07:22.000 How about all of these things are bad?

00:07:24.000 They're not all equivalently bad.

00:07:25.000 Some of them are way worse.

00:07:26.000 Murder is way worse than using the N-word.

00:07:28.000 And I understand that some on social media are pointing out and going crazy about the fact.

00:07:34.000 That one woman, a white woman, using the N-word for a five-year-old kid, the news media will treat that in the same way they would an actual racial murder or an alleged racial murder.

00:07:44.000 And I think there is truth to that.

00:07:45.000 That's what I said before.

00:07:47.000 Calling out the double standard in order to get the media to adhere to a better standard, that's not unjustifiable.

00:07:51.000 That is calling on a person to do a more moral thing.

00:07:54.000 But if you are calling on people to do less moral things with reference to other people doing immoral things...

00:08:00.000 That's not doing anything productive.

00:08:01.000 That is making the world a worse place, one step at a time.

00:08:04.000 And there is no bottom to that pit.

00:08:06.000 Because the next time somebody does something terrible with the races reversed, then somebody will raise a million dollars.

00:08:13.000 And this is how you end up with a body politic that has no level of trust in one another.

00:08:20.000 It's how you destroy the social fabric.

00:08:22.000 Because I think you should be able to hold all these thoughts in your head at one time.

00:08:25.000 I don't think you need to engage in the reactionary.

00:08:28.000 Rush to defend bad behavior because somebody else did a bad behavior.

00:08:32.000 I don't think that's childlike logic.

00:08:34.000 It's the same thing that your children do where your kid breaks a rule and then your kid when caught says, yeah, but my sibling also broke the rule so it's okay if I do it.

00:08:45.000 That's kid logic and there's no reason to use it.

00:08:48.000 It is not moral.

00:08:48.000 It does not make the world a better place.

00:08:50.000 It does not make America stronger.

00:08:52.000 You can call out all bad behavior when you see the bad behavior and the fact that this has even come into question now.

00:08:57.000 It's not only bizarre, it is somewhat terrifying.

00:09:01.000 Because if you as a society cannot call out bad behavior, ranging from racialized murder to calling people the N-word, and again, those are not equivalent in any way, shape, or form in terms of the moral gravity, and we can call out the media for treating them as similar, they're not.

00:09:17.000 But if you can't at least say that these are bad things, all these things fall into the category of bad things people should not do, and you find yourself justifying the behavior on the basis of what the other side did, you're making the world We'll get to more on this in a moment.

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00:11:44.000 Meanwhile, the media continue to be bamboozled and distracted by everything that President Trump does.

00:11:49.000 It is truly amazing how after a full decade of President Trump, they still have no clue how to handle the comments that are clearly facetious or joking.

00:11:57.000 And they treat them exactly the same as when he is making a substantive policy argument.

00:12:01.000 So you'll recall that President Trump has spent the last few weeks joking about running in 2028. 0.87

00:12:06.000 This is clearly a troll.

00:12:08.000 The Constitution does not allow for this.

00:12:09.000 And Steve Bannon, notwithstanding, this was never a serious program.

00:12:12.000 And I understand what Steve Bannon is trying to do.

00:12:14.000 One way that you get in good with the Trump administration is by showing utter fealty to everything that Donald Trump says and taking it perfectly literally.

00:12:21.000 If you do that and you're on the right, then you're likely to earn some plaudits from President Trump himself sometimes.

00:12:28.000 If you legitimately start justifying and making the case that President Trump should serve a third term, yeah, you might get some winks and some nods and some laughter and some knowing understanding that you are the most loyal of the world.

00:12:39.000 But let's be real about this.

00:12:40.000 Steve is too smart for that.

00:12:41.000 He understands Trump is not serving a third term.

00:12:43.000 That is not a thing that is happening.

00:12:45.000 So the media tried to play this up because the media, of course, have an interest in suggesting...

00:12:49.000 That President Trump is a threat to democracy who is going to declare himself dictator of the United States and serve not only a third term, but a fourth, fifth, and sixth term.

00:12:58.000 He will be the Vladimir Putin of the United States electoral system, ending democracy after the next election or something.

00:13:04.000 Well, President Trump yesterday gave a lie to all of this because he was asked in a serious context about whether he was running again in 2028.

00:13:13.000 And he said, well, give me a break.

00:13:14.000 This is NBC's Meet the Press.

00:13:15.000 Here's President Trump saying the obvious.

00:13:18.000 Who do you see as your successor, Mr. President?

00:13:21.000 Well, it's far too early to say that, but I do have a vice president, and typically it would be, and J.D.'s doing a fantastic job.

00:13:29.000 He would be at the top of the list?

00:13:30.000 It could very well be.

00:13:32.000 I don't want to get involved in that.

00:13:34.000 I think he's a fantastic, brilliant guy.

00:13:37.000 Marco is great.

00:13:38.000 There's a lot of them that are great.

00:13:40.000 I also see tremendous unity.

00:13:43.000 But certainly you would say that somebody's the VP.

00:13:46.000 If that person is outstanding, I guess that person would have an advantage. 0.99

00:13:52.000 So, again, this is President Trump actually putting to bed this stupid lie that he's going to run in 2028. 0.99

00:13:58.000 He is not. 0.96

00:13:58.000 It is fascinating that he's keeping the door open, which, by the way, is what he should do, because the American people have not sounded off on who should be his successor at this point. 0.96

00:14:07.000 There's open debate inside the administration on a wide variety of issues.

00:14:10.000 The Republican Party is.

00:14:11.000 We'll talk about shortly.

00:14:13.000 Is split on many issues, particularly with regard to foreign policy, but also with regard to domestic policy, the involvement of the federal government in the economy and all the rest.

00:14:20.000 But the media spent weeks, remember, they cycled you up on the idea that President Trump was going to run again in 2028.

00:14:28.000 He is not. 1.00

00:14:29.000 Other stupid media tricks today. 1.00

00:14:31.000 So over the weekend, same interview, the media decided to go nuts over President Trump talking about the constitutional obligations for due process for illegal immigrants. 0.99

00:14:39.000 They suggested that he doesn't care about the Constitution.

00:14:41.000 That is not what he is saying here.

00:14:43.000 This is the headline over at Drudge, over at the New York Times, everywhere else, was the idea that Trump was basically dismissing the Constitution as a concern when it comes to due process for illegal immigrants.

00:14:53.000 That is not what he says.

00:14:55.000 Here we go.

00:14:56.000 We have thousands of people that are some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on earth.

00:15:02.000 Some of the worst, most dangerous people on earth.

00:15:05.000 And I was elected to get him the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it.

00:15:10.000 But even given those numbers that you're talking about, don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?

00:15:17.000 I don't know.

00:15:18.000 I have to respond by saying again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.

00:15:28.000 Okay, so, again, that is, I think...

00:15:34.000 Him saying over and over and over that he actually will abide by his constitutional obligations.

00:15:39.000 He says, I don't know what those obligations are.

00:15:43.000 He's saying that you don't need a trial to remove every illegal immigrant in the United States, which, of course, is true. 1.00

00:15:47.000 It is also, again, a bit of a red herring.

00:15:52.000 The reality is that nobody, as far as I'm aware, is calling for a full-scale criminal trial with juries and such in order to determine whether somebody ought to be deported or not.

00:15:59.000 The question is...

00:16:00.000 What are the due process considerations for illegal immigrants before they can be deported?

00:16:04.000 But that is not Trump saying that he's going to ignore the Constitution.

00:16:07.000 It's him saying, I'm not a constitutional lawyer.

00:16:08.000 So I don't know what the obligations of due process actually are.

00:16:11.000 And when the Supreme Court sounds off on it, then I will abide by the Supreme Court.

00:16:14.000 But the media ran with the headline that he just doesn't like the Constitution.

00:16:17.000 Again, in service of a narrative, which is that Trump is a dictator, they are just fibbing to you. 0.89

00:16:21.000 And then, of course, they went nuts over the weekend because President Trump, again, trolling, trolling. 0.97

00:16:25.000 He is always trolling.

00:16:26.000 President Trump put out a picture via the White House.

00:16:29.000 It was an AI picture of himself as a potential Pope candidate.

00:16:32.000 And I have to admit, I laughed.

00:16:35.000 But I'm not the only one who laughed.

00:16:36.000 Matt Walsh laughed.

00:16:37.000 He's a Catholic.

00:16:37.000 Michael Moles laughed.

00:16:38.000 He's a Catholic.

00:16:39.000 In fact, most of the conservative Catholics that I know laughed at this because no one believes that Donald Trump actually wants to be Pope.

00:16:45.000 First of all, that would come along with some obligations such as chastity that I don't think that the President of the United States would be very much in favor of.

00:16:53.000 But the idea that the media went nuts over that.

00:16:55.000 How dare he be so disrespectful to Catholics?

00:16:57.000 Okay.

00:16:58.000 I'm sorry.

00:16:59.000 You guys do not get to do this routine.

00:17:01.000 In the last election cycle, the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, literally did a video giving a Eucharistic Dorito to a female staffer kneeling on the floor.

00:17:14.000 You are the party of on-demand abortion and transing the children. 1.00

00:17:18.000 Nope!

00:17:19.000 You do not get to sign into chats and now talk about how offended you are on behalf of Catholics everywhere.

00:17:23.000 You are the party of Barack Obama suing the little sisters of the poor to make them involve themselves in abortion coverage.

00:17:30.000 Nope!

00:17:30.000 You have no ground to stand on right here, and obviously he is joking, and no one takes this seriously at all, of course.

00:17:37.000 And meanwhile, the true threat, as I've said over and over and over to the Trump administration, is not, in fact, the left at this point.

00:17:42.000 The left is basically prone.

00:17:44.000 The true threat to the Trump administration is economic in nature.

00:17:49.000 Again, there's a basic rule when it comes to the Trump administration.

00:17:51.000 If you listen to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and you follow his policies, the economy will recover.

00:17:57.000 If you listen to Peter Navarro, who should be immediately and forthrightly fired, if you listen to trade advisor Peter Navarro, the economy will go down.

00:18:04.000 The big story in the economy over the weekend was that billionaire Warren Buffett shocked an arena full of shareholders, according to the Associated Press, by announcing he will retire at the end of the year, bringing down the curtain on a six-decade run, leading Berkshire Hathaway that made him the most influential investor.

00:18:19.000 In the world.

00:18:20.000 He appointed to success him Greg Abel, who is the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.

00:18:26.000 Again, he's 94 years old, I believe. 0.71

00:18:30.000 So the idea that Warren Buffett was not going to step down anytime is really silly.

00:18:34.000 But the reason that Warren Buffett has been a historically great investor is because he is not gambling when he invests.

00:18:41.000 Warren Buffett follows the advice of Benjamin Graham, the inventor of a term called margin of safety, which is all about safe investment.

00:18:48.000 There's this bizarre idea in the stock market that a lot of people who don't actually spend a lot of time investing have, that basically the stock market is a giant casino for day traders.

00:18:55.000 That is not what the stock market really is.

00:18:57.000 If you're a market maker, if you're a market mover, then you are doing deep research into both the geopolitical and economic conditions that undergird the economy and also the specific companies and how they are run and whether they are underpriced or overpriced.

00:19:11.000 The market is an amazing way of aggregating all information about particular companies.

00:19:16.000 Doesn't mean that markets are right in the moment.

00:19:19.000 As Graham said, and he was the sort of philosophical mentor for Warren Buffett, as Graham said, in the short term, the market is a voting machine.

00:19:27.000 In the long term, it's a weighing machine.

00:19:29.000 So over the long term, the market tends to get it right.

00:19:31.000 In the short term, there's play in the numbers because you don't actually have all the information in the moment.

00:19:35.000 However, when Warren Buffett, as he was stepping down, makes comments about the tariff regime that President Trump has been pushing, it is worth listening to because, again, he is the single most...

00:19:45.000 Successful investor of our age.

00:19:48.000 Trade should not be a weapon.

00:19:51.000 And the United States, we've won.

00:19:57.000 I mean, we have become an incredibly important country starting from nothing.

00:20:03.000 250 years ago, there's nothing been anything like it.

00:20:06.000 And it's a big mistake, in my view, when you have it.

00:20:13.000 Seven and a half billion people that don't like you very well, and you've got 300 million that are crowing in some way about how well they've done.

00:20:24.000 And I don't think it's right, and I don't think it's wise.

00:20:31.000 I do think that the more prosperous the rest of the world becomes, it won't be at our expense, the more prosperous we'll become.

00:20:42.000 Okay, so the argument that he's making there is that free trade benefits all who engage in it.

00:20:47.000 Now, there may be, again, national security reasons why you want to tariff countries, but declaring trade wars on the entire world is not, in fact, a good strategy, as Warren Buffett points out.

00:20:56.000 And the administration is sending a lot of mixed signals right now, and the markets are not dropping because of the mixed signals.

00:21:01.000 If they were all universal in the Peter Navarro direction, the bottom would have fallen out of the market already.

00:21:05.000 As the Wall Street Journal points out, Wall Street's best forecasters have been warning that tariffs could spark a recession.

00:21:10.000 Goldman Sachs puts the chances at 45% in the next 12 months.

00:21:14.000 Apollo Global Management's top economist recently pegged it at 90%, but somebody forgot to tell stock traders the market is roaring ahead.

00:21:20.000 Despite those gloomy predictions, as investors put their faith in solid economic data, including And again, President Trump is sending an enormous number of mixed signals when it comes to the tariff regime.

00:21:33.000 So stock traders seem to be optimistic that he's going to follow the advice of the Treasury Secretary and radically de-escalate, particularly with non-China countries, and then find a more moderate off-ramp with China as well. 0.66

00:21:45.000 President Trump seems to be giving some of those signals.

00:21:47.000 So over the weekend, he gave a signal that he might lower tariffs.

00:21:49.000 Thank you.

00:21:50.000 At some point, I'm going to lower them, because otherwise you could never do business with them.

00:21:55.000 And they want to do business very much.

00:21:57.000 Look, their economy is really doing badly.

00:22:00.000 Their economy is collapsing.

