The Ben Shapiro Show - The Supreme Court ATTACKS DOGE Cuts!

00:00:00.000 Well, folks, controversy over Doge, turmoil over the economy, new movement on Ukraine, a lot going on.

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00:00:26.000 Head on over to dailywire.com right now and become So the fallout continues from President Trump's address to a joint session of Congress the other night.

00:00:35.000 Again, I was there and it was an amazing experience.

00:00:37.000 The enthusiasm in the room from the Republicans was off the charts and the radical depression into which Democrats have sunk is quite real.

00:00:45.000 They are so disorganized, so unable to come to any sort of answer for President Trump's steamroller and sort of juggernaut of an early administration that it felt disorganized.

00:00:56.000 It felt ridiculous.

00:00:57.000 It felt as though a bunch of spoiled college students couldn't get it together.

00:01:01.000 And instead, they decided to sit on their hands.

00:01:03.000 And so it was a big optic win for President Trump, which he is going to need because we are now about to enter the most tumultuous period of President Trump's presidency.

00:01:11.000 I say most tumultuous because the first month, the president has a lot of political capital to spend.

00:01:16.000 This is true for every president.

00:01:17.000 When a president is first elected, that president usually has a pretty high popularity rating.

00:01:22.000 They have a bit of a halo effect from winning.

00:01:24.000 And they spend the first month...

00:01:25.000 Putting forward most of their sort of big agenda items.

00:01:28.000 But then the rubber meets the road.

00:01:30.000 Things start to get a lot tougher, ranging from how to fund the government to how to solve war.

00:01:34.000 New crises emerge.

00:01:36.000 Sort of Act 2 of any presidency doesn't begin a year in.

00:01:40.000 Act 2 of any presidency begins about a month in, and that is where we currently are.

00:01:43.000 So the sort of optic capital that President Trump earned from this joint address to Congress, I think was really, really strong.

00:01:52.000 Yesterday, that continued at the White House.

00:01:53.000 DJ Daniels, of course, a very cute 13-year-old kid who's suffering from brain cancer.

00:01:58.000 And he visited the White House.

00:02:00.000 And then he went on Fox News and said thank you to President Trump.

00:02:04.000 I'd like to say thank you to him.

00:02:06.000 And I hope he got his cowboy hat because I bought him a brown one from Texas.

00:02:11.000 But I'm not sure if they got it out the thing that were to check it because the dog had to sniff it and stuff like that.

00:02:18.000 So, again, this is a very big win for President Trump.

00:02:21.000 Not only that, it was a big loss for the Democrats.

00:02:23.000 So Caroline Levitt, the excellent White House press secretary, in the White House press room yesterday, she trashed the Democrats over their reactions to the State of the Union. 1.00

00:02:31.000 She said, I don't understand.

00:02:32.000 The only people you can clap for are the Ukrainians, but like literally every other thing. 0.95

00:02:37.000 Cancer-ridden children, victims of illegal immigrant crime, girls who've been hit in the face and suffered brain damage because a man hit a volleyball.

00:02:47.000 Like literally nothing.

00:02:48.000 You couldn't clap for anything.

00:02:49.000 Here's Caroline Levitt. 0.97

00:02:50.000 We have an individual in our new media seat today, Mary Margaret Olihan, who is the Daily Wire's first ever White House correspondent.

00:02:59.000 Congratulations, Mary Margaret.

00:03:00.000 The Daily Wire was founded 10 years ago by Ben Shapiro.

00:03:04.000 The Daily Wire now has over 1 million paid subscribers, a monthly network reach of 138 million, and has evolved into a leading conservative multimedia giant.

00:03:14.000 They are now the fifth largest podcast network in the world, and home to some of the top-ranked shows.

00:03:19.000 With that, I will take your questions, and Mary, Margaret, why don't you kick us off?

00:03:23.000 Thank you so much, Caroline.

00:03:24.000 It's great to be here.

00:03:25.000 Thanks.

00:03:25.000 So I have two questions, if that's okay.

00:03:27.000 The first on last night, and the second on May.

00:03:29.000 You talked about behavior from Democrat lawmakers, a lot of disruptions, and I just wanted to kind of go back to that.

00:03:37.000 We saw Democrat lawmakers not stand for Lake and Riley, for Peyton McNabb, for the son of a slain police officer and 13-year-old cancer survivor.

00:03:45.000 What are the optics of that nationally, just in terms of not just the people who were in the room last night, but across the nation?

00:03:52.000 And also, was President Trump expecting this type of behavior when he was crafting his speech?

00:03:57.000 So I gave a quote to one of the media outlets in this room yesterday that Democrats behaving like children would be the least surprising thing of the night.

00:04:04.000 And unfortunately, that quote did turn out to be true.

00:04:07.000 I think the president and everyone, frankly, was surprised by the Democrats refusing to stand for not the president's policies, because frankly, we expected that, but for the everyday Americans who President Trump was shining a light on their stories.

00:04:21.000 Mark Fogle, for instance, an American school teacher who was detained by the Russians.

00:04:26.000 President Trump freed him.

00:04:29.000 If Joe Biden had done that, they all would have been on their feet.

00:04:31.000 But because of what came from President Trump, they weren't.

00:04:34.000 So we think it's very sad.

00:04:36.000 But we're very proud of the president today.

00:04:38.000 And the American people are the people that this president cares about most.

00:04:41.000 And the reviews are in.

00:04:42.000 And everybody loved his speech.

00:04:43.000 Joining us online to discuss is Mary Margaret Olehan.

00:04:47.000 She, of course, is our Daily Wire White House correspondent.

00:04:50.000 She was in the hot seat yesterday. 0.99

00:04:51.000 She got the first question at the press briefing yesterday.

00:04:53.000 So how is that, Mary Margaret?

00:04:54.000 That's pretty cool.

00:04:57.000 Good morning, Ben.

00:04:58.000 It is a beautiful day at the White House today.

00:05:00.000 And yes, I was in the new media seat in the briefing room yesterday and got not just one, actually, but two questions from there.

00:05:06.000 And for the people in the audience who might not understand what that means, the briefing room is full of seats, but most of them are occupied by legacy media outlets.

00:05:13.000 And a couple weeks ago, Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt announced that...

00:05:17.000 Some reporters who had been starting to cover the White House recently, including myself, would have access to the quote-unquote new media seat, which is to the left of the podium, and it's usually occupied by her staff.

00:05:28.000 But it's right up there by the front row where a bunch of the most prominent White House reporters are, so it gives you really good access.

00:05:34.000 So I was excited to be there yesterday, excited to hear Caroline tell the room, and the whole nation actually, how much...

00:05:41.000 Influence and how big the Daily Wire has become, because we are one of the most leading conservative news outlets in the world, not just the nation.

00:05:49.000 So I asked her two questions.

00:05:51.000 I asked her about the disruptive behavior from Democrats yesterday, a few days ago actually, at the joint address that President Trump delivered.

00:05:58.000 And I also asked her about what's going on in Maine, where the governor is refusing to comply with Donald Trump's executive orders.

00:06:07.000 And she did give cogent answers to both.

00:06:09.000 She's very, very good at her job, obviously.

00:06:12.000 And what has been the mood around the White House surrounding President Trump's speech?

00:06:16.000 I mean, I actually was at the White House kind of walking around simultaneously yesterday with Matt Walsh.

00:06:20.000 We got to visit and hang out in the White House comms office a little bit.

00:06:23.000 People seem pretty high about President Trump's speech as well.

00:06:25.000 They should have been, it seems.

00:06:28.000 Yeah, I mean, the Trump administration is viewing this joint address as one of the highs of the...

00:06:34.000 Presidency so far.

00:06:36.000 And Ben, I got a bunch of pictures of you texted to me.

00:06:40.000 People saying, oh my gosh, Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh are in the White House.

00:06:43.000 It was a big, big deal to have you guys on campus.

00:06:46.000 But what I can tell you is around the White House, I'm hearing a lot of different emotions.

00:06:51.000 Some people are saying that President Trump's guests, including people like Peyton McNabb, the family of...

00:06:58.000 The young girl, Laken Riley, who was brutally killed by an illegal immigrant.

00:07:02.000 There's some people that are saying these were stunts.

00:07:05.000 I think a lot of other people would disagree and say that these were emotional moments.

00:07:09.000 Caroline Levitt defended them in the briefing room yesterday and said that these were important American citizens who had stories to tell.

00:07:15.000 And she actually told me when I asked her that she expected some disruptive behavior from Democrats.

00:07:21.000 And I asked her specifically, was President Trump expecting this behavior when he chose some of these guests?

00:07:26.000 She said they were not expecting the level of disruptive behavior that they saw, and she condemned that behavior very strongly.

00:07:32.000 Mary Margaret, you were on Air Force One last week with the President of the United States flying back down to Palm Beach.

00:07:37.000 How did that go?

00:07:38.000 Well, that was really cool.

00:07:39.000 I was able to travel on Air Force One last weekend.

00:07:42.000 As part of the travel pool and what that means is I was part of a group of reporters who went on Air Force One and kind of tracked the president's movements over the weekend.

00:07:51.000 Now he went golfing at Trump International Golf Course in Palm Beach on both Saturday and Sunday.

00:07:56.000 He was meeting with prominent people including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his wife.

00:08:01.000 He had lunch with them and golfed with them.

00:08:03.000 And I'm told he was actually doing some speech prep for the Joint Address.

00:08:06.000 So we weren't able to ask him questions, but that proximity is still really important.

00:08:11.000 And one thing that I thought was super interesting was that when we got on the plane, we saw all these massive boxes being loaded onto Air Force One.

00:08:18.000 And it was later revealed to us by Stephen Chung, who's one of Trump's advisors, that those boxes were full of the president's personal property that had been taken from him by the FBI during the Mar-a-Lago raid.

00:08:29.000 So they were loaded onto Air Force One and they traveled with us back to Palm Beach.

00:08:33.000 And we were told that these were personal items.

00:08:36.000 They were not significant items.

00:08:38.000 They could have been as mundane as clothing and diaries and things like that.

00:08:41.000 So that was really interesting and great to be there and get to experience Air Force One.

00:08:46.000 Really good food, which I was surprised by.

00:08:50.000 I was Mary Margaret Olihan at the White House every day as our Daily Wire White House correspondent.

00:08:54.000 Congrats on, again, being in the new media seat yesterday, and I look forward to checking in with you soon.

00:09:00.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:09:02.000 Again, gigantic failure by Democrats, and President Trump did something quite brilliant in the speech.

00:09:06.000 I talked to many people in the White House yesterday, and they said that the most brilliant thing in the speech, which was President Trump deliberately calling out the Democrats and saying, they won't clap for anything I'm about to say.

00:09:15.000 It put them in such a difficult position because then if they clapped for what he was saying, they might prove him wrong, but they'd be clapping for what he said.

00:09:22.000 And if they didn't clap for what he was saying, then they look like jackass because many of the things that he was saying were totally unifying and apolitical.

00:09:28.000 Like, for example, renaming a national park after a 12-year-old who was murdered by illegal immigrants. 1.00

00:09:33.000 Like, how exactly is that something you don't clap for?

00:09:36.000 How do you not clap for the kid getting into West Point?

00:09:38.000 These are things that happened in the speech, and Democrats couldn't clap because Trump had trapped them between a rock and a hard place.

00:09:43.000 That was an excellent piece of strategy by President Trump.

00:09:46.000 Again, he actually thought of that and put it in the speech himself, apparently.

00:09:50.000 Democrats, the smarter ones, understand that they are wrong-footed.

00:09:54.000 David Axelrod, who, of course, was the top advisor to Barack Obama when he was running for president in 2008, ripped into the Democrats for their optic failures.

00:10:01.000 So it's one thing to mine.

00:10:04.000 Our differences, it's another thing to try and heal our differences.

00:10:08.000 And that is, you know, that's the difference between real leadership and political expedience.

00:10:15.000 Would it have been healing to stand for Mark Fogle?

00:10:17.000 Might have been.

00:10:18.000 No, I agree.

00:10:19.000 You know, you are absolutely right.

00:10:21.000 I will do what you will not.

00:10:23.000 I will say, I thought Democrats, I think there were times when they should have risen.

00:10:27.000 I think what Al Green did was despicable.

00:10:31.000 Okay, so, again, Axelrod is living in the world of reality, but many Democrats are not.

00:10:36.000 Smart Democrats are going to have to start living in the world of reality if they actually wish to win back the presidency or the Congress or the Senate of the United States.

00:10:44.000 Top Senate Democrats, this would be Blumenthal, Dick Durbin, Cory Booker, even they were saying, yeah, our behavior in there was not particularly good.

00:10:52.000 We need to start actually offering some solutions here instead of just holding bingo signs or Brazilian steakhouse signs to bring more steak.

00:11:01.000 I wouldn't have necessarily done all the things that were done, but I understand the emotion.

00:11:09.000 He's offering showmanship and bluster and bullying.

00:11:13.000 We need to provide real solutions and avoid taking a bait.

00:11:17.000 There wasn't any conscious strategy.

00:11:19.000 You know, in terms of responding to that speech, I think there are better ways to do it.

00:11:24.000 Stick with the basics.

00:11:25.000 Look, I believe firmly that that should be a room of decorum.

00:11:31.000 These are Democrats who at least are smart enough to read the tea leaves a little bit.

00:11:34.000 And then there are the Democrats who, of course, are not.

00:11:36.000 Like, for example, Democratic Representative Latifah Simon from California who claimed that Al Green, he's the 77-year-old gentleman who rose to scream at President Trump about Medicaid while shaking his cane at him and then was removed by the sergeant-at-arms in a bizarre move.

00:11:51.000 Here is a congresswoman suggesting that the reason Al Green was removed was, wait for it, wait for it.

00:11:56.000 It wasn't because he was yelling at Trump for, like, solidly minutes on end.

00:11:59.000 It wasn't because of that.

00:12:00.000 It's because...

00:12:04.000 Racism!

