The Ben Shapiro Show - TAPE Emerges in Nancy Guthrie Kidnapping

00:00:00.000 Tape emerges of the presumed kidnappers and the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping.

00:00:04.000 We'll go through all the details with Lyndon Blake.

00:00:06.000 We also have breaking economic news, as well as a shooting in Canada that appears to be trans. 0.53

00:00:12.000 The shooter appears to be trans. 0.54

00:00:14.000 And airspace was closed in El Paso, supposedly for 10 days, and that was revised down.

00:00:18.000 Mexican drug cartels breaching American airspace.

00:00:20.000 A lot going on.

00:00:21.000 First, tonight, we're going live with an all-new friendly fire.

00:00:24.000 If you've never watched Friendly Fire before, here's the deal: it's the only time and place you're going to get me, Matt Walsh, Michael Moles, Andrew Clavin, all in the same place for a full hour, and we're going to say exactly what we think, as you might imagine.

00:00:34.000 We take the biggest stories in the headlines, we discuss them, debate them, and we probably disagree on them just a little bit.

00:00:39.000 And yes, the live chat will be open for members, so you can jump in and be part of the conversation with us.

00:00:43.000 It starts tonight, 7 p.m. Eastern.

00:00:45.000 Watch it at dailywire.com or on the Dailywire Plus app.

00:00:49.000 Well, we do have some breaking news in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping case.

00:00:54.000 Some of it is good news in the sense that we now have more information.

00:00:57.000 Some of it is a little bit squirrely in the sense that somebody was suspected and then picked up and then released over the course of the last 24 hours.

00:01:05.000 So, according to the New York Post, the FBI finally released the first images of Nancy Guthrie's suspected abductor.

00:01:11.000 It was 10 days after she vanished from her Arizona home.

00:01:15.000 The delay was caused by a couple of obstacles.

00:01:16.000 One, her security camera was missing.

00:01:18.000 And two, she did not actually subscribe to the camera's backup storage plan.

00:01:24.000 She was not paying for a Google Home subscription, which would have stored her nest feed, even if the physical camera was removed.

00:01:30.000 But Google apparently was capable of still drawing up that data.

00:01:35.000 So it took them 10 days to find that data.

00:01:38.000 Investigators apparently could have gotten the video from Google in a few different ways.

00:01:41.000 They could have gotten a search warrant to issue to Google, or the family could have authorized them to conduct a search, or Google could have voluntarily opted to track it down.

00:01:49.000 Bottom line is that they are retaining an enormous amount of data, obviously.

00:01:53.000 Here is what some of the video looks like.

00:01:54.000 It is very creepy stuff.

00:01:57.000 There's a nest camera footage.

00:01:59.000 You can see a person who is masked and who appears to be carrying a pistol in his waistband, but kind of in an awkward place.

00:02:06.000 There's been suspicion that this person was an amateur, specifically because of how he is carrying the pistol. 0.95

00:02:12.000 He is carrying it directly in front of his crotch, which is a very dumb place to carry a weapon. 0.94

00:02:16.000 That is not typically where you're going to holster a firearm. 0.90

00:02:19.000 The person walks up to the camera, appears to be messing with the camera, and then goes over to the front of the house and picks up an object.

00:02:30.000 And then we have another angle of the person attempting to obstruct the object with leaves, trying to obstruct the camera with leaves.

00:02:38.000 There is some suspicion that perhaps there's a hole in the glove, which may have led to the leaving of some DNA evidence.

00:02:42.000 Of course, that is just suspicion at this point.

00:02:47.000 Unclear at this point, the status of Nancy Guthrie.

00:02:49.000 There has been no proof of life that has actually been put out thus far.

00:02:53.000 At the same time, TMZ founder Harvey Levin told CNN that the Bitcoin account that was attached to the first ransom note for Nancy Guthrie actually saw some activity late on Tuesday.

00:03:02.000 Here was Harvey Levin reporting.

00:03:05.000 About 12 minutes ago, we saw activity in that account.

00:03:14.000 Activity like what?

00:03:17.000 That's what I can't talk about.

00:03:20.000 There are reasons I can't, but all I can say is there is now activity in that Bitcoin account.

00:03:28.000 Okay.

00:03:29.000 Now, let me just ask one more question and you'll share with me what you can.

00:03:32.000 But when you say activity, is that that you can see money is going into the account, or are you able to tell whether it's money going in or going out?

00:03:41.000 Well, it would only show, as I understand this, money going in.

00:03:46.000 And the only thing you would see is money.

00:03:49.000 And Aaron, that's all I can say.

00:03:53.000 So, not a lot more information, but obviously it suggests there's somebody on the other end of the Bitcoin account who's drawing down the money.

00:04:01.000 Late yesterday, there was some news that a person had been detained for questioning.

00:04:04.000 That person has apparently now been released, according to the New York Times.

00:04:07.000 In an interview early on Wednesday, the man said he had not heard about Nancy Guthrie, but hopes she's found safe.

00:04:11.000 He said, I hope they got the suspect because I'm not it.

00:04:14.000 The FBI and Pima County, Arizona Sheriff's Department on Tuesday had carried out a court-authorized search related to the investigation in a place called Rio Rico, Arizona, which is an hour's drive south of Tucson.

00:04:25.000 As of 1.20 a.m. local time on Wednesday, the department had not yet confirmed it had released the person it had detained for questioning, but apparently they had completed their search of a property in Rio Rico.

00:04:36.000 Joining us online to give us all the updates is the host of Finding Nancy Guthrie, our ongoing true crime podcast.

00:04:41.000 Again, if you want all the updates on this case, you should be a Daily Wire subscriber so you can hear Lyndon Blake report on this stuff as it happens.

00:04:48.000 Lyndon joins us online now.

00:04:49.000 Lyndon, thanks so much for the time.

00:04:50.000 Really appreciate it.

00:04:52.000 Of course, a lot has happened over the last several hours, 12 hours, I would say, Ben.

00:04:58.000 Yeah, so why don't you give us the brief update on what exactly is going on and whether the investigation is progressing or whether wheels are just sort of spinning?

00:05:06.000 Well, I would say a lot has picked up since that FBI footage or since the FBI released that footage of the armed masked person from Nancy Guthrie's front doorbell cam.

00:05:16.000 It took eight days.

00:05:18.000 They worked with Google, with the Nest cameras to try to recover that footage.

00:05:22.000 And since that went out, I would say about 18 hours ago, things have really just started to pick up.

00:05:28.000 There was a person detained for questioning south of Tucson last night in a town called Rio Rico.

00:05:34.000 I just want to say that was always just for questioning.

00:05:37.000 And that person was released.

00:05:38.000 His name was Carlos.

00:05:39.000 He said he was a delivery driver in the Tucson area.

00:05:42.000 And he said when he was detained by the authorities, they showed him the picture of the masked armed person.

00:05:49.000 And Carlos said that authorities thought they had similar eyes, but he said he didn't know who Nancy Guthrie was, doesn't know who Savannah Guthrie is, and all that.

00:05:58.000 So that was the lead last night that was unfolding in real time, pretty late into the night.

00:06:03.000 And you were thinking that, okay, this footage was released.

00:06:07.000 Someone recognized this person and maybe this could have been him.

00:06:10.000 And now we know that it wasn't, but it's normal to bring people in for questioning and then they're gone.

00:06:17.000 Like I wouldn't call this like, oh, we're back at square one.

00:06:20.000 I wouldn't say that at all.

00:06:22.000 I think the footage is very clear.

00:06:25.000 Even though there's a mask on, you can still tell a lot about the person's eyes, eyebrows.