00:22:04.000 He is right that China is having severe economic trouble.

00:22:07.000 The difference is that China is a dictatorship. 0.64

00:22:09.000 So if things get really bad, they can just kill some people and oppress some people and they'll probably be fine.

00:22:13.000 And if worse comes to worse, China can blockade Taiwan.

00:22:15.000 So President Trump does look to be seeking an off-ramp, which is why the markets have not cratered.

00:22:20.000 At the same time, he then makes comments that suggest maybe he's not so quick to look for an off-ramp.

00:22:25.000 Now, maybe this is all a policy of strategic ambiguity.

00:22:27.000 It has been suggested that President Trump is basically threatening tariffs in order to reduce the tariffs.

00:22:34.000 Okay, if that's the policy, again, I've said from day one, if that's the policy that we are threatening action in order to get other countries to lower their tariffs and their non-tariff trade barriers, I'm okay with that.

00:22:44.000 I don't think that's necessary.

00:22:45.000 I think if you go to Vietnam and just say that, they will lower their trade barriers without the sort of open threats to every country on Earth.

00:22:52.000 With that said, President Trump, again, gives a lot of mixed signals here.

00:22:55.000 So in the same interview with Meet the Press, he suggested that if, in fact, there are supply chain problems, kids don't need that many pencils.

00:23:04.000 I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs, that's 11 years old, needs to have 30 dolls.

00:23:11.000 I think they can have three dolls or four dolls.

00:23:14.000 Because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable. 0.96

00:23:17.000 We had a trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with China.

00:23:22.000 When you say they could have $3 instead of $30, are you saying Americans could see empty store shelves?

00:23:29.000 No, I'm not saying that.

00:23:31.000 I'm just saying they don't need to have $30.

00:23:33.000 They can have $3.

00:23:34.000 They don't need to have 250 pencils.

00:23:36.000 They can have $5.

00:23:38.000 But you're basically saying there could be some supply shortages because of the tariffs.

00:23:42.000 I'm basically saying we don't have to waste money on a trade deficit with China for things we don't need, for junk.

00:23:49.000 Okay, this is not going on.

00:23:51.000 As I said last week, President Trump should abandon this line immediately.

00:23:54.000 This is an unsuccessful political line.

00:23:57.000 Retailing the idea that kids need fewer pencils or dolls is one of the worst approaches to this issue on a public relations level that I can imagine.

00:24:06.000 I mean, President Trump himself is a particularly conspicuous consumer of very, very expensive things.

00:24:11.000 So the idea that kids have to go without dolls or pencils or that parents should willingly accept higher rates on those things because they don't need cheap junk from China.

00:24:20.000 It's easy for President Trump to say and a lot of other people are going to say that if the economy continues to...

00:24:25.000 Play footsie with recession.

00:24:27.000 We'll get to more on that in a moment.

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00:26:40.000 Meanwhile, President Trump today put out an executive order suggesting that he was going to put a 100% tariff.

00:26:47.000 On foreign movies.

00:26:48.000 Which, yeah, like, why?

00:26:50.000 Just why?

00:26:51.000 I'm sorry, if Hollywood is unable to lower its costs, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to go elsewhere and produce your movies.

00:26:58.000 All movies and TV shows now, this has been going on for decades, are basically produced outside of Hollywood.

00:27:03.000 Hollywood has emptied itself out and that has forced them to actually move their own businesses to places like Vancouver in Canada or go to other states like Georgia in order to film.

00:27:13.000 Or go abroad to Romania or Hungary or wherever else in order to film.

00:27:18.000 So President Trump thinks that by radically increasing the cost on movie production in a time when streaming is already eating out the profit margins of all of the movie-making industry, that is a very badly calibrated executive order.

00:27:30.000 President Trump put up a post on Truth Social.

00:27:33.000 The movie industry in America is dying a very fast death.

00:27:35.000 Other countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States.

00:27:39.000 Hollywood and many other areas within the United States are being devastated.

00:27:42.000 This is a concerted effort by other nations and therefore a national security threat.

00:27:46.000 So he's saying it's a national security threat for Romania to offer a tax incentive to film in Romania.

00:27:52.000 I'm sorry, that is not remotely a national security threat.

00:27:54.000 It may be a threat to Tom Cruise's next paycheck, but that is not a national security threat.

00:27:59.000 If Matthew McConaughey makes less money because films are being made or a key grip in Hollywood has to travel in order to go film over in Budapest.

00:28:10.000 That is not remotely a national security threat.

00:28:13.000 We are emptying the term national security threat of pretty much all content.

00:28:17.000 He says he was authorizing the Department of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% tariff on any and all movies coming into our country that are produced in foreign lands.

00:28:27.000 We want movies made in America again.

00:28:30.000 Where is the demand for this?

00:28:32.000 Seriously, it's just a stop to the Actors Union, right?

00:28:35.000 It's a stop to the Writers Union and to...

00:28:37.000 SAG-AFTRA and to the rest of the big Hollywood unions. 0.99

00:28:40.000 When he says, in addition to everything else, this creates messaging and propaganda, which is something that he says here.

00:28:45.000 If you want to stop the messaging and propaganda, President Trump should go back to actually shutting down TikTok.

00:28:51.000 You want to end the foreign propaganda?

00:28:54.000 How about the weaponization of social media by TikTok in order to generate support for a bunch of anti-American policies?

00:29:00.000 Because that is a thing that is very much happening.

00:29:03.000 In fact, according to a brand new They are literally undermining his own trade agenda.

00:29:31.000 According to NCRI, Following President Trump's April 2025 tariffs on Chinese imports, this is realitieslaststand.com reporting, TikTok was suddenly flooded with well-produced videos telling Americans to cut out the middleman and buy straight from Chinese sellers.

00:29:44.000 What they don't show is how this effort hides the product's true origin.

00:29:47.000 Sellers use shady tricks like routing shipments through third countries and setting up shell companies to dodge tariffs.

00:29:52.000 Many packages also are mislabeled to sneak through customs.

00:29:55.000 According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, this is all part of a coordinated CCP effort called the Shopping in China Campaign.

00:30:02.000 It is not just a marketing push.

00:30:03.000 It is a full-blown psychological operation using TikTok's algorithm and state-backed influencers to evade tariffs by messing with how Americans think, shop, and spend.

00:30:11.000 So again, if the goal is to shut down propaganda outlets, TikTok would be like number one on that list.

00:30:16.000 And yet, yesterday, President Trump also suggested that he might give TikTok another extension.

00:30:20.000 Again, the sort of discombobulation policy is not well calibrated toward the success of the policies.

00:30:25.000 President Trump told NBC's Meet the Press, quote, perhaps I shouldn't say this, but I have a little warm spot in my heart for TikTok.

00:30:32.000 And then he said he'd like to see a deal, but he'd be willing to give a reprieve despite not having made a deal. 0.67

00:30:38.000 This is ridiculous. 0.80

00:30:40.000 First of all, it is bucking constitutional congressional authority. 0.87

00:30:43.000 Congress should actually push its own preserve here. 0.98

00:30:47.000 Congress passed a law.

