The Ben Shapiro Show - The Economy Is About To Burst

00:00:00.000 After a big drop in the stock market, is the tech bubble about to burst?

00:00:03.000 And what does that mean for the Trump administration, affordability, and free markets?

00:00:07.000 First, there's still time to win my personal Daily Wire lifetime membership.

00:00:10.000 One winner will get all access for life.

00:00:12.000 Every feature we have today, every feature we build tomorrow, locked in for your lifetime.

00:00:16.000 All you have to do is download the free Dailywire Plus app on iOS or Android and tap follow right under this face.

00:00:22.000 That is your entry.

00:00:23.000 Or if you don't want to leave it to chance, you can purchase one of our 10,000 lifetime memberships yourself.

00:00:28.000 Fewer than 1,500 remain.

00:00:30.000 When they're gone, they are gone forever.

00:00:32.000 Go to dailywire.com/slash lifetime for all the details or to claim your spot in Dailywire history right now.

00:00:39.000 So yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled about 800 points.

00:00:39.000 All righty.

00:00:44.000 As of this morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures, those were also tumbling.

00:00:48.000 And the question is: what the hell is going on?

00:00:49.000 And it may be that many people are beginning to realize that a lot of these big tech companies, which are investing in each other, that they are betting on a payoff from AI that may not actually accrue to those companies.

00:01:00.000 So, for example, Oracle has become a heavy investor in OpenAI, which is the chat GPT company.

00:01:07.000 OpenAI is not publicly traded, but you have a bunch of publicly traded companies that are basically doing circular cash deals with OpenAI.

00:01:14.000 And so, if you're investing in Oracle, you are partially investing in, for example, OpenAI.

00:01:19.000 Or if you are investing in NVIDIA, you are partially investing in OpenAI.

00:01:23.000 A lot of money is being passed between all of these companies at the top end of the market because some provide services to other members of that particular crew.

00:01:32.000 Well, the problem is: is the gain from AI going to accrue to OpenAI?

00:01:38.000 Well, go to Meta.

00:01:40.000 Who will actually benefit from the productivity increases we're going to see from AI?

00:01:45.000 There's a difference between the proposition that AI is going to be transformative for the economy, which it absolutely will.

00:01:51.000 You will be using AI in your job if you're not already.

00:01:53.000 AI is going to increase productivity.

00:01:56.000 I use AI regularly, right?

00:01:58.000 Not just because Perplexity is one of our sponsors via Comet, but also because if I'm doing research, it is easier to get my research started by asking a sophisticated question of Comet, for example, and then to do my secondary research based off of that answer than it is to simply compile 10 different sources and then have to synthesize all of those sources just to answer a relatively simple question.

00:02:20.000 It saves a lot of time.

00:02:21.000 That's true for a lot of people.

00:02:22.000 But does that mean that those companies are then reaping the benefits in terms of profits to them?

00:02:29.000 What keeps the wheel spinning for those companies?

00:02:31.000 That's the question.

00:02:32.000 And a lot of investors are beginning to ask that particular question.

00:02:35.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. stocks posted their worst day in the month, unwinding a rally that began with news of a deal to end the federal government's longest closure.

00:02:42.000 Declines were broad, with tech stocks sliding alongside the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which lost almost 800 points.

00:02:49.000 Shares of smaller companies dropped, with the Russell 2000 index losing 2.8%.

00:02:52.000 Bitcoin also extended its recent fall, slipping back below $100,000 to its lowest 4 p.m. level since May.

00:03:00.000 President Trump signed, of course, that spending legislation late on Wednesday, but investors, according to the Wall Street Journal, are now worried the incoming torrent of data could swing markets and upend bets on a December interest rate cut they'd once taken for granted.

00:03:14.000 And actually, if you check with our sponsor, Calci, right now, on the odds that there will, in fact, be a rate cut, those odds have been plummeting all week long.

00:03:22.000 They've been going down.

00:03:23.000 In fact, right now, Calci has it as basically dead even on whether the Fed is going to cut or whether the Fed is not going to cut.

00:03:32.000 Like 50-50, essentially.

00:03:34.000 And I think that's about right.

00:03:36.000 In fact, I'm highly skeptical the Fed is going to cut rates given the current state of the economy because inflation has not been put to bed because liquidity actually is not all that hard to get for businesses right now.

00:03:48.000 And because inflating the economy by lowering those interest rates again and pumping more money into the economy could be a mistake.

00:03:57.000 So the SP 500 fell 1.7% on Thursday.

00:04:00.000 The Dow dropped 1.7%.

00:04:02.000 The tech-heavy NASDAQ composite sank 2.3%.

00:04:05.000 Those are the biggest declines for all three major indices since October 10th.

00:04:10.000 So what does it show?

00:04:12.000 If the economy is this responsive to the possibility of a Fed rate cut or a Fed rate increase, that is not a strong economy.

00:04:18.000 It isn't.

00:04:19.000 If what you're worried about is whether there's going to be incrementally lower interest rates for businesses to artificially spice things up in terms of liquidity, to inject more money into the economy, and that's what you're waiting on, that does not bode well.

00:04:33.000 It does not mean that the fundamentals seem particularly strong to me.

00:04:37.000 Why?

00:04:38.000 Well, again, because so much of what is happening at the top end of the market and the vast majority of the gains in the stock market are located in the Magnificent 7, in those top seven companies.

00:04:48.000 The rest of the stock market over the past couple of years has been essentially flat, maybe slight increase.

00:04:53.000 The top end of the market has exploded.

00:04:55.000 That's what's driven the Dow Jones industrial average up to 48,000.

00:05:00.000 But what exactly is happening at the top end of the market?

00:05:02.000 So back in October, there's a piece from the New York Times that explained how much money is passing hands between companies like, for example, OpenAI and companies like NVIDIA.

00:05:13.000 According to the New York Times, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, says technological revolutions are driven by more than technology.

00:05:20.000 They're driven by new ways of paying for them.

00:05:22.000 He recently said there is always a lot of focus on technological innovation.

00:05:26.000 What really drives a lot of progress is when people also figure out how to innovate on the financial model.

00:05:32.000 Now, that's true.

00:05:33.000 I mean, new financial tools do unlock new capacities for liquidity.

00:05:37.000 It is also true that new financial tools sometimes are very risky and dangerous.

00:05:43.000 Over the last several years, as the New York Times points out, Mr. Altman's company has found unusual and creative ways of paying for the computing power needed to fuel its ambitions.

00:05:52.000 Many of the deals OpenAI has struck with chipmakers, cloud computing companies, and others are strangely circular.

00:05:57.000 OpenAI receives billions from tech companies before sending those billions back to the same companies to pay for computing power and other services.

00:06:06.000 So, for example, from 2019 through 2023, Microsoft was OpenAI's primary investor.

00:06:13.000 Microsoft pumped more than $13 billion into the startup, and then OpenAI funneled most of those billions back into Microsoft, buying cloud computing power needed to fuel the development of new AI technologies.

00:06:26.000 By the summer of last year, OpenAI could not get all the computing power they wanted from Microsoft, so they started signing cloud computing contracts with other companies, including Oracle and little-known startups with names like Core Weave.

00:06:36.000 Across three different deals signed this year, OpenAI agreed to pay Core Weave, a company that builds AI data centers, more than $22 billion for computing power.

00:06:45.000 As part of these agreements, OpenAI receives $350 million in Core Weave stock, which could ultimately help pay for this computing power.

00:06:54.000 OpenAI struggled to get additional investment from Microsoft, so instead it went to SoftBank, which then lent it $40 billion.

00:07:02.000 At the same time, OpenAI has been working with various companies to build its own computing data centers rather than relying on cloud computing deals.

00:07:08.000 And that includes SoftBank.

00:07:10.000 So the company is raising $100 billion to help OpenAI build data centers in Texas and Ohio.

00:07:15.000 Oracle has agreed to spend $300 billion building new data centers for OpenAI in Texas, New Mexico, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

00:07:23.000 OpenAI will then pay Oracle roughly the same amount to use these computing facilities over the next several years.

00:07:30.000 So, again, there's a lot of circular money movement right here.

00:07:35.000 Last month, NVIDIA announced it intends to invest $100 billion in OpenAI over the next several years, which will help OpenAI pay for its new data centers.

00:07:43.000 And then OpenAI will use that money to buy chips from NVIDIA.

00:07:48.000 So again, there's nothing particularly corrupt about all of this, but it's everybody betting on the same horses over and over and over and over.

00:07:55.000 If you keep betting on the same horses over and over and over, and those horses don't come in, things get ugly.

00:08:00.000 What happens if OpenAI does not deliver the gains it has promised everybody?

00:08:03.000 Well, it's not going to be able to pay for all of those bills.

00:08:05.000 It's not going to be able to pay Oracle or NVIDIA or any of the other companies that bet on it.

00:08:11.000 In fact, according to Baron's, Oracle stock has given back all the gains from the cloud computing group NVIDIA Moment as investors grow increasingly cautious over investments linked to the AI boom and shares just keep falling.

00:08:22.000 When Oracle reported earnings in September, the results included a massive revenue forecast.

00:08:27.000 That forecast has become a source of consternation due to the source of that revenue, OpenAI, which plans to spend $1.4 trillion building and accessing AI data centers over the next decade.

00:08:37.000 In fact, Oracle is also trading at least in part as a proxy for OpenAI.

00:08:41.000 Remember, OpenAI is a private company.

00:08:42.000 What does that mean?

00:08:43.000 It means you and I, we can't buy stock in OpenAI.

00:08:47.000 The only companies that are buying stock from OpenAI are making private deals for OpenAI.

00:08:53.000 Okay, but it is not publicly traded, so we don't know its actual real market valuation at this point.

00:09:00.000 And again, are the gains to OpenAI, the profits to OpenAI going to accrue to a multiple of seven or 10 or 15 from where they currently are, their earnings?

00:09:09.000 That would just be to pay their bills and keep the lights on.

00:09:11.000 And that would have to happen pretty fast.

00:09:15.000 One of its biggest commitments is a reported $300 billion agreement to buy computing power for Oracle.

00:09:20.000 That deal represented about 65% of its so-called RPO forecast that sent the stock soaring in early September.

00:09:26.000 But a lot has happened since then.

00:09:29.000 Oracle tapped the corporate bond market for an $18 billion debt sale that triggered a wave of new issues from tech giants like Meta.

00:09:36.000 Private credit markets wobbled following a spate of auto-related bankruptcies and broader market liquidity dried up.

00:09:41.000 So again, one of the reasons why they're going to need market liquidity is to make these sorts of deals.

00:09:47.000 So again, optimism around AI eventually, it could peter out, given the fact that earnings, it's going to take a while for those earnings to actually accrue.

00:09:56.000 And stock traders, you know, unless the stock keeps going up, caution is warranted.

00:10:01.000 And so people are starting to divest a little bit from the top of the market.

00:10:05.000 That's why you're seeing the market start to drop a little bit right now.

00:10:09.000 And you could see that turn into a wave if, for example, OpenAI ever reports any bad news.

00:10:14.000 Or if one of these other major AI companies starts to report decreased profit share.

00:10:21.000 Or people start to think, generally speaking, that it'll take longer for AI to filter into every aspect of the market and then down to the original companies than they thought it would.

00:10:30.000 There's some early indicators that's happening, by the way.

00:10:33.000 Alrighty, coming up, more economic reports, some little bit disquieting.

00:10:37.000 We'll get to that in a moment.

00:10:38.000 First, Grand Canyon University, an affordable private Christian university based in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, is one of the largest universities in the country.

00:10:45.000 Praised for its culture of community and impact, GCU integrates the free market system, a welcoming Christian worldview, and free and open discourse into 369 academic programs with over 300 online.

00:10:56.000 Join a nationwide community of learners redefining online education through GCU's 100% online MBA degree program.

00:11:02.000 Learn ethical entrepreneurship and scale your business to serve your community.

00:11:06.000 In addition to federal grants and aid, GCU's online students received nearly $161 million in institutional scholarships in 2024.

00:11:13.000 Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University.

00:11:15.000 Private, Christian, affordable. 0.94

00:11:17.000 Visit gcu.edu slash myoffer to see the scholarships you may qualify for.

00:11:21.000 GCU is a terrific school.

00:11:23.000 Their campus is beautiful.

00:11:24.000 Great people over there.

00:11:25.000 I visited their campus.

00:11:26.000 I mean, it really is like a gorgeous campus. 0.86

00:11:28.000 And again, you're going to get an education that's actually worth it because they're not going to teach you a bunch of trash values.

00:11:33.000 Instead, they'll teach you eternal truths.

00:11:35.000 Head on over to gcu.edu slash myoffer and check them out.

00:11:39.000 Also, this episode is brought to you by PrizePicks.

00:11:41.000 We all make decisions every day on prize picks.

00:11:43.000 Being right can get you paid.

00:11:45.000 Don't miss any of the excitement this sports season on prize picks.

00:11:48.000 Whether you're a football fan, basketball fan, fan of both, the way that I am, it always feels good to be right.

00:11:52.000 So, producer Jake, who is the guy who's doing this the most, he has some more action on the NFL this weekend.

00:11:57.000 He's been doing well, not well enough to quit yet.

00:12:00.000 Jake picked Casey's Travis Kelsey to have fewer than 42.5 receiving yards versus Denver on Sunday.

00:12:05.000 He also picked Matthew Stafford to have more than 1.5 pass touchdowns versus Seattle.

00:12:10.000 Those both seem like good bets to me.

00:12:11.000 Travis Kelsey feels like he's a little on the way in.

00:12:13.000 No, PrizePicks makes daily fantasy simple.

00:12:15.000 Just pick more or less on at least two player projections.

00:12:18.000 And when you get your picks right, you could cash in.

00:12:20.000 Here's what's new: PrizePicks now offers stacks.

00:12:23.000 So you can pick the same player up to three times in one lineup.

00:12:25.000 Want to go all in on Steph Curry's points, threes, assists?

00:12:28.000 Well, now you can stack them all together in the same lineup only on PrizePicks.

00:12:31.000 You can also follow other PrizePicks players directly on the app and copy their lineups in one click.

00:12:35.000 Whether it's a friend or just somebody whose picks you like, hit that button, check out every lineup they create in that new feed tap.

00:12:40.000 And if one of your players gets injured in the first half and doesn't come back, PrizePicks won't count it as a loss with their injury reboots.

00:12:45.000 Withdrawals are fast and secure.

00:12:47.000 Options like Venmo, Apple Pay MasterCard, and more for quick and easy deposits.

00:12:50.000 Join millions of users on America's number one fantasy sports app.

00:12:54.000 Download PrizePicks today.

00:12:55.000 Put your skills to the test this season.

00:12:56.000 Download that PrizePicks app today.

00:12:58.000 Use Code Ben to get 50 bucks in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.

00:13:01.000 That's Code Ben.

00:13:02.000 Get $50 in lineups after you play that first $5 lineup PrizePicks.

00:13:05.000 It's good to be right.

00:13:06.000 According to CNBC, professional investors have been using the market's record-setting run as an opportunity to take profits.

00:13:12.000 Retail investors have been doing much of the heavy lifting in the latest run of the three-year-old bull market.

00:13:17.000 Hedge funds and other institutional clients have been the biggest net sellers of single stocks and exchange-traded funds this year, unloading more than $67 billion worth of equities in 2025.

00:13:26.000 Now, if institutional investors are being replaced by retail investors, institutional investors are significantly more sophisticated than retail investors, just generally speaking.

00:13:37.000 Hedge fund managers are doing this for a living.

00:13:39.000 They're doing this with large amounts of money.

00:13:41.000 They're doing this with 401ks and trust funds.

00:13:44.000 They're doing this with gigantic pension funds.

00:13:48.000 So if in fact they are pulling out of the market and you are buying stock from a hedge fund, you might want to think about who's more sophisticated, you or the hedge fund.

00:13:58.000 Retail investors might be pushing up the market, but the reality is that the people who are the sophisticated investors are saying, I'm going to get out.

00:14:06.000 Well, the getting is good, at least at the top end of the market.

