The Ben Shapiro Show - The Bannon-Epstein Connection REVEALED!

00:00:00.000 As more Epstein files drop, some of the biggest conspiracy theorists are ensnared in the scandal itself.

00:00:05.000 Plus, we get to Marjorie Taylor Greene rebelling against the president of the United States and the stock market taking a tumble.

00:00:11.000 What comes next first?

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00:00:31.000 Tomorrow night, you will hear all four winners announced before we go live at 7 p.m. Eastern.

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00:00:42.000 Well, there's something very fishy about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

00:00:46.000 And no, of course, I'm not talking about just the scandal itself, which, of course, remains incredibly fishy.

00:00:51.000 We don't know where Jeffrey Epstein got his gigantic oodles of money in the first place.

00:00:56.000 We don't know whom he was trafficking to, if anyone besides himself.

00:01:00.000 We don't know a lot of things about Jeffrey Epstein.

00:01:03.000 But what I mean here is that the response to Jeffrey Epstein has been quite fascinating.

00:01:06.000 Many of the figures who have been largely associated with the question asking about Jeffrey Epstein, it turns out that some of them are, in fact, associates of Jeffrey Epstein.

00:01:15.000 And this is where things start to get weird in conspiracy land because conspiracy land suggests that they're the people who are in on it, and then there are the people who are outside attempting to crack the code on the conspiracy.

00:01:26.000 But when you are talking about a hoax, and here we're not saying that everything associated with Jeffrey Epstein is a hoax.

00:01:32.000 I'm talking about the political op directed at President Trump specifically regarding Jeffrey Epstein.

00:01:38.000 One of the ways you can tell when people are quote unquote in on the hoax is when they themselves were close associates of the person at issue.

00:01:45.000 And now they've decided to try and weaponize that same person as a weapon against the people who they are targeting.

00:01:52.000 Case in point, Steve Bannon.

00:01:53.000 So Steve Bannon, I've known Steve for a very, very long time.

00:01:57.000 It's currently 2025.

00:01:58.000 I believe I first met Steve in 2012.

00:02:00.000 So I've known Steve for 13 years or so.

00:02:02.000 And, you know, I knew him back when he was at Breitbart and I was at Breitbart as well.

00:02:06.000 And we'll say that he's not the easiest human being, to put it mildly.

00:02:11.000 Steve Bannon has a long history of attempting to associate himself with more powerful people, glomming onto them, and then sort of making his way up the chain.

00:02:18.000 So a bit of career background on Steve Bannon, at least politically.

00:02:22.000 He made a documentary about then Congresswoman Michelle Bachman.

00:02:26.000 After that documentary was made, he then used that as a sort of entree card to make a documentary about Sarah Palin.

00:02:32.000 After that documentary was made, he then used that as an entree card to make a documentary about Andrew Breitbart.

00:02:37.000 He used that documentary in order to become a prominent person at Breitbart itself when Andrew unfortunately passed away.

00:02:44.000 And then he used that position in order to leverage a position for himself in the first Trump administration.

00:02:49.000 He, of course, ended up being ousted by the first Trump administration.

00:02:52.000 President Trump calls him sloppy Steve rather famously.

00:02:55.000 He then went through a period in the wilderness where he was associating with some rather shady figures.

00:03:00.000 He ended up doing a very short stint of jail time.

00:03:04.000 And now, of course, he has his show, The War Room, where the media call him up routinely for quasi-leaks because I'm not sure how really empowered his access is to the administration, but they're constantly using him, the media, as a sort of window into the dark side of the Trump administration, which is, of course, something that Steve really loves.

00:03:22.000 Now, the reason that Steve has become an issue is because Steve, along with many other people who are attempting to wrest control of the MAGA movement away from President Trump, their assumption is that President Trump is in the waning days of his political power, that President Trump is now close to being, if he is not already, a lame duck.

00:03:38.000 And that means that the future of the Republican Party is going to be fought in an internasine war.

00:03:44.000 And that's going to involve a war of all against all, people who have different perspectives on foreign policy, different perspectives on economics.

00:03:51.000 And Steve believes, presumably, that he is going to have a heavy voice in deciding the future of the MAGA movement without President Trump.

00:03:58.000 Let me be clear.

00:03:59.000 There is no MAGA movement without President Trump.

00:04:01.000 It does not exist.

00:04:03.000 President Trump is MAGA.

00:04:04.000 President Trump, as I have said before, is Swede generous.

00:04:07.000 It is the president of the United States who decides the direction of MAGA.

00:04:11.000 And every attempt, every attempt to intellectualize or philosophize President Trump, to turn his impulses, to turn his instincts into a coherent political program, those have all failed.

00:04:23.000 Because again, the president holds a bunch of different conflicting thoughts at the same time.

00:04:27.000 And then he tends to come down on the side of pragmatic populism.

00:04:31.000 And by this, I mean that he will try things.

00:04:33.000 And if they don't work, he will then move away from them.

00:04:35.000 He is not ideological.

00:04:37.000 And so any attempt to peg President Trump to a quote-unquote MA ideology is destined to fail because President Trump could at one point articulate a version of MAGA in which support for Ukraine is bad.

00:04:49.000 And then when Russia is intransigent, he could articulate a version of MAGA in which support for Ukraine is good, just to take an obvious example.

00:04:56.000 He could do the same thing with support for particular business people.

00:05:00.000 He can flip on a dime because President Trump, again, is not just the leader of MAGA.

00:05:04.000 He is the definition of MAGA.

00:05:06.000 There is no MAGA aside from President Trump.

00:05:08.000 He's very much like Barack Obama in this way.

00:05:10.000 Barack Obama was able to kind of gloss over all of the various divisions inside the Democratic Party without necessarily a cohesive program.

00:05:17.000 Now, Obama was much more intellectually consistent and ideological in his approach than Donald Trump has been.

00:05:24.000 But all attempts to sort of boil Trump down into a philosophical or ideological package, which can then be transferred over to another candidate, whether that candidate is JD Vance or whether it is Ted Cruz or whether it is Steve Bannon or whether it is somebody else, that is bound to fail because President Trump is too big for that.

00:05:41.000 You can't just take what he is, sort of shrink wrap it, put it in an ideological box, and then hand it over to the next guy.

00:05:50.000 So one of the things that Steve Bannon has been trying to do for years is claim that he's sort of the intellectual mover and shaker behind MAGA, which of course is really silly.

00:05:57.000 It's really silly.

00:05:58.000 There is no shadow president to President Trump.

00:06:00.000 There is no one who is defining his program except for President Trump.

00:06:04.000 The reason I bring this up is because Steve Bannon, among many other people, being opposed to some elements of Trump's agenda and trying to run a sort of bizarre op inside the Republican Party to remove support from Trump and move it over to his version of MAGA, he, among other people, has been quite vocal about the so-called Epstein scandal.

00:06:24.000 He's been very vocal about this.

00:06:25.000 He's talked about it a lot.

00:06:26.000 Well, it turns out, again, that so much of what is happening right now is just fibbery.

00:06:31.000 According to the UK Guardian, hundreds of texts over almost a year show MAGA influencer Steve Bannon and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein workshopping legal and media strategies to protect Epstein from the legal and publicity quagmire that enveloped him in the last year of his life.

00:06:45.000 The texts released by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday show that as early as June 2018, the pair were devising responses to the gathering storm of public outrage about Epstein's criminal history, his favorable treatment by the justice system, and his friendships with powerful figures in business, politics, and academia.

00:07:00.000 Remember, that's 2018, 2018.

00:07:04.000 That is 10 years after Jeffrey Epstein's first conviction, after the controversial plea deal that he cut with Alex Acosta.

00:07:12.000 That's 10 years later.

00:07:13.000 Okay, we're not talking about Donald Trump hobnobbing with Jeffrey Epstein in the late 90s.

00:07:18.000 We're not talking about going to parties with Jeffrey Epstein at Mar-a-Lago in 2004.

00:07:24.000 We are talking about 10 years after it was obvious to everyone that Jeffrey Epstein was, in fact, a pedophile.

00:07:31.000 That 10 years after that, he was acting not just as a sort of friend, but as a confidant and as a PR advisor, which says something about somebody.

00:07:40.000 If you are acting as a confidant and PR advisor to a convicted sex offender like Jeffrey Epstein, who is well known to be into underage girls, if that is, I don't know what that says about you or why you should have any level of authority in any future Republican Party.

00:07:56.000 This seems to me quite damning.

00:07:58.000 The texts released by the House Oversight Committee show as early as 2018 that they were devising responses to the gathering storm of public outrage about Epstein's criminal history, his favorable treatment by the justice system, and his friendships with powerful figures in business, politics, and academia.

00:08:13.000 Bannon conspiratorially described the renewed scrutiny of Epstein as a sophisticated op.

00:08:17.000 And over time, he counseled Epstein in his adversarial responses to media outlets, the justice system, and his victims.

00:08:24.000 All the while, both men were also strategizing how best to promote Bannon's right-wing populist agenda and the political fortunes of its standard bearer, Donald Trump.

00:08:32.000 Bannon's identity in the threads, according to The Guardian, cited in this reporting, is clear from contextual clues, including his documented activities at the time, details of his business and media pursuits, and other disclosures.

00:08:43.000 In one document, the senator's phone number is not redacted.

00:08:45.000 It's the same number linked to Bannon in a legal case against Trump advisor Roger Stone.

00:08:52.000 The men were discussing Epstein's problems even before he came to broader public awareness as a notorious sex criminal without connections to the Trump administration.

00:09:00.000 Bannon left the Trump White House in late summer 2017, and by 2018, he was hanging out and texting with Jeffrey Epstein about how to rehab Jeffrey Epstein.

00:09:08.000 On June 22nd, 2018, days after Jeffrey Epstein had been the focus of an anti-Trump protest at a Trump speech, the men began discussing the scandal that was beginning to loom over Epstein.

00:09:17.000 At first, they treated it as a publicity problem, with Bannon seeing it as an orchestrated campaign.

00:09:22.000 Bannon asked Epstein, who is running this op on you?

00:09:25.000 Something serious going on.

00:09:26.000 Epstein replied, first a protest at Clinton and then at Trump.

00:09:28.000 Lots of people very angry at our friendship.

00:09:30.000 Bannon responded, it's an op, dude.

00:09:32.000 I do this for a living.

00:09:33.000 The pieces that are dropping are deeply researched, adding, this is sophisticated op.

00:09:38.000 On December 18th, an unknown correspondent tried to reassure Epstein, writing, quote, it will all blow over.

00:09:43.000 They're really just trying to take down Trump and doing whatever they can to do that.

00:09:46.000 Epstein responded, yes, thanks.

00:09:47.000 It's wild because I am the one able to take him down.

00:09:51.000 In early February 2019, Bannon opened an exchange on the developing story by linking to an item at the controversial news site, Zero Hedge, that quoted then-Republican Senator Ben Sass on the matter.

00:10:01.000 And he asked Bannon on advice for how to respond.

00:10:04.000 Continue to ignore, attack, op-ed, not my skill set.

00:10:08.000 Bannon said, that drives it a week.

00:10:12.000 Okay, so again, they were having these back and forth in which he was attempting to guide Epstein.

00:10:16.000 And we know for a fact that there are hours and hours of tape between Epstein and Bannon that have not yet been released, which is strange, is it not?

00:10:25.000 Bannon said, should it be an interview format interviewed by or just me speaking to the camera?

00:10:29.000 Humor apology.

00:10:30.000 How did I get rich?

00:10:30.000 Topics.

00:10:31.000 That's Epstein asking Bannon for advice.

00:10:33.000 They spoke frequently on the phone, apparently.

00:10:38.000 Again, what does this mean?

00:10:40.000 It means that certain people are less trustworthy than others in political media.

00:10:45.000 And the fact that Steve Bannon has spent, again, his entire career trying to find more powerful people to quote unquote advise and glom onto in order to advance his own agenda.

00:10:56.000 And that didn't even stop at the doorway of Jeffrey Epstein.

00:10:59.000 It says something about him and about his attempts to hijack the MAGA movement beyond President Trump.

00:11:05.000 All righty, coming up more on the Epstein op.

00:11:08.000 And it really is at this point an op led by many of the people who are literally involved with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:11:13.000 Plus, we'll be joined by Scott Jennings, who has a brand new book out first.

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00:13:37.000 So, here, for example, with Steve Bannon over the summer at TPUSA, when everybody else was also promoting these conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein, intelligence agencies, and all the, here's Jeffrey Epstein's friend and quasi-fixer Steve Bannon doing the exact same thing.

00:13:54.000 Epstein is a key that picks the lock on so many things, not just individuals, but also institutions, intelligence institutions, foreign governments, and who is working with him on our intelligence apparatus and in our government.

00:14:10.000 Now, in fact, that's not even restricted to Steve Bannon.

00:14:14.000 We are now finding out, for example, that Stacey Plaskett, the U.S. Virgin Island non-voting delegate who's a Democrat, was messaging with Epstein in February 2019 while a hearing into Trump was ongoing.

00:14:25.000 And she even asked Epstein for guidance in one message, according to the Washington Post.

00:14:29.000 Her office confirmed to the paper that she had received texts from Epstein.

00:14:33.000 Again, these sort of relationships that people had with Jeffrey Epstein, it's quite fascinating.

00:14:38.000 He's on both sides of the aisle, obviously.

00:14:41.000 And there is something dishonest about you having a close personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, and then turning around and spouting conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein that you could yourself easily weigh in on.

00:14:57.000 Pretty fascinating.

00:14:58.000 Now, Democrats are trying to use the Epstein situation as a way to harm President Trump, trying to hurt President Trump.

00:15:05.000 Chuck Schumer, the very endangered Senate minority leader who may be facing, he's going to retire.

00:15:12.000 I mean, he's not going to run for reelection.

00:15:13.000 Here he is suggesting that President Trump is hiding something.

00:15:18.000 Just, I guess, a question that's out there.

00:15:20.000 Why wouldn't they have been released the last four years when President Biden was in office?

00:15:24.000 Well, that's the question every American is asking.

00:15:27.000 Not every American, but so many Americans are asking.

00:15:29.000 What the hell is he hiding?

00:15:31.000 Why doesn't he want them released when you don't want something like this released when even a whole lot of Republicans are calling for the release?

00:15:38.000 His own party members, people ask the question: what's he hiding?

00:15:43.000 Okay, but this raises a question for Democrats, which is what are Democrats hiding?

00:15:46.000 So, one reporter asked, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, who we'll get to in a minute, is going to face a primary challenger himself.

00:15:52.000 The Democratic Party is coming apart at the seams.

00:15:55.000 A reporter asked him, why exactly should Americans trust Democrats on Epstein when Democrats like Stacey Plaskett were texting Jeffrey Epstein?

00:16:05.000 Why should Americans trust you and House Democrats on the Jeffrey Epstein files when one of your own, Congresswoman Plaskett, was found to be texting with Jeffrey Epstein during a hearing, getting information from him, using that in her questioning during a congressional hearing?

00:16:22.000 And at one point, he tells her, good job.

00:16:24.000 This is a bipartisan effort to make sure that consistent with what the survivors have requested, that this full and complete transparency in every single predator who may be in those Justice Department files doesn't escape accountability.

00:16:42.000 Okay, so one of the things I noticed is you not answering the question, House Minority Leader, and the finger wagging about how you're full of transparency.

00:16:50.000 Fascinating.

00:16:50.000 Just fascinating.

00:16:51.000 Meanwhile, speaking of full transparency, President Trump said yesterday that he would sign a bill to release the Epstein files.

00:16:57.000 Here he was explaining.

00:16:59.000 So I'm for any, I don't care. 0.99

00:17:03.000 They can do whatever they want.

00:17:04.000 We'll give them everything.

00:17:06.000 Sure, I would.

00:17:08.000 Let the Senate look at it.

00:17:09.000 Let anybody look at it.

00:17:10.000 But don't talk about it too much because honestly, I don't want to take it away from us.

00:17:15.000 It's really a Democrat problem.

00:17:17.000 The Democrats were Epstein's friends.

00:17:22.000 So he then continued along these lines, the president.

00:17:25.000 He said, you know, the reason why I don't want to talk about this?

00:17:27.000 Because it's a distraction from the things that are going on in actual Americans' lives.

00:17:32.000 All I want is I want for people to recognize the great job that I've done on pricing, on affordability, because we brought prices way down, but they're going way lower, on energy, on ending eight wars, and another one coming pretty soon, I believe.

00:17:49.000 We've done a great job, and I hate to see that deflect from the great job we've done.

00:17:59.000 So, you know, the president of the United States right there, again, he is not wrong, and he's also not wrong, that there is, in fact, a coalition of people who wish to take him down and degrade his presidency, and that spans from the left to the right.

00:18:12.000 So, for example, Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, he's now claiming that Trump chickened out.

00:18:17.000 Well, I mean, you can't really have it both ways here.

00:18:19.000 Either President Trump desperately wanted to avoid transparency or he's perfectly willing to do transparency, but he's doing the thing you want, so you call him a chicken?

00:18:28.000 That's kind of a weird take.

00:18:31.000 Donald Trump appears to have chickened out on the Epstein scandal.

00:18:35.000 He's caved.

00:18:36.000 It's a complete and total surrender.

00:18:39.000 Because as Democrats, we made clear from the very beginning, the survivors and the American people deserve full and complete transparency as it relates to the lives that were ruined by Jeffrey Epstein, who was a monster, and all of those folks who were dealing with him.

00:19:02.000 Okay, so there he is saying Trump chickened out.

00:19:04.000 Okay, so he's attacking Trump on Epstein.

00:19:06.000 And guess who else is?

00:19:07.000 Thomas Massey, of course.

00:19:08.000 And the reason Thomas Massey is attacking Trump on Epstein is not because Thomas Massey is so deep in the weeds on Epstein and cares deeply about, I mean, he's right next to RoConna.

00:19:16.000 RoConna, the Democratic congressman from California, who despises the president of the United States.

00:19:16.000 Come on.

00:19:21.000 The reason they're holding hands is not because they are so deeply ensconced in the Epstein case.

00:19:25.000 It's because Massey doesn't like many of the things that Trump is doing as president, which is why Trump wants him primarily.

00:19:30.000 Here is Thomas Massey trying to claim credit for all of this.

00:19:35.000 What do you make of the president's reversal?

00:19:38.000 How do you see it?

00:19:40.000 Well, he got tired of us winning and he decided to join us.

00:19:44.000 Look, they could have done this four months ago, and instead they fought us every bit of the way.

00:19:50.000 Now they want to be on our side.

00:19:52.000 We'll accept their support, but we're, you know, a little bit suspicious of this sudden turn of events.

00:19:58.000 So we'll keep an eye on things.

00:20:00.000 We're worried that maybe they'll try to muck it up in the Senate.

00:20:06.000 Again, look at the coalition here.

00:20:08.000 Just look at the coalition here.

00:20:10.000 There's a reason that CNN is now praising Marjorie Taylor Green.

00:20:12.000 Marjorie Taylor Green was a joke and remains a joke today.

00:20:15.000 The attempt to turn Marjorie Taylor Greene into some sort of honest, great intellect is like the perfect example of how strange new respect is earned simply by attacking President Trump.

00:20:24.000 That's all.

00:20:26.000 It's like amazing.

00:20:27.000 Here is CNN's Dana Bash praising Marjorie Taylor Greene.

00:20:32.000 Yeah, remarkable interview.

00:20:34.000 And just I see change from what we've seen.

00:20:38.000 In some ways, some of the rhetoric she was saying was sounded like Joe Biden of there's more that unites us than divides us.

00:20:45.000 That is not the sort of rhetoric we are used to hearing from President Trump and the MAGA base.

00:20:53.000 Again, like it's so ridiculous.

00:20:55.000 What happened is that Marjorie Taylor Greene did an interview where she apologized for her toxic language. 0.97

00:20:59.000 No one believes this.

00:21:00.000 No one with half a brain believes this, but you're looking for a rationale for glazing Marjorie Taylor Greene because she opposes the president now.

00:21:07.000 It is that simple.

00:21:08.000 It is that how much so?

00:21:09.000 Jamie Raskin, who was a participant in the impeachment trial for President Trump on the Democratic side, Congressman from Maryland, says Marjorie Taylor Greene should join the Democratic Party now.

00:21:20.000 We are a big tent.

00:21:22.000 We must be a huge, vast tent.

00:21:24.000 I say this is a party that's got room for Marjorie Taylor Greene if she wants to come over. 0.99

00:21:32.000 Okay.

00:21:33.000 Fine.

00:21:33.000 Okay.

00:21:34.000 Fine.

00:21:36.000 Again, it is indicative of what's actually happening.

00:21:39.000 The Epstein thing, particularly from the right, is just a way to undermine the president's agenda.

00:21:45.000 It really is.

00:21:46.000 Because no one on the right truly believes that the president of the United States is complicit in a child sex trafficking cover-up.

00:21:52.000 If you're on the right and you believe, if you believe that, you should just say it out loud.

00:21:56.000 You really should.

00:21:57.000 I noticed the cowardice of people who are softly making this claim.

00:22:01.000 They never mention Trump's name.

00:22:02.000 At least credit to Massey.

00:22:03.000 He'll at least say Trump's name.

00:22:05.000 I mean, I think he's wrong and I think his priorities are screwed up, but at least he'll say the quiet part out loud.

00:22:10.000 All these other people like, ah, President Trump, people around Trump, somebody is manipulating the Epstein, somebody.

00:22:19.000 Again, the same people who are fellow traveling with Steve Bannon, a literal advisor to Jeffrey Epstein, complaining about President Trump.

00:22:26.000 I think maybe you guys have another agenda.

00:22:29.000 Alrighty, coming up, we're going to be joined by Scott Jennings.

00:22:31.000 Plus, we will talk about the AI bubble.

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00:24:47.000 Joining me on the line is Scott Jennings.

00:24:49.000 He, of course, is a senior political contributor at CNN, host of the Scott Jennings show on Salem Radio.

00:24:54.000 And he's the author of the brand new book, A Revolution of Common Sense: How Donald Trump Stormed Washington and Fought for Western Civilization.

00:25:00.000 That is out today.

00:25:01.000 Scott, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:25:03.000 Really appreciate it.

00:25:04.000 Ben, thanks for having me on.

00:25:05.000 Good to see you.

00:25:07.000 So let's talk about your brand new book.

00:25:09.000 Obviously, President Trump has been under a lot of fire recently.

00:25:13.000 That is happening from both the right and the left.

00:25:15.000 But the reality is that he is the transformative figure of our period, no question.

00:25:20.000 So what caused you to write this book?

00:25:23.000 Well, when I was listening to his inaugural address, he used the phrase, a revolution of common sense.

00:25:28.000 And I thought, that would make a great title for a book.

00:25:30.000 When I pitched him on it in February, I told him I thought he revolutionized political campaigning.

00:25:35.000 And at that point, you know, he had hit the ground running with 200 executive orders.

00:25:38.000 I mean, they had really smashed Washington before it ever got out of bed.

00:25:42.000 And I said, I think you're revolutionizing governing.

00:25:44.000 It's the most active presidency since FDR.

00:25:47.000 And I said, I think 100 people are going to write a book crapping on you.

00:25:49.000 And somebody who likes you and voted for you ought to write a book about it and about how Middle America is absorbing what you're doing.

00:25:56.000 And he bought it and we worked together on it.

00:25:59.000 I interviewed the cabinet, a lot of his staff, and spent some time with him.

00:26:02.000 It was an eye-opening experience.

00:26:05.000 Now, Scott, one of the things that I find fascinating about President Trump, and I've been talking about this a lot, is that when people say MAGA is an ideological program, that's not true.

00:26:13.000 President Trump is MAGA, and he is unbelievably pragmatic.

00:26:16.000 He tends to take the 70 position on pretty much every 70-30 issue.

00:26:20.000 And what that means is that he ends up oddly being a moderate in a world of polarized politics.

00:26:25.000 That's what happened in the last election cycle.

00:26:27.000 While the media want to portray him as some sort of wild-eyed fanatic, the reality is that they are significantly more fanatical in their politics than President Trump is in his day-to-day politics.

00:26:36.000 Yeah, look, he would describe his decision-making as just trying to take the common sense issue.

00:26:41.000 Now, he would also say, and I've asked him before, do you consider yourself to be a conservative?

00:26:45.000 And he said, yeah, but most of the time, conservative is common sense, but I'm trying to do the common sense thing on most issues.

00:26:51.000 So in the book, I write about DEI issues.

00:26:53.000 I write about his taking on the transgender cult out there. 1.00

00:26:57.000 I write about the straws, the paper straws.

00:26:59.000 I mean, I was in the Oval Office today.

00:27:01.000 He banned the paper straws.

00:27:02.000 I mean, he sort of picks things out that are common sense, 80-20, that annoy people, that are culturally significant.

00:27:10.000 And he is not afraid to go after it.

00:27:12.000 And, you know, the last four years under Biden, we were sort of all walking around being forced to accept things that we knew were nonsense, but everybody was too afraid, I guess, out in the institutional world to say it.

00:27:22.000 Trump comes in and takes the wet blanket off of America.

00:27:24.000 And part of his political magic is just saying what everyone else is already thinking, but they're too afraid to do it.

00:27:30.000 He does it for them.

00:27:32.000 You know, Scott, one of the things that's been very weird to watch is obviously we're now seeing people inside the Republican Party acting as though the president is a lame duck.

00:27:39.000 He is not, in fact, a lame duck.

00:27:40.000 He still has three years left of his actual presidency.

00:27:43.000 But there is this bizarre attempt by some to wrest away what they think is quote unquote, the legacy of MAGA from President Trump, as though MAGA exists apart and aside from President Trump.

00:27:53.000 What do you make of it?

00:27:54.000 Well, what I make of it is that the isolationists in the Republican Party, who have always wanted Trump to be a pure isolationist, but who are sorely disappointed in it, are trying to move away from him or trying to destabilize his presidency.

00:28:08.000 I trace it all back to the decision to strike Iran. 0.97

00:28:11.000 When that happened, you had a number of people who've been in his orbit, who've been claiming to be his supporters, who were urging him not to do it.

00:28:18.000 He defied them.

00:28:19.000 And ever since that moment, they've been picking at him.

00:28:21.000 They've been trying to destabilize him.

00:28:23.000 They've been opposing him.

00:28:24.000 Take Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance.

00:28:26.000 You go back to the summer.

00:28:27.000 She's opposed him on that stuff in the Middle East.

00:28:29.000 Now she is opposing him on deportation.

00:28:31.000 She runs off to the view to criticize him.

00:28:34.000 And so what I see are the pure isolationists who are disappointed with Trump trying to separate him from his people.

00:28:40.000 I think it's a fool's errand, truthfully.

00:28:43.000 Trump is as popular with his base today as he's ever been.

00:28:45.000 And of course, when these things happen, the media always tries to, you know, they want to argue, finally, Donald Trump's losing his base.

00:28:52.000 Finally, he's, you know, a lame duck, as you say.

00:28:54.000 Of course, none of this is true.

00:28:56.000 It's complete and total nonsense.

00:28:57.000 He's the strongest political figure, the strongest party boss we've had in modern American politics, and that's not changed today.

00:29:06.000 You know, one of the things that, again, is fascinating is the attempt to sidetrack him with things like the Epstein scandal, which supposedly is about President Trump.

00:29:15.000 And again, it is such an obvious op by so many of his political opponents to elevate this.

00:29:21.000 When the Biden administration had full access to all of these files for four years, if they wanted to release some bad information about President Trump from the files, there's no doubt that absolutely would have happened and that the president of the United States at the time, Joe Biden, would have actually had the power to do that.

00:29:34.000 They had no scruples about his tax returns leaking into public view, for example.

00:29:38.000 It is amazing to me that there are so many members on the Republican side of the aisle who really are attempting to undermine his presidency by focusing in on Epstein.

00:29:46.000 And again, this idea that there's something deep and dark hiding in the Epstein files, and that's what President Trump is bothered about.

00:29:51.000 I mean, you've spent time with him.

00:29:53.000 He's been saying, and people I've talked to who are very close with him have been saying, no, the real reason he doesn't really want all that out there is not because he is anti-transparency.

00:30:01.000 It's because he doesn't feel like talking about dumb crap in the middle of a presidency that is still very active.

00:30:06.000 That's 100% correct.

00:30:07.000 This issue is still not anywhere near the most important issue for the American people.

00:30:11.000 A, he knows it.

00:30:12.000 B, you know, look, there is some governing responsibility here.

00:30:16.000 I mean, you've got a, let's just pretend you've got some boxes of documents sitting here.

00:30:19.000 People's names appear in those documents who may not have done a thing wrong.

00:30:23.000 All of a sudden, you dump this out on the street.

00:30:25.000 Now people are implicated in something who've not been charged with a crime, who haven't done anything wrong at all.

00:30:30.000 I think that's a valid concern.

00:30:31.000 But the bottom line is Democrats are constantly looking for things to tie him up, run out the clock on his presidency.

00:30:37.000 They did it in the first term.

00:30:39.000 This is obviously what they're trying to do with this in the second term.

00:30:42.000 So now they're all going to vote for it and fine.

00:30:44.000 I'll tell you, the left may regret going down this road.

00:30:47.000 I mean, what have we learned so far?

00:30:48.000 We've learned a Democrat member of Congress, Stacey Plaskett, was being programmed to say things in committee hearings by Jeffrey Epstein.

00:30:55.000 We've learned that Larry Summers was soliciting dating advice from Jeffrey Epstein.

00:31:00.000 He's now having to step back from public life.

00:31:02.000 There may be a number of figures on the left here who get ensnared in embarrassing situations here or worse, but I don't think it's going to be Donald Trump at all.

00:31:11.000 Well, Scott, having spent so much time with the president, what do you think his top priorities need to be in the run-up to the midterm elections?

00:31:16.000 Obviously, affordability is on everybody's mind.

00:31:18.000 He has spelled out a few kind of ideas that he's thrown out there.

00:31:22.000 The truth is that some of this is just not in his hands because, you know, beyond things like not passing gigantic inflationary bills, there's not much that's in any president's hands, actually, with regard to the general overall global economy.

00:31:33.000 What do you think the president needs to focus on?

00:31:35.000 Well, I mean, look, the thing that dictates outcomes in elections is almost always the economy.

00:31:40.000 And so, you know, to the extent that he's already put in motion his economic policies, you know, making permanent the tax cuts, deregulation, energy production, which by the way has lowered gas prices.

00:31:51.000 It was $5 under Biden.

00:31:52.000 We're approaching $2 under Trump.

00:31:54.000 That's absolutely true.

00:31:56.000 But part of the issue is now selling it and saying my policies will lead to this better trajectory for the United States.

00:32:02.000 So some of it, I think, is just focus and what do you spend your time on and attention on?

00:32:08.000 giving the American people the feeling that you're in touch with what they're feeling in their daily life.

00:32:12.000 He's a great salesman.

00:32:14.000 And so, you know, up until now, I think he's been somewhat of a foreign policy president, which may shock a lot of people.

00:32:19.000 He's had a ton of foreign policy success.

00:32:22.000 In the run-up to a midterm, I would just run around the country.

00:32:24.000 They hired him in the first place because he's a businessman and they trust him to make correct economic decisions.

00:32:30.000 I think he's made good economic decisions so far.

00:32:32.000 He just now needs to go explain why he's got the trajectory correct.

00:32:35.000 And he cannot let the Democrats get away from this affordability debate scot-free here.

00:32:41.000 I mean, these people took prices to the moon under Joe Biden and now they want to lecture him about normalizing rates of inflation.

00:32:48.000 It's kind of crazy.

00:32:49.000 You can't memory hole that four-year period where prices went to the moon.

00:32:53.000 It's not like prices are going to go back to 2017 levels, but the rates of inflation here, I mean, it's laughable to hear a Democrat criticize him on grocery prices or anything else after what they did to the country.

00:33:04.000 And I think reminding voters of that is a critical issue.

00:33:09.000 What's Scott Jennings?

00:33:10.000 His brand new book is A Revolution of Common Sense, How Donald Trump Stormed Washington and Fought for Western Civilization.

00:33:14.000 And of course, you can watch him on CNN particularly on Abby Phillip, shall we say, battling with the left.

00:33:20.000 Scott, thanks so much for the time.

00:33:21.000 Really appreciate it.

00:33:22.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:33:24.000 All righty, coming up, we'll jump into some fast facts first.

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00:34:52.000 Well, meanwhile, the economy continues to be essentially on a razor's edge.

00:34:57.000 Yesterday, there was another market route.

00:35:00.000 This has continued from last week.

00:35:02.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, an intensifying sell-off across financial markets on Monday ensnared everything from gold to crypto to high-flying tech stocks, dragging the Dow Jones industrial average to its worst three-day stretch since President Trump's tariff turmoil in April.

00:35:16.000 Investors in recent days have dumped assets in the lead up to key tests for whether the AI boom and economic growth that powered stocks to successive records in 2025 will continue into the new year.

00:35:25.000 NVIDIA on Wednesday is set to report earnings in the latest snapshot for chip demand.

00:35:29.000 September jobs data delayed during the government shutdown is also due out on Thursday.

00:35:34.000 Monday's retreat came as Amazon is set to issue $15 billion in bonds, and it provided fresh evidence Wall Street is peeking under the hood of the expensive and sometimes circular deals underpinning one of the largest infrastructure buildouts in American history.

00:35:47.000 Again, this is something that we've been talking about for a while.

00:35:50.000 We talked a little bit last week about the circular deals that are now embedded in the economy, particularly with regard to the chip buildout.

00:35:59.000 Warren Buffett's latest bet on a big tech firm wasn't enough to juice investors' optimism for other AI names.

00:36:04.000 Berkshire Hathaway's multi-billion dollar purchase of Alphabet stock sent the Google parent 3.1% higher on Monday.

00:36:10.000 Google, by the way, may be the only company that is in fairly good shape here.

00:36:14.000 The rumors are that Gemini 3 is supposed to be unbelievable, which is their latest AI.

00:36:19.000 With that said, even Google's Sindar PitchEye is saying that if the bubble bursts, it's going to hurt everybody.

00:36:25.000 Given the potential of this technology, the excitement is very rational.

00:36:32.000 It's also true when we go through these investment cycles, you know, there are moments we overshoot, right, collectively as an industry.

00:36:42.000 We can look back at the internet right now.

00:36:44.000 There was clearly a lot of excess investment, but none of us would question whether the internet was profound or did it drive a lot of impact.

00:36:53.000 It's fundamentally changed how we work digitally as a society.

00:36:58.000 I expect AI to be the same.

00:37:00.000 So I think it's both rational and there are elements of irrationality through a moment like this.

00:37:08.000 Now, again, it'll be interesting.

00:37:09.000 I mean, even he is sort of saying it, right?

00:37:11.000 That there's a lot of bubble here.

00:37:13.000 And that's not just him, right?

00:37:14.000 Sam Altman of OpenAI, which is the company that may be the center of the bubble because OpenAI is privately traded.

00:37:21.000 And so that means there are a lot of deals that are happening with OpenAI in which companies are essentially lending OpenAI money to buy chips on the other side, or they're investing in OpenAI.

00:37:31.000 And then OpenAI is using that money in order to buy chips from NVIDIA.

00:37:35.000 And then NVIDIA is lending more money to OpenAI and all the rest.

00:37:38.000 Well, all the way back in August, he suggested that we may be in a bubble.

00:37:43.000 Quote, when bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth.

00:37:46.000 Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI?

00:37:49.000 My opinion is yes.

00:37:50.000 Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time?

00:37:52.000 My opinion is also yes.

00:37:54.000 And again, that seems rational to me, but one of the key indicators that maybe we're in a bubble is that the institutional investors seem to be divesting themselves of stock in places like NVIDIA.

00:38:04.000 That is true apparently for Peter Thiel report yesterday that Peter Thiel is dumping his stake in NVIDIA.

00:38:11.000 Peter is, of course, an incredibly smart human being.

00:38:13.000 And so you'd be well advised to follow his trading strategy rather than being the guy who's picking up the stock from Peter Thiel.

00:38:20.000 Apparently, they sold off their entire stake in NVIDIA during the third quarter.

00:38:25.000 Their fund sold around 537,000 shares in the AI chip frontrunner in the quarter.

00:38:30.000 That stake would have been worth around $100 million.

00:38:33.000 Now, again, that's not like a giant chunk of NVIDIA stock.

00:38:35.000 NVIDIA is the highest valued company on planet Earth right now in the trillions of dollars, but it is an indicator.

00:38:41.000 You sell when you think the market's high.

00:38:43.000 You don't sell when you think it's going to keep going up.

00:38:46.000 Meanwhile, over at Calci, one of our sponsors, the worries about the Federal Reserve deciding not to cut rates further, basically, I think there's enough liquidity in the economy.

00:38:57.000 As I've been saying, I'm of the opinion the Fed is not going to cut rates in December because they're looking at this.

00:39:03.000 The inflation is still too high.

00:39:05.000 There are not problems with obtaining liquidity.

00:39:07.000 There's a problem of what to do with the liquidity.

00:39:10.000 Right now, the Calci markets suggest 52% of people are saying that the Fed will maintain its current rate.

00:39:18.000 49% of people are saying they will cut the rates.

00:39:21.000 That is a dramatic jump from November 12th, when almost 75% of people were saying that they were going to cut the rates.

00:39:30.000 And only a quarter of people were saying they weren't going to cut the rates.

00:39:32.000 So, something is changing and something is changing pretty quickly here.

00:39:36.000 Now, meanwhile, this is only exacerbating concerns about affordability because if people feel as though what's coming around the bend here is nothing good and they're already paying too much money, they're worried about what comes next.

00:39:47.000 President Trump is out there touting his economic record yesterday.

00:39:51.000 He was saying that the investments are coming in fast and furious.

00:39:54.000 He did this at the McDonald's Impact Summit, where he opened, by the way, with a great joke about how a Frykook has become president because, of course, he had that very famous photo shoot where he was in the back room at a McDonald's cooking up the fries.

00:40:05.000 Here he was yesterday talking about his economic strategy.

00:40:09.000 We have over $17 trillion being invested in our country in nine months.

00:40:15.000 It's now just about ready to crack 18.

00:40:18.000 And by the end of one year, we will have about $20 to $21 trillion invested in our country.

00:40:25.000 That's more by 10 times the highest amount ever invested in any country ever before.

00:40:33.000 And it's largely because of tariffs.

00:40:37.000 Okay, now, I disagree.

00:40:39.000 Okay, I disagree.

00:40:40.000 You can have a bunch of companies that come in and say they're going to put billions of dollars into the American economy and make big statements at the Oval Office about it.

00:40:48.000 If that money never materializes or if it only materializes over the course of years, or as is the case, they're already planning to make those investments and now they're just announcing it publicly.

00:40:57.000 That doesn't change the trajectory of the economy.

00:41:00.000 The economy has worked better under President Trump than it did under Joe Biden for a few very simple reasons.

00:41:04.000 One, the tax rates are consistent.

00:41:06.000 They are not changing.

00:41:08.000 Two, regulations are coming down.

00:41:11.000 Those would be the big reasons.

00:41:13.000 It is not because of the tariffs.

00:41:15.000 Okay, the president was touting his tax cuts.

00:41:18.000 The big problem with him touting the tax cuts is that, well, it's great that we maintained the same tax rates in the One Big Beautiful bill.

00:41:24.000 That didn't fundamentally change the underlying substructure.

00:41:27.000 There was uncertainty in the economy about whether taxes were going to go up.

00:41:31.000 But once they just stayed where they were, that isn't actually quote unquote a tax break.

00:41:35.000 It's a continuation of his very successful first-term policy in lowering taxes.

00:41:42.000 While Democrats wanted to give Americans the largest tax hike in history in July, I proudly gave you the largest tax cuts in American history and signed the One Big Beautiful bill.

00:41:53.000 I call it the Great Big Beautiful Bill into law.

00:41:56.000 That includes no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors.

00:42:04.000 That is a big deal.

00:42:07.000 Okay, now, again, he's not wrong.

00:42:08.000 It is a big deal, but does it fundamentally change the underlying systems in the United States to the extent that you're going to get more investment and more innovation, or does it just maintain what was?

00:42:18.000 And at the same time that you're maintaining what was, which is a good thing, if you throw a bunch of sand into the gears with the tariffs, what you end up doing is creating confusion.

00:42:29.000 And so people are taking the money that they have and they are stacking it.

00:42:31.000 Again, it is not a coincidence that they are stacking their money, particularly in the markets at the upper end of the market in areas that are significantly less subject to tariff regulations like tech, like tech.

00:42:44.000 The underlying fundamentals of companies that are, for example, manufacturing or service industry companies that require inputs from other countries, a lot of those companies don't know what's coming next.

00:42:54.000 And that continues to be a problem.

00:42:57.000 Now, President Trump is trying a bunch of short-term band-aids.

00:42:59.000 This is always a bad indicator for an administration.

00:43:01.000 When administrations have to rely upon short-term band-aids, they got a problem.

00:43:04.000 Here's the president teasing the idea of giving $2,000 tariff rebates to people ahead of the midterms.

00:43:10.000 Again, these sorts of short-term juiced stimulus packages, they tend to increase inflation and they don't really change people's overall lives for the better in any significant way in even the midterm.

00:43:25.000 Hundreds of millions of dollars in tariff money.

00:43:27.000 We're going to be issuing dividends later on, Somewhere prior to, you know, probably in the middle of next year, a little bit later than that, of thousands of dollars for individuals of moderate income, middle income.

00:43:42.000 We're going to pay down debt.

00:43:43.000 You know, we have a lot of money from tariffs.

00:43:46.000 If we didn't have tariffs, this nation would be in serious trouble.

00:43:50.000 Now, if you actually want to help Americans right now, particularly on, for example, student debt, where Americans took out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt, largely subsidized by the federal government, and now they can't pay it back.

00:44:01.000 Joe Biden tried to do student debt relief.

00:44:04.000 He tried to basically just say, you don't have to pay anything back from now on.

00:44:07.000 And again, that's a form of stimulus.

00:44:08.000 It also creates an incentive trap, a disincentive for people to actually pay back their loans and all the rest.

00:44:17.000 There has been some talk about shifting the burden of payments over to the colleges rather than to the taxpayer, basically saying that if people default, the colleges have to eat it if those colleges have been handing out crappy degrees, which, yeah, I'm kind of fond of that.

00:44:30.000 I'd be interested in legislative solutions regarding that, at least on a going-forward basis.

00:44:36.000 But the reality is that what the markets are looking for, as always, is simply some level of consistency, some level of consistency, some level of sustainability.

00:44:45.000 And all these short-term band-aids are very unlikely to achieve that sort of thing.

00:44:49.000 Meanwhile, President Trump can count on the Democrats continuing to be as crazy as humanly possible.

00:44:53.000 Graham Plattner, who is the Nazi-tattooed candidate from Maine, who is essentially a cradle socialist, masquerading as a man of the people, as so many Democrats are.

00:45:08.000 Here he was suggesting that if the Democrats gain control of government, they should pack the Supreme Court and change the systems of government.

00:45:15.000 And the reason that Trump was elected is not just because of Trump.

00:45:17.000 It's also because the Democrats have gone crazy.

00:45:21.000 We're going to have to start treating the Supreme Court like the political action wing that it has become of conservative.

00:45:29.000 It is not functioning as a constitutional body.

00:45:31.000 And I firmly believe if we held Supreme Court justices to the same standard that we hold other federal judges, there's a compelling case for the impeachment and removal of at least two civilians of people. 0.82

00:45:44.000 So, I mean, if they campaign on this, then Republicans actually do have a better shot in the midterms.

00:45:48.000 The more crazy Democrats go, the more Republicans have a better shot.

00:45:52.000 Speaking of which, Hakeem Jeffries is now apparently going to face a primary challenger.

00:45:55.000 There's no one left enough for the Democratic Party at this point.

00:45:58.000 According to Breitbart, a Brooklyn city councilman known for his ties to progressive movements has formally launched a campaign committee to challenge House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in the 2026 Democrat primary, mounting a rare intra-party bid against one of the highest-ranking Democrats in Congress.

00:46:12.000 On Monday, November 17th, the FEC received a new statement of organization for a campaign committee titled Chi Osi for Congress.

00:46:19.000 The filing confirms that Chi Ose, a 27-year-old Brooklyn councilman, intends to run in New York's 8th congressional district.

00:46:25.000 He recently rejoined the DSA.

00:46:27.000 Osi openly identifies as queer and has reportedly told political allies he plans to run during the 2026 midterms.

00:46:34.000 He is a Zorhan Mamdani acolyte.

00:46:37.000 Mamdani apparently discouraged OC from running.

00:46:40.000 He's afraid that that's going to rip open the sort of gap that exists between DSA and the traditional Democratic Party.

00:46:49.000 Apparently, again, he is an emissary of the radical left, and the radical left continues to eat the Democratic Party piecemeal.

00:46:57.000 Meanwhile, mainstream Democrats are having some staffing problems.

00:47:01.000 Apparently, Senator Tammy Duckworth's office, according to Breitbart, has now fired a staffer who was accused of pretending to be an attorney to free an illegal immigrant from ICE custody, according to a report.

00:47:10.000 Fox News' Bill Malugan shared a letter that Duckworth directed at Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE.

00:47:16.000 In that letter, Duckworth explained she was responding to Lyons' November 12th letter regarding interactions between her now former staffer and ICE officials.

00:47:24.000 And she added that her office has terminated the employment of the staffer.

00:47:27.000 But these are the kinds of people who are staffing up some of the congressional offices or people who masquerade as lawyers in order to apparently violate the law.

00:47:34.000 Now, speaking of people, Democratic staffers violating the law, according to the New York Post, alleged Chinese mole, Linda Sun, brazenly forged then-Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul's signature in glowing missives sent to dignitaries from the Henan province in China, according to feds and documents presented at her bombshell trial.

00:47:51.000 Jurors in Brooklyn federal court were shown copies of letters purportedly sent by Hochul on March 26th, 2018, inviting a six-member delegation from the province in central China to a meeting with then-Governor Andrew Cuomo.

00:48:03.000 But the signatures were forged, apparently, by this person who was allegedly a Chinese spy.

00:48:10.000 Sun was serving as Cuomo's director of Asian American Affairs and forged the governor's then-number two Hochul signature several times that year in an attempt to curry favor with Chinese officials.

00:48:20.000 And our government is honeycombed.

00:48:22.000 There are a lot of people in the precincts of government who are working for the Chinese government.

00:48:26.000 That is just a reality.

00:48:27.000 It's an unfortunate reality, but it is indeed a reality. 0.94

00:48:31.000 And that spans apparently coast to coast from New York to California.

00:48:34.000 Meanwhile, again, the question of which party is going to act in the interests of sanity remains an open one.

00:48:42.000 So Democrats continue to fail to acknowledge that their radical wing is going to hurt them.

00:48:48.000 Bill Maher had an interesting episode of Club Random with Patton Oswald, the comedian, and the voice of the rat from Ratatouille about the fact on left-wing extremism.

00:48:59.000 Here's what it sounded like.

00:49:01.000 That's not what we started to teach, which was that every baby is, I don't know, let's not even put it on the birth certificate.

00:49:09.000 That's what they wanted.

00:49:10.000 Were we teaching that?

00:49:11.000 Yes.

00:49:12.000 We were teaching that.

00:49:13.000 We were teaching it.

00:49:13.000 It was a law here in California.

00:49:16.000 See, don't put sex on the birth certificate. 1.00

00:49:21.000 We'll see.

00:49:23.000 Now, we've passed that period now.

00:49:26.000 I'm sorry, I don't remember that.

00:49:27.000 I mean, I know, but it doesn't get in the blue sky bubble.

00:49:31.000 I'm not just on blue sky.

00:49:34.000 I really think that's a lot of it is that some of this stuff doesn't get in to everybody's media.

00:49:40.000 He is right about that, but the fact that so many Democrats are unwilling to acknowledge that remains the problem.

00:49:44.000 Sonny Hostin is one of those Democrats.

00:49:46.000 Here she was on the view yesterday, suggesting that Trump's victory just demonstrates that Americans are racist and sexist.

00:49:52.000 This is a country based on racism and slavery and founded in it.

00:49:58.000 There is systemic racism and misogyny.

00:50:02.000 And there are people that no one, I've never met anyone that raises their hand and says, I am racist.

00:50:07.000 However, there are people that seem to be able to look the other way when it comes to racism.

00:50:13.000 So you have a president who traffics in misogyny, who traffics in xenophobia, who traffics in sexism.

00:50:23.000 And won.

00:50:24.000 And he won.

00:50:25.000 And won against a black woman. 0.99

00:50:27.000 So don't tell me that this power of the rotten dog is ready for a black woman. 1.00

00:50:33.000 Don't tell me this country is ready for a woman. 1.00

00:50:37.000 I mean, one of the things here, it's just incredible.

00:50:40.000 Democrats are going to continue to label the American people racist and sexist and all the rest, even though President Trump won huge numbers of women, huge numbers of minorities. 0.94

00:50:50.000 Now, that doesn't mean those people are going to stay in the Republican camp forever.

00:50:53.000 And this is the problem for Republicans.

00:50:55.000 When you look at the future, when you look at 2028, the question is not who can maintain Trump's coalition.

00:51:00.000 Every politician must have their own coalition.

00:51:02.000 That's just the way politics works.

00:51:04.000 No one is going to inherit all of Trump's voters.

00:51:06.000 They'll inherit a large portion of Trump's voters if they're Republican, but not all of them.

00:51:11.000 And you need more votes than President Trump won in this last election to win the next election because the voter base grows in every single election by a few million votes.

00:51:19.000 And so the question is who can expand the coalition and how.

00:51:23.000 That is the main thing that Republicans should be focused on when it comes to 2028 candidacies.

00:51:27.000 Who can win?

00:51:28.000 Who is capable of winning?

00:51:30.000 Perhaps it's JD Vance.

00:51:31.000 Maybe it's someone else.

00:51:32.000 We don't know yet.

00:51:33.000 It's very, very early.

00:51:34.000 One bad indicator for Republicans, Harry Enton is pointing out that President Trump's poll numbers among Latinos have taken a serious nosedive.

00:51:42.000 That is largely because of the coverage around immigration.

00:51:46.000 Again, when the president said deport all the illegal immigrants, I never thought that he meant that literally.

00:51:52.000 I don't think anyone thought that he meant that literally because it was never going to happen.

00:51:55.000 We weren't going to take 15 to 20 million illegal immigrants and simply deport them wholesale.

00:52:00.000 What President Trump did that's popular when you break down his actual immigration policy, which is still one of his more popular policies.

00:52:07.000 When you break down what he's actually doing, it's popular, but that's not the headline.

00:52:12.000 Well, when we talk about winning the presidency in 2028, we should look back for a moment at how Republicans have done with the Latino-Hispanic vote.

00:52:20.000 So I asked our sponsors a comment, a new web browser by Perplexity, to list the share of the Hispanic Latino vote won by each Republican presidential candidate since 1980.

00:52:28.000 It was based on exit poll and major media data.

00:52:30.000 Reagan won 37% in 1980 and 34% in 1984.

00:52:35.000 Now, again, it was easier to win with those percentages when the country was significantly less Hispanic Latino. 0.87

00:52:40.000 The percentage that you need to win of that vote in order to win the presidency has gone up because there are more Hispanic and Latino voters as a percentage of the population now than there were in 1980.

00:52:50.000 1988, George H.W. Bush won 30%.

00:52:52.000 1992, he won 25%.

00:52:55.000 He lost.

00:52:56.000 Bob Dole in 1996, 21%.

00:52:58.000 He lost.

00:52:59.000 2000, George W. Bush won 35%.

00:53:02.000 He won.

00:53:02.000 2004, 44%.

00:53:04.000 He won.

00:53:05.000 2008, John McCain won 31%.

00:53:08.000 He lost.

00:53:08.000 2012, Mitt Romney won 27%.

00:53:11.000 He lost.

00:53:12.000 2016, President Trump won 28% and somehow pulled out that miracle victory, but he did lose the popular vote, obviously.

00:53:19.000 In 2020, he won 32% and he lost.

00:53:22.000 And in 2024, he won somewhere between 42 and 46% and he won.

00:53:26.000 Okay, so if you were to set some sort of benchmark here that doesn't really include the kind of flukey wins that Republicans achieved, 2000 and 2016 were both unbelievably close elections.

00:53:37.000 Republicans ended up winning, but not very handily.

00:53:41.000 And they clocked in somewhere between 32 and 28%, somewhere in that neighborhood.

00:53:47.000 If Republicans wish to win the presidency and they wish to do so relatively handily, they need to win at a minimum 37 to 40% of the Hispanic vote.

00:54:00.000 It seems to me that that is pretty clear, probably higher.

00:54:03.000 And so if Republicans start losing those votes in massive numbers, because Democrats stop being quite so crazy on the social issues and they back off some of their nuttier positions on crime and they stop doing the DEI kind of nonsense with regard to racial set-asides and trans and BLM, if Democrats move back toward normality, they will win a larger share of the Latino-Hispanic vote. 0.58

00:54:25.000 And Republicans are going to have to present something to Latinos and Hispanics in order to win.

00:54:29.000 And again, that doesn't mean going soft on immigration.

00:54:31.000 It just means actually enforcing the parts of immigration law that are the most popular to enforce.

00:54:36.000 So right now, what he has done is he has shut the southern border, totally popular.

00:54:39.000 There are very few people who object to this, including Democrats.

00:54:42.000 And then there's deporting criminal illegal immigrants.

00:54:44.000 Again, very few people object to that.

00:54:46.000 And then there are the sort of large-scale raids that are making a lot of press right now.

00:54:50.000 And that apparently is alienating people.

00:54:52.000 Here's Harry Enton explaining from CNN.

00:54:56.000 What about the Latino vote overall?

00:54:57.000 All right.

00:54:58.000 How do Latinos feel about Donald Trump overall?

00:55:00.000 Let's take a look here.

00:55:01.000 This, I think, sort of gives the game away.

00:55:03.000 Yeah.

00:55:04.000 Oh, my goodness.

00:55:04.000 I mean, that is the phrase of the day.

00:55:07.000 Trump's not appropriating among Latinos.

00:55:09.000 In early February, again, he was just two points underwater.

00:55:12.000 Look at where he is now.

00:55:14.000 Late October, minus 34 points, 34 points underwater, a shift to 32 points.

00:55:23.000 Okay, so again, this is something to keep an eye on.

00:55:25.000 If you're a Republican who wants Republicans to win in 2028, obviously you do have to keep your eye on the polls and on reality.

00:55:32.000 Okay, meanwhile, speaking of immigration, President Trump's immigration policy is now being adopted even by members of the left.

00:55:38.000 Okay, that is the reality.

00:55:39.000 And so if we are talking about the president's plummeting poll numbers with Latinos, one of the things that Republicans need to be pointing to again and again and again is that Democrats are just against deporting even criminal, illegal immigrants.

00:55:51.000 So North Carolina governor Josh Stein, who is very upset that the ICE agents are working in Charlotte, he's out there claiming the agents are targeting and racially profiling.

00:56:02.000 We've seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling and picking up random people in parking lots and off of our sidewalks, going after landscapers simply decorating a Christmas tree in someone's front yard.

00:56:24.000 Okay, this right here is going to be the Democrat campaign.

00:56:26.000 It's incumbent on President Trump and the administration to continue to show the faces of the criminal illegal immigrants that they are arresting and to publicize those extremely heavily. 0.79

00:56:35.000 That's what they should be doing.

00:56:36.000 Because here's the reality.

00:56:38.000 Everybody with any shred of common sense knows that that's a good idea, including, by the way, the UK.

00:56:44.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the UK government on Monday announced an overhaul of its immigration policy to deter asylum seekers from arriving on British shores, the latest European nation to tighten rules in response to growing dissatisfaction from voters at levels of illegal immigration.

00:56:57.000 The Labor government of Prime Minister Kirstarmer announced a suite of policies, including changing laws to make it easier to expel migrants, quadrupling the length of time they have to wait to become permanent residents to 20 years and regularly reviewing whether their home countries have become safer and can take them back.

00:57:12.000 Britain is also threatening countries, mainly in Africa, with restricting visas unless they accept illegal migrants and criminals back into their countries.

00:57:19.000 So even Britain is now adopting the immigration policies of the president of the United States, which makes perfect sense because those are practical policies.

00:57:28.000 That's the stuff that the Trump administration needs to be focusing on.

00:57:32.000 And they can't allow the narrative to get away from them with, you know, colorful images about the suffering of Abuela being arrested in front of the Christmas tree.

00:57:42.000 Alrighty, coming up, we'll get to the latest in the Middle East, a major move by the Trump administration with the acquiescence of the United Nations, actually.

00:57:50.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:57:51.000 If you're not a member, become a member, use Coach Shapiro.

00:57:53.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 18, 2025

The Bannon-Epstein Connection REVEALED!

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