00:30:48.000 It passed through both houses of Congress.

00:30:50.000 It was signed into law.

00:30:51.000 President Trump was in favor of the TikTok ban until he suddenly reversed himself.

00:30:55.000 And TikTok is, in fact, spreading foreign propaganda.

00:30:59.000 Meanwhile, by the way, Both Russia and China are moving aggressively to counter President Trump's agenda abroad.

00:31:06.000 According to the UK Telegraph, Vladimir Putin and President Xi are now signing a series of agreements to work in coordination with each other.

00:31:18.000 Those agreements are likely to span everything from economics to military agreements.

00:31:25.000 One day ago, Xi Jinping...

00:31:28.000 He said that he was entering into a mutual trust mission with Vladimir Putin in Russia in order to cement strategic ties in the face of new circumstances.

00:31:37.000 Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is threatening greater action in Ukraine.

00:31:41.000 He gave a speech in Moscow in which he said that they have the strength and means to bring their war on Ukraine to a logical conclusion. 0.70

00:31:49.000 He said we have enough strength and means to bring what was started in 2022 to a logical conclusion with the outcome Russia... 0.97

00:31:56.000 He said there was no need to use nuclear weapons.

00:31:59.000 And of course, he has basically made clear that he wants to take the rest of Ukraine. 0.63

00:32:03.000 So far, Putin has offered zero concessions in order to get to the table right now.

00:32:07.000 Which is why, by the way, it is good that the United States is doing the thing that it should have been doing all along.

00:32:13.000 Which is pressuring Vladimir Putin with the reality.

00:32:17.000 That the West is not simply going to allow him to walk into Kiev.

00:32:20.000 According to the New York Times, Ukraine is now getting more help in its war with Russia.

00:32:24.000 A Patriot air defense system that was based in Israel will now be sent to Ukraine after its refurbished.

00:32:28.000 For a current and former U.S. official said in recent days, Western allies are discussing the logistics of Germany or Greece, giving another one, which of course would be necessary given the fact that Kiev was hammered just a couple of weeks ago.

00:32:38.000 We were in Kiev to interview Vladimir Zelensky.

00:32:40.000 I left the next day.

00:32:41.000 There was a massive attack on Kiev that ended up killing something like 12 people and injuring another 60. So the abandonment of Ukraine is a figment of the imagination.

00:32:51.000 Ukraine is not, in fact, being abandoned, which is good.

00:32:53.000 Meanwhile, in other foreign policy matters, the continued assault by Iranian proxies on Israel is quite real.

00:33:01.000 So, as you know, because we talked about it last week, I was recently in Israel.

00:33:06.000 I was given an honor to celebrate on Yom Hatsumu by lighting a torch.

00:33:11.000 And I left on Sunday morning, very early.

00:33:14.000 From Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, and approximately four hours later, three and a half hours later, a Houthi missile actually hit right outside Ben-Gurion Airport.

00:33:22.000 This apparently was due to a failure of the FAD and Arrow 3 anti-missile systems of Israel.

00:33:29.000 Here is some video, you can see it, of the missile hitting directly outside the airport.

00:33:33.000 It's pretty scary stuff, because it only missed by about 350 yards.

00:33:37.000 Like a direct hit on the center of the airport.

00:33:40.000 Instead, it hit an unpopulated area.

00:33:43.000 It blew up some of the ground near that.

00:33:47.000 There were some slight injuries.

00:33:48.000 Thank God the Houthis didn't actually hit the airport directly.

00:33:53.000 This is just another aspect of the Iranian terror war on America and its allies. 0.88

00:33:58.000 And yes, it is a war by Iranian proxies on American shipping, on the American Navy, in the Red Sea.

00:34:05.000 It is a terror war against America's allies, ranging from Israel to Saudi Arabia.

00:34:09.000 One of the signal failures of the Biden administration was attempting to curb Saudi Arabia's war on the Houthis by depriving them of the weaponry necessary to actually win in Yemen, leaving huge swaths of the country in control of the Houthis, who now are firing long-range missiles.

00:34:22.000 Iran, by the way, has announced that it has developed a new long-range missile that is capable of hitting Israel.

00:34:27.000 Presumably, if they have a nuclear weapon, they will then put that nuclear weapon on top of the missile and fire it at Israel. 0.67

00:34:32.000 Meanwhile, several Iranians were just arrested in the UK in two anti-terrorism operations.

00:34:39.000 In one operation, according to the AFP, five men, four of them Iranian, were taken into custody on suspicion of preparation of a terrorist attack.

00:34:46.000 This is no surprise because the Iranians spread their terror tentacles all over the world, ranging from Latin America to Europe to the United States. 1.00

00:34:53.000 Obviously, Iranian agents were planning to assassinate President Trump. 0.61

00:34:56.000 President Trump, for his part, has been attempting to negotiate some sort of deal with Iran.

00:35:02.000 The question inside the Trump administration has been whether they're attempting to negotiate a deal that will completely dismantle the Iranian nuclear facilities or whether they will allow them to continue a quote unquote civilian program while opening up the sanctions, which would basically just be the Barack Obama program, but on steroids because Iran is now significantly closer to it.

00:35:20.000 That has been sort of an open debate inside the administration.

00:35:26.000 It's also been an open debate as to whether the United States is willing to do anything if some sort of nuclear deal is not signed with the Iranians.

00:35:34.000 President Trump, for his part, has been very consistent and clear on this.

00:35:37.000 Yesterday on NBC News, He said that the goal was total dismantlement of the nuclear regime in Tehran.

00:35:44.000 The idea was get rid of the nuclear weapons and the nuclear facilities entirely, not the sort of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff proposal that was basically the Obama proposal, allow them nuclear development to 3.67%.

00:35:55.000 President Trump is saying no, total dismantlement is the goal.

00:35:58.000 Is the goal of these talks limiting Iran's nuclear program or total dismantlement?

00:36:05.000 Total dismantlement.

00:36:06.000 That's all you'll accept?

00:36:08.000 That's all I'd accept.

00:36:09.000 Secretary Rubio has said that he would accept, or the idea is there is an openness to accepting peaceful, civil, nuclear programs.

00:36:20.000 Well, that's what people, I didn't say anything contradictory.

00:36:23.000 I said that people are talking about that, and this is something that's really pretty new in the dialogue.

00:36:28.000 And I'd have to be, you know, my inclination is to say, what do you need that for?

00:36:33.000 You have a lot of oil.

00:36:34.000 So you want total dismantlement, bottom line?

00:36:36.000 I think that I would be open to hearing it.

00:36:40.000 You know, civilian energy, it's called.

00:36:42.000 But, you know, civilian energy often leads to military wars.

00:36:48.000 And we don't want to have them have a nuclear weapon.

00:36:52.000 Now, again, there is precedent for a peaceful civilian nuclear program.

00:36:56.000 The United States signed an agreement.

00:36:58.000 In 2009, with the UAE, on peaceful nuclear cooperation, but basically what that meant is that the UAE would forego all domestic uranium enrichment and reprocessing of spent fuel, and they would have to be completely open to all sorts of inspections.

00:37:13.000 That is the only kind of deal that will work here.

00:37:15.000 Because remember, President Trump, as we've said on the show over and over, called the JCPOA, the Obama-Iran deal, the worst deal in American history.

00:37:22.000 Well, joining us on the line to discuss this, because this week is the anniversary of President Trump pulling out of the terrible, historically bad JCPOA, is Senator Tom Cotton.

00:37:30.000 He's the United States Senator from Arkansas.

00:37:32.000 He's author of The New York Times'number one bestseller, Seven Things You Can't Say About China.

00:37:36.000 Senator Cotton, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:37:38.000 really appreciate it.

00:37:38.000 Hey, Ben.

00:37:39.000 Thanks for having me on.

00:37:40.000 So this week marks the anniversary of the JCP JCPOA's end, President Trump killing the JCPOA, that of course was the terrible, historically bad Iran deal that President Obama cut with Iran, and President Trump killed it.

00:37:54.000 Why don't we start with, for people who don't actually know what the JCPOA was, why it was bad, what that was, and then we can talk about what President Trump is attempting to do, or maybe attempting to do with negotiations with Iran right now.

00:38:05.000 President Obama's deal with Iran was so bad, as Prime Minister Netanyahu put it, because it didn't block Iran's path to a nuclear weapon, it's paved their path. 0.78

00:38:13.000 And the critical point in that deal was it allowed Iran to keep centrifuges and to continue enriching uranium.

00:38:20.000 Uranium can get enriched at different levels.

00:38:22.000 At a fairly low level is what's necessary for civilian nuclear power.

00:38:26.000 That's at 3.67%.

00:38:28.000 But if you have any enrichment capability, if you have those centrifuges, Then moving from 367 up to 20 and up to 60 and ultimately up to weapons grade really is not that hard.

00:38:39.000 It's just a matter of time.

00:38:40.000 And that's one of the reasons why the nuclear deal with Iran...

00:38:44.000 That Barack Obama made was so terrible because it left them that vast nuclear infrastructure.

00:38:49.000 Of course, it did nothing to address their missile program either.

00:38:52.000 And you see the consequences of that now.

00:38:54.000 Iran is arming rebels in Yemen that are shooting at our ships and shooting at Israel.

00:38:58.000 They just almost hit Israel's airport over the weekend.

00:39:01.000 They're shipping out their missiles and drones to Russia to use for attacks on Ukraine as well.

00:39:06.000 And they're not that far away from having missiles that could hit the United States.

00:39:10.000 So this is a threat not just to our friends in the Middle East, but a threat to the American homeland imminently in just a few years. 0.99

00:39:17.000 President Trump, well, he withdrew from that terrible deal because it paved their way to a nuclear weapon.

00:39:22.000 And what happened under the Biden administration is that they began to enrich uranium up to near weapons grade.

00:39:28.000 And what President Trump has said as recently as his Meet the Press interview over the weekend is that we have to have the full dismantlement.

00:39:36.000 We cannot have them with any centrifuges or enrichment capacity.

00:39:41.000 And if they wanted civilian nuclear power, they don't need that.

00:39:44.000 Lots of countries around the world have civilian nuclear power, and they import uranium for their nuclear power plants at the appropriate level without any ability to turn it into weapons-grade uranium.

00:39:58.000 What threat does Iran actually pose to the United States, to Europe, to our neighbors in the Middle Eastern region?

00:40:04.000 There's been a lot of talk recently about the idea that even if Iran were to gain a nuclear weapon, it wouldn't have any impact on the United States because the idea that Iran is going to fire a missile some 8,000 miles and hit the United States is far-fetched, or that they would attack Europe directly is far-fetched.

00:40:18.000 And that's true.

00:40:19.000 I mean, the idea that Iran is going to directly launch a missile on the United States, for example, that's not something that's going to happen.

00:40:24.000 But there are serious geopolitical threats that exist with the nuclear Iran ranging from the region to the globe. 0.99

00:40:29.000 Maybe you can talk a little bit about the threat of Iran. 0.94

00:40:31.000 What are its ambitions?

00:40:32.000 What is it attempting to do?

00:40:33.000 Thank you.

00:40:41.000 We spend a tremendous amount of time worried about North Korea's nuclear arsenal and trying to deter it or trying to build missile defenses for it.

00:40:49.000 And frankly, I'm more concerned about the crazed, theocratic Ayatollahs in Iran than I am the Kim regime in North Korea. 0.85

00:40:58.000 But that's just a few years away as well.

00:41:00.000 Again, they're developing intercontinental missiles.

00:41:04.000 Under the flimsy cover of a so-called space launch program, it's the same technology you need to develop ballistic missiles.

00:41:10.000 But let's say that is a few years away.

00:41:12.000 What in the interim would a nuclear weapon do?

00:41:15.000 Well, look at what Iran already does. 0.95

00:41:18.000 Threatening Americans in the region. 0.97

00:41:20.000 For that matter, threatening Americans here in the United States. 0.86

00:41:22.000 They tried to assassinate Donald Trump and former administration officials, for goodness sakes.

00:41:28.000 They already armed terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and rebels in Yemen that are directly threatening our sailors and our troops today.

00:41:37.000 And they do that without Imagine what they would do if they had a nuclear umbrella.

00:41:43.000 And then, of course, there's the threat that they pose directly to Israel as well. 0.90

00:41:48.000 Former Iranian leaders have said that Israel is a one-bomb nation.

00:41:51.000 They don't mean that Israel only has one nuclear weapon.

00:41:54.000 They mean that they think they could destroy Israel with just one of their own weapons if they ever got it. 0.69

00:42:00.000 And that's not just destroying Israel.

00:42:02.000 That's destroying the seat of Christendom around the world as well.

00:42:05.000 Another effect would be the nuclear proliferation throughout the region.

00:42:10.000 In Riyadh, or you're sitting in Abu Dhabi, and Iran gets a nuclear weapon, it's hard to imagine how you could feel comfortable without getting your own nuclear weapons as a deterrent. 0.90

00:42:20.000 And the more countries that develop nuclear weapons, and I think particularly the more countries in the Middle East, an incredibly volatile region that develop nuclear weapons, the much greater risks that those nuclear weapons are used or those nuclear weapons fall in the hands of terrorists who would like to use them against the United States or our interests around the world.

00:42:39.000 I mean, there's also the major issue of the nuclear weapon as a threat, and we've seen this in the Russia-Ukraine war, where the fact that Russia is a nuclear-armed nation means that the ability to push back against an invasion of eastern Ukraine or the Donbass region is limited by the fact that you're always worried about the possibility of this escalating to nuclear war.

00:42:55.000 Imagine an Ayatollah-run regime with a nuclear weapon using that nuclear umbrella with capacity to threaten Israel with terror attacks in Judea and Samaria or from the Gaza Strip or from its north, or terror attacks on the Saudi oil fields with the threat that if there's retaliation against Iran, then Iran will fire a nuclear weapon into Saudi Arabia and maybe take out. 0.83

00:43:13.000 I mean, these are all major geopolitical issues in which the United States obviously has an interest.

00:43:17.000 We have an interest in the Red Sea.

00:43:18.000 We have an interest in the flow of oil.