00:12:04.000 Here we go.

00:12:06.000 I gotta say, as a new member of Congress, I was shocked at what seems like a blatant disrespect for the House.

00:12:14.000 And it wasn't coming from Representative Green.

00:12:18.000 It was coming from the men behind him on the right side who were telling him and yelling, sit down!

00:12:24.000 I mean, it felt like...

00:12:26.000 I was watching something in a history class of racists yelling at an elderly black man challenging the president of the United States not to cut medical care for the sick.

00:12:41.000 Okay, these folks are so off their rocker.

00:12:44.000 And they're off their rocker on the easiest issues in the world.

00:12:47.000 I mentioned yesterday that the most obvious issue Democrats should clearly drop just for pragmatic reasons.

00:12:53.000 I mean, for moral reasons they should because it's absolute insanity and idiocy.

00:12:56.000 But for pragmatic reasons, they also should, because most Americans recognize that it's idiocy, is the boys-can-be-girls routine. 0.76

00:13:01.000 But it was just a couple of days ago where Republicans pushed a bill to bar transgender women and girls, meaning like boys and men, from school sports teams designated for female students.

00:13:14.000 The measure stalled in the Senate on a party-line 51-45 vote.

00:13:18.000 Every single Democrat in the Senate voted against that bill.

00:13:22.000 Every single one.

00:13:23.000 Which is insane.

00:13:25.000 It's totally crazy.

00:13:27.000 Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said, quote, what Republicans are doing today is inventing a problem to stir up a culture war and divide people against each other and distract people from what they're actually doing.

00:13:35.000 And then he said the bill was, quote, unquote, totally irrelevant to 99.9% of all people across the country.

00:13:40.000 Well, if it's irrelevant, then why don't you just vote in favor of it?

00:13:43.000 And it's obviously relevant to you.

00:13:47.000 As stated, the Democrats look crazy because of this particular issue.

00:13:50.000 They're crazy on a lot of issues.

00:13:52.000 But there were two big issues in the last election cycle where they just looked befuddlingly insane.

00:13:56.000 They're ones that are clearly just political games that are bad for the country, like leaving the border open or blowing money into an inflationary economy.

00:14:05.000 And then there's stuff that's just bleep lunacy, like bad bleep lunacy.

00:14:10.000 Those are things like boys are girls and also maybe Hamas isn't that bad. 1.00

00:14:13.000 Those are like things where people look at them and they go, you must be out of your mind, like totally crazy.

00:14:18.000 And Democrats keep doubling down on the crazy.

00:14:20.000 They're going to have to recover some semblance of sanity if they wish to move forward.

00:14:25.000 Now, meanwhile, the president of the United States has planned to cut into USAID spending.

00:14:32.000 Doge basically wiped out about $50 billion in USAID spending, saying that this does not comport with American standards of foreign policy.

00:14:40.000 And so a temporary federal freeze, an impoundment was essentially put on those funds.

00:14:45.000 And a district court judge then put a freeze on the freeze.

00:14:48.000 And said, no, no, no, the money has to go out the door.

00:14:50.000 And this raises a very serious constitutional issue, as we've discussed.

00:14:54.000 That constitutional issue is whether a district court judge has the capacity to simply shut down a presidential nationwide action.

00:15:00.000 Can one low-level district court judge actually do that?

00:15:03.000 We'll get to more on this in a moment.

00:15:04.000 First, let me ask you a question.

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00:15:14.000 In the United States, it's even worse.

00:15:15.000 ISPs can legally sell your browsing history to whomever they want.

00:15:19.000 So what can you do about it?

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00:15:27.000 Neither can data brokers or other third parties.

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00:15:31.000 I was in the airport yesterday using ExpressVPN because, hell, I don't want anybody checking out on my data while I'm at the airport.

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00:16:31.000 Also, I've tried pretty much everything to improve my sleep quality.

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00:17:25.000 That's Bowl& Branch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D. Well, yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States, on a 5-4 vote, essentially remanded the case back to the district court and said we need clarification as to why and how you are actually doing this.

00:17:48.000 So, according to the Supreme Court majority opinion, it was a 5-4 decision that was joined on the right side of the aisle.

00:17:56.000 By Justices Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett.

00:18:01.000 This order essentially said that the District Court for the District of Columbia had issued a temporary restraining order enjoining the government from enforcing directives pausing disbursements of USAID assistance funds.

00:18:13.000 The present application did not challenge the government's obligation to follow that order.

00:18:17.000 The District Court ordered the government to issue payments for a portion of the paused disbursements, those owed for work already completed.

00:18:24.000 So this doesn't apply, by the way, to forward-looking monies.

00:18:27.000 This is to, like, there was an invoice because the work was already done.

00:18:30.000 Does the federal government have to pay the bill?

00:18:32.000 The chief justice entered an administrative stay shortly before the 1159 deadline and then referred the application to the court.

00:18:38.000 The application has been denied.

00:18:40.000 But when the application was denied, it doesn't mean that's the end of the story.

00:18:43.000 The district court needs to now clarify what obligations the government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order.

00:18:50.000 With due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timeline.

00:18:52.000 So again, sort of unclear the scope of this.

00:18:55.000 It is remanding back to the district court to figure out exactly what it is that they are saying has to be paused and what doesn't have to be paused.

00:19:03.000 Are they saying that the part that has to go out is the part that's already been paid for?

00:19:06.000 Or are they saying that literally you can't pause federal spending at all?

00:19:10.000 And so we're going to need clarification on that.

00:19:12.000 This drew a very, very marked dissent.

00:19:17.000 A hot dissent.

00:19:18.000 From Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh.

00:19:23.000 And Alito, who is just awesome.

00:19:25.000 If I have to rank my favorite Supreme Court justices, there's some people who rank their favorite baseball players.

00:19:30.000 I rank favorite Supreme Court justices.

00:19:31.000 And for me, it goes Clarence Thomas and then Samuel Alito.

00:19:34.000 So Justice Alito, who is terrific, wrote the following, quote, Does a single district court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the government of the United States to pay out and probably lose forever $2 billion taxpayer dollars?

00:19:47.000 The answer to that question should be an emphatic no, but a majority of this court apparently thinks otherwise.

00:19:51.000 I am stunned.

00:19:53.000 Just as the leader not pulling any punches.

00:19:56.000 He says in capsule form, this is what happened.

00:19:58.000 Respondents are a group of American businesses and nonprofits that receive foreign assistance funds from the State Department and USAID. They brought suit and claimed the current administration's temporary pause of foreign assistance payments is unlawful.

00:20:10.000 The district court issued a temporary restraining order requiring the government to then halt the funding pause, meaning spend the money.

00:20:16.000 After issuing the TRO, the district judge grew frustrated with the pace at which the funds were being dispersed.

00:20:20.000 On February 25th, he issued a second order requiring the government to pay out approximately $2 billion.

00:20:25.000 The judge brushed aside the government's argument that sovereign immunity barred this enforcement order.

00:20:29.000 He took two steps that would prevent any higher court from reviewing or possibly stopping the payments.

00:20:33.000 First, he labeled the order as a non-appealable TRO. And second, he demanded that the money be paid within 36 hours.

00:20:40.000 Alito says this left the government little time to try to obtain some review of what it regarded as a lawless order.

00:20:44.000 The government moved for a stay pending appeal in the district court.

00:20:46.000 The judge then shrugged off the government's sovereign immunity claim and ignored the government's representation that most of the money in question could probably not be recovered once actually dispersed.

00:20:55.000 So he writes, to start, it is clear the district court's enforcement order should be construed as an appealable preliminary injunction, not a mere TRO. A temporary restraining order does not apply here because it is not temporary.

00:21:05.000 Once the money is gone, it's gone.

00:21:07.000 Usually a temporary restraining order applies to, for example, you're not allowed for a certain period of time.

00:21:13.000 To do this thing.

00:21:14.000 But if the temporary restraining order says you must pay X dollars to this person, that's not a temporary restraining order.

00:21:19.000 The money has now been paid and you can't claw it back.

00:21:21.000 This is Alito's point.

00:21:24.000 He says the order did not merely restrain the government's challenged action in order to preserve the status quo.

00:21:29.000 It acts as a mandatory injunction requiring affirmative action by the government.

00:21:32.000 So the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction.

00:21:34.000 He said even if the majority is unwilling to vacate the district court's order.

00:21:38.000 It should at least stay the district court's enforcement order until the government is able to petition for a writ of certiorari, meaning like the Supreme Court takes up the full case.

00:21:46.000 He is right about all of this, of course.

00:21:48.000 He says, Self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction is not one of them.

00:22:09.000 So, again, this raises questions as to why Justice Roberts did what he did or why Amy Coney Barrett did what she did.

00:22:16.000 It's not as extreme an order as it originally seems from the Supreme Court.

00:22:19.000 That basically says any district court judge anywhere can put a nationwide temporary restraining order on the federal government for any reason whatsoever.

00:22:26.000 But, as Justice Alito says, if the effect of the order is to force the federal government to disperse funds it can't get back before the adjudication at the Supreme Court level, Then that is a massive problem.

00:22:37.000 And Justice Alito is right about all of that.

00:22:40.000 But again, you were expecting a lot of this sort of stuff to happen.

00:22:42.000 I mean, the reality is that because President Trump is moving fast and breaking things, there's going to be a lot of legal action.

00:22:47.000 Most of that legal action is going to read down to the benefit of the Trump administration.

00:22:50.000 Some will not.

00:22:52.000 So the Trump administration has now been ordered to reinstate thousands of fired U.S. Department of Agriculture workers as well.

00:23:00.000 The chair of a federal civil service board ruled on Wednesday that thousands of fired workers at the Department of Agriculture must get their jobs back for at least the next month and a half.

00:23:08.000 The ruling said the recent dismissals of more than 5,600 probationary employees may have violated federal law and procedures for carrying out layoffs.

00:23:15.000 But that is not going to resolve all of this because, again, the administration, as Politico reports, may have further options to place the reinstated workers on administrative leave or fire them again as part of a formal reduction in force.

00:23:28.000 So basically, there are all these sort of laws and regulations in place designed to ensure the continued peonage of all of these various federal jobs, that people be stuck in these jobs basically forever.

00:23:40.000 One of those procedures is an administrative review before anybody gets fired.

00:23:44.000 They're saying that that didn't happen.

00:23:45.000 There was no administrative review.

00:23:46.000 And so you have to replace people in these jobs because there's a Merit Systems Board that has to review the issue.

00:23:54.000 Okay, now, again, that's not a permanent end to what Trump is trying to do inside the USDA. All of these road bumps are to be expected at this point.

00:24:01.000 But in the end, one of the things that's going to have to happen is actual congressional movement to re-enshrine what Doge is attempting to do.

00:24:08.000 The executive branch can do many things in terms of firing people.

00:24:11.000 And, by the way, there will be negative headlines that attend to many of these firings.

00:24:15.000 So, for example, lots of headlines today about the fact that some of these firings are affecting veterans.

00:24:20.000 So there's a whole article from the Associated Press today suggesting that it's a great tragedy that veterans are losing their jobs.

00:24:27.000 Number one, nobody, including veterans, has a right to a job from the federal government.

00:24:30.000 That's not actually how it works.

00:24:32.000 You do have veterans benefits that attend to your service time, but nobody has a right to a federal taxpayer job.

00:24:37.000 With that said, it would be a very smart move for the Trump administration to launch an initiative to help people who are veterans get jobs in the private sector if they end up being fired in the public sector, right?

00:24:46.000 That would be just a smart political move, and I think the Trump administration will probably do something Like that.

00:24:51.000 But in the end, most of the big things that the Trump administration is trying to do, again, this is the hard part.

00:24:58.000 This is where I say, like, the first 30 days are now over, and now you hit the hard part of the presidency.

00:25:03.000 You need Congress to do a lot of these things.

00:25:06.000 And so yesterday, Elon Musk went to the Hill, and he had a meeting with House Republicans to discuss what Doge was doing.

00:25:12.000 According to the Washington Post, While supportive of Doge's cost-cutting mission, some Republican lawmakers have begun to express concern over Musk's methods of laying off federal employees en masse and then pursuing large budget cuts without congressional input.

00:25:23.000 However, with that said, House lawmakers have been talking pretty seriously about the possibility of rescission.

00:25:31.000 That is a process whereby the government of the United States, the Congress of the United States can, with 51 votes, vote to rescind some of its funding.

00:25:44.000 Musk and the Republicans were talking about this as proposed by Rand Paul.

00:25:47.000 Rand Paul is a consistent deficit hawk.

00:25:50.000 According to NBC News, they discussed a rescission package that the White House could send to Congress to codify doge cuts through a measure that can get around the 60-vote hurdle in order to get around legal challenges to the administration's power to act unilaterally.

00:26:02.000 Many of the challenges currently happening are people suing and saying the executive branch can't make these cuts.

00:26:07.000 These spending initiatives were put forward by Congress.

00:26:09.000 Only Congress can undo them.

00:26:11.000 Well, there is a process called rescission.

00:26:13.000 It's been attempted in the past, a little hard to do, but it could theoretically be done with 51 votes, where the Congress says, we're going to now rescind certain aspects of spending.

00:26:22.000 Senator Rand Paul said, quote, to me, it's ephemeral now, meaning all of these cuts.

00:26:27.000 I love the stuff they're doing.

00:26:28.000 We've got to vote on it.

00:26:28.000 My message to Elon was, let's get over the impoundment idea, the idea that the federal government in the executive branch can simply stop the spending, and let's send it back as a rescission package.

00:26:37.000 Then all we have to do is lobby to get to 51 senators or 50 senators.

00:26:41.000 Plus, J.D. Vance breaking the tie to cut the spending.

00:26:45.000 Musk apparently was surprised to learn there was even a pathway to do that.

00:26:49.000 Lindsey Graham also backed the idea.

00:26:50.000 He said, it's time for the White House to go on offense.

00:26:52.000 We're losing altitude.

00:26:53.000 Now, we started off straight good.

00:26:55.000 We need to get back in the game on offense.

00:26:57.000 The way you can regain altitude is to take the work product, get away from the personalities in the drama.

00:27:01.000 Take the work product and vote on it.

00:27:02.000 And again, this is, in fact, a smart move by Rand Paul and some of the deficit hawks.

00:27:07.000 So, yeah, cutting the debt.

00:27:09.000 Rescission is a very good idea. 1.00

00:27:11.000 Deregulation is absolutely necessary at this point.

00:27:13.000 There's been a lot of talk about we won't add one regulation without getting rid of 10 others.

00:27:17.000 You run into sort of a definitional problem.

00:27:19.000 What amounts to a regulation?

00:27:21.000 Is it like the entire piece of regulation?

00:27:22.000 Is it a piece of a regulation?

00:27:24.000 What exactly is that?

00:27:25.000 But bottom line is businesses need to be unchained.

00:27:28.000 That is happening, particularly in the energy sector.

00:27:30.000 Drill baby drill is very real.

00:27:32.000 The Department of the Interior, led by Doug Burgum, is doing an excellent job with a lot of this sort of stuff.

00:27:37.000 The permits are going to get a lot easier.

00:27:40.000 This particular administration is very keen on unlocking America's energy resources, and that's very necessary.

00:27:45.000 But congressional action is going to be the next step on a lot of this.

00:27:49.000 This administration is moving incredibly fast, and so is this year.

00:27:52.000 Two entire months of the new year are already behind us.

00:27:54.000 I need to make sure that I'm maintaining my health, hitting the gym, spending time with the family, even with the crazy work schedule.

00:27:59.000 When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on willpower and caffeine.

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00:28:52.000 balanceofnature.com, promo code SHAPIRO. Also, After more than a year of war, terror, and pain in Israel, all of Israel is brokenhearted after learning of the horrific murders of the Bibas family who were held hostage in Gaza.

00:29:02.000 We're talking about the murder of actual babies by the monsters of Hamas. 0.72

00:29:06.000 Many people are still hurting throughout the Holy Land, where the need for aid continues to grow.

00:29:10.000 The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has support and will continue to support the families of hostages and other victims of the October 7th terror attacks.

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00:29:53.000 Now, one area where there could be serious drag in the economy, and again, I'm going to warn about this because economic reality is economic reality regardless of who is the president of the United States.

00:30:02.000 A giant regime of increased tariffs will harm the American economy.

00:30:05.000 It will.

00:30:07.000 There are areas of the American economy where businesses will be reshored.

00:30:11.000 Protectionism does reshore businesses in the affected area.

00:30:14.000 However, the broader costs of gigantic tariff wars across the planet are to shrink the market for American goods, increase the price for American consumers, undermine the value of U.S. dollar as foreign reserve currency, and lead our allies to make trade deals with each other but not us or with our enemies.

00:30:31.000 That is what tariff wars tend to do. 0.99

00:30:33.000 They are not, in fact, good or easy to win.

00:30:35.000 Now, again, if President Trump is throwing out his willingness to do tariffs as a way of leveraging down tariffs, meaning that he is basically saying, listen, I'm willing to do whatever it takes.

00:30:46.000 You want to do tariff war?

00:30:47.000 Man, let's do tariff war. 0.99

00:30:48.000 Let's do this thing.

00:30:49.000 Or...

00:30:50.000 There's an off-ramp, and the off-ramp is you lower your tariffs and we lower our tariffs.

00:30:53.000 As I said yesterday, if President Trump's emphasis in the term retaliatory tariff is on retaliatory rather than tariff, then I'm fine with it.

00:31:01.000 A retaliatory tariff would be designed to say that if you guys go down, we will also go down.

00:31:06.000 And that's fine and dandy.

00:31:08.000 However, comparative advantage is still an element of economics, and pretending that it is not is a fool's errand.

00:31:16.000 Just because we can produce something in the United States, Does not mean that it is the best thing economically for it to be produced in the United States.

00:31:24.000 Autarchy is a giant fail.

00:31:25.000 As an economic strategy, autarchy is a fail.

00:31:28.000 And again, that doesn't mean we can't out-compete people.

00:31:30.000 We can out-compete a lot of people.

00:31:31.000 It does mean products are going to get more expensive.

00:31:34.000 Businesses are going to be underfunded.

00:31:36.000 Our bonds are going to be less purchased on the open markets.

00:31:40.000 There are going to be real, real problems here.

00:31:43.000 So, one of the big questions right now with regard to the tariffs is what they will be.

00:31:46.000 There's been a lot of sort of up and down, in and out.

00:31:49.000 I mean, it's a rollercoaster with regard to this tariff regime.

00:31:51.000 And that in and of itself, by the way, not good for the economy.

00:31:55.000 What you want from the economy is, George Gilder described the economy, the economist George Gilder, he described the economy as essentially a phone line.

00:32:04.000 A series of regulations, regulatory background, the tax regime, as essentially a phone line.

00:32:09.000 What do you want on a phone line?

00:32:10.000 You want clarity.

00:32:11.000 You just want clarity and predictability.

00:32:13.000 If you have extraneous information in your phone line, meaning static, it's very difficult to hear the actual information you want to hear, which is the person at the other end of the phone.

00:32:22.000 Unpredictability is static in the phone line.

00:32:24.000 And so when you are saying one day, we're doing tariffs, and the next day we're not doing tariffs, or we're going to do a tariff, and then we're going to blow a hole in the tariff with an exception for automakers, or maybe it's a retaliatory tariff, maybe we just love tariffs.

00:32:36.000 When you do that sort of stuff, business people get a little skittish.

00:32:40.000 Because how do you invest in building abroad if you think the tariffs are going to increase?

00:32:45.000 And why would you invest building in the United States if you believe tomorrow President Trump is going to revoke those tariffs or the next administration will revoke those tariffs?

00:32:54.000 Business is very much about investing for the future because it takes a while for things to materialize.

00:33:00.000 This is why when Apple, for example, says they're going to spend $500 billion in the United States, they don't mean they're just going to take a bag of cash and drop it in the Federal Reserve today.

00:33:08.000 That is not how that works.

00:33:09.000 They mean that over the course of years, they're going to spend on a variety of projects in the United States, the net cost of which will be $500 billion.

00:33:18.000 That's what they mean.

00:33:19.000 But that could change at any moment.

00:33:21.000 A commitment to spend money is not actually spending money.

00:33:25.000 So uncertainty in the economy is the enemy of productive growth.

00:33:29.000 It is the reason why, when you have sort of tyrannical countries where the rules change at any moment, you can't get economic growth.

00:33:36.000 You would not invest in a country.

00:33:38.000 Where the government could at any moment seize your assets.

00:33:41.000 And investing in a country where the regulations change every five seconds, a tariff goes up, a tariff goes down, it's literally day by day, very difficult.

00:33:47.000 People instead tend to withdraw their money from the economy and they tend to keep their powder dry.

00:33:52.000 And that's what you're seeing, by the way, from, for example, Warren Buffett.

00:33:55.000 The reason he's keeping his powder dry right now is because he doesn't know where this is going and he's figuring, hell, if the stocks go down in a month, then I'm going to be able to buy them up on the cheap.

00:34:05.000 Well, meanwhile, the trade war that is currently being initiated with Canada.

00:34:09.000 Now, President Trump has said that he wants a crackdown on the northern border in Canada.

00:34:14.000 Fine.

00:34:15.000 Let's get that.

00:34:15.000 Let's do that.

00:34:16.000 And then let's get rid of these tariffs. 0.98

00:34:17.000 Seriously.

00:34:18.000 Let's get them to ratchet down their tariffs. 1.00

00:34:19.000 Let's ratchet down our own tariffs. 0.89

00:34:21.000 Canada is the number one trade partner of the United States.

00:34:24.000 They are not a financial or economic or physical threat to the United States.

00:34:30.000 Treating them as such is not a wise move.

00:34:33.000 It just isn't.

00:34:34.000 And by the way, it's going to keep Justin Trudeau in power.

00:34:37.000 So President Trump had a conversation yesterday with the terrible leader of Canada, and then he put out a statement, quote, Justin Trudeau of Canada called me to ask what could be done about tariffs.

00:34:45.000 I told him many people have died from fentanyl that came through the borders of Canada and Mexico, and nothing has convinced me that it has stopped.

00:34:51.000 He said it's gotten better, but I said that's not good enough.

00:34:53.000 The call ended in a somewhat friendly manner.

00:34:54.000 He was unable to tell me when the Canadian election is taking place, which made me curious, like, what's going on here?

00:34:59.000 I then realized he was trying to use this issue to stay in power.

00:35:02.000 Good luck, Justin.

00:35:03.000 Except for the fact that actually it is good luck, Justin, because the reality is that Pierre Polyev, who's the leader of the Conservative Party and is excellent, a terrific leader, would be an amazing Prime Minister of Canada.

00:35:15.000 Pierre Polyev has been sinking in the polls since the initiation of the trade war because people in Canada are associating Polyev with Trump, even though he says he doesn't like the tariffs and doesn't like what Trump is doing.

00:35:26.000 So you know what I would like?

00:35:27.000 I would like lower tariffs with Canada.

00:35:29.000 Sure, I'd like more border security.

00:35:31.000 I will point out at this point.

00:35:32.000 That the grand total of fentanyl that was caught at the northern border in the last year was 43 pounds.

00:35:39.000 By way of contrast, the amount of fentanyl that was caught at America's southern border was 22,000 pounds.

00:35:45.000 So there may or may not be a major problem with fentanyl coming across our northern border.

00:35:50.000 The United States should articulate to Canada what are the concrete steps that they want Canada to actually take to crack down on fentanyl trafficking across the border.

00:35:57.000 We should actually make a significant ask and then get the ask.

00:36:00.000 You get the win.

00:36:01.000 And then ratchet this thing down because it is not good for Canada and it is not good for the United States.

00:36:05.000 And hell, I don't care much about Canada, but I do care about the United States.

00:36:08.000 When you ratchet up prices on everything from oil to cars because of this, that is not going to be particularly good.

00:36:15.000 Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, he seemed to be linking the Canadian and Mexican policy to our open borders.

00:36:21.000 This, again, totally on board with us.

00:36:23.000 If you're using tariffs as leverage, that is worthwhile.

00:36:25.000 If you're using them as a way of, quote-unquote, winning economically, not as worthwhile.

00:36:30.000 You are our greatest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, right?

00:36:35.000 If we are so important to you, why is the border wide open?

00:36:39.000 Why do we have to build a wall?

00:36:41.000 Why aren't you building a wall?

00:36:43.000 Why aren't you respecting America?

00:36:46.000 Why do you think it's okay to disrespect America?

00:36:49.000 So what they did is they disrespected America.

00:36:51.000 They had caravans coming in from Mexico.

00:36:53.000 They had visas just flying off the shelf from Canada.

00:36:56.000 And every criminal in the world and terrorists coming in through Canada.

00:36:59.000 And the president said, I've had enough.

00:37:04.000 Okay, well, that's fine.

00:37:05.000 But we need the deliverables.

00:37:06.000 What are the deliverables so that the tariffs can go back down?

00:37:09.000 And in fact, President Trump has already blown a hole in his own tariff regime because you can see that it's having a massive impact on trade with the United States.

00:37:19.000 Yesterday, the White House announced a one-month reprieve from tariffs on Mexico and Canada for cars that comply with the USMCA. Again, the USMCA was negotiated by President Trump in his first term.

00:37:29.000 It is a pretty good piece of agreement.

00:37:32.000 The markets immediately rose because it turns out, you know what the markets don't like?

00:37:35.000 The breakup of trade.

00:37:37.000 It turns out that after you announce that, what you get is an increase in markets.

00:37:42.000 And when you announce tariffs, then you get a decrease in markets.

00:37:46.000 It does not require a genius-level understanding of economics to understand that this is, in fact, the case.

00:37:53.000 There are a bunch of reasons why a tariff war would not redound to America's overall benefit.

00:37:58.000 Again, maybe it harms others more than it harms us, but it certainly harms us, and I'm not sure what exactly is the achievable goal.

00:38:04.000 If you're doing it for national security reasons, on board.

00:38:06.000 You're doing it to leverage our enemies, on board.

00:38:09.000 You want to get something out of someone?

00:38:10.000 Fine.

00:38:11.000 But tariffs are a blunt instrument, and they're a blunt instrument that affects the American consumer and many American producers who import inputs into their product.

00:38:22.000 Why do I care about this?

00:38:23.000 Because the only thing, the biggest obstacle to President Trump's success is an economic downturn.

00:38:27.000 It is the single biggest obstacle.

00:38:29.000 And there's a theory out there that what President Trump is actually doing is quote-unquote engineering.

00:38:33.000 I don't believe that's true.

00:38:34.000 I don't think that's true.

00:38:35.000 The theory goes that basically President Trump is attempting to undermine trade regimes with the United States in order to essentially force the Federal Reserve to lower the interest rates, undermining the strength of the American dollar because President Trump likes a weaker dollar in comparison with other countries to rectify the trade imbalance.

00:38:57.000 I don't think it's anything like that.

00:38:58.000 I think President Trump has a very simple view of trade, and that very simple view is we don't like getting screwed.

00:39:03.000 And again, I'm on board with that.

00:39:07.000 Tariffs is leveraged, that's fine.

00:39:08.000 But if the idea here is that tariffs are going to make America wise, free, and beautiful on their own, that is a massive mistake that is going to come back to bite.

00:39:15.000 And again, I don't think President Trump believes that.

00:39:18.000 I hope he doesn't believe that.

00:39:20.000 I know the markets hope he doesn't believe that, which is why they rose yesterday on news that he is suspending.

00:39:26.000 Meanwhile, there is some movement on Ukraine.

00:39:31.000 Mike Walls, the national security advisor, yesterday, he suggested that there will be some good movement on Ukraine after Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, came to the United States.

00:39:40.000 There, of course, is a giant blow up at the White House between Vladimir Zelensky and the president and the vice president.

00:39:45.000 And then a couple of days ago, Vladimir Zelensky essentially gave up the ghost.

00:39:48.000 He put out a statement saying that he wanted to do the rare earths mineral agreement with the United States, that he was looking forward to moving toward peace.

00:39:54.000 Here was the NSA Mike Wallace explaining.

00:39:56.000 I just got off the phone before I walked out here with my counterpart, the Ukrainian National Security Advisor.

00:40:03.000 We are having good talks on location for the next round of negotiations, on delegations, on substance.

00:40:15.000 Just in the last 24 hours since the public statement from Zelensky and then these subsequent conversations, which I'm going to walk inside and continue, I think we're going to see movement in very short order.

00:40:30.000 Now, it is worthwhile to note here that the movement is all on the Ukrainian side.

00:40:34.000 I've seen no movement whatsoever from the Russians, and it takes two to tango. 0.99

00:40:37.000 The Russians keep saying that we want to do an agreement, but then when it comes down to sort of the hard-nosed negotiation of what an agreement looks like, they are currently turning down pretty much all of the prerequisites and necessities for any sort of peace agreement.

00:40:48.000 And remember, Russia invaded Ukraine.

00:40:50.000 Russia would like to take Kyiv.

00:40:52.000 If they believe that the West is going to cave in Ukraine, they will continue to push.

00:40:55.000 This is how negotiations work.

00:40:57.000 So pushing the Ukrainians does not come without risk to the Ukrainians, clearly. 1.00

00:41:03.000 The reason I say this is because literally yesterday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who's essentially a cutout for Vladimir Putin in Belarus, Belarus is effectively a sort of satellite member of Russia, he warned the Kremlin, quote, will never accept a European troop deployment to Ukraine.

00:41:18.000 In a wide-ranging interview with blogger Mario Nafal, who of course is very big on X, Lukashenko praised President Trump's forthright approach to Russia's war on Ukraine and suggested Putin was ready to make peace.

00:41:28.000 However, He said any proposal would be unlikely to win Russian support if it included deployment of European forces into Ukraine.

00:41:34.000 Quote, Russia will never agree to this.

00:41:36.000 At least this is Russia's position today, especially since the leadership of the EU, primarily in the person of Germany and France, is taking a very aggressive position at the moment.

00:41:45.000 The Belarusian leader also counterattacks by both Trump and Putin on the legitimacy of Vladimir Zelensky while offering Belarus as a location for peace negotiations.

00:41:54.000 So, again.

00:41:55.000 Here is the question.

00:41:56.000 This is a very real question.

00:41:58.000 If Russia is unwilling to make an agreement that allows European boots on the ground, how in the world do you get to a national peace agreement?

00:42:05.000 I've been saying since 2022, again, that an agreement looks like Russia keeps Donbass and Crimea.

00:42:12.000 There are security arrangements with Ukraine that guarantee that this never happens again.

00:42:15.000 That's the only thing that Ukraine will sign on to.

00:42:18.000 If Russia refuses that, then why would Ukraine sign on to anything and any peace that would be forced by the West?

00:42:24.000 It would be a sort of temporary respite before Russia rearms and then goes back in. 0.92

00:42:30.000 That's what Ukraine is worried about, I don't think, unreasonably.

00:42:34.000 Part and parcel of this is right now, again, the United States continues to ratchet up pressure on Ukraine as though it's Ukrainian intransigence that's responsible for all this.

00:42:42.000 What I would love to hear is some move by Russia to explain exactly what they want.

00:42:46.000 I've yet to hear that.

00:42:47.000 I want to hear from Vladimir Putin and from the Russians, what is it that would look like an off-ramp to you?

00:42:53.000 Because so far, it's been everybody else projecting an off-ramp onto what Russia wants, including me.

00:42:57.000 I'm telling Russia what it should get if we want to come to some sort of end to this thing.

00:43:02.000 But if Russia refuses to take that, what does the off-ramp look like?

00:43:05.000 Would Vladimir Putin actually accept Donbass and Crimea and real security arrangements, meaning European troops there that would trigger a larger regional war if Russia were to walk across the border?

00:43:15.000 And if the answer to that is no, there's no agreement, it seems to me, to be made.

00:43:19.000 So the United States keeps ratcheting up the pressure on Ukraine.

00:43:23.000 John Ratcliffe, the head of the CIA, said that they're cutting intelligence support to Ukraine.

00:43:26.000 This, to me, I don't understand this part of the strategy.

00:43:29.000 I'll just be totally frank with you.

00:43:30.000 I don't understand the part of the strategy where we are denying Ukraine weaponry to at least maintain the current status in the war, to maintain the current lines.

00:43:39.000 Again, if Russia feels like they have momentum and they can push further, why would they come to the table?

00:43:44.000 If it takes two to tango, you have to simultaneously convince the Ukrainians to come to the table. 1.00

00:43:48.000 By threatening things like, we might withdraw if you don't get a deal.

00:43:52.000 But you also have to say to the Russians, if you don't come to the table, what happens?

00:43:58.000 Where's that other half of the conversation?

00:43:59.000 Withdrawing intelligence support to Ukraine, which is effectively designed to prevent Ukraine from making attacks inside Russia, which is a way of them, by the way, clawing back territory, which then they will presumably trade for some territory inside Ukraine.

00:44:13.000 I want to see movement from the other side of the table.

00:44:16.000 Has there been any movement from the other side of the table?

00:44:18.000 I'm waiting to see it.

00:44:19.000 Now again, I'll let the administration cook, but I would love to see some movement from Vladimir Putin to justify the kind of movement that is being pushed on the Ukrainians right now.

00:44:27.000 Here is John Ratcliffe over at the CIA. President Trump had a real question about whether President Zelensky was committed to the peace process.

00:44:34.000 And he said, let's pause.

00:44:36.000 I want to give you a chance to think about that.

00:44:38.000 And you saw the response that President Zelensky put out a statement saying, I'm ready for peace.

00:44:43.000 And I want Donald Trump's leadership to bring about that peace.

00:44:47.000 And so I think on the military front and the intelligence front, the pause that allowed that to happen, I think, will go away.

00:44:55.000 And I think we'll work shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine, as we have, to push back on the aggression that's there, but to put the world in a better place for these peace negotiations to move forward.

00:45:07.000 Now, again, what Radcliffe is saying there is actually correct.

00:45:12.000 So the pause has to be temporary.

00:45:13.000 And again, Zelensky, I think one of the reasons that now he's showing more flexibility is because of the pressure.

00:45:18.000 That means that the pause should actually stop at this point.

00:45:21.000 And the United States should continue to ratchet up pressure on both sides.

00:45:24.000 It requires pressure on both sides.

00:45:25.000 If you're going to be an arbiter who is neutral, a mediator who is neutral, there has to be pressure on both sides to come to the table.

00:45:31.000 Meanwhile, the Europeans are apparently stepping up military spending.

00:45:34.000 The Germans in particular are radically revamping their military spending.

00:45:39.000 The EU is in crisis talks on Thursday focused on defense.

00:45:42.000 French President Emmanuel Macron says, I want to believe the U.S. will stand by our side.

00:45:46.000 We have to be ready for that not to be the case.

00:45:48.000 The future of Europe must not be decided in Washington or Moscow.

00:45:51.000 Which, okay, fine.

00:45:52.000 That's great.

00:45:53.000 I mean, again, I think that President Trump is very much on board with the Europeans taking the lead on this sort of stuff.

00:46:00.000 Apparently, Germany is about to blow out its debt ceiling in an attempt to radically increase their defense spending, which, of course, is necessary in the face of Russian predation. 0.92

00:46:08.000 None of that is particularly bad.

00:46:09.000 And I think, all the pyrotechnics aside, we could end up with a salutary end to this war because of what President Trump is doing.

00:46:16.000 He's putting pressure on the Ukrainians to come to the table. 0.84

00:46:18.000 They're ready.

00:46:19.000 Now the pressure needs to be on Vladimir Putin to come to the table.

00:46:23.000 And the pressure that he's put on the Ukrainians has been accompanied by a radical revision upward of European security spending, which is good. 0.97

00:46:31.000 And the end of this could be quite salutary from President Trump.

00:46:35.000 And if so, he deserves an enormous amount of credit.

00:46:37.000 It's a little early to say that.

00:46:38.000 Let's get there first.

00:46:39.000 If it does end the way that it could, that would be a very, very good thing.

00:46:43.000 And meanwhile, speaking of foreign policy and the president of the United States, peace through strength.

00:46:47.000 So the president of the United States yesterday put out an ultimatum to Hamas because Hamas is still holding American hostages and indeed holding probably 35 live hostages somewhere in that neighborhood.

00:46:57.000 The president of the United States put out an ultimatum to Hamas in some of the strongest language he has yet issued.

00:47:04.000 Quote, Shalom Hamas means hello and goodbye.

00:47:07.000 You can choose.

00:47:08.000 Release all of the hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered or it is over for you.

00:47:14.000 Only sick and twisted people keep bodies and you are sick and twisted. 0.92

00:47:16.000 I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job. 0.97

00:47:18.000 Not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don't do as I say. 1.00

00:47:21.000 I've just met with your former hostages whose lives you have destroyed.

00:47:23.000 This is your last warning for the leadership.

00:47:25.000 Now is the time to leave Gaza while you still have a chance. 1.00

00:47:27.000 Also to the people of Gaza, a beautiful future awaits.

00:47:30.000 But not if you hold hostages.

00:47:31.000 If you do, you are dead.

00:47:32.000 Make a smart decision.

00:47:33.000 Release the hostages now or there will be hell to pay later.

00:47:36.000 Donald J. Trump, President of the United States.

00:47:39.000 Love it.

00:47:40.000 Love it.

00:47:40.000 Couldn't possibly love that more.

00:47:42.000 Imagine if this had been the angle of the United States on October 8th as opposed to Joe Biden being up.

00:47:46.000 Cowardly fraud.

00:47:48.000 Amazing stuff from President Trump.

00:47:50.000 The Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained in more detail President Trump's language here, although it didn't really require a lot of explication.

00:47:56.000 This is the beautiful thing about President Trump.

00:47:58.000 If you're ever wondering what he's thinking, you shouldn't.

00:48:01.000 He just says it.

00:48:02.000 Here is Marco Rubio yesterday.

00:48:04.000 You know how long we've been waiting for a long time in this country to have the kind of leadership with that kind of clarity?

00:48:10.000 People don't realize the president meets with these people.

00:48:13.000 He hears their stories.

00:48:14.000 He's outraged and rightfully so.

00:48:16.000 He's tired of watching these videos every weekend where hostages that are emaciated are released and bodies are turned over and sometimes it's the wrong bodies and this five here and three there and these games that are being played and he's lost his patience with it.

00:48:29.000 He's been very clear about this in the beginning.

00:48:30.000 He's created space and time for this to be solved and now it's time for seeing it come to an end.

00:48:35.000 It's enough of this already.

00:48:36.000 These people have been in captivity now for over a year and a half.

00:48:39.000 We're monsters.

00:48:40.000 It needs to stop.

00:48:41.000 And I wish there were more international pressure along the same lines here.

00:48:44.000 But I'm glad he's putting those statements out.

00:48:46.000 I think he doesn't say these things and not mean it, as folks are finding out around the world.

00:48:51.000 If he says he's going to do something, he'll do it.

00:48:53.000 He'll do it.

00:48:53.000 And so they better take that seriously.

00:48:55.000 And again, that is that is excellent stuff there from the secretary of state and obviously from the president of the United States.

00:49:03.000 And meanwhile, a breaking story courtesy of our reportorial team over at Daily Wire is pretty amazing story up.

00:49:09.000 Apparently, it turns out that a former top aide to Kamala Harris is now under criminal investigation by the Trump administration.

00:49:15.000 Apparently, this person tried to forge paperwork to take advantage of Elon Musk's fork-in-the-road buyout offer, according to Luke Rosiak and the team at Daily Wire.

00:49:24.000 The probe is apparently going to explore whether high-level officials, potentially including Kamala Harris herself or Lena Kahn, Joe Biden's chair of the Federal Trade Commission, who's awful, conspired to embed a person named Nathaniel Siegel into a job at the FTC just before President Trump's inauguration.

00:49:37.000 Apparently, that placement involved a series of maneuvers that appeared to have been designed to evade personnel and ethics regulations, hide that Siegel was a political appointee, and prevent the Trump administration from firing him.

00:49:48.000 So basically, in short, this person was placed on the payroll at the FTC on the direct orders of Lena Kahn, even though he was missing essential paperwork, and...

00:49:57.000 When the scheme began to unravel, Siegel tried to pull the ripcord by doctoring a document to try to secure the deferred resignation program buyout, despite the deadline having passed and Siegel not having received the offer in the first place, which would have assured him something like $200,000 in exchange for leaving the government.

00:50:13.000 The official confirmed, according to the DOJ, that the department was taking a broad look at this story.

00:50:18.000 Apparently, again, it was a bunch of sleight of hands that resulted in Siegel being hired just before the Biden administration left and then classified improperly as a tenured non-political All right, guys, coming up, we're going to get into some culture.

00:50:41.000 Viola Davis has some thoughts on Black History Month that are sort of bizarre.

00:50:45.000 Plus, Hamilton and Lin-Manuel Miranda, he says that they will no longer be performing at the Kennedy Center because of the evils of Donald Trump.

00:50:54.000 In order to hear my thoughts on that, you do have to become a subscriber, and we have all sorts of great stuff, right?

00:50:57.000 You've got all access with me.

00:50:58.000 You've got Matt Walsh's fantastic movies.

00:51:00.000 What is a woman? 1.00

00:51:01.000 Am I racist?

00:51:01.000 You've got all the kids' content you could ever want.

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00:51:05.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - March 06, 2025

The Supreme Court ATTACKS DOGE Cuts!

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