The Ben Shapiro Show - The 2024 Republican Race Is ON

00:00:00.000 So, over the weekend at the Family Leadership Summit, Tucker Carlson had the opportunity to interview a bunch of Republican candidates for president.

00:00:08.000 Essentially all the major Republican candidates for president, with the exception of maybe some minor candidates like Chris Christie, and of course one very big major national candidate, Donald Trump, who did not show up to be questioned by Tucker Carlson.

00:00:19.000 Now, Tucker, of course, is very warm toward Trump.

00:00:20.000 He's made that clear on a wide variety of podcasts of late.

00:00:24.000 And so it's been interesting to see Tucker actually ask Trump some difficult questions, as we'll get to in just a minute.

00:00:28.000 Trump actually stumbled over himself a little bit this weekend when he was on with Maria Bartiromo.

00:00:32.000 But what was kind of fascinating about Tucker's interviews with the various candidates is how much Tucker and his issue set have become sort of national priorities, at least among Republicans in the primaries, apparently.

00:00:43.000 The reason I say apparently is because there's not a ton of support to the idea, just statistically speaking, that the base Republican voter cares deeply about issues like, for example, the war in Ukraine.

00:00:52.000 The base Republican voter may have some strong feelings about the war in Ukraine, but it doesn't make the top 10 list of priorities.

00:00:58.000 It's become more of a litmus test in the same way that in 2016 support or opposition to the Iraq war became a litmus test.

00:01:04.000 But it really isn't sort of the top issue, but it became a top issue in Iowa at this particular Family Leadership Council event.

00:01:12.000 There are a couple of issues that became kind of key issues that the American public and Republicans...

00:01:16.000 Just don't care all that much about.

00:01:18.000 Which may be sort of Tucker's point, is the idea that domestic concerns ought to trump foreign concerns, but Ukraine took center stage at this event over the weekend in Iowa.

00:01:27.000 And it was sort of fascinating to see how the race has launched for various candidates based on issues like this.

00:01:32.000 Again, I'm gonna say that Ukraine is not a top issue for anyone, because by polling data, it isn't a top issue for nearly anyone.

00:01:37.000 Here's the latest polling data from Gallup on Americans' top issues.

00:01:41.000 Economy in general, 14%.

00:01:43.000 High cost of living or inflation, 10%.

00:01:45.000 Federal budget deficit, 3%.

00:01:46.000 Lack of money, 2%.

00:01:47.000 Gap between rich and poor, 2%.

00:01:48.000 Okay, then you look at the non-economic problems.

00:01:51.000 The government or poor leadership, 18%.

00:01:53.000 Immigration, 8%.

00:01:54.000 Unifying the country, 6%.

00:01:55.000 Crime and violence, 5%.

00:01:56.000 So where exactly does Ukraine land?

00:01:58.000 It lands presumably under foreign policy, foreign aid, and focus overseas, 0%.

00:02:03.000 Zero percent.

00:02:04.000 But it became sort of the issue du jour.

00:02:06.000 And I think the reason for this is because ever since Donald Trump, there's been an attempt inside the Republican Party to capture the issue set that Trump supposedly stood for.

00:02:14.000 And there have been a thousand takes on what exactly drove Trump's success in 2016.

00:02:19.000 I've always thought that these thousand takes are too sophisticated by half.

00:02:23.000 Well, he had Rust Belt policy because he was going to reshore American jobs. 0.54

00:02:28.000 Or he was more isolationist on foreign policy, and that's what really drove support inside the Republican Party for Donald Trump.

00:02:34.000 I don't think it was any of those things, because Donald Trump actually, in certain areas, was rather interventionist.

00:02:38.000 Remember that he fired a couple of missiles into Syria.

00:02:41.000 For example, he assassinated Qasem Soleimani, who is one of the heads of the Iranian terror regime.

00:02:46.000 But what it really was about was pretty simple and remains pretty simple.

00:02:50.000 The support for Donald Trump.

00:02:51.000 Donald Trump is a giant orange pulsating middle finger to the left.

00:02:54.000 That's all Donald Trump is.

00:02:56.000 He's a very famous person who has an extraordinary amount of public recognition.

00:03:00.000 This was true in 2016.

00:03:01.000 And he was actually not spitting on people who lived in the middle of the country and lived in the Rust Belt.

00:03:07.000 He actually kind of liked those people.

00:03:09.000 He didn't see those people as people who were going to be abandoned by the economy, people who needed to be kind of thrown away.

00:03:14.000 He respected those people and so they respected him.

00:03:16.000 It was really quite simple.

00:03:18.000 Everything that was Donald Trump was reactive to a media environment and a Democrat media complex that hates people who live in the middle of the country, particularly rust belt white people who have a high school degree.

00:03:28.000 Those people particularly felt dispossessed by the political system, and Donald Trump reached out to them on a personal level.

00:03:34.000 And that's why Donald Trump's support among those folks is extremely durable.

00:03:38.000 It's not his issue set.

00:03:39.000 So what's sort of fascinating is to watch as intellectuals, including Tucker, try to cram an issue set into Trumpism.

00:03:45.000 And that issue set supposedly is, for example, being anti-entitlement reform or being more isolationist on foreign policy.

00:03:53.000 And what that makes for is this sort of bizarre dynamic where Republicans are trying to hit on the issue set that made Donald Trump Donald Trump.

00:03:59.000 All the Republican candidates are trying to do this.

00:04:02.000 And the answer is it ain't the issue set, guys.

00:04:04.000 The thing that makes Donald Trump Donald Trump is Donald Trump.

00:04:06.000 That's it.

00:04:08.000 He's one of one.

00:04:10.000 Now, you can also be a giant pulsating middle finger to the left, right?

00:04:14.000 That is a thing you can do, but you can't do that with an issue set.

00:04:16.000 You actually have to do that with a tremendous amount of aggressiveness in a space that is unfriendly to you.

00:04:21.000 We'll get to that in just a little while, because when you see what the DeSantis campaign is intending on doing, it looks as though they're about to get much more aggressive.

00:04:27.000 In sort of opposing territory.

00:04:30.000 But we have to go through how candidates are responding to Tucker's issue set.

00:04:33.000 And again, I think that I agree with Tucker a lot.

00:04:35.000 I disagree with Tucker a lot.

00:04:36.000 Everybody knows this.

00:04:37.000 But one of the things that's fascinating about what Tucker did is Tucker is trying to essentially cudgel some of these candidates.

00:04:44.000 Into taking up positions that he himself likes, but those issues aren't necessarily top issues for Republican voters, and watching as candidates scurry to try and avoid the wrath is fascinating.

00:04:57.000 We'll get to that momentarily.

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00:06:01.000 Okay, so Tucker, there are a couple of big headlines that came out of the TuckerConFab over the weekend.

00:06:08.000 Headline number one was the Tucker versus Mike Pence exchange.

00:06:12.000 Now, as I say, one of the things that has obviously been happening right here is the attempt by Tucker to go after Mike Pence in particular ways.

00:06:26.000 So Mike Pence is a candidate who really does not have a path.

00:06:30.000 He does not have a path because Donald Trump frankly lied about him for two months in the aftermath of the 2020 election, suggesting that Mike Pence had the singular power vested in him by the Constitution to overturn the results of state certified elections.

00:06:41.000 He did not have the power to do that.

00:06:42.000 He never had the power to do that.

00:06:43.000 That was a bizarre legal theory.

00:06:44.000 It was promoted by John Eastman.

00:06:46.000 I know John.

00:06:47.000 John's a nice guy, but that was a bizarre legal theory.

00:06:49.000 John knew it was a French legal theory, and the idea that Mike Pence had the capacity single-handedly to overturn the election would be absurd.

00:06:56.000 Think about how absurd that would be.

00:06:58.000 Let's say in the upcoming election, Donald Trump wins certified state votes across the country, and Kamala Harris just throws out the vote.

00:07:06.000 Do you think that's what the Constitution does?

00:07:08.000 Of course, that's not the answer.

00:07:09.000 That's not what the Constitution does.

00:07:10.000 In any case, Donald Trump said that for like a couple of months.

00:07:13.000 Mike Pence was the vice president at the time who certified the election and put a final stamp, which he had to do by constitutional duty.

00:07:19.000 And ever since then, he has been enemy of sort of some parts of MAGA world.

00:07:24.000 And so he doesn't really have a path toward the nomination.

00:07:27.000 Well, Tucker decided to jump on that by going after Pence with regard to Ukraine.

00:07:34.000 Now, again, I think that Ukraine is a litmus test for a lot of Republicans, because what Republicans are looking for from Ukraine is, what is America's national priority there?

00:07:42.000 I've said all along, I don't think America's national priority is quote-unquote democracy in Ukraine, any more than America's national priority is democracy in Saudi Arabia.

00:07:51.000 The simple fact is America has national interest in Ukraine because Ukraine provides an extraordinary amount of grain, because Ukraine is a gateway to Europe, because it is a pathway for natural gas flowing into Europe, because you do not want the Russians to be able to consolidate territory and then use that In its partnership with China, because you want to dissuade China from invading Taiwan, so you actually have to show some stones when it comes to sovereign giant countries invading surrounding countries to which they have territorial claims, supposedly.

00:08:19.000 So there are a lot of American national interests in crippling the Russian military and preventing them from invading Ukraine again.

00:08:23.000 I've also said That Zelensky isn't going to get what he wants, right?

00:08:26.000 Zelensky is not going to get back all of Donbass. 0.98

00:08:28.000 He's not going to get Crimea.

00:08:29.000 None of that's going to happen.

00:08:30.000 So the best thing that Joe Biden and the West could be doing right now is negotiating back channel with Putin and saying, listen, you're going to keep part of Donbass.

00:08:36.000 You're going to keep part of Crimea.

00:08:37.000 We're going to give security guarantees to Ukraine.

00:08:39.000 The war is over.

00:08:40.000 That's what actually should happen here.

00:08:42.000 Now, I've heard no actual countervailing response from either side, which is kind of weird, right?

00:08:46.000 From the people who are like, Zelensky, full out, full victory.

00:08:49.000 They know he's not going to get that.

00:08:50.000 And yet they keep preaching it.

00:08:52.000 And they keep putting the onus on Zelensky to somehow surrender territory, which he's not going to do.

00:08:56.000 And on the other side, the people who are saying that we shouldn't be supporting Ukraine in the war.

00:08:59.000 The question I have is, OK, so what do you mean by that?

00:09:02.000 Like on a practical level, do you mean that America right now should stop providing military support to Ukraine at all?

00:09:08.000 In which case the Russians walk into Kiev. 0.91

00:09:10.000 Is that like a thing that you are OK with?

00:09:12.000 Like, really, what are the alternatives?

00:09:14.000 I just want to hear, like, a practical, on-the-ground alternative.

00:09:16.000 I don't want to hear the pie-in-the-sky, winning, winning, winning, from one side.

00:09:19.000 And I don't want to hear the pie-in-the-sky, Ukraine is really bad and we should just stop support, because I don't think that's what you mean.

00:09:25.000 I don't even think Tucker wants Russia to take over Kiev.

00:09:29.000 I mean, I've never heard him say so, so I'd be surprised if he actually wants that to be the case.

00:09:33.000 Okay, so, he's questioning Mike Pence about Ukraine.

00:09:36.000 What does he actually wish to get from Mike Pence?

00:09:38.000 So, a lot of this primary with regard to Ukraine is about the idea that you have to show that you care more about America than Ukraine.

00:09:46.000 Now, of course you should care more about America than Ukraine. 0.84

00:09:48.000 I mean, duh.

00:09:49.000 You should care more about America than any other country.

00:09:51.000 Of course, you're an American.

00:09:51.000 Like, this is not really... America's national interest does not match the national interest of every other country.

00:09:57.000 Those countries have their national interest.

00:09:58.000 America has its national interest.

00:10:00.000 Okay, there's a clip that was going around, it was out of context, and there are some people, I won't name names here, who deliberately took this clip out of context and then tried to suggest that what Mike Pence was saying here is that he doesn't care about American cities.

00:10:12.000 That is clearly not what he is saying here.

00:10:14.000 Again, I don't totally agree with Mike Pence on Ukraine, but that's not what he is saying here.

00:10:18.000 And so this attempt that has now been made to kind of cram one issue set into the Trump phenomenon and then to suggest that everybody who disagrees with you doesn't care about America full scale, I think that's ugly stuff and I don't like it very much.

00:10:31.000 Here was Tucker with Mike Pence.

00:10:33.000 You are distressed that the Ukrainians don't have enough American tanks.

00:10:39.000 Every city in the United States has become much worse over the past three years.

00:10:44.000 Drive around.

00:10:45.000 There's not one city that's gotten better in the United States.

00:10:49.000 And it's visible.

00:10:50.000 Our economy has degraded.

00:10:52.000 The suicide rate has jumped.

00:10:54.000 Public filth and disorder and crime have exponentially increased.

00:10:59.000 And yet, your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people can't find on a map, who've received tens of billions of U.S.

00:11:07.000 tax dollars, don't have enough tanks. 1.00

00:11:09.000 I think it's a fair question to ask, like, where's the concern for the United States in that?

00:11:13.000 Well, it's not my concern.

00:11:16.000 Tucker, I've heard that routine from you before, but that's not my concern.

00:11:20.000 I'm running for president of the United States because I think this country's in a lot of trouble.

00:11:24.000 I think Joe Biden has weakened America at home and abroad.

00:11:28.000 And as President of the United States, we're going to restore law and order in our cities, we're going to secure our border, we're going to get this economy moving again, and we're going to make sure that we have men and women on our courts at every level that will stand for the right to life and defend all the God-given liberties enshrined in our Constitution.

00:11:47.000 Anybody that says that we can't be the leader of the free world, and solve our problems at home has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on earth.

00:11:56.000 We can do both.

00:11:57.000 Okay, so what was taken out of context here is that Tucker says to him, your concern is not about the cities, your concern is about the tanks in Ukraine.

00:12:05.000 And Pence says, that's not my concern.

00:12:08.000 OK, so the way that was read and it was deliberately promoted in the media this way, and it's just not true, was that Mike Pence isn't concerned about American cities.

00:12:14.000 He is concerned about the tanks.

00:12:15.000 He literally is saying the opposite.

00:12:17.000 He's saying my chief concern is not the tanks in Ukraine.

00:12:19.000 I'm concerned about all of it.

00:12:20.000 You're proclaiming I don't care about what happens in the cities.

00:12:22.000 So here is where I start to have a bit of a problem.

00:12:26.000 I think that part of the movement inside the Republican Party to cram an issue set into Trumpism is dishonest.

00:12:33.000 It is dishonest to suggest that if we took the money that we are using in Ukraine and we poured it into Detroit, Detroit would be a blooming place filled with joy and wonder.

00:12:41.000 That's not true.

00:12:42.000 We've poured trillions of dollars into poor cities in the United States over the course of the last 50 years.

00:12:46.000 That is not the chief problem that is happening in America's inner cities.

00:12:49.000 Now, you can make the case we shouldn't be giving the aid to Ukraine, but these two things do not have to do with one another.

00:12:53.000 The aid that we are giving you to Ukraine is not money that would otherwise be flowing into the great font of joy and wisdom that is the governance of the city of Chicago.

00:13:02.000 That's not how any of this works.

00:13:04.000 And I'm wondering when that actually became a conservative principle, that if you just pour more government money on it.

00:13:08.000 Here's what government is really good at.

00:13:09.000 Government is really good at putting people in jail and breaking things.

00:13:12.000 Those are the things the government is good at.

00:13:13.000 You know what government is terrible at? 0.99

00:13:15.000 Building things, building cities, building up jobs, building all this crap. 0.97

00:13:19.000 Again, this is not a case for aiding Ukraine that I'm making right here.

00:13:24.000 The case that I am making is that if you are linking together spending in, say, military

00:13:29.000 matters to, we should take that money and we should just pour it on top of Washington, 0.98

00:13:34.000 D.C., and then magically all the crime will go away.

00:13:36.000 That is a democratic point.

00:13:39.000 That is not a conservative or Republican point.

00:13:41.000 And yet that has been the issue set that has been sort of picked up from Trumpism.

00:13:44.000 And I don't understand it because that's not how Trump governed.

00:13:46.000 That's actually not what Trump was promoting.

00:13:48.000 Trump said things like that, but he said things that were not like that also.

00:13:51.000 And so every Republican candidate who is sort of running to that perspective, I think is making a category error.

00:13:57.000 We'll get to more on that in just one second.

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00:15:00.000 Now when I say that the Trump issue set is not.

00:15:04.000 We need to cut off aid to Ukraine so that we can pay for the cities at home.

00:15:09.000 And that spending money, that's actually not a Trump thing.

00:15:11.000 Let me point out, that's actually not a Trump thing.

00:15:13.000 Trump was deliberately asked about this by Maria Bargaromo over the weekend.

00:15:17.000 He was specifically asked how he would stop the Ukraine war because Trump's been going around saying he would stop the Ukraine war in one day.

00:15:22.000 You will notice something that Trump says here.

00:15:24.000 He says the exact same thing that every practical politician has been saying.