00:14:09.000 Now, again, I'm not saying that a stock market crash is imminent.

00:14:12.000 I'm saying that there is a bubble, it seems to me, in a lot of areas.

00:14:16.000 In real estate, there's a bubble.

00:14:17.000 In tech, there is a bubble.

00:14:19.000 And when you have a market that is this frothy, the possibility of bubbles bursting is pretty robust.

00:14:25.000 That doesn't mean recession or depression, but it does mean the possibility of stagnation.

00:14:29.000 Since, again, so much economic growth right now is predicated on tech.

00:14:35.000 According to the CNBC, retail investors have been the market's backbone, the most consistent dip buyers since 2020, a behavior forged during the pandemic rebound, the Wall Street Investment Bank said.

00:14:45.000 That strategy has paid off handsomely as the SP 500 reached multiple all-time highs this year.

00:14:50.000 Now, again, why?

00:14:52.000 Part of the inflationary market is people actually getting more dollars from the federal government.

00:14:57.000 One of the reasons why there's been a push by many members of the government for the Federal Reserve to lower those interest rates is because they are hoping retail investors will take that money and then sink it back into the stock market.

00:15:09.000 That tension will be in focus this week as scores of high-profile institutional investors gather at CNBC's Delivering Alpha Investor Summit on Thursday in New York City, offering the world a chance to hear how some of the industry's most influential voices are navigating this volatile market.

00:15:24.000 Again, I would be wary, and frankly, I am wary.

00:15:28.000 Meanwhile, other signs that things may be starting to slow.

00:15:33.000 Foreclosures are once again on the rise in the United States.

00:15:36.000 New data from ATTOM shows more homeowners falling behind on their mortgages amid job losses and soaring living costs, according to the Daily Mail.

00:15:43.000 In October alone, there were 36,766 foreclosure filings, the first step up in the process when a lender warns a borrower they're in default.

00:15:51.000 That's up 3% from September and 19% from a year ago.

00:15:56.000 Today's homeowners have safer loans, and the real estate values haven't dropped so dramatically.

00:16:01.000 So, if a bank has to foreclose, it's not like it's going to completely take the legs out from under the bank the way that it did during the crash of 2008.

00:16:09.000 But as those foreclosure rates go up, a couple things happen: one is good and one is bad.

00:16:14.000 The good thing that's happening is that that is the additional supply that you need in the market.

00:16:18.000 So, if you're worried about not being able to afford a house, it turns out that when people can't afford their current houses and they get out and the bank has to seize that house and then resell it, the price are going to go down.

00:16:27.000 It's additional supply.

00:16:29.000 But it is also a sign that people can't afford things right now.

00:16:32.000 Both those things are true at the same exact time. 0.79

00:16:34.000 Meanwhile, companies are cutting jobs.

00:16:37.000 I mean, there's no question this is happening.

00:16:38.000 Verizon is planning to cut roughly 15,000 jobs.

00:16:42.000 The cuts are the largest ever for the carrier, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:16:45.000 They're set to take place in the next week.

00:16:47.000 The majority of the reduction is expected to be made through layoffs.

00:16:51.000 Verizon is also going to transition its stores into franchise operations, which is going to shift employees off its own payroll.

00:17:00.000 Now, they've lost a lot of phone subscribers.

00:17:03.000 There's a lot of competition in this area for sure.

00:17:06.000 But again, one of the things that we are seeing here is big companies that are running into headwinds, clearly.

00:17:14.000 Okay, so if affordability is a problem, if we are worried about the stock market, if we're concerned that Americans are going to suffer some significant temporary job dislocation as AI starts to filter into the market, if we're doing what is the solution to all of that now, there are two solutions that are basically being offered.

00:17:34.000 One used to be called left-wing and one used to be called right-wing, but we don't actually have a left and a right anymore since pretty much all economic discussions now cross-cut.

00:17:43.000 There are people who are voting Republican who agree with Elizabeth Warren on economics.

00:17:47.000 I can't say there are a lot of people who are voting Democrat who agree with me on economics, but you know, that is what it is.

00:17:53.000 The Democrats' proposal is socialism.

00:17:56.000 Their proposal is big government interventionism, ban things, regulate things, force sales, take over businesses, tax the hell out of people.

00:18:05.000 More government involvement supposedly will solve affordability.

00:18:08.000 It will supposedly create more broad-based prosperity, take money away from the top end of the market, supposedly get rid of the market cap of Oracle or Meta, and suddenly people will become richer.

00:18:20.000 Now, again, there's no logic to this.

00:18:22.000 The thing that actually makes people richer is innovation.

00:18:25.000 The thing that actually makes people's lives better is innovation.

00:18:28.000 Remember, money is just a ruler.

00:18:30.000 The amount of money you make is a ruler.

00:18:32.000 What I mean by that is you use a ruler to measure things.

00:18:35.000 The amount of money you make is a measurement of the goods that you can buy in exchange for the money.

00:18:40.000 So you could titularly be making tons and tons and tons of money in a particular currency.

00:18:45.000 If the currency is inflated and you're carrying it around in a wheelbarrow, it'll buy you nothing.

00:18:49.000 That's true in, for example, Venezuela.

00:18:51.000 It was true until very recently in Argentina.

00:18:54.000 The real question is: what's the kind of stuff that you can get today?

00:18:58.000 Innovation makes your stuff better and it makes your stuff cheaper.

00:19:00.000 Competition makes your stuff better and it makes your stuff cheaper.

00:19:03.000 All of that is true.

00:19:05.000 But socialists believe that if they take control of all of the means of distribution, it used to be about the means of production.

00:19:11.000 They seem to have given up on that in large part.

00:19:13.000 Now they're more about the means of distribution of cash.

00:19:16.000 If they just redistribute all day long, this will somehow make Americans better off.

00:19:21.000 But again, the reality is forward progress in material terms is reliant on innovation, on the development of new products and services.

00:19:30.000 Democrats don't want to believe this.

00:19:31.000 So one of your choices is momdaniism, where you yell about how things are unfair, and then you try to tax the hell out of people, and then they leave your jurisdiction, and then you tax the hell out of the second richest people, and then they leave your jurisdiction.

00:19:44.000 And then the services you're providing don't actually stack up because it turns out that if nobody has an interest in protecting private property, then actually the places they live get worse.

00:19:54.000 This is what happened with supposed affordable housing in, for example, St. Louis when the government tried this in the 60s.

00:20:01.000 They tried to build these gigantic affordable housing complexes, government-owned, and people treated them like trash because they felt no actual responsibility for a thing they didn't own.

00:20:10.000 Nonetheless, this is what Democrats are pushing.

00:20:12.000 This would be the AOC wing of the Democratic Party.

00:20:14.000 So AOC and parts of the Democratic Party that are growing believe that sort of traditional Democratic Party politics are over, that it's time to basically shut everything down, shut everything down in the name of vast government redistributionism.

00:20:31.000 Especially with this administration, my concern is that the lesson that they're learning is that Democrats are elite and that next time we just need to hurt working people and working Americans more to get them to fold.

00:20:42.000 And I don't want them to learn that lesson.

00:20:44.000 And I want us to be a party that says we're going to get results for people.

00:20:48.000 Okay, the AOC part of the Democratic Party is on the ascent.

00:20:52.000 There's no question that's the case.

00:20:53.000 Yesterday, Zaran Mamdani, the self-stated socialist, held a secretive meeting, according to the New York Post, with far-left U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday, a sit-down that was captured by an eagle-eyed New Yorker whose office is across from the mayor-elect headquarters.

00:21:07.000 She then tweeted out, tax the rich, billionaire tears not pictured, which, I mean, pathetic, truly pathetic. 0.92

00:21:16.000 Tax the rich, billionaires, not, billionaire tiers not pictured. 0.96

00:21:20.000 Okay, the people who are paying all the bills in New York City are the rich people.

00:21:24.000 That is just true by the tax receipts in New York City.

00:21:29.000 There are a lot of people in New York who pay taxes.

00:21:31.000 The people who are paying net taxes, meaning taxes minus the benefits received from the government, those people are at the top of the income spectrum.

00:21:38.000 That is also true federally.