00:43:20.000 We have an interest in preventing the spread of terrorism around the region and in Europe as well.

00:43:24.000 And pretending that the world isn't interconnected in this way is simply ignoring reality, especially considering the fact that Iran, Russia, and China No, that's exactly right, Ben.

00:43:36.000 I mean, if you can contrast, for instance, the difference between the war in Ukraine versus the war over Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

00:43:45.000 One major difference is that Iraq didn't have nuclear weapons at the time.

00:43:47.000 Thankfully, they would have had nuclear weapons if Israel hadn't destroyed their nuclear weapons facilities in 1981. 0.89

00:43:53.000 But any time a country develops nuclear weapons, it severely limits.

00:43:58.000 Our freedom of action and our friends' freedom of action, it gives them much greater cover to do things like continue to support terrorism, terrorists that have killed thousands of Americans over the years.

00:44:10.000 So this is just one of the cascading effects you'd see if Iran ever got its hands on nuclear weapons. 0.85

00:44:17.000 And that's why President Trump has been very clear.

00:44:20.000 Going back 10 years, the first time I ever spoke to Donald Trump, in fact, in the summer of 2015, he was a new candidate.

00:44:27.000 He was coming to Arkansas.

00:44:29.000 We talked on the phone.

00:44:30.000 He thanked me for my work against the Iran nuclear deal and said that we can never have Iran. 1.00

00:44:35.000 Iran can never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon or the vast nuclear infrastructure to develop nuclear weapons.

00:44:41.000 And he hasn't changed a bit from that conversation I had with him in June of 2015 to where he is today in May of 2025.

00:44:50.000 So there's been a lot of mixed signals.

00:44:52.000 By the administration, not from President Trump directly, who's been actually quite consistent on this, but from, for example, the negotiator Steve Witkoff, special envoy to the region, who suggested that maybe Iran should have a civilian nuclear program and then seemed to walk that back a little bit.

00:45:04.000 Secretary of State Marco Rubio, of course, has said they shouldn't be allowed any nuclear program at all.

00:45:08.000 The nation of Qatar, which is trying to negotiate a lot of this, obviously...

00:45:12.000 Qatar has some dicey connections, shall we say. 1.00

00:45:15.000 They're the number one funder of Hamas.

00:45:17.000 They're essentially an Iranian cutout in a lot of these negotiations.

00:45:20.000 How should we view Qatar, which sort of plays this bizarre middleman role, with one foot as sort of friendly to the United States and then the other foot as a very, very friendly with Iran and terrorist groups around the region?

00:45:32.000 Well, first, Ben, the point you make about President Trump...

00:45:35.000 Being very consistent is correct.

00:45:37.000 He has advisors in his administration.

00:45:39.000 They're exploring other possibilities, like the possibility of a nuclear agreement that we have with other countries.

00:45:45.000 We have with the United Arab Emirates, for example, that would kind of put the lie to Iran that says they only want civilian nuclear power.

00:45:52.000 It's like, okay, fine.

00:45:53.000 We'll give you civilian nuclear power.

00:45:55.000 You just can't enrich uranium.

00:45:56.000 And if they say no to that, then we know what they really want.

00:45:59.000 So I think that's part of where Secretary Rubio is coming from. 0.99

00:46:02.000 But ultimately, in any administration, advisors advise and the presidents decide.

00:46:06.000 It's just like me and the Senate.

00:46:07.000 You know, I've got a lot of great advisors on my team, but I'm the one that has to decide how to vote, and I'm the one that has to cast that vote and answer for it to the people of Arkansas.

00:46:15.000 On the point of Qatar, you're right.

00:46:17.000 They play both sides, and unfortunately, they play the other side a little bit more closely than we would like.

00:46:22.000 They've long been close to Iran.

00:46:24.000 They've long been much more sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is kind of the intellectual font of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.

00:46:33.000 They've been hosting Hamas for many years. 0.51

00:46:36.000 Now, they might say, like, oh, well, Israel and the United States tacitly asked us to do so.

00:46:40.000 Okay, well.

00:46:42.000 Maybe, but we didn't ask you to put them up in a penthouse in the Four Seasons or to give them billions of dollars or to spread propaganda about Israel and what's happening in Gaza around the world.

00:46:52.000 Take, for instance, just a few weeks ago, there were widespread protests in Gaza by ordinary Gazans against Hamas.

00:47:00.000 And that led the news, not just in Israel, but in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and elsewhere in the Arab world.

00:47:06.000 If you were in Qatar, you had no idea what was happening because Al Jazeera and Qatari media never broadcasted at all.

00:47:13.000 There's just a few more examples of how they've been playing both sides for too long.

00:47:16.000 And unfortunately, they played a little closer to the other side than we would like.

00:47:21.000 So there's been a lot of talk about what the United States involvement should be if the nuclear talks fail.

00:47:25.000 The idea being, would the United States participate in some sort of strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities to destroy those facilities, push off their nuclear program by 10 or 20 years or maybe indefinitely?

00:47:36.000 There have been some people suggesting that if the United States were to do that, it would launch a sort of all-out regional war.

00:47:41.000 I see zero evidence.

00:47:42.000 The United States killed Qasem Soleimani under President Trump's first term.

00:47:46.000 There was not an all-out regional war.

00:47:47.000 The fact is, Iran is massively weaker than it was during President Trump's first term, largely thanks to his maximum pressure campaign, but also thanks to Israel defenestrating Hamas, defenestrating Hezbollah, defenestrating an enormous number of Iranian proxy groups in the region, and then defenestrating Iran's air defense systems completely.

00:48:03.000 The skies over Tehran are completely open at this point.

00:48:06.000 So if this were to actually eventualize, if the United States were to participate in a strike, and maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't, I'd like to get your perspective on that, but I think the basic notion that there will be a regional all-out war, if that were to happen, I see zero evidence that that is the case, and that seems like the same sort of false construct that Barack Obama was pushing during his presidency, this idea that if you didn't cut a bad deal with Iran, there would be all-out regional war.

00:48:29.000 That false binary was sort of the guiding vision of the Obama foreign policy.

00:48:34.000 You see that being reflected on a lot of the left today and even some parts of the right.

00:48:38.000 Yeah, well, first off, Ben, You're right about the president, again, being consistent and clear on this.

00:48:44.000 He doesn't talk like a normal Republican president of the past.

00:48:48.000 They might have said, well, we'd like to have a deal, but if we don't, all options are on the table.

00:48:52.000 I mean, Donald Trump, he speaks the plain truth.

00:48:55.000 He says, you know, Iran can have a deal and live happily without death, or there will be bombing. 0.72

00:49:00.000 I mean, he couldn't be more blunt about it.

00:49:04.000 And the argument that...

00:49:07.000 Striking their nuclear facilities, whether it's United States, whether it's Israel, whether it's some combination, it's going to lead to some, quote-unquote, forever war.

00:49:16.000 Again, simply belies the historical facts, some of which you laid out.

00:49:21.000 President Trump authorized the killing of Qasem Soleimani, Iran's terrorist mastermind, in January of 2020.

00:49:27.000 And many of the same voices today who are hysterically claiming that strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities would lead to forever war were the same ones.

00:49:36.000 Then, in late 2019 and early 2020, saying that this was going to start another war.

00:49:41.000 I'm also reminded of the tanker wars in 1987 and 1988 when Iran was mining the Persian Gulf.

00:49:48.000 It was threatening oil shipping out of the Gulf.

00:49:50.000 It ultimately ended up destroying or severely damaging a U.S. naval vessel.

00:49:55.000 And what did Ronald Reagan do?

00:49:57.000 He didn't take it to the U.N. He actually sank half of Iran's navy.

00:50:01.000 He was asked on the walk to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House one day in that period, if we were at war with Iran now, and he looked and he chuckled in his kind of Reagan-esque way, and he said, no, Iran wouldn't be so stupid. 0.84

00:50:16.000 So again, it's many of the same voices in the past that said, The forceful but discriminant application of military power to achieve national objectives is going to lead to a war that were wrong then, that are wrong now as well. 0.96

00:50:29.000 And as you put it, Iran is both unusually dangerous and unusually weak in this moment. 0.99

00:50:34.000 Dangerous because of all the advances they made in their nuclear and missile program under Joe Biden, but weakened because Israel has destroyed their terrorist proxies.

00:50:43.000 Hamas and Hezbollah, we're in the process of doing that in Yemen. 1.00

00:50:46.000 And Israel also destroyed most of their air and missile defenses.

00:50:51.000 Well, Senator Tom Cotton, really appreciate your time and your insight.

00:50:54.000 Go check out his number one New York Times bestseller, Seven Things You Can't Say About China.

00:50:58.000 Senator Cotton, really appreciate the time.

00:51:00.000 Thank you, Ben.

00:51:01.000 Meanwhile, opposing President Trump's very consistent agenda with regard to Iran have been members of the administration itself, people inside the administration who've been pitching the idea that Qatar should broker a sort of nuclear deal with Iran.

00:51:13.000 These are people on the right who will say that if the United States participates in a strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities, that this will lead to a widespread global conflagration, which is a lie.

00:51:22.000 That is not true.

00:51:22.000 There is zero evidence of that.

00:51:23.000 The United States, under President Trump, killed the Iranian terror mastermind Qasem Soleimani.

00:51:28.000 It not only did not lead to a regional war, it was part of crippling Iran's terror infrastructure.

00:51:33.000 So it is just not true.

00:51:34.000 It's obviously an agenda that is also being pushed by Qatar, which is half a cutout for the Iranian regime.

00:51:40.000 America does have an airbase in Qatar who could just as easily move it.

00:51:42.000 To Bahrain or UAE, I would recommend that actually the United States should do that because there is no reason why Qatar, which again does the work of both the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, should be a recipient of the largesse of the United States in that particular way. 0.77

00:51:56.000 But there is a bizarre horseshoe theory that is formed between left and right with regard to Iran, a sort of strange willingness to accept an Iranian nuclear regime.

00:52:04.000 And again, I think there's an argument to be made over whether the United States needs to participate in a strike, even whether Israel should just do it itself.

00:52:11.000 If the United States is unable to secure a deal with the Iranian regime in order to fully dismantle their nuclear capabilities, and also, by the way, to dismantle their ballistic missile capabilities, and also to get them to not use newly minted American money to pay their terror proxies all over the region, which is one of the big flaws of the JCPOA. 0.67

00:52:32.000 It allowed Iran to open their economy, no restrictions on missile development, no restrictions on terror support, something that even the awful Secretary of State John Kerry...

00:52:41.000 Admitted at the time.

00:52:43.000 If you can do a deal that somehow achieves all those goals, well, congratulations.

00:52:48.000 But if you cannot, it is a one-day sortie for American B2s.

00:52:51.000 But even if you don't want to use American B2s, if Israel should hit the Iranian nuclear facilities, no, that's not going to lead to an all-out regional war.

00:52:57.000 By the way, that all-out regional war, from Israel's perspective, already exists. 0.57

00:53:00.000 They've been attacked on literally every border they have by Iranian proxies.

00:53:04.000 They're being attacked from the south by the Houthis.

00:53:06.000 They're being attacked...

00:53:06.000 From the southwest by Hamas and the Gaza Strip.

00:53:09.000 They were attacked from the north by Hezbollah.

00:53:11.000 They were attacked from Syria by Hezbollah agents.

00:53:14.000 They've been attacked in Judea and Samaria by Iran-backed terror groups, ranging from Hamas to Islamic Jihad to the PFLP.

00:53:21.000 So the idea that some sort of radical Iranian escalation is going to take place if Israel takes out the nuclear facilities is ridiculous.

00:53:27.000 But this has now been promoted by people on the both left and the isolationist right.

00:53:32.000 And it's sort of fascinating to see that horseshoe theory playing out in real time.

00:53:36.000 So, for example, Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, he says that the best way for Israel to stand up against Iran is for Israel to basically surrender in the Gaza Strip to Hamas, which of course is ridiculous.

00:53:49.000 The best thing we could do to stand up against Iran would be for Israel to end the conflict in Gaza, get the hostages back, because, you know, starting to rebuild and giving the Palestinians some hope for life.

00:54:04.000 would allow Saudi Arabia and other nations in the region to, frankly, recognize Israel and then put an even more united front against Iran. 0.99

00:54:13.000 you That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. 0.94

00:54:16.000 So you're going to reconstitute an Iranian proxy state in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, and somehow this will help the Abraham Accords and make the region safer? 1.00

00:54:25.000 When people say there's a two-state solution or the Palestinians must have, who rules it? 0.98

00:54:28.000 What does the territory look like?

00:54:29.000 I think we know the answers to that because we've seen it actually happen.

00:54:32.000 Since the Oslo Accords in the early 90s, the answer has been terror states supported by Iran, which are a threat not just to Israel, but also to the Saudis, to the Jordanian monarchy, by the way, to the Egyptians. 0.75

00:54:43.000 There's a reason that Jordan is not allowing people to flow in.

00:54:47.000 Palestinians, 60% of Jordan is Palestinian.

00:54:49.000 There's a reason that they are not letting more Palestinians come from Gaza Strip to Jordan or from Jadantum area to Jordan.

00:54:54.000 There's a reason Egypt has rejected all refugees into its country from these areas. 0.98

00:54:59.000 And it is not because they think that it's more humane to keep people in a war zone.

00:55:04.000 It's because they don't want those people in their country because they believe that they support terror and they are correct about that as a generalized matter. 0.98

00:55:10.000 So this is incredibly stupid, obviously, but it's also supported by some So, Jeffrey Sachs is a great example. 0.99

00:55:18.000 So, Jeffrey Sachs is a globalist. 0.99

00:55:19.000 There is just no way to describe the word globalist without talking about Jeffrey Sachs.

00:55:24.000 Jeffrey Sachs is, of course, a professor, an American economist.

00:55:29.000 He has...

00:55:30.000 Taught at Columbia University.

00:55:32.000 He serves as the president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and is a frequent guest with Tucker Carlson because he favors an isolationist foreign policy.

00:55:42.000 But that isolationist foreign policy is connected to a globalist regime.

00:55:45.000 What he actually wants is for the UN to rule the world, meaning a multipolar world ending American hegemony around the planet, curtailing American power and allowing America's enemies to have vast run over the globe.

00:55:58.000 It is bizarre that Jeffrey Sachs and Tucker Carlson seem to be in alignment on this agenda.

00:56:02.000 Again, there is no way to use the word globalist without talking about Jeffrey Sachs.

00:56:06.000 Jeffrey Sachs is a textbook globalist.

00:56:09.000 Globalist does not mean that America should be involved in the world.

00:56:14.000 That is not globalist.

00:56:15.000 Globalist means that America's priorities should be reduced to a precinct of UN rule or the World Bank or the IMF.

00:56:24.000 That's globalist.

00:56:25.000 And that's all stuff that Jeffrey Sachs believes in.

00:56:27.000 He believes in a sort of...

00:56:28.000 Global Green New Deal socialism that is bizarre in the extreme.

00:56:34.000 Here he was over the weekend talking about global government.

00:56:36.000 Remember, he's a frequent guest with some sort of isolationist types on the right.

00:56:40.000 So you tell me why Jeffrey Sachs, who is, again, in the dictionary under the word globalist, there's a picture of Jeffrey Sachs, why he is on with people who declare themselves America first, spewing the same sort of nonsense.

00:56:52.000 And there's one other concept that I find very, very useful.

00:56:57.000 And it's actually embodied in the European idea.

00:57:00.000 It came from the Catholic Church originally, but it's called subsidiarity.

00:57:05.000 And the idea of subsidiarity is, let's get real.

00:57:10.000 We need governments at all levels.

00:57:13.000 We need a global government, that's the UN.

00:57:16.000 We need a regional government, that's the European Union.

00:57:19.000 We need a national government, that is the government of Cyprus.

00:57:24.000 We need a local government.

00:57:26.000 That is the Nicosia City Hall where we are right now.

00:57:30.000 You have governments at all levels.

00:57:35.000 Hey, so the key there is not that there's a government of Cyprus.

00:57:39.000 The key is a global government at the level of the UN.

00:57:42.000 Jeffrey Sachs has been quite warm, by the way, toward China.

00:57:45.000 And there's a reason for that as well.

00:57:47.000 Well, the sort of isolationist wing inside the Trump administration is now leaking.

00:57:51.000 I mean, let's be very clear about this.

00:57:52.000 The leakers inside the administration are not the people who are more in line with the Trump Peace Through Strength agenda.

00:57:59.000 All the leakers thus far have come from one wing of the Trump administration, and it is in fact a more isolationist wing of the Trump administration.

00:58:05.000 The latest leak comes courtesy of the Washington Post.

00:58:08.000 Quote, President Donald Trump's decision to oust his national security advisor, Michael Walz, was the product of a slow accumulation of frustration with a former Green Beret officer who was seen as far more eager to use military force than his boss in the Oval Office.

00:58:19.000 He had been clashing with other top officials since early in the administration, including over whether to pursue military action against Iran.

00:58:25.000 Senior officials and Trump advisors said Friday, so I have a question.

00:58:28.000 If the Trump administration does not want people leaking, maybe they should be investigating the leaks.

00:58:32.000 We already know that there were leakers inside the Defense Department, and they were allegedly fired over those leaks, and they were very much in line with the sort of isolationist wing of the Trump foreign policy regime.

00:58:44.000 The article says that Walt supposedly upset President Trump after an Oval Office visit in early February by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the National Security Advisor appeared to share the Israeli leader's conviction that the time was ripe to strike Iran.

00:58:57.000 Two of the people said, who do you think is leaking that?

00:58:59.000 Again, if you don't like leaks from the administration to the Washington Post, maybe you should actually look at who's leaking and why they are doing that leaking.

00:59:05.000 And the attempt is to use the movement of Walt from NSA to UN ambassador in order to suggest...

00:59:11.000 That the globalists have to be stopped.

00:59:13.000 Well, again, it's very weird that the isolationists and the actual globalists like Jeffrey Sachs are very much in line.

00:59:19.000 The Israeli Prime Minister, by the way, denied the idea that there was intensive and exclusive contact with Mike Waltz.

00:59:26.000 The office of the Prime Minister said, contrary to the Washington Post report, Prime Minister Netanyahu did not have intensive contact with Mike Waltz on Iran.

00:59:34.000 Prime Minister Netanyahu had a warm meeting with Mike Waltz and Steve Witkoff at Blair House in February, prior to the Prime Minister's meeting with President Trump.

00:59:41.000 At the White House, Mike Waltz also joined VP J.D. Vance in a meeting with the PM before leaving Washington.

00:59:46.000 Since then, the PM, the former National Security Advisor, and Steve Witkoff had one phone conversation that did not deal with Iran.

00:59:52.000 But, again, the people who are leaking to the press from the Trump administration are people who are very much in the sort of isolationist wing of the Trump administration.

01:00:00.000 They also seem to be allied with the Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.

01:00:05.000 And there are a lot of people in this sort of wing of the party who suddenly, over the weekend, Started promoting the idea that a strike on Iran involving the United States would lead to a broad regional war or that there was not even a threat to the United States if Iran were to gain a nuclear weapon.

01:00:22.000 Again, there's this bizarre and peculiar and I think foolish idea in foreign policy that if something does not amount to an immediate threat, meaning like Cuba with a nuclear weapon pointed at American shores, that it's not a threat at all.

01:00:34.000 And that's not how the world works.

01:00:35.000 The entire business of foreign policy is attempting to game out What is the most likely and worst possibilities to occur from actions that are occurring across the world today?

01:00:44.000 That's how you shape a foreign policy.

01:00:46.000 By the way, it's how you make good decisions in your own life.

01:00:49.000 You don't let your kids randomly wander into the street because you think, well, you know, our street's pretty calm.

01:00:54.000 The chance of a car actually hitting the kid pretty low.

01:00:56.000 You keep your kid out of the street because you don't want your kid to get hit by a car.

01:01:00.000 You make decisions like this all throughout your life based on the probabilities, based on the risk factors, based on the reward, based on that risk-reward ratio.

01:01:08.000 The idea that you do foreign policy based solely on the question of whether Iran is going to fire a nuclear weapon directly at the United States, ignoring the regional ramifications, nuclear proliferation, control of the Red Sea, control of the Straits of Hormuz, control of the oil flow, the possibility of attacks on American allies, the possibility of widespread nuclear conflict in a region that then spreads outward.

01:01:27.000 If you like India, Pakistan, man, how'd you like that in the Middle East?

01:01:31.000 If the way you do foreign policy is basically, if it's not happening right now in my living room, I don't care about that.

01:01:37.000 Let's just say that that is a short-sighted way to do American foreign policy.

01:01:41.000 All righty, coming up, in Australia, the leftists win.

01:01:46.000 We're going to ask the question as to whether President Trump's trade war is actually benefiting the United States or not benefiting the United States when it comes to getting our allies elected, meaning like right-wing allies elected in countries all over the world, first.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - May 05, 2025

Stop Giving Your Money To Crappy People

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