00:15:28.000 Keep the aid flowing to Ukraine so as to keep the pressure up on Russia. 0.64

00:15:32.000 So at the same time that Trumpism is being reinterpreted, Trump is saying a different thing than many of his great expositors and interpreters.

00:15:39.000 Here is Donald Trump asked how he would stop the war in Ukraine in one day.

00:15:42.000 Notice it's actually no different than Lindsey Graham.

00:15:45.000 You said you could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours.

00:15:48.000 Yes, I could.

00:15:49.000 How would you do that?

00:15:50.000 I know Zelensky very well.

00:15:52.000 I felt he was very honorable because when they asked him about the perfect phone call that I made, he said it was indeed perfect.

00:15:58.000 He said he didn't even know what they were talking about.

00:16:01.000 He could have grandstanded, oh, I felt threatened.

00:16:03.000 Well, that's not going to be enough for Putin to stop bombing Ukraine.

00:16:05.000 No, no, no, I'm not saying that.

00:16:07.000 What I'm saying is that I know Zelensky very well and I know Putin very well, even better.

00:16:12.000 And I had a good relationship, very good, with both of them.

00:16:16.000 I would tell Zelensky, no more.

00:16:19.000 You gotta make a deal.

00:16:20.000 I would tell Putin, if you don't make a deal, we're gonna give them a lot.

00:16:23.000 We're gonna give them more than they ever got, if we have to.

00:16:26.000 I will have the deal done in one day.

00:16:31.000 Okay, so in other words, the exact same policy that Joe Biden is currently pursuing.

00:16:35.000 So again, this attempt to sort of pour content into the mold of Trump.

00:16:39.000 Trump is a one-of-one.

00:16:41.000 People like him because he's Trump.

00:16:42.000 They don't like him because of the things that he is saying in terms of policy.

00:16:44.000 They like him because of the thing that he is.

00:16:47.000 In any case, Tucker used the sort of Pence out-of-context quote to go after Pence over the weekend.

00:16:52.000 And you want to slam people for things they say?

00:16:55.000 That's fine.

00:16:55.000 You want to slam people for things that they kind of are not saying?

00:16:58.000 I'm not super happy with that.

00:17:01.000 I asked a self-appointed Christian leader about that, and I said, what do you think, as someone who spent his life advocating for religious freedom, about raiding nunneries and throwing priests in jail?

00:17:16.000 And he said with a straight face, well, they, you know, they had the wrong views.

00:17:19.000 Oh! 0.60

00:17:21.000 Oh, so, oh, that, okay, I'm sorry, I didn't realize what the boundaries were.

00:17:24.000 So you have religious freedom, or freedom of speech, or freedom of assembly, As long as you stay within the lines, but if you express an unapproved view, then you go to jail.

00:17:32.000 But that's freedom, isn't it?

00:17:34.000 This person was joined by a chorus of people on the right. 1.00

00:17:38.000 Yeah, shut up! 1.00

00:17:40.000 Shut up! 1.00

00:17:41.000 National Review wrote a piece this morning. 1.00

00:17:42.000 Shut up! 1.00

00:17:42.000 It's bigoted to notice that Christian clergy are being imprisoned in Ukraine. 1.00

00:17:49.000 And my view would be, you know, maybe you care, maybe you don't, but if you're a Christian leader and Christians are going to jail for their views, you are required to say something. 0.69

00:18:00.000 And if you don't, you're not much of a Christian leader.

00:18:07.000 Okay, so this was presumably Tucker going after Pence because he asked Pence specifically about the attempts by the Ukrainian government to shut down the Russian Orthodox Church inside Ukraine because the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church inside Russia is actually a Putin ally and has been preaching the war in Ukraine and many of the churches in Ukraine have actually been mirroring all that.

00:18:27.000 Now again, I get Tucker's point with regard to the shutdown of religious freedom in Ukraine and the targeting of some of the Russian Orthodox churches or many of the Russian Orthodox churches in Ukraine.

00:18:36.000 It is a little bit more complex than the idea that Mike Pence just doesn't care about Christians around the world.

00:18:40.000 I'm just not a huge fan of the attempt to paint everybody who opposes a particular policy position as an enemy of freedom or as an enemy of the American people or as opposition.

00:18:52.000 I just I don't think that that's true about many of these candidates.

00:18:56.000 I disagree with a wide variety of these candidates, including Mike Pence on a lot of these issues.

00:18:59.000 I actually agree with Tucker more than I agree with Mike Pence with regard to the Russian Orthodox Church inside Ukraine.

00:19:04.000 But the attempt to sort of paint various candidates as malevolent forces in the world, I don't like very much.

00:19:09.000 And you can sort of see this happening across the Republican Party.

00:19:13.000 And this this does trouble me.

00:19:16.000 And one of the kind of weird dynamics about what it is that we do for a living, commenting about politics, is the easiest thing in the world is to say things that people want to hear, and the hardest thing in the world is to say things that people do not want to hear.

00:19:27.000 And what I'm seeing increasingly is an attempt to sort of say things that people want to hear, but present it as though you're saying something that nobody wants to hear.

00:19:35.000 So to take another example from over the weekend, then we'll get back to sort of this presidential forum, because some of the answers are really interesting.

00:19:41.000 So J.D.

00:19:41.000 Vance was speaking at Turning Point USA yesterday.

00:19:45.000 And J.D.

00:19:46.000 Vance became famous for writing a book called Hillbilly Elegy.

00:19:48.000 And listen, I like J.D.

00:19:49.000 I think he's a good senator from Ohio.

00:19:51.000 I supported him in his race in Ohio.

00:19:53.000 Hillbilly Elegy is largely about how the entitlement state perverts the incentive structure for middle class and lower class white Americans in terms of income In the Midwest of the country.

00:20:05.000 That's what Hillbilly Elegy is about.

00:20:06.000 It's why he became nationally famous.

00:20:08.000 Did JD.

00:20:09.000 And you can see me talk with JD.

00:20:10.000 I mean, I've done interviews with JD.

00:20:11.000 Again, I supported him in his Ohio Senate run.

00:20:14.000 But one of the things that J.D. 0.61

00:20:16.000 says here is so patently sort of ridiculous that I think that it's worth noting. 1.00

00:20:22.000 Because again, it ties into this whole idea that if you disagree with a particular policy position, it must be because you oppose the interests of Americans. 0.92

00:20:29.000 And I don't like this.

00:20:30.000 I just don't think it's true in the vast majority of cases.

00:20:33.000 In some cases, it's 100%.

00:20:35.000 In some cases, it is 100% true.

00:20:37.000 I don't think it happens to be true in this case.

00:20:38.000 I'm going to get to that in just one moment.

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00:21:49.000 Okay, so, J.D.

00:21:51.000 Vance, again, the reason I'm pointing out J.D., he's not running for president, but is this perspective that is now being promoted, which is that if you disagree with a particular policy position inside sort of the supposed MAGA right, even though, again, Donald Trump doesn't even believe a lot of this sort of stuff, That this means that you have you have exposed your disloyalty.

00:22:09.000 I just I don't buy it.

00:22:11.000 I don't buy it and I think it's rather demagogic.

00:22:13.000 So here is JD Vance over the weekend talking about Ukraine and entitlements and what he's about to say does not make any logical sense.

00:22:22.000 There's no issue that these people with Ukrainian flags in their bio are more obsessed with what they call an entitlement reform, but of course what they're saying is that they want to cut social security for the people who paid into it for a generation so that we can send more money to Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine.

00:22:39.000 Do we want to do that?

00:22:41.000 Absolutely not.

00:22:44.000 Okay, can I just point out that the people with Ukrainian flags in their bios and the crossover with people who want entitlement reform, that Venn diagram is two separate circles.

00:22:51.000 Those are two separate circles.

00:22:52.000 The people with Ukraine flags in their bios are by and large Democrats who are supportive of Joe Biden.

00:22:56.000 And none of them want entitlement reform.

00:22:58.000 This idea that if you want entitlement reform, that's because you want to spend the money in Ukraine is bizarre and absurd.

00:23:03.000 I don't want to spend money in Ukraine.

00:23:05.000 And also, I do want entitlement reform.

00:23:06.000 By the way, you know who agrees with that position?

00:23:08.000 J.D.

00:23:09.000 Vance circa 2010.

00:23:11.000 When J.D.

00:23:12.000 Vance was writing, this is a piece from J.D.

00:23:14.000 Vance, December of 2010, talking about the federal budget, quote, Social Security, and especially Medicare, grow rapidly relative to tax revenue increases.

00:23:23.000 Some policy experts estimate that Medicare will consume well over half of the budget by itself before my generation sees any benefits.

00:23:29.000 Basically, our budget situation is bleak and it grows worse over time.

00:23:32.000 The political obstacles intimidate more than the practical problems.

00:23:34.000 The party of, um, limited government, the Republican Party, is also the party of the aging white person.

00:23:39.000 The party's only solid constituency thus depends on the Medicare and Social Security benefits that are the biggest roadblocks to any kind of real fiscal sanity.

00:23:47.000 The Democrats are similarly hopeless.

00:23:49.000 J.D.

00:23:50.000 Vance, 2010 Here's J.D.

00:23:52.000 J.D. Vance in Hillbilly Elegy, quote, if you believe that hard work pays off, then you work hard.

00:23:56.000 If you think it's hard to get ahead, even when you try, then why try at all?

00:23:59.000 Similarly, when people do fail, this mindset allows them to look outward.

00:24:02.000 I once ran into an old acquaintance at a Middletown bar who told me that he'd recently quit his job

00:24:06.000 because he was sick of waking up early.

00:24:08.000 I later saw him complaining on Facebook about the Obama economy and how it affected his life.

00:24:12.000 I don't doubt that the Obama economy has affected many, but this man is assuredly not among them.

00:24:16.000 His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he's made, and his life will improve only through better decisions.

00:24:21.000 But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask tough questions about himself.

00:24:26.000 There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherence by the day. 0.87

00:24:35.000 That is J.D.

00:24:35.000 Vance and the book that made him famous, Hillbilly Elegy.

00:24:38.000 And you can make the case that Medicare, Social Security, that, you know, the changes that are going to have to happen should happen gradually.

00:24:45.000 You can make the case against spending with the war in Ukraine.

00:24:47.000 That's fine.

00:24:48.000 But to link the two as though if you want some sort of entitlement reform, this is because inherently what you actually want to do is build a city in Ukraine.

00:24:57.000 You care about Bakhmut or something.

00:24:58.000 That's absurd.

00:24:59.000 And it's not true.

00:25:01.000 And so this is the part of the kind of modern movement inside the Republican Party.

00:25:06.000 Everybody who disagrees with me is bad and badly motivated, whether it is Mike Pence or whether it is any other candidate.

00:25:15.000 I don't buy it and I don't like it and I don't think it's true.

00:25:18.000 I really don't.

00:25:19.000 I think there are a lot of candidates in this race and they disagree about a wide variety of issues.

00:25:22.000 And on the Republican side, I think by and large, they really care about the country.

00:25:26.000 And I think it's a category error to pretend that the people who are talking to you in the ways that you like the best are therefore the people who are telling you the truth.

00:25:36.000 Very often, it is precisely the opposite.

00:25:38.000 Let me give you another example of somebody who's been doing this.

00:25:41.000 Again, this is a person that I personally like.

00:25:43.000 I'm friends with him.

00:25:44.000 Vivek Ramaswamy is having a bit of a moment in some of the polling data.

00:25:49.000 Which is great.

00:25:49.000 Good for him, right?

00:25:50.000 He's coming from literally nowhere.

00:25:51.000 He's a 35-year-old guy who made a lot of money in the biotech sphere.

00:25:54.000 We've talked about it.

00:25:55.000 I did like a full two-and-a-half-hour search with him.

00:25:58.000 I think Vivek is a brilliant guy.

00:25:59.000 I think he's a bright guy.

00:26:00.000 I think he's got a lot of future in him, obviously.

00:26:04.000 But some of the stuff that he's saying at events like this, I understand it's a primary campaign.

00:26:08.000 I get it.

00:26:09.000 But they are clearly things that the crowd wants to hear.

00:26:11.000 So, yesterday, or over the weekend, Tucker is interviewing Vivek.

00:26:15.000 And he asked him about January 6th.

00:26:17.000 And what Vivek says about January 6th, when people say that what people say in primaries might affect how things go in a general election, this would be a case in point.

00:26:26.000 Anyway, here is Tucker asking Vivek about January 6th.

00:26:29.000 And what Vivek says here is sort of half true.

00:26:32.000 And it's half true in a particular way.

00:26:34.000 I'll be very honest with you.

00:26:37.000 You want to know what caused January 6th?

00:26:39.000 There's such a temptation to say that there's one man whose name is unspeakable.

00:26:42.000 No, first of all, it's QAnon.

00:26:43.000 It's QAnon.

00:26:44.000 It's QAnon.

00:26:45.000 You wanna know what caused January 6th?

00:26:49.000 Is pervasive censorship in this country in the lead up to January 6th.

00:26:54.000 You tell people in this country they cannot speak, that is when they scream.

00:27:01.000 Okay, so, a couple of things.

00:27:03.000 Is pervasive censorship one of the causes of great outrage on the right side?

00:27:06.000 Of course!

00:27:07.000 Of course!

00:27:07.000 I mean, duh.

00:27:10.000 People like me have said that while I don't believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump in the sense that there were like big boxes, pallets of votes that were being shipped into Fulton County in the middle of the night, that the election was rigged in the informal sense, in the sense that you create all sorts of rules that benefit Democrats, including early mail-in voting, universal mail-in balloting, and ballot harvesting, and all this kind of, and then you shut down the media for a month before the election about Hunter Biden, and that's going to have an impact on the election.

00:27:34.000 Of course, that part is true. 0.75

00:27:36.000 But one of the things that no one would say on the stage is one of the reasons the January 6th happened is because Donald Trump said for two months that Mike Pence could unilaterally decide to overturn the election.

00:27:46.000 Which is a bad thing, and Donald Trump should not have said it.

00:27:49.000 He was not telling the truth about that stuff.

00:27:51.000 It was not true.

00:27:53.000 And now, the dynamic here apparently is, again this is politics, I get it, tell people what they want to hear, but I don't think that telling people what they want to hear is actually going to get you where you need to go.

00:28:03.000 Because in the end, we're still going to have to live in a country together and we're still going to have to govern that country.

00:28:08.000 And I think that you can walk and chew gum at the same time.

00:28:10.000 I think you can say, censorship in the media was egregious and terrible and social media participated in it, that's going to need a real solution.

00:28:18.000 I mean, listen, I run a company that is directly opposed to the outrageous kind of behavior that social media has played in affecting elections on behalf of Democrats.

00:28:26.000 It's one of the things that we do.

00:28:29.000 Clearly.

00:28:30.000 But you also have to tell the truth with regard to bad things that happen when they come from your own side, for example.

00:28:37.000 And I don't think that this sort of attempt to suggest that if you say that, that there's somehow an aspect of disloyalty, that this is...

00:28:48.000 Again, I think that there's a lot of posturing.

00:28:50.000 Let's just say that.

00:28:50.000 There's a lot of posturing.

00:28:52.000 Another piece of posturing that happened over the weekend.

00:28:54.000 So, Tucker asked Asa Hutchinson about COVID.

00:28:57.000 And he was asking him how many COVID shots he took.

00:28:58.000 Now, Tucker had been asked in the past about how many shots he took, and he said, you know, that's none of your business.

00:29:02.000 Which, by the way, is the proper response.

00:29:04.000 None of your business is the proper response to how many shots did you take, because that is personal medical information, obviously.

00:29:10.000 But here's Tucker going after Asa Hutchinson.

00:29:12.000 Now, there are lots of reasons to go after Asa Hutchinson.

00:29:14.000 I think Asa Hutchinson is a terrible candidate. 0.94

00:29:15.000 I think Asa Hutchinson is weak as hell. 0.84

00:29:17.000 I think Asa Hutchinson is awful on a wide variety of issues. 0.90

00:29:19.000 I think there's a reason he's completely stalled out in this campaign and no one cares about him.

00:29:23.000 This particular exchange, I think, is kind of interesting, however.

00:29:28.000 One of the powers that government did usurp over the past several years is the right to decide what medicine you take in the form of COVID mandates.

00:29:38.000 How did you feel about that?

00:29:39.000 And how many COVID shots did you take?

00:29:41.000 And how do you feel about it now, in retrospect?

00:29:45.000 How many COVID shots did you take?

00:29:46.000 Zero.

00:29:51.000 But I think it's fair, and I can see that you recoiled when I asked you that question.

00:29:57.000 And I don't think, honestly, you should be asking people about their medical care, but that became a matter of public policy.

00:30:03.000 Okay, now, he said I don't think you should be asking people about their medical care directly after he asked Asa Hutchinson about his, about the number of shots.

00:30:12.000 Now, Tucker says he took no shots, and that's fine.

00:30:16.000 That's fine.

00:30:16.000 I mean, sure.

00:30:18.000 I'll also point out that Tucker worked at Fox News at a time when Fox News was deliberately forcing all of its employees to vax.

