The Ben Shapiro Show - The America LAST Left Cuts Loose, Plus New Epstein SUBPOENAS

00:00:00.000 Already, folks, a lot to get to on the show today.

00:00:02.000 The anti-American left is in full march, led, of course, by the squad that went abroad and then declared essentially that America is quite terrible.

00:00:10.000 Meanwhile, Jasmine Crockett, no relation to Davey Crockett, is apparently now calling President Trump Timu Hitler and a lot of focus on Jeffrey Epstein today.

00:00:19.000 We'll explain why.

00:00:20.000 First, there's a lot coming to Daily Wire Plus, and it's not inclusive, save for moderated by NPR.

00:00:24.000 You're going to love it.

00:00:25.000 On August 13th, the Pope and the Fuhrer unburies the lie.

00:00:27.000 They didn't want us to fact check.

00:00:28.000 It exposes how Pope Pius XII did not stay silent during World War II.

00:00:32.000 And now the Vatican's receipts are wide open.

00:00:34.000 This fall, Isabel Brown's new show joins the lineup alongside the most trusted voices in conservative media, all ad-free, uncensored with live chat.

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00:00:49.000 So massive controversy has now broken out over a Democratic lawmaker in the House of Representatives who announced at a Pan-American Congress, which took place in Mexico City, all about how America was terrible.

00:01:03.000 Her name is Representative Delia Ramirez.

00:01:05.000 She is from Illinois.

00:01:06.000 She was born in the United States.

00:01:08.000 Her parents came here and apparently, I think they came here illegally.

00:01:13.000 Her husband is in the country illegally.

00:01:15.000 She is the only congressional lawmaker in a mixed status marriage and fights for the rights of dreamers like her husband Boris and for comprehensive immigration reform according to her website.

00:01:24.000 And she declared in Spanish that she is a proud Guatemalan before I'm an American, which is pretty amazing.

00:01:30.000 She then followed that up by suggesting the United States prioritizes imperialism, militarization, conquest control, competition in this attempt at domination. 0.97

00:01:38.000 Here's what she had to say: just to make sure that I wasn't mishearing what she said, I checked this five different times in five different ways to ensure that I'm not mistranslating what she said, but this has now been widely reported.

00:02:01.000 The White House spokeswoman, Liz Hustin, said, quote, these Democrats' comments are despicable and underscore their commitment to putting America last.

00:02:08.000 That, of course, is exactly, exactly right.

00:02:11.000 Nobody is suggesting that if you are an immigrant to this country or your parents are from another country, if you're Italian or your parents are Italian, you can't have pride in your Italian heritage.

00:02:20.000 But to say that you're Italian more than you are American or prouder to be Italian than American while living in America is a wild statement.

00:02:28.000 It is a wild statement.

00:02:29.000 And again, goes to a deeper problem inside the Democratic Party, which suggests that they are, in fact, not America first.

00:02:35.000 They are, in fact, America last. 0.89

00:02:37.000 First of all, why would you be prouder to be a Guatemalan than an American?

00:02:42.000 Like, why?

00:02:43.000 Just on a raw level, the murder rate in Guatemala is 16.1 per 100,000 compared to the United States, where it's 6.8 per 100,000.

00:02:52.000 The GDP per capita in Guatemala is $6,100 per capita.

00:02:56.000 Since 2019, some 2 million people have left the Northern Triangle, many of those from Guatemala.

00:03:02.000 This conference, by the way, took place in Mexico City.

00:03:05.000 Mexico is, of course, a disastrous hotbed of crime, corruption. 0.58

00:03:10.000 It is partially run by the drug cartels.

00:03:13.000 According to the 2023 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, Mexico ranks 126th in the world in terms of fighting corruption.

00:03:23.000 Mexico has a $14,000 GDP per capita, and their murder rate is 19.3 per 100,000, down from 24 per 100,000 in 2023.

00:03:33.000 All this is taking place again.

00:03:34.000 This entire conference is taking place in a country vastly inferior to the United States.

00:03:40.000 And of course, it wasn't just Delia Ramirez.

00:03:42.000 The other people who showed up, as I mentioned, included Representative Ilhan Omar, who suggested that America is one of the worst countries in the world.

00:03:50.000 To be coming out of our country, I mean, I grew up in a dictatorship, and I don't even remember ever witnessing anything like that.

00:04:02.000 To have a democracy, a peak of hope for the world to now be turned into one of the worst countries where the military are in our streets without any regard for people's constitutional rights, while our president is spending millions of dollars prompting himself up like a failed dictator with a military parade.

00:04:31.000 That was on Democracy Now, just a couple of months ago.

00:04:34.000 Somalia, of course, has a GDP per capita of $636.

00:04:38.000 It's one of the worst places on planet Earth.

00:04:40.000 And she says America is one of the worst places on planet Earth.

00:04:42.000 This, of course, is the same Representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota, who said about 9-11, some people did something.

00:04:49.000 You remember this quote?

00:04:51.000 CARE was founded after 9-11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.

00:05:07.000 I mean, the fact that she said this also at a conference for the Council on American Islamic Relations says a lot, considering the nefarious beginnings of the Council on American Islamic Relations and their connections with the Muslim Brotherhood and all the rest.

00:05:19.000 But don't worry, it is not just the children of immigrants like Delia Ramirez or actual immigrants like Ilhan Omar.

00:05:26.000 It is also homegrown Americans like Ayanna Presley, who believes that America is quite the terrible place.

00:05:32.000 She also spoke at this Pan-American conference.

00:05:35.000 Ayanna Presley, of course, is the ringo star of the squad.

00:05:38.000 You'll remember not all that long ago when she voted against the formation of a Tough on China committee because she said that that would further anti-Asian hate in the United States.

00:05:47.000 Can you explain why you voted no?

00:05:51.000 I voted no because, again, it's another sham effort here.

00:05:57.000 It's really clear that this is just a committee that would further embolden anti-Asian rhetoric and hate.

00:06:06.000 And again, this is the way that these people feel about the United States of America.

00:06:09.000 Representative Rashida Taliba also went.

00:06:11.000 She, of course, is the Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, a terror sympathizer who literally just last year refused to condemn chance of death to America, walking away from questions about it.

00:06:22.000 People were chanting death to America.

00:06:24.000 Do you condemn?

00:06:25.000 Do not talk to Fox News.

00:06:27.000 Do you condemn Chance of Death to America?

00:06:29.000 I don't talk to people that use racist tropes.

00:06:34.000 Why can't you just say whether or not you condemn people chanting death to America?

00:06:37.000 Why are you afraid to talk to Fox?

00:06:39.000 Fox News is not.

00:06:42.000 Listen, using racist tropes towards my community is what Fox News is about.

00:06:47.000 And I don't talk to Fox News.

00:06:48.000 Is death to America racist?

00:06:52.000 Is chanting death to America racist? 0.83

00:06:54.000 Talking about your guys' racist tropes.

00:06:57.000 There's also Representative Summer Lee, Democrat from Pennsylvania, who has suggested in the past that requiring only American citizens to be allowed to vote is actually xenophobic.

00:07:07.000 Republicans want to throw up barriers because when people vote, they lose.

00:07:11.000 Let me be clear.

00:07:12.000 They don't want you to vote.

00:07:15.000 They don't want to hear black voices, brown voices, LGBTQIA voices, young voices. 1.00

00:07:20.000 Our fundamental access to our democracy is being politicized.

00:07:23.000 And this xenophobic attack that we're debating today will make it harder for Americans to vote.

00:07:30.000 All these wonderful people showed up to a conference outside the United States to rip on America and talk about how terrible America was.

00:07:37.000 In a TV interview before the event, David Adler, the general coordinator for the Progressive International organization that was in charge of this event and one of the summit's main coordinators, said the intention of the summit was to confront authoritarian and fascist threats and shift authority from Washington, D.C. to developing countries.

00:07:54.000 The DCNF reported in the global south, a term used to describe a loose division of nations across different continents that are generally poorer, have higher levels of inequity and harsher living conditions.

00:08:03.000 Progressive International described the United States as, quote, the linchpin of that imperial violence, a position it has carefully built over two centuries.

00:08:12.000 And the website says that U.S. militarism sustains profound political tensions around the world.

00:08:16.000 Its interventions have destroyed nation after nation, leaving a trail of violence and sorrow in their wake.

00:08:21.000 Ending U.S. militarism means saving lives.

00:08:24.000 This is the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

00:08:27.000 This is where they are at.

00:08:29.000 And this is going to be the next governing wave of the Democratic Party as well.

00:08:32.000 Representative Alexandra Elcasio-Cortez, she hides it a little bit better, but she is a fellow traveler with this caucus. 0.97

00:08:38.000 Zor Mamzani is much louder. 0.59

00:08:40.000 He is not just a fellow traveler.

00:08:41.000 He is one of the main spears at the tip of this caucus.

00:08:46.000 The new mayoral candidate in Minnesota for the Democrats is a person who agrees with this sort of stuff.

00:08:53.000 Bernie Sanders, of course, agrees with this take on America, the sort of Howard Zinn hatred for the United States.

00:09:00.000 And you can say that this is TDS.

00:09:01.000 This is specifically about Donald Trump, but it clearly is not.

00:09:03.000 It goes deeper than that.

00:09:04.000 It goes to an oppressor-oppressed narrative whereby America is the great oppressor.

00:09:08.000 America's allies are the great oppressors.

00:09:10.000 And everybody in the world who is unsuccessful, every failed country around the world is simply oppressed by the first world. 0.85

00:09:17.000 And that's why they are in such dire circumstances right now.

00:09:22.000 Now, this is a recipe for more chaos around the world.

00:09:25.000 It just is.

00:09:27.000 Any sort of matrix that you use for the world in which no one has personal responsibility, particularly if they fail, that matrix on both a personal level and a national level is horribly dark.

00:09:39.000 It wrecks human beings, it wrecks nations, and it wrecks the planet overall.

00:09:44.000 And yet, this is the growing movement inside the Democratic Party that shirks responsibility, that presents the United States as the great aggressor in the world, despite the fact that the world is inestimably, unfathomably more wealthy, better off, healthier, living longer, more democratic because of the presence of the United States on planet Earth.

00:10:06.000 That bizarre hatred for the United States is a driving force behind everything from the open borders immigration platform of the Democratic Party to their redistributionist view of free market economics to their belief that the world is better off if the United States basically lays down its arms and allows all of its enemies to dominate the world situation.

00:10:26.000 If this is where the Democratic Party wants to go, I do not think this is where the American people want to go.

00:10:32.000 Alrighty, coming up, President Trump enjoying the Democrats falling apart plus new Epstein information, and we examine the state of the economy.

00:10:40.000 We'll get to that in a moment.

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00:12:44.000 Now, this manifests in the United States is a bizarre form of Trump derangement syndrome.

00:12:48.000 This is a point that President Trump himself made yesterday on CNBC.

00:12:51.000 He said the Democratic Party is self-destructing.

00:12:53.000 They have TDS so bad.

00:12:55.000 The Democrat Party is self-destructing.

00:12:58.000 I mean, when you have low IQ people like Crockett, I wonder if she's any relationship to the late, great Davy Crockett, who is a great, great, a great gentleman.

00:13:09.000 I wonder if she's got any relationship to Davy Crockett, the great old David Crockett.

00:13:14.000 But you have this woman, Crockett.

00:13:15.000 She's a very low IQ person. 1.00

00:13:18.000 Somebody said the other day, she's one of the leaders of the party. 0.77

00:13:21.000 I think you've got to be kidding.

00:13:24.000 The Democrats are lost. 0.67

00:13:26.000 They have Trump derangement syndrome so bad that they can't walk. 0.95

00:13:30.000 They can't talk.

00:13:31.000 They don't know where they're going.

00:13:32.000 Schumer is finished.

00:13:33.000 Schumer looks like a child.

00:13:34.000 I watched him the other day.

00:13:35.000 He's lost all of his confidence.

00:13:39.000 I mean, he's not wrong about the Democratic Party.

00:13:41.000 I really, really doubt that Jasmine Crockett is related to Davey Crockett, unless President Trump knows something.

00:13:47.000 The Free Association in which President Trump engages is definitely one of my favorite things about President Trump.

00:13:52.000 And listen, he's living his best life, the president of the United States.

00:13:55.000 Yesterday, he was wandering around on the roof of the White House, and he was basically just kind of lobbing insults back and forth with the press from the roof of the White House.

00:14:03.000 Pretty funny.

00:14:08.000 Mr. President, what do you want to build?

00:14:10.000 What are you trying to build?

00:14:14.000 Sir, you say you approve.

00:14:18.000 You say more missiles?

00:14:19.000 Are you building missiles?

00:14:22.000 What?

00:14:23.000 Come on now.

00:14:25.000 Did he say missiles?

00:14:26.000 Now he's taking over all of Gaza, sir. 0.65

00:14:30.000 In any case, the Democrats' Trump derangement syndrome is symptomatic of something broader.

00:14:34.000 It is not that their hatred for America is growing out of their derangement about President Trump.

00:14:38.000 It's that their derangement about President Trump is growing out of their hatred for America, because President Trump, of course, is pro-business.

00:14:44.000 President Trump is very strong in favor of our allies.

00:14:47.000 President Trump is a fan of the U.S. military.

00:14:50.000 President Trump does not believe that the United States is a historically dark and horrible place.

00:14:55.000 That's the reason they hate him.

00:14:56.000 It's not they hate Trump, and therefore they're anti-American.

00:14:59.000 It's they're anti-American, and therefore they hate President Trump.

00:15:02.000 And this leads them to the most bizarre performative nonsense with regard to Trump.

00:15:09.000 See, one of the things about the American political system is that if you love America, if you know anything about America, if you know anything about her constitution, the possibility of a true Hitlerian figure rising to the presidency of the United States and then actually enacting the policies of, say, Hitler, that is a near impossibility in the American constitutional structure.

00:15:28.000 There are too many tracks, there are too many balances, there are too many things heming that in.

00:15:31.000 Now, again, I think that that even leaves aside the good nature of the American people, which is the ultimate resource here.

00:15:38.000 But the reality is that if you know anything about American history, the idea that we are like this far from a Hitlerian takeover, even that supposition is a manifestation of a broader distrust of America and a belief that America is susceptible to Hitlerianism.

00:15:53.000 And so Jasmine Crockett, who you heard President Trump reference before, no relation to the late, great David Crockett.

00:16:00.000 She called President Trump Timu Hitler yesterday.

00:16:03.000 For everyone that's been asking, where are the Democrats?

00:16:06.000 Well, here they are.

00:16:08.000 For everyone that's been asking, where is the fight?

00:16:10.000 Well, here it is.

00:16:12.000 But let me tell you something.

00:16:13.000 Don't leave them out on the ledge by themselves.

00:16:16.000 They need to know that you, the American people, stand with them because they are standing for you.

00:16:22.000 There are so many people that they will never meet, but they understand the importance of making sure that they have a voice when it comes to their government.

00:16:30.000 They understand the importance of standing for what democracy is and making sure that it does not fall by the wayside.

00:16:36.000 They understand that we have a Timu Hitler in the White House right now that thinks that he is going to become the dictator of the United States. 0.87

00:16:43.000 Well, I got another thing to tell you, sir.

00:16:48.000 Okay.

00:16:49.000 Okay.

00:16:50.000 Meanwhile, Representative Jolana Jones, also of Texas, she's out there comparing the Texas redistricting fight to the Holocaust.

00:16:57.000 Again, this doesn't say much about the Texas redistricting fight.

00:17:00.000 It does say something about the bizarre mentality of Democrats these days who are perfectly willing to support Hamas's attempted Holocaust against Jews, but are somewhat less reticent when it comes to calling, you know, a redistricting fight in Texas, the Holocaust.

00:17:14.000 And if you think it can't happen, it can.

00:17:16.000 And I will liken this to the Holocaust. 0.95

00:17:18.000 People are like, well, how did the Holocaust happen?

00:17:20.000 How is somebody in a position to kill all their people?

00:17:23.000 Well, good people remain silent, or good people didn't realize that what happens to them can very soon happen to me or somebody I love.

00:17:32.000 And so you, and so even if you made it, man, you have an obligation to help people who can't because God forbid they end up targeting you and your family.

00:17:43.000 Oh, yeah.

00:17:44.000 So, why are the American people running headlong away from these folks? 0.99

00:17:48.000 Well, probably because they're kind of crazy.

00:17:50.000 Meanwhile, President Trump continues to be wildly successful in reshaping the politics of the country.

00:17:56.000 Harry Enton over at CNN just the other day did a whole analysis Suggesting President Trump is, in fact, the most consequential president of the century.

00:18:04.000 More so than Barack Obama, for example.

00:18:06.000 Here he was.

00:18:08.000 We are potentially looking at negative net migration for the first time in at least 50 years.

00:18:13.000 And that is a big reason why I'm saying that Trump, at least in my mind, is the most influential president, certainly this century, and probably dating a good back chunk into the 20th century as well, Omar.

00:18:23.000 So when you say most influential, I mean, statistically, how much is Trump doing?

00:18:28.000 Yeah, okay, so let's talk about this.

00:18:30.000 How about executive orders?

00:18:32.000 Already, 180 executive orders signed by Donald Trump this year.

00:18:38.000 You have to go all the way back to the FDR administration once again to find a year in which there were as many executive orders signed as we have this year.

00:18:47.000 To give you an idea, Biden during his first year signed 77.

00:18:51.000 That's the entire year.

00:18:52.000 We're only a little bit more than halfway through this year, Omar.

00:18:56.000 Again, this is why I'm saying executive orders, immigration with net migration, and we're talking about tariffs and the effective tariff rate.

00:19:03.000 Donald Trump is remaking the United States love it, like it, or lump it.

00:19:07.000 He has been tremendously influential to a historic degree.

00:19:12.000 Which is an amazing, amazing thing.

00:19:14.000 So, what could presumably stop President Trump?

00:19:17.000 What could stop President Trump?

00:19:18.000 Well, it's not going to be yelling team Hitler at him.

00:19:21.000 And theoretically, an economic downturn could stop President Trump.

00:19:24.000 Obviously, an economic downturn can stop any president. 0.94

00:19:26.000 We'll get to that possibility in a little bit.

00:19:28.000 But there is one other thing that could theoretically stop any president, and that, of course, is scandal.

00:19:34.000 And this is why I think you are starting to see the left hone in almost exclusively on the Jeffrey Epstein stuff.

00:19:42.000 Obviously, you have people who are interested in the Jeffrey Epstein case, who are still concerned about what they believe are outstanding questions about the Jeffrey Epstein case.

00:19:50.000 And many of those questions are legit.

00:19:52.000 Where did Jeffrey Epstein get his money?

00:19:53.000 How did he get that money?

00:19:54.000 Why did he get a sweetheart deal from the former labor secretary back when he was a DA in Florida?

00:20:00.000 Those are all open questions and all understandable.

00:20:02.000 However, to understand why there is this sort of rabid desire on the part of some, not all, but some, like a very, very loud coterie of people about the Jeffrey Epstein case, there is something else going on.

00:20:14.000 And there is a reason that Hunter Biden, of all people, is now parroting this Epstein nonsense.

00:20:19.000 Here he was yesterday.

00:20:22.000 But do I think that what they do have implicates him?

00:20:28.000 Yeah, I think so.

00:20:30.000 You know, I mean, Epstein introduced Melania to Trump.

00:20:35.000 The connections are like so wide and deep.

00:20:39.000 Anyway, why do we think that they don't want the files released?

00:20:43.000 I don't know.

00:20:44.000 I think John, you know, that thing that John Holling says is like a long time ago, I think is the most accurate kind of assessment of them, which is everything is projection or confession.

00:20:57.000 Everything.

00:20:58.000 By the way, Hunter Biden is doing his finger painting in the middle of this video with the conspiratorial music underneath.

00:21:04.000 All right, coming up, Victor Davis Hansen stops by to discuss his view of the presidency of Donald Trump thus far.

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00:23:17.000 There's a good piece by Lee Smith over at Tablet Magazine asking what is the motivation behind some of the most vociferous resistance to President Trump and the Trump administration with regard to the Epstein case.

00:23:29.000 And as I've said before, if you want to claim that there's a cover-up, you have to claim that Cash Patel, Dan Bongino, Pam Bonnie, and President Trump were all implicated in that cover-up.

00:23:36.000 So is J.D. Vance, so is everybody else who has knowledge of what is going on in the Jeffrey Epstein case.

00:23:43.000 So, Lee writes this: CIA Director John Ratcliffe told the press that officials from the Barack Obama administration may be charged for their role in RussiaGate, the spy operation designed to topple the first Donald Trump administration.

00:23:53.000 With FBI Director Cash Patel reportedly overseeing a criminal conspiracy case involving Brennan, Comey, and others, there's reason for optimism that those who targeted the president, his aides, and supporters from 2016 to 2024 will finally be held accountable.

00:24:07.000 Naturally, those with the most to lose, such as former Obama officials implicated in the biggest political scandal in American history and the media that served as their willing accomplices, are playing to block.

00:24:16.000 And the instrument they've chosen to protect themselves is another anti-Trump conspiracy theory, this one holding that the administration is hiding information about Jeffrey Epstein to protect Donald Trump from being implicated in his crimes.

00:24:26.000 Call it Epstein Gate. 0.91

00:24:27.000 Perhaps the most senior former Obama official pushing Epstein Gate is Susan Rice, the one-time national security advisor, whose January 5th, 2017 email may implicate Obama in the anti-Trump conspiracy.

00:24:37.000 In an ex-post over a New York Times op-ed by Brennan and Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, she wrote that the Trump administration's RussiaGate disclosures are, quote, a shameless, dishonest, defamatory scheme to distract from Epstein, Epstein, Epstein.

00:24:51.000 The media, as Lee says, have a substantial corporate interest in obfuscating the Trump administration's efforts to bring Russia Gate to light, since it may also illuminate the role of the press in publishing leaks of classified intelligence to advance known falsehoods undergirding a criminal conspiracy.

00:25:06.000 The president says Democrats started what he calls the Epstein hoax, but that's not entirely right.

00:25:10.000 They're using it to defend themselves from RussiaGate.

00:25:12.000 But it was a MAGA-aligned cohort led by Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon who weaponized the Epstein narrative.

00:25:17.000 And now parts of the right are as giddy with anti-Trump animus as first-term never Trumpers are.

00:25:21.000 Douglas McGregor, a prominent figure on the MAGA podcast circuit who worked in the Pentagon during Trump's first term, said, quote, the Epstein thing is probably going to bring President Trump down.

00:25:30.000 The problem then isn't just that Russia Gate revelations aren't breaking through to the rest of the electorate, but also that podcasters ostensibly aligned with Trump are employing the ghost of a dead defender to fracture his base and hobble him with help from Democrats after the 2026 midterms, just as RussiaGate hobbled Trump's first terms.

00:25:46.000 And as Lee Smith points out, again, there is a push by many of these people to try to hijack the MAGA movement away from President Trump.

00:25:57.000 The problem, says Smith, is that nothing the administration produces now will satisfy this faction of MAGA because Bannon and Carlson are not interested in transparency or accountability.

00:26:05.000 Rather, they've rigged the Epstein story to damage Trump.

00:26:08.000 In their telling, Epstein wasn't just a predator, he was also a spy, an operative using American teenagers as bait to compromise powerful liberal elites on behalf of the Mossad.

00:26:16.000 They framed the affair so that only confirmation of their mad conspiracy theory will put Epstein's ghost to rest.

00:26:22.000 The logic is that if Trump doesn't release the evidence, he's shielding Israel, it's evidence he's owned by Israel. 0.75

00:26:27.000 The setup is as crazy and destructive as RussiaGate because it's the Russiagate playbook, except in this reboot, Netanyahu plays Putin's part, and it's not Moscow that controls Trump's brain, but the Jews. 0.92

00:26:37.000 And again, the kind of general idea here that President Trump is being hurt is not true, but could it theoretically be doing damage to him?

00:26:46.000 Sure.

00:26:47.000 And it's a purposeful damage.

00:26:48.000 It is an attempt, obviously, to undermine the president's agenda when you run out a bunch of nonsense about how Donald Trump is covering up the Epstein case.

00:26:56.000 And there's always, it's always done by implication.

00:26:59.000 Steve Bannon will always suggest that Donald Trump is being manipulated or somebody underneath him is doing the hiding.

00:27:04.000 He won't just say that it's Donald Trump doing the hiding in Epstein.

00:27:07.000 Tucker Carlson does the same routine.

00:27:08.000 But if you're going to make these allegations, you should just say the thing.

00:27:11.000 You should just say the thing, especially Bannon, who, by the way, was deeply ensconced in the Epstein circle. 0.81

00:27:17.000 He spent 15 hours interviewing Jeffrey Epstein.

00:27:21.000 He was also a source for Vicki Ward's 2019 book, Kushner Inc., which was a takedown of Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

00:27:29.000 Vicki Ward also happens to be a source that's constantly being cited with regard to Epstein.

00:27:36.000 So, again, you have to wonder about some of the motivations.

00:27:39.000 Again, not of everybody who's asking questions.

00:27:41.000 There are still legit questions, but many of the people who are at least positing a theory.

00:27:45.000 Because in the middle of all this, there is an attempt to get to the bottom of it.

00:27:48.000 For example, the House committee has now subpoenaed Jeffrey Epstein records from the Justice Department.

00:27:55.000 That's the House Oversight Committee.

00:27:56.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, they subpoena the DOJ for records related to its Jeffrey Epstein investigation and is seeking to question Bill and Hillary Clinton, along with a host of former officials, over the disgraced financier's crimes.

00:28:07.000 The subpoenas sent Tuesday by the Republican-controlled committee intensify pressure on the Trump administration to hand over other documents.

00:28:14.000 That committee is also seeking communications about Epstein between former President Joe Biden and his administration as well.

00:28:20.000 The House panel wants to question everybody from former FBI Director James Comey and Attorneys General William Barr, Merrick Garland, and Jeff Sessions to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.

00:28:31.000 So it'll be interesting to see who responds to all of this.

00:28:34.000 Meanwhile, a senior White House official says the administration is making plans to release audio recordings and a transcript of an interview last month between Jeffrey Epstein's associate and now convict Ghelaine Maxwell and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

00:28:47.000 The contents have already been briefed to officials in the West Wing.

00:28:51.000 Now, apparently, there are some concerns in the Trump world about releasing the Maxwell transcripts, specifically because nothing she says has really been vetted yet.

00:28:59.000 So she can say whatever she wants.

00:29:01.000 She's obviously going to be saying things that benefit her.

00:29:04.000 That would be the entire purpose of her doing the interview in the first place.

00:29:08.000 One of the officials told CNN, quote, a final decision has not been made about the release.

00:29:14.000 The officials have been eager to take control of the narrative around the optics of the issue.

00:29:20.000 And apparently, it's going to be released sooner rather than later.

00:29:24.000 But it is worth noting here that Ghelaine Maxwell at the same time is trying to block the Trump DOJ's request to unseal grand jury transcripts. 0.99

00:29:32.000 Why?

00:29:33.000 Well, because presumably those grand jury transcripts show that Ghelaine Maxwell is going to contradict whatever she said in this interview. 1.00

00:29:38.000 That's the reason why she's attempting to block all of this. 0.96

00:29:42.000 Maxwell's attorney wrote on Tuesday: Jeffrey Epstein is dead.

00:29:44.000 Ghelaine Maxwell is not.

00:29:46.000 Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive.

00:29:52.000 Her legal options are viable and her due process rights remain.

00:29:55.000 I don't actually think what this is about.

00:29:57.000 I think what this is about, actually, is that Ghelaine Maxwell probably told the grand jury that she didn't know anything, and now she's contradicting all of that in her interview with Todd Blanche in order to somehow get herself a pardon or to put out unverifiable and unverified information about third parties.

00:30:14.000 That would make the most sense.

00:30:15.000 And anybody treating Ghelaine Maxwell as a source of truth, given the fact that she was, in fact, Jeffrey Epstein's paramour for years and years and years and a convict for helping underage girls to Jeffrey Epstein and for her own pleasure.

00:30:28.000 Now, that typically is not the most reliable witness, shall we say?

00:30:34.000 Jeffrey Epstein's victims are also condemning the Trump administration for a plan to unseal some of the grand jury testimony.

00:30:41.000 Neither victim requested to keep the files under seal, according to Axios.

00:30:44.000 Both urged the court to make sure any identifying information was thoroughly scrubbed to protect them, which, of course, makes sense.

00:30:50.000 You don't want the victims having their information released.

00:30:54.000 So, again, the administration is attempting to move toward more information, more transparency, which is what they should have done in the first place.

00:31:04.000 But if there are people who are really, really retailing the most lurid version of Epstein Gate, you do have to wonder based on what evidence, and if they don't have that evidence, and if they purport to be allies of President Trump, the question would be why.

00:31:17.000 What is your goal here?

00:31:19.000 I have doubts about your intentions, shall we say.

00:31:22.000 Already coming up, President Trump is fighting back against debanking of the politically heterodox.

00:31:27.000 We'll get to that in a moment.

00:31:28.000 First, here's the reality: over 90% of Americans don't get enough dietary fiber.

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00:32:30.000 Also, can the Fed take the right action at the right time, or are we going to be looking at a potential economic slowdown?

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00:33:33.000 Meanwhile, Pam Bondi is now pursuing a grand jury probe into Obama officials over the Russiagate investigation.

00:33:41.000 According to CNN, a grand jury would be able to issue subpoenas as part of a criminal investigation into renewed allegations that Democratic officials tried to smear President Trump during his 2016 campaign by falsely alleging that his campaign was colluding with the Russian government.

00:33:53.000 It could also consider an indictment should the Justice Department decide to pursue a criminal case.

00:33:58.000 That, of course, follows a referral from DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who had said that she was going to refer all of this for the possibility of criminal prosecution over to the DOJ.

00:34:08.000 The Justice Department has so far declined to comment.

00:34:12.000 Again, it'll be interesting to see how this plays in court.

00:34:16.000 Here, for example, is a retired FBI agent named Christopher O'Leary on MSNBC saying that this isn't about anything except for the Trump administration weaponizing the DOJ.

00:34:27.000 Oh, the irony.

00:34:28.000 You guys were all fine with the weaponization of the DOJ during President Trump's first term and then during Joe Biden's term.

00:34:34.000 But now it's weaponization of the DOJ to try and open a grand jury investigation into members of the Obama administration who clearly were complicit or active in the Russiagate scandal.

00:34:45.000 Trust the current DOJ officials to follow the facts here.

00:34:49.000 I do not.

00:34:50.000 And I think what's going to be telling is where they put the grand jury.

00:34:53.000 So a grand jury is typically 23 citizens that are brought together.

00:34:58.000 It's a prosecutorial tool, but if they convene it in D.C. district, they might not get the outcome that they want.

00:35:04.000 So it's likely they're going to put it in Florida, which means they're looking for a certain outcome, not where the facts actually drive you.

00:35:10.000 So again, this looks like weaponization.

00:35:13.000 And what it looks like is, you know, he's bringing together an old conspiracy to kind of fig leaf the Epstein conspiracy.

00:35:21.000 So we're bringing President Obama back in.

00:35:24.000 Hillary Clinton, George Soros is mentioned in this again.

00:35:27.000 So it's the old hits coming back, which might drag some of the MAGA base back to their side.

00:35:34.000 Okay, so again, this is the left-wing attempt to try and spin away from RussiaGate.

00:35:39.000 But as more evidence has emerged in the past of RussiaGate and its depth and the magnitude of that scandal, that is a very real scandal.

00:35:47.000 And simply talking it away is not going to work.

00:35:49.000 Meanwhile, speaking of weaponization of government, a fascinating piece by Charlie Gasparino over at the New York Post about J.P. Morgan and Bank of America.

00:35:57.000 So President Trump yesterday announced That he would be pushing forward with a plan to stop the debanking of people on the basis of politics.

00:36:06.000 He did an interview with MSNBC, and there he talked about being personally debanked by both J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America.

00:36:14.000 Here's what he had to say: The banks discriminated against me very badly, and I was very good to the banks.

00:36:20.000 I had the greatest economy in the history of our country when I was president.

00:36:23.000 And by the way, our economy now will blow that away, and you see it happening.

00:36:28.000 But our economy now, because we're a rich country, because of our trade deals, we've become a rich country again.

00:36:34.000 But nowadays, they totally discriminate against, I think, me maybe even more, but they discriminate against many conservatives.

00:36:41.000 You know, I told that story and sitting around tables with other people that were conservative or Trump supporters.

00:36:47.000 I think the word might be Trump supporters more than conservative.

00:36:50.000 And I believe what they did is they went to the regulators.

00:36:53.000 You know, banks are not afraid of anything but a regulator.

00:36:56.000 They're regulators and their wives. 0.72

00:36:58.000 They're more afraid of their wives than the regulators. 0.98

00:37:01.000 But the group they're really afraid of is bank regulators.

00:37:06.000 And I believe that Biden or Kamala, and I don't think they're smart enough to do it, but the people that are surrounding the beautiful Resolute desk, you know, the high IQ people that are radical left, I believe they told the banking commission, the bankers, that the banking regulators, do everything you can to destroy Trump.

00:37:28.000 And that's what they did.

00:37:30.000 And guess what?

00:37:31.000 I'm president.

00:37:32.000 How did that happen?

00:37:35.000 Well, according to Charlie Gasperino over at the New York Post, J.P. Morgan and Bank of America debanked President Trump for his role in the January 6th Capitol Hill melee following pressure from the Biden administration's banking regulators and the Federal Reserve.

00:37:47.000 People with direct knowledge of the matter tell the New York Post.

00:37:50.000 The exact reason for Trump and his tens of millions of dollars in holdings being kicked off the JPMorgan banking platform and then denied access to Bank of America services has yet to be actually reported.

00:37:59.000 But sources at the banks confirmed the cause stemmed from the controversy surrounding January 6th and threats from Joe Biden's bank regulators that banking the former president's money put them at danger of falling afoul of a rule that prohibits financial institutions from doing business with individuals and companies that present a reputational risk.

00:38:16.000 Apparently, people at those banks told the New York Post that Biden's banking cops at the office of the comptroller of the currency, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, often use the nebulous nature of that edict to go beyond debanking money launderers and drug kingpins.

00:38:28.000 And instead, they're pressured to include people who have heterodox political and business ties, often including conservatives and anyone who participated in the January 6th protests.

00:38:38.000 An executive of J.P. Morgan said regulators, quote, put the fear of God in you if you did business with people like Donald Trump.

00:38:44.000 Another banking executive said, think back to what it was like being Trump back in 2021.

00:38:48.000 He was a hot potato after January 6th.

00:38:50.000 The regulators made it clear that we shouldn't do business with him.

00:38:53.000 So President Trump has now made a move to try and stop this sort of activity.

00:38:58.000 Bank executives and lobbying groups are pushing broadly back against the assertion that people are being debanked.

00:39:04.000 But President Trump says that there is going to be action by the administration to stop the debanking of people who are politically heterodox.

00:39:16.000 And of course, this makes a fair bit of sense.

00:39:18.000 I mean, the reality is that when you are talking about the possibility of people not being able to access their money or put their money in a bank because they have political opinions that others don't find to be within the purview of the appropriate, what's the limiting principle there?

00:39:33.000 Now, you make the free market argument that, okay, Bank of America, JP Morgan, they don't want to take Donald Trump's money.

00:39:38.000 There'll be another bank that takes Donald Trump's money. 0.97

00:39:40.000 And I suppose that's a fair free market argument.

00:39:42.000 The problem is the collusion that we have seen in the tech sector, for example, between these major companies deplatforming people and a collusion that presumably follows in the banking sector could mean the unpersoning of wide swaths of people.

00:39:55.000 And we have seen that when there's no limiting principle, when there's no actual enforceable principle there, and it just becomes ad hoc, well, that means that the former and future president of the United States could find himself without a place to park his money, which is a major problem in the United States.

00:40:13.000 So good for President Trump for taking a look at that.

00:40:15.000 Honestly, I'm not sure what the precise solution to it is, but the fact that it's becoming a bigger issue for the banks may in and of itself be enough of a shaming mechanism to get them to open their Overton window from where it was during the Biden administration.

00:40:28.000 Meanwhile, as I say, Scandal is one danger to an administration.

00:40:32.000 The other danger to an administration is the collapse of the economy.

00:40:36.000 Right now, there are a bunch of factors militating in favor of a growing economy.

00:40:40.000 Those include the investments in AI, which continue to be stellar, the earnings of new companies like Palantir, the One Big Beautiful Bill, which ensures the tax didn't skyrocket on major and minor American businesses, the deregulatory nature of the Trump administration, which has been going through the books with a chainsaw.

00:40:59.000 Things like the EPA getting rid of using the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions.

00:41:04.000 And there are all sorts of good things happening in the business sector.

00:41:08.000 And then there are some not so great things happening within the economic sector, namely over-regulation and interference.

00:41:14.000 So President Trump announced yesterday that he would be levying gigantic tariffs on pharmaceutical products within the next week.

00:41:21.000 Here's what he had to say.

00:41:23.000 Look, I did something with Switzerland the other day.

00:41:26.000 I spoke to their prime minister.

00:41:28.000 The woman was nice, but she didn't want to listen. 0.99

00:41:30.000 And they paid essentially no tariffs.

00:41:33.000 And I said, we have a $41 billion deficit with you.

00:41:37.000 You want to pay 1% tariffs.

00:41:39.000 You wanted 1%. 0.80

00:41:40.000 I said, you're not going to pay 1%.

00:41:42.000 We lose.

00:41:43.000 Because I view deficit as loss.

00:41:45.000 You know, you have some people.

00:41:46.000 By the way, I think.

00:41:47.000 Pharmaceuticals are a big issue with Switzerland, I think.

00:41:49.000 Well, I'll go into pharmaceuticals.

00:41:52.000 They make a fortune with pharmaceuticals, and they make our pharmaceuticals in China and Ireland and everything else.

00:41:58.000 And within the next week or so, we're going to be announcing tariffs on specifically.

00:42:03.000 This is a, you know, this is a separate class than the 15% tariffs on sort of everything.

00:42:08.000 Right.

00:42:09.000 We're going to be announcing on semiconductors and chips, which is a separate category, because we want them made in the United States.

00:42:17.000 Okay, so he says that he's going to levy tariffs on pharmaceuticals that could eventually reach up to 250% the price of the product.

00:42:27.000 Hard to see how that's not going to increase the price of pharmaceuticals to the consumer.

00:42:31.000 I mean, if you're talking about drugs being too expensive, which is a major thing that President Trump is focusing on, then it seems like restricting supply of the pharmaceuticals into the United States is going to be a problem for people who are trying to get their pharmaceuticals at an affordable price.

00:42:46.000 The Trump administration in April initiated a so-called Section 232 investigation on pharmaceutical products that is a legal authority allowing the Secretary of Commerce to investigate the impact of imports on national security.

00:42:56.000 He says we want pharmaceuticals made in this country.

00:42:58.000 Now, again, there's a case to be made that we should make the most important pharmaceuticals in the country.

00:43:04.000 However, you do have to acknowledge there will be rising prices that result from all of that.

00:43:09.000 Well, now, President Trump seems to be engaging when it comes to pharmaceuticals in both price controls and tariffs.

00:43:17.000 I mean, this is not conservative economic policy.

00:43:20.000 It's not free market economic policy by any stretch of the imagination.

00:43:23.000 Here's President Trump talking about his plans on the one hand to tariff the living hell out of pharmaceuticals.

00:43:28.000 And then on the other hand, he is saying that he also wants most favored nation status on drug pricing.

00:43:33.000 So here he was talking about drug pricing.

00:43:35.000 As you know, for 30 years, Europe has had drug prices that are, in many cases, one-tenth the cost of drugs in here.

00:43:44.000 Same manufacturing plants, same everything.

00:43:46.000 One tenth.

00:43:47.000 I've invoked favored nations.

00:43:49.000 Now, there is no favored nations because I've just said there is because we're not going to pay 10 times more per sale than they pay in Europe.

00:43:56.000 Then that's going to have a tremendous impact on the price of medicine.

00:44:01.000 So, again, do I believe that this is good economic policy?

00:44:05.000 I do not.

00:44:06.000 I think that the president of the United States radically increasing the price of pharmaceuticals via tariffs and then going to the pharmaceutical companies and just yelling at them to lower their prices.

00:44:15.000 That is not going to be possible.

00:44:17.000 You can't restrict the inputs that people use to make the pharmaceuticals and then at the same time just tell them that they have to lower the prices.

00:44:24.000 That doesn't work.

00:44:25.000 Economics is not dictated to.

00:44:27.000 You can't just say you want the price of a product to be X with the same quality control.

00:44:32.000 That's not the way any of this works.

00:44:34.000 These sorts of bumps in the road are going to create additional friction for President Trump's economy.

00:44:41.000 That also happens to be true with regard to President Trump's continuing tariff wars.

00:44:46.000 Now, again, if the idea of the tariff wars is that you are trying to facilitate a reduction in Chinese global power, I'm very much in favor of that. 1.00

00:44:54.000 But it seems as though China is going to walk away from this thing in fairly solid shape. 0.83

00:44:59.000 President Trump says that we are very close to a deal with China.

00:45:03.000 Okay, but if that deal with China also involves them being able to buy NVIDIA chips for purposes of their AI development, if it means that China gets away with using TikTok as a weaponized psyop against the American people, if it means that China still gets to restrict its supply of rare earth minerals to the United States, I'm not sure how that is going to benefit the United States as a general rule.

00:45:27.000 But China was collapsing.

00:45:28.000 China is very reliant on the United States.

00:45:31.000 My relationship with him is very good.

00:45:34.000 I think we'll make a good deal.

00:45:37.000 It's not imperative, but I think we're going to make a good deal.

00:45:40.000 But no, they had a thing that Donald Trump really wanted to go there.

00:45:43.000 No, I don't.

00:45:45.000 It's a 19-hour flight.

00:45:48.000 It's a long flight.

00:45:49.000 But at some point in the not-too-distant future, I will.

00:45:53.000 And just to end this conversation in China, I have a very good relationship with President Xi always had, other than the COVID moment where I was very angry with him and essentially didn't want to talk to him, frankly, because, you know, it did come out of Wuhan in all fairness, which I was saying from the day one, I was saying I knew exactly where it came from.

00:46:12.000 But that did interfere with the relationship.

00:46:16.000 But no, I've had a great relationship with President Xi.

00:46:19.000 We respect him a lot.

00:46:20.000 They respect us a lot.

00:46:22.000 They didn't respect Biden. 0.83

00:46:23.000 They thought he was a numbskull.

00:46:26.000 They couldn't believe he was the president of the United States.

00:46:29.000 And neither can anyone else that that happen.

00:46:32.000 I mean, again, that's all fine and dandy.

00:46:35.000 The problem, of course, is that if we cut a so-called great deal with China, and meanwhile, we are actually alienating ourselves from potential bulwarks against China.

00:46:44.000 Like, for example, India, like if you're going to formulate a foreign policy that boxes China in, what you want to do is draw India in toward you, alienate China, right? 0.88

00:46:52.000 Box China in.

00:46:56.000 If you're punishing India because India is buying Russian oil, who do you think is buying the most Russian oil?

00:47:02.000 And the answer there is China by leaps and bounds. 0.95

00:47:04.000 China has been funding Russia's entire war against Ukraine, essentially.

00:47:08.000 But here's President Trump saying he's likely to raise tariffs on India.

00:47:11.000 With India, what people don't like to say about India, they're the highest tariff nation.

00:47:16.000 They have the highest tariff of anybody.

00:47:19.000 We do very, very little business with India because their tariffs are so high.

00:47:24.000 So India has not been a good trading partner because they do a lot of business with us, but we don't do business with them.

00:47:30.000 So we settled on 25%, but I think I'm going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours because they're buying Russian oil.

00:47:38.000 They're fueling the war machine. 0.55

00:47:40.000 And if they're going to do that, then I'm not going to be happy.

00:47:45.000 Now, again, there's no one on the right who's been more of an advocate for stopping Russia and the war in Ukraine than I have been.

00:47:50.000 But I'm just saying that if you are going to, as an extension of geopolitics, box in China, then drawing China close while alienating India, that doesn't seem like a particularly great policy and will have economic side effects as well.

00:48:02.000 If you want to see the Trump administration succeed, again, the two biggest dangers to any administration are scandal and economic downturn.

00:48:09.000 Those are the two biggest ones.

00:48:10.000 I'm not particularly worried about the scandal at this point in time.

00:48:13.000 I am concerned that the added friction in the economy that is being created by attempted tariffs and price controls and all the rest, that this is not going to benefit the American economy in the short to medium run.

00:48:26.000 Joining us on the line is Victor Davis Hansen.

00:48:28.000 He, of course, is the Martin Illeg Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he specializes in classics and military history.

00:48:34.000 He's written, of course, an amazing number of tremendous books, including Carnage and Culture, The Case for Trump, The End of Everything.

00:48:41.000 Professor Victor Davis Hanson, thanks so much for joining the show.

00:48:43.000 I really appreciate it.

00:48:44.000 Thank you for having me, man.

00:48:47.000 So let's assess where the Trump administration is at this point in time.

00:48:52.000 Right now, it looks as though the economy is moving along, probably slowing a little bit.

00:48:57.000 We probably are going to get a reduction, I would assume, in the interest rates from the Federal Reserve at the next Federal Reserve meeting, but there's sort of mixed signals in the economy.

00:49:04.000 On the international level, it looks as though the war in Ukraine is going to continue for the foreseeable future.

00:49:10.000 And it seems as though Israel is about to make some major moves in Gaza.

00:49:14.000 What do you make of kind of the state of play for the Trump administration now that we are seven months in?

00:49:21.000 Well, it's waging the most ambitious counter-revolution I think I've ever seen in my life, much more fundamental and multifaceted Than the Reagan Revolution.

00:49:31.000 And by that, I mean certain issues are now moot.

00:49:34.000 He's closed the border.

00:49:36.000 There is no more illegal entry.

00:49:38.000 It's just a question of how do you get the 12 million that came under Biden out.

00:49:43.000 We were told there would be 55,000 short military recruits because of systemic problems with gangs or drugs or competition with private enterprise.

00:49:53.000 That proved to be fallacious.

00:49:54.000 He solved that problem.

00:49:56.000 I don't think I'd ever...

00:50:18.000 systemic racism on theme houses, graduation, safe spaces.

00:50:23.000 So he's really caused a DEI-academic revolution.

00:50:30.000 As far as these two wars go, the instigators or the attackers, Hamas and Russia, apparently and their supporters feel that the war went against them and they have no rationale for the types of losses they incurred and the humiliation they incurred.

00:50:49.000 So they're not really going to give up unless they can go back to their masters and say this was worth it in the cost of benefit analysis.

00:50:57.000 So I don't know where the magic point is for Putin, how far west of the Donbass and Crimea he's got to explain to his base, the oligarchs and the military, that he lost a million Russian casualties basically to just start out with what he had.

00:51:14.000 He had Crimea, he had the Donbass, he had pretty much de facto certainty that Ukraine wouldn't be in NATO.

00:51:21.000 And I don't know what he's gained for all that losses, but he apparently feels he's got to show something more.

00:51:27.000 And I don't know where that magic line of a DMZ will be, but I think that's what the negotiations are.

00:51:33.000 The other problem with Israel's got is that they've got an existential enemy that tried to, you know, it would destroy the Jewish state if it ever had the capability. 0.72

00:51:45.000 And its patron, Iran, has been defanged, Hezbollah has been defanged. 0.74

00:51:51.000 So here we have this remnant, subterranean remnant, and you've got the international community trying to say that resurrect it.

00:52:00.000 You've got the people of Gaza from latest polls seem to want to resurrect it.

00:52:04.000 And Israel can't countenance it. 0.88

00:52:07.000 They can't resurrect it.

00:52:08.000 And so it's just a question of what are they going to do about it?

00:52:12.000 How are they going to, they've been into Gaza once, and I don't think it was in their interest to get anywhere near there again, but they can't leave it be.

00:52:23.000 So they're in an existential dilemma, a doom loop.

00:52:26.000 They can't let it be, and they don't want to go in there and run things.

00:52:30.000 And so we'll see what happens.

00:52:32.000 But it really hurt their efforts that the international community sort of gave a life raft to this dying Hamas cause. 0.99

00:52:43.000 You know, one of the things about President Trump that I've said many times is that he is heterodox in many of his views, but he's also responsive to reality in a way that many other presidents are not.

00:52:51.000 He's non-ideological, which means that he's quite pragmatic.

00:52:54.000 So he might start off his administration taking an almost neutral position between Russia and Ukraine.

00:52:58.000 But if Ukraine comes to the table and Russia doesn't, then he will say Ukraine has come to the table, Russia has not, and he will up his support for Ukraine.

00:53:05.000 If he looks at the Middle East, he's not going to make an ideological commitment to neutrality between a terrorist group and a democratic ally of the United States.

00:53:13.000 Even when it comes to the economy, there's been a lot of talk about President Trump's tariffs.

00:53:18.000 The most sort of extraordinary of those tariffs, he has walked back to a certain extent.

00:53:22.000 He's still keeping a large tariff regime, an almost unprecedented tariff regime in place.

00:53:27.000 But it seems to me that if the economy starts to slow too significantly, you might see him attempt to relieve some of that as well.

00:53:33.000 That pragmatism has backfooted a lot of his political opponents.

00:53:37.000 And so it seems as though the only real obstacle to the success of his continuation and his administration would come in the form of either an economic downturn or in the form of some unforeseen scandal.

00:53:50.000 Is that analysis fair?

00:53:52.000 Yeah, I think it is.

00:53:53.000 And if we had this conversation in January of 2020 when things were booming, it was pretty Clear that he was going to be reelected until the COVID thing hit.

00:54:04.000 And I think that destroyed his reelection chances.

00:54:08.000 But he's in unknown territory.

00:54:12.000 We've never had a president that has pledged his presidency on the assumption that these people who were running vast surpluses, whether it's China, Japan, South Korea, the EU, they had a profit margin of which we didn't know what it was, but he's saying that they can still make a profit without marginal, you know, without in a great deal of raising prices and pricing them out of the U.S. market and still pay the tariff.

00:54:40.000 And they don't want to admit it, but he suggests that's accurate. 0.98

00:54:44.000 He also feels that while the Wall Street Journal might say that trade deficits don't matter and tariffs are bad, then why does China and the EU and all these brilliant nations adopt the things that we're told are injurious to them?

00:54:59.000 But I guess in the larger picture, what he's trying to do is square the circle.

00:55:04.000 He said that he's not going to cut defense.

00:55:07.000 He's not going to cut Social Security and Medicare.

00:55:10.000 He's not going to raise taxes.

00:55:12.000 And he's going to do all these incentives that will kick in, he thinks, before the midterm.

00:55:18.000 And this is deregulation, investment incentives, lower taxes.

00:55:24.000 But he's got to show some progress in addressing this $2 trillion budget deficit.

00:55:31.000 And the way that he's trying to do it is very interesting.

00:55:34.000 Scott DeSant said the other day that if the tariffs continue, they might get $300 billion in new revenue.

00:55:41.000 The Doge people think they can get $200 billion in cuts.

00:55:47.000 And Trump is going wild over Jerome Powell.

00:55:51.000 But the subtext of that is we're paying $3 billion a day in interest.

00:55:56.000 And if you can get down maybe a half a point or three quarters of a point, you might save another $200 billion in annual interest.

00:56:04.000 And before you know it, you've cut $700 billion from the $2 trillion, which is 30 or 40%, is pretty good without raising taxes and without touching defense and entitlements.

00:56:15.000 I think that's what he's trying to do.

00:56:17.000 And that's why he's so inflamed and angry at Powell.

00:56:22.000 Because Powell, on the one hand, says, when the Wall Street Journal in March and April were saying the stock market's not going to come back, we're going to be in a recession, stagflation, the tariffs are going to cause a trade war.

00:56:33.000 You would think that as someone who agreed with that assessment, he would have lowered interest rates.

00:56:39.000 And then when he didn't, and everybody said, well, things are getting better, then he didn't, you know, you could see why he kept them because he said he was afraid of inflation, but there was no evidence there was any inflation.

00:56:53.000 It was about 2.4, 2.5.

00:56:55.000 It's gone down.

00:56:56.000 January, I think the whole year, seven months is 2.4 inflation.

00:57:01.000 So he's not consistent, but one thing is consistent.

00:57:04.000 He's sort of a Merrick Garland wounded fawn.

00:57:07.000 He's somebody that had been attacked by the opposition and wounded and never got over it.

00:57:13.000 And too late, Powell, and all of that rhetoric, he can't, I don't think he can digest it and be empirical vis-a-vis Trump.

00:57:21.000 And it's tragic because I think the economy justifies a lowering of interest rates, and that would do a lot for the deficit.

00:57:30.000 And more importantly, it would get a lot of people in homes they can't afford.

00:57:34.000 But I don't think he's going to do it in the same way that Merrick Garland just seemed to be obsessed with going after Trump, although in a candlestick way.

00:57:47.000 I mentioned there the situation with the economy.

00:57:50.000 And then the other possibility is the possibility of scandal.

00:57:54.000 And this brings us to a bizarre drumbeat on some parts of the right, tremendous focus on Jeffrey Epstein.

00:58:01.000 You understand why the Democrats would jump on the Jeffrey Epstein stuff, because for the Democrats, if you need some club to wield against President Trump and the only handy club is the Jeffrey Epstein case, then you wield it against President Trump.

00:58:13.000 But it appears fairly clear from the evidence that we know about and also the people who are actually in charge of looking at that evidence that Pam Bondi basically got over her skis, the attorney general, that she suggested that she had access to materials that didn't exist or she exaggerated the content of those materials.

00:58:28.000 And then essentially the DOJ And FBI had to walk that back in their iterated ruling.

00:58:34.000 You'll get some release of some more documents, but probably the underlying judgment won't change.

00:58:37.000 What's fascinating to watch is some people on the right, not people who have, I think, open and legit questions about where Jeffrey Epstein got his money, which, again, is understandable, or people who are frustrated because they were promised more, but people who are fully confident that there is some sort of nefarious cover-up going on inside the Trump administration and seem bound and determined to elevate the Epstein case to the front page every single day.

00:58:58.000 What do you think is the motivation there?

00:59:02.000 I think what happened was they were very, as you said, they got ahead of their skis.

00:59:05.000 They were very enthusiastic when they saw the initial evidence.

00:59:09.000 They thought this would be another sign that the Trump administration is far more transparent than their predecessors.

00:59:16.000 And then when they looked at the 170 names that appear in text messages, emails, court inquiries, interrogatories, there's a lot of people there.

00:59:25.000 I mean, there's Leonard DiCaprio, there's Bruce Willis, there's all these names, and we have no idea why they're there.

00:59:33.000 And on a one to 10, they could have just bumped into him.

00:59:37.000 They could have said hello.

00:59:38.000 They could have seen him in a party.

00:59:39.000 They could have tried to raise money with him.

00:59:41.000 They could have done a business deal.

00:59:43.000 Or at a 10, they could have been involved nefariously.

00:59:46.000 And I think once she said that, they must have been swarmed by calls from people who say, if you release this information, I'm innocent, but I'm going to be ruined for life.

00:59:57.000 I'm a donor.

00:59:58.000 I know you people.

00:59:59.000 Why are you doing this?

01:00:00.000 And I think they made a mistake at that point and said, and backed off.

01:00:04.000 And now I think they're trying to correct and say, you know what, whatever damage we do by letting the names out and letting people adjudicate for themselves the degree of culpability, it's a lot more damaging to try to keep it under wraps.

01:00:19.000 If there had been incriminating information about Trump or major conservatives, it would have been leaked under the Biden administration.

01:00:28.000 We know that.

01:00:28.000 They leaked everything.

01:00:30.000 They leaked everything about the Doc Smith, the Fannie Willis.

01:00:35.000 It was just like Russian collusion under the first Trump.

01:00:38.000 They leaked leaked leaks.

01:00:39.000 I don't think there's anything there that's particularly embarrassing to Trump.

01:00:46.000 Well, that's Professor Victor Davis Hanson.

01:00:47.000 Again, you can go check out all of his work at the Hoover Institution, among other places, and obviously check out his fantastic books.

01:00:53.000 Professor Victor Davis-Hanson, thanks so much for the time.

01:00:55.000 I really appreciate it.

01:00:56.000 Thank you for having me.

01:00:58.000 All righty, folks, the show is continuing for our members right now.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - August 06, 2025

The America LAST Left Cuts Loose, Plus New Epstein SUBPOENAS

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