00:06:30.000 You can see facial hair, a mustache.

00:06:32.000 You can see how tall they are.

00:06:33.000 You can see the way they walk.

00:06:34.000 And the big thing is he turns around.

00:06:37.000 You can see a backpack.

00:06:38.000 People have already started to identify the windbreaker in this footage.

00:06:43.000 I mean, these are how these things are solved.

00:06:44.000 You look at what type of shoes that was wearing.

00:06:47.000 And if you think about other crime cases, you don't always get such a clear footage or picture.

00:06:53.000 And here you have 30 seconds of video of this guy kind of messing around because for someone that walked up to Nancy Guthrie's house with a backpack full to the rim of things he obviously came prepared to do with, he was not ready to cover up a camera.

00:07:12.000 And then that's what you see in the video.

00:07:13.000 He tried to go off and get some grass bush, something, and then went back to the camera to try to cover it up.

00:07:22.000 So just a treasure chest of things to uncover there.

00:07:25.000 But yeah, the absolute latest.

00:07:27.000 Now no one is in any type of custody or is being detained.

00:07:31.000 The one person last night, his name was Carlos.

00:07:33.000 He lived in Rio Rico and he was released about 1 a.m. Arizona time.

00:07:40.000 So Lyndon, one of the other pieces of information that was put out by Harvey Levin over at TMZ is that there was action in the Bitcoin account to which the Guthrie family had sent a bunch of money.

00:07:49.000 He did not really reveal much about what was going on with that.

00:07:52.000 You would assume that just means somebody was drawing the money down.

00:07:55.000 Yeah, well, that was interesting because Harvey, and he did say Harvey Levin, TMZ founder, who has laid eyes on this ransom note, he said he did not feel comfortable revealing the amount that was in there.

00:08:06.000 He just didn't want to do that.

00:08:07.000 He was very cautious about the wording when even talking about the Bitcoin activity in the ransom note.

00:08:13.000 But KGUN, a local station in Tucson, that also got the note, they said it was less than $300.

00:08:20.000 And I think that's huge too, because the more we're learning about this new digital age that we're in and doing all this investigative work in this new era, like people, you know, at first, like, oh, how can you track this?

00:08:33.000 This physical Bitcoin address, like, it will be able to be tracked.

00:08:38.000 So we don't know if that payment came from the FBI or someone putting in a little amount to see if the person would react.

00:08:45.000 We don't know if it was the Guthrie family doing a test.

00:08:49.000 I mean, that's not revealed, but what is the facts is there was activity in that Bitcoin account that was related to the ransom note.

00:08:57.000 Again, we still don't know if that was authenticated, if the person that was doing the ransom notes or people is the person that is on that doorbell footage that we now have.

00:09:08.000 I mean, you could be working the same spider web of things.

00:09:11.000 You could be working two separate things: someone or some group that was completely just trying to take advantage of the situation with this ransom ordeal, and then someone who was clearly at the door to commit the crime.

00:09:24.000 And we don't know if those intersect yet.

00:09:27.000 But again, very interesting how both sectors kind of started developing after that footage was released.

00:09:34.000 And I will say that FBI Director Kash Patel did kind of hint, and he could have misspoke.

00:09:39.000 You know, you're doing these interviews, you're talking, and things come out, but he acted like they were continuing to look for persons of interest.

00:09:48.000 And we saw the one person on that doorbell camera, but it leads me to believe we know there were multiple cameras at the home.

00:09:55.000 Maybe we get more footage.

00:09:56.000 Maybe we do see more people.

00:09:58.000 But right now, with what authorities have given to the public and what authorities have gotten themselves, and I was also told that authorities got that video Tuesday as well.

00:10:07.000 There's this big debate.

00:10:08.000 Why did they keep it so long?

00:10:10.000 They saw it for the first time, then released it.

00:10:13.000 So there may be more that comes out, but bravo to them for working with Google and Google for working with the FBI to get this recovered footage because this is how these things get solved.

00:10:27.000 Lyndon, one of the things that still has not been provided, so far as I'm aware, is any proof of life whatsoever.

00:10:32.000 So we are now 11 days into this ordeal, and the Guthrie family has been waiting for proof of life this entire time.

00:10:38.000 We know that they didn't bring the medication because Savannah Guthrie mentioned that they had not brought the medication.

00:10:42.000 We know that she had a life-threatening situation if she did not obtain medication.

00:10:46.000 And you would imagine that her kidnappers are not exactly going to head on over to the CVS and pick up the medication because that would be the number one red flag for attempting to track these people down.

00:10:57.000 And so there's every possibility at this point that, God forbid, something has happened to Nancy Guthrie and she actually is no longer alive.

00:11:04.000 Yeah, I mean, that's like the human part of this all.

00:11:07.000 And it just makes you so sad is that there is this 80, there's all this stuff happening with at the end of the day.

00:11:15.000 There's this 84-year-old woman who is dependent on medication and help from people to survive right now.

00:11:21.000 And it's now 11 days without that.

00:11:24.000 But what gives me hope is that something, and it could just be Savannah again, leaning on her faith, but she is saying, even after that footage was released on Tuesday, that she believes her mother is still alive.

00:11:36.000 And that was a strong statement in response to the video that went out Saturday night, where everybody could read into the words where Savannah said, bring, you know, bring her back to us.

00:11:48.000 That's the only way we'll have peace so we can celebrate with her.

00:11:51.000 People looked at that video and they're like, okay, does the family now think that Nancy's no longer with us?

00:12:00.000 But then you get the two posts on Instagram from Savannah on Tuesday where clearly she is like, someone knows this person.

00:12:08.000 I believe my mother's still alive.

00:12:10.000 Let's bring her home. 1.00

00:12:14.000 Well, that is Lyndon Blake.

00:12:15.000 You can go check out all of her coverage of this issue.

00:12:19.000 It has been extraordinary throughout this entire process.

00:12:21.000 She's doing a series called Finding Nancy Guthrie that is available only at Daily Wire.

00:12:26.000 Plus, Lyndon, thanks so much for the time of the coverage, as usual.

00:12:29.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:12:30.000 We'll get to breaking news from a terrible story in Canada in just one moment.

00:12:34.000 First, when we launched the Daily Wire, we had all the usual uncertainties.

00:12:37.000 What if nobody listens or people don't care what we have to say?

00:12:40.000 Well, we're glad we took the risk.

00:12:41.000 You can launch a business as well with our sponsor, Shopify.

00:12:44.000 Shopify is the e-commerce platform powering millions of businesses all around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including our very own Daily Wire shop.

00:12:52.000 Getting started is super simple.

00:12:54.000 With hundreds of ready-to-use templates, you can build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style.

00:12:59.000 Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography so you can accelerate your efficiency, whether you're uploading new products or improving existing ones.

00:13:09.000 Maybe you already know you have a good product, but you need help getting the word out.

00:13:12.000 Shopify helps you find your customers with easy-to-run email and social media campaigns, making it feel like you have a marketing team behind you.

00:13:18.000 You can tackle all those important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics without juggling multiple websites or platforms.

00:13:25.000 For small CPG teams or launching products, Shopify is indispensable.

00:13:28.000 If you ever get stuck, Shopify's award-winning 24-7 customer support is always around to help.

00:13:33.000 Plus, that iconic purple Shop Pay button and just recognizable, it is the best converting checkout on planet Earth, and that means more sales for you.

00:13:39.000 It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today.

00:13:43.000 Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/slash Shapiro.

00:13:47.000 Head on over to shopify.com/slash Shapiro.