00:30:23.000 All of them.

00:30:25.000 We here at The Daily Wire, regardless of my personal decision on whether I got vaxed or not, and I did.

00:30:30.000 I was vaxed.

00:30:31.000 And if I had known now what I knew then, the opposite, if I had known then what I know now, would I have gotten vaxed?

00:30:37.000 Probably not.

00:30:38.000 I was a 37-year-old man in good physical condition, and we were lied to by the pharmaceutical companies and by the federal government.

00:30:45.000 With that said, my company literally sued the federal government to prevent our own employees from vaxing if they did not want to.

00:30:51.000 We sued the federal government, and we committed that we would never force an employee to vax.

00:30:56.000 Now Tucker can talk about how he didn't get vaxed, that's fine for him, but he didn't say one word on the air about Fox News' mandates on vaccination.

00:31:04.000 Listen, again, I think Tucker says a lot of wonderful and brilliant things.

00:31:07.000 I think Tucker's one of the most talented people in modern media history, for sure.

00:31:11.000 I think all of that is true.

00:31:12.000 I also think that some of the virtue signaling that's happening right now with regard to the Republican primary and with regards to the Republican Party in general, is just not telling people the truth about what exactly is going on, and I find that a little bit of a problem.

00:31:25.000 Okay, but all of that is beside the point, because the question really is, in the Republican Party, how this Republican nominating race is going to go.

00:31:30.000 The reason all of this is relevant, by the way, is because this dynamic shapes how the Republican race is run.

00:31:35.000 The way the Republican race should be won is actually very simple.

00:31:38.000 Who is most likely to beat Joe Biden and to promote the conservative values that you want?

00:31:44.000 Those are the two questions that matter.

00:31:46.000 Who is the person who is most likely to promote the values you want in office and is likely to win?

00:31:50.000 That's all, which means that theoretically people should be asked about the policies that actually matter to the American people most in, for example, a general election.

00:31:57.000 This is one of the reasons why I'm sort of objecting to all the focus on Ukraine, for example, because the American people, by and large, do not care.

00:32:03.000 As long as you'd say, and as long as it is true, that you care more about America than Ukraine, which is, I would imagine, virtually everybody in the Republican race, if not everybody in the Republican race, then all the rest of this is sort of irrelevant.

00:32:14.000 But this became sort of a big topic over the weekend.

00:32:17.000 Here was Tucker grilling, for example, Tim Scott on Ukraine.

00:32:21.000 Our primary objective should only be to engage with America's vital national interests are being engaged in.

00:32:28.000 Unfortunately, President Biden has no ability to understand and appreciate what that looks like.

00:32:35.000 Wait, may I ask?

00:32:36.000 So you're saying that it's in our national interest, vital national interest to degrade the Russian military, in other words, to fight Russia with other people's soldiers. 0.86

00:32:44.000 I would say it this way.

00:32:46.000 If you think about the world order that we established after World War II, if you think

00:32:52.000 about a rules-based system, where does a rules-based system come from?

00:32:56.000 It comes from this nation, our Judeo-Christian foundation, that says that there are rules

00:33:01.000 of the road, that there is something called absolute truth.

00:33:04.000 And we established that.

00:33:06.000 As a part of that absolute truth, what we're trying to do is make sure that our home front remains safe.

00:33:13.000 Keeping our home front safe means evaluating the actual threats to our country.

00:33:19.000 The most immediate military threat that could happen is Russia.

00:33:25.000 And here was Tucker asking Ron DeSantis the same question about Ukraine.

00:33:30.000 Europe needs to do more.

00:33:32.000 This is their backyard.

00:33:34.000 We have NATO countries that don't produce support for their own defenses.

00:33:39.000 And we're supposed to do it and we're taking away weapons and ammo that could go to respond to contingencies overseas.

00:33:45.000 So we would do more in terms of the Pacific.

00:33:48.000 And the goal should be to bring it to a conclusion.

00:33:52.000 We cannot have a quagmire that goes on for years and years.

00:33:57.000 And seeing Biden put those troops there, I can tell you, we cannot have American troops in Ukraine.

00:34:02.000 That is a total non-starter.

00:34:06.000 Okay, all of this is fine and dandy.

00:34:08.000 Also, the point of differentiation against Joe Biden is really not going to be on this particular issue.

00:34:13.000 Because when it comes down to the policy, as I say, I played a clip of Donald Trump talking about the policy.

00:34:17.000 Right now, his policy is indistinguishable from that of Joe Biden, the way he's talking about it.

00:34:21.000 Not distinguishable!

00:34:22.000 Okay, so that means that really, if we're going to talk about which Republican candidate is best to take on Biden, you know what would be great?

00:34:28.000 Is to ask the candidates How they would best take on Joe Biden.

00:34:32.000 Because that seems like the real question.

00:34:33.000 We'll get to that in a moment because that question is being answered.

00:34:36.000 And we're, you know, we're going to answer that question before these primaries are over.

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00:36:30.000 Okay, meanwhile.

00:36:32.000 If we are looking at the Republican primary, now the Republican primary is down to a really simple question.

00:36:36.000 And it really is not about the internal policies here, because again, I believe that virtually all of the Republican candidates on the stage with Tucker or with anybody else, Trump, by the way, did not show up.

00:36:45.000 And it's kind of amazing.

00:36:47.000 The Blaze, which ran the debate, they had Carrie Lake on as a commentator. 0.99

00:36:50.000 Carrie Lake is already a Trump surrogate. 0.99

00:36:51.000 She is the losing gubernatorial candidate in Arizona. 0.78

00:36:54.000 I'm sorry, she lost.

00:36:55.000 She lost to a dead person, Katie Hobbs.

00:36:57.000 It's amazing how bad candidates can lose to actual corpses like Katie Hobbs in places like Arizona. 0.94

00:37:02.000 But Carrie Lake was on the telecast talking about how wonderful Trump was.

00:37:05.000 Trump, who did not show up to the event.

00:37:07.000 And so the question is going to be, listen, Trump, he doesn't have to show up to the event.

00:37:10.000 He's the front runner right now.

00:37:11.000 His prerogative.

00:37:12.000 But the question is going to be, who is best poised to take on Joe Biden?

00:37:17.000 Right now, the top two Republicans in the polls remain Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

00:37:21.000 DeSantis is now shifting and he is moving.

00:37:25.000 Right now, there are a couple of long shots who are raising some cash, right?

00:37:27.000 Tim Scott has raised a bunch of money.

00:37:30.000 He raised about $5.8 million in the last quarter.

00:37:33.000 Nikki Haley raised $5.3 million.

00:37:35.000 That is, you know, a drop in the bucket compared to the $20 million that DeSantis raised and the $17 million that Trump raised.

00:37:41.000 Ron DeSantis is now shaking up his campaign as he should.

00:37:44.000 He's shaking up his campaign because he has not gained traction yet in the polls.

00:37:47.000 He's sort of been steady in the polls for a couple of months here.

00:37:51.000 There's this big jump that everybody is comparing his current poll numbers to right after the 2022 election when, for just a second, Republicans realized that Donald Trump is very, very bad at picking Senate candidates and had Caused a lot of Republican electoral losses in 2018, 2020, 2021, and 2022.

00:38:03.000 And so they're like, okay, who else is out there who did really well?

00:38:06.000 Oh, Ron DeSantis did great in Florida.

00:38:08.000 So the polls spiked for DeSantis for a moment, and then everybody sort of went back to their original positions.

00:38:12.000 But DeSantis has an uphill climb.

00:38:14.000 Apparently he has fired roughly a dozen staffers.

00:38:16.000 More dismissals are expected in the coming weeks.

00:38:18.000 He's shaking up his big money political operations after less than a couple of months on the campaign trail.

00:38:22.000 That's according to NBC News.

00:38:23.000 And he is also going to be going into unfriendly territory.

00:38:26.000 So according to Mediaite, He is going to do a one-on-one with Jake Tapper over at CNN.

00:38:33.000 I assume this will be a little bit of rock'em, sock'em robots, which is necessary for DeSantis' campaign.

00:38:37.000 Again, if the appeal of Donald Trump is he goes into unfriendly territory and he punches people in a debate, he says things to Hillary Clinton like, you'd be in jail, right?

00:38:44.000 If that's the appeal, then you need somebody who will do that, who will go into unfriendly territory and will knock heads together.

00:38:50.000 And has the actual track record to prove it.

00:38:51.000 I mean, there are some Republican candidates who are going into unfriendly territory and doing a good job.

00:38:55.000 I mentioned Vivek Ramaswamy a little bit earlier on, was critical of him.

00:38:57.000 In this arena, Vivek has been very good.

00:38:59.000 He's gone on a bunch of shows that are very unfriendly to him, and he has really taken aggressive positions.

00:39:03.000 DeSantis is going to have to do the same, and now he is going to.

00:39:06.000 So apparently he is getting ready to do a spate of interviews with sort of legacy media outlets.

00:39:13.000 And again, I think he's going to treat these more as debate settings than as actual honest interview settings, which is what he should do because they're going to come after him with a hammer and with a hatchet.

00:39:22.000 And how DeSantis performs in these interviews is going to be very critical to his pathway going forward.

00:39:27.000 Because again, the question is going to be who can fight the media on the one hand and Joe Biden on the other.

00:39:32.000 Meanwhile, Donald Trump is avoiding debate, which, again, it is his prerogative, but he is also setting himself up, I will say.

00:39:39.000 He made a comment about Joe Biden dodging early debates against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and he's actually setting the predicate for Biden also dodging a debate against him.

00:39:47.000 I think a lot of Republicans are counting on the idea that Trump will get into a general election scenario with Biden and that the economy will tank, which maybe it will, maybe it won't.

00:39:56.000 And then there will be a debate between Trump and Biden in which Biden basically is a corpse and Trump does a good job.

00:40:02.000 I'm highly doubtful that Biden even debates Trump.

00:40:05.000 I think there is every possibility that Biden says, I'm not going to debate an insurrectionist.

00:40:11.000 And he just refuses outright to debate Trump.

00:40:13.000 And Trump kind of set the predicate here.

00:40:15.000 Here is Trump talking about why it's OK for Biden not to debate RFK Jr.

00:40:18.000 and why he is not debating all the other Republicans.

00:40:21.000 The Democrats don't want to do debates.

00:40:23.000 I know Marianne Williamson and RFK Jr.

00:40:26.000 want to debate.

00:40:27.000 What do you think about that?

00:40:29.000 Well, I understand why he doesn't want to do it.

00:40:31.000 I mean, I truly understand why he doesn't want to do it.

00:40:34.000 But they are, you know, there's a big difference.

00:40:35.000 Although, in the case of RFK, I've seen polls where he's at 20 percent.

00:40:40.000 That's not bad.

00:40:41.000 But I understand why he doesn't want to do it.

00:40:43.000 Look, when you're running for office and you have, in his case, let's say he has a 30 or 40 point lead, why would he do it?

00:40:50.000 People are going to say, well, he can't do it.

00:40:52.000 I actually think he can't do it, if you want to know the truth.

00:40:54.000 I don't think he's capable of doing it.

00:40:57.000 But why would he do it?

00:40:58.000 Especially because of that, why would he do it?

00:41:00.000 If he's got a 30 or 40 point lead, which is what he's got, I mean, I don't think RFK expects that he's going to be debating.

00:41:08.000 He's a very smart guy, by the way.

00:41:10.000 I don't think he expects to be debating Biden.

00:41:15.000 Now, obviously, Trump here is talking about himself.

00:41:16.000 This is why he's saying he's not going to debate the rest of the Republican field.

00:41:18.000 He's not talking about Biden and RFK.

00:41:19.000 He's talking about himself and the rest of the Republican field.

00:41:22.000 Just be careful what you wish for, because I think that Joe Biden could use similar logic with regard to Trump.

00:41:27.000 And again, a lot of people on the Republican side, including people like me, if Trump is the nominee, I want to see them debate, obviously.

00:41:33.000 Here's Bartiromo asking him, like, you didn't drain the swamp.

00:41:35.000 You didn't clean the executive branch.

00:41:36.000 You said you were going to do all these things, and then none of them happened.

00:41:39.000 I know the people now better than anybody's ever known the people. 0.97

00:41:42.000 I know the good ones, the bad ones, the dumb ones, the smart ones. 0.98

00:41:47.000 Oh, you didn't drain the swamp like you said you would. 1.00

00:41:49.000 You didn't drain the swamp.

00:41:50.000 I did.

00:41:50.000 I fired Comey.

00:41:51.000 I fired a lot of people.

00:41:52.000 A lot of the people I had, I fired.

00:41:54.000 I fired Comey very early.

00:41:58.000 And, you know, there was a question as to whether or not you could.

00:42:02.000 Okay, so, actually, he did not.

00:42:05.000 I mean, in terms of drain the swamp, I mean, the deep state was there throughout his tenure, as he himself has said.

00:42:10.000 Ron DeSantis also pointed out the other day, and this is, again, why Trump doesn't want to be in a debate.

00:42:14.000 DeSantis points out he added $8 trillion in debt and built 50 miles of wall.

00:42:17.000 Accurate.

00:42:19.000 We've been very frank at our differences with respect to the former president.

00:42:23.000 I mean, for example, he promised to drain the swamp.

00:42:27.000 It got worse.

00:42:28.000 He did not drain the swamp.

00:42:29.000 He promised to have Mexico pay for a border wall.

00:42:32.000 They did like 50 miles of wall.

00:42:34.000 There's massive expansives still there.

00:42:37.000 He said he was going to eliminate the national debt.

00:42:40.000 They added almost eight trillion dollars to the debt in four years and of course in 2020 he turned the country over to Dr. Fauci and those lockdowns and the borrowing and printing really sent us on a bad course.

00:42:54.000 I've been very very frank at that.

00:42:57.000 So bet which Republican is going to be best tailored to take on Biden.

00:43:00.000 That's going to be the story of the rest of this race. 1.00

00:43:01.000 Don't get distracted in the weeds with all the rest of this, including anything that's attempted to draw support for positions that are not particularly honest.

00:43:10.000 All that matters is who's going to be most conservative in office and who can beat Joe Biden.

00:43:14.000 That's all that matters.

00:43:14.000 Maybe it's Trump.

00:43:15.000 It could easily be Trump.

00:43:17.000 Maybe it's not.

00:43:18.000 But the kinds of questions that are being asked to the candidates need to be tailored to that specific take, not to any other ancillary issues that benefit some at the expense of others.

00:43:27.000 Meanwhile, on the Democratic side of the aisle, RFK Jr.

00:43:30.000 is freaking out a lot of people in the media because he's actually polling fairly decently against Joe Biden.

00:43:34.000 Joe Biden should be in the 90% range.

00:43:35.000 He should not be in the 70% range.

00:43:37.000 RFK Jr.

00:43:38.000 should be in the 0% range, not in the 15 to 20% range.

00:43:41.000 And yet RFK Jr.

00:43:42.000 continues to draw some support.

00:43:44.000 There was a bit of a mini controversy over the weekend that was kind of bizarre.

00:43:47.000 With regard to RFK Jr.

00:43:49.000 So he was on tape and he was talking specifically about COVID.

00:43:53.000 And he suggested that COVID might have been a bioweapon engineered by the Chinese that was made less deadly for people of particular ethnicities.

00:44:01.000 And this was touted as though he was suggesting that, for example, Jews had created COVID in order to avoid the targeting of Ashkenaz Jews.

00:44:08.000 That's not actually what he is saying right here, I'll point out.

00:44:11.000 So here are his comments and then here is what he was actually talking about.

00:44:15.000 COVID-19, there's an argument that it is ethnically targeted.

00:44:20.000 COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately.

00:44:27.000 The races that are most immune to COVID-19 are because of the structure, the genetic structure, genetic differentials among different races.

00:44:42.000 Of the receptors, of the ACE2 receptor. 0.69

00:44:49.000 COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. 0.87

00:44:58.000 The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. 0.88

00:45:05.000 So he was actually citing a study that was published in July 2020 that suggested that one particular receptor for the virus was not present in certain populations.

00:45:15.000 Now, it appears that that study was misread by RFK Jr., but he was not Again, I'm rather attuned to anti-Semitism.

00:45:24.000 I do not think he was making the claim that the Jews engineered COVID to avoid the deaths of Ashkenazi Jews.

00:45:30.000 I'm pretty sure that's not what he was saying right there.

00:45:32.000 And again, I'm not a huge RFK Jr.

00:45:34.000 fan.

00:45:34.000 I think that he is a conspiratorial thinker.

00:45:36.000 I've pointed out when I think that he is overstating the case.

00:45:39.000 For example, he's constantly making the case that if it's not autism, that if it's not vaccines that are increasing the risk of autism, then what is it?

00:45:46.000 Which is a really, really bad scientific argument.

00:45:48.000 That's like me saying to my wife, If it wasn't a robber who created this giant pile of dishes in the sink last night, who was it?

00:45:55.000 Well, it could be another thing.

00:45:56.000 I mean, it could be.

00:45:59.000 So don't count me among Robert F. Kennedy Jr.' 's most ardent defenders.

00:46:03.000 I've been more critical of him than many, but the notion that what he was saying there was like explicitly anti-Semitic or it was a conspiracy theory about Jews creating COVID or something, I think one of the things that's happening now is now the media, who are fairly warm to RFK Jr.

00:46:14.000 for years and years and years, see him as a threat to Biden, and so they're starting to turn on him.

00:46:18.000 You'll also notice that those comments didn't get any sort of the same sort of coverage as comments that he made to Shmuley Boteach, who leads the World Values Network, And in this particular interview, you'll hear RFK Jr.

00:46:32.000 talking about strong support for Israel.

00:46:34.000 And so again, what the media are focused on like a laser beam is anti-Semitism,

00:46:38.000 supposed anti-Semitism from RFK Jr.

00:46:40.000 in a comment that is fairly, certainly not anti-Semitism.

00:46:44.000 Meanwhile, they're perfectly willing to overlook open anti-Semitism inside the Republican,

00:46:48.000 inside the Democratic Party, which we'll get to in one second.

00:46:50.000 Well, I can tell you there's nobody who's running for president right now in either party

00:46:56.000 who will be a better friend to Israel than me as president and nobody who will articulate the moral case for Israel

00:47:04.000 with the same erudition or the same persuasive power as me because I believe it in my heart.

00:47:12.000 It's the.

00:47:14.000 It's core to the values that I was raised with.

00:47:17.000 My father was a key commitment of my father during his lifetime, to President Kennedy, to my Uncle Teddy, who played such a key role in assisting the Soviet Jewry to leave the Soviet Union during the 1980s to get to the United States and safe harbors in Israel.

00:47:39.000 And that friendship with Israel and making the case for the moral case for Israel will be a key part of my presidency.

00:47:49.000 Okay, so let me just point out here that, again, the media are very attuned to RFK Jr.

00:47:52.000 He must have said something super antisemitic right there in that comment over dinner.

00:47:57.000 When he's pretty clearly not.

00:47:58.000 Meanwhile, Pramila Jayapal, who's the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, she was, like, openly anti-Semitic over the weekend.

00:48:04.000 I mean, just, like, openly full-bore anti-Semitic. 0.94

00:48:06.000 She was at Netroots Nation, which is a place for crazy people, and she was speaking about Israel, and she just calls it openly, just, it's a racist state. 0.88

00:48:12.000 I mean, like, full, full anti-Semitic rant here from Pramila Jayapal. 0.89

00:48:18.000 And inside the Democratic Party halls of power, like, they're going to, like, kind of tut-tut her, but they'll basically let it go, of course.

00:48:25.000 Can I say something as somebody that's been in the streets and has participated in a lot of demonstrations?

00:48:32.000 I think I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state. 0.71

00:48:40.000 That the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy.

00:48:46.000 That the dream of a two-state solution is slipping away from us.

00:48:53.000 That it does not even feel possible.

00:49:00.000 And I want you to know that while you may have arguments with whether or not some of us on stage are fighting hard enough, I do want you to know that there is an organized opposition on the other side, and it isn't the people that are on this stage.

00:49:21.000 Right, so Israel is a racist state, says the lady about the country that has a 20% Arab population, where Arabs are fully a part of every part of the Israeli economy and fully part of everyday Israeli life.

00:49:30.000 Meanwhile, the Palestinians, where there are literally no Jews, Jews do not live there because they will be murdered, they're doing just fine. 1.00

00:49:36.000 The Democratic Party is generally okay with this.

00:49:39.000 Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris Tweeted out a picture of herself with Reverend Jesse Jackson, saying, Reverend Jesse Jackson, you're one of our nation's greatest patriots.

00:49:47.000 Thank you for widening the path for generations to come.

00:49:49.000 In this moment, let us all model your lifelong commitment to progress and remain committed to the fight for freedom and justice.

00:49:53.000 Jesse Jackson is a lifelong anti-Semite.

00:49:55.000 He famously, in the 1980s, called New York, Hymietown, filled with Hymies. 0.99

00:50:00.000 And he suggested, when Barack Obama was running for president, that he was going to finally wipe away the Zionist conspiracy inside the government and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

00:50:07.000 The Democratic Party is not only okay with that.

00:50:08.000 The Vice President of the United States tweets out her friendship and support for Jesse Jackson, who of course is also very close with Louis Farrakhan.

00:50:13.000 So, this is the way that it works.

00:50:15.000 Only certain types of anti-Semitism bother the Democrats.

00:50:18.000 The types of anti-Semitism that may not actually be anti-Semitic, but may threaten Joe Biden's hold on power.

00:50:24.000 Okay, meanwhile...

00:50:25.000 Joe Biden, what is he doing amidst all this chaos?

00:50:28.000 He's nibbling children in Finland. 0.97

00:50:30.000 That's apparently a thing.

00:50:31.000 Remember, this is a man who is with it.

00:50:33.000 Here's a clip of Joe Biden nibbling a child in Helsinki, Finland.

00:50:38.000 Okay, literally the only child that is acceptable to treat like this is if you are genetically related to the child.

00:50:42.000 That is the only... A random child?

00:50:45.000 What is wrong with this dude?

00:50:51.000 Here he is.

00:50:52.000 He's going up.

00:50:52.000 He's like nibbling this kid.

00:50:54.000 What the?

00:50:54.000 What in the world?

00:50:55.000 And look at this kid.

00:50:56.000 This kid's afraid of him.

00:50:57.000 She's shying away from him.

00:50:59.000 Look at that.

00:50:59.000 He's trying to kiss the baby.

00:51:01.000 And the baby is like, get me the get me the hell away from this old smelly man. 0.98

00:51:05.000 Get me out of here. 0.95

00:51:07.000 What is wrong with this guy?

00:51:08.000 What is wrong with this guy?

00:51:09.000 I mean, it really is quite amazing that this is the current leader of the free world.

00:51:14.000 He's very vulnerable.

00:51:15.000 Republicans should choose wisely.

00:51:16.000 The candidate they think is most likely to defeat him.

00:51:19.000 OK, meanwhile, a quick thing that I hate.

00:51:26.000 A couple things today.

00:51:27.000 So one of my favorite things is when people have this very self-flattering view that is just not true.

00:51:31.000 So MSNBC's Ali Velshi over the weekend, he uttered a comment that I could not let pass without comment.

00:51:36.000 He said that there are no conspiracy theorists in the MSNBC audience, which is weird since if you poll the MSNBC audience as to how many of them believe that the Russians basically stole the 2016 election for Trump, I guarantee you it's a very, very high percentage.

00:51:47.000 Here's Ali Velshi packing himself on the back.

00:51:51.000 Two segments ago I talked about red states and Bidenomics.

00:51:55.000 Again, my audience doesn't have conspiracy theorists in it.

00:51:59.000 So what does this content war mean?

00:52:02.000 What does this volume of information mean?

00:52:04.000 I can sit here and book you guys on the show and we can debunk these conspiracy theories that my viewer didn't have in the first place.

00:52:13.000 And the people out there who are bathing in this cesspool of conspiracy are not watching me.

00:52:22.000 You're right.

00:52:22.000 Nailed it.

00:52:23.000 Nailed it.

00:52:23.000 No one who watches MSNBC has ever believed a conspiracy theory.

00:52:27.000 Yes.

00:52:27.000 Great.

00:52:28.000 Absolutely correct. 1.00

00:52:29.000 Okay, meanwhile, this is the dumbest story of the day. 0.93

00:52:32.000 I don't know why Disney wishes to destroy its own intellectual property, but if they're going to do so, then, you know, more power to them, I suppose. 0.92

00:52:40.000 So they've now decided that apparently every redhead in the Disney universe will be recast as a racially diverse person. 0.99

00:52:47.000 And this is how, for example, the Little Mermaid ended up as a person of color.

00:52:52.000 It's something that somebody noticed.

00:52:53.000 It's basically if you're a redhead in Disney universe, then they'll recast you. 1.00

00:52:56.000 But now they're recasting everyone.

00:52:57.000 So they've cast Snow White Snow White is now going to be played by Rachel Zegler.

00:53:05.000 Okay, now, Rachel Zegler, you may know, again, her name is Snow White.

00:53:09.000 Now, you might consider that racist, but that's also the name of the actual fairy tale.

00:53:13.000 And in the actual fairy tale, it says, this is from the original 1936 Snow White.

00:53:20.000 Skin as white as snow, right?

00:53:23.000 That is literally in her name.

00:53:25.000 That's why she has her name.

00:53:26.000 So, I guess just to, like, screw with people, they're casting... Rachel Ziegler is a very talented person.

00:53:31.000 I'm just... It's weird casting, you might say, right?

00:53:35.000 Like, I don't understand.

00:53:36.000 There's certain parts that are racially specific.

00:53:38.000 I mean, very clearly so.

00:53:39.000 They're not going to cast Tiana from The Frog Prince, Princess, whatever it is.

00:53:45.000 They're not going to recast Tiana as a white lady.

00:53:47.000 They're not going to.

00:53:48.000 Even though you certainly could.

00:53:49.000 But they're not going to.

00:53:51.000 And we all know why, of course.

00:53:52.000 Well, Snow White is like maybe the only racially specific white princess because it's in the name.

00:53:58.000 And it's not like greatly evil if a person is cast as what the part is.

00:54:03.000 It's very strange to me that if you cast Alexander Hamilton as a black person, that's totally fine. 1.00

00:54:08.000 But if you cast Martin Luther King as a white person, that is totally unacceptable.

00:54:12.000 Maybe you should cast people as like what the description of the part is.

00:54:15.000 There are certain parts where the person is described as white.

00:54:18.000 And that's okay.

00:54:19.000 That's not the end of the world.

00:54:21.000 So you have to be racially blind when it comes to a person who is cast for white physical descriptors.

00:54:28.000 But you have to be racially diverse for everybody else is the way that this works.

00:54:33.000 Um, it's a weird take.

00:54:34.000 It's definitely, definitely a, uh, a weird take.

00:54:38.000 So, um, she is, uh, I believe Colombian-American?

00:54:41.000 Is, uh, is, um, Rachel Zeigler?

00:54:45.000 And, um, she is, uh, yeah.

00:54:48.000 Her father is of Polish descent, her mom is from Colombia.

00:54:51.000 Or her maternal grandmother came from Colombia in the 1960s.

00:54:55.000 So, in the new Snow White, Snow White is what people in the Democratic Party would call brown, right?

00:55:01.000 I mean, like, Because people of color, they're brown people. 1.00

00:55:05.000 This is what they would call it.

00:55:06.000 Should be categorized in the census as non-white, according to the Democratic Party, playing Snow White. 0.76

00:55:11.000 Okay?

00:55:12.000 That's not the weird part.

00:55:14.000 That's not.

00:55:15.000 The weird part is the dwarves.

00:55:17.000 So you may have realized that Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has dwarves, right?

00:55:22.000 Because, like, they're dwarves. 0.94

00:55:23.000 And that's, like, what they are.

00:55:25.000 And one of the most characteristic things about the dwarves in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is that they are short because they are dwarves.

00:55:32.000 Well, we have decided that this is very, very insulting.

00:55:35.000 And so, the seven dwarves, so that's six racially diverse tall people, and one person who is a little person. 0.81

00:55:42.000 Is my understanding.

00:55:43.000 All of this, yeah, so one of the dwarves is also a woman.

00:55:47.000 So that's, that's, you know, again makes for a very weird dynamic.

00:55:50.000 Because as you recall from the original Seven White and the Snow Dwarves, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, as you recall from the original, they all live in one room together.

00:55:56.000 So that's, that's definitely weird.

00:55:58.000 This is, Apparently this is all because of Peter Dinklage, the guy from Game of Thrones, who at one point was like, they're casting a racially diverse Snow White, but you're still telling the story of Snow White and the seven dwarves?

00:56:12.000 You're still making that effing backward story about seven dwarves living in a cave together? 0.99

00:56:15.000 First of all, they're the heroes of the story, you'll recall.

00:56:19.000 And then Disney said it was taking a different approach to avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original.

00:56:24.000 Why is that a stereotype?

00:56:25.000 What if they're just dwarves in the story?

00:56:27.000 I don't understand.

00:56:29.000 Like, it's so strange that you would think that way.

00:56:33.000 I mean, truly, that's a strange thing.

00:56:35.000 The heroes of the story are the dwarves in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

00:56:39.000 The prince isn't even useful in the story.

00:56:42.000 The prince arrives at the very end and kisses Snow White and wakes her up.

00:56:45.000 He didn't do anything about the witch.

00:56:46.000 It's the dwarves who do something about the witch.

00:56:48.000 They're like, you know, we can't have dwarves doing that. 1.00

00:56:49.000 It has to be racially diverse tall people.

00:56:52.000 Including, apparently, let's see that picture again.

00:56:54.000 I mean, I just have to describe this for folks who can't actually see the picture.

00:56:57.000 So let me describe the members of the dwarf community in the new live action Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

00:57:02.000 You have one guy who looks like a member of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs because he's actually, you know, a little person.

00:57:07.000 And then you have Jack Dorsey wearing some sort of like Russian hair covering.

00:57:16.000 Looks like a Portland homeless person.

00:57:20.000 And then you have a black female who came straight from the Brown campus. 1.00

00:57:26.000 And then you have a black male. 0.92

00:57:29.000 And then you have apparently a member of a very low-rent biker gang. 0.63

00:57:36.000 A dude with long hair and a beard.

00:57:38.000 And I assume that he is grumpy.

00:57:42.000 You'd have to assume because of his face.

00:57:45.000 And then Carrot Top.

00:57:49.000 And then Gregory Hines.

00:57:51.000 This is my... I don't understand the casting.

00:57:55.000 So, apparently their goal is to just destroy whatever sense of believability the story has.

00:58:02.000 Yes, to fairytale, you can cast it however you want, but it's literally in the description.

00:58:05.000 This is the most physically descriptive of all titles.

00:58:10.000 Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

00:58:13.000 So now, apparently, the title of this movie is Hispanic Person, Six Large People, and a Little Person.

00:58:20.000 Which seems like a different film to me.

00:58:22.000 It seems like a different story.

00:58:24.000 Hispanic person, six large people of racially diverse background, and a little person, sounds like a different story than Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. 0.80

00:58:35.000 It truly is an astonishing thing and yeah, I'm...

00:58:39.000 Okay, so a few things.

00:58:43.000 One, the live action cannibalization of actual IP is an amazing thing.

00:58:47.000 Second, the destruction of actual good IP off of, in favor of new crappy IP

00:58:53.000 is something Disney's been doing for a while and they're doing it with everything.

00:58:55.000 They're doing it with everything.

00:58:57.000 So they'll put like, they'll slap a warning sticker on Aladdin,

00:58:59.000 they'll slap a warning sticker on Snow White.

00:59:01.000 And then the thing that I actually wanna show my kid That's the thing they're actually making money off of.

00:59:05.000 And they make these crappy live-action versions.

00:59:07.000 And they're like, that's what we really wish Snow White and the Seven Dwarves were.

00:59:10.000 A Hispanic lady, six racially diverse large people, and a little person.

00:59:14.000 That's what we wish the story were. 0.96

00:59:16.000 It's like casting Sleeping Beauty as an awake, ugly person. 0.99

00:59:20.000 It's like the reverse of what this story is.

00:59:22.000 And by the way, I'm just going to point out here, Disney does this with apparently every piece of content now.

00:59:27.000 I've already told my children who are big Star Wars fans, like original Star Wars fans, that the last three movies just don't exist.

00:59:33.000 Because this is what Disney does now.

00:59:35.000 Kathleen Kennedy.

00:59:36.000 What they do is they take all their good IP and they cannibalize it and destroy it in favor of crappy new IP that nobody cares about.

00:59:44.000 Meanwhile, they won't even sell the old IP.

00:59:47.000 If they really didn't like Aladdin or Snow White, they really thought these things were racist, they could put that IP up on the sales block, or they could just take it down entirely from their platform.

00:59:54.000 They won't do that because they understand that what we're actually subscribing to Disney Plus for, if you're still subscribing, is for the old IP. 0.90

01:00:01.000 So I just slow clap for all the morons in charge of marketing because, again, you know what would have happened? 0.93

01:00:06.000 What would have happened if, for example, they just cast a talented white lady as Snow White and seven dwarves? 1.00

01:00:12.000 You know what would have happened?

01:00:13.000 Nothing.

01:00:14.000 No one would have cared and would have made a lot of money.

01:00:16.000 No one would have cared.

01:00:17.000 But they're so interested in virtue signaling.

01:00:19.000 They're so interested in cramming down on you, their version of what the world should be, that they are they are destroying their own IP in the process.

01:00:25.000 Good for them.

01:00:26.000 All right.

01:00:27.000 I suppose in a weird way, they're putting their money where their mouth is.

01:00:31.000 Bizarro world.

01:00:31.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.

01:00:33.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

01:00:34.000 We'll be getting into the mailbag.

01:00:35.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

01:00:36.000 Use code Shapiro.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - July 17, 2023

The 2024 Republican Race Is ON

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