The Ben Shapiro Show - The Dumbest Assumption In All Of Politics

00:00:00.000 The DOJ announced that they cracked a major terror plot, this time in California. 0.97

00:00:04.000 Plus, we'll get to the dumbest assumption in all of politics first.

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00:00:41.000 Well, yesterday, the Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi, announced that after an investigation, the DOJ actually uncovered a massive and horrific terror plot in the Central District of California.

00:00:52.000 That would be Orange County and LA.

00:00:54.000 She put on X the following statement: The Turtle Island Liberation Front, a far-left pro-Palestine, anti-government, anti-capitalist group, was preparing to conduct a series of bombings against multiple targets in California beginning on New Year's Eve.

00:01:06.000 The group also planned to target ICE agents and vehicles.

00:01:09.000 This was an incredible effort by our U.S. attorneys and the FBI to ensure that Americans can live in peace.

00:01:14.000 We'll continue to pursue these terror groups and bring them to justice.

00:01:17.000 Here is Bill Asali.

00:01:19.000 He's the first assistant U.S. attorney breaking down the plot as the FBI explained it to him.

00:01:26.000 In November 2025, Defendant Carol created a detailed bombing plot to use explosive devices to attack five or more locations across Southern California on this upcoming New Year's Eve.

00:01:39.000 Carol and her co-defendant, Zachary Page, led the effort to obtain and build the bombs and to recruit others to join in their plot.

00:01:49.000 Carol's bomb plot was explicit.

00:01:51.000 It included a step-by-step instructions to build IEDs or improvised explosive devices and listed multiple targets across Orange County and Los Angeles.

00:02:01.000 Carol also made clear her desires.

00:02:04.000 She said, quote, what we are doing will be considered a terrorist act.

00:02:08.000 Carol and Paige also discussed plans for follow-up attacks after their bombings, which included plans to target ICE agents and vehicles with pipe bombs.

00:02:18.000 Carol stated that those plans would quote take some of them out and scare the rest.

00:02:24.000 According to Cassia Kiva reporting for our Daily Wire, all of the defendants have been charged with conspiracy and possession of a destructive device.

00:02:33.000 According to an affidavit obtained by the Daily Wire, the lead person in this gave an eight-page written document titled Operation Midnight Sun that detailed the bombing plot to a law enforcement source.

00:02:46.000 The plan included planting backpacks with pipe bomb IEDs and simultaneously detonating them at five locations, including two American companies at midnight on New Year's Eve.

00:02:54.000 The plans included information about how to manufacture the bombs and guidance to avoid leaving behind evidence.

00:02:59.000 And apparently, they took multiple steps to carry out the plot, including acquiring bomb-making materials and traveling to a remote location in the Mojave Desert to construct and detonate a test explosive device on December 12th.

00:03:10.000 While they were there, they began assembling devices using materials such as precursors, PVC pipes, and fuses before they were arrested.

00:03:18.000 An Instagram account for the so-called Turtle Island Liberation Front, apparently that is an indigenous term from North America adopted by radical leftists who say that the name North America is colonialists.

00:03:30.000 So apparently an Instagram account for the Turtle Island Liberation Front in LA, which authorities say is operated by the aforementioned Carol, shows a woman named Mary mass with a Kathia explaining the ties between Palestine and Turtle Island.

00:03:42.000 Quote, Palestine is the true name of Israel.

00:03:43.000 It's the same with Turtle Island.

00:03:45.000 That was what the original tribes on the Americas, before it was called America, it was known as Turtle Island, because believe it or not, if you look at the map, rather from the top down, but the bottom up, if you flip that map of the Americas, it looks like a turtle.

00:03:56.000 Other posts on the account include not only anti-Israel and anti-government slogans like resistance is the deepest form of love and capitalism prevents liberation, but also death to ice and death to America.

00:04:07.000 Apparently, the group was looking for reparations and land back to indigenous groups.

00:04:11.000 I do find it amusing that they believe that Palestine was the true name of Israel, which is strange.

00:04:18.000 That was a name given by the Roman Empire to the land of Judea, which is what it was called before it was called Syria-Palestina.

00:04:26.000 In any case, the reason that this is, of course, disturbing is because this coalition of left-wingers, radical left-wingers, anti-capitalists, anti-Semites, Islamists, this sort of coalition has been building for a very long time because, in the end, what do they hold in common?

00:04:44.000 A desire to destroy Western civilization, a desire to tear down anything in the civilized West that is, in fact, successful.

00:04:52.000 And that is why I truly believe that one of the dumbest things that we can do is to flatten out all ideologies and pretend all human beings think the same way.

00:05:01.000 Every time anyone does this, you end up with the worst possible policy.

00:05:05.000 So, if you say, for example, all human beings have a yearning in their human heart for freedom in the same exact way, well, that can very easily lead you to the sort of policies pursued by the George W. Bush administration, in which the president declared that it was the goal of the United States to end tyranny on planet Earth.

00:05:22.000 Of course, that is not a sustainable goal because it assumes that everyone has the same priorities that you have.

00:05:28.000 In the same way, when you suggest that all acts of violence are equivalent, when you abstract terrible things happening, specific, terrible things happening to the level of the general, when you say, okay, there's a specific terror act directed at, say, Jews or against blacks or against whites for that matter, and instead of looking at the specific cause that is being pursued, instead of looking at the specific ideological matrix used to justify violence and foman violence, instead of looking at that, you just say violence is bad.

00:05:57.000 And all human beings should just know that violence is bad.

00:06:00.000 What you are doing is preventing the actual solutions to these problems.

00:06:06.000 Because if you refuse to face up to the fact that certain ideas are worse than other ideas, certain cultures are worse than other cultures, certain ideological frameworks are worse than other ideological frameworks.

00:06:15.000 If you refuse to do that, you are missing the motivating factor in human action. 0.99

00:06:20.000 And instead, what you end up with is blunderbus foreign policy that differentially strikes groups in an unfair and stupid way. 0.99

00:06:30.000 We'll get to more on this in a moment. 0.98

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00:08:43.000 So, Sonny Hostin over at The View, she did a good version of this the other day.

00:08:47.000 She was commenting on the mass shooting in Bondi Beach in Sydney against Jews by two Islamists.

00:08:55.000 And here's what she had to say: I used to think that gun violence was just an American phenomenon, and now we see this sort of anti-Semitic attack in Australia on the first day of the day. 0.64

00:09:09.000 On the front of Hanukkah, which is so disgusting and disturbing.

00:09:13.000 And then, you know, kids going to college at Brown in the middle of finals, getting murdered.

00:09:19.000 What are those families going through?

00:09:20.000 I'm just, why all of this sickness and hatred going around the world?

00:09:27.000 Not just why all the sickness and hatred going around the world?

00:09:33.000 Okay, on a generic level, the level of a two-year-old, sure.

00:09:37.000 But let's be very clear: different ideological groups commit different types of crimes.

00:09:45.000 Some commit no crimes, some actually promote peace.

00:09:48.000 Some ideologies promote vast terror attacks like radical Islamism.

00:09:53.000 And when you reduce everything to, well, it's just an act of violence, or you reduce it to the tool.

00:09:58.000 When you look at the Brown University shooting where we still don't know the motive, and then you look at what happened in Sydney, Australia, where you absolutely know the motive, and you just flatten that out and pretend that's all the same, you're preventing the implementation of policies that would actually prevent shootings.

00:10:14.000 Because there actually is a way to target radical Islam in, for example, Sydney, Australia.

00:10:19.000 Don't import more radical Muslims would be one way. 1.00

00:10:22.000 Surveillance of radical mosques might be another way.

00:10:25.000 Creating better security apparatus, having a government that does not, in fact, grant credibility to radical Islamists and their arguments.

00:10:34.000 That might be another way to do it.

00:10:35.000 There are lots of things that we can do actually to fight particular ideologies, particular ideas.

00:10:42.000 And when you flatten that all out to the idea that it's all just gun violence, it's all just gun violence.

00:10:46.000 What you are doing is preventing the solution.

00:10:50.000 And unfortunately, I think that that is kind of the core of the debate sometimes between the right and the left, the traditional right and the left.

00:10:56.000 Because I always have to clarify this now, because there are people who exist on the so-called political right who are not in any real way conservative.

00:11:05.000 They just don't like some of the elements of the left.

00:11:07.000 And so they found themselves on the right, sort of bizarre fellow travelers.

00:11:11.000 But traditional conservative thinking suggests that human beings are motivated by the ideas and ideologies that they carry.

00:11:20.000 And also that human beings are deeply flawed.

00:11:22.000 They're not inherently good.

00:11:23.000 That human beings have the capacity for greatness and also the capacity for sin, right?

00:11:27.000 All of this is embedded, for example, in Federalist 51, in which James Madison argues that if human beings were angels, you wouldn't need a government in order to govern them because they would be angels.

00:11:37.000 Once you recognize the reality of human flawed nature, once you recognize that people, in fact, change their behavior based on the ideologies that they hold, then it makes it possible to look at the outgrowth of particular ideologies and then fight those ideas, fight those ideologies. 0.96

00:11:53.000 Otherwise, what you end up with is bad and stupid public policy.

00:11:57.000 So Australia is a great example of a place that has bought into the sort of left-wing nostrum that everybody is equally good, that all human beings are born inherently good and wonderful. 0.98

00:12:09.000 And therefore, the only thing we have to do is keep them away from particular tools, like, for example, guns.

00:12:16.000 If you keep them away from the guns, then magically everything will be better, as opposed to, hey, maybe there's a difference between kind of normy Australian-ness and radical Islam. 0.97

00:12:26.000 Maybe we shouldn't import hundreds of thousands of people from Syria. 1.00

00:12:30.000 Maybe we should make sure that before we decide to change the culture of our country, we recognize that not everybody thinks the same way, that not everyone behaves the same way.

00:12:40.000 The single dumbest idea in all of politics is that all human beings think the same way and have the same priorities.

00:12:48.000 So to take Australia as an example, it turns out that one of the shooters in the anti-Jew terror attack at Bondi Beach was previously investigated by authorities for his ties to an Islamic State terrorist cell. 0.97

00:13:02.000 This is a father-son team.

00:13:04.000 The son was investigated by Australia's domestic intelligence agency, ASIO, six years ago, according to Australian media.

00:13:12.000 Police say the attack was inspired by the paris dedication to ISIS, with two ISIS flags reportedly discovered in their vehicle.

00:13:19.000 Apparently, police reportedly first took an interest in the 24-year-old terrorist, according to the Daily Wire, after they foiled an ISIS attack that was planned by a man who declared himself the Australian commander of an ISIS cell in Australia.

00:13:30.000 He was under investigation for six months before being deemed to pose no ongoing threat.

00:13:35.000 ASIO Director General Mike Burgess confirmed on Sunday one of the terrorists was known to law enforcement.

00:13:41.000 The younger shooter is in critical condition.

00:13:44.000 His father was shot dead by officers at the scene.

00:13:48.000 Now, again, why does this matter?

00:13:50.000 Because let's say that you wanted to, you know, stop anti-Jew terror attacks in Sydney, Australia.

00:13:55.000 One of the things that you might do is you might look at how to shut down, for example, ISIS sympathizers.

00:14:01.000 Maybe you ought to look at how to deport ISIS sympathizers rather than importing ISIS brides in repatriation, which is what the Australian government actually recently did.

00:14:11.000 But instead, what you get is this attempt to put the focus on the gun. 0.99

00:14:18.000 Now, again, one of the things that's kind of astonishing about the gun control argument is that the focus typically on the weapon obscures the focus on the ideology, which is really stupid. 0.97

00:14:29.000 Because let's be real, I am a gun owner. 0.93

00:14:32.000 Virtually all my friends are gun owners, and none of us have committed a gun crime or will be really in danger of committing a gun crime.

00:14:38.000 How do I know?

00:14:39.000 Well, because I know that the people who I am friends with are not the types of people who go around shooting up mass gatherings.

00:14:46.000 And in fact, you can pretty easily tell where the gun crime is going to happen in the United States.

00:14:51.000 And it actually does not have to do with the prevalence of guns in those parts of the United States.

00:14:55.000 Vermont has many, many guns and very, very little gun crime.

00:14:58.000 Chicago has many guns and much, much gun crime.

00:15:02.000 Well, because gangs are incredibly prevalent in Chicago.

00:15:02.000 Why?

00:15:05.000 Young fatherless males are wandering around at night with guns in Chicago and they aren't in Vermont.

00:15:11.000 You can actually look at the social milieu.

00:15:14.000 You can look at a particular endemic problem in certain areas and target that.

00:15:21.000 But if you believe that all human beings are, again, motivated by the same things and act in the same ways, then what you end up with is it must be the guns.

00:15:29.000 And this is exactly what they are doing in Australia.

00:15:32.000 Well, the benighted Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of the Labour Party will admit that this targeted Jews, the focus isn't on radical Islam in Sydney, where they've had a massive problem.

00:15:43.000 Again, in 2023, right after October 7th, there were Muslims who gathered en masse at the Sydney Opera House to chance gas the Jews.

00:15:50.000 But apparently that was no problem.

00:15:52.000 There have been anti-Semitic gatherings pretty much every weekend in Australia.

00:15:55.000 That was no problem.

00:15:56.000 The problem, of course, is the guns.

00:15:58.000 So here's Anthony Albanese saying that he stands with the Jewish community.

00:16:02.000 This was an attack deliberately targeted at the Jewish community on the first day of Hanukkah, which, of course, should be a joyous celebration. 1.00

00:16:12.000 And the Jewish community are hurting today.

00:16:16.000 Today, all Australians wrap our arms around them and say, we stand with you.

00:16:22.000 We will do whatever is necessary to stamp out anti-Semitism.

00:16:26.000 It is a scourge and we will eradicate it together.

00:16:30.000 Okay, so they're going to eradicate anti-Semitism without actually doing anything about anti-Semitism.

00:16:35.000 They're going to target the guns.

00:16:36.000 So here was Albanese yesterday talking about the actual solution.

00:16:40.000 Wait for it, wait for it.

00:16:41.000 More gun control. 0.51

00:16:42.000 So let's just be clear.

00:16:43.000 The only people in the situation at Bondi Beach who had guns were the shooters.

00:16:48.000 None of the people on the beach had a gun because gun control is extremely strict in Australia.

00:16:52.000 And the cops cowered behind their cars doing nothing while the shooting took place.

00:16:57.000 And his solution is, yes, more gun control.

00:17:01.000 Not Islamist control, gun control. 0.79

00:17:05.000 The government is prepared to take whatever action is necessary.

00:17:09.000 Included in that is the need for tougher gun laws.

00:17:13.000 And this afternoon at four o'clock, I will put on the agenda of the National Cabinet tougher gun laws, including limits on the number of guns that can be used or licensed by individuals, a review of licenses over a period of time.

00:17:39.000 People's circumstances change.

00:17:41.000 People can be radicalized over a period of time.

00:17:44.000 Licenses should not be in perpetuity.

00:17:48.000 And checks, of course, making sure that those checks and balances are in place as well.

00:17:53.000 We will task, I'll take to the National Cabinet this afternoon a proposal to empower agencies to examine what can be done in this area.

00:18:04.000 Now, the Premier of New South Wales, Chris Minn, said the same thing, that Australia needs more gun laws.

00:18:09.000 Forget about stopping the importation of radical Muslims into the country or keeping tabs on the radical Muslims who are already there. 0.97

00:18:15.000 No, it's the gun laws that are really the big issue there.

00:18:19.000 They need to change and they can change.

00:18:22.000 It does require legislation and it means introducing a bill to parliament to, I mean, to be really blunt, make it more difficult to get these horrifying weapons that have no practical use in our community.

00:18:37.000 Do you think they're not a farmer if you're not involved in agriculture?

00:18:40.000 Why do you need these massive weapons that put the public in danger and make life dangerous and difficult for New South Wales police?

00:18:50.000 So I understand, of course, I understand the genuine desire to have information about how the law will change.

00:18:58.000 We're less than 24 hours into this horrifying crime.

00:19:02.000 I want to make sure that legislation and reform that we bring to Parliament makes a big difference.

00:19:07.000 But that's exactly my intention.

00:19:09.000 And my colleagues feel exactly the same way.

00:19:12.000 Now, focusing on the wrong things allows you, as an advocate for things like radical Islam, to simply misdirect.

00:19:19.000 It's pretty amazing.

00:19:20.000 We'll get to more on this in a moment.

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00:21:41.000 So, for example, Representative Ilhan Omar, who is herself a vast repository of anti-Semitic sentiment, Ilhan Omar is out there saying, well, you know, maybe Australia should try more gun control.

00:21:55.000 I can't imagine where the anti-Semitism is coming from.

00:21:57.000 I mean, like, it's such a mystery.

00:21:58.000 It's such a mystery.

00:21:59.000 I, you know, what I need is advice on how to prevent anti-Semitic mass terror attacks from Ilhan Omar.

00:22:06.000 Yeah, I mean, we are still recovering from the shooting at Enunciation Church.

00:22:13.000 It is a tragedy that this has become a normal occurrence, not just in the United States, but now seeing it in Australia, who's worked really hard to create gun prevention laws to prevent the kind of tragedy that took place today.

00:22:35.000 I mean, this is the beauty of your complete flattening of all moral boundaries: is that you can have people who are complicit in the ideology that actually leads to terrorism instead suggesting that actually they're against that.

00:22:48.000 They're against it.

00:22:49.000 They're part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

00:22:52.000 Pretty impressive stuff.

00:22:53.000 Meanwhile, in the United States, Democrats, the nice thing for Democrats, they don't even have to wait in order to jump into the water when it comes to mass shootings.

00:23:01.000 I mean, typically the way that this works is if a mass shooting is carried out by a radical Muslim in the United States or by, for example, a radical leftist in the United States, Democrats immediately suggest that gun control is the answer.

00:23:13.000 If it's a right-wing shooter or someone perceived as right-wing, it's a white supremacist, for example, then the left will immediately do what actually should be done very often, which is investigate the ideology.

00:23:25.000 And what I'm saying is perfectly consistent.

00:23:27.000 If ideologies tend to breed terrorism, then we ought to critique the ideologies.

00:23:32.000 We ought to think about what about those ideologies leads to terrorism.

00:23:36.000 And we ought to think about what we can do in order to combat those ideologies.

00:23:40.000 Because that's what motivates human beings, not the instrument on the table, not the gun.

00:23:45.000 But for the left, it allows them the ability to blame everything on the gun when it's convenient, blame it on the ideology when it's convenient.

00:23:54.000 So, for example, Democratic Representative Angie Craig of Minnesota, she immediately called for a wait for it, more gun control. 1.00

00:24:00.000 Cheryl and I are just devastated.

00:24:02.000 Another act of senseless gun violence in this country.

00:24:05.000 And we're the only nation in the world whose lawmakers don't seem to be willing to step forward and at least try to address this epidemic we have across our country.

00:24:16.000 I am so saddened.

00:24:18.000 I am just disgusted with my Republican colleagues and their lack of acknowledgement that these lives matter, their lack of acknowledgement that these annunciation school children matter in our country and that we can do something about it.

00:24:34.000 It is time to ban assault weapons in high capacity magazines in our nation.

00:24:40.000 So here's the problem.

00:24:42.000 None of this actually solves the underlying issues.

00:24:44.000 None of it.

00:24:46.000 And when we ignore the underlying issues in favor of these ridiculous nostrums about all acts of violence springing from the same place and all of them presumably being solvable by more centralized government control, including the confiscation of guns, you ignore the actual problems simmering under the surface that generate actual violence.

00:25:04.000 Okay, meanwhile, new and horrifying details emerging regarding the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife.

00:25:11.000 Apparently, according to the New York Post, Rob Reiner's troubled son, Nick, fatally stabbed the fame director and his wife, Michelle, at their L.A. home, authorities said on Monday.

00:25:19.000 Nick Reiner, who spent years in and out of rehab for drug addiction, is in custody and being held.

00:25:23.000 He was detained Sunday night after police discovered the director of the Princess Bride and his longtime spouse had been hacked to death in their mansion, which is just horrifying at every possible level.

00:25:32.000 The couple's daughter, Rami, found Rob Reiner, 78, and Michelle Reiner, with their throats slashed around 3.30 p.m. on Sunday and told cops she believed a family member should be a suspect.

00:25:43.000 Rami also told the cops she thought the relative was dangerous.

00:25:46.000 Nick Reiner had talked openly about his battles with addiction and bouts of homelessness.

00:25:51.000 He told People Magazine in 2016 that he was homeless in Maine, homeless in New Jersey, homeless in Texas, that he went to rehab at age 15, ended up doing at least 17 stints in treatment.

00:26:03.000 So, again, truly a horrifying situation, really horrifying in every possible way.

00:26:11.000 Apparently, he had a reputation for violence and had always been troubled.

00:26:15.000 That's what the New York Post reported.

00:26:17.000 This is not the first time their son has been violent.

00:26:19.000 A longtime neighbor of the victims said of Nick Reiner.

00:26:21.000 I know of another incident a few years back with Nick, but I won't say more than that, added the man.

00:26:25.000 I just never thought he would ever get to this point.

00:26:27.000 Rob was always heartbroken.

00:26:28.000 His son couldn't beat his addiction.

00:26:30.000 I know they wanted him to get help to go to rehab, but he wanted to get help while at home.

00:26:33.000 He didn't want to get treatment at a facility.

00:26:36.000 And I know they've argued about that for years.

00:26:38.000 Nick has had demons for the longest time.

00:26:39.000 It's such a nightmare.

00:26:40.000 The whole thing is a tragedy.

00:26:43.000 A second neighbor said, I wasn't surprised to learn that Nick was charged with killing his parents.

00:26:49.000 The residents declined to elaborate.

00:26:53.000 Again, terrible, terrible story, obviously.

00:26:56.000 There's a report from the UK Daily Mail that there was a fight that happened at a Christmas party at Conan O'Brien's house shortly before all of this.

00:27:07.000 According to the UK Daily Mail, Reiner had booked a massage on the day he and his wife died, but did not answer the door, prompting the couple's daughter to go into their home.

00:27:15.000 And that's when she had discovered that they had been knifed to death.

00:27:17.000 Apparently, the couple's son had an explosive row with his parents at Conan O'Brien's holiday party hours before.

00:27:23.000 And the 32-year-old has now been arrested and booked for felony murder.

00:27:28.000 So, again, truly a horrifying thing.

00:27:31.000 Here is the LAPD's chief, Jim McDonnell, announcing the arrest of the Reiner's son.

00:27:38.000 They worked throughout the night on this case and were able to take into custody Nick Reiner, a suspect in this case.

00:27:49.000 He was subsequently booked for murder and is being held on $4 million bail.

00:27:55.000 All of that is, again, the only word for it is horrifying.

00:27:58.000 It is a reminder that sometimes parents and relatives of people who have significant violent mental illness refuse to see the cost of that until it's too late, whether it's a danger to themselves or danger to others.

00:28:11.000 And sympathy sometimes wins out over reason when it comes to the love we have for our family members.

00:28:17.000 And it's something that we all ought to keep in mind as we navigate the travails of life.

00:28:23.000 The president of the United States put out what was truly, I think, a vile and egregious statement about Rob Reiner.

00:28:30.000 And I don't care what Rob Reiner has said in the past.

00:28:32.000 I mean, I do, but it was in the past and it was bad.

00:28:35.000 And also what the president of the United States said about Rob Reiner yesterday was quite terrible.

00:28:42.000 Quote, a very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood.

00:28:45.000 Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away together with his wife Michelle, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-crippling disease known as Trump derangement syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS.

00:29:01.000 He was known to have driven people crazy by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness.

00:29:10.000 And with the golden age of America upon us, perhaps like never before, may Rob and Michelle rest in peace.

00:29:15.000 That is a horrifying statement from the president of the United States.

00:29:18.000 Truly, truly bad.

00:29:19.000 And again, I have a very high tolerance level after 10 years of the president tweeting random nonsense on the internet and with great appreciation for much of his policy.

00:29:28.000 That's bad.

00:29:29.000 And it's bad when people say bad things.

00:29:33.000 I don't understand what a son murdering his parents in cold blood in their home by slashing their throats has to do with Trump derangement syndrome and the apparently peculiar desire of the president to refocus that issue on himself is beyond me.

00:29:47.000 I don't understand it, nor do I think that it should receive any sort of justification or whataboutism.

00:29:53.000 It's just bad.

00:29:54.000 Just bad things are allowed to be bad.

00:29:55.000 That is bad.

00:29:56.000 The president should take it down.

00:29:57.000 The president should apologize.

00:29:58.000 It's not good.

00:29:59.000 Okay, meanwhile, on the foreign policy front, the United States apparently has been moving toward offering Ukraine a significantly more fulsome security guarantee in trying to end the war between Ukraine and Russia.

00:30:11.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the United States pledged to protect Ukraine from any future Russian attack, offering to support European security guarantees and seek Senate backing for Washington's promised role, which it hasn't yet publicly detailed.

00:30:22.000 The pledge came on the second day of talks in Berlin among the U.S., Ukraine, and European leaders and top officials.

00:30:27.000 It remains unclear to what extent Washington would militarily intervene.

00:30:30.000 That, of course, is the sticking point.

00:30:32.000 It's one thing for the United States to say, hey, we'll do something.

00:30:35.000 I mean, maybe, it depends on what the thing is.

00:30:37.000 We'll do something if the Russians walk across the border. 1.00

00:30:40.000 But remember, even Joe Biden, supposedly pro-Ukraine, Joe Biden, let off the invasion by weeks before the invasion, saying that if it was a minor incursion into Ukrainian territory, then maybe the United States wouldn't do anything, which, of course, Vladimir Putin took as a green light to do whatever he wanted.

00:30:57.000 However, if this is a real serious security guarantee, that is the necessity for any sort of deal to get done.

00:31:02.000 That's just the reality.

00:31:03.000 Otherwise, why would Ukraine sign on to anything?

00:31:05.000 Why?

00:31:06.000 What interest would they have?

00:31:07.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the shift could lift one of the biggest obstacles to Kiev signing up to a peace deal with Russia.

00:31:13.000 A bigger hurdle still remains over territory because apparently the Russians want territory that Kiev hasn't even lost yet.

00:31:20.000 European officials have for months offered Ukraine security guarantees to deter a future Russian attack, but they've stressed the need to have some form of U.S. help to backstop those plans.

00:31:28.000 European officials have advised Ukraine to tread carefully in agreeing to other major concessions until they had locked in clear U.S. military support.

00:31:36.000 U.S. officials say they have secured consensus with Ukraine on 90% of the issues being discussed after eight hours of face-to-face talks in Sunday between Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and Trump's Russia envoy Steve Witkoff, as well as Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law.

00:31:50.000 U.S. officials say they aren't unduly pressuring Ukraine, but the Trump administration wants a deal done by year end, if possible.

00:31:57.000 Now, again, we still have no idea if the Russians would accept any of this.

00:32:01.000 So, as I've said before, negotiating against yourself is a hell of a strategy.

00:32:05.000 It seems to me that you at least have to hear what the Russians are willing to give up before you start pressuring the Ukrainians, you know, the ones we're allied with, not the ones who are posing a geopolitical threat to our allies.

00:32:17.000 You know, it seems you might want to get what the Russians are willing to do before you force the people we're allied with to make the concessions. 0.88

00:32:25.000 This sort of honest broker nonsense between Ukraine and Russia is ridiculous.

00:32:29.000 Russia, as a governing philosophy, has an idea of significant geopolitical power that threatens American interests in multiple regions ranging from Eastern Europe to the Middle East to Africa to Asia.

00:32:43.000 The notion that somehow we're supposed to play honest broker between the Ukrainians, an invaded country, a country invaded by the Russians and the Russians, seems bizarre, especially given the fact that, again, it is American weaponry that has largely been used by the Ukrainians to resist the Russian aggression in the first place.

00:33:00.000 With that said, the United States is signaling optimism.

00:33:04.000 Moscow has already said, by the way, it would object if proposals developed by Kyiv and Brussels, like U.S. backed security guarantees, are included in the peace plan, which, of course, that's the basis for any possible peace plan.

00:33:13.000 Why would the Ukrainians sign on otherwise? 0.99

00:33:15.000 But a U.S. official said, I would assess it was a really, really positive interaction.

00:33:18.000 We've got consensus on a number of issues we view as critical to getting a peace deal.

00:33:22.000 We have some things to discuss as well.

00:33:24.000 The security guarantees would include monitoring, verification, and deconfliction and would lay out a role the U.S. would play if Russia breached a peace deal and came back to attack Ukraine.

00:33:33.000 They would also include the provision of weapons to deter a Russian force.

00:33:37.000 The U.S. would not send ground troops.

00:33:38.000 Unclear what the United States would, in fact, send.

00:33:43.000 President Trump said in August that Washington was prepared to use air power to support European troops in Ukraine.

00:33:48.000 It would be interesting to see what kind of guarantee is allowed.

00:33:52.000 A statement signed Monday by a dozen European leaders welcomed the greater convergence between the United States and Ukraine on ending the war.

00:33:58.000 And they said security guarantees would include help to regenerate Ukrainian armed forces of up to 800,000 troops, the securing of Ukraine's skies, and legally binding commitments to come to Ukraine's aid in the event of a Russian attack.

00:34:12.000 So we'll have to see exactly what this looks like.

00:34:15.000 Apparently, Zelensky told journalists on Monday it's important the U.S. accepts an Article 5-like plus the corresponding security guarantee.

00:34:21.000 So Article 5 basically says, I won't join NATO, but if Ukraine is attacked, then basically it's kind of like Article 5.

00:34:27.000 We say that we've been attacked and now you have a treaty obligation to intervene.

00:34:32.000 He says we're making good progress there.

00:34:33.000 I see the details the military has been working on.

00:34:35.000 They look quite good, even though it's only the first draft.

00:34:38.000 So we'll have to see how all of this works out for the Ukrainians.

00:34:41.000 Now, meanwhile, and this bizarre idea that is spread far and wide in precincts of the right that the Russians are not a threat to Western interests, I'm just wondering on what basis that is said.

00:34:54.000 What makes people think that the Russians are aligned with the United States?

00:34:57.000 Like on what?

00:34:58.000 I mean, really, on what thing?

00:35:01.000 The last time the United States tried to align with the Russians, the Russians proceeded to take over effectively air bases in Syria and proceeded to foment greater war in the region while providing the possibility of aid and supply for countries like Iran.

00:35:19.000 So I'm just every place Russia has been given the ability to spread its tentacles, it has brought terror and violence in its wake. 0.77

00:35:29.000 So I'm just wondering, like, where is the commonality of interest?

00:35:32.000 Somebody needs to spell it out.

00:35:34.000 Okay, well, apparently, according to the new spy master of Britain's secret intelligence service, Russia poses an acute threat to the West, plotting arson and sabotage operations, assassinations, and cyber and drone attacks all across Europe.

00:35:46.000 This Blaise Metrowelli, who is the chief of MI6, the new frontline is everywhere.

00:35:51.000 She said, the export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in the Russian approach to international engagement.

00:35:57.000 She describes a new age of uncertainty in which Russia and other hostile powers use a battery of weapons from cyber technology to disinformation to sow discord and disrupt Western democratic societies.

00:36:06.000 That, of course, is not shocking at all.

00:36:09.000 Russia does, in fact, utilize algorithmic boosting in order to generate distrust and suspicion.

00:36:18.000 That is nothing new.

00:36:19.000 How much Americans take that in?

00:36:21.000 That's their choice.

00:36:21.000 But that is a thing that Russia has been doing for a very, very long time.

00:36:26.000 Apparently, she says that the frontline is basically everywhere with the Russians.

00:36:33.000 That again, not a shock.

00:36:34.000 Russia has been quite active in the West for years and years and years and years.

00:36:39.000 The other, of course, major geopolitical threat to the United States, a far greater geopolitical threat is China.

00:36:44.000 And it's worthwhile noting that everywhere China has spread its tentacles, things have gotten worse for U.S. interests.

00:36:52.000 That, of course, includes in Hong Kong.

00:36:55.000 According to the Washington Post editorial board, when China peacefully took control of Hong Kong in 1997, Beijing's communist rulers promised to preserve the former British colony's freedoms and way of life.

00:37:04.000 That promise was eroded a long time ago.

00:37:06.000 And Monday's guilty verdict in the trial of media mogul and pro-democracy stalwart Jimmy Lai extinguished any flicker of hope that still burned in the once vibrant city.

00:37:13.000 Again, it was a dumb idea for Britain ever to hand over Hong Kong. 0.98

00:37:17.000 Total foolishness. 0.94

00:37:18.000 Lai has been held for some five years, mostly in solitary confinement. 0.82

00:37:21.000 The three judges who handed down the decision were doing precisely what they were hand-picked to do: ignore the evidence and use a political show trial to find Lai guilty of colluding with foreign forces and conspiring to publish seditious material, among other ludicrous offenses.

00:37:36.000 It's worth looking at what the judges wrote in their 855-page ruling to see how far Hong Kong has fallen.

00:37:42.000 Lai's intent, they said, was to seek the downfall of the Communist Party, and he used his now shuttered newspaper Apple Daily to write and publish articles and editorials to make the Hong Kong people view the government with hatred and contempt.

00:37:54.000 They said that he affiliated himself with Western values.

00:37:57.000 Again, this is what China believes.

00:37:58.000 And if you affiliate yourself with Western values, then that means that you are bad.

00:38:02.000 You should remember this when we're talking about facing down the Chinese. 1.00

00:38:06.000 And since the handing over of Hong Kong to the Chinese, they have gripped ever tighter. 0.96

00:38:11.000 That, of course, is no surprise.

00:38:13.000 Meanwhile, Chinese billionaires are entering the United States and apparently fathering dozens of children via surrogate.

00:38:19.000 That's according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:38:22.000 Apparently, over and over and over, billionaires are coming to the United States and paying millions in surrogacy fees to hire women in the U.S. to help them build families of jaw-dropping size.

00:38:36.000 Several major billionaires have fathered more than 100 children through surrogacy in the United States.

00:38:41.000 One wealthy Chinese executive, Wang Hu Wu, hired U.S. models and others as egg donors to have 10 girls with the aim of one day marrying them off to powerful men, according to people close to the executive's company education.

00:38:54.000 Other Chinese clients are high-powered executives lacking the time and inclination to bear their own kids. 0.94

00:38:59.000 Older parents or same-sex couples, according to people who arrange surrogacy deals and work in surrogacy law, all have the wealth to go outside China while maintaining the privacy needed to manage potential logistical publicity and legal issues back home.

00:39:11.000 Some have the political cloud to avoid censure.

00:39:13.000 The market, according to the Wall Street Journal, has grown so sophisticated that at times Chinese parents have had U.S.-born children without even stepping foot in the country.

00:39:21.000 A thriving mini-industry of American surrogacy agencies, law firms, clinics, delivery agencies, and nanny services, even to pick up the newborns from hospitals, has risen to accommodate the demand, permitting parents to ship their genetic material abroad and get a baby delivered back at a cost to up to $200,000 per child, which is pretty insane.

00:39:43.000 Now, all these kids are U.S. citizens by virtue of the 14th Amendment as currently construed by the Supreme Court of the United States.

00:39:51.000 In 2020, under President Trump, the State Department tried to end birth tourism.

00:39:56.000 It's been relatively unsuccessful, however.

00:40:00.000 But yes, the manipulation of the systems by Chinese higher-ups is quite real. 0.93

00:40:07.000 Now, meanwhile, the U.S. immigration system, again, the Trump administration is doing a good job overall on immigration.

00:40:14.000 But there is one group of people where we should really think before we deport them.

00:40:20.000 That would include a person apparently named Guan Heng.

00:40:24.000 Greg Lukianov links to a piece called Human Rights in China, and it points out that there was a man who filmed the Uyghur concentration camps and then fled to the United States.

00:40:35.000 He went through South America and finally sailed alone in a small boat for 23 hours from the Bahamas to land in Florida and then released the videos.

00:40:43.000 And this footage became crucial evidence from the international community to confirm what China was doing in Xinjiang.

00:40:51.000 Well, apparently, he was now arrested in upstate New York for illegal entry and he faces the threat of deportation where he will be sent, apparently, back to China.

00:40:59.000 Again, not everybody who claims refugee status in the United States should be given it.

00:41:04.000 This seems like, from the fact, a fairly good case.

00:41:09.000 Okay, meanwhile, in good foreign news, Chile has now elected a right-wing leader, which is excellent.

00:41:15.000 Chile has historically been a pretty right-wing country, really ever since Milton Friedman and the so-called Chicago boys went down to Chile and helped restructure their economy in capitalist ways.

00:41:26.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, when Jose Antonio Cost ran for president in 2021, he vowed to crack down on migration and restore law and order on Chile streets.

00:41:36.000 The conservative admirer of dictator General Augusto Pinochet lost by double digits on Sunday.

00:41:41.000 He won one of the most lopsided presidential victories in Chile's recent history, again, focusing on migration and crime.

00:41:49.000 That is because there's a feeling in Chile and throughout much of South America that migration, mostly people fleeing out of Venezuela, had spiraled out of control.

00:41:57.000 Cass said we must show great strength against crime, organized crime, impunity, and disorder.

00:42:01.000 Chile can't become used to fear.

00:42:04.000 He'll become the most right-wing leader since 1990.

00:42:08.000 It's the biggest presidential victory by a right-wing candidate in Chile since the 1930s.

00:42:13.000 And so if you were to divide up a map of South America right now, basically the western half of South America has turned red.

00:42:20.000 The eastern half of South America remains blue, but the red is spreading.

00:42:25.000 There's a lot of talk about a so-called pink wave that had overtaken South America over the course of the last decade or so, pink wave, meaning like close to communism.

00:42:33.000 And that seems to be receding and receding quite quickly.

00:42:38.000 So, again, this is good news.

00:42:41.000 It is good to have better allies in South America.

00:42:46.000 Cass's pledge to restore order resonated with voters after protesters looted stores and tortured buildings in 2019 unrest, causing billions of dollars in damage.

00:42:54.000 His support surged in the 2021 election amid a backlash against centrist politicians.

00:42:59.000 Cass did make it to the runoff, but then lost to the extremely left-wing president Gabriel Borick.

00:43:04.000 Borick did a terrible job in Chileans, got more and more worried.

00:43:07.000 Foreign-born residents now make up 10% of Chile's population.

00:43:12.000 And so immigration, even within South America, remains a major issue.

00:43:15.000 It is not just an issue for the United States, an issue for the rest of the world as well.

00:43:22.000 Meanwhile, I have to point out that the Democratic Party continues to be totally wrongheaded on this issue.

00:43:28.000 J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, is out there yesterday complaining about ICE closer to home.

00:43:35.000 No, the way they're doing it now is just dead wrong.

00:43:37.000 I mean, and I believe unconstitutional.

00:43:40.000 I mean, marching people in uniforms in our automatic web with automatic weapons through our major cities where they're mostly just stopping people for being black and brown, not because they're actually undocumented or have committed crimes.

00:43:55.000 You know, that's clearly something that all of us ought to stand up against.

00:43:59.000 And we lived through that, as you know, we are living through it now.

00:44:03.000 And again, this idea that ICE is just arresting black and brown people because of their color is insipid at a very, very high level.

00:44:10.000 Pritzker also said, by the way, that as long as you've been here for five or 10 years, we should give you a pathway to stay no matter who you are.

00:44:16.000 These are hard.

00:44:17.000 I'm talking about the people who've been here for five, 10, 20 years, hardworking, raising families, paying taxes, law-abiding, right?

00:44:27.000 All of those folks.

00:44:29.000 And people who are undocumented, right?

00:44:32.000 Those are the very people you'd want to have come into the country if you had a proper immigration policy. 1.00

00:44:38.000 And so we ought to fix it so that we actually are doing that.

00:44:42.000 And giving people who are here, who I get some of them, by the way, have broken the law because they crossed the border without permission, but also some who overstayed a visa and are here undocumented.

00:44:56.000 That, you know, we ought to have a path for those folks to stay.

00:45:01.000 I can't believe the Democrats are doing this routine. 0.99

00:45:03.000 But again, doubling down on stupid seems to still be in the catalog for Democrats. 0.99

00:45:07.000 Jasmine Crockett, who wants to run for senator in Texas, she takes it to a whole new level. 1.00

00:45:12.000 So over the weekend, apparently, she suggested that we need many, many immigrants because black people are done picking cotton.

00:45:19.000 I just, I can't even with this. 0.96

00:45:21.000 Like, what are we talking about here?

00:45:23.000 What are we even talking about here?

00:45:25.000 Slavery has not been legal in the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.

00:45:30.000 What is she even talking about?

00:45:33.000 So I have to go around the country and educate people about what immigrants do for this country or the fact that we are a country of immigrants.

00:45:42.000 The fact is, ain't none of y'all trying to go and farm right now.

00:45:49.000 Okay, so I'm lying.

00:45:50.000 Raise your hands.

00:45:56.000 You're not.

00:45:58.000 You're not.

00:45:59.000 We're done picking cotton.

00:46:03.000 We are.

00:46:04.000 You can't pay us enough to find a plantation. 1.00

00:46:08.000 Oh, my goodness.

00:46:09.000 So this is your case for mass immigration.

00:46:09.000 Oh, my God.

00:46:12.000 Okay, good luck with that.

00:46:14.000 Good luck with that.

00:46:15.000 I will say that one person who seems to be getting it, maybe late in life, is Nancy Pelosi.

00:46:19.000 So Nancy Pelosi, actually, yesterday, she suggested that actually maybe we shouldn't impeach Trump right away.

00:46:26.000 Like if they win Congress in the next election cycle, maybe impeachment Trump would be a dumb idea because they tried it twice and it didn't seem to stop him.

00:46:33.000 You say we're going to do that. 0.60

00:46:34.000 No, there has to be cause.

00:46:35.000 There has to be reason.

00:46:36.000 We had review.

00:46:38.000 This is a very serious historic thing.

00:46:41.000 And our founders knew that there could be a rogue president and that's why they put impeachment in the Constitution.

00:46:48.000 They didn't know there'd be a rogue president at the same time, a rogue Senate that didn't have the courage to do the right thing.

00:46:56.000 Again, like, okay, maybe she's getting, maybe.

00:47:00.000 We'll find out.

00:47:01.000 Democrats, by the way, seem to be shying away from some of their older messaging, DEI and France.

00:47:06.000 And instead, they are moving again toward bread and butter, kitchen table issues.

00:47:10.000 The biggest one that they believe they have is Obamacare and the Obamacare subsidies.

00:47:13.000 According to Politico, Democrats have unified behind a simple message: extend the subsidies, keep health insurance premiums from spiking for more than 20 million Americans.

00:47:21.000 Meanwhile, Republicans are struggling to coalesce.

00:47:25.000 Well, that seems about right.

00:47:26.000 Now, again, Democrats don't actually have a plan to solve this other than just endless subsidies and in the end nationalized healthcare.

00:47:33.000 I guess points to RoCon, the Democrat from California, who continues to say the quiet part out loud.

00:47:37.000 He says we should just nationalize our healthcare system.

00:47:40.000 What do you want to say to those who are critical of the Democrats who say you're talking about affordability?

00:47:45.000 It was in fact your plan, Obamacare, which bankrupted businesses and continues to be incredibly expensive.

00:47:53.000 The high cost of the Democrats' health care plan did not work.

00:47:59.000 That's just not true.

00:48:00.000 Look, private health insurance is what's bankrupting America.

00:48:04.000 It was happening before the Affordable Care Act.

00:48:06.000 The Affordable Care Act helped slow the growth of private insurance.

00:48:10.000 But of course, it's not the solution.

00:48:11.000 The solution, as everyone knows, in my view, who studied this, is Medicare for all.

00:48:16.000 People should have national health insurance.

00:48:18.000 Healthcare is a human right.

00:48:21.000 Well, you know, saying the quiet part out loud, if Democrats decide to do that, things will not go so well.

00:48:25.000 If they just kind of do the soft version, which is subsidies until the end of time, I suppose that is a stronger political line.

00:48:31.000 Well, meanwhile, Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, is out there pointing out that the health of the U.S. government's finances are improving.

00:48:39.000 He says the current calendar year-to-date deficit is $1.52 trillion, which compares to a deficit of $1.93 trillion for the comparable period last year under Joe Biden, a 21% drop.

00:48:49.000 Not only is the deficit smaller under President Trump, the economy is bigger.

00:48:52.000 The full 2025 calendar year budget deficit to GDP may total only 5%, substantially lower than the unsustainably high 6.8% in calendar year 2024 under Joe Biden.

00:49:03.000 And then he says that we're going to grow our way out of debt and into prosperity.

00:49:07.000 I mean, listen, that's better than Joe Biden, but better than Joe Biden.

00:49:10.000 It's probably not a high enough standard.

00:49:12.000 The reality is that if you go back before 2020, our calendar year budget deficits were lower than a trillion dollars, with a few sort of exceptions, including in 2009 when you had the Obama bailouts and all the rest of it.

00:49:26.000 Even then, our calendar year budget deficit in 2009 was $1.41 trillion, which is lower than it is now.

00:49:33.000 And that was the year of the great recession.

00:49:36.000 Basically, this is the problem.

00:49:37.000 Government spending, a one-way ratchet, very, very difficult to ratchet it back down for all of the predictable reasons.

00:49:43.000 Alrighty, folks, coming up, it seems that one Republican might be interested in challenging JD Vance for the presidential nomination in 2028.

00:49:51.000 And not who you're thinking.

00:49:53.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:49:54.000 If you're not a member, become a member, use Code Shapiro.

00:49:56.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

00:49:58.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

00:50:02.000 Oh, this is an illusion.

00:50:05.000 An echo of a voice that has died.

00:50:09.000 and soon that echo will cease they say that merlin is mad They say he was a king in Dovid.

00:50:32.000 The son of a princess of lost Atlantis.

00:50:36.000 They say the future and the past are known to him.

00:50:41.000 That the fire and the wind tell him their secrets.

00:50:45.000 Let the magic of the hill folk and druids come forth at his easy command.

00:50:51.000 They say he slew hundreds.

00:50:54.000 Hundreds, do you hear?

00:50:56.000 That the world burned and trembled at his wrath.

00:51:03.000 The Merlin died long before you and I were born.

00:51:08.000 Merlin Emirus has returned to the land of the living.

00:51:14.000 Vortigen is gone.

00:51:16.000 Rome is gone.

00:51:18.000 The Saxon is here. 0.76

00:51:21.000 Saxon Hengist has assembled the greatest war host ever seen in the island of the mighty. 0.84

00:51:25.000 And before the summer is through, he means to take the throne.

00:51:30.000 And he will have it.

00:51:32.000 If we are too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to take up arms against him, here is your hope.

00:51:38.000 A king will arise to hold all Britain in his hand.

00:51:42.000 A high king who would be the wonder of the world.

00:51:46.000 You to a future of peace.

00:51:53.000 There'll be no peace in these lands till we are all dust.

00:51:56.000 Men of the island of the mighty!

00:51:59.000 You stand together!

00:52:02.000 You stand as Britons!

00:52:05.000 You stand as one.

00:52:09.000 Great darkness is falling upon this land.

00:52:13.000 These brothers are our only hope to stand against it.

00:52:17.000 Not our only hope.

00:52:20.000 Esay Merthen slew 70 men with his own hands.

00:52:24.000 At Cathay, he slew 500.

00:52:28.000 No man is capable of such a thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 16, 2025

The Dumbest Assumption In All Of Politics

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