The Ben Shapiro Show - THE OP IS LIVE: Candace’s Magical Russia Tour Continues

00:00:00.000 Historically, Russia was very, very good at what we call psyops, psychological operations designed to undermine the United States. 0.98

00:00:07.000 They are still good at it. 0.85

00:00:09.000 The op is happening.

00:00:10.000 It's live right in front of you.

00:00:11.000 Candace Owens, Andrew Tate, other woke right influencers have now landed in Moscow.

00:00:16.000 And they're basically Jane Fonda on the Viet Cong anti-aircraft guns during the Vietnam War.

00:00:20.000 They're propagandists for our enemies. 0.83

00:00:22.000 You're not going to believe the footage from Moscow. 1.00

00:00:25.000 And if you somehow believe that these people are just good-hearted folks who are invested in Christianity and the West and traditional conservative values in Russia, I hate to break it to you, but you are the sucker. 0.99

00:00:37.000 If your head is attached to your shoulders, the op has never been more obvious. 0.99

00:00:40.000 We're going to debunk all the lies one by one.

00:00:42.000 We'll also get into more commie momdani craziness in New York City, whether or not sports are fascist.

00:00:47.000 Plus, we're joined by the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Bergam, and the Daily Wire's own investigative reporter, Luke Rosiak, in just a few moments.

00:00:54.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:01:08.000 Is that Candace Owens' music?

00:01:11.000 Is that her music?

00:01:13.000 Folks, the dictator who currently runs Russia, Vladimir Putin, he was literally a member of the KGB.

00:01:19.000 His task intelligence and counterintelligence.

00:01:22.000 He worked under a man named Yuri Andropov, who was leading the KGB at the time.

00:01:26.000 Later, Andropov became, you know, the premier of the Soviet Union, like the dictator of the Soviet Union.

00:01:32.000 And here's what Andropov said about psyops directed at Soviet enemies Disinformation is like cocaine.

00:01:38.000 Sniff once or twice, it may not change your life.

00:01:40.000 If you use it every day, though, it will make you an addict, a different man.

00:01:43.000 Well, it seems like a lot of people in the West are now all coked up.

00:01:48.000 So, as mentioned, Candace Owens is in Russia talking about the Romanovs murdered by communists, but according to Candace, Satanists.

00:01:56.000 She's sitting on Russian propaganda panels.

00:01:57.000 She is praising what she describes as Russia's approach to family.

00:02:00.000 Spoiler alert, statistically, the Russian approach to family is to not get married and never have children, and also suggesting that Russian history is a beautiful melange of philo-Semitism.

00:02:11.000 Meanwhile, Archer Taylor Greene doing the same sort of stuff, signaling her support for Candace's big Russian adventure, and Buckley Carlson, aka Tucker Carlson, minus the skincare regimen, openly saying that Russia's leader looks out for his people's interests, and he wishes we had that here. 0.55

00:02:25.000 Tucker, of course, says exactly the same thing.

00:02:27.000 None of them are just making critiques of America.

00:02:30.000 They are all saying that Russia is somehow better, that Russia's leadership is somehow better.

00:02:34.000 And that's the tell.

00:02:35.000 Because there's a big difference between saying countries act in their own national interest, duh, or America has problems, duh.

00:02:43.000 There's a difference between saying that and I wish our country were run more like Vladimir Putin's Russia.

00:02:48.000 Those are not the same argument.

00:02:50.000 One of those is rooted in some form of realism.

00:02:53.000 The other is just crazed fan fiction conspiracy nonsense.

00:02:57.000 And that is what this has become. 0.93

00:02:58.000 All of this geopolitical fan fiction for people who think America sucks so much that countries like Russia not only ought to be a model for us, but ought to have more global power.

00:03:07.000 This is all part of what we called last week a demoralization op.

00:03:11.000 As we discussed last week, demoralization.

00:03:13.000 Is the effort to destroy basic moral principles and dogmas and replace them with divisive fringe ideologies.

00:03:19.000 It is step one in trying to collapse your enemies.

00:03:21.000 And that is what is happening here.

00:03:23.000 Enemies of America are using every resource at their disposal to do it. 0.96

00:03:26.000 And good news for them there's lots of resources, an entire online repository of complete dunderheaded morons and conspiratorial America haters to do their dirty work for them, and lots of people online to click into the echo chamber. 0.92

00:03:38.000 The exact same people who built their brands around don't trust the regime and don't trust the media and don't trust the propaganda. are suddenly very much in favor of trusting the regime when it's Russia, the media when it's Russia today, and the propaganda when they are controlled by the Russian government. 0.95

00:03:55.000 Now tell them America is decadent and the West is collapsing and Putin is strong and Russia protects tradition and suddenly they are on board all the way.

00:04:03.000 They're not investigating or questioning.

00:04:04.000 This is not skepticism, folks.

00:04:06.000 This is not skepticism.

00:04:07.000 This is credulity. 1.00

00:04:09.000 This is absolute credulous stupidity. 1.00

00:04:13.000 And they're nodding along either because they are bought and paid for or Because the message actually flatters their priors. 1.00

00:04:19.000 And their priors are obvious. 1.00

00:04:20.000 America sucks. 1.00

00:04:20.000 America's in decline. 1.00

00:04:22.000 America, in fact, is evil.

00:04:24.000 The case is that we took the wrong side during World War II.

00:04:28.000 We were vicious during the Cold War.

00:04:29.000 We were the bad guys. 1.00

00:04:32.000 In the modern era, we're the great despoilers of innocent Muslims in the Middle East. 1.00

00:04:37.000 And in the end, the result is all the same.

00:04:38.000 The only way, the only way to fix all of this, to unburden the brutalized, demonized American soul, is to give more power.

00:04:48.000 To America's enemies.

00:04:49.000 We need, wait for it, multipolarity.

00:04:51.000 That's how the op works.

00:04:54.000 The goal is to convince you that America is irredeemably crappy morally and that the people we've always seen as our geopolitical opponents are actually not that bad.

00:05:02.000 Russia is not that bad.

00:05:03.000 In fact, in many ways, they're better than we are. 0.97

00:05:05.000 Iran is not that bad.

00:05:06.000 They don't bother us.

00:05:07.000 Maybe they could be our friends.

00:05:08.000 China is not that bad. 0.99

00:05:10.000 That's the op. 0.76

00:05:12.000 And it's working on a large number of people who spend too much time online watching Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens or Sean Ryan or Andrew Tate or Megyn Kelly or any of the increasingly anti American grifters and click cores willing to crap on America, either because they believe it or for fame and money.

00:05:25.000 So, again, all of this is coming up because Candace Owens went to Russia to just do propaganda work on behalf of the Russian regime.

00:05:33.000 She wasn't in St. Petersburg because she wanted to see the churches or anything like that.

00:05:37.000 She was there because she was attending and speaking.

00:05:39.000 At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, alongside Vladimir Putin and Alexander Dugin and other members of the Russian government and the Intel community.

00:05:49.000 And again, Ryan Morrow has reported that the St. Petersburg Forum is a known hub for Russian Intel and that its panels serve as recruitment pipelines for foreign collaborators and top goals include state directed soft power programs.

00:06:01.000 It's a hotspot for Russian intelligence.

00:06:04.000 That is what it is.

00:06:07.000 And so again, we have seen a wide variety of these woke right influencers who now are pretty much openly allied with the left.

00:06:14.000 Going over to Russia and paying tribute to it from Tucker Carlson sniffing the bread and marveling at the shopping carts because, again, he is a silver spoon.

00:06:25.000 There's a word here that is inappropriate for public use.

00:06:28.000 He is as silver spoon as it's possible to get.

00:06:30.000 That dude has never been in an Aldi's and so he's astonished by basic movements of shopping carts.

00:06:34.000 But don't worry, he's a man of the people because he wears flannel up in his multi million dollar mansion in Maine.

00:06:39.000 Anyway, they head on over to Russia and they talk about how great Russia is.

00:06:43.000 A few facts about Russia.

00:06:44.000 Russia has one of the worst abortion rates on planet Earth, 45 per 1,000 women.

00:06:48.000 Its church attendance rate among the Russians who identify as Orthodox is somewhere between 6 and 14%.

00:06:56.000 If you look at the total population of Russia, it's actually significantly lower, at 2 to 8%.

00:07:02.000 Their total fertility rate is 1.4.

00:07:05.000 The birth rate is 1.37 children per woman.

00:07:08.000 That is way below replacement rate. 0.96

00:07:09.000 They're going to have their population.

00:07:11.000 The fastest growing religion in Russia is Islam, 14 to 20% of the population.

00:07:16.000 With far higher observance and fertility rates than Christians in Russia.

00:07:20.000 Their drug, alcohol, and STD rates remain the highest in the world outside of sub Saharan Africa. 0.93

00:07:26.000 Russia has a massive suicide rate, 2.3 times higher than the world average.

00:07:34.000 Their life expectancy is lower than the rest of the West. 0.98

00:07:37.000 And this is the model.

00:07:39.000 These are the people that you should be seeing as a model for the West, the people who have got it right.

00:07:43.000 Okay, so Candace, of course, remember, she was only there because her husband wanted to fish in Russia.

00:07:48.000 She wasn't there to do propaganda.

00:07:49.000 She just randomly ended up on a propaganda panel for the Putin regime.

00:07:53.000 She was there explaining at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that Russia and the United States are basically the same.

00:07:59.000 Did you know that?

00:08:00.000 Did you know that they're basically the same?

00:08:03.000 I mean, I didn't know that because it isn't true.

00:08:05.000 But according to Candace, it's true.

00:08:08.000 Also, she really likes the architecture.

00:08:13.000 My main conclusion would be that we are grappling with the same issues, West and East.

00:08:20.000 I think something that we hit upon today was just the media messaging and constantly trying to make this division between what's going on in Russia, what's going on in America, that there are no similarities.

00:08:32.000 My entire trip has revealed to me just how similar we are and our motivation, both as a faithful society, putting God first, but family, understanding that family encourages us in a positive way.

00:08:47.000 It has just been a tremendously encouraging trip, and I can't wait to go back.

00:08:51.000 Onto my podcast and to be able to share that with the American people as well.

00:08:57.000 Oh, that's so nice.

00:08:58.000 That's so nice.

00:08:59.000 And then they're being clapped for, oh, isn't that nice?

00:09:02.000 Isn't that nice?

00:09:03.000 Next year, we'll talk about the Iraqs, about the maps.

00:09:08.000 My goodness.

00:09:09.000 All right, coming up more from Candace Owens' propaganda tour of Russia.

00:09:14.000 And, you know, Candace has gone to sleep on America, but the thing is, you actually do need more sleep because sleep is the beginning of health.

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00:10:21.000 She, of course, also talked about how much of a blessing it was to hear about Russia's big family policies, big family policies that are so efficient that Russia has one of the lowest fertility rates in any semi developed country.

00:10:37.000 I think at times there has been some conflict.

00:10:40.000 Between governments and thinking that maybe you don't want that messaging to come out.

00:10:46.000 Maybe they think, oh, we don't want people at home with big families.

00:10:49.000 That's not going to help.

00:10:50.000 And I couldn't disagree with that perspective more.

00:10:54.000 Governments and institutions should encourage big families because it encourages better people, people that build with purpose, and people that nurture with purpose.

00:11:03.000 And so it really has been a blessing to hear about, I guess, to hear more intimately about what's going on in Russia in terms of those policies that are being put into place.

00:11:14.000 Place to encourage big families.

00:11:17.000 Oh, that's so nice.

00:11:18.000 That's so nice.

00:11:19.000 You know, Candace is, of course, a huge fan of civilizations that have high birth rates, like Israel, which has the highest birth rate in the developed world.

00:11:26.000 No, I'm just kidding, of course.

00:11:28.000 Of course.

00:11:28.000 She's not a fan of Israel.

00:11:31.000 Candace was asked on Russia Today, which, of course, Russia Today was just pumping out these clips all day long.

00:11:35.000 All these clips of Russia Today, an actual Russian propaganda outlet, just pumping out these clips of Candace talking about the wonders of Russia.

00:11:41.000 Here she was denying that the Soviet Union.

00:11:45.000 Was ever involved in promoting anti-Semitism.

00:11:47.000 In fact, Russia has never been involved in promoting anti-Semitism.

00:11:49.000 Things I learned today from people who have never read a book.

00:11:54.000 I think you posted something this morning.

00:11:56.000 I didn't get a chance to look at it all, but I think you'd mentioned something about that there's some tie between charges from Israel, that they're somehow trying to tie anti-Semitism to Russia.

00:12:09.000 Right.

00:12:09.000 It was actually just on the way over here.

00:12:11.000 One of my followers sent it.

00:12:13.000 We had been covering this.

00:12:16.000 Farah filing from a company called Clock Tower LLC, Clock Tower X LLC.

00:12:23.000 And they are, you know, they filed for Farah.

00:12:25.000 They're not pretending that they're not foreign agents.

00:12:26.000 It's directly from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel that is controlling this organization.

00:12:31.000 And they are explicit in their filings that this is about propaganda targeting American Christians and how we're going to go around and create the October 7th experience.

00:12:41.000 Here are people that we deem problematic and I had missed in this document.

00:12:45.000 They explicitly stated, mind you, this was filed before I had.

00:12:48.000 Any plans to come to Russia that they were going to conquer their focus on anti Semitism by basically alleging that anti Semitism comes from Russia. 0.51

00:12:59.000 Which, by the way, I will appreciate the irony. 0.54

00:13:01.000 I'm pretty sure that the first country to recognize Israel as a nation was Russia.

00:13:06.000 So this is, we don't know that.

00:13:09.000 Yeah, but we're not allowed to know that.

00:13:11.000 We're not allowed to know that.

00:13:13.000 We're not allowed to know that because it's not true.

00:13:15.000 The Soviet Union went in alphabetical order at the UN when they voted for the establishment of the state of Israel.

00:13:20.000 Also, I love that her comeback to there's been anti Semitism historically in Russia is the USSR backed the establishment of the state of Israel, as did a majority of countries in the UN at the time.

00:13:32.000 I mean,. 0.60

00:13:34.000 I don't mean to drop some very, very baseline knowledge about the source of anti Semitism, but the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a Tsarist forgery. 0.84

00:13:45.000 It was forged in Tsarist Russia.

00:13:47.000 Many of the origins of the Zionist movement were from Russia because of, for example, the slaughter in Kishinev.

00:13:55.000 The reason that Russian Jews largely became Zionistic is because of anti Semitism in what was called the Pale of Settlement, which was an entire area where Jews were allowed to live.

00:14:02.000 You see, Jews were not allowed to live in all of Russia in the pre communist era.

00:14:07.000 And under the communists, of course, there was also tremendous anti-Semitism, particularly later on in the doctor's plot when Stalin's, when Stalin was attempting and his heirs were attempting to target Jews.

00:14:18.000 So there's an entire Soviet dissident movement led by Natan Sharansky, people being jailed for supporting Israel.

00:14:25.000 Again, speaking knowledge to people who legitimately don't care about knowledge, have no interest in information, they have no interest at all in basic information.

00:14:36.000 It's, It becomes tiresome.

00:14:38.000 I will admit, it is a tiring, tiring task.

00:14:41.000 But Candace Lawrence's history is an amusing thing.

00:14:44.000 So, Candace also put out a tweet about the Romanov family.

00:14:48.000 And here was her tweet Kremlin grounds, revisiting what Satanists did to the Romanov family.

00:14:54.000 The Christian world needs to awaken.

00:14:57.000 Does she mean communists? 0.80

00:14:59.000 Why doesn't she just say communists?

00:15:02.000 I was unaware that the people who killed the Romanovs were worshippers of Satan, per se. 0.90

00:15:07.000 It seems to me like communists are bad enough.

00:15:11.000 Because communism is bad, but see, she's not going to rip the communists because the current dictator of the Soviet Union was a member of the KGB.

00:15:19.000 And the entire regime there is run by former members of the Soviet Union.

00:15:23.000 So she's not going to say that.

00:15:24.000 She's going to say that it's about the Satanists.

00:15:27.000 And why does any of this matter?

00:15:28.000 Well, because when you have an overwhelming op that's directed at the idea that Russia is wonderful and that America's actual allies are not allies but enemies and that America itself has been spiritually emptied, this is part of the op.

00:15:41.000 And if you are a willing participant in the op, this makes you the bad guy.

00:15:45.000 Buckley Carlson, again, he and his brother Tucker are in lockstep.

00:15:49.000 They're like bizarro world twins.

00:15:51.000 He was on with Elizabeth Lane, another parrot of Russian propaganda at best, talking about the magic of Russia.

00:16:01.000 Obviously, the similarities between Americans and Russia, we could go on and on about this, and I'm certainly happy to. 0.55

00:16:07.000 But just the fact that it is a primarily white Christian country, which has made an enormous contribution on the world.

00:16:18.000 Literature and architecture, and it has a very resilient people who value life, I would say.

00:16:25.000 They've had a lot more hardship than we have in America.

00:16:28.000 But again, they have a leader who represents their interests and they respond to that leadership.

00:16:35.000 And I wish we had it here, but they're not our enemy.

00:16:38.000 And again, it's not a unipolar world anymore.

00:16:41.000 It's not just America.

00:16:42.000 We can't dictate what goes on.

00:16:45.000 We have to maybe think about having some enduring friendships.

00:16:51.000 Oh my goodness.

00:16:53.000 Yes, never has a nation, a government valued life like the country that sent unarmed men into battle at Stalingrad and Leningrad and threatened to shoot them in the back if they turned back. 0.78

00:17:05.000 And there is a reason that mass casualty events in war are sort of a Russian way of war.

00:17:11.000 And there are a lot of great people from Russia.

00:17:15.000 And I'm a huge fan of Russian literature, actually.

00:17:17.000 I love Russian literature.

00:17:20.000 I'm a huge Dostoevsky fan.

00:17:21.000 I'm a huge Tolstoy fan.

00:17:22.000 I'm a huge fan of Vasily Grossman.

00:17:25.000 There's a lot of wonderful Russian literature.

00:17:27.000 Much of it about the problems of revolutionary Russia.

00:17:31.000 To pretend that Vladimir Putin is sort of a representative of white Christianity is total insanity and part of the op. 0.99

00:17:37.000 It is ridiculous. 0.98

00:17:39.000 And the problem is, of course, that this bleeds into real life. 0.93

00:17:44.000 So, for example, Representative Anna Paulina Luna was talking with Marco Rubio, and the representative was asking him about can we just talk more with the Russians?

00:17:54.000 We need to talk more with the Russians.

00:17:57.000 This idea. 0.76

00:17:57.000 That talking with the Russians will get Vladimir Putin to stop being one of the world's most aggressive dictators is absolute sheer nonsense. 0.76

00:18:04.000 The problem has not historically been that we talk too little with Russia.

00:18:07.000 Every single president of my lifetime has tried to hit the so called reset button with Russia.

00:18:11.000 They have all failed.

00:18:13.000 Want to know why?

00:18:14.000 It ain't because of the United States, but here we go. 0.56

00:18:19.000 What is the end result when Congress fails to open up dialogue and at least maintains communications with another superpower like Russia?

00:18:28.000 Well, I think there's two things to discuss.

00:18:29.000 One is the war in Ukraine.

00:18:30.000 Ukraine, which we would like to see end through a negotiated settlement, and separate from that is a bilateral relationship with a country that possesses, if not the largest, the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

00:18:39.000 At a minimum, we have to have relations and conversations with Russians.

00:18:42.000 We just do, whether we like what they're doing or not, because given those factors that I just pointed to, I've had multiple conversations with the Foreign Minister Lavrov, and we have to, because that's mature diplomacy and it's important.

00:18:53.000 It's the same with China.

00:18:54.000 We have to have communication with them, and there are issues in our bilateral relations that have nothing to do with Ukraine.

00:19:00.000 So now, I think our Relations with them will be friendlier and easier to pursue once the war in Ukraine is wrapped up.

00:19:06.000 And we've made that point in this engagement. 0.55

00:19:08.000 But I think what we've learned, and certainly I think has been affirmed to us in the last year and a half, is you're much better off having someone to talk to on the other side than not.

00:19:18.000 Okay, well, maybe, maybe not.

00:19:20.000 But the reality is we've been talking our ear off to.

00:19:24.000 But maybe true, maybe not.

00:19:25.000 But the reality is we've been talking Putin's ears off for the last couple of years and it has achieved precisely zero things.

00:19:31.000 Zero.

00:19:33.000 Again, that's one thing.

00:19:35.000 Arguments over Ukraine is one thing.

00:19:36.000 But what we are seeing right now is obviously a concerted effort to drive down American belief in our own country in favor of a multipolar world that benefits our enemies.

00:19:46.000 And that truly is gross.

00:19:47.000 And if you don't see it, I don't know how else to show it to you because it's all right there in front of you.

00:19:52.000 All righty, coming up, the New York Knicks are in the NBA Finals.

00:19:55.000 And I will make the case to you that America wins only if the New York Knicks lose.

00:19:59.000 Not because I hate Carl Anthony Towns or Jalen Brunson, but come on.

00:20:03.000 Zoramam Dhani, can you imagine how insufferable he will be if the Knicks win?

00:20:06.000 We'll get to all of that in a moment.

00:20:08.000 And of course, why the Spurs need to leave Harper in the game and run a pick and roll for Wemby.

00:20:12.000 What are you doing first?

00:20:14.000 People spend a lot of time talking about bringing manufacturing back to America, which, don't get me wrong, it's great.

00:20:19.000 But it's also worth noticing that a lot of industries never actually left in the first place.

00:20:23.000 One example America's beverage companies.

00:20:25.000 The drinks people have grown up with for generations, sodas, sparkling waters, teas, sports drinks, the companies behind them have continued making those products here in the United States the entire time.

00:20:33.000 And behind all of that are 275,000 men and women across all 50 states showing up every day doing the real work.

00:20:40.000 These are great paying jobs, distribution, manufacturing, trucking, production, the kind of jobs that support families and local communities.

00:20:46.000 For more than a century, America's beverage companies have continued investing here and building here and employing American workers in American hometowns.

00:20:52.000 In an economy where so many industries actually move their operations overseas, that actually does matter.

00:20:57.000 Learn more about how they're keeping America strong at WeDeliverForAmerica.org.

00:21:01.000 Again, that's WeDeliverForAmerica.org.

00:21:03.000 America's beverage industry has done a great job of investing and building and employing American workers, and you can find out all the information about it when you head on over to WeDeliverForAmerica.org.

00:21:12.000 Okay, meanwhile, speaking of threats significantly closer to home, at least at this moment, New York, Zoran Momdani, Brad Lander, the pick by Zoran Momdani for DSA in Congress, a person named Chevalier and Valdez.

00:21:30.000 All of these people are far lefties.

00:21:32.000 Aired an ad in an NBA Finals game last night, game one of the NBA Finals.

00:21:39.000 This is where we are right now.

00:21:40.000 And this is why New York must lose.

00:21:41.000 I know I have a lot of fans and friends, or our next fans, but for the good of the United States, New York must lose because otherwise you're going to have these people celebrating.

00:21:51.000 Here's the ad.

00:21:54.000 New York, we know anything's possible with a great team.

00:21:58.000 I'm Brad Lander, and I'll block billionaires from buying our elections.

00:22:03.000 I'm Darialisa Avila Chevalier, and I'll defend New York by abolishing ICE.

00:22:07.000 Israel doesn't exist in the abolition of ICE.

00:22:08.000 And I'll stand up against bad landlords and greedy corporations.

00:22:12.000 Get out and vote.

00:22:14.000 This is the team.

00:22:16.000 This is our year.

00:22:17.000 I'm Brad Lander.

00:22:18.000 I'm Claire Valdez.

00:22:19.000 I'm Darialisa Avila Chevalier, and we approve this message.

00:22:25.000 Oh, so they put a political ad in the middle of the next game because it's so New York.

00:22:28.000 If you're in favor of socialism, so for the sake of America, the Knicks must lose.

00:22:32.000 Also, I got to say, I don't know what Mitch Johnson, the coach of the Spurs, what were you doing last night?

00:22:36.000 Leal, what were you doing?

00:22:38.000 I have to say, my son was very upset.

00:22:40.000 My son is a huge Wemby fan.

00:22:42.000 And Wemby has got to attack the paint.

00:22:46.000 What's going on?

00:22:47.000 Why is he shooting nine three pointers?

00:22:48.000 He is seven foot five.

00:22:50.000 He needs to attack the paint.

00:22:52.000 Guys, run a pick and roll for goodness sake.

00:22:54.000 Come on.

00:22:56.000 You're going to run an ISO for Wemby in the last four minutes of the game, 26 feet from the basket, facing up against Carl Anthony Towns.

00:23:02.000 How's that going to work out for you? 1.00

00:23:03.000 That's stupid. 1.00

00:23:04.000 He's got to move without the ball. 1.00

00:23:07.000 He's not Gilgis Alexander or something.

00:23:09.000 What are you doing?

00:23:10.000 Why in the world was Harper out of the game?

00:23:11.000 What's happening?

00:23:14.000 Harper was the only person on the Spurs who was playing with aggression.

00:23:17.000 And you take him out with four minutes left and the game tied.

00:23:19.000 Why?

00:23:21.000 What in the world? 1.00

00:23:22.000 Dylan Harper is a monster. 0.99

00:23:23.000 And yeah, he's a kid, but he's playing with confidence. 0.96

00:23:25.000 And you take him out of the game.

00:23:26.000 He was the only one with a significant plus minus rating.

00:23:29.000 He played 16 minutes.

00:23:30.000 But you played the somewhat injured to Aaron Fox 38 minutes last night.

00:23:34.000 What kind of coaching decision is that?

00:23:36.000 That's terrible.

00:23:38.000 Next, why, why are you tiring Wemby out by putting him out past the three point line, guarding Carl Anthony Towns?

00:23:46.000 What are you doing?

00:23:47.000 You leave him in the paint to discourage the drive and you let Carl Anthony Towns take the threes.

00:23:52.000 I understand he's a great three point shooter.

00:23:54.000 I also understand that Carl Anthony Towns inside the paint shoots about 56%, which means that in order for him to justify taking a three, he needs to shoot at least 37% from three.

00:24:03.000 Put a hand in his face and challenge him to do exactly that.

00:24:06.000 Make him stay out there shooting threes because those rebounds, those long rebounds, will go to the Spurs.

00:24:13.000 What are you doing?

00:24:14.000 Come on. 0.99

00:24:15.000 Listen, points to Jalen Brunson, who's a monster.

00:24:17.000 But I will say, like, if. 0.94

00:24:17.000 That dude is cold blooded. 0.94

00:24:22.000 Come on.

00:24:23.000 Better play.

00:24:25.000 Stephon Castle has to play a better game.

00:24:28.000 I was disappointed by the Spurs roster.

00:24:29.000 Champagne had a great first half, but he obviously went cold in the second half.

00:24:32.000 You got to put Harper in, you got to take him out.

00:24:37.000 Bad performance by the Spurs last night.

00:24:38.000 But okay, fine.

00:24:39.000 Put all of that aside.

00:24:41.000 Enough sports talk on what is not a sports show.

00:24:44.000 But meanwhile, apparently sports are fascist.

00:24:48.000 This is what I'm now hearing.

00:24:49.000 So CNN had on Dana White, who is the head of the UFC, and asked about President Trump being a fascist because America 250 will feature an MMA fight on the lawn of the White House.

00:25:03.000 You see, sports has in times been used by authoritarian governments like Mussolini to.

00:25:11.000 Show power, to show strength, to show control.

00:25:15.000 Do you worry about the confluence of this sport in particular and the Trump administration sort of being intertwined?

00:25:26.000 I don't think like that.

00:25:27.000 People might say, look, Trump's using the same playbook as a Mussolini or a Putin, right?

00:25:33.000 Putin's into judo, right?

00:25:36.000 And he uses this as a way to show he's the strong man, he's the man.

00:25:41.000 Do you see Trump using that same playbook or no?

00:25:44.000 In politics, that's the way it's always worked.

00:25:48.000 It's not just Trump.

00:25:50.000 It's been like that since the beginning of time, and it will be till the end of time.

00:25:54.000 It's not just one guy or one administration, it's everybody.

00:25:58.000 And yes, sports has been used politically forever.

00:26:04.000 Man, that's some serious journalism right there.

00:26:07.000 By the way, Teddy Roosevelt literally erected a boxing ring at the White House and would box people there because he liked boxing so much. 0.83

00:26:13.000 Just like Mussolini.

00:26:15.000 Abraham Lincoln, believe it or not, was famous in his hometown in Illinois for wrestling people, apparently, who's a really, really good wrestler.

00:26:21.000 Also, who's gigantic for the time, six for four. 0.98

00:26:24.000 So, but that, man, our media, could they be dumber? 0.95

00:26:28.000 I mean, probably, but back to New York for a second. 0.95

00:26:30.000 Okay, so, you have Mamdani running this ad for all of his Democratic Socialist friends.

00:26:35.000 And as we discussed yesterday, the radicals in the Democratic Party have the upper hand.

00:26:38.000 How crazy are these radical people?

00:26:40.000 According to the New York Post, Democrats are trying to rewrite New York law.

00:26:45.000 So, as to replace terms, mother, the term mother, would be replaced with gestating parent.

00:26:51.000 Father would become non gestating parent.

00:26:57.000 Or parent in family court, along with in domestic and education law under the legislation, which was passed by state Democrats.

00:27:04.000 They wrote the law.

00:27:04.000 It needs local sign off.

00:27:05.000 It's already passed. 0.98

00:27:06.000 So, mother is now the gestating parent. 0.95

00:27:08.000 You know what's really cool?

00:27:09.000 We actually have a word for the gestating parent in the English language.

00:27:13.000 It's called mother. 0.99

00:27:15.000 I know, crazy.

00:27:16.000 And we actually have a word. 0.98

00:27:18.000 That is shorter than two words for the non gestating parent.

00:27:22.000 It doesn't even have a hyphen in it.

00:27:23.000 It's called the father.

00:27:24.000 In fact, you can define biological sex by who is capable of gestation and who is not.

00:27:29.000 And crazy towns.

00:27:31.000 Paternity proceedings to determine a child's biological father would meanwhile become parentage cases under the bill, which is weird a little bit because what are we afraid? 0.78

00:27:43.000 Like, can you file a paternity case against your lesbian partner?

00:27:48.000 I feel like that would be weird. 1.00

00:27:50.000 I'm not sure why you need that.

00:27:53.000 A putative father, also known as a deadbeat dad, would be called an alleged parent in official state records.

00:28:02.000 Well, I mean, at least that one's fair.

00:28:04.000 Sometimes when I don't do the kids' homework, I guess I'm an alleged parent at that point in time.

00:28:10.000 But that's putative father.

00:28:12.000 Solid stuff there from the Democrats.

00:28:13.000 Things are going really well.

00:28:14.000 Well, the good news is you can sense more of this coming because the Democrats continue to steer to the left.

00:28:19.000 You know that in Maine, Janet Mills, the governor, Of the state, who is not a psychotic and not a Nazi, is still on the ballot.

00:28:28.000 The cost to Democrats to back her and not Graham Platner is zero, but they ain't doing it.

00:28:34.000 They're staying on board with Captain Totenkopf over here.

00:28:38.000 It's incredible.

00:28:40.000 Apparently, there was a big Democratic Senate meeting with Graham Platner.

00:28:46.000 Democrats got together behind closed doors, which is where he does his favorite things.

00:28:53.000 Not those kinds of things.

00:28:54.000 It wasn't in a porta potty.

00:28:55.000 The meeting was not in a porta potty.

00:28:56.000 That would have been inappropriate.

00:28:57.000 They had the meeting actually in a room, like a normal room.

00:29:01.000 And apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders asked Platner if any additional allegations would emerge against the embattled Democratic candidate.

00:29:10.000 Plattner said, nope, there wouldn't be, which is, I don't believe him, since he also said that a few days ago.

00:29:14.000 And then it turns out that there was much more, including sexting every woman in a 300 mile radius in Maine and also some elk.

00:29:24.000 Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren followed up and said, there's a big difference between marital issues and allegations of sexual assault.

00:29:31.000 And he said, don't worry, there are no allegations of, he said, there were no credible allegations of assault forthcoming.

00:29:37.000 I guess we'll have to decide on credible possibly in the near future.

00:29:39.000 I noticed that she didn't say, There's a difference between marital issues and being a Nazi. 0.51

00:29:45.000 Because that would have been awkward, because he's kind of a Nazi.

00:29:48.000 So it turns out that he's very enthused about Nazi memorabilia. 0.65

00:29:53.000 Remember, he said that that Tuttlenkopf tattoo, you know, the death's head tattoo, that he had no idea it was a death's head tattoo.

00:29:58.000 It was just a cool tattoo that he got tattooed giant on his chest, as one would.

00:30:02.000 You know, when you're about to have a giant tattoo done on you, typically you don't know what it is, you just have a vague idea.

00:30:08.000 Anyway, there's a picture on Reddit.

00:30:11.000 Apparently, of a Swedish volunteer battalion in the trenches during the Continuation War.

00:30:19.000 This is when Finland was fighting the USSR in 1941.

00:30:24.000 And the story of Finland during World War II is a really dicey one because obviously Finland originally fought an action against the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union tried to take it over during the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact.

00:30:35.000 And then they essentially lost.

00:30:37.000 And then the Germans conquered Finland.

00:30:41.000 And then during the Soviet drive back across Europe, A lot of the Finns had to decide whether they wanted to side with the Nazis or whether they wanted to side with the Soviets, which is just a Hobson's choice.

00:30:51.000 In any case, a little bit of history.

00:30:53.000 Graham Plattner's response to this was German helmets and a bar.

00:30:57.000 What a cool pick.

00:30:59.000 So he's definitely recognizing the German helmets, but not the Death's Head tattoo, apparently.

00:31:05.000 The fact that Democrats continue to embrace him is beyond me.

00:31:08.000 It's pretty crazy.

00:31:10.000 Well, the president, for his part, is railing against the communists, which I'm in favor of. 0.59

00:31:15.000 Where those communists are, communist nouveau in Russia, or whether those are communists who are mayors of New York, the president put out a tweet, quote, Has anyone ever seen a happy communist? 0.97

00:31:25.000 President Trump.

00:31:27.000 Well, I mean, yeah, sure, I've seen happy communists.

00:31:30.000 Usually it's when they're standing atop a pile of dead bodies.

00:31:32.000 That's usually when they're the happiest, the communists. 0.91

00:31:34.000 And the president said that free everything tends to end with death, destruction, and squalor, which of course is true. 0.97

00:31:41.000 I'd be the greatest in the world.

00:31:44.000 Nobody would be as good as me.

00:31:45.000 I'd get away with it.

00:31:46.000 I could be the greatest.

00:31:47.000 I would sell them.

00:31:48.000 You're going to get. free rent, you're going to get free houses, you're going to get free food, you're going to get free everything.

00:31:55.000 But eventually that ends.

00:31:57.000 And it leads to death, destruction, and squalor 100% of the time.

00:32:04.000 When I watch New York, and you know, I liked him very much.

00:32:06.000 He stood right here and he's been in the office a couple of times.

00:32:10.000 The mayor of New York, I think he's a very nice person, but, and I don't know, he's a smart guy.

00:32:15.000 I don't understand why he thinks it's okay for all these companies That pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes a year to leave because you're not going to have any tax base and you're going to end up in hunger and squalor and death and destruction.

00:32:32.000 No, again, historically, that is not incorrect.

00:32:35.000 And just another reason why Mamdani's Knicks must lose. 0.77

00:32:38.000 They must. 0.97

00:32:40.000 Also, I want to see the era of Wemby actually arrive.

00:32:42.000 In any case, the Democrats are also pushing back against allegations that waste, fraud, and abuse plague public systems. 0.99

00:32:50.000 Dr. Oz over at CMS is out there saying that we are no longer allowing illegal immigrants to benefit from taxpayer health care programs, which would be a good thing for sure. 0.99

00:33:02.000 And when one third of all the hospices in the entire country are in Los Angeles, not even California and Los Angeles. 1.00

00:33:09.000 That creates issues.

00:33:10.000 First of all, it's not plausible, but it also means someone's been ignoring the problem.

00:33:14.000 And in fact, there was a call four years ago by the state auditor in California to address these problems.

00:33:18.000 It was not managed.

00:33:20.000 So our agency has now suspended payments to 850, almost half of all the hospices in California now have been suspended, but they're no longer being paid.

00:33:30.000 And we're going to keep aggressively going at this problem.

00:33:34.000 Well, speaking of waste, fraud, and abuse, our investigative reporter Luke Rosiak has been all over.

00:33:39.000 The story of waste, fraud, and abuse.

00:33:41.000 Luke, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:33:42.000 Really appreciate it.

00:33:43.000 Thanks for having me, Ben.

00:33:44.000 So, why don't you talk a little bit about what you were testifying about yesterday on the Hill?

00:33:49.000 Sure.

00:33:50.000 So, this is about the home health care services that pay people essentially to hang out with their own families.

00:33:56.000 And my latest installment in the series focused on a Bhutanese refugee who now flies on private planes drinking champagne.

00:34:07.000 He's got a yacht, he's buying his parents, you know.

00:34:12.000 Mercedes for their birthdays.

00:34:15.000 Like you look at this guy's social media, he's literally living like a rapper, and it all comes from our money.

00:34:22.000 His dad has this Medicaid company that was paid $17 million, even though the dad has another full time job, apparently.

00:34:30.000 He hasn't paid taxes in five years. 0.61

00:34:33.000 But basically, 81% of Bhutanese people are on welfare, and they use that to incur tax payments to the other 19% who have these companies that just make them mega millionaires. 0.55

00:34:46.000 And what I found is that all the major Bhutanese advocacy organizations in the United States are directly tied to home healthcare firms. 0.78

00:34:54.000 They oftentimes share addresses with them.

00:34:57.000 And so the money goes from, you know, to the company and then overseas.

00:35:02.000 And so the guy I just mentioned, his name is Raushan Adkihari.

00:35:07.000 He's the one who says he has a private plane.

00:35:12.000 The Adkihari family alone has been paid $350 million from Ohio. 0.73

00:35:18.000 That's just one family from Bhutan in just one state. 0.96

00:35:21.000 And that's a tenth of the GDP.

00:35:23.000 And so there are part of why, and of course, the Democrats tried to deny that this is even happening.

00:35:30.000 But the vast majority of the people that I've seen who are doing home health Medicaid stuff are foreign.

00:35:35.000 And this kind of explains why they've turned a program for medical aids into one that's literally foreign aid.

00:35:41.000 So you had Democrats questioning you.

00:35:44.000 What were they actually trying to question you about here?

00:35:47.000 Were they just trying to make the claim that none of this was fraudulent or that it was justified?

00:35:52.000 What was their case?

00:35:53.000 They actually didn't even engage with it enough to articulate whether either of those was their objections.

00:35:58.000 They started screaming over me. 0.99

00:36:01.000 A woman who wasn't even on the committee came and sat down at the dais. 0.95

00:36:06.000 And I think her name is like Chantelle Brown. 0.94

00:36:08.000 She's from Ohio. 0.98

00:36:09.000 She's not even on the committee.

00:36:11.000 And she sat down at the dais and started screaming during the opening statement so that people couldn't hear what I was saying.

00:36:18.000 And I was just going through some specific facts and figures that come directly from HHS Medicaid data.

00:36:25.000 The hearing was just beginning, so I don't think anybody could have said anything objectionable at that point.

00:36:31.000 And so it really did seem like Democrats don't want people to hear about Medicaid fraud, which I was really disheartened by because it's one of the government's biggest.

00:36:41.000 If you look at a pie chart of the government spending, Medicaid is a huge one.

00:36:45.000 And if we're not going to look at ways to find savings there, then I don't know how we're going to get rid of the federal debt.

00:36:53.000 So, Luke, obviously, you've been working with members of the government, Republicans in Ohio.

00:36:59.000 Vivek Ramaswamy is a person who you actually went on the trail with a little bit to talk about what's going on.

00:37:03.000 He, of course, is running for governor of Ohio.

00:37:05.000 What sort of feedback have you been receiving from Republicans in positions of power about investigating all of this?

00:37:10.000 How thoroughly do you think they're invested in doing that?

00:37:14.000 Well, you know, JD Vance is from Ohio and he's leading that fraud task force.

00:37:19.000 I think there's undoubtedly going to be prosecutions.

00:37:22.000 You know, I've testified to the House and to Senate and to the Ohio legislature.

00:37:27.000 A lot of people are interested in this.

00:37:29.000 At the same time, a lot of the fraud happened under the administration of Mike DeWine, who's a Republican governor.

00:37:36.000 Who got rid of the requirement to use GPS to stop fraud?

00:37:41.000 And so it's a mixed bag, but obviously what happened in Congress speaks for itself.

00:37:46.000 The Democrats don't want to even look at Medicaid fraud.

00:37:50.000 They had the minority leader of the state Senate show up as their witness.

00:37:55.000 And Brandon Gill asked her a very important question at the end, which was a simple one Has Somali immigration been good for your district?

00:38:03.000 And at first, she didn't know how to answer.

00:38:05.000 It seemed like she didn't want to say yes.

00:38:08.000 But then she went on this huge rant that said that she wanted to cry because of what I was saying, which was just the truth that anybody who goes to Ohio, even looks at the data, can see this.

00:38:18.000 There are essentially no Americans who are getting paid on this government program.

00:38:24.000 And it's literally funding.

00:38:25.000 I mean, you got a tenth of the GDP going to Bhutan just from Ohio Medicaid.

00:38:31.000 They're sipping champagne on private jets.

00:38:33.000 They're not paying taxes, which, if I was a Democrat, I thought we were supposed to be mad at the fat cat CEOs who don't pay their taxes. 1.00

00:38:40.000 That's one of the things that really concerns me about these foreigners unmedicated. 1.00

00:38:45.000 It almost seems like they are trying to bankrupt our country because if somebody paid me $10 million from the taxpayer, I don't think I would find it that hard to pay, you know, $500,000 or whatever back in taxes. 1.00

00:38:55.000 We do, in fact, have that clip of an Ohio State Senator very, very offended by Representative Brandon Gill's line of questioning along these lines.

00:39:01.000 Here's what that sounded like. 0.50

00:39:03.000 Has Somali immigration been good for Ohio? 1.00

00:39:11.000 You know, that's really outside of my purview. 0.78

00:39:15.000 You're a state senator.

00:39:16.000 Would you like to see more immigration?

00:39:20.000 As far as I'm processing your question, and I have to say that I was almost brought to tears just now. 1.00

00:39:34.000 72% of immigrants are unemployed.

00:39:36.000 The rate and the level of hateful rhetoric based on false immigrants is shocking.

00:39:42.000 It's shocking.

00:39:44.000 I am shocking to me that lack of even humanity to group a group of people together.

00:39:53.000 I am shocking to me that.

00:39:54.000 I certainly have a major problem.

00:39:59.000 I certainly have a major problem.

00:40:01.000 Every community.

00:40:03.000 Luke, you've been doing an amazing job in investigating all of this.

00:40:06.000 I know that there's much more to come.

00:40:08.000 This is just one reason, people, that you need to go subscribe over at Daily Wire Plus because we can't do this kind of investigative reporting and change the nature of how things like Medicaid work in the country and root out waste, fraud, and abuse without your help.

00:40:19.000 Please go to Daily Wire Plus right now and become a member and help us out.

00:40:22.000 Luke, thanks so much for the time.

00:40:23.000 Really appreciate it.

00:40:24.000 Absolutely.

00:40:25.000 Good to see you, Ben.

00:40:26.000 Well, when they're not excusing waste, fraud, and abuse, apparently, top progressive Democrats are out there stumping for full scale theft of private property.

00:40:36.000 This is their big thing.

00:40:37.000 And they're couching it around opposition to AI. 0.96

00:40:41.000 So, Sam Altman idiotically went to meet with Bernie Sanders. 0.93

00:40:44.000 I do not understand why you would do such a thing. 0.98

00:40:47.000 Bernie Sanders is a full scale, seize the means of production socialist.

00:40:52.000 Trying to make, there's so many people who are in sort of the free market arena, innovators.

00:40:57.000 Who think that if they pat the socialists on the head, the socialists will be nice to them.

00:41:01.000 And they're out of their mind. 1.00

00:41:02.000 They're totally crazy. 0.98

00:41:04.000 Because the goal of democratic policy is not to foster some sort of greater prosperity. 0.55

00:41:09.000 The number of quote unquote abundance Democrats like Ezra Klein is vanishingly small.

00:41:13.000 The goal of people like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or the rest of this crew is to actively degrade the actual tax base of the country by seizing the means of production.

00:41:23.000 It is an actual thing they want.

00:41:24.000 But here is Sam Altman trying to pretend like he and Bernie get along.

00:41:28.000 Hundreds of millions of dollars in elections across the country.

00:41:31.000 From OpenAI, I don't think we've done anything near that.

00:41:36.000 I would love to see money out of politics in general.

00:41:38.000 I think that'd be a great thing to happen.

00:41:40.000 I think that it would need to happen fairly to all companies.

00:41:46.000 You can't just say OpenAI is going to follow these rules and Google gets to follow these or whatever.

00:41:52.000 I'd love to see money out of politics, is again, there has always been money in politics.

00:41:56.000 There always will be money in politics.

00:41:57.000 The question is, How you get to spend in elections as an individual, and corporations are just collections of individuals.

00:42:02.000 That's what they are.

00:42:03.000 They are legal entities.

00:42:04.000 Again, the goal here is amazing to me when people who are reliant on a private property system of free markets go out and try to appease socialists like Bernie Sanders because they ain't going to be appeased.

00:42:15.000 They are not.

00:42:16.000 That is not a thing that is going to happen.

00:42:18.000 They are in agreement with people like Hassan Piker that you should be able to just steal things.

00:42:23.000 Remember, here's Hassan Piker, not all that long ago, claiming that IP theft should just be legal.

00:42:29.000 You should just be able to steal stuff.

00:42:33.000 Yeah, no, I'm pro piracy all the way.

00:42:34.000 Like across the board, would you pirate a car?

00:42:38.000 Yes.

00:42:39.000 You know, if you could.

00:42:40.000 If one could pirate a car.

00:42:42.000 It was just a classic thing back in the day.

00:42:46.000 The government funded anti piracy initiatives would be like, would you steal a car?

00:42:51.000 Yeah, sure.

00:42:52.000 If I could get away with it, if it was as easy as, you know, pirating IP, I would do it.

00:43:02.000 This is, I mean, I'll give credit to Piker for this.

00:43:04.000 I mean, the guy's honest about what he actually wants out of government and out of life.

00:43:10.000 Senator Elizabeth Warren, who it's kind of sad, honestly.

00:43:13.000 I knew Elizabeth Warren back when she was a professor at Harvard. 0.86

00:43:15.000 She was a property professor at Harvard, believe it or not. 0.62

00:43:17.000 And she was very charismatic in the classroom.

00:43:20.000 She was an excellent teacher.

00:43:21.000 She had sort of heterodox ideas about public policy.

00:43:24.000 She wrote a book called The Two Income Trap, which had some interesting ideas, including why she was against, for example, the government subsidizing childcare.

00:43:33.000 And then she became just sort of a rote progressive Democrat by frontally lobotomizing herself.

00:43:38.000 And now she is saying things like she doesn't really care how much a wealth tax would raise.

00:43:42.000 It's just fair, which at least is, you know, points for honesty.

00:43:46.000 Here she was being asked about a wealth tax.

00:43:48.000 She's proposing a wealth tax, which is basically seizing people's wealth that has not yet been realized.

00:43:53.000 So you own stock in a company, you haven't sold the stock in a company, we are just going to tax you on the unearned gains of the company.

00:44:01.000 And she's asked, how much money would that raise?

00:44:03.000 And she's like, uh huh.

00:44:04.000 Because that ain't the point.

00:44:05.000 That ain't the point.

00:44:05.000 The point is not raising money.

00:44:07.000 The point is not prosperity.

00:44:08.000 The point is, quote unquote, fairness, which is to say, seizing things.

00:44:12.000 That is the point.

00:44:16.000 Your first $50 million in wealth is free and clear.

00:44:20.000 Your 50 millionth and first dollar, you have to pay a two cent tax on.

00:44:26.000 Right.

00:44:26.000 Is that such a big deal?

00:44:28.000 I mean, philosophically, I think it's a pretty big deal.

00:44:31.000 You think it's a big deal?

00:44:32.000 I do, because you paid money to accrue that.

00:44:35.000 Did you pay money to buy your house?

00:44:37.000 I understand.

00:44:38.000 You're going to go to the property tax.

00:44:39.000 And you pay a property tax on that for services.

00:44:43.000 For services.

00:44:44.000 You pay tax on services.

00:44:47.000 You pay these taxes.

00:44:48.000 What is that number if you do 2% on 50 million and above?

00:44:51.000 So I have an.

00:44:53.000 Trying to remember.

00:44:53.000 I'm going to ask Claude right now.

00:44:55.000 Yeah, but I will tell you.

00:44:57.000 But you don't like Claude because you want to tax him.

00:44:59.000 You can look it up.

00:45:02.000 Okay, so again, all of this for Democrats is just about confiscating things.

00:45:06.000 That is what it is about.

00:45:07.000 It's about seizure of property.

00:45:09.000 And it's about opposition to new technology because that is just another way that they can seize property.

00:45:13.000 The bizarre rising opposition to AI is a massive problem, it is a massive national security problem, it is a massive economic problem for the United States.

00:45:23.000 The Ludditism of the Democratic Party and increasingly of a splinter faction of the right.

00:45:30.000 It tends to cross streams with our enemies who would all love to see us lose the AI race.

00:45:35.000 Joining us online to discuss all of this is the Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum.

00:45:38.000 Secretary Burgum, I want to start by asking about Democratic opposition to the building of AI data centers. 0.62

00:45:44.000 This has become a big talking point for a lot of the sort of Momdani communists in the Democratic Party.

00:45:49.000 A huge percentage of the left wing now believes the data centers are somehow inherently bad.

00:45:54.000 Bernie Sanders trying to say that.

00:45:55.000 That unsurprisingly wants to seize the means of production.

00:45:58.000 What do you make of that?

00:45:59.000 Why is it important that, for example, in Pennsylvania, the United States actually ramp up the capacity to build data centers and energy facilities capable of supplying them?

00:46:10.000 Well, good morning, Ben.

00:46:11.000 Well, it's not just Democrats that don't want us to build AI dentist centers, our global state competitors don't want to.

00:46:19.000 And then there's growing evidence that some of these local opposition that's being presented as organized, I mean, or as organic, is actually organized and perhaps funded by. 0.72

00:46:29.000 Foreign sources, and we just have to be very careful because we are in an AI arms race with China.

00:46:36.000 This is about national security, this is a super critical thing, and it's just being conflated. 0.93

00:46:43.000 I can go 10 different directions on this, but let me start with one.

00:46:46.000 I mean, last year Iran shot 500 projectiles at Israel in one day, you know, 400 of them, as you know, coming at low elevation and lower speeds, about 100 that were coming at higher speeds than a few hypersonics thrown in that were going to get there in 12 minutes.

00:47:03.000 All timed to arrive at the same time of day.

00:47:07.000 And Israel and its allies shot down like 497 of those. 0.67

00:47:10.000 That doesn't happen because, you know, some World War II gunner is a good shot.

00:47:16.000 It happens because of AI.

00:47:17.000 And so there is no national security into the way warfare is conducted today without it.

00:47:22.000 And you have to build power.

00:47:24.000 I mean, it's the first time in history where you can take a kilowatt of electricity and turn it into intelligence, not just light and heat.

00:47:31.000 And so we need more power.

00:47:34.000 The entire left pursuit of, quote, energy transition was a complete false statement because it was never about transition.

00:47:42.000 If you shut down reliable, affordable American energy and replaced it with intermittent, weather dependent, highly taxpayer subsidized, often equipment that's foreign sourced, it wasn't energy transition, it was energy subtraction.

00:47:54.000 And of course, who loved that?

00:47:56.000 The people that were selling energy, Iran, Russia.

00:48:00.000 So, you know, the whole point of President Trump's energy dominance agenda ties back into your AI question because We have to have enough energy for America to have affordability and prosperity.

00:48:10.000 We have to be able to sell energy to our friends and allies so they don't have to buy it from our adversaries that are funding war and terrorism.

00:48:17.000 And we need even more, particularly on the electricity front, to be able to win the AI arms race because, again, this is the key component for it's not about a data center, it's about manufacturing intelligence.

00:48:30.000 A data center might be, you know, I've got a health claim, so I've got a provider, a payer, and a patient.

00:48:36.000 That's a closed loop system.

00:48:37.000 When we're manufacturing intelligence, it's GPT, it's general purpose technology.

00:48:41.000 We can use it for defense, we can use it for advanced manufacturing, we can use it for education, we can use it to cure cancer.

00:48:47.000 We need more intelligence.

00:48:49.000 And so when we have When we have the left, and now even on the far right, we have candidates running in red states saying that they're going to save their state by banning the manufacture of intelligence in their state.

00:49:03.000 This is absurd, and it doesn't make any economic sense for those states.

00:49:09.000 But we're going to see a huge amount of capital that's deployed.

00:49:12.000 The five hyperscalers in America right now, $400 billion was their capital expenditures for this year to build power and build AI manufacturing.

00:49:21.000 Next year, it's $800 billion.

00:49:23.000 That's bigger than.

00:49:25.000 Auto manufacturing, other manufacturing, mining, all those other industries combined just in this one thing.

00:49:31.000 And so the private sector is driving this, and both our regulated utilities, our policymakers, the Democrats for sure, and then the far right are all trying to stop it.

00:49:43.000 We're going to see that $800 billion is not going to be spread evenly across the 50 states.

00:49:47.000 It's going to go to the states that have pro energy, common sense, they understand the stuff.

00:49:52.000 And so you're going to see some red states, some rural red states, That just have more capital investment than they've ever seen in their lives, particularly if they've got stranded energy that's been blocked by ENGOs blocking pipelines, blocking transmission lines.

00:50:08.000 You can take and build AI manufacturing next to that source of energy and then export the finished product on a fiber optic cable.

00:50:15.000 And they haven't figured out how to protest.

00:50:17.000 They can protest pipelines, they've made that into an art form, but they haven't figured out how to protest a fiber optic cable yet.

00:50:24.000 So the way that the U.S. is going to get through this is we're going to have some pockets of sanity.

00:50:29.000 That embrace this and understand the benefits it's going to mean to the education of their kids.

00:50:35.000 I mean, if you don't want to, in my state in North Dakota, when I was governor, last thing before I left office, we brought a $1.2 billion data center to an 800 person community.

00:50:47.000 And they not only lowered their electric rates, the property tax revenue going into the school district from that one data center was more than the entire rest of the county.

00:50:59.000 And so you could lower everybody else's property taxes, lower their electric rates.

00:51:03.000 You know, they had one cafe.

00:51:05.000 Now they've got four.

00:51:06.000 They hadn't had a new home in 30 years.

00:51:08.000 Now there's 30 new homes built by the company that was building the AI manufacturing.

00:51:14.000 So there's a way to do this.

00:51:15.000 But if somebody's coming into your town and saying, be afraid, be afraid of AI, and they're telling you it's about water, it's about power, it's about your electric rates, this is the be afraid, send me a check crowd that was hyping up the climate fantasy for the last, you know, 20 years.

00:51:32.000 And they found out it's hard to get.

00:51:34.000 People hyped up about one degree of climate change in 2100, especially when it's not true and the computer models don't support that.

00:51:41.000 But they have been able to get people hyped up about, hey, your power bill is going to go up if there's an AI manufacturing in your state.

00:51:51.000 But of course, that's also not true because the places where electricity rates have gone up have been the states that were chasing energy transition and having aggressive energy transition policies.

00:52:02.000 Their electric rates have already gone up.

00:52:04.000 They don't need to pass laws banning AI data centers because no.

00:52:08.000 No hyperscaler is going to go to a state and build a $10 billion data center where their electricity is already three times higher than it is across a state line in a more common sense, pro Trump energy focused state.

00:52:21.000 So there's a lot to unpack there, but you are spot on to ask that question.

00:52:27.000 I mean, it is really astonishing how many people you see, the entire left, as you say, a fraction, splinter fashion of the right, and of course, all of America's foreign enemies are very eager to see us fail with regard to AI development, especially because.

00:52:38.000 If you are concerned about things like inflation, one of the things that will allow for deflation, that will allow for prices to actually come down, is the increased productivity that is a result of innovation via AI.

00:52:47.000 I mean, the manufacturing innovation that is going to be created by AI is astonishing.

00:52:53.000 The new products and services that will bring prices down and make old products obsolete, it's going to be incredible.

00:52:58.000 And this is exactly the stuff that is going to be foreclosed if this sort of Luddite anti AI side gets its way.

00:53:04.000 And trying to blame that on energy development, as you say, is completely nonsensical.

00:53:08.000 It's rare that a policy is.

00:53:10.000 Is as vindicated publicly as the sort of drill baby drill approach that President Trump has brought over the course of his two terms, not only in terms of AI data center development, but also in terms of global geopolitics.

00:53:21.000 Because the reality right now, obviously, is that as the Strait of Hormuz has been closed, as the blockade has been on Iran, as Iran has been harassing shipping in the Strait, it's the American energy industry that is holding up the American economy that continues to produce at exorbitant rates.

00:53:35.000 And the rest of the world is becoming more dependent on America, not less dependent on America, actually because of things like the Strait of Hormuz and because we actually have the capacity to drill.

00:53:44.000 Well, Ben, so insightful of you to, and of course, you'd be the one that understands this and can articulate it so well.

00:53:49.000 But President Trump, with his energy abundance strategy, energy dominance strategy, you know, simplified down to drill, baby, drill, which means more supply, tapping into that American abundance, has changed, shifted this.

00:54:03.000 I mean, this is a historic generational shift from the Middle East to the Western hemisphere.

00:54:08.000 And you throw in the fact that the U.S. now number one oil producer in the world, number one natural gas producer in the world.

00:54:16.000 Number one LNG exporter in the world.

00:54:19.000 I mean, displacing, I mean, 16 months ago, the Biden administration had a ban on building LNG export facilities for who knows why.

00:54:29.000 But the U.S. has now displaced two thirds of Russian sales into Western Europe with U.S. supplies.

00:54:37.000 As you say, these are, they're becoming, our allies are becoming our customers.

00:54:41.000 They can buy, we can sell energy to our friends and allies and have affordable energy at home.

00:54:46.000 That brings prosperity at home, peace abroad.

00:54:49.000 And so you take and then throw in Venezuela, President Trump turning the world's largest oil reserves.

00:54:56.000 This was controlled by a sanctioned adversary.

00:55:00.000 And in 45 minutes, along with our amazing military, they become a strategic ally.

00:55:05.000 Then you throw in Alaska, which President Trump is opening back up again, as we should.

00:55:11.000 I mean, Alaska has the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska.

00:55:14.000 It's not a wildlife refuge, it's not wilderness, it's not a national park, it is a petroleum reserve.

00:55:20.000 And it has enormous resources.

00:55:22.000 It's eight days from Anchorage to Tokyo.

00:55:24.000 We've got 50,000 troops in Japan.

00:55:26.000 We have 28,000 troops in South Korea.

00:55:29.000 Our allies in the Pacific, including our own territories, our own citizens on Guam, American Samoa, Marianas Islands, all of those, including Hawaii, where we have a massive military presence, they are all also dependent on oil coming from the Strait of Hormuz.

00:55:44.000 It can be supplied from American supplies, like coming out of Alaska.

00:55:48.000 And lastly, you know, of course, California, the most egregious Self inflictor of energy dependence at a time.

00:55:55.000 They're the exception to everything I just said.

00:55:57.000 They import 60% of the oil in California from foreign sources.

00:56:01.000 Number one at the time of the latest conflict with Iran, beginning of February, was Iraq.

00:56:06.000 That was on their website. 0.91

00:56:07.000 That's who they're importing from.

00:56:09.000 And they've shut down over 30 of their 40 refineries through overregulation.

00:56:15.000 They are an anomaly in terms of driving energy prices up.

00:56:20.000 I mean, if you want to drive people out and energy prices up, your role model is California.

00:56:25.000 So I do have to ask you about the dumb controversy of the day over at the Interior Department.

00:56:30.000 So a lot of people have been apparently very agitated over the reflecting pool.

00:56:34.000 I've been trying to get myself to care deeply about.

00:56:36.000 The reflecting pool.

00:56:38.000 And I'm really failing dramatically to do so.

00:56:41.000 So, for those who have missed a controversy over the color of the bottom of a reflecting pool in Washington, D.C., can you explain to people what the administration is actually doing and why people are somehow agitated about this thing?

00:56:55.000 I can't explain why they're agitated, but I can tell you President Trump did put out an executive order last year about making D.C. safe and beautiful.

00:57:03.000 So, apparently, people are concerned that we're going to have a safe and beautiful capital because when you take a look at the work that's been done.

00:57:10.000 By the amazing people of the National Park Service, the U.S. Park Police, which is a separate police force as part of Interior, formed by George Washington in 1791, the work they've done to drive safety in this city.

00:57:24.000 But President Trump re empowering law enforcement.

00:57:27.000 But again, we have over 48 monuments, 22 fountains, dozens and dozens of parks that have all been restored, 1,700 light fixtures replaced.

00:57:37.000 I mean, I guess there was a conditioning under the Biden administration that we should have dark, dangerous, and desolate.

00:57:44.000 Parks in the city, and those parks are run by the federal government across the metro area.

00:57:49.000 And then things like the reflecting pool, which was a leftover artifact from an Obama disaster.

00:57:57.000 Obama had it closed the last two years of his time in office.

00:58:01.000 They spent more money and they spent two years of time.

00:58:05.000 President Trump, in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost, like one tenth the time, a fraction of the cost is going to have the reflecting fuel better than ever.

00:58:13.000 And the reflecting pool, of course, is this pool between.

00:58:16.000 The Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument is the largest pool of its kind in the world.

00:58:21.000 It's as long as the Empire State Building plus the Washington Monument, eight acres.

00:58:26.000 It was leaking 45,000 gallons a day of water, and it was algae filled swamp, is basically what it was.

00:58:34.000 And an international visitor of some import walked on the mall one morning, walked into the office, the Oval Office later that day, mentioned it to President Trump.

00:58:44.000 President Trump gave me a call and said, We've got to fix this before.

00:58:49.000 Our celebration of America's 250th anniversary.

00:58:52.000 So, again, it is going to be big and beautiful, better than ever before.

00:58:57.000 But how lucky are we to have a president who actually understands construction?

00:59:01.000 He grew up with construction, he spent his life in construction.

00:59:05.000 I was with him.

00:59:05.000 We drove over one night.

00:59:06.000 He had a chance to shake hands and talk to the workers that were working on the reflecting pool.

00:59:12.000 Everything that President Trump touches ends up better than it was before in terms of the aesthetics, the construction, the design.

00:59:22.000 He's, he's built a lot of tall buildings.

00:59:24.000 He's also built a lot of swimming pools in his life.

00:59:27.000 And, uh, we're going to have a pool that is done better, cheaper, faster, and doesn't leak.

00:59:32.000 Uh, and, uh, we're going to hit that milestone here.

00:59:34.000 We're closing in.

00:59:35.000 Big milestone last night.

00:59:37.000 Uh, the last of this, uh, super impervious service that was put in there that's going to keep it from not leaking.

00:59:42.000 That was completed.

00:59:44.000 Uh, refilling is, uh, and the flushing is beginning today, but it's going to be all ready to go.

00:59:48.000 And it's going to be, uh, magnificent.

00:59:50.000 Reflecting pools are designed for one thing, to reflect.

00:59:54.000 And so that's an American flag blue, the color that President Trump picked, is the perfect color to be able to do that because you want a pool to be dark if it's meant to reflect.

01:00:05.000 If you want to swim in it, make the pool bottom as light as you want so you can see straight to the bottom.

01:00:09.000 But this is not a swimming pool.

01:00:11.000 This is a reflecting pool.

01:00:14.000 Secretary Bergam, I really appreciate the time and thank you for explaining what's going on at the reflecting pool, which is, of course, the most pressing issue in America, according to our legacy media.

01:00:22.000 I appreciate it.

01:00:23.000 Thanks for the time.

01:00:24.000 All right, so I've been railing against a lot of the Democratic agenda here.

01:00:24.000 Thank you, Ben.

01:00:29.000 Obviously, I think their economic plans are based on confiscatory policies and procedures.

01:00:35.000 I think their goal is seizure of the means of production in many cases.

01:00:38.000 I think they're determined to drive down America's international advantage and all the rest.

01:00:42.000 And so that means that it's pretty important that Republicans not nominate bad candidates, which is why what is going on in Iowa right now is pretty dangerous.

01:00:49.000 So this week, Republicans nominated for governor a person named Zach Lan. 0.95

01:00:55.000 Zach Lan is sort of a maha candidate, which is to say, That he is not conservative on a wide variety of issues.

01:01:05.000 And he is somewhat conspiratorial in his approach to politics. 0.86

01:01:08.000 Here he was with Tucker Carlson recently, talking about how the government is run by unelected people.

01:01:13.000 He's very much against everything from AI development to large business.

01:01:20.000 So here he was recently on Tucker Carlson.

01:01:22.000 This is the new nominee for governor in Iowa who beat Randy Feenstra, who is sort of a more typical establishmentarian Trump endorsed Republican in the primary race.

01:01:33.000 Somebody asked me the other day, what do you think the most pressing issue facing America is?

01:01:39.000 And I like taking out the spiritual because spirituality is intertwined, but taking that out, I said, I think it's that our government is run by unelected people and we don't know who they are.

01:01:49.000 Yeah.

01:01:50.000 And I was talking about it without our best interest at heart at all.

01:01:54.000 And so, this idea of America first, of Iowa first, it's like to many of us, this is just common sense.

01:01:59.000 It's like this is what the country was set up for.

01:02:02.000 What's the other form of government that's legitimate?

01:02:04.000 I can't think of one.

01:02:06.000 If this is a democratic republic and the government is acting in an interest that's not our interest, how is that legitimate?

01:02:13.000 How is that not grounds for, you know?

01:02:16.000 Anyway, right.

01:02:18.000 There's no other legitimate form of government but America first or Iowa first. 0.76

01:02:23.000 Like, that's the only option.

01:02:25.000 And how we got away from that is unbelievable.

01:02:30.000 I mean, Tucker doesn't think that about the Russians or the Saudis or the Qataris or anything like that.

01:02:34.000 Anyway.

01:02:35.000 But bottom line is that Lon's a weak candidate.

01:02:38.000 Right now, the Calchee Marcus, Calchee's a sponsor, suggests that Democrats are now favored to win the governor's seat in Iowa, which is pretty astonishing.

01:02:45.000 According to Politico, this could have some pretty significant bleed over effect.

01:02:48.000 Both the Senate and governor's seats are open in Iowa at the same time for the first time since 1968.

01:02:54.000 So Democrats are running a candidate who's a fairly well accepted candidate named Sand, who's going to be taking on Zach Lon.

01:03:02.000 He won 38% of the vote in the primary.

01:03:05.000 Sand is an avid hunter who's the only statewide elected Democratic official.

01:03:10.000 And he's campaigning as a sort of moderate in Iowa.

01:03:15.000 Meanwhile, in the Senate race, the Republicans have nominated a guy named Turek who's going to face.

01:03:23.000 Sorry.

01:03:24.000 Meanwhile, in the Senate race, Democrats have nominated a candidate named Turek who will face off against GOP Representative Ashley Hinson.

01:03:32.000 The early numbers there show a statistical deadlock.

01:03:36.000 If Republicans lose the Iowa Senate race because the top of the ticket is weak, which could happen, Because there is the national ticket, people go to vote for the president, but they also go to vote for the governor.

01:03:46.000 So, if the Republicans run a weak gubernatorial candidate who loses in a place like Iowa, it makes it more difficult for the Senate candidate to win on the GOP side in Iowa.

01:03:54.000 If Republicans lose Iowa, if Republicans lose Ohio, and there's some polling suggesting that John Husted is down to Sherrod Brown in Ohio, if Republicans lose North Carolina, then they are one Senate seat away from losing control of the Senate.

01:04:09.000 That's really not a great look for Republicans.

01:04:11.000 That is really bad.

01:04:12.000 Basically, Republicans are lucking out right now.

01:04:16.000 Particularly in Maine.

01:04:17.000 They're lucky out that the Democrats picked Graham Platner.

01:04:19.000 If Democrats pulled their heads out of their butts for five seconds and put Janet Mills up, they would have a very serious shot of stealing the Senate away from the Republicans.

01:04:30.000 Again, this is some big, smooth brain stuff happening at state party levels on the Republican side. 0.57

01:04:36.000 Again, picking the riskier candidate every single time is typically not a great way to win Senate seats.

01:04:43.000 Meanwhile, on the foreign policy front, yesterday, a meaningless War Powers Resolution was passed by the House of Representatives, 215 to 208.

01:04:52.000 Now, you'll recognize that 215 is not, in fact, a majority of 435, which is the number of members of Congress.

01:04:57.000 There are a bunch of Republicans who didn't show up for the vote, but four Republicans did switch over and vote with the Democrats to basically demand that America pull troops from Iran, which is weird because we don't actually have troops in Iran.

01:05:10.000 So it's a completely symbolic vote.

01:05:11.000 It doesn't mean much, but it does, again, generate this feeling among people that, that, The war is unpopular and losing.

01:05:19.000 It also undercuts the president in a time of war, which is a pretty bad look.

01:05:24.000 The president's policy continues to be, in my opinion, discombobulated with regard to Iran.

01:05:30.000 The president seems to want a deal really, really badly.

01:05:32.000 And the best way to not get a deal in Iran is to want a deal really, really badly because they're just going to continue to force Trump to the ground if they believe that they can continue to drag this out.

01:05:43.000 Over the course of the last 48 hours, Iran launched a series of strikes against Kuwait.

01:05:49.000 They hit Kuwait, according to the Wall Street Journal, with a barrage of ballistic missiles and drones, shutting down its international airport, killing one person, injuring dozens more.

01:05:59.000 Here is some CCTV of an Iranian drone striking the Kuwait International Airport.

01:06:03.000 You can see it coming in, blowing a gigantic hole into the airport's roof.

01:06:08.000 There is serious damage inside the Kuwait airport as well.

01:06:12.000 Here's what it looks like inside Kuwait's airport.

01:06:21.000 And it's just dust and damage inside.

01:06:24.000 That's what it looks like after any sort of heavy munition strike.

01:06:29.000 Now, remember, there's supposed to be a ceasefire happening right now.

01:06:32.000 There is no ceasefire. 0.94

01:06:34.000 Let's be clear the United States is ceasing fire, but the Iranians have not been ceasing fire. 0.87

01:06:39.000 They've been firing regularly against UAE, against Saudi, against Kuwait. 0.99

01:06:44.000 They're still doing all of this.

01:06:46.000 Now, President Trump was asked about the ceasefire, and here's what he had to say.

01:06:52.000 How do you define ceasefire?

01:06:55.000 Pretty much the way it is.

01:06:56.000 It's a different part of the world.

01:06:57.000 You know, I'd say in that part of the world, ceasefire is when you're shooting in a more moderate manner.

01:07:04.000 No, that is not what a ceasefire is, typically speaking.

01:07:07.000 And if you sign on to such a ceasefire, that is a very bad idea.

01:07:10.000 The reality, again, we've talked about this at length on the show.

01:07:12.000 I'm sure we'll talk about it more. 0.91

01:07:14.000 The worst case scenario here is that the president signs a bad deal that frees up a bunch of cash to the Iranians without getting rid of their nuclear program, their ballistic missile program, and their support for terrorism. 0.92

01:07:23.000 If we free up their economy and we allow them to rebuild all of those capacities and rebuild their terror networks, that would be the worst case scenario. 0.87

01:07:30.000 And so, what that means is that the president should either commit to a path of action in which we indefinitely shut down their economy indefinitely, which I'm not sure he wants to do, or we strike their oil facilities on Kharga Island and South Pars gas field and we destroy their future capacity to rebuild, which is what that would do. 0.76

01:07:48.000 That comes with the danger that Iran will fire more stuff at Kuwait and Qatar and UAE and Saudi.

01:07:54.000 But some of our allies, like UAE, are willing to undergo that threat if it means that the Iranian government is basically on its last legs.

01:08:03.000 The worst thing that could happen here would be a linkage, for example, of Iran's demands in the Strait of Hormuz with Lebanon.

01:08:09.000 That would be a disaster area. 0.58

01:08:11.000 So if the president doesn't want to do any of that, then what he should do at this point is he should say, We degraded tremendously their ballistic missile program.

01:08:20.000 We degraded tremendously their nuclear program.

01:08:22.000 We degraded tremendously their Navy and their Air Force, which no longer exist. 0.99

01:08:25.000 Their economy continues to be trash. 0.96

01:08:27.000 Even if they were. 0.96

01:08:29.000 To be able to export their oil, it would not make up for the economic disaster, the slow rolling economic disaster that's overtaken the country and that materialized before the US invasion, before the US action.

01:08:41.000 And so now we're done. 0.86

01:08:43.000 And we should leave it to our Gulf allies and Israel to do Overwatch. 0.94

01:08:49.000 That seems to me a fine solution to the problem at this point. 0.95

01:08:53.000 We should arm them up and we should let them do the work they need to do.

01:08:57.000 They've been happy to do the work, by the way.

01:08:59.000 The truth is, the UAE was flying sorties during this war.

01:09:02.000 Israel has been flying a large majority of the sorties during this war.

01:09:05.000 And so it seems like fairly decent policy for the United States to basically work with our Gulf allies to free up the Strait of Hormuz and then say, okay, we've done what we were supposed to do. 0.73

01:09:16.000 We've significantly degraded their capacity and their economy.

01:09:19.000 They are not recovering.

01:09:20.000 Our allies are on top of this now.

01:09:23.000 That seems like a fairly good solution, not just my solution, also Condy Rice's solution.

01:09:28.000 The former Secretary of State has a good piece in the Wall Street Journal.

01:09:30.000 She says, in sum, Iran is far weaker today than it was in February.

01:09:34.000 No amount of Iranian propaganda can mask this reality.

01:09:37.000 America's near term goals should be to keep it in that weakened state, to strengthen the region's political realignment, and to make certain that President Trump's promise that Iran will never possess a nuclear weapon is fulfilled.

01:09:47.000 The United States does not need a nuclear agreement with Iran to achieve these goals.

01:09:51.000 Once the Strait of Hormuz is opened, if the administration engages in nuclear negotiations, it's critical the following conditions are maintained.

01:09:57.000 Not a single penny of frozen assets or sanctions relief should go to Tehran.

01:10:02.000 That is the biggest thing. 1.00

01:10:03.000 She, of course, is exactly right about all of that.

01:10:06.000 Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rubio was testifying in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and things got bizarre, shall we say.

01:10:16.000 Mr. Secretary, it seems like you have an issue admitting facts.

01:10:19.000 You can't say that the president lost the 2020 election, just like you won't admit President Trump is losing this reckless war of choice, and just like you couldn't admit that the shoes the president bought you were too big.

01:10:30.000 You clearly don't know what winning means, and not because the facts are unclear to you, it's because telling the truth would cost you your job, and the American people are entitled to a Secretary of State who tells them the truth even when the president doesn't want to hear it, and my constituents, our service members, deserve better.

01:10:46.000 Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

01:10:48.000 I don't know what shoes she's talking about.

01:10:50.000 What is she talking about?

01:10:52.000 Representative Burchett, you're recognized.

01:10:54.000 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

01:10:55.000 If you'd like to answer any of that, I don't know about the shoes.

01:10:58.000 I mean, he gave me some Floorsheim shoes.

01:10:59.000 They're actually pretty good.

01:11:00.000 They fit fine.

01:11:01.000 I don't know what she's talking about.

01:11:02.000 And maybe that's what she's referring to.

01:11:04.000 Your shoes look very nice today, Mr. Secretary.

01:11:07.000 How can you see them?

01:11:07.000 They're way down here.

01:11:10.000 We're talking about shoes.

01:11:11.000 Are you guys kidding me?

01:11:12.000 I mean, is this the Foreign Affairs Committee or is this like a circus?

01:11:15.000 What is this?

01:11:16.000 I think it's a circus.

01:11:18.000 But I appreciate you being here, Mr. Secretary.

01:11:22.000 Secretary Rubio.

01:11:24.000 Gotta love that.

01:11:25.000 Alrighty, folks, coming up, we'll jump into the latest on the 60 Minutes controversy because apparently a lot of people think that you should be able to basically rip into the company that pays you and declare that they're awful and that they should continue paying you somehow.

01:11:40.000 And we'll get to some good Trump, bad Trump.

01:11:42.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:11:43.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

01:11:44.000 Use code Shapiro to check out for two months free on all annual plans.

01:11:47.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show - June 04, 2026

THE OP IS LIVE: Candace’s Magical Russia Tour Continues

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