00:13:49.000 That's shopify.com/slash Shapiro.

00:13:52.000 In other criminal justice news, up in Canada, one of the worst shootings in recent memory, according to the New York Times, Canada was reeling on Wednesday, a day after a shooter killed nine people and injured 25 others in a remote town in northeastern British Columbia, the third deadliest shooting in the country's entire history.

00:14:07.000 Seven people were found dead in Tumblr Ridge Secondary School, including a person believed to be the shooter who apparently committed suicide.

00:14:13.000 Two other people were found dead in a local residence people believed was connected to the shooting.

00:14:18.000 Another person died while being transported from the school to the hospital.

00:14:21.000 25 people suffered injuries that were not life-threatening.

00:14:26.000 This was the second deadly incident in British Columbia in less than a year because back in April, a man drove a car into a crowd.

00:14:32.000 Now, the gun laws in Canada are incredibly strict.

00:14:36.000 Gun ownership is allowed with a license in Canada, but they've had a number of gun buybacks.

00:14:43.000 In the aftermath of shootings a couple of years ago, Canada tightened its laws even more.

00:14:46.000 They essentially banned AR-15s.

00:14:48.000 And so Canada should be sort of case in point of how gun control works, except for obviously in this case, it did not work.

00:14:55.000 Now, just as importantly, there are reports that are filtering out.

00:14:59.000 The police know exactly who did this, and they say they know exactly who did this.

00:15:02.000 But as per our usual arrangement, if the suspect is not somebody who matches up with the profile of a straight white man of right-wing orientation, that means it's time for the police to obscure who the shooter allegedly was.

00:15:14.000 Staff Sergeant Chris Clark was asked about all of this, and he says that he's not going to name the shooter and then proceeds to call the person a gun person, which is a word I did not know existed.

00:15:25.000 That includes the deceased gun person.

00:15:28.000 Okay.

00:15:28.000 And then separately, do you know the gun person's relationship to?

00:15:35.000 Okay, apparently the gun person, the reason that this term is being used, he says because it would impede the investigation and for privacy reasons.

00:15:42.000 And I'm less than concerned about the privacy of people who go and shoot school children.

00:15:46.000 I don't really care very much about their privacy, to be honest with you.

00:15:50.000 I think that they should be blasted out over the news so long as it's not encouraging further shooters.

00:15:55.000 Here is the police saying that they're not going to say anything about who the shooter was.

00:15:59.000 Usually that's not about preventing future crime.

00:16:02.000 Usually that is more about politics.

00:16:04.000 We believe we've been able to identify the shooter, but for privacy reasons and obviously for the conducting investigation, we're not releasing that information at that time until we're assured that we've connected with the appropriate people.

00:16:18.000 Well, the internet quickly went to work and it appears that the person who did the shooting was trans.

00:16:25.000 That is at least the information that is filtering out.

00:16:28.000 There are questions about this person's recent move toward identifying as female.

00:16:35.000 The entire media have identified this person as female, which is malpractice.

00:16:40.000 It is journalistic malpractice.

00:16:41.000 If this person is a biological male who is masquerading as a female, a biological male with gender dysphoria, a biological male insisting that he be called a woman, that does not make him a female.

00:16:50.000 And it is a slander against women to artificially increase their homicide rate against children by calling a male a female.

00:16:58.000 If suddenly, statistically, there's just an uptick in women winning boxing matches against men and being able to dunk and also committing murder, it seems to me that that is a slander against women because if you're just calling men women now, then you've got a problem.

00:17:14.000 It is also a perverse incentive that the only way you earn respect from the mainstream media and in life is to do harm to other people, at which point the media will call you by your preferred pronoun.

00:17:27.000 And all this information is filtering out right now.

00:17:30.000 We'll bring you more as it develops.

00:17:32.000 But once again, societies that tend to mainstream delusion and treat them as though they are normal and then blame the gun, blame the instrument rather than the mainstreaming of mental illness, especially mental illness that has an extraordinarily high crossover with suicidality and depression.

00:17:49.000 Nobody is doing anybody any favors.

00:17:51.000 The people who identify as trans or in outlying cases, their victims. 0.81

00:17:58.000 And it is very difficult to deny that we are now seeing a trend with regard to mass shootings that is emerging from trans shooters. 1.00

00:18:06.000 This was not an issue 15 years ago.

00:18:08.000 It just wasn't.

00:18:09.000 Derangement took other forms.

00:18:11.000 That obviously has changed, and the media and governmental policy have a lot to do with it.

00:18:16.000 Joining us online is Lior Sapires, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who covers topics related to pediatric gender medicine, education policy, and culture.

00:18:23.000 We, of course, at the Daily Wire have been covering this stuff extensively for years up to and including a bunch of breaking news about the AMA's treatment, absurd treatment of trans medicine. 0.64

00:18:32.000 That was a story that we broke last year.

00:18:34.000 It made a lot of the rounds, and I think it made a significant shift in the culture surrounding the cult of trans medicine.

00:18:40.000 He has a piece out recently talking about the lack of consensus among medical groups on what they are calling gender-affirming care for minors.

00:18:47.000 Leader, thanks so much for the time.

00:18:48.000 Really appreciate it.

00:18:50.000 Thanks for having me, Ben.

00:18:53.000 So why don't we begin with sort of the news of the day?

00:18:55.000 So it is now being reported that the shooter up in Tumblr Ridge in Canada is a person who identified as trans.

00:19:04.000 This has become an alarming pattern in which people who identify as trans have been engaged in acts of violence.

00:19:11.000 This, of course, is not totally surprising given the fact that people who identify as trans have a very, very high rate of suicidality, of depression. 0.77

00:19:20.000 And, you know, again, the media continue to treat this as though this is of no consequence.

00:19:26.000 They're referring to the prospective shooter up in Tumblr Ridge as a she, even though pretty clear this is a biological he. 0.94

00:19:32.000 And this goes to kind of our entire society's willingness to say things that are biologically false, supposedly in pursuit of sympathy for people who are suffering from a mental disorder.

00:19:42.000 And that, of course, is not backed by medicine, which is the thing that you're writing about.

00:19:47.000 That's right.

00:19:48.000 That's right.

00:19:49.000 And so these are very troubled, young, usually young adolescent boys, young men who have a wide range of mental health problems and usually very troubled histories.

00:20:01.000 And they're not getting the care that they need.

00:20:03.000 They're not getting the societal response that they deserve.

00:20:08.000 And instead, they're being led down a path where they believe that things like transition will be a cure for all their problems when we just know that that's not the case.

00:20:19.000 So it's unfortunate that we've gotten to this point, but hopefully there will be a wake-up moment in the near future.

00:20:27.000 So speaking of that, it's been pretty amazing how over the course of the last couple of weeks, major medical groups have now come out and completely reversed themselves on what they were saying on quote-unquote gender affirming care for years.

00:20:39.000 So for years, it was DeRegore in the medical community to proclaim that hormone treatment, that social transition, that actual surgery was the solution for people suffering from gender dysphoria, particularly minors, because the idea was that if you didn't arrest puberty when a kid was 11 years old, that that person will look more like their biological sex than they otherwise would.

00:21:00.000 And so you're doing them a grave harm.

00:21:02.000 Now, after a few lawsuits and after it turns out that the science doesn't reflect any of this, we're suddenly getting the slow and soft walk back of, oh, well, actually, we don't have any evidence to show this worked in the first place.

00:21:12.000 So we've had thousands, presumably, of children who've been surgically or hormonally mutilated.

00:21:18.000 And does anyone pay a price for this?

00:21:20.000 What was the actual driving factor in them suddenly changing their tune?

00:21:24.000 Well, I guess the first thing I would say is this was never a wide and deep consensus of the medical profession.

00:21:30.000 This was always a consensus brought about by a very small number of medical organizations and one activist organization that claims to be a medical group.

00:21:38.000 That's the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

00:21:42.000 And once you start looking into how the consensus came about, you start to realize that it was the result of activists, usually in key committees within these organizations, capturing the decision-making mechanisms.

00:21:55.000 And then the rest of the medical community remaining silent or saying, look, we're just going to trust our colleagues because they're experts in this area.

00:22:02.000 And we always trust, we always defer to our expert colleagues in medicine.

00:22:07.000 So I think that's really important just to start there, that this was never a wide and deep consensus.

00:22:12.000 But you're right.

00:22:14.000 We've had last week, we saw the first major medical group come out and say at least surgeries should be deferred until minimum age 19.

00:22:25.000 And I should point out that the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, that's the organization that published this statement, is the largest organization of its kind.

00:22:33.000 It represents 11,000 plastic surgeons in the United States and Canada, which is over 90% of the field.

00:22:39.000 So this is a major, major medical group.

00:22:41.000 And the American Medical Association, the following day, issued its own statement to the New York Times and National Review, basically saying, agreeing with their colleagues, their surgeon colleagues, but they added the word generally.

00:22:55.000 They said surgeries should generally be deferred until age 19 or above.

00:22:59.000 And so if you know anything about the field and how it operates, that is a massive loophole.

00:23:04.000 So it remains to be seen what exactly the AMA's position on this is.

00:23:08.000 But the fact that the ASPS issued this statement, and it's an extremely good statement, and we can talk about it, but it's a very, very important moment.

00:23:19.000 Now, do you think that was driven by medical liability claims?

00:23:22.000 Because obviously there had been a major lawsuit that was won by a quote-unquote detransitioner, a person who had surgeries who then realized that that was a huge mistake.

00:23:29.000 And she sued her plastic surgeon and won a couple million dollars. 0.91

00:23:32.000 And so this is a real liability issue now for surgeons.

00:23:35.000 Certainly the science didn't change between now and then.

00:23:39.000 Well, I can say one thing with confidence, and that is that this statement was not issued in response to that particular lawsuit.

00:23:47.000 And we can know that because it's a very carefully written statement, and it came out within, I think, 48 hours after the lawsuit was announced.

00:23:54.000 And the lawsuit was not being reported until the jury actually reached the verdict.

00:23:58.000 So there's virtually zero chance that the ASPS managed to draft this very careful statement and get it through all of its approval process within 48 hours.

00:24:07.000 So I think that's important because if you read the statement, you see that they are taking very seriously all of the knowledge that has emerged in the last five or six years as scientific scrutiny of the field began in earnest, I think, in Scandinavia in 2019.

00:24:26.000 And so the ASPS cites all of the systematic reviews.

00:24:30.000 It cites the CAS review.

00:24:31.000 It cites the HHS review, of which I was a co-author.

00:24:35.000 And these are, you know, these are massive systematic reviews of the literature, which is the most reliable method in evidence-based medicine to evaluate medical evidence.

00:24:47.000 I think it's important also that the ASPS includes some considerations about ethics, decision-making for minors, because one of the arguments, as I'm sure you know, Ben, as somebody who's followed this debate, one of the key arguments now being made by Democrats, by LGBT organizations, by gender clinicians in particular, they have conceded over the last few years that the evidence is very weak.

00:25:09.000 What they argue is that in the face of weak evidence, decisions about whether to treat and how to treat should be between parents who consent on behalf of their kids and doctors, meaning what should matter is the autonomy of the patient and the, let's call it the proxy autonomy of the parents to decide.

00:25:28.000 Well, ASPS comes out and basically says, you know, autonomy is the right to refuse treatments that are appropriately offered to patients.

00:25:36.000 It is not a right to obtain any intervention you want from a doctor.

00:25:41.000 And that distinction between those two understandings of autonomy is the distinction between medicine and consumerism.

00:25:48.000 And it's very important, I think, that ASPS, of all organizations, the plastic surgeons came out and said, you know, we cannot allow medicine to devolve into consumerism.

00:25:57.000 We have to protect the sacred principle of autonomy.

00:26:00.000 And it's been misunderstood and misapplied in this area.

00:26:05.000 And this is, I think, why the statement is really fascinating is because of where they set the age limit, right?

00:26:10.000 They said that it's about whether somebody is a minor or whether somebody is a major, which is a legal issue.

00:26:13.000 That is not a medical issue.

00:26:14.000 It is not as though, you know, your medical issue changes between the time you're 18 and 19 or 17 and 19.

00:26:21.000 The real issue here is that if you don't want to get sued, and if you want to be able to quote unquote consent to a surgery, you have to be of a particular age.

00:26:28.000 And so what that really suggests is that these surgeries are not, they have no evidence they're therapeutic.

00:26:32.000 And it totally undercuts the argument of the sort of trans grift medicine industry, which is that the reason that people are getting these things is not because it's a nose job, but because it's going to save your life and prevent somebody from committing suicide.

00:26:44.000 And so that has always been the argument in the gender-based trans community.

00:26:49.000 And the evidence for that is so scanty that they're now basically reducing this to the question of whether somebody should be able to get a nose job once they're above age or not.

00:27:00.000 Right.

00:27:01.000 I would say that when gender clinicians and their allies are speaking to the public, in particular to the skeptical public, so lawmakers and legislative hearings, to news reporters and mainstream media outlets, and even to parents who kind of have concerns about their kids and want to know what to do, then yes, they frame these interventions as a mental health intervention.

00:27:22.000 They make claims about reduction in depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and so forth.

00:27:28.000 When they talk amongst themselves, and you can see this when you look at their videos from conferences, When you see how you watch video calls which were somehow leaked to the public, you see that they actually offer different rationales.

00:27:46.000 They say that this is about helping kids who are or helping people in general who are otherwise healthy achieve their embodiment goals, achieve their cosmetic goals for how they want their body to look in light of their internal sense of gender.

00:28:00.000 So these are two rationales that have been offered for these interventions, and they kind of hop back and forth between them depending on who they're talking to and what it is that they're trying to persuade.

00:28:12.000 Well, that's Lior Sapiri.

00:28:13.000 Go check out all of his work over at Manhattan Institute.

00:28:16.000 Lior, thanks so much for the time and the insight.

00:28:18.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:28:20.000 In other bizarre news, the FAA had announced there would be a 10-day closure over the El Paso airport.

00:28:27.000 Apparently, the reason why the airspace had been closed, not sure why there was a 10-day period that was attached, but apparently, according to Jennifer Jacobs reporting for CBS News, the decision to close the El Paso International Airport to all flights for 10 days was triggered by Mexican cartel drones breaching U.S. airspace.

00:28:45.000 And apparently the Defense Department took action to disable the drones, which we assume it means that they are shooting down the drones.

00:28:51.000 Now, I've seen those drones personally.

00:28:53.000 If you go check out Behind the Paywall, our series about the divided states of Biden, one of the things we did is went down to the Arizona border.

00:29:01.000 And there was a point where we literally saw cartel drones overflying American territory along the Arizona border.

00:29:07.000 This is what the cartels do.

00:29:09.000 They fly these drones so as to monitor American law enforcement so they can smuggle drugs across the border.

00:29:15.000 And so it is not a surprise at all that Mexican cartel drones were breaching U.S. airspace.

00:29:19.000 They've been doing this on a routine basis, good for the Trump administration for finally shooting them down.

00:29:24.000 Actually, I remember when I was at the border, I asked Border Patrol, we were doing a ride-along, I asked Border Patrol why they weren't just shooting the drones down.

00:29:31.000 They're on American territory.

00:29:32.000 And they said they would have had to have sign-off from Alejandro Mayorcas, then the head of the Department of Homeland Security.

00:29:38.000 So presumably the Trump administration has now decided to activate with regard to these drones and shoot them down routinely.

00:29:45.000 Still not sure why that meant a 10-day announcement as opposed to a temporary announcement.

00:29:50.000 Maybe they're expecting that more drones were coming and now they're not.

00:29:53.000 Whatever the case may be, that is the right decision by the Trump administration.

00:29:56.000 We should not have foreign overflights of American territory. 0.99

00:29:59.000 Well, speaking of stories, upon which we are still finding out the whole story, as more Epstein files drip into view, as more pages drip out, as redactions are undone, new questions emerge.

00:30:17.000 Jon Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, he says that obviously, if your name is in the Epstein files, you're going to end up answering some questions.

00:30:24.000 This applies presumably to Howard Luttnick, the commerce secretary, whose name was brought into public view yesterday.

00:30:31.000 Well, look, I think it's going to be ultimately what happens there is probably going to be up to the American people.

00:30:36.000 And what I've been for, and I've been very clear about this from the outset, is full disclosure, get the information out there.

00:30:43.000 Let's have transparency.

00:30:45.000 And I think that's being done.

00:30:47.000 And so, you know, for people whose names appear or in some context might be in the Epstein files, they're going to have to answer the questions around that.

00:30:56.000 And I think the American people are going to have to make judgments about whether or not they think those answers are sufficient.

00:31:02.000 Now, there are conflicting stories coming out about President Trump.

00:31:05.000 Obviously, President Trump's enemies want to claim that he was deeply embedded with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:31:10.000 So far, we actually know the names of the people who are very much in bed with Jeffrey Epstein, as we talked about at length on yesterday's show.

00:31:15.000 Steve Bannon was one of those people, but obviously Peter Mandelson, who is a member of the UK government, was another one of those people and their various business people, including, of course, Les Wexner, who were deeply in bed with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:31:28.000 Some new details are coming out about that.

00:31:30.000 There was apparently an FBI file that listed him, Lex Wexner, the Victoria's secret founder, as a secondary co-conspirator with Epstein.

00:31:38.000 He was never charged as such, but a lot of money passing from Wexner to Epstein and vice versa, mostly from Wexner to Epstein and not the other way around.

00:31:48.000 Yesterday, I suggested that if Rocana and Thomas Massey wanted to actually forward the case, what they should do is just use their congressional immunity to read the names of people who had been redacted into the congressional record, which you can do without fear of liability.

00:32:02.000 Rocana actually did do that. 0.99

00:32:03.000 So, you know, props to him.

00:32:05.000 I think that's not a bad thing.

00:32:06.000 I think now he should actually show evidence that the people he's mentioning did something nefarious.

00:32:11.000 Just naming names without kind of explaining what they did seems like not amazing practice.

00:32:16.000 Some of these people have already been mentioned publicly.

00:32:19.000 Here's Rokana doing this, California congressperson yesterday.

00:32:24.000 Congressman Massey and I went to the Department of Justice to read the unredacted Epstein files.

00:32:30.000 We spent about two hours there, and we learned that 70 to 80 percent of the files are still redacted.

00:32:40.000 In fact, there were six wealthy, powerful men that the DOJ hid for no apparent reason.

00:32:48.000 When Congressman Massey and I pointed this out to the Department of Justice, they acknowledged their mistake, and now they have revealed the identity of these six powerful men.

00:33:00.000 These men are Salvatore Navora, Zorab Micheladz, Leopig Leonor, Nikola Caputa, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulyam, CEO of Dubai Ports World, and billionaire businessman Leslie Wexner.

00:33:20.000 Okay, so again, some of those names we already know.

00:33:23.000 We already knew about Leslie Wexner, obviously.

00:33:25.000 Literally tens of millions of dollars passing hands from Wexner to Epstein.

00:33:30.000 And what the files show is that, again, an FBI document apparently listed him at one point as a secondary co-conspirator, but he was never charged as such.

00:33:37.000 Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayim is the chairman and CEO of Dubai-based logistics giant, and he was linked to a 2009 email that read, quote, I loved the torture video.

00:33:46.000 And apparently he was discussing sexual incidents with Epstein in 2015.

00:33:53.000 Nicola Caputo, it is unconfirmed exactly who that is, but there is an Italian politician who served as a member of European Parliament whose name was redacted and then unredacted, which is how obviously Rokana saw it.

00:34:06.000 It is unclear what the allegations against him are.

00:34:08.000 And this is sort of one of the problems with the entire release of the Epstein files.

00:34:12.000 It was not done methodically.

00:34:14.000 When you just sort of dump millions of pages into the public view without any sort of contextual explanation of what people are looking at, it becomes very, very easy to make allegations that are unevident.

00:34:24.000 So I don't know even what the allegations are against Nikola Caputo.

00:34:27.000 I just know that his name got mentioned yesterday by Rokana.

00:34:30.000 Same thing with Salvatore Noara.

00:34:32.000 Unclear who this person is.

00:34:34.000 Doesn't seem to be a famous person.

00:34:35.000 Or Zurab Micheladze, unclear who he is or what the allegations are.

00:34:40.000 Or Leonik Leonov, unclear who he is or what the allegations are.

00:34:44.000 So they sort of found some names.

00:34:46.000 They brought those names out in public.

00:34:48.000 And again, I think that that is good for transparency if there's no reason for those names to be redacted.

00:34:53.000 I will say that if people's lives are ruined on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that doesn't seem to be a wonderful, wonderful thing.

00:35:01.000 As far as President Trump, apparently, according to the New York Times, one of the first calls the Palm Beach police received was from Donald Trump, according to a local police chief at the time.

00:35:11.000 He told the FBI that more than a decade later.

00:35:14.000 That was after it became known that Epstein was under investigation in the 2000s.

00:35:17.000 Trump reportedly told the chief, one Michael Ryder, thank goodness you're stopping him.

00:35:21.000 Everyone has known he's been doing this.

00:35:24.000 Trump apparently said it was known in New York circles Epstein was disgusting.

00:35:28.000 And he also suggested the police focus their investigation on Epstein's associate, Glene Maxwell.

00:35:32.000 So that is precisely the reverse of what some people are trying to claim about Trump, which is that he was deeply in bed with all of this.

00:35:38.000 That, at the very least, does not seem to be the case.

00:35:41.000 It seems to be that Trump was one of the people who called the cops on Epstein as soon as the investigation was initiated.

00:35:46.000 Now, one person who has been caught up in this scandal inside the administration is Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick.

00:35:53.000 Luttnick had said that he had cut off ties with Jeffrey Epstein years before he visited Epstein's private island in 2012 with his wife and his kids.

00:36:03.000 So Luttnick described his contact with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:36:06.000 He was being questioned by Senator Chris Van Hollen yesterday in the Senate.

00:36:10.000 I think you understand the root of concern here.

00:36:13.000 It's the way you described very emphatically your first encounter with him in his apartment, said you were disgusted, would never have any contact with him again.

00:36:26.000 Did you, in fact, make the visit to Jeffrey Epstein's private island?

00:36:32.000 I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation.

00:36:38.000 My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies.

00:36:43.000 I had another couple with they were there as well with their children, and we had lunch on the island.

00:36:51.000 That is true for an hour, and we left with all of my children, with my nannies, and my wife all together.

00:36:59.000 We were on family vacation.

00:37:00.000 We were not apart to suggest there was anything untoward about that in 2012.

00:37:07.000 I don't recall why we did it.

00:37:11.000 So obviously, this has driven a lot of ire.

00:37:14.000 Records released by the Justice Department appear to show Luttnick emailing with Epstein, arranging calls and being scheduled for a drink in 2011, and that yacht trip that he just mentioned.

00:37:24.000 In subsequent emails, Lutnick confirmed lunch plans with Epstein on the island.

00:37:28.000 That is about all there is.

00:37:29.000 In 2017, apparently Epstein contributed some $50,000 to a dinner honoring Lutnick and another investor, which was put on by the Jewish philanthropic organization UJA Federation of New York.

00:37:40.000 Epstein was offered a table and 10 seats to attend the event, but declined, writing in an email to tell Luttnick he can film them.

00:37:46.000 Were those associations criminal in nature?

00:37:48.000 Doesn't appear to be evidence of that.

00:37:49.000 Were they sexual in nature?

00:37:50.000 Doesn't really appear to be evidence of that.

00:37:53.000 But again, association with people who have been convicted or pled guilty to child sex trafficking or sex trafficking of a minor, that is a stain for sure.

00:38:02.000 Caroline Levitt over at the White House defended Lutnick.

00:38:06.000 So does the White House stand behind Secretary Luttnick right now?

00:38:10.000 Or given what he has said today, has there been any shift in how the White House is viewing Secretary Lutnick's performance?

00:38:17.000 No, Secretary Luttnick remains a very important member of President Trump's team, and the president fully supports the Secretary.

00:38:26.000 Now, again, I think that it's important not to conflate all issues together.

00:38:29.000 The evidence in the emails and in the text and everything else shows that Luttnick knew Epstein and was friendly with Epstein.

00:38:36.000 That is not quite the same thing as, for example, Peter Mandelson actually passing government secrets to Jeffrey Epstein or Steve Bannon planning a PR comeback with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:38:46.000 And that is not quite the same thing.

00:38:48.000 It's not great.

00:38:49.000 It's not wonderful.

00:38:49.000 It is not criminal.

00:38:51.000 And so I think it's important to keep those two strains apart for the sake of accuracy, if nothing else.

00:38:58.000 On the congressional side, the Democrats, once again, look to be staring down the barrel of another partial shutdown.

00:39:04.000 There's an immigration shutdown that they're going to attempt to pursue.

00:39:08.000 According to Axios, Senate Democrats are drawing a preemptive red line on ICE reforms, telling Axios any sanctuary city crackdown is now dead on arrival.

00:39:16.000 Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's rank and file are in no mood to let Republicans turn a debate about ICE's use of force into a conversation over sanctuary cities.

00:39:26.000 Senator Chris Van Holland told the Axios, I know they're trying to change the conversation.

00:39:29.000 The issue is ICE's conduct.

00:39:31.000 That's the issue before us.

00:39:32.000 Of course, these issues are absolutely linked.

00:39:34.000 ICE is being forced to take measures they never would have to take in a non-sanctuary city. 0.81

00:39:40.000 The Democrats, of course, have been threatening a partial government shutdown, meaning not funding of DHS for the long term.

00:39:46.000 Senator Thun moved Tuesday evening to set up a Thursday vote on a House-passed DHS bill.

00:39:52.000 He might instead do another short-term CR.

00:39:55.000 Chuck Schumer might go for that because, again, they feel like the longer they push this issue, the better it is for them politically.

00:40:03.000 President Trump, for his part, continues to maintain nobody's coming through our borders.

00:40:06.000 It's interesting that the Trump administration is, in fact, making the case, and it's the best possible PR case, that they have shut the border, which is true.

00:40:15.000 This is a case that Trump is making.

00:40:17.000 And also that they are, in fact, targeting criminal illegal immigrants, which we'll get to in a moment.

00:40:21.000 Here's President Trump.

00:40:23.000 We have the strongest border in the history of our country.

00:40:27.000 We have Democrat people giving us the statistics that no people have come into our country illegally in the last eight months.

00:40:36.000 Even I can't believe that totally, but I'll take it.

00:40:39.000 But essentially, no people have come in.

00:40:41.000 Nobody's coming through our border.

00:40:43.000 They only come in legally.

00:40:46.000 Now, he's right about that.

00:40:47.000 The administration has been trying to shift its focus from this idea that they're going to deport all illegal immigrants to that they are focusing at least primarily on criminal illegal immigrants.

00:40:56.000 There's a story that came out from CBS News yesterday that said that less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses, according to an internal DHS document obtained by CBS News.

00:41:11.000 So that appears to conflict with the argument being made by the Trump administration that they're not focusing on Abuela, who's been here for 20 years, that they're really focusing in on people who have committed crimes other than illegal immigration.

00:41:23.000 Caroline Lovitt, however, pushed back on the statistic from the White House yesterday.

00:41:27.000 Nearly 60% of ICE arrestees over the past year had criminal charges or convictions.

00:41:34.000 And among that population, the majority of the criminal charges or convictions are for nonviolent crimes.

00:41:40.000 Oh, well, what are nonviolent crimes, you ask?

00:41:42.000 This has coincided with what DHS has been saying all along, that approximately 70% of illegal aliens arrested under President Trump have pending criminal charges and or prior convictions.

00:41:53.000 And these so-called nonviolent crimes, drug trafficking, distribution of child burglary, fraud, DUI, embezzlement, solicitation of a minor, and human smuggling, just to name a few.

00:42:07.000 So just because a crime is not violent in nature doesn't mean that crime is victimless.

00:42:13.000 Okay, and this, of course, is exactly right.

00:42:15.000 The Trump administration has not claimed they are going to arrest only violent criminal illegal immigrants.

00:42:19.000 They said criminal illegal immigrants, a huge amount of crime is nonviolent.

00:42:24.000 And so she is right about that.

00:42:25.000 Democrats, by the way, continue to be as radical as they want to be.

00:42:28.000 Yesterday, Todd Lyons, who's the acting immigration and customs enforcement director, was in front of the House Homeland Security Committee.

00:42:35.000 And Democrats went at him and he said, listen, I'm not going to unmask my agents.

00:42:40.000 I'm not going to not enforce the law.

00:42:42.000 This is silliness.

00:42:44.000 Will you commit, yes or no, to immediately unmasking every agent conducting immigration enforcement and requiring them to wear standard uniforms with identifiable badges?

00:42:55.000 No.

00:42:57.000 Well, it's a sad response.

00:43:00.000 Your answer is completely unacceptable.

00:43:02.000 People who are proud of what they do aren't hiding their identity.

00:43:08.000 We're a nation of laws, and you, your boss, Secretary Noam, and Donald Trump are not above the law.

00:43:18.000 So, again, this sort of stuff from Democrats, that the big issue here is the masking of ICE agents.

00:43:23.000 Good luck with all of this.

00:43:24.000 Representative Lamonica R. MacIver of the New Jersey 10th, she's one of the people who was briefly arrested for protesting outside an ICE facility and obstructing law enforcement in the process. 0.99

00:43:34.000 She asked Todd Lyons if he's going to hell.

00:43:36.000 And good luck for Democrats.

00:43:38.000 Again, if their claim is that non-enforcement of the law is superior to enforcement of the law, that is a radical proposal Americans do not like.

00:43:47.000 Well, let me ask you some questions that you may be able to answer.

00:43:51.000 Mr. Lyons, do you consider yourself a religious man?

00:43:54.000 Yes, ma'am.

00:43:55.000 Oh, yes.

00:43:56.000 Well, how do you think Judgment Day will work for you with so much blood on your hands?

00:43:56.000 Okay.

00:44:02.000 I'm not going to entertain that question.

00:44:04.000 Of course not.

00:44:04.000 Oh, okay.

00:44:05.000 Do you think you're going to hell, Mr. Lyons? 0.91

00:44:07.000 I'm not going to enter. 0.96

00:44:08.000 Of course.

00:44:09.000 How many governments?

00:44:11.000 Gentlelady will suspend. 1.00

00:44:14.000 Ridiculous, ridiculous stuff. 1.00

00:44:16.000 Truly ridiculous stuff from Democrats. 1.00

00:44:18.000 I guess they can take this angle if they wish to. 0.96

00:44:20.000 I don't think it's going to work out for them.

00:44:21.000 They might win a temporary battle.

00:44:22.000 They will lose the immigration war. 0.95

00:44:24.000 At the same time, Congress is taking up the Save Act.

00:44:28.000 Whether or not Democrats are forced to vote on it is the question in the Senate.

00:44:32.000 President Trump outlined what is in the Save America Act on Fox News with Larry Kudlow yesterday.

00:44:39.000 You have a thing called Save America Act.

00:44:43.000 Save America Act.

00:44:44.000 And Schumer's going to say, I oppose it.

00:44:47.000 How do you oppose Save America?

00:44:49.000 So this is simply unvoting.

00:44:52.000 Voter ID.

00:44:54.000 We want a statement that you are a citizen of America.

00:44:57.000 I think that's a reasonable thing to ask.

00:44:59.000 And no mail-in ballots, which are very corrupt.

00:45:02.000 No country in the world is doing mail-in ballots, or especially the way we do them.

00:45:08.000 I mean, they send them all over the place.

00:45:10.000 Nobody knows.

00:45:11.000 It's totally corrupt.

00:45:12.000 No country in the world does what we do.

00:45:18.000 And so, again, he is not wrong about this.

00:45:21.000 Joining us online to discuss Democrats' activities in the Senate, obstructing the Save Act, obstructing DHS funding, is Senator Rick Scott of Florida.

00:45:29.000 Obviously, he is sitting senator.

00:45:30.000 He has also served two terms as governor of Florida.

00:45:33.000 Senator Scott, thanks so much for the time.

00:45:34.000 I appreciate it.

00:45:36.000 The governor's job was easier.

00:45:37.000 And just so you know, it's easier to get things done.

00:45:42.000 This is hard.

00:45:42.000 Yeah, it certainly feels like that.

00:45:44.000 That is unsurprising.

00:45:46.000 Speaking of which, it seems like the Democrats are now looking at yet another partial government shutdown, this time over the Department of Homeland Security.

00:45:52.000 Can you give us the latest on what exactly they are demanding?

00:45:54.000 Because we've heard sort of vague reports about what it is that they want, but some of the things that they seem to be asking for essentially look like they would end law enforcement with regard to illegal immigration in the country.

00:46:06.000 Well, that's what they want to do.

00:46:07.000 I mean, they don't want ICE to be able to do their job.

00:46:11.000 They want to defund it and they want to defang it.

00:46:14.000 So things that you don't ever have, you don't require local law enforcement to do or our sheriff's departments to do.

00:46:20.000 They want to make ICE do.

00:46:21.000 I mean, you have to look at where the Democrats are.

00:46:23.000 They want open borders. 0.94

00:46:24.000 They don't care the criminals are murdering our kids or raping our daughters and granddaughters. 0.99

00:46:29.000 I mean, they, I mean, you look at what would they look at Lick and Riley's family in the face and say, hey, we don't care.

00:46:35.000 Or Jocelyn Angari, because that's what they're saying.

00:46:37.000 So, I mean, there's some common sense things.

00:46:40.000 I think in Florida, when I was governor, we added, but we'd let the sheriff's department decide police departments.

00:46:45.000 We added body cameras.

00:46:48.000 But, I mean, there's times for all these other things.

00:46:51.000 There's times for masks.

00:46:52.000 And by the way, you realize that we don't have any of these problems in Florida because our sheriff's department, police departments, they work with ICE.

00:46:59.000 So we don't have these problems that they're having in these sanctuary cities where there's a criminal in jail and they know that he's illegal and they turn they'll turn him over to ICE and then ICE has to go into the neighborhood with protesters and try to arrest him.

00:47:14.000 So we don't have any of those problems in Florida.

00:47:15.000 It's all driven by local mayors and governors.

00:47:19.000 So, Senator Scott, one of the things that we've been hearing is the possibility the Democrats are going to try to push for the use of judicial rather than administrative warrants by ICE when they're performing arrests.

00:47:29.000 Have you heard that from Democrats?

00:47:31.000 They've talked about changes around warrants, but again, it's kind of vague what exactly they're demanding.

00:47:35.000 Absolutely.

00:47:35.000 And what that does would mean that you would never be able to arrest anybody.

00:47:43.000 It would set up a system to where none of these people get arrested.

00:47:46.000 I don't get it.

00:47:49.000 When I was governor, you know what people care about?

00:47:51.000 They care about jobs, their kids' education, public safety.

00:47:54.000 So all these mayors and governors have forgotten the basic thing of government, keep people safe.

00:48:00.000 So, yeah, we should be able to do administrative warrants and deport people.

00:48:06.000 And you don't have to go per person for a judicial warrant, which would mean that ICE couldn't do their job.

00:48:12.000 Might as well shut down ICE.

00:48:15.000 So, Senator Scott, what do you think are the possibilities that Democrats actually do shut down the government here?

00:48:21.000 Or do you think there are enough crossover votes from Democrats to prevent them from being able to use the filibuster, for example?

00:48:29.000 No, we'll shut down government. 0.97

00:48:31.000 I think there's only two options.

00:48:32.000 Either government will get shut down Friday night or we'll do another continuing resolution for a couple of weeks to see if there's some deal.

00:48:40.000 But look, the Democrats, they don't care about the public safety.

00:48:45.000 I mean, they want open borders.

00:48:47.000 And I think the only thing they must be is they think it's the only way they can win elections.

00:48:54.000 Well, meanwhile, the Republicans in the House have already passed the Save America Act, and that has moved on to the Senate as well.

00:49:00.000 Democrats are treating this as anathema.

00:49:03.000 Why don't you first of all tell us what exactly is in the Save Act?

00:49:05.000 Because what we have been told by Chuck Schumer is that this is Jim Crow 2.0, which again, that line is getting a little old since I've heard it applied to probably a dozen bills over the course of the last 10 years or so.

00:49:15.000 But this is their latest bugaboo is voter ID in the States.

00:49:19.000 Well, it's pretty common sense.

00:49:21.000 You have to show an ID when you go to vote, right?

00:49:24.000 You have to show an ID on an airplane.

00:49:26.000 I think you have to show an ID to get a lottery ticket, things like that.

00:49:28.000 You just have to show an ID.

00:49:29.000 That's number one.

00:49:30.000 Number two is to register to vote, you have to prove citizenship.

00:49:35.000 You know, I don't like Macron.

00:49:37.000 I don't actually get to vote against Macron in France.

00:49:39.000 I don't like Starmer in the UK.

00:49:41.000 I don't get to vote against him.

00:49:42.000 So if you're illegal, you don't get to vote in our elections either.

00:49:45.000 So it's pretty basic.

00:49:47.000 I'm glad the House has passed it.

00:49:48.000 The president's come out in favor of it.

00:49:51.000 So now we've got to get it done in the Senate any way we can.

00:49:54.000 We might have to do it through the talking filibuster, which is probably the only way we'll get it done because the Democrats are all opposed to it.

00:50:03.000 What have you heard about that?

00:50:04.000 Because we've heard some conflicting reports about whether Senator Thune is going to use the talking filibuster, meaning for those who don't follow Senate procedure, there has been a basic deal between both sides that if you don't have 60 votes to shut down debate, that you don't actually have to get up and talk.

00:50:19.000 Everybody tends to think of Mr. Smith goes to Washington.

00:50:22.000 You actually stand up there and you talk for a really long time.

00:50:24.000 That's what a filibuster is, but that's almost never done.

00:50:26.000 And so forcing people to actually do a talking filibuster means that somebody gets up there and rans for 25 hours or however long their catheter holds out.

00:50:35.000 What is the possibility that Senator Thune is actually going to force a talking filibuster on this?

00:50:39.000 Well, the positive is Thune has committed that we're going to have a vote on the SAVE Act.

00:50:44.000 So he said that.

00:50:45.000 So that's positive.

00:50:46.000 Now, I think the only way we're going to get passed is we've got to go.

00:50:50.000 We've got to work through to see if we can do it through a talking filibuster because we don't have enough Democrats who are going to support us. 0.71

00:50:56.000 So if you remember, the filibuster was simply you didn't have to have 60 votes to pass something.

00:51:02.000 You had to have six, you know, you have to say, we're going to stop debate at some point.

00:51:06.000 Okay.

00:51:07.000 Okay.

00:51:07.000 So what we need to do is make people talk.

00:51:10.000 So hopefully that's what we'll do.

00:51:11.000 We yesterday at our Republican Senate lunch, we had a conversation about it.

00:51:16.000 So I think we're going to continue to have these conversations, but hopefully we'll be able to do the talking filibuster.

00:51:21.000 But the first step is we've got to make sure 51 of us are on board for the Save America Act.

00:51:26.000 So I tell everybody call their senators and make sure they're on board of the Save America Act.

00:51:31.000 That's number one, because we're not going to get anywhere if we don't have 51 of us supporting it.

00:51:35.000 That's number one.

00:51:36.000 Number two is then we've got to say, can we get it done through a talking filibuster?

00:51:41.000 I mean, the problem we've got is the Democrats are blocking everything.

00:51:44.000 So ultimately, what they're going to force us to do is actually, I think, get rid of the filibuster.

00:51:48.000 I think the right way of doing it is, okay, let's have a talking filibuster.

00:51:51.000 If you want to talk about something, talk about it, but let's vote at the end.

00:51:57.000 So meanwhile, bipartisanship is not totally dead.

00:52:00.000 One of the bills that you are promoting, along with some Democrats, is something called the Clear Labels Act, which is designed to make sure that everybody knows where their medicines are coming from, which presumably would help reshore a lot of the manufacturing process because a lot of people don't trust medications that are going to be produced in China, for example.

00:52:15.000 Why don't you explain where that is and what's the possibility of that being brought to a floor vote?

00:52:20.000 Well, I've got the support of the ranking member on the agent committee.

00:52:23.000 I'm the chairman of that committee, Christine Gillibrand.

00:52:26.000 And so she and I have this bill.

00:52:29.000 It's the Clear Labels Act.

00:52:30.000 It says that basically you should know what you're putting in your body.

00:52:34.000 So when you get a prescription, you'll know where the ingredients came from and where it's manufactured.

00:52:41.000 It's pretty common sense.

00:52:42.000 So I'm optimistic that we'll get that bill to get that done, whether it's a standalone vote or whether we get it through another package like the National Defense Authorization Act.

00:52:52.000 But we should not be dependent on communist China in India for our medicines.

00:52:56.000 And by the way, it's not safe.

00:52:58.000 The FDA is not doing inspections like they do in the United States of medicines, the manufacturing medicines.

00:53:03.000 On top of that, there's been studies that say that you have a much higher chance of death and hospitalization if you take a generic drug made in China or in India.

00:53:15.000 Well, that is Senator Rick Scott.

00:53:16.000 Senator, thanks so much for the time and for the updates.

00:53:18.000 And good luck.

00:53:19.000 And what is a much harder job than being governor of Florida?

00:53:23.000 That's going to get done.

00:53:24.000 We're going to get there.

00:53:25.000 Be optimistic.

00:53:27.000 Meanwhile, for the Trump administration, excellent economic news.

00:53:30.000 A good jobs report came out in January.

00:53:33.000 There's some upside, there's some downside.

00:53:34.000 The upside is a very good jobs report in January.

00:53:37.000 Apparently, 170,000 private sector jobs, 130,000 jobs added overall because some government jobs were done away with.

00:53:44.000 That is much stronger than economists expected.

00:53:47.000 They were expecting 70,000 jobs in January.

00:53:49.000 The unemployment rate has ticked down to 4.3%, which is historically quite good.

00:53:54.000 The downside is that the BLS in revisions shaved down 400,000 jobs from the 2025 employment gain, meaning that for all of 2025, there are about 181,000 new jobs created, which is presumably one of the reasons why people are still feeling dyspeptic about the economy.

00:54:10.000 The reality is the Trump economy right now is quite strong.

00:54:13.000 There's a very good piece by Ramesh Panuru over at the Washington Post talking about the status of the economy.

00:54:20.000 And as he points out, right now, even though economic confidence is low, like 21%, the unemployment rate is only 4.3%.

00:54:28.000 There's a relatively low misery index, which is unemployment plus inflation.

00:54:33.000 And the inflation-adjusted wages have been rising pretty precipitously over the course of the last year or so.

00:54:42.000 The biggest problem in Panuru's estimation as to why there's a disconnect between what Americans are feeling about the economy and how the economy is actually performing is because they expected that inflation going down meant actual deflation.

00:54:54.000 This is something I've talked about on the show a lot.

00:54:57.000 The way politicians talk about bringing down inflation, they don't explain that the prices are basically going to remain the same.

00:55:03.000 You're not going to see a real deflation in prices.

00:55:06.000 And so even if you've seen wage increases, those still have to eat away and chip away at a time when inflation far outpaced inflation-adjusted wages.

00:55:17.000 This is a point that Ramesh Penuro is making.

00:55:19.000 He says, even though real wages have risen since 2022, their decline during the previous two years has not been undone.

00:55:24.000 People can remember when they were making more.

00:55:26.000 The current wage trend may have to continue for a while for Americans to be satisfied.

00:55:31.000 Also, it doesn't really help that the president is constantly talking about tariffs.

00:55:34.000 Most Americans don't feel that is a big win for them.

00:55:37.000 It's one of his more unpopular economic views.

00:55:40.000 But overall, what this does suggest is that as the Trump economy continues to churn, maybe the sentiment with regard to the economy starts to rise along with the economic strength of the country.

00:55:53.000 All righty, coming up, the New York Times has finally, finally decided that, hey, wait, you know, pot, not great for you.

00:55:59.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:56:01.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:56:02.000 Use code Shapiro.

00:56:03.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

00:56:05.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

00:56:07.000 Okay, no not even close Two, three.

00:56:24.000 Whatever.

00:56:25.000 You know what?

00:56:26.000 Two, three, four.

00:56:34.000 I cannot believe we're back here again, Ben.

00:56:37.000 If the Ben Shapiro shows a mom, then Ben After Dark is a cool mom.

00:56:43.000 James.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 11, 2026

TAPE Emerges in Nancy Guthrie Kidnapping

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript