The Ben Shapiro Show - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

00:00:00.000 Folks, huge news happening over the weekend.

00:00:03.000 Everything from AOC for president to Snow White totally bombing at the box office.

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00:00:31.000 Well, Democrats have a serious problem.

00:00:35.000 President Trump's approval ratings maintain their status.

00:00:39.000 He's somewhere close to 50%, which is higher than he has been nearly in his entire political career.

00:00:43.000 His main policies are quite popular, ranging from...

00:00:47.000 Crackdowns on illegal immigration, which is a very popular position, to even his positions with regard to Doge.

00:00:53.000 Again, most Americans are into cutting waste, fraud, and abuse, and Democrats really don't know how to deal with it.

00:00:58.000 And Democrats who spend at least a moment in the real world know this.

00:01:01.000 So Bill Maher, with whom I am friendly, but Bill is definitely a Democrat.

00:01:04.000 He is not a Republican.

00:01:05.000 Maher was on his show on Friday Night Real Time on HBO, and there he was mocking the Democrats over their absolute incompetence.

00:01:14.000 This state has almost 400,000 regulations.

00:01:17.000 I just put in a new roof because of fire.

00:01:20.000 I thought, oh, let's get a roof that's not going to burn up.

00:01:23.000 Two inspections.

00:01:24.000 Why are you inspecting my roof?

00:01:27.000 It's my roof.

00:01:29.000 If it falls on me, that's my problem.

00:01:35.000 And we're taxed more than any other state.

00:01:38.000 People are leaving these kind of states for places where they're not, they feel the heavy breath of government on them.

00:01:46.000 It's just, it's not that hard for Democrats to understand this, but they seem to be incapable of doing anything about it.

00:01:55.000 Mar, of course, is totally correct about this.

00:01:57.000 And if you follow people's revealed preferences, meaning not what they say they like, but what they actually like, the feet are moving south.

00:02:03.000 The feet are moving from blue to red.

00:02:06.000 That'd be my family, that'd be my company.

00:02:07.000 And people are literally moving from blue areas to red areas because red areas are better to live.

00:02:12.000 Charlemagne, the God, the radio host, he says that the Democratic Party at this point is trashed.

00:02:17.000 If you're a Democrat, I'm going to tell you the worst thing that you could do right now.

00:02:21.000 Speak for that.

00:02:22.000 Party, okay?

00:02:24.000 That party's brand is in such disarray.

00:02:27.000 They have no ideology.

00:02:29.000 The people that are actually governing, like the Josh Shapiro's, the Gretchen Whitney's, the Wes Moore's, y'all stay in y'all states and keep governing and doing the work.

00:02:38.000 That's it.

00:02:39.000 Distance yourself from all of that that's going on in D.C. Distance yourself from the party and speak for you.

00:02:45.000 He, by the way, is right that the party is totally toxic.

00:02:48.000 I mean, he's wrong to cite Wes Moore and Gretchen Whitmer as examples of people who are doing an amazing job.

00:02:52.000 But the reality is that Democrats have misgoverned at nearly every level of government.

00:02:56.000 The Wall Street Journal has a piece over the weekend talking about the failures of Los Angeles, my old home city.

00:03:02.000 Quote, the Democratic mismanagement of America's big city is becoming a liability for the party.

00:03:06.000 A shining example is Los Angeles, where city leaders this week announced a $1 billion budget hole owing to a slowing economy and soaring payouts to public unions.

00:03:14.000 City Administrative Officer Matthew Jabo told the council on Wednesday this year's extraordinary shortfall could necessitate thousands of layoffs.

00:03:21.000 Mayor Karen Bass blamed the recent wildfires, extreme uncertainty in terms of federal funding, and downward national economic trends.

00:03:26.000 In other words, blaming Trump.

00:03:27.000 The reality is that the city's fiscal problems have been building up like dry tinder, and Ms. Bass has made them worse.

00:03:32.000 And this, of course, is exactly right.

00:03:36.000 Apparently, LA's unemployment rate in December was 6%.

00:03:38.000 That is higher than any state and even Puerto Rico.

00:03:41.000 High taxes, burdensome regulations, the city's $17.28 an hour minimum wage, litigation abuse, shoplifting, and other crime, raised business costs and insurance premiums.

00:03:49.000 Litigation abuse is busting the city's budget.

00:03:51.000 Payouts totaled $240 million in the last fiscal year alone.

00:03:57.000 The city of Los Angeles is collapsing from within.

00:04:00.000 So what are Democrats to do?

00:04:02.000 Because their governance is really, really poor.

00:04:05.000 And President Trump is moving incredibly fast, and it's very difficult for them to figure out what is the point of differentiation?

00:04:10.000 Where do they want to put their chips?

00:04:12.000 Where is going to be the line of attack that they can use against President Trump and Republicans?

00:04:18.000 And so Democrats are going to have to define exactly what they are.

00:04:20.000 Now, there is a rule that has been put forward by the political commentator, another one of my friends, Matt Continetti, which I think is exactly right.

00:04:28.000 If you're trying to scope out the future candidates of any party, Going rule for the last several decades has been that the successful candidate, the successful presidential candidate, first runs against his or her own party and then runs for the presidency.

00:04:43.000 So President Trump is an excellent example of this.

00:04:45.000 He came in 2016.

00:04:46.000 He ran against every aspect of the Republican Party.

00:04:48.000 He broke the Republican Party, and then he took the presidency.

00:04:51.000 Barack Obama did this in 2008.

00:04:52.000 He overcame Hillary Clinton, who was considered the establishment pick, took over the party, and then won.

00:04:58.000 And so if you're looking at the Democratic Party right now, What exactly is the Democratic Party?

00:05:03.000 Now, there are a few angles they could take.

00:05:05.000 There are a few angles that could be taken to take over the Democratic Party.

00:05:08.000 Angle number one would be the better administrative angle.

00:05:12.000 be the Bill Maher angle or say the Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson angle in their new book, Abundance, which is a book basically about how Democrats ought to suggest that government actually is good at certain things and then should get a lot of regulations out of the way so government can build the Hoover Dam again or government can build affordable housing without any of the environmental regulations or build a bullet train or whatever it is.

00:05:34.000 Now, they can make that case.

00:05:35.000 I think that case is relatively unsuccessful, but they could say, listen, we're good at So that's problem number one.

00:05:48.000 Problem number two is that most of the Democrat hardcore does not care about that stuff.

00:05:53.000 Most of the Democrat hardcore cares more deeply about the quote unquote moral issues in the country rather than just being good at administration They don't understand that being a good administrator on the local or state level actually does have a moral component.

00:06:05.000 Because if you wish to, for example, alleviate poverty, one of the best ways to do that is to provide a stable and useful local government.

00:06:13.000 But Democrats have stopped believing that, at least the primary voting Democrats.

00:06:17.000 And so now they are left with a couple of other angles.

00:06:19.000 One is the sort of DEI angle.

00:06:23.000 That would be the idea that the Democratic Party stands for diversity.

00:06:26.000 That really what the Democratic Party is about is re-centering the marginalized.

00:06:30.000 This would be the elevation of Kamala Harris, for example.

00:06:34.000 This would be the attempt to elevate candidates of color at the expense of other candidates who might be better qualified.

00:06:41.000 Or, by the way, elevating people like Pete Buttigieg on the basis of his sexual orientation to a presidential candidacy.

00:06:46.000 Not because he was good at fixing potholes in South Bend.

00:06:49.000 He was not. 0.96

00:06:49.000 But because he's gay. 0.96

00:06:51.000 That would be the DEI Democrats. 0.96

00:06:52.000 And that's certainly an angle.

00:06:53.000 And there's a lot of support for that inside the Democratic Party.

00:06:56.000 The problem is that's the angle they've been taking, and it has been failing. 1.00

00:07:00.000 Democrats may double down on stupid. 1.00

00:07:01.000 If they do, they're unlikely to win back the presidency. 1.00

00:07:04.000 According to a brand new poll from Warren Consult, Kamala right now has the support of 36% of Democrat primary voters.

00:07:12.000 Next in line is Buttigieg, who's a 10% support.

00:07:17.000 No other candidate on the list received double-digit support in early primary polling.

00:07:21.000 Tim Walz, AOC, and Gavin Newsom each have 5% support.

00:07:26.000 Billionaire Mark Cuban and Governor Josh Shapiro each have 4% backing.

00:07:30.000 Thank you.

00:07:31.000 So, part of that is going to be name recognition.

00:07:33.000 Obviously, Kamala Harris has very high name recognition.

00:07:35.000 She was the last Democratic presidential candidate, even if she lost to President Trump.

00:07:39.000 So maybe it's that, or maybe it's the Democrats who are trying to double down on DEI.

00:07:44.000 That seems like that is likely to be an unsuccessful angle.

00:07:47.000 However... They also cannot go back to sort of establishmentarian Democratic politics.

00:07:52.000 The establishment has failed the Democratic Party and they know it, which is why Chuck Schumer is under serious fire right now.

00:08:00.000 Chuck Schumer was making his pitch for why he should continue to be sort of the leader of the Democratic congressional contingent on Meet the Press over the weekend.

00:08:07.000 And it is just lackluster stuff.

00:08:10.000 And our caucus is united in fighting Donald Trump every step of the way.

00:08:15.000 Our goal, our plan, which we're united on, is to make Donald Trump the quickest lame duck in modern history by showing how bad his policies are.

00:08:27.000 He represents the oligarchs, as I said.

00:08:29.000 He's hurting average people in every way.

00:08:33.000 And we are, through oversight hearings, we're exposing what he's doing.

00:08:36.000 Through the courts, which I mentioned, we've had some real success in.

00:08:40.000 Through legislation and through organizing in all the districts throughout the country.

00:08:46.000 Okay, so, does that inspire?

00:08:48.000 The answer there is no.

00:08:49.000 Chuck Schumer is getting run over by the Congress, run by Republicans.

00:08:53.000 While the possibility of a resurgent Bernie Sanders should scare everybody who has money in the stock market, or, you know, money in general, in these uncertain economic times with tariff tensions, recession worries, stubborn inflation, it's no surprise that gold prices keep breaking records.

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00:09:36.000 The economic challenges we're facing, they took decades to develop.

00:09:39.000 The real question is, how long will recovery take?

00:09:42.000 What's it going to cost along the way?

00:09:43.000 It is not going to be an easy economic road going forward, in my own personal opinion.

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00:11:01.000 So what are Democrats left with?

00:11:03.000 Democrats are basically left with the Bernie Sanders wing.

00:11:05.000 Bernie Sanders led an insurgency originally against Hillary Clinton in 2016, which wounded her for the general election.

00:11:11.000 Then, of course, he ran again in 2020 and really threatened to take over the party until Joe Biden and the Democratic establishment mobilized Jim Clyburn and the heavily black Democrat electoral base against Bernie Sanders.

00:11:27.000 And then, of course, he didn't run in 2024 because there was an incumbent, but he was very critical of Joe Biden for at least part of that race.

00:11:33.000 And now...

00:11:34.000 He's out touring the country.

00:11:36.000 The Bernie Sanders energy.

00:11:37.000 Bernie's too old.

00:11:38.000 He's not going to be the guy.

00:11:39.000 But the Bernie Sanders energy is the insurgent energy inside the Democratic Party.

00:11:44.000 Because the insurgent energy inside the Democratic Party is not a sort of administrative liberalism that is effective in its approach.

00:11:51.000 It is full-scale class warfare.

00:11:54.000 DEI is played out.

00:11:55.000 And so they're going back from race Marxism or sex Marxism back to like the original Marxism.

00:12:01.000 This is the direction of the Democratic Party.

00:12:02.000 This is where the energy is.

00:12:04.000 And this is exactly what the Trump administration should be concerned about.

00:12:09.000 Not in that Bernie Sanders and the AOC wing of the party are going to defeat Donald Trump.

00:12:14.000 But if the Trump administration fails, why the Trump administration has to be very, very good at what it does.

00:12:18.000 If they fail, the next thing up on the Democratic side of the aisle is Bernie.

00:12:22.000 And whoever Bernie taps on the shoulder, because it's not going to be Bernie personally.

00:12:27.000 So apparently, over in Tempe, Arizona, tens of thousands of people showed up at a rally for Bernie Sanders.

00:12:34.000 Now, again, big rallies are not a proxy for success.

00:12:38.000 Mitt Romney held big rallies in 2012 and then lost to Barack Obama.

00:12:41.000 But right now, Democrats can't draw flies. 0.94

00:12:44.000 Democrats are toxic.

00:12:46.000 Bernie Sanders is going around and holding rallies, and literally tens of thousands of people are showing up. 1.00

00:12:52.000 He's an 83-year-old, lifelong, useless leech on the ass of society. 0.98

00:12:56.000 And tens of thousands of people are showing up to hear him and to hear AOC, with whom he is campaigning. 0.99

00:13:01.000 So here's Bernie in Tempe, Arizona.

00:13:04.000 If we stand together, we can not only defeat Trumpism, but we can create the kind of great nation we know that we can become.

00:13:16.000 Thank you all very much.

00:13:18.000 A packed house at Mullet Arena listened as Sanders and AOC underscored the need to come together and be united to fight against a Republican-controlled Congress and President.

00:13:28.000 Okay, so again, this is sort of fight oligarchy.

00:13:31.000 There is a class of people who are running the country and they're evil and they're rich and we need to tear them down to the ground.

00:13:37.000 It runs in direct opposition to exactly the sort of abundance Democrat mentality pushed by Ezra Klein or pushed by Derek Thompson.

00:13:43.000 But it is the thing that Democrats are animated by.

00:13:46.000 Originally, according to the Wall Street Journal, when visiting Omaha, Nebraska, AOC and Bernie reserved a place that held 800 people.

00:13:53.000 Then they had to move to a bigger venue of 3,400.

00:13:56.000 And then when they went to Tempe, 15,000 people showed up.

00:14:00.000 And Bernie said, this is insane.

00:14:01.000 I'm not running for anything.

00:14:02.000 People are outraged and they're frightened and they want to fight back.

00:14:04.000 And this is one form of beginning the struggle to fight back.

00:14:08.000 And it is not a coincidence that Bernie is tapping AOC on the shoulder.

00:14:13.000 AOC, of course, has a very young, very woke, very socialistic contingency who follows her.

00:14:21.000 Sanders is taking a really interesting approach.

00:14:23.000 Again, he's wrong and his perspective on capitalism is not just wrong, it happens to be evil, but...

00:14:29.000 It is an interesting approach.

00:14:30.000 He's abandoning certain issues that are sort of tentpole Democrat issues right now, and he's focusing instead on pure class warfare, pure unbridled Eugene V. Debs class warfare.

00:14:40.000 He's an old-school wobbly, Bernie Sanders.

00:14:44.000 So, for example, when it came to the border over the weekend, Bernie was interviewed, and he said that Trump was actually right about the border.

00:14:49.000 Now, this is a switch in time for Bernie.

00:14:51.000 So if you remember all the way back to 2016 when he was running against Hillary Clinton, he actually talked about solidifying the border.

00:14:57.000 Why? Because He understands, this is correct, that you cannot have both socialism and an open border.

00:15:02.000 It doesn't work that way.

00:15:03.000 So now, he's reverting back to type.

00:15:05.000 He's going back to a sort of protectionist socialism, which does involve actually closing the border.

00:15:09.000 This is where the horseshoe theory comes all the way around for people like Bernie.

00:15:13.000 I mean, I think cracking down on fentanyl, making sure our borders are stronger.

00:15:19.000 Look, nobody thinks illegal immigration is appropriate. 0.96

00:15:23.000 And I happen to think we need comprehensive immigration reform.

00:15:26.000 But I don't think it's appropriate for people to be coming across the border illegally.

00:15:34.000 Okay, so again, that is Bernie saying that Trump is basically right on the border.

00:15:38.000 Why? He's abandoning the worst issues for the Democrats.

00:15:40.000 Immigration is a bad issue for Democrats.

00:15:42.000 Bernie, he'll talk about trans, but only if forced to do so at point of gun.

00:15:46.000 This is not a major issue for him.

00:15:48.000 Instead, he rails against his own party, which again is the prereq to actually successfully running in the United States.

00:15:54.000 He rails against his own party. 0.81

00:15:56.000 And he does pure, unbridled, kill the rich and eat them, class warfare. 0.74

00:16:00.000 So here he was railing against his own party.

00:16:02.000 Well, I would take us back even two years before that, before Trump was elected, and saying that it saddens me that when the Democrats had control of the Senate, they did virtually nothing for working people.

00:16:15.000 I'd have to say that.

00:16:15.000 I'm a member of the Democratic caucus as an independent.

00:16:18.000 So I'm not going to lie to you and tell you otherwise.

00:16:22.000 Okay, so, again, of course he has an interest in saying this.

00:16:24.000 He is an independent from Vermont who has basically become a quote-unquote thought leader inside the Democratic Party because they have no thoughts.

00:16:31.000 And so he is just pouring old-school Marxism into the vessel of the Democratic Party.

00:16:37.000 Here he was talking about the quote-unquote oligarchy.

00:16:39.000 Now again, any actual definition of oligarchy would have to include Bernie Sanders in it.

00:16:45.000 He's the most powerful people in the country.

00:16:47.000 He's very wealthy.

00:16:48.000 He obviously has that lake house.

00:16:50.000 He has a big following.

00:16:51.000 If you're talking about...

00:16:52.000 Oligarchs in control of the levers of power and capable of controlling people's lives. 0.95

00:16:56.000 Bernie should be near the top of that list.

00:16:58.000 What he means by oligarchy is actually just very rich people, like people who have made money in private industry.

00:17:03.000 He hates private industry.

00:17:04.000 He hates private markets, Bernie.

00:17:07.000 Bernie is the kind of person who literally has said that private charity is bad because it crowds out government spending.

00:17:12.000 I mean, you have to go pretty far afield to find people who literally hate people giving charity.

00:17:17.000 Bernie has said himself that charity is bad.

00:17:21.000 Private charity is wrong because it might make people feel as though they're actually doing something good when actually the government should be doing that thing.

00:17:27.000 Bernie Sanders is the kind of person who praised bread lines at one point because there's bread at the lines.

00:17:33.000 Bernie Sanders is the type of person who has said there are too many types of toothpaste in the aisles at CVS.

00:17:39.000 Why do you need that many types of toothpaste?

00:17:40.000 He is like a full-scale tanky, meaning a communist sympathizer.

00:17:45.000 There's a reason that this dude honeymooned in the USSR.

00:17:49.000 Here he was going after the quote-unquote oligarchy with John Carl on ABC News.

00:17:54.000 I've been covering you for a long, long time.

00:17:56.000 I've heard you railing against millionaires and billionaires for a long time.

00:18:00.000 Hey, just what?

00:18:01.000 Turns out a few other people are catching on to that, right?

00:18:04.000 I have been talking for many years about this country moving toward an oligarchy. 0.95

00:18:09.000 And I think anybody who is not dumb, deaf, or blind is seeing precisely what is happening. 0.89

00:18:18.000 Again, this is his shtick, and it is going to be the successful shtick.

00:18:22.000 So then he was asked by Jonathan Karl about AOC, because it's clear that Bernie himself, he's 83 years old.

00:18:27.000 By the time of the next presidential election, Bernie is going to be 86, 87 years old.

00:18:32.000 So he ain't going to be the guy.

00:18:33.000 So who is it that he's going to tap on the shoulder?

00:18:35.000 There is a reason he's campaigning with AOC.

00:18:37.000 So Jonathan Karl asked him about the possibility of AOC supplanting Chuck Schumer in the New York Senate.

00:18:43.000 She might want to run for the Senate, but the reality is that AOC has a better shot of being president than being senator from New York. 0.98

00:18:48.000 There's a lot of internal politics in New York.

00:18:51.000 Schumer has his hands on a lot of different levers in the state of New York.

00:18:55.000 Would you like to see her join in the Senate? 1.00

00:19:00.000 Right now, we have, as I said, just a whole lot of people in the Congress.

00:19:04.000 Okay, Jonathan, thanks.

00:19:05.000 Wait, I got one more.

00:19:06.000 I got one more.

00:19:06.000 This is important.

00:19:07.000 Well, I ask you, okay, you know, you want to do nonsense, do nonsense.

00:19:10.000 No. I don't want to talk about inside the Beltway stuff.

00:19:13.000 I got 32,000 people.

00:19:15.000 I was just asking you about AOC because she was out there with you.

00:19:17.000 Fine, but I don't want to talk about this.

00:19:18.000 What was the last question?

00:19:19.000 I was just going to ask you one more question about you.

00:19:21.000 I mean, that's all.

00:19:22.000 I was literally your last...

00:19:23.000 What is your question?

00:19:24.000 I mean, it's easier...

00:19:26.000 Unbelievable. So he's getting up, and the reason he's getting up is because he knows that he's being asked to create a war inside the party.

00:19:36.000 What he actually wants is for AOC to run for president.

00:19:38.000 And so, by the way, does the Associated Press.

00:19:40.000 Quote, Bernie Sanders stepped onto a stage in downtown Denver, surrounded by tens of thousands of cheering supporters in what he described as the biggest rally he had ever addressed.

00:19:47.000 The Vermont senator put his hand on the shoulder of the woman who had introduced him, a signal for her to stay on stage.

00:19:51.000 Quote, she's become an inspiration to millions of young people, recounting her biography from a girl who helped her mother clean houses and later became a bartender before emerging as political insurgent who ousted a powerful New York Democrat in a U.S. House primary.

00:20:03.000 Now, again, that is a very rosy picture of AOC's history.

00:20:06.000 The truth is that she grew up pretty middle class in New York.

00:20:09.000 Again, there's nothing wrong.

00:20:10.000 Growing up middle class is great, but this kind of idea that she's a total rags to riches story, she runs at Boston University. 1.00

00:20:14.000 I mean, this is not somebody who grew up totally impoverished.

00:20:17.000 And then she ousted a powerful New York Democrat in a House primary that, I think she received 15,000 votes in that House primary. 0.96

00:20:25.000 The crowd began a chant of her well-known moniker, AOC.

00:20:28.000 In a leaderless Democratic Party out of power in Washington, Ocasio-Cortez has a message and a connection, with a segment of liberals feeling disenchanted with both parties.

00:20:36.000 Now in her fourth term, the 35-year-old congresswoman is working to broaden her appeal beyond her progressive anti-establishment roots. 0.95

00:20:42.000 Hitting the road last week with Sanders for his fighting oligarchy rallies, she's addressing people who disagree with her and reframing the divide in the Democratic Party not as progressive versus moderate, but as those going after Republican President Donald Trump and those being more cautious.

00:20:53.000 She said, quote, no matter who you voted for in the past, no matter if you know all the right words to say, no matter your race, religion, gender identity, or status, no matter, even if you disagree with me on a few things, if you're willing to fight for someone you don't know, you are welcome here.

00:21:04.000 So she is posing herself as against the establishment Democratic Party that is unwilling to face up to the challenges of President Trump, which is smart. 0.54

00:21:13.000 It is.

00:21:14.000 And the class warfare aspect of what Democrats are going to steer into, that is the next step.

00:21:19.000 They're going to steer full scale into class warfare. 0.97

00:21:21.000 That is the reason why they are attacking Elon Musk as opposed to Trump.

00:21:25.000 You've noticed a shift in fire from the Democrats, from Trump to Musk.

00:21:28.000 Part of that is because Trump is totally tough on.

00:21:30.000 This has been true for a decade. 1.00

00:21:32.000 President Trump, because he is made of mud, he is a mud monster. 1.00

00:21:35.000 If you throw more mud on him, he just looks like a mud monster. 1.00

00:21:38.000 You can't do anything to him.

00:21:39.000 That's not true with regard to, for example, Elon Musk Democrats think.

00:21:43.000 Democrats are ripping on Trump.

00:21:44.000 They're ripping on Musk because they would love to steal your income. 1.00

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00:24:02.000 Now, Elon is invulnerable in other ways.

00:24:04.000 He's obviously too wealthy for them to threaten his livelihood.

00:24:07.000 He doesn't seem to care very much what people think of him.

00:24:10.000 So that is unlikely to stick to Musk personally.

00:24:13.000 However, that's not the goal.

00:24:14.000 The goal right now for Democrats is very simple.

00:24:16.000 There's a reason they're using the word oligarchy. 0.99

00:24:18.000 I don't think they're being stupid. 0.98

00:24:19.000 I think it's actually quite smart. 0.99

00:24:20.000 What they're attempting to do is craft a narrative of a group of people at the top of government in private industry and in the public sector who are working together to corrupt the system.

00:24:30.000 Now, the comeback to that typically from the conservative side of the aisle is, well, if the economy is booming, what are you complaining about?

00:24:39.000 Not that.

00:24:39.000 There's coordination and collusion, but of course business is going to support Republican administrations because Republican administrations remove all of the horrible regulations that have led to the downfall of cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Detroit.

00:24:53.000 Republicans get the obstacles out of the way of business, so business tends to support Republicans.

00:24:56.000 This has been sort of a long-standing theme in American politics for decades.

00:25:01.000 But the way that Democrats are playing it is that there's a sort of corporatist, slimy deal going on at the top of politics, the oligarchy.

00:25:09.000 Air quotes.

00:25:11.000 In which the Musks of the world are cooperating with the Trumps of the world so that Trump will put money in Musk's pocket and Musk will put money in Trump's pocket and they both go home happy and everybody else gets poor.

00:25:21.000 That is the line.

00:25:22.000 It's not true.

00:25:23.000 But that is the line Democrats are going to use.

00:25:24.000 The reason that's clever is because the way that people tend to filter politics, you and I, we sit here, we talk politics every day.

00:25:32.000 And so if you listen to this show, you're a member of a tiny cadre in the American public who watches politics at a fairly granular level.

00:25:39.000 You know the players.

00:25:40.000 You know the general arguments.

00:25:42.000 The vast majority of people in the United States have a picture of politics that is significantly less granular.

00:25:48.000 All of us are right up close to the Surratt painting.

00:25:52.000 George Surratt is a famous impressionist who paints with dots.

00:25:55.000 Sunday in the Park with George is a musical based on the life of Surratt.

00:25:59.000 If you ever go and you see his paintings, for example, the museum in Chicago, if you go and you look at his paintings, it's pointless.

00:26:06.000 He's got a bunch of dots, and it's like millions of dots.

00:26:09.000 And then when you draw back, you see that it's a picture of something.

00:26:12.000 People who watch politics closely are like people who are really, really close to a Seurat painting.

00:26:17.000 You can see every single dot.

00:26:18.000 You can see every pixel.

00:26:19.000 Then you pull back and you see the whole picture.

00:26:21.000 Most people are people who wander into the room with the Seurat painting.

00:26:25.000 They see a bunch of people who are by a river and walking on a Sunday and they walk out of the room.

00:26:31.000 It is not a granular view of politics.

00:26:33.000 So if you see a picture of President Trump at the inauguration flanked by Jeff Bezos, And Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk, and Tim Cook, and Neil Mohan, and Sundar Pinchai, and all the rest of these sort of tech CEOs, and they're all in a room together.

00:26:52.000 And President Trump is next to them.

00:26:54.000 These sort of bird's eye view, take half a moment and look at the TV and then move on with your day, view of that is, oh, these guys are friends and they must work together.

00:27:01.000 And so what Democrats are banking on, what they are banking on, is a close coordination between private industry, And the president, and then an economic fall.

00:27:11.000 That is what they're banking on.

00:27:12.000 And if there's an economic fall, AOC is poised right there, and so is Bernie.

00:27:16.000 And let's be clear about what the threat level is.

00:27:18.000 This is why the economy must succeed.

00:27:19.000 People on the sort of Trump-supportive side of the aisle, maybe they're frustrated with the fact that I've been critical of President Trump's moves toward tariffs, what he's been doing with regard to Canada.

00:27:29.000 The reason I've been saying that is because the greatest danger to the Trump administration's success isn't economic downturn.

00:27:36.000 Anything else can be overcome.

00:27:37.000 An economic downturn gets attributed to the president, who is the president when it happens, whether or not he deserves it.

00:27:43.000 That's just the way it works.

00:27:44.000 And so that is the great danger.

00:27:47.000 And it is great that this White House is very friendly toward business.

00:27:51.000 That's a wonderful thing.

00:27:52.000 But every image showing how friendly this White House is toward business becomes a weapon in the arsenal of people like AOC, who doesn't understand business, doesn't understand economics, hates the rich, truly does not like them.

00:28:06.000 Thinks that there's like a moral quality that adheres to you as you gain wealth that makes you immoral and bad.

00:28:11.000 It's a bizarre sort of Marxist presentiment that makes no sense, just on a moral level.

00:28:17.000 I have been very not rich and I've been very rich.

00:28:20.000 And I'm basically the same person all the way through.

00:28:22.000 And that's true of pretty much everybody I know who was at one point not rich and then became rich.

00:28:28.000 It turns out I know many people who are wonderful who are not rich.

00:28:30.000 I know many people who are wonderful who are rich.

00:28:32.000 I know many people who are awful who are rich.

00:28:33.000 I know many people who are awful who are not rich.

00:28:36.000 Wealth does not define character.

00:28:38.000 But for people like AOC and Bernie, there's a very flattering view that they can present to the vast majority of Americans, which is that if you are rich, it's because you suckered someone and did something wrong and did something corrupt and you're bad.

00:28:51.000 That essentially, participating in the capitalist system makes you morally inferior in some way.

00:28:56.000 The richer you get, the worse you get.

00:28:58.000 This is why Bernie will say billionaires should not exist.

00:29:00.000 He doesn't just mean we should redistribute the wealth.

00:29:02.000 He means there's something literally immoral in being a billionaire.

00:29:06.000 Well, that's precisely the opposite of what President Trump is doing.

00:29:10.000 But people tend to judge politics, again, based on that walking through the room, looking once at the painting, walking out.

00:29:15.000 And if they see closeness between the White House and various industrial capitalists who have done really well, tech bros who have done really well, and then the economy sinks, all of that is going to be tied to the ship.

00:29:29.000 All of that is going to get tied into...

00:29:32.000 The sinking ship, if the ship should sink, which is why the ship really needs it not to sink.

00:29:36.000 As part of this, for example, over the weekend, it was reported that the White House, through an outside event production company called Harbinger, is soliciting corporate sponsors for this year's Easter egg roll, which is prompting major concerns from ethics experts and shock from former White House officials from both parties.

00:29:50.000 The sponsorship offers range from $75,000 to $200,000, with the promise of logo and branding opportunities, according to a nine-page document sent to potential sponsors and obtained by CNN.

00:29:58.000 The egg roll has long been privately funded without taxpayer dollars, largely through the American Egg Board, which also provides tens of thousands of eggs for the occasion.

00:30:06.000 All the money raised by Harbinger will go to the White House Historical Association.

00:30:09.000 But the solicitation of sponsorships marks an unprecedented offering of corporate branding opportunities on White House grounds, running counter to long-established regulations prohibiting the use of public office for private gain.

00:30:21.000 A former official said, this is an enterprise, this is not your grandmother's Easter egg roll, where people lined up outside the gate and go and roll an egg and get a little gift bag and walk out.

00:30:29.000 The pitch document includes logos for both the White House and Harbinger, which previously produced the event during President Trump's first term and is offering initial planning and event day execution for sponsors that sign on.

00:30:39.000 It features imagery of Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, members of the Trump family, the Easter Bunny, and the White House press corps, including CNN correspondent Caitlin Collins.

00:30:46.000 The document says sponsors of the White House Easter egg roll provide financial support activities and giveaways to enhance the event while gaining valuable brand visibility and national recognition.

00:30:55.000 So what does this mean?

00:30:56.000 It means that you can have naming rights for a key area or an element.

00:30:59.000 A sponsor logo featured on event signage, custom-branded baskets, snacks, beverages, or souvenirs.

00:31:03.000 Now, is any of this, like, truly awful?

00:31:05.000 No. I mean, who cares?

00:31:08.000 This idea that this is some sort of open bribery or something like that, it seems to me that if you're raising money for charity and people want a sponsorship opportunity attached, that's true for pretty much every private charitable enterprise I've ever associated with or seen.

00:31:22.000 Go to, seriously, a charity dinner and you'll see a bunch of corporate sponsors of the charity dinner.

00:31:26.000 And that's where the money comes from.

00:31:28.000 Is this a big deal?

00:31:29.000 It isn't.

00:31:29.000 Except that if the economy sinks, then Democrats are going to try to tie this to President Trump.

00:31:36.000 The same thing is true with regard to, for example, Tesla.

00:31:40.000 So President Trump did a big presser, you'll recall, a few weeks ago on the lawn over at the White House where he talked about buying a Tesla.

00:31:47.000 And this was ripped on by the members of the media suggesting this is a form of corruption.

00:31:52.000 This is Trump trying to prop up the Tesla stock or whatever.

00:31:55.000 Well, the truth is that Joe Biden had done exactly the same thing with Stellantis.

00:31:59.000 There's nothing really new here.

00:32:01.000 But that's not the point.

00:32:02.000 The point is, the close cooperation, which I think is quite good, between Trump and people who are successful in business, is going to be wrapped around the Republican Party's neck and capitalism's neck if the economy should shift south.

00:32:16.000 That right there is the biggest problem that Trump...

00:32:19.000 It's why we cannot afford, either as a country or as a body politic, For this administration to economically downturn, because the next thing that comes is a horseshoe theory populism that takes capitalism and stomps its boot on it.

00:32:32.000 What you're going to get the rise of is on the right, these sort of anti-capitalist populists.

00:32:37.000 These people definitely exist.

00:32:39.000 These people are actually an increasingly loud contingent of the Republican Party who believe that capitalism is evil, that business is bad, that capitalism takes away from home and hearth.

00:32:49.000 There's a very live debate inside the right.

00:32:52.000 And meanwhile, on the left, you are going to see the rise.

00:32:54.000 Of the Bernie Sanders types.

00:32:55.000 Bernie is well placed inside the party right now, and whomever he taps on the shoulder is quite likely at this point to be the nominee, particularly if that person can knit together some of the other aspects of the Democratic agenda.

00:33:05.000 AOC is perfectly on brand when it comes to the wokeness.

00:33:08.000 She obviously is very involved in standing up for DEI and all the rest.

00:33:13.000 So she checks the boxes of the radical left on the woke side, but she is also reaching over not into that.

00:33:19.000 That's not how she's campaigning. 0.99

00:33:20.000 She's campaigning as a full-scale...

00:33:23.000 Democratic socialist in the mold of Bernie Sanders.

00:33:26.000 So I know, people laughed.

00:33:28.000 I wrote a column back in 2008 when Barack Obama was first running for president before he received the nomination.

00:33:33.000 And I said, beware, because the actual danger here is not Hillary Clinton.

00:33:37.000 The actual danger here is Barack Obama.

00:33:39.000 And I think it was in 2007, actually.

00:33:41.000 Well, it turns out that right now, the real danger is AOC.

00:33:45.000 I'm just telling you right now, right here.

00:33:46.000 And we can laugh at her.

00:33:48.000 I've been laughing at her for years. 1.00

00:33:49.000 I think she's a ridiculous figure. 1.00

00:33:50.000 I also think that she's talented on camera. 0.99

00:33:53.000 I think that she speaks the slogans with passion.

00:33:56.000 And I think that in the Democratic primary, she's a dangerous, dangerous candidate. 1.00

00:34:01.000 Who's going to run against her and be able to overcome her? 0.99

00:34:04.000 Because if you actually try to poo-poo AOC, if you try to say, well, she's dumb, which is true. 0.98

00:34:09.000 If you try to say that she's dumb in a Democratic primary, she's just going to say, well, did you oppose Trump sufficiently? 0.99

00:34:15.000 Because the smarter people in the Democratic Party are biding their time. 0.99

00:34:18.000 Like Slotkin in Michigan.

00:34:20.000 And if you say, well, you know, she's never done anything.

00:34:23.000 She's going to say, well, I never got anything done because I was just too dedicated to the cause.

00:34:27.000 And she'll have Bernie's support base.

00:34:28.000 And Bernie will transfer that support base over to her. 1.00

00:34:31.000 She's a dangerous candidate inside the party. 1.00

00:34:33.000 For sure, for sure.

00:34:35.000 So do not take your eye off the ball there.

00:34:38.000 And for the Trump administration, do not take your eye off the economic ball.

00:34:43.000 That is the single most important thing that you can do is to calm the economic waters.

00:34:48.000 It is deeply important.

00:34:49.000 Right now, according to the Wall Street Journal, people are selling their stocks.

00:34:55.000 They're starting to look elsewhere.

00:34:57.000 Just two months after JPMorgan Chase declared American exceptionalism the broad and dominant investing theme of 2025, ordinary investors across the world are looking elsewhere.

00:35:05.000 Instead of riding the wave of U.S. outperformance, they are parsing the potential implications of tariff wars and major shifts in U.S. foreign policy.

00:35:11.000 And for much of this volatile stretch, markets in China and Europe are outpacing expectations.

00:35:16.000 These are things we do not need.

00:35:18.000 And much of this is being self-created.

00:35:20.000 So unless somebody can spell out the long-term plan for how this helps the American economy, and by long-term, I really mean short to mid-term.

00:35:27.000 Because again, the election is coming up fast.

00:35:29.000 I know, we just finished one.

00:35:30.000 But it is 2025.

00:35:33.000 2028 is the election.

00:35:34.000 It's not a lot of time.

00:35:36.000 If the idea is we've got to undergo some economic pain in order to get economic gain, that better be some fairly short-term pain for some pretty long-term gain if you hope that the successor to President Trump is going to win the White House.

00:35:47.000 Well, meanwhile, speaking of controversies that could be a problem for the Trump administration, so President Trump right now is going up against an incredibly left-wing judiciary, particularly at the district court level.

00:35:56.000 Apparently, today, there's supposed to be a hearing.

00:35:59.000 The Trump administration has a hearing with a three-member appeals panel to overturn a judgment from Judge James Bosberg.

00:36:06.000 That was the temporary restraining order that blocked the use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport plane loads of migrants without due process.

00:36:12.000 And that's what the lawsuit suggested.

00:36:15.000 Justice Department lawyers will demand that Boesburg be thrown off the case.

00:36:19.000 This is according to Politico.

00:36:21.000 So, Josh Gerstein of Politico says, this is a big test for Trump's team's in-your-face approach to all the litigation he now faces, coupling confrontational court filings with an all-out fusillade on both cable news and social media against judges who have blocked administration policies.

00:36:35.000 Boesburg, of course, is not going to go along with it.

00:36:37.000 I think it's very doubtful, by the way, that the appeals court goes along with...

00:36:42.000 Trump's attempt to get Bosberg thrown off the case.

00:36:46.000 According to Politico, there are two Republican appointees on this three-judge panel.

00:36:51.000 One is a Trump appointee named Justin Walker.

00:36:52.000 The second is a George W. Bush appointee named Karen Henderson.

00:36:57.000 Josh Gerstein says, will they embrace Trump's expansive view of executive power or will they show concern about what Bosberg has called the very frightening possibility of almost any migrant being rapidly expelled to a third country based solely on the say-so of the executive branch?

00:37:10.000 Now, It's not clear exactly what happens if the appellate court rules against Trump.

00:37:17.000 Presumably, they will then appeal to the Supreme Court, and that's where this needs to go.

00:37:20.000 What we really need at this point is a broad-scale understanding of what local district court judges are allowed to put TROs on and what they are not allowed to put TROs on, at least when it comes to national policy.

00:37:33.000 President Trump was asked about defying the judiciary.

00:37:36.000 So the Democrats have been suggesting that Trump is just going to defy the judiciary and keep defying the judiciary and keep defying...

00:37:40.000 Here was Trump yesterday basically making clear that that's not the case.

00:37:44.000 He said the Secretary of State is in charge of these deportations and determining who will be deported and who will not in many of these cases, and he's going to act in accordance with the law.

00:37:53.000 If there was a flight tonight with these guys, even though it's still being litigated, if there was a flight tonight full of accused gang members and somebody called and said, Mr. President, I know that this is still being adjudicated, but we can get these guys down to El Salvador right now.

00:38:09.000 Would you say that that's okay?

00:38:11.000 I would say that I'd have the Secretary of State handle it because I'm not really involved in that.

00:38:18.000 Okay, so again, that is him deferring to the Secretary of State.

00:38:21.000 Marco Rubio is not going to just...

00:38:22.000 Willy-nilly ignore the law.

00:38:24.000 This idea that there's a constitutional crisis going on, if there is, it is in fact a creation of overreaching district court judges.

00:38:30.000 But it's not a constitutional crisis.

00:38:32.000 It's going to go to the Supreme Court.

00:38:33.000 There is no evidence whatsoever at this point that the Trump team is going to ignore orders from the Supreme Court of the United States. 0.96

00:38:39.000 Meanwhile, these justices, these judges at the low level, many of them are just nuttily radical, totally crazy.

00:38:47.000 For example, just last week, U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes issued another sweeping injunction against banning trans volunteers and current service members from serving in the military and wrote a 75-page decision, quote, The military ban is soaked in animus and dripping with pretext. 0.86

00:39:04.000 Its language is unabashedly demeaning.

00:39:06.000 Its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit.

00:39:09.000 Its conclusions bear no relation to fact.

00:39:12.000 Well... Pete Hegseth, the excellent Secretary of Defense, then immediately tweeted back, quote, Since Judge Reyes is now a top military planner, she, they, can report to Fort Benning at 0600 to instruct our Army Rangers on how to execute high-value target raids.

00:39:24.000 After that, Commander Reyes can dispatch to Fort Bragg to train our Green Berets on counterinsurgency warfare.

00:39:30.000 I mean, that is right.

00:39:32.000 And again, that judgment will be appealed to the Supreme Court.

00:39:34.000 Right now, what we need is for the Supreme Court to stop mouthing off about President Trump mouthing off about district judges and actually sign into chat.

00:39:41.000 When is Justice Roberts going to allow the Supreme Court to take up the question of what are district court judges allowed to do in terms of these gigantic temporary restraining orders that stop in their tracks any national policy?

00:39:56.000 And again, all the talk right now about how...

00:39:59.000 Republicans are going to run roughshod over the rule of law.

00:40:01.000 It's just not true.

00:40:02.000 So President Trump has been saying we need to impeach these federal judges.

00:40:06.000 They're not getting impeached.

00:40:07.000 Senator John Curtis of Utah says, listen, President Trump can say whatever he wants.

00:40:11.000 It takes two-thirds of the Senate to impeach, and that's not going to happen.

00:40:15.000 I hope every high school civics teacher and every high school student is paying attention because we're having a lesson in civics.

00:40:22.000 It's not crisis, it's civics.

00:40:25.000 And our founders created a system where there were these tugs and pulls between the three branches.

00:40:31.000 And it's messy sometimes.

00:40:33.000 But that's the beauty of the Constitution.

00:40:36.000 And, you know, you can talk impeachment and you can throw it out there.

00:40:39.000 That's what you can do.

00:40:40.000 But the reality of it is it takes two-thirds of the Senate to impeach.

00:40:44.000 We know that's not going to happen.

00:40:47.000 Okay, so he's right about that.

00:40:48.000 Again, so many of the things that Trump says on Truth Social, it's been a long time.

00:40:54.000 Article of faith.

00:40:55.000 In the Trump-supportive community, that you take President Trump seriously but not literally.

00:40:59.000 And that's right.

00:41:00.000 When President Trump is ranting about these district court judges and when he's saying we're going to impeach them, that's not going to happen.

00:41:05.000 There's a process for that thing.

00:41:06.000 And when President Trump suggests that he's going to defy court orders, again, there's very little evidence that President Trump is actually going to defy court orders once we know what the actual authority of these district court judges is.

00:41:18.000 Okay, meanwhile, in cultural news, Snow White, there's been an enormous amount of controversy surrounding Snow White, obviously, because of everything from the original decisions with regard to casting to the insane, hardcore, nasty leftism of Rachel Zegler attacking her own co-star for being Israeli and generally attacking men and suggesting that Snow White was a sexist story and all this.

00:41:41.000 Controversy has been dogging this movie since the very beginning.

00:41:44.000 So much so that the Daily Wire, I think we played a major role in basically forcing Disney to go reshoot it.

00:41:50.000 Well, it didn't help.

00:41:50.000 Apparently. Disney's Snow White was essentially a box office dud.

00:41:55.000 Early estimates suggested that they would take in $48-58 million in the first weekend.

00:41:59.000 Apparently, it did $43 million in its first weekend.

00:42:03.000 It cost $270 million to make.

00:42:08.000 $270 million.

00:42:11.000 Obviously, it was going to win the box office.

00:42:13.000 It's the biggest movie at the box office this weekend.

00:42:16.000 But... For example, Disney's Cinderella, which for my money is still the only good live-action Disney remake, mainly because it was directed by Kenneth Branagh, who actually is a terrific director.

00:42:25.000 That one did $91.8 million in its opening weekend against a $138 million budget.

00:42:32.000 Both figures adjusted for inflation.

00:42:35.000 But this live-action remake is a giant fail.

00:42:38.000 It is not doing well at the box office.

00:42:41.000 When it comes to the Rotten Tomatoes score on this thing, even the critics...

00:42:45.000 I'm not in love with Disney's Snow White.

00:42:47.000 It's clocking in at 44%.

00:42:48.000 The cinema score, which is basically how audiences respond to the film, is a B +, which generally is not terrible, but it actually is quite terrible with regard to kids' films.

00:42:57.000 Kids' films are graded on a curve.

00:42:58.000 There's never been a Disney live-action remake that is graded lower than an A-, except for Snow White.

00:43:04.000 It turns out that Americans are not in love with the politics of Disney.

00:43:09.000 I think this is the last gasp of old Disney.

00:43:11.000 And when I say old Disney, I mean sort of the...

00:43:13.000 The regime that decided that wokeness needed to be infused in every movie. 0.56

00:43:17.000 If they keep going along this path, they're going to go bankrupt.

00:43:19.000 They really are going to be in serious, serious trouble.

00:43:21.000 They can't keep churning out trash IP based on some of the greatest IP ever created and hope that audiences are going to keep showing up at the box office.

00:43:29.000 Well, folks, in order to determine just how badly Snow White is doing at the box office, I asked my friend Perplexity, one of our sponsors of the show.

00:43:37.000 About which Disney films actually have done the best at the box office in terms of live action remakes adjusted for inflation versus the budget.

00:43:43.000 And here is what my friend Perplexity says.

00:43:45.000 Quote, Disney's live action remakes have generally performed well at the box office, with several earning over a billion dollars worldwide.

00:43:51.000 The Lion King of 2019 had box office $1.663 billion.

00:43:54.000 The original budget was $260 million.

00:43:57.000 Adjusted for inflation, you're talking about $310 million.

00:44:00.000 So the return on investment was like 5.3x.

00:44:03.000 Beauty and the Beast, almost 4x.

00:44:05.000 Made $1.264 billion at the box office.

00:44:09.000 The adjusted budget, which I assume includes production, advertising, all the rest, $321 million.

00:44:16.000 Aladdin did really well at the box office at almost 5x.

00:44:19.000 $1 billion at the box office.

00:44:22.000 Adjusted budget, $218 million.

00:44:25.000 Jungle Book did well as well, and Cinderella.

00:44:27.000 Now, you'll notice that the years that these did well are all prior to the pandemic.

00:44:33.000 Cinderella was 2015.

00:44:34.000 Jungle Book was 2016.

00:44:35.000 Aladdin was 2019.

00:44:36.000 Beauty and the Beast was 2017.

00:44:38.000 And Lion King was 2019.

00:44:39.000 Then the pandemic happened.

00:44:41.000 And once the pandemic happened, people actually had to have a reason to go to the box office.

00:44:45.000 And this is when the fail began for Disney.

00:44:47.000 Mulan had a $231 million adjusted budget.

00:44:52.000 It made $70 million at the box office.

00:44:54.000 Now, again, part of that is because it was released at Disney+.

00:44:56.000 Pinocchio, same deal.

00:44:59.000 Production budget, $164 million.

00:45:02.000 Zero dollars at the box office because, of course, it debuted on Disney+.

00:45:05.000 Dumbo, live-action remake, made in 2019.

00:45:10.000 That one did poorly because they also had Tim Burton direct it, which is a very bizarre directorial choice for a kid's movie.

00:45:16.000 Tim Burton is very scary.

00:45:18.000 Snow White, however, is the worst performing of any of these except for, you can count Mulan, but Mulan was in the middle of a pandemic.

00:45:25.000 Right now, Snow White is the worst performing.

00:45:27.000 Of these live-action remakes so far in history.

00:45:29.000 Now, it's not going to stop at $87.3 million global box office.

00:45:33.000 That's where it is right now.

00:45:35.000 Its adjusted budget is $270 million.

00:45:38.000 Eventually, it'll end up earning maybe its budget.

00:45:41.000 Maybe. Maybe it makes back like its original money.

00:45:44.000 Certainly not if you include all of the advertising that was put behind it, all the press, and the rest.

00:45:48.000 It's going to be a gigantic box office failure.

00:45:50.000 But the trend that you're noticing is that the worst performing of the Disney movies in terms of live-action remakes, are basically everything in the last five years.

00:45:59.000 And that is a combination of wokeness and the pandemic.

00:46:02.000 And now you better have a good reason to get people to the theaters.

00:46:04.000 And this ain't it.

00:46:05.000 The movie apparently is not very good.

00:46:06.000 I haven't seen it yet.

00:46:07.000 I would be shocked if it were.

00:46:10.000 Again, the star, Rachel Ziegler, is unbelievably charmless in public. 0.87

00:46:14.000 Studios really need to go back to what they originally did, which was tell your stars to shut up and not say things because no one is paying to hear your star say offensive things off the screen. 0.96

00:46:22.000 It's quite foolish.

00:46:23.000 There's one area, by the way, where Tom Cruise has got it exactly right. 0.97

00:46:25.000 One of the reasons he's still...

00:46:27.000 America's most iconic movie star well into his 60s is because Tom Cruise, you just don't see him anymore when he is not on the big screen.

00:46:34.000 He's just that character on the big screen, which means that you can just take him or leave him on the big screen.

00:46:38.000 That is the smart way to approach this stuff.

00:46:40.000 Hollywood needs to go back to it.

00:46:42.000 And meanwhile, big controversy has now broken out as well over cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP.

00:46:51.000 SNAP is basically food stamps.

00:46:53.000 And all across the country, Under pressure from the Health and Human Services Department under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., there's been a push to cut off the use of SNAP for candy and soda and junk food, which is a smart move.

00:47:08.000 There's no reason.

00:47:10.000 If SNAP is designed to provide nutritional supplement to kids particularly or to poor families, then why exactly are we supplementing with the most unhealthy stuff in American life?

00:47:19.000 We already have a massive childhood obesity problem in this country.

00:47:22.000 The problem in the United States right now, by the way, When it comes to things like obesity, is that if you were to create a curve of obesity versus health, it actually reverses the historical curve.

00:47:33.000 The historical curve would have been that people at the top of the income pyramid were the most overweight, right?

00:47:40.000 They were the most obese.

00:47:41.000 If you go back to ancient societies, and then if you move to now, actually it's the reverse.

00:47:46.000 Right now the problem with the health of people who make less money in the United States is not about them being undernourished.

00:47:54.000 In terms of not getting enough caloric intake, it's actually too much caloric intake.

00:47:57.000 And that comes along with an enormous number of other health problems.

00:48:01.000 So why exactly should the American taxpayers subsidize people eating unhealthy junk?

00:48:06.000 And yet somehow this has turned into a massive controversy.

00:48:08.000 There are some right-wing influencers who are suggesting that this is very bad, that somehow there has to be some right for people to use Snap to buy a Snickers.

00:48:15.000 I don't know under what rubric of conservatism that falls.

00:48:19.000 I can hear a libertarian conservatism that suggests that you shouldn't pay for anybody's food stamps to begin with.

00:48:24.000 That's a libertarian conservatism that suggests that private charity should fill the gap or whatever.

00:48:27.000 You could be a sort of social conservative who believes that government should, at some baseline level, care for people who are the most impoverished, but they should not subsidize them fattening themselves in the most unhealthy ways.

00:48:41.000 That I could hear.

00:48:41.000 I don't know what kind of conservatism says you owe somebody a Snickers.

00:48:44.000 I don't understand what that is.

00:48:47.000 But apparently...

00:48:48.000 That is, in fact, a controversy.

00:48:49.000 Kennedy is right about this, obviously.

00:48:52.000 The amount of clinical obesity in the country is extraordinary.

00:48:56.000 It is crippling the American healthcare system.

00:48:58.000 If you look at the sort of life outcomes, the health outcomes of Americans right now, one of the reasons we lag behind many of the other places on Earth, ranging from Japan to certain countries in Europe, one of the reasons for that is because we are inordinately fat.

00:49:09.000 We are a very unhealthy country before you ever hit the medical system.

00:49:14.000 Many of the so-called failings of the medical system are not failings of the American medical system.

00:49:18.000 They're failings of the American nutritional system.

00:49:20.000 This is something that RFK Jr. is absolutely right on.

00:49:22.000 Now, where RFK Jr. is sort of half right and half wrong is over the weekend, RFK Jr. suggested that we should ban cell phones from schools, which is right.

00:49:30.000 We should not have kids on iPhones at their schools.

00:49:32.000 That's right.

00:49:33.000 The reason that he cited was because of electric radiation effects on the human body.

00:49:43.000 Which, let's just say the evidence for that is scanty at best.

00:49:47.000 So, there have been some jokes online about the idea that perhaps this will be the pattern here, is that RFK Jr. recommends good policy based on bad premises.

00:49:55.000 That basically, RFK Jr. is going to be saying that you should not eat too many trans fats because the aliens might get you or something.

00:50:05.000 Like, it's good policy, but it's not exactly based on the best available science.

00:50:09.000 All right, you guys, coming up, fascinating piece in the Wall Street Journal about American women abandoning marriage.

00:50:15.000 We'll get into that in detail.

00:50:17.000 First, you have to become a Daily Wire Plus member.

00:50:19.000 Why? Because there's so much good stuff that we're going to be adding.

00:50:22.000 I mean, first of all, this show continues.

00:50:24.000 Okay, so if you like this show and you want more of the show every single day, you need to be a Daily Wire Plus member.

00:50:28.000 There's that.

00:50:29.000 Okay, but beyond that, we also have Backstage Live, Morning Wire, Matt Walsh's movies, Am I Racist?

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00:50:35.000 We have All Access Live, all sorts of great stuff.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - March 24, 2025

The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

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