00:21:40.000 But the idea here is to punish rich people, that if you just punish them hard enough, suddenly things will get better.

00:21:45.000 Now, the problem with this theory is it doesn't work.

00:21:48.000 Punishing the rich doesn't make everybody richer.

00:21:50.000 It just makes rich people poorer.

00:21:52.000 That's all.

00:21:53.000 And then everybody gets poorer because nobody has money to invest in innovation, for example.

00:21:57.000 And I understand all the dyspepsia about innovation.

00:21:59.000 I just talked about some of the dyspepsia in the middle of a bubble.

00:22:04.000 Joseph Schumpeter, the famous economist, talked about creative destruction.

00:22:07.000 He talked about the idea that when you have markets, free markets tend to make bad things in the market or less efficient things in the market obsolete, and that destroys them.

00:22:17.000 And in the short term, that looks bad, but it's creative because what grows out of that is something better.

00:22:22.000 That if you want an automobile-based economy, it will destroy the wheel rights, the people who make wheels for wagons.

00:22:28.000 Those people will no longer actually have a job, but then they will find new jobs.

00:22:33.000 And so in the moment, it'll look really bad.

00:22:36.000 That's also true with regard to AI.

00:22:37.000 I understand there are some of the AI doomers out there who believe that AI is going to take everybody's job.

00:22:41.000 I don't believe that's the case.

00:22:43.000 I think that AI will end up being a supplement in the way that virtually all other technologies are supplements to your jobs.

00:22:48.000 There are certain jobs that will probably get automated out of existence where AI will do them.

00:22:53.000 Ironically, those will likely be the very white-collar jobs that the media was touting about 15 years ago when members of the media were telling welders to code.

00:23:02.000 Well, now it seems much more likely that coders are going to have to learn to weld because AI is actually quite good at the things that the coders taught the AI to do, like coding.

00:23:12.000 So it'll be fascinating to see which ways the job market moves.

00:23:15.000 In fact, the job market is likely to move more toward a blue collar than it is to move toward sort of middle management white collar.

00:23:21.000 But the market will change.

00:23:23.000 The market will move.

00:23:24.000 Things will become more efficient.

00:23:25.000 Everything will become cheaper.

00:23:27.000 These are good things.

00:23:28.000 Again, not to pretend there are no downsides to AI, particularly in the immediate term, but the sort of Luddite philosophy that if you take a technology out to a field and beat it to death with a hammer, that somehow you're going to be able to prevent the future from happening, unlikely.

00:23:42.000 Other countries like China will just take an advantage on you and then they will undercut your entire market and they will gain global market share and they will gain more geopolitical power and you will have worse products for a higher price working a worse job.

00:23:55.000 That is the likely outcome of worse tech because historically that's the outcome of worst tech.

00:24:00.000 Coming up, we'll get into what should the strategy be with regard to affordability and the housing market and all the rest.

00:24:06.000 But first, look, I'm on the road constantly covering news stories, political events, you name it. between the flights and the hotel room.

00:24:11.000 Sometimes getting that proper nutritional meal is the first thing that goes out the window.

00:24:14.000 But here's the thing.

00:24:15.000 I've got a wife and kids at home and I need to stay healthy.

00:24:18.000 That's why I started taking Balance of Nature's fruits and veggies supplements.

00:24:21.000 These are the original whole food supplements.

00:24:23.000 16 fruits, 15 veggies, freezed right into capsules.

00:24:25.000 As somebody who keeps kosher, I appreciate there are no binders, no fillers, no flow agents, just 100% whole food ingredients.

00:24:31.000 Nothing that shouldn't be in there.

00:24:33.000 When I'm rushing through an airport, I can take them with water.

00:24:35.000 If I'm in the car between interviews, I can chew them.

00:24:36.000 Sometimes I'll pop those capsules, mix the powder into my smoothies.

00:24:40.000 However, the day is going, Balance of Nature makes my day go better.

00:24:42.000 Balance of Nature delivers the natural goodness of fruits, veggies, spices, and fibers just as nature intended, which means even when I'm a couple thousand miles from home, I'm still taking care of myself the way my family needs me to.

00:24:52.000 After years of research and development, they've truly created something that makes getting proper nutrition convenient for any lifestyle.

00:24:58.000 Head on over, balanceofnature.com, get a free fiber and spice supplement plus 35% off your first set as a new preferred customer by using discount code Shapiro.

00:25:07.000 Also, it is November.

00:25:09.000 Gift-giving season is looming like a certain socialist mayor over New Yorker's wallets.

00:25:13.000 But you don't have to sweat it because the Daily Wire shop is your go-to for conservative gifting.

00:25:17.000 Introducing the all-new Truth Bomb Driver Empire covers.

00:25:21.000 Behold these.

00:25:22.000 Behold.

00:25:23.000 Cast your eyes upon these products and notice what you could have.

00:25:27.000 But it's not just that.

00:25:28.000 We also have, check this out.

00:25:31.000 This is the Lions and Scavengers hoodie.

00:25:34.000 It's actually very cool.

00:25:36.000 It fits beautifully.

00:25:37.000 You will love wearing this every second of the day.

00:25:41.000 Well, you can get these and up to 30% off.

00:25:43.000 Great gifts for conservatives in your life.

00:25:45.000 Like this New York Times bestseller.

00:25:46.000 Look, this one right here.

00:25:47.000 Lions and scavengers.

00:25:48.000 The signed copies are available only at the Daily Wire shop.

00:25:52.000 And again, like that, that sweatshirt.

00:25:53.000 That was inspired by the book.

00:25:54.000 Go to dailywire.com/slash shop.

00:25:56.000 Take advantage of early Black Friday deals.

00:25:58.000 Enjoy holiday anticipation stress-free.

00:26:00.000 We're launching all new items and you can get great deals on all your favorites.

00:26:02.000 So keep checking back.

00:26:03.000 That's dailywire.com slash shop.

00:26:06.000 So what are the actual strategies that people who are, say, capitalists can use with regard to a lot of the economic unease right now?

00:26:12.000 Because there's no question people are feeling uneasy.

00:26:15.000 And that's totally understandable.

00:26:17.000 Prices are really high, obviously.

00:26:19.000 It costs a lot of money to buy a home.

00:26:22.000 There's a big argument online yesterday about in 1950, a man and his wife and his two kids, he could work a job and he could own a home and you can't do that today.

00:26:30.000 And people were pointing out that the homes in 1950 kind of sucked.

00:26:32.000 They were like 900 square feet.

00:26:35.000 And the guy's job wasn't that great.

00:26:36.000 He was riveting in a factory.

00:26:37.000 And also the entire rest of the world was destroyed by World War II. 0.52

00:26:40.000 That's true.

00:26:41.000 But that doesn't alleviate the fact that there are a lot of people right now who would like to buy a home who cannot afford to buy a home.

00:26:48.000 So what policy changes can be made?

00:26:49.000 We've been talking about this for days.

00:26:51.000 Now, again, there are two separate questions to be asked that people are conflating.

00:26:55.000 I think dishonestly.

00:26:56.000 One is, what should you on a personal level do right now?

00:26:59.000 And the answer for you on a personal level is to make a personal decision.

00:27:04.000 And that personal decision may involve looking at your circumstances, where you live and deciding you can get a better job elsewhere.

00:27:10.000 And that's not the end of the world.

00:27:12.000 That is not, in fact, a fundamental betrayal of the American contract.

00:27:16.000 Okay, you deciding that you wish to leave home to go to college, that you wish to leave college to go to a different city for a job.

00:27:25.000 And people have been doing this for literally all of human history and all of American history.

00:27:30.000 Now, that doesn't, that's a different question from what can we do on a broad national or local scale in order to make things more affordable.

00:27:35.000 New York is never going to be as affordable as Des Moines, Iowa.

00:27:38.000 It's not going to.

00:27:39.000 Nothing you do.

00:27:40.000 There are no policy things you can do that will make New York as affordable as Des Moines.

00:27:44.000 Why?

00:27:45.000 Because there are a lot more people in New York and a lot less real estate in New York and a lot more demand and a lot less supply.

00:27:49.000 So things will be more expensive in New York.

00:27:51.000 That's just a reality of the world.

00:27:52.000 And yes, there are things you can do to bring down costs somewhat significantly, but it's never going to be the price of Iowa to live in New York.

00:28:00.000 That's just not the way that it works.

00:28:02.000 It has never worked that way.

00:28:03.000 And literally all of human history has never worked that way.

00:28:06.000 So recognizing economic realities, what can you do to alleviate some of these problems?

00:28:11.000 Well, I'll tell you what you can't do is denial.

00:28:13.000 Politically speaking, denial is a bad idea.

00:28:15.000 So the administration lately has tried this.

00:28:19.000 Barack Obama used to do this back when the economy under Barack Obama was bad, which it was.

00:28:19.000 Again, this is nothing new.

00:28:24.000 Barack Obama used to say that people just don't understand what we're doing.

00:28:28.000 If we just articulate it better, then they'll understand.

00:28:30.000 That tech never works.

00:28:32.000 President Trump has been trying to do this a little bit.

00:28:35.000 He's been going on shows and doing interviews in which he says that people just don't understand how good the economy is.

00:28:42.000 Again, trying to talk people into feeling good, try it with your wife sometime. 1.00

00:28:47.000 Seriously, like talking people into feeling good is almost never successful.

00:28:51.000 The vice president was trying that yesterday.

00:28:52.000 Here he was on Fox News.

00:28:55.000 I know that there are a lot of people out there, Sean, who are saying things are expensive.

00:29:00.000 And we have to remember they're expensive because we inherited this terrible inflation crisis from the Biden administration.

00:29:07.000 But you've already seen signs that things are getting better.

00:29:10.000 The price of eggs has gone way down.

00:29:13.000 The price of energy has gone way down.

00:29:15.000 The price of gasoline has gone way down.

00:29:17.000 And as we know, when the price of energy goes down, that starts to filter out into the entire economy, but that also takes a little bit of time.

00:29:28.000 So, yeah, again, that is not wrong.

00:29:32.000 It's just not likely to be convincing to the American people.

00:29:34.000 So what strategies can actually be tried?

00:29:35.000 Well, one strategy is to yell at the Fed.

00:29:38.000 The administration has tried this also, yelling at the Fed, telling them they need to lower those interest rates more to therefore inject more liquidity into the economy, and that this somehow won't be inflationary.

00:29:48.000 Here's the thing.

00:29:49.000 All the Fed can do is control the money supply.

00:29:51.000 That's all they do.

00:29:52.000 They control the money supply.

00:29:53.000 They do it directly and they do it indirectly.

00:29:55.000 The indirect version is by lowering that open markets overnight rate.

00:29:58.000 That's the way they lower.

00:30:00.000 You can go view a YouTube video that I did a few years back, searching on YouTube, where I explain exactly what the Federal Reserve does in order to inject liquidity into the economy and how it relates to inflation.

00:30:10.000 Peter Navarro, who of course is a tariff hawk, he loves tariffs, big on tariffs.

00:30:16.000 He's blaming Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve for lack of growth.

00:30:21.000 I think that Jay Powell is almost purposely being an obstructionist to this administration.

00:30:29.000 He's been through this the last time.

00:30:30.000 He's doing it again.

00:30:31.000 I don't know why.

00:30:32.000 The man is costing this country literally hundreds of billions of dollars in growth and thousands of jobs.

00:30:43.000 So no, actually, I'm not a fan of Jerome Powell's policies.

00:30:48.000 I think that he's been late on the ball every time.

00:30:49.000 I think he was inflationary.

00:30:50.000 I think that inflationary policy has been significantly more damaging than the somewhat moderate delays in lowering those interest rates.

00:30:58.000 Blaming Jerome Powell for stagnation at the, you can blame Jerome Powell for inflation.

00:31:02.000 Blaming him for a stagnation, I think, is another question.

00:31:05.000 That's not going to do it.

00:31:06.000 So what could do it?

00:31:08.000 Ironically, the Trump administration is now tacitly acknowledging that the tariff regime that they put in place actually does damage Americans at, for example, the supermarket.

00:31:16.000 So yesterday, the Trump administration said import taxes on coffee and bananas will be lowered as part of trade deals with four Latin American countries.

00:31:25.000 The agreements with Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Ecuador come as President Trump faces scrutiny over his handling of the economy and concerns about affordability.

00:31:34.000 As part of an initial framework, a reciprocal tariff of 10% will stay on goods from Guatemala, Argentina, and El Salvador, as will a 15% tax on imports from Ecuador into the U.S.

00:31:43.000 But the deals will exempt products that cannot be produced in the United States in sufficient quantities, like coffee.

00:31:50.000 The U.S.-Argentina deal also addresses beef producers' access to foreign markets.

00:31:54.000 So I'm just going to point out right now that this is a tacit admission that tariffs increase prices on American consumers.

00:32:01.000 That's what it is.

00:32:02.000 If you say, I want the prices to go down on bananas and thus I have removed the tariffs on bananas, what does that mean?

00:32:09.000 It means that, yes, by restricting supply through tariffs to bananas, the prices of bananas go up.

00:32:14.000 This is true for all other products as well.

00:32:17.000 When you put tariffs on products, the prices tend to go up because, of course, you're putting an artificial restriction on the supply of the product.

00:32:25.000 As we discussed yesterday and will continue to discuss, the laws of supply and demand are very basic.

00:32:30.000 If the demand remains stable and the supply goes down, the prices go up.

00:32:34.000 Again, if there are fewer bananas and the same number of people to buy those bananas and more people competing to buy those bananas, the price goes up.

00:32:41.000 So the president acknowledging that coffee is too expensive and bananas are too expensive, and thus perhaps we should lower the tariffs on coffee and bananas.

00:32:48.000 What if we took that logic and extended over a wide variety of other products?

00:32:53.000 Wouldn't that be nice?

00:32:54.000 That might seem like a thing worth doing.

00:32:57.000 And one of the things worth pointing out is that when the president says he's keeping blanket tariffs on countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, Ecuador, Argentina, and then he says he's going to carve out things like bananas and coffee, that is a pretty giant carve out.

00:33:09.000 In fact, I asked our sponsors over at Comet, a project of perplexity, what are the top products exported to the United States by Guatemala, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Argentina?

00:33:18.000 Please list percentages.

00:33:20.000 The top exports from Guatemala, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Argentina to the United States consist mainly of agricultural products, textiles, and primary commodities, with most recent percentages reflecting their significance in trade for 2024 to 2025.

00:33:33.000 Guatemala, 22.9% of their export market to the United States is bananas.

00:33:39.000 Another 11% is knit sweaters, and 9% is coffee.

00:33:43.000 Other products include melons, papayas, and apparel.

00:33:46.000 So I just have a question.

00:33:47.000 Are those products you want to pay more for because we are protecting the domestic papaya industry or the domestic melon industry?

00:33:55.000 It seems to me the answer is no.

00:33:57.000 How about El Salvador?

00:33:58.000 El Salvador, 44.5% of their exports to the United States are knit or crocheted apparel.

00:34:04.000 I mean, I understand that the knitting industry in the United States requires significant protection.

00:34:09.000 I mean, the Knitters Association of America must be upheld at all costs.

00:34:14.000 But I mean, come on.

00:34:16.000 Ecuador, crude oil is 25.1%.

00:34:20.000 Fish, 20.3%.

00:34:22.000 Fruits and nuts like bananas and plantains, 12.4%.

00:34:25.000 Cocoa, 11%.

00:34:28.000 So, you know, when I look at these percentages, I think these are pretty big carve-outs, number one.

00:34:31.000 And number two, this is in fact a tacit admission.

00:34:34.000 Of course, of course, because basic economics is correct, that if you wish to lower prices, perhaps you should remove trade barriers on the countries that are going to supply you cheaper and better products.

00:34:44.000 By the way, it is worth noting that there is a reason why competitors try to cut off foreign markets for their competitors.

00:34:53.000 So again, tacit admission.

00:34:55.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon is now joining Microsoft in supporting legislation that threatens to further limit NVIDIA's ability to export to China.

00:35:03.000 The moves by Microsoft and Amazon to work against a company they are deeply intertwined with highlights the fierce nature of the AI race.

00:35:09.000 The companies are all jockeying for favorable policy to stay ahead of competitors.

00:35:13.000 NVIDIA is fighting for access to the Chinese market despite security concerns.

00:35:18.000 Microsoft came out publicly in favor of legislation in order to stop the distribution of NVIDIA chips.

00:35:25.000 Officials at Amazon's cloud unit have said that they support it as well.

00:35:29.000 Why?

00:35:30.000 Well, because it gives Microsoft and Amazon preferential access to the chips at their data centers around the world.

00:35:34.000 Now, I actually agree that there should be significant restrictions on the export of NVIDIA chips to China.

00:35:39.000 The Chinese are our enemies. 1.00

00:35:41.000 They're our geopolitical opponents.

00:35:42.000 Shipping them, our best tech, is a huge, gigantic mistake.

00:35:47.000 But I think one of the reasons, obviously, Microsoft and Google and Amazon are doing all this is because they would very much prefer to have preferential pricing on the chips by removing a potential market in China.

00:36:00.000 Okay, so affordability.

00:36:03.000 The Federal Reserve ain't going to do it.

00:36:04.000 How about trade?

00:36:05.000 Well, maybe if we got rid of some of those tariffs, that would help, which is, again, a free market policy.

00:36:10.000 How about deregulation?

00:36:11.000 Deregulation would help. 1.00

00:36:12.000 Well, the Trump administration is, in fact, pursuing that in some areas.

00:36:16.000 The Trump administration announced Thursday that oil and gas drilling would be allowed in a fragile expanse of tundra and wetlands in northern Alaska that is home to caribou, grizzly bears, and thousands of migratory birds.

00:36:25.000 I remember writing about this back when I was in college.

00:36:27.000 That was now 25 years ago.

00:36:29.000 The move reverses actions taken during the Biden administration to restrict development in half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, that is 23.5 million acres of federal land in the North Slope.

00:36:40.000 The expanse is some of the last remaining pristine wilderness in the country.

00:36:44.000 Okay, America has a lot of wilderness and a lot of pristine wilderness, of course.

00:36:49.000 Unlocking more jobs, unlocking more oil production will bring down prices.

00:36:53.000 That is the nature of creating more supply.

00:36:55.000 That is a good policy.

00:36:57.000 On healthcare, the GOP can also move to make things more affordable.

00:37:02.000 How?

00:37:02.000 By removing regulations.

00:37:04.000 The reality is that the Democrats have suggested, again, when we talk about Democrat solutions, they always involve redistribution and seizure of wealth.

00:37:12.000 The Democrats have suggested the only way to bring down the cost of health care is to subsidize healthcare, therefore raising the cost of healthcare.

00:37:17.000 There's a reason that the price of healthcare in the United States has continued to outpace the market.

00:37:24.000 Rich Lowry has a good column at the New York Post.

00:37:26.000 He says, as Avic Roy of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity points out, and Avic Roy is a very, very good scholar, Barack Obama ran for president promising his healthcare reform would reduce premiums by $2,500 per family.

00:37:39.000 Roy notes that the premiums for the benchmark silver Obamacare plans have nearly tripled since 2013.

00:37:46.000 Deductibles for those same silver plans have more than doubled, outpacing the rate of increase for employer-sponsored plans.

00:37:51.000 So, actually, the price of Obamacare is increasing faster than like your private health insurance.

00:37:56.000 Democrats don't even pretend anymore that Obamacare is going to reduce the cost. 0.95

00:38:00.000 Instead, they say we have to just keep pouring money down that rat hole.

00:38:04.000 The biggest problem with Obamacare, of course, is that it redistributes healthcare coverage from young people to old people. 0.62

00:38:09.000 That's what it does.

00:38:10.000 It forces young people to buy a particular level of healthcare coverage in order to be covered in the Obamacare exchanges.

00:38:18.000 And then they use that money to pay for older people and their health insurance.

00:38:23.000 Instead, what Avik Roy proposes is a more free market solution, what's called a reinsurance program, which pays the cost of people with preexisting conditions, which is a straight-up subsidy to people with pre-existing conditions, which has always been the problem.

00:38:36.000 Because insurance for people who have preexisting conditions is not insurance, it's just healthcare.

00:38:42.000 I can't buy insurance for a broken leg after I have a broken leg.

00:38:45.000 If I do that, that's just called healthcare.

00:38:47.000 It's like buying fire insurance for your house after it's burned down already.

00:38:51.000 The age ban imposed by Obamacare, which mandates that young people can't pay too much less than old people, should be eliminated.

00:38:57.000 Obamacare taxes should be repealed.

00:39:00.000 You should be able to buy catastrophic plans, particularly for people who are young, because if you're young, your minor injuries aren't going to cost you that much money.

00:39:07.000 It's really only if you have a car wreck or a serious disease that you need serious health insurance coverage.

00:39:15.000 Again, free market solutions here would be a good thing.

00:39:18.000 And Republicans should explain that because otherwise, you're just going to have Democrats explaining that we should continue to pour money down the rat hole of Obamacare.

00:39:25.000 And then we get to housing.

00:39:27.000 Now, again, the Trump administration keeps throwing out government-based solutions for the housing issue.

00:39:34.000 The reality is that if you wish for there to be more supply of housing, you need to allow people the market conditions to build more supply of housing.

00:39:43.000 That's how that works.

00:39:44.000 We need a higher supply.

00:39:45.000 Now, one thing that the vice president said about this, and he and I have pretty significant disagreements on our economic vision, but he is right that deporting 30 million illegal immigrants would definitely help. 1.00

00:39:55.000 I mean, you have a lot of people in the country who should not be here and who are taking up housing space.

00:39:59.000 Here's the vice president.

00:40:02.000 A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive.

00:40:06.000 Why is that?

00:40:07.000 Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who are taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens. 1.00

00:40:15.000 And at the same time, we weren't building enough new houses to begin with, even for the population that we had.

00:40:21.000 So, what we're doing is trying to make it easier to build houses, trying to make it easier to build factories and things like that so that people have good jobs.

00:40:29.000 We're also getting all of those illegal aliens out of our country, and you're already seeing it start to pay some dividends. 1.00

00:40:36.000 Now, again, he's not wrong about this.

00:40:38.000 We have way too many people in this country who do not belong in this country, obviously. 1.00

00:40:42.000 Obviously, that's true.

00:40:44.000 But is that going to solve the housing affordability crisis?

00:40:46.000 The answer is not really.

00:40:48.000 The actual thing that's going to solve the housing affordability crisis is deregulation.

00:40:53.000 It's going to be free market capitalism.

00:40:56.000 It's actually going to be banks making real decisions about who can afford a home and where.

00:41:02.000 Otherwise, you end up with government subsidies that push up the price of housing by giving many, many people who probably don't have the credit worthiness to get a private loan access to houses, which then will go bust.

00:41:16.000 And then you have, again, a repeat of subprime housing crises.

00:41:19.000 Government-based solutions tend to have precisely the opposite effect of what they are attempting to achieve.

00:41:26.000 So, markets, free market, I know, free market capitalism.

00:41:30.000 No one talks about this anymore.

00:41:32.000 I don't know when it fell out of fashion for the right to stop talking about free markets and to instead suggest that government solutions are the actual answer.

00:41:41.000 You know, growing up as a conservative, this was sort of rote conservatism, was the idea that private property, free markets, should be, at least in the first instance, the solution.

00:41:53.000 Doesn't mean all problems will be solved by markets, but it does mean that if you get rid of markets or heavily intervene in markets or put your grubby government fingers on the markets, you're skewing all the incentive structures and you end up undermining the very thing that you are attempting to do in the vast majority of cases.

00:42:08.000 Already, meanwhile, the Democrats, some Republicans, they continue to try to attack President Trump over Jeffrey Epstein.

00:42:15.000 And nothing has been released from the new Epstein emails that is particularly shocking about President Trump.

00:42:20.000 Literally nothing.

00:42:21.000 I'm waiting for the supposed smoking gun in the same way that I was waiting for the Russiagate smoking gun for years and years and years, and it never happened.

00:42:27.000 And it feels very much the same at this point.

00:42:30.000 Now, again, I'm fine with all of the Epstein files being whatever is available, what can be released.

00:42:35.000 Not only am I fine with it, I think it would be good.

00:42:36.000 Again, more transparency is better.

00:42:38.000 And I think that there is a Streisand effect thing that is going on where the president says that he wants to abide by the law and then he brings people in and he browbeats them because he doesn't want certain files being released.

00:42:49.000 And people are asking, well, why does he not want the files?

00:42:52.000 Again, that's a Barbara Streisand effect. 1.00

00:42:55.000 Is there anything there?

00:42:56.000 I highly, highly doubt it.

00:42:58.000 Again, the Biden administration had full control over all of these files for four years.

00:43:02.000 There was something, some smoking gun about Donald Trump and children there.

00:43:05.000 You don't think the Biden administration relieked it?

00:43:08.000 Donald Trump's personal tax returns were leaked.

00:43:10.000 Like, give me a break.

00:43:12.000 Give me a break.

00:43:13.000 Democrats, however, are out there spinning up every old story, every unspecified allegation.

00:43:20.000 For example, Representative Robert Garcia went on MSNBC and then claimed that Epstein was doing his work at Mar-a-Lago, which, again, there is no support for this idea evidentiarily that Mar-a-Lago was like a center of human trafficking on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein.

00:43:36.000 The reality is that every time we get a new batch of documents, there are a lot more questions.

00:43:41.000 And in my opinion, signs point back to the White House.

00:43:44.000 When you think about Epstein, his six-trafficking ring, Ghelane Maxwell, all this happened in New York.

00:43:51.000 It happened in South Florida.

00:43:53.000 It happened at Mar-a-Lago.

00:43:54.000 They ran in the same circles.

00:43:57.000 So, you know, a little much, a little much, and you can see now who's pushing this, right?

00:44:02.000 Democrats who wish to smear President Trump with Jeffrey Epstein and some Republicans who wish to smear President Trump with Jeffrey Epstein, mainly because they don't like a lot of Trump's policies and are trying to undermine his credibility within his own party.

00:44:14.000 Again, I think the solution to that is more transparency, but I'm not sure that that's going to solve it because there are some ill-motivated actors, shall we say.

00:44:22.000 Meanwhile, CNN is now trotting out old stories again.

00:44:25.000 So CNN brought forth a swimsuit model named Stacey Williams, who claims that she was groped by Trump all the way back in 1993. 0.99

00:44:32.000 Now, this has been in the public eye for a long, long time.

00:44:35.000 In fact, it was already brought out, I think, last year, two years ago.

00:44:40.000 But CNN's going to retell it again.

00:44:41.000 Here we go.

00:44:42.000 He writes, my 20-year-old girlfriend in 93 that after two years, I gave to Donald.

00:44:48.000 Now, by the way, you met him in 1992.

00:44:52.000 When you see that, though, in this email in black and white, I quote unquote gave to Donald.

00:44:57.000 What's your reaction?

00:45:00.000 I mean, it screams about, you know, the mindset of these men.

00:45:10.000 You know, the same two men who did what they did to me when Jeffrey Epstein walked me into Donald Trump's office to be groped by him.

00:45:18.000 Clearly, we are these objects, these trophies, and it's deeply misogynistic.

00:45:25.000 Okay, now, again, this was dealt with last year.

00:45:29.000 I mean, this is not anything new.

00:45:32.000 According to The Guardian, this is more than a year ago.

00:45:36.000 A former model who says she met Donald Trump through the late sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein has accused the former president of groping and sexually touching her in an incident in Trump Tower in 1993 in what she believes was a twisted game between the two men.

00:45:49.000 Now, again, she only came out with this story, I guess, in 2024.

00:45:54.000 I'm wondering why it would take you 21 years to tell that story, given the fact, I'm sorry, 31 years to tell that story, given the fact that Donald Trump has already been president once and has been the most famous person on earth for several decades at this point.

00:46:08.000 Caroline Levitt at the time, who is a press secretary for the Trump campaign, said these accusations made by a former activist for Barack Obama and announced on a Harris campaign call two weeks before the election are unequivocally false.

00:46:18.000 It's obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign.

00:46:23.000 Now, again, the attempt to retail these stories anew because Democrats leaked three emails out of context to the New York Times. 0.61

00:46:31.000 It's not just silly.

00:46:33.000 It's actually wildly counterproductive for the body politic.

00:46:36.000 And meanwhile, in what is an actual scandal, remember Representative Matt Gates?

00:46:39.000 Remember that time when the Trump administration briefly attempted to nominate him for attorney general?

00:46:44.000 And then the entire Republican caucus went, oh, what now?

00:46:47.000 Well, it turns out the entire Republican caucus was right.

00:46:49.000 What now was the proper response to the idea that Representative Matt Gates should be Attorney General of the United States, according to the New York Times?

00:46:56.000 She was 17 and a high school junior in Florida.

00:46:59.000 She was working at McDonald's and she was living in and out of a homeless shelter, hoping to save up to buy braces to fix her teeth.

00:47:05.000 She falsely advertised herself in 2017 as 18 years old on a website that matches men looking for companionship with young women looking to make money.

00:47:14.000 What followed would set off a chain of events that would have a dramatic impact on her life and help upend the political career of one of the men she would encounter, Representative Matt Gates, the Florida Republican.

00:47:24.000 A bipartisan health ethics committee investigation determined there was substantial evidence he had sex with the 17-year-old.

00:47:29.000 The report included testimony from the girl about how she was paid by Gates for the sex.

00:47:35.000 In response to a request from McClatchy, a federal judge has now unsealed court documents from a related civil case that shed some light on the girl's background.

00:47:43.000 Apparently, she was a then-homeless 17-year-old high schooler. 0.91

00:47:48.000 The girl's lawyer agreed to confirm some basic biographical information about her client.

00:47:54.000 So, again, apparently, the girl began this path of meeting Gates during her junior year in high school.

00:48:02.000 In December 2016, she turned 17.

00:48:04.000 Her parents were divorced.

00:48:05.000 One of them was so poor, the parent was living in and out of a homeless shelter.

00:48:08.000 When the girl and her siblings were staying with that parent, they lived also in the homeless shelter.

00:48:11.000 To make extra money, the girl worked at McDonald's.

00:48:14.000 She began looking for other ways to make money and turned to a website that advertised itself as a sugar dating website that primarily connected older men and younger women seeking mutually beneficial relationships through the website.

00:48:25.000 In April of her junior year in high school, she met Joel Greenberg, a Florida tax collector who is a friend and ally of Gates.

00:48:32.000 Greenberg invited the 17-year-old to a meeting on his boat.

00:48:34.000 At that meeting, they did not have sex, but Greenberg paid her $400.

00:48:37.000 He also gave her ecstasy and told her to try it at home.

00:48:41.000 Then he contacted her again, and then they met up at a hotel where they had sex, and she was paid another $400.

00:48:47.000 Apparently, he would have sex with her seven times for money before she turned 18, and he would give her ecstasy.

00:48:52.000 On July 15th, 2017, he asked the girl and others to attend a party at the home of Chris Dorworth, a former Republican member of the Florida State House, who at the time worked as a lobbyist for Ballard Partners.

00:49:05.000 At the party, the girl who was 17 later testified both cocaine and ecstasy were offered to her.

00:49:09.000 She took ecstasy and drank.

00:49:11.000 She testified she danced naked in front of Mr. Dorworth and swam naked in the pool.

00:49:14.000 Gates was there along with a girlfriend. 0.58

00:49:17.000 Apparently, the girl twice had sex with Gates that evening. 1.00

00:49:19.000 A court document quotes her as having testified she had sex with him once on a pool table or an air hockey table.

00:49:25.000 She testified Dorworth saw Gates have sex with her on the game table and then laughed about it with other party goers.

00:49:32.000 And she says that she saw Gates use cocaine that night.

00:49:37.000 So, um, not great, Bob.

00:49:39.000 I'm just going to put it out.

00:49:40.000 I don't think he would have made a good attorney general.

00:49:42.000 I don't.

00:49:43.000 I just don't.

00:49:44.000 Now, I will say that there are a group of Democrats, there are a large group of people on the left who would say that this sort of thing is bizarrely legitimate, to which I say, what the hell, man?

00:49:55.000 Of course it isn't. 1.00

00:49:56.000 It's ridiculous and disgusting and horrible. 0.99

00:49:59.000 This is why when people say that sex work is work, well, no, sex is something very different from other types of quote-unquote work. 1.00

00:50:06.000 And anybody claiming otherwise, it's ridiculous.

00:50:09.000 Okay, meanwhile, other members of Congress now under scrutiny.

00:50:13.000 Apparently, Eric Swalwell is under scrutiny.

00:50:15.000 He is under scrutiny apparently for theoretically or allegedly taking out another bad mortgage.

00:50:23.000 The DOJ has opened a probe, according to Fox News, into Swalwell over alleged mortgage fraud.

00:50:29.000 Swalwell then went on MSNBC to respond.

00:50:30.000 Here he was.

00:50:32.000 Yeah, I only have one mortgage and a residence in California, and I spend my time every week between California and Washington, D.C.

00:50:43.000 This is, again, just Donald Trump doing everything he can to target his enemies.

00:50:47.000 In our lawsuit, it's not lost on me that we've begun to depose members of the administration.

00:50:53.000 And so you can connect the dots there if you will.

00:50:59.000 Now, he then claimed that he is being targeted alongside the likes of Letitia James, James Comey, John Bolton, Adam Schiff.

00:51:07.000 Okay, there's only one problem.

00:51:09.000 If you actually committed crimes, then you will be, in fact, prosecuted.

00:51:12.000 And if you don't, then presumably you will not.

00:51:15.000 Now, we'll have to see what exactly he did.

00:51:18.000 The probe will investigate allegations, according to Fox News, of millions of dollars in loans and refinancing based on Swallow declaring that his primary residence was in Washington, D.C. According to the report, the director of the federal housing agency, Bill Pulte, sent A.G. Pambondi a letter on Wednesday accusing Swallow of possibly making false or misleading statements on loan documents.

00:51:37.000 Apparently, the investigation is into possible mortgage fraud, tax fraud at the state and local levels, insurance fraud, and any related crimes.

00:51:43.000 We will have to see, of course, how this plays out.

00:51:44.000 Innocent until proven guilty is, of course, the rule of the day in all of this.

00:51:50.000 Okay, meanwhile, John Fetterman yesterday was unfortunately hospitalized, according to a statement that was put out on his X page.

00:51:59.000 During an early morning walk, Senator Fetterman sustained a fall near his home in Braddock.

00:52:03.000 Out of an abundance of caution, he was transported to a hospital in Pittsburgh.

00:52:06.000 Upon evaluation, it was established he had a ventricular fibrillation flare-up that led to Senator Fetterman feeling lightheaded, falling to the ground, and hitting his face with minor injuries.

00:52:14.000 Senator Fetterman had this to say: if you thought my face looked bad before, wait until you see it now.

00:52:21.000 Listen, again, Senator Fetterman, he may be the last courageous person in the Democratic Party.

00:52:27.000 Also, like, it's hard to dislike the.

00:52:29.000 I've met Senator Fetterman.

00:52:31.000 He and I disagree on, I don't know, 80% of issues.

00:52:34.000 Hard to dislike Senator Fetterman.

00:52:35.000 He says he is doing well and receiving routine observation at the hospital.

00:52:39.000 He has opted to stay so doctors can fine-tune his medication regimen.

00:52:42.000 Senator Fetterman is grateful for the EMT's doctors and nurses who are providing his care.

00:52:47.000 So we'll bring you all the health updates as they emerge for Senator Fetterman, maybe the last sane Democratic senator.

00:52:54.000 Okay, meanwhile, fascinating things happening at our nation's colleges and universities.

00:52:59.000 So Texas A ⁇ M has decided to crack down on woke in the classroom.

00:53:02.000 According to the New York Times, Texas A ⁇ M University System Regions voted on Thursday to limit how instructors may discuss matters like gender identity and race ideology in classrooms, tightening the rules in a conservative state where debates over academic freedom have flared for months.

00:53:15.000 Regions who met in college station on Thursday afternoon unanimously backed a revised proposal decreeing no courses, quote, will advocate race or gender ideology or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity without a campus president's approval of the course and related materials.

00:53:29.000 A related measure that regents approved said the faculty members could not teach material inconsistent with the approved syllabus for the course.

00:53:36.000 Well, that is a good thing.

00:53:37.000 That is a very good thing.

00:53:39.000 What is the educational value of teaching queer theory at Texas AM?

00:53:45.000 Please explain, please explain how the taxpayers of Texas are somehow benefited by this or the tuition payers of Texas are somehow benefited by this.

00:53:56.000 In September, Texas AM fired a lecturer after a student accused her of teaching a course that recognized more than two genders.

00:54:03.000 I mean, again, why this is controversial is beyond me.

00:54:06.000 I understand that there are a lot of dumb theories that emerge from the universities.

00:54:09.000 There is no reason the taxpayers should subsidize it. 0.65

00:54:13.000 There are some members of the university faculty who are upset because they believe that they should be able to do whatever they want with other people's money.

00:54:21.000 Martin Peterson, a philosophy professor, said it was, quote, tempting to agree no academic system course should advocate race or gender ideology since no serious academic course should promote any ideology.

00:54:31.000 But he said, seeking truth sometimes meant exploring contested ideas.

00:54:34.000 But okay, if you say, here's gender ideology and here's what his critics say, my guess is that the president of the university will greenlight that course.

00:54:44.000 Also, there are a bunch of professors there, particularly in the STEM fields, who say, you know what, we need better education because it turns out our educational system is absolutely collapsing.

00:54:54.000 And it is affecting higher education.

00:54:57.000 According to the free press, good piece by Tanner Now over there, California officials expect math students in public school to know basic math by the end of second grade.

00:55:08.000 But when some incoming college students were asked basic questions, about 20% could not correctly count.

00:55:14.000 Like, here's the problem: okay, Sarah had nine pennies and nine dimes. 0.91

00:55:17.000 How many coins did she have in all?

00:55:21.000 That's not a question as to the value of the pennies and the dimes.

00:55:23.000 That is a question of how many coins, right?

00:55:24.000 That's an easy one.

00:55:25.000 That's nine plus nine.

00:55:26.000 But apparently, 20% of college students got it wrong, incoming college students.

00:55:31.000 And as for the question, solve 10 minus 2, parentheses, and then parentheses, 4 minus 6x equals 0.

00:55:39.000 Okay, which is like a very, very basic algebra question.

00:55:41.000 80% of incoming college students couldn't solve that problem.

00:55:45.000 We've got a problem in our educational system for sure.

00:55:48.000 A report released last week by the University of California San Diego, which has about 45,000 students and is one of America's highest-ranked public universities, said that the number of entering first-year students whose math skills fall below middle school level increased at nearly 30-fold between 2020 and 2025.

00:56:06.000 The deterioration of basic academic preparation has left incoming students, quote, increasingly unprepared for the quantitative and analytical rigor expected at UC San Diego.

00:56:16.000 The percentage of students who have now been placed in remedial math at UC San Diego is nearing 10%, like one out of every 10.

00:56:24.000 That's crazy.

00:56:26.000 And again, that's after they admit these people.

00:56:27.000 Remember, a lot of applicants get rejected.

00:56:31.000 Last fall, Harvard University offered remedial math.

00:56:37.000 The university systems, I mean, we're failing at the middle school level, we're failing at the high school level, and we're increasingly failing at the college level because of all of the focus on politically heterodox leftism, as opposed to, you know, actually teaching people the things that matter.

00:56:55.000 And then meanwhile, we're telling people that they need to take out a $50,000 per year loan in order to even get basic employment on the other end.

00:57:02.000 That needs to change and change in a major way.

00:57:04.000 All righty, folks, the show is continuing for our members right now.

00:57:07.000 We'll get into the BBC apologizing to President Trump after slandering him.

00:57:11.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:57:13.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:57:14.000 Use Coach Shapiro.

00:57:15.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 14, 2025

The Economy Is About To Burst

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript