The Ben Shapiro Show - June 17, 2026


The FBI Just Foiled a Catastrophic "Second Wave" Attack on the White House

Breaking Down the Newsom Investigations and the Latest Midterm Projections The Truth About the American Affordability Crisis And Why Don Lemon Is Wrong

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

194.18

Word count

1,369

Sentence count

81

People

Also mentioned:
Cabot Phillips Jeffrey Epstein Donald Trump Marsha Blackburn Adolf Hitler Reich

Harmful content

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

As it turns out, the spectacle attracted an incel terrorist plot too. Thanks to the excellent work of our FBI, the plotters are being charged and arrested. So, what were the motivations? The Daily Wire's own Cabot Phillips joins us to fill us in on all of the arrest details.

Transcript

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Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 There was much ado about the massive UFC event at the White House over the weekend.
00:00:03.000 As it turns out, the spectacle attracted an incel terrorist plot, too.
00:00:07.000 Thanks to the excellent work of our FBI, the plotters are being charged and arrested.
00:00:10.000 So, what were the motivations?
00:00:11.000 The Daily Wire's own Cabot Phillips joins us to fill us in on all of the arrest details.
00:00:16.000 Well, Cabot, thanks so much for taking the time.
00:00:17.000 Really appreciate it.
00:00:18.000 Absolutely, Ben.
00:00:21.000 So, can you give me some details on this apparent gigantic terror plot, a drone plot against people who are attending the UFC fight on the White House lawn on Sunday that was uncovered by the FBI?
00:00:33.000 Yeah, it's worth pointing out a lot of times people hear about these plots or these alleged plots and they think, oh, was this thing actually going to happen?
00:00:40.000 Was this actually serious? 0.99
00:00:41.000 Or were these just a few guys sitting around a campfire spewing out stupid ideas and getting caught? 1.00
00:00:46.000 This one seems very, very serious and very credible. 0.98
00:00:49.000 So, what we have here is about 20 plus individuals in a series of signal chats plotting out a plan to attack the UFC event this past Sunday at the White House.
00:01:00.000 One of those individuals, his mother, became so concerned by what she was seeing from her son that she contacted Federal authorities and they immediately came in and began investigating.
00:01:09.000 So it looks like there was not like an informant or a federal agent of some kind in these chats spreading this plan.
00:01:17.000 This was actually something where the suspect's mother turned him in.
00:01:20.000 The plot itself a number of individuals said that they were going to have explosive laden drones that they were going to set off above the UFC event.
00:01:28.000 They then were going to have snipers posted with long rifles in elevated areas around the event.
00:01:34.000 They were going to try and herd the crowd, create evacuation, mass panic, and begin shooting people.
00:01:39.000 As they came out, they had very specific plans.
00:01:42.000 The affidavit that we were just reading through, the Daily Wire obtained yesterday, shows clear maps that they had.
00:01:49.000 They had direct routes and evacuation routes that they had.
00:01:52.000 They had all sorts of very specific ideas of what they wanted to do here.
00:01:57.000 Also worth pointing out, these individuals had a plan allegedly to meet up in Fredericksburg, Virginia to begin recon and training for this alleged operation in the days before the event.
00:02:08.000 And so there's all sorts of probable cause here, all sorts of evidence that this was a very real plot.
00:02:13.000 We now have five individuals who've been arrested.
00:02:15.000 Charges include conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to attack federal officials, all sorts of other things, conspiracy against the United States.
00:02:22.000 So, very serious case here.
00:02:25.000 Now, as always, the first place that people go is what are the politics of the people who are attempting to carry out this plot?
00:02:32.000 What do we know at this point about why they wanted to do this, who they were targeting?
00:02:36.000 What was the goal?
00:02:38.000 Yeah, there's kind of a weird smorgasbord right here as far as what their motives are.
00:02:43.000 It does appear. from a number of the social media accounts of some of the individuals.
00:02:47.000 Again, there are 20 plus people in these chats.
00:02:49.000 All of them are being investigated.
00:02:51.000 Only five have been arrested, but a number of the five have been arrested.
00:02:54.000 Their social media accounts in the past would be considered conservative.
00:02:57.000 They were sharing things in support of Donald Trump, sharing things on the traditional conservative side.
00:03:03.000 But it appears over the last few years, they became radicalized.
00:03:07.000 They began espousing all sorts of beliefs about the U.S. government being controlled by, you know, Jeffrey Epstein associates.
00:03:15.000 They said that the elites were going to eat young children.
00:03:18.000 And there was a clearer string of anti Semitism within this plot.
00:03:23.000 The co conspirator, or one of the head masterminds, according to federal officials, his parents said that in recent months he'd began spreading supportive messages of Adolf Hitler.
00:03:35.000 They said that he had been talking about how the Jews control the government.
00:03:39.000 And that appears to be a huge element of this case.
00:03:42.000 In these group chats, you can read through them within the affidavit, the suspects were talking to each other about how do we pick who we're targeting?
00:03:49.000 They talked first about the elites and billionaires and, you know, kind of the corporate overlords.
00:03:54.000 And then they started specifically sending photos of lawmakers, including Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn.
00:04:01.000 And they said, one of the people chimed in and said, Why are we targeting these specific lawmakers, these senators, these congressmen?
00:04:07.000 And the alleged ringleader said, They're the ones that are accepting money from APAC and the Israel lobby.
00:04:12.000 And he started including photos and saying, Here's how we know who to target.
00:04:16.000 And the photos of the lawmakers that he was uploading to this chat allegedly were pulled directly from a website that was trackapac.com.
00:04:25.000 And so you can get an idea here where.
00:04:27.000 It does appear that their hatred of Jews, their hatred of anyone who supports Israel, played a clear role in motivating this alleged attack. 0.99
00:04:36.000 So, unsurprisingly, it turns out the conspiratorial nonsense surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and Israel and the Trump administration may have some pretty dire consequences for people who didn't used to be crazy and then went crazy because there are people who are spoon feeding them this garbage. 0.99
00:04:50.000 So, Cabot, what are the charges? 0.95
00:04:52.000 What would the expected sentences be?
00:04:53.000 And how fast does this thing move toward trial?
00:04:57.000 Yeah, and it's still in the very early phases, actually.
00:04:59.000 So, for three of the five men who've been arrested, we have charges that have been listed.
00:05:03.000 For two, we're still waiting to hear if they even, we don't even know if they have legal representation yet.
00:05:07.000 So, it's very early on.
00:05:09.000 This plot was only even discovered about a week ago.
00:05:12.000 I believe it was June 10th, the first day that this main suspect's mother contacted law enforcement.
00:05:17.000 So, we're still in the very early days.
00:05:19.000 These charges are very serious, though.
00:05:21.000 If there is a clear way for law enforcement to prove that they were going to carry out these acts, there's up to lifetime sentence for some of these charges conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy against the United States.
00:05:34.000 To murder federal law enforcement officials, all sorts of very hefty charges here.
00:05:38.000 But I also do want to point out that the mother talked to law enforcement officials about how she felt her son had been radicalized.
00:05:47.000 And the direct quote was really haunting, given what we're seeing in our culture right now.
00:05:52.000 The direct quote was she believed the individuals were using religion to manipulate and influence her son. 0.97
00:05:58.000 And this woman appeared to do everything right.
00:06:01.000 She raised her son in a Christian household.
00:06:03.000 There's all sorts of social media posts throughout history in the last few years showing.
00:06:07.000 Their relationship, showing him wearing traditional Christian shirts and things of that nature, being involved in church.
00:06:14.000 And this mom said that her son's love of God had been manipulated and twisted into something evil.
00:06:20.000 And that is just what we're seeing from the radical left.
00:06:23.000 And as you've pointed out, that's what we're seeing from the woke Reich of these people who are claiming to be taking action in support of the gospel.
00:06:31.000 And they're actually twisting it into a hatred of Jews, into a hatred of all sorts of people. 0.59
00:06:36.000 And that part just jumped out to me in the affidavit and was so.
00:06:40.000 Just a reminder of how important this topic is.
00:06:44.000 Very disturbing stuff.
00:06:44.000 Cabot Phillips, thanks for your reporting.
00:06:46.000 Check out the show Wired in Live every day over at Daily Wire, Spotify, and Apple.
00:06:50.000 Cabot, thanks so much for the time.
00:06:53.000 Absolutely, Ben.
00:06:54.000 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:06:56.000 Wasn't that amazing?
00:06:57.000 Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.