The Ben Shapiro Show - The Internet’s Cleavage Over Sydney Sweeney’s Commercial

00:00:00.000 All righty, folks, tons coming up on today's show.

00:00:02.000 All the updates on this terrible shooting in New York City, plus massive controversy, internet cleavage over Sidney Sweeney's cleavage, among other things.

00:00:11.000 And we'll bring you all the foreign policy and economics updates.

00:00:13.000 But first, we're 35 days out from the release of my brand new book, Lions and Scavengers, coming September 2nd.

00:00:19.000 It's been four years in the making.

00:00:21.000 It lays out the defining battle of our time between those who build and those who wish to tear everything down via resentment and envy. 0.66

00:00:28.000 I expose exactly how those scavengers are undermining the West and why the Lions have to fight back. 0.99

00:00:33.000 If you've had enough of the scavengers, this is the book you read before the next round begins.

00:00:37.000 Go to dailywire.com slash Ben to pre-order right now.

00:00:39.000 All the buying options are there, including Amazon at Barnes and Noble, even a signed copy from the Daily Wire shop.

00:00:44.000 Again, that's dailywire.com slash Ben.

00:00:47.000 So yesterday afternoon, horrific shooting in Midtown Manhattan.

00:00:51.000 According to the Associated Press, a man stalked through a Manhattan office tower, firing a rifle, killing four people, including a New York City police officer, wounding a fifth person before shooting himself.

00:01:01.000 That shooting took place at a skyscraper that is home to both the headquarters of the NFL as well as Blackstone.

00:01:07.000 It appears that the shooter was attempting to target the NFL headquarters, got off at the wrong floor, and just started shooting people.

00:01:14.000 The gunman was identified as a person with a documented mental health history.

00:01:18.000 We don't use the names of mass shooters on the program because we don't wish to give them the sort of glory and attention that they so desperately seek.

00:01:27.000 The motive was supposedly unknown, although there was apparently a note on the body that suggested that this person, who apparently had a history when he was in high school, being a pretty good football player, he said he had CTE.

00:01:39.000 The short note was scribbled according to CNN over three pages and found by investigators after the shooting.

00:01:44.000 It apparently expressed grievances with the NFL and suggested that he suffered from some sort of brain damage and had mental illness.

00:01:52.000 And that is why he was doing all of this.

00:01:54.000 Surveillance videos showed the man exiting a double park BMW just before 6.30 p.m., carrying an M4 rifle and then marching across a public plaza into the building.

00:02:02.000 He started firing.

00:02:03.000 Apparently, he killed a police officer who was off duty working a corporate security detail and then also hit a woman who tried to take cover as he sprayed the lobby with gunfire.

00:02:11.000 He then went to an elevator bank, shot a guard at the security desk, and then shot another man in the lobby, then went all the way up to the 33rd floor offices of the company that owned the building.

00:02:20.000 Now, again, that's probably not on purpose.

00:02:22.000 Probably what happened is that someone summoned the elevator because when you go into these big office buildings in New York, you usually have to have a key card to get into the level that you are seeking to go to.

00:02:31.000 Probably this person just got into the elevator, went up to wherever it was going, got off and started shooting people.

00:02:36.000 He shot and killed one person on that floor, and then he shot and killed himself.

00:02:41.000 The officer killed was a man named Didarul Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh who had served as a police officer in New York City for three and a half years.

00:02:48.000 Mayor Eric Adams said that officials are still unraveling what took place.

00:02:54.000 There is a rifle case, revolver, magazines, and ammo in the car, and as well as medication that belonged apparently to the shooter.

00:03:00.000 The vehicle traveled all the way across the country.

00:03:02.000 It went through Colorado, then Nebraska and Iowa, and then went through New Jersey on Monday and drove into York City thereafter.

00:03:09.000 So, what is there to say about this?

00:03:11.000 Well, I mean, obviously, the media continued to get this sort of stuff wrong in early reporting, and this is why it is worthwhile to wait for a little bit before you make a judgment as to the motivations or the identity of the shooter.

00:03:21.000 Here is CNN in real time getting it wrong, suggesting this person was quote unquote possibly white.

00:03:26.000 He clearly was not.

00:03:27.000 This person was obviously a person of color.

00:03:29.000 Here is CNN getting it wrong.

00:03:32.000 All right.

00:03:32.000 So, Brian, stay with us.

00:03:33.000 The deputy, former deputy director of the FBI, Andy McCabe, is with us as well.

00:03:37.000 And Andy, I just want to ask you, you talk about a 40-floor, a 44-story building, as Brian is reporting.

00:03:44.000 And what John Miller just said, there were a few things that really stood out there.

00:03:49.000 Among them that they did get, they do know what he looks like, sunglasses, mustache, male, possibly white.

00:03:57.000 Okay, so again, getting that completely wrong.

00:04:00.000 Now, some people are suggesting that that is because of animus for white people by CNN.

00:04:04.000 Certainly a possibility.

00:04:05.000 CNN is always quick to jump to a particular racial narrative.

00:04:08.000 And because this was not a white person shooting up an office building, presumably it will be out of the news within about five minutes.

00:04:15.000 With that said, CNN tends to get things wrong, just as most networks tend to get things wrong in the early minutes of any reportage.

00:04:22.000 The bigger point here about the city of New York is that you really should not be electing a mayor of the city who hates the cops, regardless of the motivation of the shooter.

00:04:31.000 And we can talk about the NFL and CTE and the damage that is done to brains by the repeated concussions that football players suffer.

00:04:38.000 But the real story here is that if you're a resident of New York City, forget about CTE and the motivations of the shooter.

00:04:44.000 Why would you elect as mayor a person who obviously does not like the police?

00:04:47.000 Flashback, November 7th, 2020, Zoran Mamdani, now the frontrunner for New York mayor, quote, nature is healing.

00:04:54.000 He tweeted that in response to a person writing, I just saw a cop crying in his car, L-M-A-O. 0.98

00:05:00.000 Nature is healing, says Zoran Mamdani.

00:05:03.000 And there's a person who obviously has animus for the police department.

00:05:06.000 He's also somebody who believes in defunding the police, and now he's attempting to walk that back as he runs for New York mayor.

00:05:12.000 If New York decides they wish to embrace a person who hates the cops, who wish to undermine the cops, who wishes to destroy the ability of the cops to police the city, you will end up with more violence, period, of all sorts, people being thrown in front of subways, people engaging in mass shootings, people engaging in stabbings.

00:05:28.000 Now, all of that will go up because the cops are indeed the barrier between chaos and normalcy in the city of New York. 0.84

00:05:35.000 So if you're in New York City this morning and you're thinking of voting for the socialist idiot who is Zarn Mamzani, you might want to think twice because honestly, every incidence of violence just underscores that you need a virile and powerful police department in order to ensure safety in a major city like New York. 0.81

00:05:52.000 All righty, folks, coming up, a commercial features Sydney Sweeney and everybody goes crazy because of Nazism or something. 0.98

00:06:00.000 We'll get to all of it first.

00:06:01.000 Here's the reality.

00:06:01.000 Over 90% of Americans are not getting enough dietary fiber.

00:06:04.000 Most of us aren't hitting that recommended variety of fruits and veggies either.

00:06:07.000 I know I wasn't.

00:06:08.000 That's why I tried balance of nature supplements.

00:06:10.000 These aren't some artificial knockoff trying to mimic what nature provides.

00:06:13.000 They simply let nature do what it does.

00:06:15.000 We're talking about 47 real ingredients, mango, wild blueberry, spinach, kale, shiitake mushrooms, broccoli, the whole works.

00:06:20.000 Plus, their fiber and spice blend is also unique.

00:06:23.000 It combines four whole fibers like psyllium husk and flaxseed with 12 aromatic spices, including turmeric and cinnamon.

00:06:29.000 You won't find Another supplement that does that.

00:06:31.000 I also appreciate there are no artificial additives and no added sugars, just clean ingredients.

00:06:35.000 They're vegan, kosher certified by the OU, and gluten-free.

00:06:38.000 You can even mix the powder into smoothies or sprinkle it over food, no bags, no mess, no measuring.

00:06:42.000 And when I'm traveling, hard to be really nutritiously conscious, it's absolutely handy, Balance of Nature.

00:06:48.000 After years of research and development, they've created something that makes getting proper nutrition convenient.

00:06:52.000 But at balanceofnature.com, use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer plus.

00:06:57.000 Get a free bottle of fiber and spice.

00:06:59.000 That's balanceofnature.com.

00:07:00.000 Promo code Shapiro.

00:07:01.000 Balanceofnature.com.

00:07:03.000 Promo code Shapiro.

00:07:04.000 Also, what does feeling truly safe at home mean?

00:07:07.000 I used to think good locks and a loud alarm were enough.

00:07:09.000 Eventually, I realized real security isn't just about responding to threats, but preventing them entirely.

00:07:13.000 That's why I use SimplySafe for proactive protection that keeps my studio and employees secure before anything can happen.

00:07:19.000 Most security systems only spring into action after someone's already broken in.

00:07:23.000 By then, it's too late.

00:07:24.000 SimplySafe's new active guard outdoor protection actually stops break-ins before they happen.

00:07:29.000 Their AI-powered cameras work with live monitoring agents who can spot suspicious activity around your property in real time.

00:07:34.000 If somebody's lurking where they shouldn't be, agents can talk directly to them, flip on spotlights, call cops if necessary, all before anything actually happens to your home.

00:07:41.000 There are no contracts or hidden fees to worry about.

00:07:43.000 It's easy to see why over 4 million Americans trust SimplySafe.

00:07:46.000 CNAT named it the best home security system of 2025, while Newsweek and USA Today ranked them number one for customer service.

00:07:53.000 Plus, monitoring plans start at just a buck a day.

00:07:55.000 They'll back it all up with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

00:07:58.000 We love SimplySafe here at the office because it means that when we leave at night, everything is back here when we came in the morning.

00:08:03.000 Visit simplysafe.com slash Shapiro to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan.

00:08:08.000 Get your first month for free.

00:08:09.000 That's simplysafe.com slash Shapiro.

00:08:11.000 There's no safe like simply safe.

00:08:13.000 Okay, meanwhile, in significantly lighter cultural news, the big controversy of the day, believe it or not, surrounds Sidney Sweeney's chest.

00:08:19.000 Now, I know Sidney Sweeney, very famous actress.

00:08:22.000 She's on Euphoria.

00:08:23.000 She's been doing a number of movies lately, but she's mostly famous because she, when she's on TV, when she's, when she's doing SNL, she shows a lot of cleavage. 1.00

00:08:31.000 That is mostly what she is famous for. 1.00

00:08:33.000 Listen, she's a very attractive woman, of course, of course.

00:08:35.000 She is doing a new American Eagle ad.

00:08:37.000 And this apparently is just setting heads aflame.

00:08:41.000 So here is the American Eagle ad that has generated enormous amounts of controversy on the left.

00:08:47.000 And it has something to say about where we stand socially as a country on both left and right.

00:08:51.000 It's kind of fascinating.

00:08:52.000 It cross cuts some political boundaries.

00:08:54.000 Here is the American Eagle ad.

00:08:56.000 Jeans are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color.

00:09:06.000 My genes are blue.

00:09:08.000 Sidney's tweenie has her keynotes.

00:09:13.000 Okay, so for those who can't see, that's just a picture of her buttoning her genes seductively as she talks about genes using a homonym. 0.98

00:09:22.000 It's kind of a silly homonym.

00:09:24.000 She has great genes, like G-E-N-E-S, as in like her genetic predispositions and characteristics.

00:09:31.000 And then her genes are blue, J-E-A-N-S, right? 0.99

00:09:35.000 Her genes are blue.

00:09:37.000 Okay, so that is the pun.

00:09:38.000 I mean, no biggie.

00:09:39.000 The real story here is that Sidney Sweeney is doing sexy commercials.

00:09:42.000 All right.

00:09:43.000 I mean, this has been a hallmark of advertising for, you know, at this point, hundreds of years, probably.

00:09:48.000 You go all the way back to the mid-19th century, and you can find print ads that I'm sure were suggestive at the very least.

00:09:56.000 Here's another ad that she did with a Mustang. 1.00

00:10:09.000 Sidney Sweeney has for Keynes.

00:10:15.000 Okay, so she shuts the hood on one Mustang, get a tight shot of her rear, and then she gets into another Mustang. 1.00

00:10:22.000 You know, this is sort of supposed to be classic Americana.

00:10:25.000 Okay, and when we say classic Americana, we mean that it's a cheesecake shot.

00:10:29.000 So this has resulted in people going absolutely insane, like totally crazy.

00:10:35.000 And I think first, it's important to note that people who are characterizing American Eagle as some sort of bizarre right-wing company are missing the boat.

00:10:41.000 American Eagle is not a right-wing company.

00:10:42.000 American Eagle is a jeans company that follows whatever it thinks are the prevailing trends of the time.

00:10:47.000 So here, for example, is an ad that they cut in 2019.

00:10:52.000 Okay.

00:10:52.000 You can see in this ad, it is a bunch of people who are variously abled, who are of various body types.

00:11:03.000 In any case, American Eagle is not a right-wing company is the point here.

00:11:06.000 So the real question is, what is the zeitgeist?

00:11:08.000 And this is being read in fascinating ways by the left and by the right.

00:11:12.000 So the left is breaking down into sort of three categories over the Sydney Sweeney ad.

00:11:15.000 And again, it is amazing that we are now having a controversy over what would have been in about 2005, a perfectly normal ad on your television.

00:11:24.000 We'll get to the right in a second, because I'm old enough to remember when the right would have objected to such an ad.

00:11:28.000 And some of us who are traditionally minded still object to the overt sexualization of women in advertising, as well as the sort of sexualization that is being done to our culture, right?

00:11:41.000 Some of us are old enough to remember when Paris Hilton was grinding on cars for a Carls Jr. commercial back in 2005 and objecting to that as being too raunchy and problematic.

00:11:51.000 And we say problematic, I don't mean like problematic in a left-wing sense, mean morally problematic to put scantily clad, attractive women in advertising specifically to get people to buy product. 1.00

00:12:02.000 That poses a moral problem for the right.

00:12:04.000 For the left, the left has gone completely insane.

00:12:06.000 And so they've broken down into sort of two categories, both of them objecting to the ad.

00:12:12.000 One is the sort of feminist line that this is the oversight. 1.00

00:12:15.000 This is made for the male gaze.

00:12:17.000 It's all about the male gaze.

00:12:19.000 Now, can we get over this nonsense?

00:12:21.000 The male gaze.

00:12:22.000 You know what men like to look at?

00:12:24.000 Pretty women. 0.89

00:12:24.000 Get used to it. 0.89

00:12:25.000 That is the way of the world.

00:12:26.000 It is the progeneration of the species.

00:12:28.000 That is the basis of literally all human reproduction is quote unquote, the male gaze.

00:12:32.000 That is the beginning of all of it.

00:12:33.000 That does not mean that men should ogle women.

00:12:35.000 But if we are going to pretend that beauty does not exist and that men don't appreciate it, then you are just ignoring the realities of life.

00:12:44.000 Okay.

00:12:45.000 But this is one aspect of the left. 0.98

00:12:47.000 They're very angry that, quote unquote, the male gaze exists, which is really, really silly.

00:12:54.000 But that is really not the angle that they are taking most of all.

00:12:58.000 What they're really taking most of all is the angle That there is something peculiarly Nazi about all of this.

00:13:06.000 There's a piece in the Washington Post titled How American Eagle Sidney Sweeney Good Jeans ad Went Wrong.

00:13:11.000 Well, it's hard to say that it went wrong when it is the most talked about ad of the last five years.

00:13:16.000 For American Eagle, it's a very good ad.

00:13:18.000 According to a conversation between fashion critic of the Washington Post, Rachel Toshjian and style memo newsletter writer Shane O'Neill, according to that particular discussion, the biggest problem with the ad is the genetic component.

00:13:33.000 Quote, the most provocative part of the campaign is when she's talking about offspring and genes. 0.84

00:13:38.000 That's a message about mutable identity there.

00:13:40.000 And that could be extended into a vision of America as a place where you're not bound by who you are at birth, but they went the full opposite of that.

00:13:48.000 To be honest, I think the ad campaign didn't exactly know what it wanted to be.

00:13:52.000 I think what's getting people talking is how regressive the ads seem, says Tosh Jinn.

00:13:57.000 The line about her having great genes.

00:13:58.000 Several people are suggesting in the comments on Instagram and TikTok, this is a pro-eugenics ad.

00:14:03.000 Whether or not that's the case, it is part of a wave of imagery of influencer pop stars and musicians that feel tethers to the value of another time.

00:14:09.000 Do you mean, again, this is where you're going to see a right-wing backlash building?

00:14:13.000 The values of another time would be men think attractive women are attractive because attractive women are attractive.

00:14:20.000 Good-looking people are better looking than not good-looking people.

00:14:23.000 Like, if that's tethered to the values of another time, that would be tethered to the values of all time.

00:14:27.000 There's nothing new there.

00:14:29.000 If that were not the case, I promise you sales of Ozembek would be significantly lower.

00:14:32.000 So would sales of makeup.

00:14:35.000 Okay, but the left is now trying to turn this into a sort of take on Volkish German Nazi-esque imagery.

00:14:44.000 There is in this piece a reference to this idea.

00:14:47.000 One of the writers, the newsletter writer for the Washington Post says, the first thing I thought of when I heard the tagline, Sidney Sweeney has great jeans, was the DHS Instagram account, which posted a subtly racist painting a few weeks ago and an explicitly racist painting last week.

00:15:00.000 The latter depicted a gigantic blonde, buxom woman chasing away Native people to make way for white settlers.

00:15:04.000 When this is the imagery being promoted by our government, a pun about jeans hits differently. 0.82

00:15:09.000 And then the Washington Post style critic wrote, we're being fed a lot of images of thinness, whiteness, and unapologetic wealth porn.

00:15:17.000 Well, with this cover, influencers like Alex Earle and Sabrina Carpenter's album cover.

00:15:22.000 So again, they continue to promote the idea that there's something terribly evil and eugenic about the Sydney Sweeney ad.

00:15:30.000 And here's a bunch of crazy ladies on TikTok saying the same thing. 1.00

00:15:33.000 Those Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ads are weird. 0.97

00:15:36.000 Like fascist weird.

00:15:38.000 Like Nazi propaganda weird.

00:15:41.000 Would we be surprised that a company whose name is literally American Eagle is making fascist propaganda like this?

00:15:47.000 Probably not, but it's still really shocking.

00:15:50.000 Like a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white woman is talking about her good genes. 1.00

00:15:58.000 Like that is Nazi propaganda.

00:16:02.000 Saying anybody has good genes is eugenics. 0.86

00:16:05.000 Blonde haired, blue-eyed, Nazi. 0.86

00:16:06.000 This pro-Americana talking about pure Americans, Americans having good genes. 0.97

00:16:12.000 This is Nazi that people, especially Jews, have been warning about for a very long time.

00:16:21.000 Oh, it's not that big of a deal.

00:16:22.000 Jeans is just a play on jeans. 0.98

00:16:24.000 Shut the f ⁇ up. 1.00

00:16:26.000 This is Nazi. 0.99

00:16:27.000 Sydney Sweeney's Jeans ad is giving ethnic steak propaganda.

00:16:30.000 It is giving dystopian.

00:16:31.000 It is giving 1940s Germany.

00:16:33.000 And they could have had her set anything.

00:16:35.000 She could have just said, I'm hot, drink my bathwater, here are my jeans. 0.55

00:16:37.000 But instead, they had her say, jeans are passed down from parents to children. 1.00

00:16:41.000 I have good jeans.

00:16:42.000 My jeans are blue.

00:16:44.000 Why?

00:16:44.000 Yeah, no, that was like the most thinly veiled propaganda I think that I've ever seen.

00:16:49.000 American Eagle, who is in charge of your marketing department?

00:16:52.000 Joseph Goebbels?

00:16:54.000 A strawberry blonde, blue-eyed woman marketing, having great jeans. 1.00

00:17:01.000 Would you do this with a model of color?

00:17:06.000 Think about it.

00:17:08.000 Would you?

00:17:10.000 I mean, they probably will.

00:17:11.000 My guess is that their next dad will be a model of color saying the exact same thing. 0.97

00:17:14.000 It'll be a beautiful black woman saying the exact same thing. 1.00

00:17:17.000 Probably. 0.98

00:17:18.000 It's all a catfish.

00:17:19.000 By the way, I love that that last guy in the TikTok video, if you can't see, he's wearing an Adidas shirt.

00:17:22.000 We should note at this point that Adidas was founded by two brothers with significant ties to the actual Nazis.

00:17:27.000 So, you know, this is crazy.

00:17:30.000 This is crazy.

00:17:31.000 I'm sorry.

00:17:32.000 A play on words, genes and jeans is not meant to be a reference to the Nazis.

00:17:36.000 And also, when people look at Sidney Sweeney, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings here.

00:17:41.000 Her eye color and hair color are the third and fourth things people are looking at when they look at Sidney Sweeney.

00:17:47.000 Okay, let's just be real about that.

00:17:48.000 When she says she has good genes, people are not thinking about her eye color. 0.96

00:17:52.000 That's silly. 0.98

00:17:54.000 Nonetheless, the left is pushing forward with this nonsense. 0.92

00:17:56.000 Advertising expert Robin Landa, a professor at Michael Graves College at Keene University, told Newsweek, quote, the campaign's punt isn't just tone deaf.

00:18:02.000 It's historically loaded.

00:18:04.000 Landa said the phrase good genes was once central to American eugenics ideology, which promoted white genetic superiority and enabled the forced sterilization of marginalized groups.

00:18:13.000 Yeah, that's what's going to happen here.

00:18:14.000 This is going to lead to forced sterilization.

00:18:16.000 That's probably where this is going.

00:18:18.000 By the way, for all the talk about the failure of the ad, American Eagle stock has surged 4% since the ad was released.

00:18:24.000 You know why? 0.99

00:18:24.000 Because earned media is in fact, we wouldn't be talking about American Eagle on this program if the left hadn't gone totally insane over an innocuously stupid ad. 0.99

00:18:33.000 And now to the response from the right. 0.98

00:18:35.000 And this is kind of fascinating.

00:18:36.000 So the right has split on this ad.

00:18:40.000 Not in the sense they agree with the left, of course. 0.95

00:18:42.000 That's silly.

00:18:43.000 But it demonstrates the difference between anti-left and traditional right, which are not the same thing.

00:18:48.000 President Trump's coalition, for what it's worth, is an anti-left coalition.

00:18:51.000 It includes a bunch of people who are not in any way, shape, or form conservative, but they don't like the insanity of the left.

00:18:57.000 And then there are the traditionally conservative.

00:18:59.000 And the reactions to the ad differ between the two groups.

00:19:02.000 All righty, folks, coming up.

00:19:02.000 The right split reaction on Sidney Sweeney.

00:19:05.000 Yes, there's a cleavage over Sidney Sweeney. 1.00

00:19:07.000 I know it's a pun.

00:19:09.000 First, I always assumed restless sleep was inevitable.

00:19:11.000 Night after night, tossing, turning, waking up with that aching back.

00:19:14.000 Well, I thought that's how sleep was just supposed to be.

00:19:15.000 As you get older, then I tried Helix sleep, and everything has now been changed.

00:19:19.000 It's truly been transformative for my sleep quality.

00:19:21.000 Now I easily fall asleep in minutes, even when current news stories are continuously demanding my attention.

00:19:25.000 What makes Helix different is they don't just sell you a random mattress.

00:19:28.000 They actually match you with the perfect One for your body and sleep style.

00:19:31.000 Whether you're a side sleeper, back sleeper, somewhere in between, they have you covered.

00:19:34.000 They make it so simple to get your best night's sleep every night.

00:19:37.000 All you have to do is take their sleep quiz, get matched with a custom mattress based on your body type and sleep preferences.

00:19:41.000 Trust me, when you find the right match, you'll wonder how you ever slept on anything else.

00:19:45.000 I have a mattress made just for me.

00:19:46.000 It means it's firm but breathable.

00:19:48.000 It means that I'm sleeping cool at night, and also I don't have that back pain when I wake up in the morning.

00:19:52.000 Right now, Helix is offering an incredible deal.

00:19:53.000 Visit helixleep.com slash ben, get 27% off site-wide.

00:19:57.000 That's helixleep.com slash ben for 27% off site-wide.

00:20:01.000 Make sure you enter our show name after checkouts and they know we sent you.

00:20:04.000 Again, just visit helixleep.com slash ben for this exclusive offer, helixleep.com slash ben. 0.98

00:20:10.000 Also, you know, when you are busy, it is so easy for your day to fall apart in a myriad of tiny little stupid tasks.

00:20:17.000 Well, if you're in any profession that involves a lot of mailing and shipping, stamps.com will take at least one tedious task off your plate. 0.78

00:20:23.000 Stamps.com lets you focus on what you do best by handling all the logistics for you.

00:20:26.000 You can print stamps, shipping labels, or certified mail forms in seconds and schedule free package pickups all from one convenient place and save up to 89% off USPS, UPS, and other carriers while you're at it.

00:20:36.000 For over 28 years, more than 4 million customers have trusted Stamps.com to simplify their shipping and mailing needs.

00:20:42.000 Whether you're running a small business or selling online through major marketplaces, stamps.com gives you access to all the USPS and UPS services you need right from your computer or phone.

00:20:50.000 No more waiting in lines or dealing with post-office traffic.

00:20:53.000 What makes it really convenient is the flexibility it offers as you're all-in-one solution.

00:20:57.000 All you need is a computer and printer, and they'll even send you a free scale to get started.

00:21:01.000 You can take care of everything on the go with their mobile app, easily schedule package pickups, automatically see your cheapest and fastest shipping options.

00:21:07.000 Plus, their rate advisor takes the guesswork out of shipping costs, helping you find the best rates fast, including exclusive discounts you won't find anywhere else.

00:21:14.000 Don't waste time worrying about being a postage expert or standing in line to drop off those letters and packages.

00:21:18.000 Let stamps.com do what they do best so you can do what you do better.

00:21:21.000 Go to stamps.com slash Shapiro, sign up for a special offer.

00:21:24.000 No contract, cancel anytime.

00:21:25.000 That's stamps.com slash Shapiro. 0.98

00:21:28.000 So you're seeing a lot of people in the online space who are anti-left, who look at the insane reaction of the left to this, calling it Nazi propaganda, suggesting that it is all about the male gays and the evils of the male gays tethered to another time and all this crap. 0.93

00:21:43.000 And you see a bunch of people on the right who are like, this ad is great. 0.94

00:21:46.000 It's making America great again.

00:21:47.000 This ad is bringing back what makes America awesome.

00:21:50.000 This is a reversion to the heterosexual norm and all the rest. 0.70

00:21:55.000 Okay, now, let's be clear. 1.00

00:21:57.000 The left can be perfectly insane, stupid, and wrong. 1.00

00:22:01.000 And also, this ad is effectively no different from when Brooks Shields back in the 1980s was saying, nobody gets between me and Mike Calvins. 1.00

00:22:09.000 This ad can both be a rejection of the sort of post-gender insanity pushed by the left.

00:22:16.000 And also, it can just be a piece of very softcore pornography.

00:22:19.000 I say very softcore because, of course, it's not pornography quite, but it is certainly more in that arena than it is in the arena of art.

00:22:26.000 Clearly, it is attempting to use sex to sell genes. 0.93

00:22:28.000 That is literally the purpose of the commercial.

00:22:31.000 And so being a moral traditionalist, I do not actually believe that commercials like this are amazing for America. 0.94

00:22:38.000 I think it's good to expose the left for being totally insane. 0.99

00:22:41.000 And I think it is worthwhile noting that the left is totally crazy. 0.97

00:22:44.000 But if you're a traditionally moral person, if you're somebody who's a church goer, a synagogue goer, for example, and you look at this ad, you're saying, okay, what this looks like is a way to get a bunch of young people to buy jeans by showing Sidney Sweeney's button and breasts, basically.

00:22:57.000 Is that like good for, is that good for culture?

00:22:59.000 Is that good for male-female relations? 1.00

00:23:02.000 Is the over-sexualization of our society, has that been a generally good thing or is that a generally bad thing?

00:23:08.000 And so what you see is the reactionary nature of the anti-left, which is correct in slapping down the left, but then goes too far by suggesting that what we need, what America needs is more TNA.

00:23:19.000 That TNA is the only solution to what ails us.

00:23:22.000 Okay, well, actually, no, two things can be true at once. 0.90

00:23:25.000 One, the left is totally insane. 0.86

00:23:28.000 And there's nothing Nazi-esque about a jeans pun.

00:23:32.000 And by the way, it is not Nazi for Sydney's we need to be a star.

00:23:35.000 That is not a Nazi thing.

00:23:36.000 We live in an era in which Zendaya is in every movie that has been made for the past 10 years.

00:23:42.000 So I don't think that we are in danger of like a whites-only Hollywood here or a whites-only advertising industry. 0.81

00:23:48.000 So the anti-left is right to mock the left for being totally insipid and insane.

00:23:53.000 But the right is also split between people who don't actually hold any sort of traditional values and people who do hold those traditional values.

00:24:00.000 And they exist in a sort of uneasy coalition.

00:24:03.000 It'll be fascinating to see how that coalition works moving forward.

00:24:06.000 By the way, you're going to start to see this coalition fray, just politically speaking, once it's in power, because then there are divisions over how to actually handle policy.

00:24:14.000 And you're seeing that happen actually in real time, right?

00:24:17.000 You are seeing many of these so-called podcast bros who endorsed President Trump mainly out of ire at the left for being totally crazy are starting to revert to type.

00:24:25.000 And now they're very critical of President Trump's actual conservative policies.

00:24:28.000 Among these people would be, say, Andrew Schultz, the podcast bro who sort of endorsed Trump out of ire at the left and then turned around and talked about how the only honest people in America are the actual Democratic socialists of America.

00:24:38.000 I think you'll see some of this from Joe Rogan, who is never on the right.

00:24:41.000 It's always been amusing to me, like I'm friends with Joe.

00:24:43.000 It's always been amusing to me when the left says the left needs its own Joe Rogan.

00:24:46.000 It's like, guys, Joe Rogan would have voted for Bernie Sanders were he on the ballot.

00:24:51.000 Like let's be clear.

00:24:52.000 Joe Rogan is not of the right.

00:24:54.000 And so what you will see is as President Trump pursues conservative policies on everything from tax to foreign policy, that a lot of these podcast bros will be angry at President Trump because they're not actually conservative.

00:25:05.000 A lot of the Manosphere guys are not actually conservative.

00:25:08.000 They are more in line with the TNA is good for America, as opposed to the traditionally conservative position, which is modesty is good for America.

00:25:17.000 Traditional male-female relationships are good for America and the left is insane.

00:25:21.000 And so as we move forward in time, what you will see is a split inside the right over this issue.

00:25:26.000 There is no split on the left, really.

00:25:29.000 It's hard to find anybody on the left who's defending this ad today because they've all lost their minds.

00:25:33.000 And so as long as the left is completely crazy, any splits on the right are going to look mild by comparison.

00:25:37.000 But it's important to note that there is, in fact, a split on the right between the people who just don't like the left and the people who actually do hold traditional conservative values on a wide variety of issues.

00:25:47.000 And you should keep your eye on that because a lot of those people who are basically joining the right-wing coalition as a response to the left will start infusing that right-wing coalition with left-wing values if given half a chance.

00:26:01.000 It won't be the crazed full version left-wing values, but many of the left-wing values will migrate over to the right because of the nature of the coalition that has been created against the left right here.

00:26:10.000 Okay, meanwhile, in other news, going to be a lot of big economic announcements this week, ranging from announcements about the interest rates, those are probably going to stay stable, to a bunch of earnings announcements that are supposed to come out over the course of this week.

00:26:22.000 The biggest announcement, economically, of course, is President Trump and the EU coming together over the weekend to create a trade deal.

00:26:31.000 The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece titled How Trump Got the Upper Hand Over the EU on Tariffs.

00:26:35.000 Quote, soon after he sat down to negotiate Sunday with European officials on a potential tariff agreement at one of his Scotland Gulf resorts, President Trump said he wanted assurances that Europe would follow through on its pledges to increase investment in the United States.

00:26:47.000 Trump questioned how the U.S. could be certain European companies wouldn't shrug off their plans after a deal was agreed upon, according to people familiar with the matter.

00:26:54.000 After EU leaders assured him the investment plans were real, Trump responded, prove it.

00:26:58.000 EU officials then rattled off the names of companies they said were already prepared to invest with a trade deal in place.

00:27:03.000 Planned investments of almost $200 billion would grow by even more, they told Trump.

00:27:07.000 At the end of the talks, Trump said he would impose 15% baseline tariffs on the block, and he said the EU would now be investing $600 billion in the United States under the deal.

00:27:15.000 Now, unclear exactly whether it's going to be $600 billion or something less.

00:27:20.000 Bottom line is President Trump used tremendous leverage in order to get the EU to accept essentially zero tariff barriers on American goods coming into the European market and 15% tariffs on European goods coming into the American market.

00:27:35.000 Basically, President Trump made the bet, a correct bet, that the EU is more interested in the United States being able to shop in Europe and Europe still being able to ship goods to the United States than they are in a big trade war with the United States, that we essentially have more leverage than they do.

00:27:50.000 And not only that, the EU is recognizing that if they don't make some sort of economic deal with President Trump, that could have security implications as well, which is why they've also been increasing their GDP spend on defense.

00:28:03.000 So the bloc, the European bloc, had been making threats, and then they shifted their approach.

00:28:07.000 They presented U.S. trade officials, according to the Wall Street Journal, with a proposal that included plans to increase purchases of American energy products and an offer to lower tariffs for certain U.S. imports.

00:28:17.000 And then President Trump threatened again.

00:28:19.000 And then the EU negotiators upped the ante.

00:28:23.000 So again, President Trump used leverage.

00:28:26.000 Howard Luttnick, his commerce secretary, very triumphant yesterday going around on Fox explaining.

00:28:31.000 If the European Union is going to pay 15% and they sell us $600 billion worth of goods, that's $90 billion for America.

00:28:40.000 And they agreed for the first time ever to cut all their tariffs, cut their barriers, and let American businesses and farmers and ranchers and fishermen finally sell into the European Union.

00:28:52.000 Massive market.

00:28:53.000 This is huge for America.

00:28:57.000 Okay, so it is yet to be seen how huge it will be for America, because again, the EU is now saying that they're not sure how much they're going to buy.

00:29:04.000 They're always going to buy a lot of American energy, by the way, because as they shift away from Russian supply, they're going to need to buy American LNG.

00:29:09.000 That part is true.

00:29:10.000 As far as European investments in America, sure, they're going to try to build some stuff in America, presumably to avoid tariff barriers entering the United States, make their products more competitive.

00:29:20.000 At the same time, American consumers are going to be paying higher prices on things they normally would have bought from Europe with the lower tariffs.

00:29:27.000 Overall, the tariffs on Americans, which is what tariffs are there, attacks on Americans, because we're the ones who actually pay the bill when the prices go up.

00:29:35.000 Those tariff rates are now at, on average, 15% across the board, which is the highest since the 1930s.

00:29:42.000 And yet, the economy seems to be on relatively even footing right now.

00:29:45.000 Bill Maher of HBO, he says, listen, I thought the tariffs were going to sink the economy.

00:29:50.000 They haven't.

00:29:50.000 Here's what he had to say.

00:29:52.000 I don't know what his strategy is.

00:29:55.000 But look, the stock market is at record highs.

00:29:58.000 I know not everybody lives by the stock market, but I also drive around.

00:30:02.000 I don't see a country in a depression at all.

00:30:05.000 I see people out there just living their lives.

00:30:08.000 And I would have thought, and I got to own it, that these tariffs were going to sink this economy by this time.

00:30:18.000 And they didn't.

00:30:21.000 Now, like Bill Maher, I also was extremely skeptical of the tariffs.

00:30:25.000 And Bill Maher may be right that the tariffs are really not going to have a major impact at this point.

00:30:31.000 I certainly hope Bill Maher is right.

00:30:32.000 I hope the Trump administration is right.

00:30:33.000 I hope that I was wrong when I talked about all the tariffs having a really significantly bad impact on the American economy.

00:30:40.000 But there are a few possibilities to where we go from here.

00:30:43.000 Some good, in which case I'm happy to be wrong, and some not so good.

00:30:48.000 Okay, so he's right.

00:30:49.000 And a lot of people are wondering what the hell is going on.

00:30:51.000 CNN's Jeff Zelany, he says Trump has been reshaping the global trading order, which obviously is true.

00:30:57.000 This is the biggest trade deal in President Trump's effort to effectively reshape the global trading order that has been one of his central priorities since taking office in January.

00:31:09.000 He's been issuing many threats of tariffs, but they clearly have been working in terms of bringing other countries' allies and adversaries alike in some cases to the negotiating table.

00:31:22.000 Okay, so the big question is many people, including me, are anti-tariff.

00:31:26.000 As a general rule, tariffs are not good for economies.

00:31:28.000 So why aren't we in a recession?

00:31:30.000 Why haven't we had a sort of downturn?

00:31:33.000 Gerard Baker has a really interesting piece over at the Wall Street Journal laying out the various possibilities.

00:31:37.000 I don't know the answer to this.

00:31:39.000 However, the one thing I will say about tariffs and tariff wars is we heard the same sorts of talk about modern monetary theory for a couple of years before inflation exploded.

00:31:51.000 This is something retailed by Elizabeth Warren.

00:31:53.000 It was retailed by the Obama administration back in the day.

00:31:55.000 The idea that you could endlessly spend money and you'd never hit an inflationary cycle because people would essentially just keep buying our debt because the American dollar was still the best bet.

00:32:03.000 And it turned out not to be true.

00:32:04.000 It turns out that when you flood the market, you end up having predictable results in the economy.

00:32:10.000 So what exactly is going on?

00:32:12.000 Gerard Baker lays out three possible theories.

00:32:15.000 He says, first, theory, it's too early to tell.

00:32:19.000 Most of the tariffs announced haven't been in place for long.

00:32:21.000 Strangely enough, the uncertainty from Mr. Trump's dizzying policy changes that was expected to have been especially destabilizing maybe help softening the blow.

00:32:28.000 If importers aren't sure Whether announced duties will stay or change, they may be holding off on big price increases until they have clarity.

00:32:35.000 And as we saw with the outcome of the U.S.-Japan deal last week, when the actual tariff levels come in lower than the worst fears, the psychological effect can be a positive.

00:32:42.000 That odd feeling of contentment you get when you discover the $100 bill you thought you had dropped on the sidewalk was only a 20%.

00:32:48.000 But still, for all the unclarity, the average tariff paid by importers has indeed risen sharply to more than 15%, up from less than 3% a year ago so far with limited adverse consequences.

00:32:58.000 So possibility number one is that we just haven't had time.

00:33:00.000 The President Trump is announcing these trade deals in real time, that the tariffs have applied for a couple of months, and you have to wait for people to really adjust to that.

00:33:09.000 Then there's the second possibility, which is that the tariffs aren't actually big enough to create the sort of adverse effects that many economists thought that they would.

00:33:17.000 The U.S. is a relatively closed economy, says Gerard Baker, with imports accounting for less than 15% of GDP.

00:33:23.000 Perhaps the U.S. economy is simply resilient enough to withstand even bad policy, more capable of withstanding a moderate tariff shock.

00:33:30.000 But, he says, this is incomplete.

00:33:32.000 The average 15% tariff rate is now historically large, five times the level that prevailed previously, as close to the average rate of around 20% on all imports under smooth Holly.

00:33:42.000 So there's the third possibility, what I would call the MMT possibility, which is that the conventional wisdom is just wrong.

00:33:49.000 Perhaps economists have overlooked the countervailing forces at work with tariffs.

00:33:52.000 The redistribution of the burden of duties between foreign exporters, U.S. importers, and consumers may be reordering the balance of benefit between domestic and foreign businesses and between companies and consumers.

00:34:02.000 Federal tariff revenue up to $300 billion a year will produce gains for Americans.

00:34:05.000 The relative advantage of doing business in the United States may be, as promised, start to be reflected in stronger inward investment flows.

00:34:12.000 The strikingly one-sided deal Trump just thinks with the EU certainly suggests the sheer economic muscle of the U.S. has been previously underutilized in opening up markets overseas.

00:34:21.000 Okay, so he's saying probably not the second that the tariffs shouldn't have any impact because they're too small.

00:34:26.000 So that leaves you with really two possibilities.

00:34:28.000 One is we don't know yet and it's going to be bad.

00:34:30.000 And two is we got it wrong and it'll be fine.

00:34:33.000 I don't know the answer to this question.

00:34:34.000 I'm not sure that anybody knows the answer to this question.

00:34:37.000 I would lean more toward the former because again, when you are trying to fix quote unquote trade deficits by essentially creating an import tax that hits Americans in their pocketbook, what you're doing is not only making Americans pay more for the products that they would normally buy, you are also preventing people in other countries, presumably, from seeing the benefit of their sales in the United States.

00:35:00.000 You don't have a capital account surplus.

00:35:02.000 A capital account surplus is where you have a bunch of people abroad who essentially owe you money, and then they have to use that money in American markets.

00:35:09.000 So you're going to get less investment because less capital is flowing from the United States to other countries.

00:35:15.000 When you have a trade deficit in terms of goods, very often that means a capital accounts, I think inherently it means a capital account surplus for other countries, right?

00:35:23.000 They're sending you goods.

00:35:24.000 You're sending them money.

00:35:25.000 They have more money than they know what to do with.

00:35:26.000 What do they do with the dollar?

00:35:27.000 They then invest that back in the markets.

00:35:29.000 So it is yet to be seen what the impact of this is.

00:35:31.000 We're going to find out.

00:35:33.000 We are certainly going to find out.

00:35:34.000 For the moment, it's a big win for President Trump, at least politically, to be able to say that he forced the EU to pay their fair share, that he's forcing them to invest in the United States.

00:35:45.000 And we'll have to see how all of this plays out.

00:35:48.000 And when you combine that with the idea that there may already be a market bubble, again, I tend to be more skeptical than the average about the next couple of years in American economics.

00:35:58.000 And I desperately hope that I am wrong because I hope the American economy soars.

00:36:01.000 I think the consequences of a stagnant American economy or some sort of recession are devastatingly bad for the United States because the next thing that will happen is a reversion to left-wing orthodoxy on economic issues.

00:36:13.000 And that means maybe President Deosi, which is a full-scale disaster area for the country.

00:36:17.000 So I am praying that I am wrong and that actually traditional economics is wrong and that tariffs work out just fine.

00:36:23.000 I tend to be more in the first camp, however, saying that let's wait.

00:36:27.000 Let's see what the timing is.

00:36:28.000 Now, if it turns out that the tariffs are having a bad impact, I think President Trump, again, he shifts and he moves.

00:36:34.000 He's not wedded to any sort of real ideology.

00:36:37.000 And so if the impact turns out to be bad, I think that he will move on that as well.

00:36:41.000 But as the Wall Street Journal points out, stocks are doing crazy things again.

00:36:45.000 The share price of online house flipper open door technologies has catapulted 377% in the past month, despite a stagnant U.S. housing market.

00:36:53.000 One of the biggest stock gainers Tuesday was Kohl's, an apartment store that has been losing ground to competitors for some time.

00:36:57.000 On Wednesday, the crowd favorites were GoPro and Krispy Kreme, with both the camera company and Donut Maker notching eye-popping gains over the week.

00:37:05.000 Some investors say the action is the latest phase in what has turned into a near-euphoric rebound from April's tariff turmoil.

00:37:11.000 There's been a stampede into risky assets like meme stocks, cryptocurrencies, and shares of smaller companies that have yet to turn a profit.

00:37:18.000 To some, this resembles a bubble.

00:37:20.000 And certainly you're seeing some signs of a bubble.

00:37:22.000 One of the big tactics that many companies are using right now is they are taking all of their assets, their cash, for example, and they are turning those into crypto.

00:37:29.000 And they are now seeing a multiple on their trades, which is kind of weird because you could just buy the underlying crypto if you want exposure to crypto.

00:37:36.000 But people instead are buying companies that buy crypto, which is very strange.

00:37:40.000 Speculative stocks are doing really well.

00:37:41.000 Right now, crypto prices are up.

00:37:44.000 All of this sort of suggests that there is indeed a bubble, but you know, maybe not.

00:37:49.000 Again, I hope that I'm wrong.

00:37:50.000 I hope that the fundamentals of the economy remain sound.

00:37:53.000 I think one of the things that's happening here is a sort of emotional response to the idea, as Gerard Baker suggested, that we're going to get hit with $100 tariff and it's a $20 tariff, combined with the idea that maybe we weren't going to get a solidification of the Trump tax cuts and those got solidified.

00:38:07.000 The one big, beautiful bill.

00:38:09.000 All I can say is hold your breath because I don't know where this is going.

00:38:13.000 I don't think anybody knows precisely where this is going.

00:38:16.000 Well, in what is clearly salutary news, the Washington Post has been cleaning house.

00:38:20.000 And now they've gotten rid of the Washington Post pseudo fact-checker, Glenn Kessler.

00:38:25.000 Glenn Kessler is one of the scourges of the journalistic industry.

00:38:30.000 He has never been a fact-checker.

00:38:31.000 Glenn Kessler has instead been a propagandist on behalf of the left.

00:38:35.000 He is now out.

00:38:36.000 John Nolte has a really good piece on this over at Breitbart, pointing out that during the 2012 presidential election, President Obama's Republican appointment, Romney, ran a campaign ad, pointing out that Obama did not visit Israel during his first term.

00:38:47.000 Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler called Romney a liar, despite the fact that actually Barack Obama did not visit Israel.

00:38:53.000 And that is Kessler in a nutshell.

00:38:56.000 He wrote yesterday, quote, after more than 27 years of the Washington Post, Including almost 15 as the fact-checker.

00:39:01.000 I will be leaving July 31st, having taken a buyout.

00:39:04.000 Much as I would have liked to keep scrutinizing politicians in Washington, especially in this era, the financial considerations were impossible to dismiss.

00:39:11.000 And again, many times his fact-checking columns were just a disaster area.

00:39:17.000 Nulty's favorite example.

00:39:19.000 Under Kessler's management of the post-fact-checking column, when then-Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina stated with 100% accuracy she began her amazing business career as secretary, she was ridiculed as a liar with three out of four Pinocchios, even though the fact-check agreed she started out as a secretary.

00:39:36.000 Kessler's audaciously dishonest defense of Hillary's criminal mishandling of Benghazi was legendary.

00:39:41.000 It took him 532 days to admit that Hunter Biden's laptop from hell was the real deal.

00:39:46.000 During the 2016 presidential election, Republicans were fact-checked two to one compared to Democrats.

00:39:53.000 So again, Glenn Kessler is awful.

00:39:58.000 And the fact that he is gone is a good thing for journalism and a good thing for fact as it currently stands.

00:40:05.000 Meanwhile, in bad news, I got to say, there are many judges now that are just out of control, truly out of control.

00:40:11.000 A federal judge named Indira Talwani, who I believe is an Obama appointee, has now issued an order to block the Trump administration from enforcing a policy that would prevent Planned Parenthood clinics from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursements if they offer abortion services, according to the New York Times.

00:40:27.000 Now, again, this is not an action taken by a judge against the Trump administration.

00:40:32.000 This is an action taken by a judge against a congressional bill that is not the same thing.

00:40:36.000 She's not saying that Trump is exceeding his executive authority.

00:40:39.000 She's saying Congress cannot cut off funding to Planned Parenthood on the state level via Medicaid, which is nuts.

00:40:46.000 There is no legal basis for any of this.

00:40:49.000 The lawsuit came in response to a provision introduced in the One Big Beautiful bill.

00:40:53.000 That bill imposed a one-year ban on state Medicaid payments to any healthcare nonprofit that offers abortions and received more than $800,000 in Medicaid funding in 2023.

00:41:02.000 Many clinics affiliated with Planned Parenthood faced a choice between altering their operations and retaining millions of dollars in funding or facing a potentially catastrophic loss of revenue.

00:41:12.000 Judge Tawani found this was easily ascertainable that it was targeting Planned Parenthood.

00:41:17.000 So what?

00:41:18.000 Okay, literally so what?

00:41:21.000 Okay, so the idea here is that federal tax dollars should not go to reimburse abortion care because dollars are fungible.

00:41:26.000 If you send them to a clinic and then that clinic performs abortions, the dollars that would have been spent on abortions are now being spent elsewhere.

00:41:34.000 Federal dollars coming in, free up dollars to be spent on abortion.

00:41:38.000 That is what happens.

00:41:40.000 Pretending that there's like a line item.

00:41:42.000 And as long as the federal government isn't directly subsidizing abortion, if you sign a federal check to Planned Parenthood, that doesn't mean more abortions. 0.95

00:41:48.000 That's absolutely silly.

00:41:50.000 Federal law already prohibits the use of federal Medicaid funds for paying for abortions.

00:41:55.000 Judge Tawani found the provision was designed to indirectly squeeze clinics into dropping such services using Medicaid payments as leverage.

00:42:01.000 Well, no, actually, it's just saying you cannot perform abortions and receive federal taxpayer dollars.

00:42:05.000 That's all.

00:42:06.000 That's all.

00:42:07.000 She also then claimed that this was, in fact, a violation of the First Amendment because Planned Parenthood's umbrella organization does political organizing.

00:42:16.000 Okay, so this is insane.

00:42:17.000 Again, this is insane.

00:42:18.000 What?

00:42:19.000 You know, if the Democratic Party comes into power and they fund a bunch of organizations that are basically just blue front groups, those must be funded for the rest of time.

00:42:29.000 Otherwise, it's a violation of the First Amendment.

00:42:31.000 This is crazy.

00:42:33.000 Joining me on the line to discuss is Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute.

00:42:38.000 He is also the author of books, including Supreme Disorder, as well as Lawless, The Miseducation of America's Elites.

00:42:44.000 Ilya, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:42:46.000 Good to be back with you, Ben.

00:42:49.000 So why don't we discuss what exactly this federal judge is doing with regard to Planned Parenthood?

00:42:54.000 What is the case and what is the judge ruling?

00:42:56.000 So Congress passed a law.

00:42:58.000 This is not an executive order.

00:43:00.000 Congress passed a law defunding Planned Parenthood.

00:43:03.000 And this judge is saying that that is unconstitutional for several reasons.

00:43:08.000 First of all, that it's a bill of attainder, which is an odd argument.

00:43:11.000 A bill of attainder is criminally prosecuting somebody, targeting someone for criminal prosecution without due process.

00:43:18.000 Doesn't really apply to a defunding bill, but anyway, equal protection that Planned Parenthood is being denied somehow.

00:43:24.000 It's equal treatment under the law.

00:43:26.000 And a violation of the First Amendment because Planned Parenthood engages in advocacy and that advocacy is now being restricted.

00:43:33.000 I mean, it is crazy, possibly the craziest district court order I've seen.

00:43:40.000 Again, not against the Trump administration, against the government, against a duly enacted law in quite some time.

00:43:45.000 I think this is going to be reversed pretty quickly.

00:43:49.000 I mean, I'm kind of astonished by the ruling itself.

00:43:52.000 I can't even see what the patina of law would be to justify these particular claims.

00:43:58.000 I mean, the result of a claim that the judge is making like this is that literally any organization cannot be defunded because they all have free speech rights.

00:44:05.000 They all have the ability to speak on things.

00:44:07.000 And so you can't name a single organization funded by federal taxpayer dollars that could not make a First Amendment claim under the rubric created by this judge, could you?

00:44:17.000 Absolutely.

00:44:18.000 I mean, everyone engages in speech in some way.

00:44:19.000 Everyone has a PR department.

00:44:21.000 They issue press statements, what have you.

00:44:23.000 Absolutely. 0.87

00:44:24.000 And the Bill of Attainer thing is just so ridiculous.

00:44:26.000 I mean, remember the TikTok bill that Congress passed in a bipartisan manner?

00:44:30.000 That was explicitly, that wasn't just kind of defining terms so it would only apply to one or several organizations.

00:44:36.000 That explicitly named these groups.

00:44:39.000 And yet that kind of argument didn't fly at any level of the judiciary.

00:44:44.000 So this is just the most lawless thing.

00:44:46.000 And again, I can't emphasize enough.

00:44:48.000 So many of the complaints, rightly so by the Trump administration of lawfare by district court judges, injunctions and all these things have been about executive orders.

00:44:58.000 This is not that.

00:44:58.000 This is a duly enacted law by Congress deciding its budgetary priorities.

00:45:03.000 And here the judge is saying, well, for all these reasons, it's kind of a hand-waving exercise.

00:45:09.000 That can't be.

00:45:10.000 I mean, it's very hard to steel man this, to put it in the most solid terms.

00:45:16.000 You're right.

00:45:16.000 The judge is questioning Congress's policy judgments saying, well, Congress can be anti-abortion, but this actually doesn't help that goal because if you don't have Planned Parenthood, more people will get pregnant.

00:45:28.000 Things like that because of contraception.

00:45:31.000 Just weird policy arguments that aren't relevant to the legal decision.

00:45:38.000 Yeah, Ilya, one of the things that probably should be done here is somebody should consider impeaching this judge.

00:45:43.000 I mean, really, like this is such a bizarre sort of interpretation of law that is beyond anything that either you or I have seen from the judiciary.

00:45:51.000 Again, there's not really even an attempt to read this into the law.

00:45:54.000 It's a political op-ed that takes the form of a judicial opinion.

00:45:58.000 I mean, when do opinions, if they do, ever rise to the level of this judge should just not be on the bench anymore?

00:46:04.000 Well, we've been careful in our history not to impeach judges because we disagree with their opinions.

00:46:10.000 In the early Republic, there wasn't even an attempt to impeach a Supreme Court justice, which ultimately failed in the Senate by one vote.

00:46:19.000 So I'm cautious about the impeachment process, but just yesterday, there was a bar complaint filed, a judicial complaint filed by the Justice Department against a different judge, Jim Bozberg, of Jed Boseberg, of the DC District Court.

00:46:37.000 The same sort of thing probably should be done here.

00:46:40.000 And let those authorities, let the judicial conference do its work. 0.95

00:46:45.000 Perhaps ultimately the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court will slap down the judge in certain ways.

00:46:49.000 So there are certain steps that need to be taken before just going for impeachment right away.

00:46:54.000 But I agree, this is just, this goes beyond a simple disagreement over the law, and it's pure judicial civil disobedience, if you will.

00:47:02.000 Well, that's Ilya Shapiro, Sr.

00:47:04.000 Fellow, Director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute.

00:47:07.000 Go check out all of his work over at his account on X.com.

00:47:10.000 Ilya, really appreciate the time.

00:47:12.000 Good to talk to you.

00:47:13.000 Meanwhile, on the foreign policy front, it is amazing, despite all of the criticism of President Trump on foreign policy, President Trump is coming around to the right solutions the vast majority of the time.

00:47:24.000 This is why Harry Enton at CNN is pointing out that Republicans actually are trusted on foreign policy, which is kind of a rarity in this day and age.

00:47:31.000 The bottom line is Democrats in the American voters' minds cannot hack it.

00:47:36.000 What are we talking about?

00:47:36.000 Party trust tomorrow in foreign policy.

00:47:38.000 Well, the GOP holds an average six-point lead in the month of July.

00:47:41.000 Look at this.

00:47:41.000 Fox News came out last week.

00:47:43.000 Plus three points for Republicans on foreign policy over the Democrats.

00:47:47.000 You think that number is not high enough for you?

00:47:49.000 How about the Wall Street Journal?

00:47:50.000 GOP plus eight points when they match congressional Democrats up against congressional Republicans.

00:47:55.000 The bottom line is this.

00:47:56.000 Despite everything that's going on in the world right now, Republicans are more trusted on Democrats when it comes to foreign policy and the world at large.

00:48:06.000 By the way, there is a reason for that, and that is because Joe Biden ran an awful foreign policy.

00:48:09.000 President Trump is coming around to the right solutions.

00:48:12.000 Yesterday, he said he would give Russian President Vladimir Putin 10 or 12 days to reach a ceasefire with Ukraine or face more economic pressure from the United States.

00:48:19.000 Here was President Trump pointing out that Putin has made no moves toward peace.

00:48:25.000 I'm going to make a new deadline of about 10 or 12 days from today.

00:48:32.000 There's no reason in waiting.

00:48:34.000 There's no reason in waiting.

00:48:36.000 It's 50 days.

00:48:37.000 I want to be generous, but we just don't see any progress being made.

00:48:44.000 Correct.

00:48:45.000 Correct.

00:48:45.000 Again, President Trump responding to reality.

00:48:47.000 He said, quote, we thought we had settled numerous times.

00:48:50.000 He was very disappointed, he said, with Putin, quote, and then President Putin goes out and starts launching rockets into some city, bodies lying all over the street.

00:48:58.000 He said, you know, this has happened on too many occasions and I don't like it.

00:49:01.000 He said he was not so interested in talking to Putin anymore.

00:49:04.000 Now, again, this is correct.

00:49:05.000 This is correct.

00:49:06.000 President Trump is coming to the correct solutions.

00:49:08.000 Meanwhile, President Trump announced that he had negotiated a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand.

00:49:13.000 Here he was yesterday.

00:49:16.000 You probably know, I won't go into it very much because I don't know the final numbers yet.

00:49:20.000 I don't know.

00:49:22.000 Numerous people were killed, and I was dealing with two countries that we get along with very well, very different countries from certain standpoints.

00:49:30.000 They've been fighting for 500 years intermittently, and we solved that war.

00:49:37.000 You probably saw it just came out over the wire, so we solved it through trade.

00:49:41.000 I said, I don't want to trade with anybody that's killing each other.

00:49:45.000 So we just got that one solved.

00:49:48.000 Meanwhile, there's an enormous controversy, obviously, surrounding the distribution of food aid in Gaza.

00:49:54.000 Understand that this is being created by Hamas and its allies over at the UN and its allies in the media.

00:49:59.000 That does not mean that there's no starvation in Gaza.

00:50:01.000 The media do a horrible job of coverage.

00:50:03.000 They take all their information from the Gaza Ministry of Health.

00:50:06.000 There are widely variant videos between Gaza markets, which seem to be filled with food, and then pictures of people who seem to be very hungry.

00:50:15.000 Mati Friedman, who is a reporter from Israel, writes for the free press that, frankly, there's not really a great way of knowing exactly what's going on in Gaza.

00:50:24.000 He said, in an attempt to understand the truth of the reports, I called several trusted colleagues, veteran Israeli journalists, intimately involved in covering events here and concerned both with the health of our society and that of innocent Palestinians.

00:50:33.000 It was clear in speaking to them that our plight as journalists is only marginally better than that of the average citizen.

00:50:38.000 The consensus was that there were nearly no trustworthy sources regarding reality in Gaza.

00:50:42.000 Certainly not the Gaza Health Ministry, which answers to Hamas, or Palestinian reporters intimidated by Hamas, or the international organizations like the UN refugee agency UNRWA embroiled in various forms of collaboration with Hamas.

00:50:54.000 The international press isn't the answer either.

00:50:57.000 During my years as a reporter and editor for the Associated Press, I saw coverage altered by Hamas' threats to our staff, while this fact was concealed from readers.

00:51:04.000 But neither can Israelis trust their own government, which has regularly misled the public about the wars of progress, about the shifting goals of the campaign, etc. 0.52

00:51:13.000 So, again, you know, the sort of informational gap is quite real.

00:51:18.000 It is difficult to tell what exactly is going on or not.

00:51:22.000 There is one study that came out that suggests that the food prices in Gaza have skyrocketed, which, again, may be true. 1.00

00:51:28.000 It is also difficult to tell whether that's true given the fact that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been shipping literally millions of meals into Gaza.

00:51:36.000 Bottom line is this.

00:51:37.000 Here's what we do know.

00:51:38.000 What we do know is that Hamas, their top demand in the negotiations right now, their number one demand is a restoration of UN-driven food aid.

00:51:47.000 Why?

00:51:47.000 Because they are stealing it.

00:51:49.000 They are stealing it, and then they are reselling it for money, or they are using it for their fighters.

00:51:55.000 That is what Hamas is doing. 0.77

00:51:57.000 The UN is complicit in that.

00:51:58.000 The UN has openly announced they Will not bring food into the Gaza Strip under the auspices of the IDF.

00:52:04.000 Why?

00:52:05.000 Because if the IDF guards the UN while they hand out food, Hamas won't get it. 0.93

00:52:08.000 And the UN wishes to help Hamas, which means the only actual solution to all of this is the GHF. 0.74

00:52:15.000 We talked about this last week.

00:52:16.000 The real solution to any hunger crisis in Gaza is to set up a humanitarian safe zone in the south of Gaza, run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, protected by the IDF and funded by other neighbors in the region, including the UAE, Saudi, Qatar, Bahrain, and all the rest.

00:52:33.000 Jordan, Egypt, that would be the actual solution.

00:52:35.000 I mean, listen, a better solution would be for Egypt to open up its well-fortified border where it will allow zero Palestinians in, even temporarily, to set up a sort of way station on the other side of the Gaza border in the largely unoccupied Sinai desert. 0.94

00:52:47.000 And all these things are eminently doable.

00:52:49.000 And then if you don't get down to Rafah within a certain period of time and be screened for terrorism, moving all the Gaza Hamas into jail or exile, if that doesn't happen, then the rest of the strip should be essentially declared a zone of uninhabitedness because the rest of the strip, again, is rife with Hamas using civilians as cover. 0.86

00:53:15.000 So move all the civilians to, this is how counterinsurgency is typically done, by the way.

00:53:18.000 Clear and hold is a typical counterinsurgency strategy.

00:53:21.000 Moving everybody into a safe area where they are protected so they can receive aid from an organization not linked to Hamas would be the proper solution because the alternative is Hamas continues to run the food aid, continues to terrorize the population, continues to shoot anyone who gets in his way.

00:53:37.000 The one thing that we know for a fact is that Hamas is stealing the food aid.

00:53:40.000 Here is video from yesterday of Hamas stealing food aid because Israel relented under gigantic public scrutiny and allowed UN trucks to go in.

00:53:47.000 What happened to those UN trucks?

00:53:49.000 Well, Hamas took them. 0.78

00:53:52.000 And you can see in this red circle, a Hamas fighter on top of the truck.

00:53:56.000 And there he is pointing a gun at the Gazan civilians.

00:54:01.000 Basically saying, this is our aid.

00:54:02.000 You will not take this aid.

00:54:04.000 And that is not the only video.

00:54:07.000 We have another video of Hamas riding trucks stolen.

00:54:11.000 You can see the Khmer's fighters on top of the A-Trogs. 1.00

00:54:21.000 Literally firing their guns in triumph from the top of the trucks as those trucks are stacked with aid.

00:54:27.000 So Hamas fighters are like all over these convoys.

00:54:30.000 This is a gigantic media propaganda operation run by Hamas, mirrored by the United Nations and all of its allies to maintain Hamas's dominance of the Gaza Strip.

00:54:41.000 That is what this is.

00:54:42.000 Israel is allowing airdrops in. 1.00

00:54:44.000 Israel has facilitated the entry of millions of meals in.

00:54:46.000 And there's unprecedented wartime.

00:54:48.000 This has never happened before.

00:54:49.000 There's never been a situation in which one party attacks another party and the attacked party has a responsibility to feed the civilian population of the party that attacked.

00:54:59.000 That has never happened before in wartime in any way of which I am aware.

00:55:04.000 So again, could things be done better?

00:55:06.000 Sure, but that involves an actual plan.

00:55:09.000 That plan, I assume, will be some sort of safe harbor zone in the south of Gaza, run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, not run by the United Nations.

00:55:17.000 President Trump, by the way, is suggesting something very similar.

00:55:19.000 Here he was yesterday.

00:55:21.000 We do have to take care of the humanitarian needs what they used to call the Gaza Strip.

00:55:27.000 You don't hear that line too much anymore.

00:55:29.000 You don't hear the Gaza Strip.

00:55:30.000 But it is the Gaza Strip, and it's amazing that it's not being handled a little bit differently.

00:55:39.000 We're going to set up food centers, and we're going to do it in conjunction with some very good people, and we're going to supply funds.

00:55:49.000 And we just took in trillions of dollars.

00:55:52.000 We're getting a lot of money, and we're going to spend a little money on some food.

00:55:59.000 Okay, so again, the idea would be, presumably, that that money should be funneled through an organization that is not simply handing it over to Hamas.

00:56:06.000 And meanwhile, as you can see, President Trump is in Scotland with the Prime Minister of the UK, Kira Starmer.

00:56:13.000 It is kind of amusing that President Trump made the Prime Minister of the UK, he didn't meet him in London, he had him come to his golf club, Turnbury, in Scotland.

00:56:21.000 And there he proceeded to berate him about the mayor of London, the awful Sidiq Khan, whose apparently main concern in London is Islamophobia.

00:56:29.000 Here is President Trump slamming Sidi Khan in front of Kira Starmer.

00:56:34.000 Will you visit London during the state visit?

00:56:36.000 I will.

00:56:38.000 I'm not a fan of your mayor.

00:56:40.000 Why not?

00:56:41.000 I think he's done a terrible job. 0.99

00:56:43.000 The mayor of London, but the nasty person.

00:56:48.000 I think he's a friend of mine, Russia. 0.70

00:56:51.000 Now, I think he's done a terrible job.

00:56:55.000 But I would certainly visit London.

00:56:59.000 He's like, tough.

00:57:00.000 He's a front of yours.

00:57:01.000 I don't care.

00:57:02.000 President Trump hilariously started talking about American immigration policy, how he shut the border.

00:57:06.000 And Kiera Starmer of Labor tried to jump in and hijack it. 1.00

00:57:11.000 If you're stopping immigration and stopping the wrong people, my hats are off to you.

00:57:16.000 You're doing not a good thing.

00:57:18.000 You're doing a fantastic thing.

00:57:20.000 So I know nothing about the votes.

00:57:22.000 But if the votes are loaded up with bad people, and they usually are, because, you know, other countries don't send their best.

00:57:28.000 They send people that they don't want. 0.99

00:57:31.000 And they're not stupid people. 0.96

00:57:32.000 And they send the people that they don't want. 0.97

00:57:35.000 And I've heard that you've taken a much stronger stance on this.

00:57:38.000 Yeah, we've done a lot of work to stop them coming.

00:57:39.000 We just signed an agreement to return them.

00:57:43.000 And we've returned 35,000, in fact, as the first year of this Liberal government of people who shouldn't be in this country. 1.00

00:57:48.000 So we're very pleased that we're getting on with returning people who've got no right to be here.

00:57:55.000 Again, I love the fact that President Trump has so shifted the conversation on immigration that Keir Starmer has had to jump on board.

00:58:00.000 President Trump also went after the free speech problems in the UK.

00:58:04.000 There have been widespread reports of people being arrested for simply making comments about radical Islamic immigration, for example.

00:58:11.000 President Trump slammed that, and Keir Starmer then had to awkwardly stand there and try to defend Britain's crackdowns on free speech.

00:58:18.000 Can you discuss the importance of free speech today?

00:58:22.000 Well, free speech is very important.

00:58:23.000 I don't know if you're referring to any place in particular.

00:58:26.000 Perhaps they are.

00:58:27.000 But we've had free speech for a very, very long time here.

00:58:30.000 So we're very proud about that.

00:58:34.000 No, that is not true.

00:58:36.000 I'm not sure that Kierstarmer is very proud of free speech in Great Britain.

00:58:39.000 Meanwhile, overall, as President Trump points out, his polls are up.

00:58:42.000 He remains incredibly durable in his second term.

00:58:46.000 He said this in response to questions about Jeffrey Epstein, which, again, is at this point an op.

00:58:52.000 When I say that, I mean that advisedly.

00:58:54.000 There are people who have honest questions about Jeffrey.

00:58:56.000 I will say this a thousand times.

00:58:57.000 There are honest questions about Jeffrey Epstein, about informational flow, honest questions about why members of the Trump administration, particularly the attorney general, retailed certain things that didn't end up materializing.

00:59:08.000 Those are all open and honest and decent questions.

00:59:10.000 They're open questions about where Jeffrey Epstein got his money and all the rest.

00:59:12.000 All of that, those are fine questions.

00:59:15.000 The people who are suggesting that President Trump is somehow engaging in a cover-up, not only of Jeffrey Epstein's pedophilia, but of some sort of blackmail sex ring targeting the most powerful and rich people on earth.

00:59:26.000 And Trump is then covering that up for some nefarious purpose.

00:59:29.000 Bad partisan op designed to actually undermine the president of the United States.

00:59:34.000 And the people who are implying it without saying it should be asked really if that's what they believe.

00:59:38.000 Here's President Trump saying his polls are up, which is true.

00:59:42.000 You know, when you talk about files, I just keep going back.

00:59:46.000 And other people, too, even the enemy says this thing is not correct because if we had it, we would have used it on the guy.

00:59:55.000 It's a bad issue.

00:59:56.000 They say it's a good issue for Trump.

00:59:58.000 Do you know that my poll numbers are up four and a half points since this ridiculous Epstein stuff?

01:00:04.000 My poll numbers have gone up four and a half points because people don't buy it.

01:00:09.000 Okay, people don't buy it.

01:00:13.000 President Trump also added that the reason he stopped associating with Epstein was because of hiring issues.

01:00:20.000 For years, I wouldn't talk to Jeffrey Epstein.

01:00:23.000 I wouldn't talk because he did something that was inappropriate.

01:00:26.000 He hired help, and I said, don't ever do that again.

01:00:29.000 He stole people that worked for me.

01:00:32.000 I said, don't ever do that again.

01:00:34.000 He did it again.

01:00:35.000 And I threw him out of the place, persona non grata.

01:00:39.000 I threw him out, and that was it.

01:00:41.000 I'm glad I did, if you want to know the truth.

01:00:46.000 President Trump also said he had never been to Epstein Island.

01:00:49.000 People jumped all over his language in this particular clip.

01:00:52.000 But again, like, come on, really?

01:00:55.000 And by the way, I never went to the island, and Bill Clinton went there supposedly 28 times.

01:01:03.000 I never went to the island, but Larry Summers, I hear, went there.

01:01:06.000 He was the head of Harvard.

01:01:08.000 And many other people that are very big people.

01:01:10.000 Nobody ever talks about them.

01:01:12.000 I never had the privilege of going to his island.

01:01:15.000 And I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island.

01:01:21.000 Yeah, again, people are jumping on the word privilege there.

01:01:23.000 You can see that he sort of laughs when he says that.

01:01:26.000 He is saying it ironically.

01:01:28.000 He doesn't mean privilege like he wanted desperately to go to Jeffrey Epstein's island.

01:01:33.000 Come on, guys.

01:01:33.000 Like, really?

01:01:34.000 What do you think he's covering up?

01:01:35.000 Seriously, this is what I want to know from all the people who keep claiming that Trump is covering something up.

01:01:39.000 What is the thing supposedly that he is covering up?

01:01:42.000 Who is the they in all this?

01:01:43.000 You know, earlier on in the program, I said that there is a gap that's emerging now between the anti-left and the actual traditional right in the Republican Party.

01:01:53.000 And that gap is very much emerging over things like Epstein, where a lot of people who have bought into the idea that the systems are corrupt, which many of them are, or that they've been defaced, many of them have been, or that the institutions have been eaten from within, which is largely true.

01:02:08.000 Many of those people are not interested in an actual restoration of many of those institutions.

01:02:13.000 They're sort of in love with a narrative whereby everything in America is corrupt.

01:02:18.000 No one can succeed.

01:02:19.000 And that tends to horseshoe back around to the left.

01:02:22.000 And that, indeed, is a problem.

01:02:25.000 Name a particular issue, and we can talk about whether that issue is soluble or not.

01:02:30.000 Name a particular issue or a particular bad guy.

01:02:33.000 We can discuss whether that person is engaging in the thing you're saying they're engaging in.

01:02:36.000 Use empty words like they without any antecedent or suggest a conspiracy without any actual conspirators or make an allegation without any actual content.

01:02:47.000 Makes it very difficult to determine what is true and what is false, which again is why I think that some of that is the point designed to undermine President Trump.

01:02:54.000 All righty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.

01:02:57.000 We'll get to some actual impending problems, perhaps, for Republicans in the Senate.

01:03:01.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:03:03.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

01:03:04.000 Use code Shapiro.

01:03:05.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 29, 2025

The Internet’s Cleavage Over Sydney Sweeney’s Commercial

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript