The Ben Shapiro Show - The Trump 2026 VICTORY Plan

00:00:00.000 Already, folks, we have a lot to get to today, including some more leaked chats of the D.C. shooter.

00:00:06.000 What is his left-wing philosophy?

00:00:08.000 What was driving all that?

00:00:09.000 King Charles is making land acknowledgments in Canada now.

00:00:11.000 The left is out of its damn mind.

00:00:13.000 Plus, President Trump's big plan to actually keep the House in 2026.

00:00:18.000 And what's going on in the stock markets?

00:00:19.000 Tons going on.

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00:00:43.000 Folks, there is a philosophy.

00:00:44.000 A philosophy that has now become dominant on the left and even parts of the center.

00:00:49.000 It's throughout the West.

00:00:50.000 And this philosophy appears to be really, really funny at first blush.

00:00:54.000 Because it's just kind of silly and ridiculous.

00:00:56.000 And then it turns out that the deeper roots of this philosophy, well, they bear a deadly fruit.

00:01:01.000 So we begin today with a bizarre and hilarious spectacle.

00:01:05.000 King Charles was visiting the Canadian Parliament, and he decided that it would be worthwhile to offer a land acknowledgement.

00:01:11.000 I'm just going to point out at this point how hilarious this is.

00:01:14.000 King Charles is the King of Great Britain.

00:01:19.000 The only reason the Canadian Parliament exists is because of Great Britain's intervention in Canada.

00:01:25.000 Because of the settlement of Canada by British citizens.

00:01:29.000 That would be the reason he is there in the first place.

00:01:31.000 Him doing a land acknowledgement and taking that seriously would amount to essentially disestablishing Canada, the United States, Australia, South Africa, and a bunch of other countries, because it turns out that all of those countries were...

00:02:04.000 especially coming from King Charles, who is the greatest beneficiary on planet Earth of the imperialism of the British Empire.

00:02:11.000 And the reason I bring this up is because, once again, There is this philosophy that is afoot on the left and in parts of the center, which says that a human universal, which is migration, settlement, annexation, conflict, that is a human universal.

00:02:26.000 It is not unique to white people.

00:02:28.000 It is not unique to Westerners.

00:02:29.000 It is not unique to Europeans.

00:02:30.000 It's just that white people, Westerners, and Europeans have been much better at it than other parts of the population on planet Earth.

00:02:36.000 They're more successful, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries at it.

00:02:40.000 Okay, but that does not mean that there is some unique sin.

00:02:43.000 That attends to whiteness, being Western, being European, or anything remotely like it. 0.95

00:02:49.000 And having King Charles read off this land acknowledgement is so ridiculous and absurd just on his face.

00:02:55.000 Here we go.

00:02:56.000 I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the unceded territory of the Algonquin and the Shinabeg people.

00:03:06.000 This land acknowledgement is a recognition of shared history as a nation.

00:03:13.000 While continuing to deepen my own understanding, it is my great hope that in each of your communities and collectively as a country, a path is found toward truth and reconciliation in both word and deed.

00:03:30.000 Okay, well, I mean, theoretically, since you are the head of the British crown, you could cede a bunch of territory back to the quote unquote unceded territory.

00:03:42.000 You could do that, but you're not going to do that because the whole thing is ridiculous on its face.

00:03:46.000 Of course, it's unseated because the nature of human conflict is that when people migrate from one part of the earth to another part of the earth, conflict tends to arise, and then someone wins and someone loses.

00:03:57.000 And it is a very good thing that the British Empire won in Canada.

00:04:01.000 Not in the War of 1812.

00:04:02.000 It should be part of America.

00:04:03.000 It should be the 51st state.

00:04:04.000 But if it's not going to be part of America, the basic idea, which is that the world is better off because of the British Empire, The world is better off because of, for example, American power, the spread of European ideals.

00:04:15.000 That is obviously true.

00:04:17.000 The spread of things like property rights, due process of law, capitalism, freedom of religion, these things which are not a human universal.

00:04:26.000 That is the legacy of the West overall.

00:04:28.000 There's always an attempt to take human universals and then project them as West-specific problems.

00:04:33.000 That is not true.

00:04:35.000 The problems of murder and rapine and looting and slavery, these are human universals.

00:04:40.000 The thing that is unique about the West is all the other stuff.

00:04:42.000 And reversing that polarity, reversing that, and suggesting that the West is somehow uniquely sinful because it was better at war than other places.

00:04:50.000 Or because Westerns were better at settlement than the Algonquins who lived on the land where Canada's parliament now sits.

00:04:58.000 That somehow that's a human tragedy.

00:05:00.000 It is not, in fact, a human tragedy.

00:05:02.000 Bad things happen throughout human history.

00:05:05.000 The bad things are a tragedy.

00:05:06.000 But overall, in the broad scope of history, is it a very good thing that Europeans ended up on the North American continent?

00:05:12.000 It's an absolutely wonderful thing that Europeans ended up on the North American continent.

00:05:16.000 Anyone who doesn't believe so should probably leave.

00:05:19.000 Truthfully, if you don't believe that, you probably should go and you should cede your apartment right now, your dingy apartment in Brooklyn.

00:05:26.000 You should cede it back to the natives from whom your ancestors took it. 0.99

00:05:31.000 If that is your idea.

00:05:32.000 But again, it's ridiculous and silly, but it ties into a deeper and more deadly philosophy.

00:05:37.000 And you can see that philosophy springing up in a few different places.

00:05:41.000 So the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, visited the United States recently, visited the White House, and he was asked about the kill the boar chants.

00:05:49.000 So in South Africa, among groups like the EFF, it has become common at rallies to sing a song called Kill the Boar, which is about the Afrikaners, farmers, Who originally settled in the area of South Africa as early as the 17th century.

00:06:07.000 Have been there for hundreds of years.

00:06:09.000 And obviously were responsible at one point for tremendous racism against black people.

00:06:14.000 That of course is true in South Africa.

00:06:16.000 But the solution to that is not genocidal chants.

00:06:20.000 But the idea is that so long as the people who are shouting the genocidal chants are not white, European, and Western.

00:06:29.000 And it suddenly becomes good.

00:06:31.000 It suddenly becomes okay.

00:06:32.000 Here's Cyril Ramaphosa trying to make that case.

00:06:35.000 And we take into account what the constitutional court also decided when it said that, you know, that slogan, kill the boar, kill the farmer, is a liberation chant and slogan.

00:06:49.000 And it's not meant to be a message that elicits or calls upon anyone to go and be killed.

00:06:59.000 You see, it's a liberation chant.

00:07:01.000 Okay, so the rule for the left is apparently that if you talk about crime statistics in minority neighborhoods, that is a form of genocidal racism.

00:07:11.000 If, however, you literally shout, kill the boar, kill the farmer, that is not in any way a genocidal chant with genocidal intent.

00:07:18.000 It's a liberation chant.

00:07:19.000 Why?

00:07:20.000 Because the rules don't equally apply in this left-wing philosophy where the sins of the West are unique and good is the universal.

00:07:29.000 But the West is unique and it's evil.

00:07:31.000 What that means is that the West has to be destroyed.

00:07:33.000 And again, this goes back to a sort of Franz Fanon philosophy.

00:07:36.000 Franz Fanon was an Algerian rebel who wrote a very famous book called The Wretched of the Earth, in which he essentially suggested that colonized people had every right to, quote-unquote, kill the colonizers, and that they could do whatever they wanted in retaliation.

00:07:49.000 It didn't matter what they set up next.

00:07:50.000 It didn't matter what regime they then implemented.

00:07:52.000 The important thing was the West was uniquely sinful, and the West therefore had to be destroyed from without. 0.90

00:07:58.000 And within.

00:07:58.000 And this sort of stuff has deadly consequences.

00:08:00.000 And it doesn't matter whether you call this stuff anti-white or anti-Semitic or anti-whatever.

00:08:08.000 The problem with this generalized philosophy is that it is just evil.

00:08:12.000 It is an evil philosophy.

00:08:13.000 When you separate the world into victims and victimizers and what you suggest is that anyone successful, anyone who's been uniquely successful is a victimizer and anyone who is not is a victim.

00:08:22.000 And because those people are victims, they therefore have the moral impetus.

00:08:26.000 And the moral weight to go out and kill people, what you end up with is actual terrorism, actual violence, actual overthrow of the institutions that make the West great in the first place.

00:08:37.000 I bring this up in the context today of the shooter of the two Jews in Washington, D.C. last week.

00:08:43.000 So Ken Klippenstein, who's a left-wing journalist actually, he's gotten access to this shooter's leaked chat.

00:08:51.000 And he's surprised to find that the shooter isn't explicitly anti-Jew.

00:08:56.000 Okay, but that's been my point for a very long time, is the anti-Semitism of the left, the anti-Jewishness of the left, is not really about Jews.

00:09:04.000 It really is more about the idea that any group that is disproportionately successful anywhere on Earth is a victimizer and therefore must be laid low.

00:09:12.000 And that is what you see from the philosophy of the shooter.

00:09:16.000 The philosophy of the shooter, which is that the West is uniquely bad, America is uniquely bad, white people are uniquely bad, Jews presumably are uniquely bad.

00:09:24.000 That is not unique to Jews.

00:09:25.000 That is true of a broad, overarching, left-wing, oppressor-oppressed matrix.

00:09:30.000 And that has deadly consequences.

00:09:33.000 So the point that Klippenstein, because he's of the left, is making is that this guy isn't explicitly anti-Semitic, meaning he doesn't say, I want to kill Jews.

00:09:40.000 He says he wants to kill Israelis, which apparently is much better. 1.00

00:09:44.000 He's just anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic.

00:09:47.000 Well, what difference does it make when the Jews are the ones who die? 0.98

00:09:50.000 And also, when the broader philosophy is not really even about Israel or about Zionism, it really is just about hatred of the West.

00:09:57.000 According to Klippenstein, a woman who knew the shooter, said that he was unequivocally not anti-Semitic.

00:10:04.000 Everything I know about the shooter leads me to believe he acted in protest of the Israeli state and Zionist ideology, not Judaism.

00:10:09.000 He never ever said anything remotely racist about Jews or anyone, not even in a joking way.

00:10:14.000 This is according to a friend of the shooter.

00:10:17.000 So, number one, who cares?

00:10:20.000 He shot two Jews.

00:10:21.000 He shot them because he perceived them to be pro-Israel.

00:10:25.000 That is why he shot them.

00:10:27.000 Why exactly does it matter if the hatred in his heart was derived from an ethnic hatred of Jews or whether it was derived from a much more dangerous, bizarrely perverse philosophy about, again, how the successful in the world are evil and everyone else is a victim of those people and therefore murder is justified.

00:10:44.000 We'll be getting to more on this in just one moment.

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00:13:18.000 So, for example, the chats to which Klippenstein was made privy, those chats go back a decade.

00:13:28.000 And what the chats actually show is, Not exactly a shock.

00:13:38.000 And he hated, it appears, the Republican and Democratic parties, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, the right and the left, the bourgeois, the United States, the West, and of course, Israel.

00:13:48.000 His hatred of Israel was made evident on October 7th.

00:13:52.000 So this was not about a quote-unquote genocide.

00:13:54.000 As I've suggested, I suggested this last week.

00:13:57.000 Why does the left like the genocide lie with regard to Israel?

00:14:01.000 They like it because it gives some sort of imprimatur of legitimacy to their true hatred, which is just of Israel existing in the first place. 0.97

00:14:09.000 On October 7th, this shooter was posting, quote, just saw an incredibly gory video of the aftermath of Israeli troops trying to get dressed for the ambush, absolutely massacred by Hamas fighters, LMAO.

00:14:21.000 Not just that.

00:14:23.000 This person openly talked about hating America.

00:14:28.000 He called Israel the little Satan, which, of course, suggests that America is the great Satan, which is language that is the language of Hezbollah, the language of Iran as well.

00:14:39.000 When it came to President Trump, obviously he hated President Trump as well.

00:14:44.000 He hated America.

00:14:45.000 He routinely tweeted about America and put it in his group chats.

00:14:48.000 There's a broader philosophy at work here.

00:14:50.000 It's the same philosophy that leads to the ridiculous.

00:14:52.000 The ridiculous iteration is King Charles, the king of Great Britain, sitting there and denouncing.

00:14:57.000 European presence on the North American continent, which is insane. 0.95

00:15:01.000 That's the ridiculous iteration.

00:15:02.000 But the deeper iteration of that is a murderous philosophy that again says the West is uniquely evil.

00:15:07.000 Europe is uniquely evil.

00:15:09.000 White people are uniquely evil. 1.00

00:15:11.000 Jews are uniquely evil. 1.00

00:15:12.000 Israelis are uniquely evil. 1.00

00:15:13.000 And all of the rest.

00:15:15.000 And that has real consequences in the world.

00:15:18.000 And so we can laugh and we should laugh at King Charles being forced to say the words.

00:15:34.000 There was an interview with one of the people who was present at the D.C. shooting, and this interview was about the person's experience.

00:15:43.000 This person happened to have been a graduate of Columbia University, and the person said, I totally recognized what kind of person this was because I've seen that exact same hatred in the eyes of fellow students at Columbia University.

00:15:52.000 That is not a shock.

00:15:53.000 It's a thoroughgoing Left-wing philosophy that is being promoted by our nation's top universities.

00:15:59.000 That is the real underlying reason why President Trump right now is going after Harvard University, by the way.

00:16:04.000 So the Trump administration is now seeking to fully end Harvard's federal contracts.

00:16:08.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the General Services Administration has called for review of federal contracts in a letter viewed by the Wall Street Journal saying that Harvard engaged in anti-Semitism as well as race discrimination in its admissions processes.

00:16:22.000 That is perfectly legitimate.

00:16:23.000 They do not have to send grant money to Harvard.

00:16:26.000 If Harvard violates the Civil Rights Act, then they are not owed the money.

00:16:30.000 The Trump team is also weighing requiring all foreign students applying to study in the United States to undergo social media vetting, which we should. 1.00

00:16:39.000 If you're entering the United States on a student visa, you shouldn't come here and hate the West and hate America.

00:16:44.000 You shouldn't.

00:16:46.000 I mean, first of all, the universities of the United States should not be subsidized by taxpayer dollars to teach kids to hate America.

00:16:52.000 That is a bad thing.

00:16:53.000 We shouldn't be subsidizing the philosophy of NPR.

00:16:57.000 Hilariously, NPR and three Colorado public radio stations are now filing suit against the Trump White House over the president's executive order that bars congressionally appropriated funds for NPR and PBS, which of course is again totally appropriate because why should American taxpayers be subsidizing the far-left insanity of NPR and PBS and the self-righteousness of a media?

00:17:19.000 That has repeated all of the insane nostrums of the left on these issues.

00:17:23.000 People like Scott Pelley over at CBS News.

00:17:27.000 These are ridiculous people.

00:17:29.000 Understand that there is, in fact, a wall-like tsunami of left-wing agitprop that comes from our media, from our universities, and it bleeds down into people like the DC shooter and bleeds up to the monarch of Great Britain.

00:17:43.000 That is a deeply evil philosophy and wrong philosophy covered up for by the self-righteousness.

00:17:49.000 Scott Pelley, who I'm name-checking right now because he did a much-celebrated commencement speech at Wake Forest University, where he talked about how wonderful he is.

00:18:01.000 He said, And then he compared himself to Abraham Lincoln and such.

00:18:19.000 These are the people who have propagated this nasty philosophy in the name of journalism and then celebrated themselves.

00:18:26.000 Here's Scott Pelley enjoying the crowd's applause for this sort of garbage.

00:18:31.000 To move forward, we debate, not demonize.

00:18:37.000 Applause Applause Applause Applause Applause Applause Applause I like this crowd.

00:18:55.000 Yeah, he does.

00:18:56.000 Yeah, he does.

00:18:56.000 Of course he does.

00:18:57.000 Because they're all part of the same think group.

00:19:01.000 My favorite thing about the Scott Pelley speech at Wake Forest University is him citing Orwell to the effect that it is newspeak to get rid of buzzwords like diversity, equity, and inclusion.

00:19:11.000 No, the newspeak was diversity, equity, and inclusion, which just meant racial preferences.

00:19:16.000 DEI was just a soft form of what Cyril Ramaphosa was saying.

00:19:20.000 Which is that if you are the right race and you can't kill the Boer, it's totally fine. 1.00

00:19:24.000 And there he was cheering it.

00:19:26.000 You want to know why it is that President Trump has picked up ground in nearly every metro of the United States, with the exception of some of the highly college-educated metros?

00:19:35.000 This would be the reason.

00:19:36.000 Because President Trump rejects this philosophy.

00:19:39.000 One of the amazing things about the Trump administration is that if you look at the polls right now, the Trump administration's policies on a wide variety of topics aside from immigration, not wildly popular.

00:19:48.000 But it doesn't matter because the Democratic Party is running at 27% in the opinion polls.

00:19:52.000 And the reason for that is because they cannot divide themselves from this radical left philosophy that has deadly consequences.

00:20:01.000 And meanwhile, President Trump is trying to come up with a plan so that he can maintain the House of Representatives.

00:20:08.000 That, of course, is an uphill battle.

00:20:11.000 Off-year elections are always rough for the party in power.

00:20:15.000 The Republican hold on the House is incredibly narrow right now.

00:20:19.000 And President Trump knows effectively that the minute Democrats take over Congress, then his administration is done.

00:20:27.000 Because it will just be investigations up the wazoo.

00:20:29.000 There will be lawsuits.

00:20:31.000 The pen and the phone probably won't suffice at that point.

00:20:33.000 He won't have a Congress to work with.

00:20:35.000 Impeachment will almost certainly be on the table in the House of Representatives literally day one.

00:20:39.000 So President Trump has laid out a five-step plan to retain Republican control.

00:20:44.000 The GOP right now has an eight-seat majority.

00:20:48.000 That includes vacancies created this year by the death of three Democrats.

00:20:51.000 But, you know, those are Democrat seats.

00:20:53.000 So really, it's like a five-seat majority.

00:20:57.000 And there are some retirements that have already taken place.

00:20:59.000 So it's going to be a rough ride in 2026 for Republicans if history is any guide.

00:21:04.000 So what exactly is the Republican Party trying to do?

00:21:07.000 According to Axios, the White House is targeting several Republicans in politically divided swing districts.

00:21:11.000 And urging them not to ditch their seats or run for higher office.

00:21:15.000 So, President Trump, for example, is trying to get New York Representative Mike Lawler, who is one of the holdups in the House Big Beautiful Bill because he wanted salt deductions.

00:21:24.000 Trump wants him to stay in Congress rather than running for governor because he's afraid that that seat will then turn to a Democrat.

00:21:31.000 They're also hoping that some of these incumbents retain their seats rather than running for governor.

00:21:38.000 So, for example, Michigan Representative John James is running for governor in Michigan.

00:21:42.000 President Trump is apparently worried about the GOP's chances of keeping that seat.

00:21:46.000 They're also worried about the central Kentucky seat held by Representative Andy Barr.

00:21:51.000 Meanwhile, President Trump is going to unleash giant gobs of money in these House races.

00:21:57.000 Apparently, according to Axios, he's built a $500 million plus political apparatus.

00:22:02.000 There are already commercials airing in 13 districts where Trump won in November, but the House GOP candidates lost.

00:22:08.000 President Trump is also going to oppose a lot of primary challenges because the idea is that burns up a lot of money and divides the population in those districts.

00:22:16.000 And what you really want is a clear run to the congressional seat.

00:22:19.000 They're going to raise a lot more money, presumably.

00:22:21.000 And they're going to ramp up recruiting in some of these swing districts.

00:22:24.000 So that is the actual path to try and retain a House majority at this point.

00:22:30.000 In order to retain that House majority, however, the next couple of years have to go pretty swimmingly for President Trump.

00:22:36.000 And herein lies one of the problems with President Trump's tariff war.

00:22:40.000 We'll get to more on that in just a second.

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00:24:36.000 So right now, President Trump's tariff war, it is taking a toll on the economy.

00:24:41.000 I understand that right now, if you look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S&P 500, it's bouncing up and down like a yo-yo.

00:24:47.000 I totally get it.

00:24:48.000 The economy has not plummeted.

00:24:50.000 Consumer confidence remains pretty strong.

00:24:52.000 There's still a lot of money awash in the economy thanks to the inflation of the last several years.

00:24:57.000 But Americans are still somewhat disquieted about the path forward here.

00:25:00.000 There is, in fact, a toll on the economy because uncertainty is its own form of risk when it comes to investment.

00:25:06.000 So, for example, right now, as I say, people seem pretty sanguine about the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S&P 500 because, if you look at the numbers, the S&P 500 for the year is off maybe 2%.

00:25:17.000 From where President Trump was when he took office.

00:25:20.000 The Dow Jones Industrial Average is off, I think, 3.8% from January 21st, 2025, somewhere in that neighborhood.

00:25:25.000 And so people are like, well, he's doing all this tariff stuff.

00:25:28.000 It's reshifting manufacturing, which we will see if it's actually doing that or not.

00:25:32.000 I'm doubtful that tremendous amounts of manufacturing are going to reshore because of the tariffs that he's placing right now.

00:25:37.000 But okay, let's assume that some of that is happening.

00:25:40.000 That's fine.

00:25:41.000 But if the idea is that the markets have only sunk 2% or 4%, Depending on the market.

00:25:48.000 Based on President Trump's tariff vacillation and inconsistency.

00:25:54.000 That's actually looking at the wrong stat.

00:25:56.000 If you actually want to look at what this sort of vacillation and inconsistency costs the markets, what you should be looking at is what would have happened if Trump didn't do any of this stuff.

00:26:05.000 So the real question here should be what should the markets have been right now versus what are they right now?

00:26:11.000 Not what were they in January versus what are they right now?

00:26:14.000 Which again, minor shortfall.

00:26:16.000 But what should they have been?

00:26:17.000 And what is the delta to where they are right now?

00:26:19.000 So I asked my friends and sponsors over at Perplexity this question, assuming the same rate of growth as the period November 5th, 2024, that is the day before Election Day, to January 21st, 2025, that of course is Inauguration Day.

00:26:30.000 What should the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 be today?

00:26:35.000 And what is the percentage difference between where they are today and what they should have been?

00:26:39.000 And the answer is that using daily growth rates during that period, And projecting values, basically, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, according to Perplexity, should be at close to 48,000.

00:26:50.000 It is currently around 42,000.

00:26:53.000 The S&P 500 should be at about 6,100.

00:26:57.000 It is currently, or was a couple of days ago, around 5,800.

00:27:00.000 So the shortfall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average is well above 10%.

00:27:04.000 The shortfall in the S&P 500 is around 4%, but theoretically could be larger depending on how you do this projection.

00:27:12.000 Investors are desperate for President Trump to actually be consistent.

00:27:15.000 They want the consistency.

00:27:17.000 They want some level of understanding of where the policy is going to be tomorrow.

00:27:22.000 Beyond that, the fact that President Trump did all of this tariff action under the auspices of a law that probably doesn't actually carry the weight.

00:27:33.000 It's all done under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

00:27:39.000 That's very likely to be overthrown by the courts.

00:27:41.000 Let's be real about this.

00:27:43.000 It's very difficult to understand what is the national emergency invoked by the President of the United States on trade that would justify the gigantic tariff regime that he has put in place, this 10% blanket tariff plus 30% on China.

00:27:55.000 What exactly allows the President to unilaterally set tariffs this way?

00:27:59.000 That should be the purview of Congress.

00:28:00.000 All this stuff should have to be going through Congress.

00:28:03.000 And by the way, one of the beauties of having to go through Congress is actually less inconsistency.

00:28:07.000 When you have an executive branch that can willy-nilly do what it wants, You end up with wildly vacillating policy.

00:28:12.000 When you have a legislature you have to deal with, the checks and balances create a level of gridlock which leads to consistency in policy as opposed to this sort of wild vacillation in the markets.

00:28:24.000 And the reason I'm pointing this out is because if you want Trump to succeed, if you want Republicans to retain the House, the economy cannot dump between now and November 2026.

00:28:33.000 It cannot.

00:28:33.000 And if all this vacillation leads people to sort of If that's what people end up doing, they don't know where to put their money.

00:28:46.000 And then some sort of exogenous shock happens to the economy or one of the many bubbles in the American economy bursts.

00:28:52.000 And by the way, there are a bunch of bubbles.

00:28:54.000 There's a crypto bubble right now.

00:28:55.000 There's an AI bubble right now.

00:28:56.000 There's a real estate bubble right now.

00:28:57.000 Those are all bubbles.

00:28:58.000 And we are replete with bubbles in the American economy thanks to the inflationary policy of the Federal Reserve over the course of the last several years.

00:29:05.000 Too much money, not enough places to put it, and uncertainty about where exactly to put it.

00:29:10.000 And uncertainty about where to put it, even in terms of bonds.

00:29:13.000 This is why the bond yields are way, way up.

00:29:16.000 Because, again, people aren't even rushing to safe haven in bonds.

00:29:19.000 People literally don't know where to put their money at this point.

00:29:22.000 If the economy should downturn, you got a problem.

00:29:25.000 The Trump administration, again, used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to actually impose those tariffs.

00:29:31.000 But the reality is that it's difficult to explain why the executive branch, He made the case in a filing on Friday that a ruling that narrows the IEEPA would have ripple effects across every domain in which economic instruments are used for strategic effect.

00:29:50.000 The difference is, of course, that the IEEPA was designed for emergency situations.

00:29:54.000 So he says, for example, we couldn't have used economic measures to help calm everybody down over India and Pakistan.

00:30:00.000 But actually we could have because that's an actual national emergency.

00:30:03.000 That was an incipient conflict between two nuclear powers.

00:30:05.000 That is not the same thing as Madagascar sells us too much coffee.

00:30:10.000 That is not a national emergency.

00:30:12.000 Madagascar sells us too much coffee or Ethiopia sells us too much coffee.

00:30:16.000 So it'll be interesting to see where exactly the Supreme Court comes down on that one.

00:30:22.000 But again, that sort of inconsistency, these sort of taco trade elements of this, the Trump always chickens out trade.

00:30:30.000 Element of this is not good for the economy generally.

00:30:33.000 What's also not good for the economy generally is a feeling of a bubble.

00:30:36.000 That feeling is created by appearances of corruption, by appearances of insider baseball.

00:30:44.000 There have been a spate of stories.

00:30:45.000 We've been covering them over the past several weeks because they are worthy of note.

00:30:48.000 In which people who are close to President Trump, members of his family, his children for the Trump Organization, or for World Liberty Financial.

00:30:57.000 Have been going around and essentially picking up sacks of cash for a variety of business deals all over the world, particularly in the crypto space.

00:31:04.000 And again, the crypto space, because it is largely unregulated at this point, and because the Trump team is trying to be pro-crypto, which I think is good.

00:31:11.000 I am very pro-crypto.

00:31:12.000 I own crypto.

00:31:13.000 I own some Bitcoin.

00:31:14.000 I own some Ethereum.

00:31:15.000 I'm an investor in a crypto firm.

00:31:18.000 I'm very pro-crypto.

00:31:20.000 But if you wish for crypto to actually become a solid part of the financial framework, And what you can't have is the appearance of people selling snake oil out there on the basis of fame and fortune.

00:31:31.000 You can't do that, especially if those people are connected to the Trump administration who's drawing all the regulations.

00:31:36.000 That is a problem because if there is an economic downturn, I promise you, promise you, if there's an economic downturn, Democrats are going to run successfully on the proposition that a bunch of people got rich who are close to the Trump family and that everybody else got stuck holding the bag.

00:31:50.000 This is why the economy can't collapse under President Trump.

00:31:52.000 It's also why the Trump family Should stop openly engaging or engaging at all in many of the sort of activities in which they are currently engaged.

00:32:01.000 And I mean that ranging from social clubs in Washington, D.C. designed to essentially provide access to members of the administration to crypto events in Qatar.

00:32:15.000 Today, according to the New York Times, Trump Media and Technology Group, that is the parent company of Truth Social, said it would raise $2.5 billion from institutional investors to invest.

00:32:23.000 In Bitcoin.

00:32:25.000 So they're moving away from their social media play originally.

00:32:27.000 And they're moving into a financial services and crypto play.

00:32:31.000 Now, Trump Media's largest shareholder is President Trump.

00:32:35.000 They're going to raise $1.5 billion from about 50 institutional investors by selling 58 million shares.

00:32:41.000 They're going to raise an additional $1 billion from the sale of bonds that can also be converted into shares at a later date.

00:32:47.000 That's going to dilute the value of the Trump Media stock right now.

00:32:51.000 It is also going to radically increase the holdings of the company, of course.

00:32:56.000 And by buying Bitcoin while the Trump administration is simultaneously attempting to set up a national treasury in Bitcoin, increasing the price, because again, higher demand means higher price when the supply remains stable, which it is in Bitcoin.

00:33:11.000 That's the whole purpose of Bitcoin.

00:33:12.000 When you do that, what you are doing looks a little skeezy.

00:33:16.000 Again, all this sort of skeeziness we talked about with the Qatar jet. 0.89

00:33:19.000 This sort of skeeziness is likely to have really bad political effects.

00:33:25.000 Right now, again, if everybody is sort of fat and happy, none of it matters.

00:33:27.000 But if the economy downturns, the sort of oligarchy play that AOC and Bernie Sanders are making is going to sound a lot more plausible.

00:33:33.000 And if Democrats take Congress in November 2026, thanks to some sort of economic downturn, I promise you all the people who are pro-crypto are going to get it right in the teeth because Democrats are going to see the entire crypto industry as working closely with the Trump administration.

00:33:46.000 They will see it as an enemy and they will attack it with alacrity.

00:33:50.000 The appearance of impropriety can have the exact same effect as impropriety, even if nothing is technically being done wrong.

00:33:56.000 And I don't know whether something is technically being done wrong here.

00:33:59.000 I don't.

00:34:00.000 And I'm not a legal analyst when it comes to SEC filings.

00:34:04.000 What I will say is that World Liberty Financial, which is the large crypto instrument that is co-run by the Wyckoff boys and the Trump boys and some of the other members of Team Trump, World Liberty Financial is currently selling tokens.

00:34:18.000 Like millions and millions, like tens of millions of dollars of tokens.

00:34:21.000 Those tokens are not resellable.

00:34:23.000 So you are effectively buying, quote, a voting right in World Liberty Financial's decentralized finance policy.

00:34:29.000 I don't even know what that means.

00:34:31.000 Maybe it means something, but I'm not sure why you would expend perfectly good money for a token that is not resellable and has no inherent value so you can vote on the direction of a company in which you do not have even remotely a majority because World Liberty Financial is 75% owned.

00:34:46.000 By the Trump organization, from my understanding.

00:34:50.000 That sort of stuff, does that look great?

00:34:53.000 Is that the sort of stuff that is going to redound to the benefit, non-financial benefit, political benefit of President Trump's agenda?

00:35:00.000 I'm putting these warnings out there because if those warnings are not out there, then if the thing happens, people are going to get taken by surprise.

00:35:08.000 But they shouldn't be taken by surprise because Democrats are already planning this playbook.

00:35:12.000 They're already, you wonder why all these pieces are coming out.

00:35:15.000 Number one, because these things are in fact happening.

00:35:17.000 It is not just relegated to left-wing coverage in the New York Times.

00:35:20.000 There's coverage in tablet.

00:35:22.000 There's coverage in the free press.

00:35:24.000 Because everybody is looking at this.

00:35:26.000 People who know the financial industry and know crypto, they're looking at this and they're going, this does not look totally right here.

00:35:31.000 Is it likely that the American people are going to like this sort of stuff?

00:35:37.000 Are they going to, is that going to be good?

00:35:41.000 Again, all I care about here is Republicans retaining the House because if Democrats take the House, the presidency is over.

00:35:46.000 All I care about here is the policy that President Trump has promised the American people he will implement.

00:35:50.000 That's the stuff I want.

00:35:52.000 Anything that gets in the way of that stuff is stuff I don't want.

00:35:55.000 And this is why vacillation on trade policy.

00:35:58.000 This is why the appearance of impropriety among members of the Trump team.

00:36:04.000 And again, here I'm going with Trump team in sort of its broadest iteration, including members of the Wyckoff family, members of the Trump family. 0.59

00:36:11.000 People who are surrounding the Trump family, the 1789 Capitals and the Omid Maliks and the rest of these cast of characters who are obviously doing very, very well while President Trump is president.

00:36:25.000 That sort of stuff, it's going to come home to roost.

00:36:28.000 And again, I'm not making allegations of criminal activity here.

00:36:30.000 I'm just making an allegation that when you do stuff that appears dirty to the American public, whether or not it actually is.

00:36:37.000 It is very unlikely that political gravity will not at some point apply, and it would behoove the Trump administration to recognize that, and it would behoove the Trump administration to be above reproach on this sort of stuff if they wish a proper agenda to get done, because the blowback, if things go wrong here, is going to be absolutely exorbitant.

00:36:55.000 We'll get some more on that in a moment.

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00:37:55.000 You can actually...

00:38:01.000 Where this becomes a much bigger problem is when it comes to foreign policy.

00:38:05.000 Obviously, America's enemies are taking up the same mantle.

00:38:08.000 They clearly are.

00:38:09.000 So, Russia right now is pushing incredibly hard in Ukraine.

00:38:13.000 Russia obviously believes that it has the momentum with it.

00:38:17.000 Russia believes that President Trump is going to eventually back off a harsh stance against it.

00:38:23.000 That's what they believe.

00:38:23.000 How do we know that?

00:38:24.000 Because they're openly saying it.

00:38:31.000 Quote, what Vladimir Putin doesn't realize is that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia.

00:38:36.000 And I mean really bad.

00:38:38.000 He's playing with fire.

00:38:39.000 Okay, that's fine.

00:38:40.000 But it seems that the Putin team, that they are basically assuming that Trump is going to back off of this.

00:38:46.000 How do I know this?

00:38:47.000 Because Russia Today, which is an official outlet of the Russian government, put out a tweet saying, quote, Putin doesn't realize he's playing with fire.

00:38:55.000 Trump's message leaves little room for misinterpretation until he posts the opposite tomorrow morning.

00:39:03.000 I mean, the question is, are they wrong?

00:39:05.000 Okay, first of all, they're insulting and ridiculous, but are they wrong would be the key question here.

00:39:11.000 And the answer is, I don't know.

00:39:14.000 You don't know.

00:39:15.000 No one knows.

00:39:17.000 So right now, President Trump is apparently weighing some sanctions of his own.

00:39:21.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump is eyeing sanctions against Moscow this week as he grows frustrated by Vladimir Putin's continued attacks on Ukraine.

00:39:29.000 The restrictions likely wouldn't include new banking sanctions, one of the people said, but other options are under discussion to pressure the Russian leader into concessions at the negotiating table.

00:39:39.000 Trump is tiring of peace negotiations and is considering abandoning them altogether if a final push does not work.

00:39:45.000 But what does that mean in terms of Further commitment to Ukraine?

00:39:48.000 I mean, if he backs off and then says we're not backing Ukraine, that's exactly what Russia wants.

00:39:51.000 That's literally what they've wanted the entire time.

00:39:55.000 So are those sanctions going to happen?

00:39:57.000 And this, again, is an area where it would be great to have the Senate.

00:40:00.000 You know, you remember there's this whole vestigial organ of government called the legislature.

00:40:04.000 It'd be awesome to have them sign in to chat at this point.

00:40:06.000 So just as with trade, where it'd be great to have Congress sign in to chat and, you know, take back its traditional prerogative on what the trade rules should be here in the United States.

00:40:14.000 It'd be great to have Congress sign in to chat on new sanctions.

00:40:17.000 Like, does Congress have anything to say about sanctions?

00:40:20.000 They should.

00:40:22.000 This is a point the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal is making.

00:40:26.000 Mr. Trump may be the only person in the world still surprised by how Mr. Putin is behaving.

00:40:30.000 Mr. Trump and his advisors fancy themselves steely-eyed realists on foreign policy, no neocon idealism for them.

00:40:36.000 But on Mr. Putin, they're starry-eyed idealists, mouthing peace as if they can make it happen by wishing it were so.

00:40:41.000 The good news is the United States Senate still has some genuine realists when it comes to Russia.

00:40:45.000 As GOP Senator Lindsey Graham writes in a letter nearby, he has 82 co-sponsors on a bill that would hit countries that buy Russian oil and gas with tariff sanctions.

00:40:53.000 If Mr. Trump signals he supports the Graham, Tom Cotton, Richard Blumenthal sanctions bill, it would sail through the Senate.

00:40:58.000 I have a question.

00:40:58.000 Why shouldn't it sail through the Senate anyway?

00:41:00.000 If you have 82 co-sponsors, they should just do it.

00:41:02.000 Why doesn't Congress take back its traditional foreign policy prerogative here? 0.74

00:41:05.000 That is the thing that actually should happen, because if you wish to remove the sort of static in the line with regard to Russian policy, it would be great to have the Senate sign in.

00:41:21.000 So a kind of shocking story from Axios yesterday emerged that suggested that President Trump had cautioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call last week not to take any action that could jeopardize negotiations between the United States and Iran on a new nuclear deal.

00:41:34.000 Okay, so first of all, I have a question.

00:41:35.000 Israel is not involved in those negotiations.

00:41:38.000 So why should Israel hold off? 0.93

00:41:42.000 Real question.

00:41:43.000 Israel is the country most under threat from Iran, not the United States.

00:41:47.000 Okay, so if we were going to take the full-scale J.D. Vann's isolationist realist position, shouldn't the United States just sort of wash its hands and walk away and say whatever happens, happens?

00:41:56.000 But I noticed that's not what's happening.

00:41:58.000 Instead, these so-called restrainers inside the administration, they're not attempting to restrain the United States, which is already restrained.

00:42:04.000 I promise you, my 100% certitude is that President Trump is not going to authorize.

00:42:10.000 A bombing raid on the Iranian nuclear facilities.

00:42:12.000 Whether or not we should, I don't think it's going to happen.

00:42:14.000 Okay, that's just the reality.

00:42:17.000 So, why is the restrainer team inside the Trump administration trying to stop Israel from doing that thing?

00:42:23.000 Why?

00:42:24.000 With what bad deal?

00:42:25.000 Iran keeps saying openly they will not stop enrichment.

00:42:29.000 If they were truly afraid of what President Trump is going to do to them, then they would be coming to the table making concessions.

00:42:35.000 Instead, they appear to believe that President Trump and Steve Whitcoff and team.

00:42:38.000 Iran should be coming on bended knee right now. 1.00

00:42:53.000 All of their proxies have been exploded by the Israeli military.

00:42:57.000 Their economy doesn't exist.

00:43:00.000 Right now, the Iranian real is trading at historic lows.

00:43:12.000 Which is to say that one U.S. dollar is trading for 42,125 Iranian reals.

00:43:19.000 Which, shall we say, is not a particularly good record there.

00:43:25.000 That is because their economy has been crushed.

00:43:27.000 And yet, the United States is so desperate for a deal, what, for the sake of a deal?

00:43:32.000 The Iranians know this, which is why they're pushing. 1.00

00:43:34.000 And so when Trump warns, Netanyahu, not to go and do anything about Iran.

00:43:38.000 Just trust us.

00:43:39.000 Okay, listen.

00:43:41.000 I will trust that President Trump will cut a good deal if he continues to maintain the Trump 1.0 stance, which is no nuclear enrichment at all.

00:43:49.000 No nuclear facilities at all.

00:43:50.000 That was something that three weeks ago the Trump administration was saying.

00:43:53.000 President Trump himself, again, I'm with Trump 1.0 on this, not Steve Whitcoff and J.D. Vance 2.0.

00:43:59.000 Donald Trump 1.0 killed Qasem Soleimani, destroyed the Iranian economy, and held them in check.

00:44:05.000 Then Joe Biden came in, reversed a bunch of that stuff, and he got October 7th and a vast regional war.

00:44:12.000 Why wouldn't we just go back to Trump 1.0?

00:44:15.000 That is the foreign policy that actually shaped the Abraham Accords.

00:44:19.000 Why is that not the thing?

00:44:21.000 Instead of calling the Prime Minister of Israel and telling him he needs to restrain himself on Iran, if you actually wanted to negotiate this thing out, shouldn't the Trump administration be going to the Iranians and being, listen, we can't hold these guys back.

00:44:33.000 If you actually want to negotiate a good Iran nuclear deal, What you would do is you would say to the Iranians, these Israelis, they're champing at the bit. 1.00

00:44:42.000 They're ready to hit you.

00:44:44.000 Let's make a deal.

00:44:45.000 Let's make a deal.

00:44:45.000 Because otherwise, I don't know what I can do.

00:44:48.000 They're an independent country.

00:44:50.000 But the reason, I would assume, that there is such lack of comfort from the Israeli government toward the U.S. government right now is because of all the signals that are coming out from the U.S. government, ranging from, maybe we'll give them like a pause.

00:45:03.000 Nuclear enrichment, and then later they can enrich.

00:45:06.000 Or maybe they can enrich to 3%, but not 60%.

00:45:09.000 Or maybe we can basically do the Obama JCPOA 2.0 and ram it through.

00:45:15.000 And meanwhile, by the way, the NSC, the National Security Council, is apparently being cleansed of many of the more hawkish members, deliberately.

00:45:24.000 According to the Daily Scroll, which is a daily newsletter over at Tablet, The NSC, which again, there are lots of reasons that you want to cleanse the NSC.

00:45:34.000 There are a lot of bad people who have been over at the NSC.

00:45:36.000 Most obvious example being Alexander Vindman, who let off the first impeachment of President Trump by leaking documents from the NSC calls between President Trump and Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine.

00:45:47.000 But many of the people who are being fired right now are people who were hired about five minutes ago.

00:45:54.000 Tablet says shortly after Dan Caldwell, a Koch world restrainer was fired from the DOD.

00:45:58.000 Mayrav Sarin was targeted in a messaging op falsely claiming she was a member of the Israeli defense ministry.

00:46:04.000 The story, which was sourced to restrainers in and around the administration, was published by the far left outlet DropSite News and amplified on social media by the Qataris, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the National Iranian American Council and organs of the Koch network, including the Quincy Institute, co-helmed by NIAC founder and Iranian asset Trita Parsi.

00:46:23.000 Thank you.

00:46:23.000 Now, again, the goal here apparently is to sort of cleanse the NSE of people.

00:46:29.000 Who are not the quote-unquote restrainers, meaning the people who are more isolationist in their foreign policy orientation.

00:46:34.000 So you wonder why the Russians are feeling their oats right now, why they believe that Trump isn't going to stick by his guns, or why the Chinese are ramping up activities around Taiwan, or why the Iranians are pushing harder in the negotiations now.

00:46:46.000 Again, the Iranians should be back-footed. 1.00

00:46:49.000 They have no defenses in their skies.

00:46:51.000 Their proxies are gone.

00:46:53.000 They no longer even have a route to Lebanon because Syria has been cut off from them.

00:46:58.000 Why aren't they coming on bended knee? 0.97

00:46:59.000 The answer is because they see daylight and they see weakness.

00:47:04.000 As Park McDougald reports, Caldwell's allies see J.D. Vance as their protector.

00:47:10.000 They ran to Vance rather than to the president with their concerns.

00:47:13.000 Vance's office appears to be taking a leading role in purging the NSC of its Iran hawks, i.e.

00:47:17.000 the people who would oppose a bad nuclear deal with Iran and also have the knowledge and experience to tell a bad deal from a good one.

00:47:25.000 And some of the suggestions from Tablet suggest that the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in an attempt to sort of maintain good relations with the Vance wing, has now aligned himself with Vance and Wyckoff.

00:47:36.000 Again, maybe this all ends well.

00:47:38.000 Maybe it all ends fine.

00:47:39.000 Maybe President Trump sticks by his guns.

00:47:41.000 But certainly that's not the way the Iranians are reading it right now.

00:47:43.000 The Iranians are strengthening their demands. 0.96

00:47:46.000 That should be an indicator as to where they see the power right now in the Trump administration.

00:47:51.000 And that is not particularly good for the United States.

00:47:55.000 The pressure right now should be on Iran. 0.75

00:47:58.000 It should not be on a democratic ally that is attempting to get rid of the Iranian nuclear weapons.

00:48:04.000 Again, the agenda that Trump himself laid out during his first term and in his run for his second term.

00:48:12.000 America's opponents should be afraid.

00:48:14.000 They should not be dunking on the president the way that Russia today just did.

00:48:20.000 Speaking of which, there is a new aid system that has now been It's not going through the UN.

00:48:29.000 It's not going through the UNRW.

00:48:31.000 Right.

00:48:31.000 It is going through sources that are not going to simply hand the aid to Hamas.

00:48:36.000 You can see, it's kind of fascinating to watch the coverage of this new aid system.

00:48:42.000 Basically, some Hamas people showed up and tried to shoot people in an attempt to disturb the aid system. 0.74

00:48:47.000 Hamas was literally warning Gazans, don't get food from the American aid system that's being set up right there.

00:48:52.000 Because Hamas wants to control the distribution.

00:48:55.000 The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is running it.

00:48:59.000 There are now two separate sites that have been set up, distributing food to hundreds of thousands of people.

00:49:04.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the distribution of aid began normally on Tuesday with Palestinians lining up to receive boxes of food early in the day at a distribution center in Rafa in southern Gaza.

00:49:14.000 Around 4.30 p.m. local time, a poorly constructed gate collapsed as large crowds tried to push through the narrow entrance.

00:49:19.000 Looting ensued.

00:49:20.000 They said they heard shots fired in an effort to disperse the crowds.

00:49:23.000 Apparently, some of the people who were doing that might have been connected with Hamas, or it could have just been too much demand for the aid, and then they fixed it.

00:49:32.000 But here's some actual video of the Gazans thanking the United States for not letting Hamas distribute the aid.

00:49:37.000 This is from Cassie Akiva at Daily Wire.

00:49:38.000 Thank you.

00:49:42.000 Thank you, America.

00:49:44.000 Thank you.

00:49:46.000 Thank you.

00:49:47.000 Good luck.

00:49:51.000 Literally shouting, thank you, America.

00:49:54.000 It is kind of hilarious that the United Nations is ripping into the system, despite the fact that the UN itself was used as essentially a proxy vehicle by Hamas for literally decades.

00:50:05.000 UNRWA employees were involved in October 7th.

00:50:08.000 UN sites were used as the launching base for rockets and missiles.

00:50:12.000 So once again, leave it to the media to completely miscover the situation.

00:50:15.000 They've done a wonderful job of that.

00:50:17.000 Okay, meanwhile, in ridiculous entertainment news.

00:50:21.000 The latest in the Diddy trial.

00:50:23.000 It's Diddy update.

00:50:25.000 So, again, the big question in the Sean Puffy Combs Diddy McFace trial is whether he engaged in trafficking or whether he's just a generalized piece of crap.

00:50:37.000 That's the real question here.

00:50:39.000 The defense admits that he's a generalized piece of crap.

00:50:41.000 The question is whether he is also a trafficker violating federal law.

00:50:46.000 According to the Washington Post, the third week of testimony in the Diddy Trafficking and racketeering case brings more prosecution witnesses to the stand, including Combs' former assistant, Capricorn Clark.

00:50:58.000 Capricorn Clark.

00:51:00.000 Okay, it's a name.

00:51:03.000 That's better than Taurus Clark or something.

00:51:05.000 In testimony last week, Scott Cuddy Muscuti alleged that Clark called him to say that her boss had broken into Muscuti's home.

00:51:13.000 Other former assistants have testified saying they procured drugs and other supplies for Combs.

00:51:22.000 Again, he's pleading not guilty, and they're suggesting that these two had a volatile relationship and that he was, in fact, abusive, but that's not the same thing as trafficking.

00:51:37.000 Capricorn Clark described her tumultuous life working on and off for Diddy, a job she still misses intensely.

00:51:46.000 Apparently, After his homes were raided by federal agents, she tried to get a job with him anyway.

00:51:51.000 Clark told the jury her job was to keep Combs and his operation professional, but she then described a profoundly unethical web of operations at Bad Boy Records and other Combs companies.

00:52:01.000 Clark testified she saw Combs viciously kick Ventura in 2011 as a punishment for her secret side relationship with Kid Cudi.

00:52:10.000 Also, apparently, last question to Capricorn Clark from the defense attorney.

00:52:15.000 It was about a comment she made in an April 2024 meeting at which the lawyer was present.

00:52:21.000 Clark recounted a conversation she had with Cassie Ventura years ago in which Clark allegedly told Ventura she should end her romantic relationship with Combs.

00:52:29.000 Ventura's response, Clark paraphrased to Combs' lawyers, Jay-Z was taken.

00:52:32.000 Who would she date?

00:52:33.000 And apparently Clark said that that was true.

00:52:36.000 So yes, these are all wonderful people who surround themselves with other wonderful people.

00:52:42.000 So believe it or not, Usher and Barack Obama's names have been dropped in the Diddy trial at this point.

00:52:50.000 Apparently, his one-time personal assistant David James also says that Diddy took drugs every day, including sometimes downing Obama-shaped ecstasy pills.

00:53:01.000 They make Obama-shaped ecstasy pills?

00:53:04.000 Why?

00:53:04.000 I don't understand.

00:53:05.000 It's weird.

00:53:07.000 Anyway.

00:53:09.000 Apparently, Combs receives his drug haul from a dealer named One Stop, which, okay, good branding there.

00:53:14.000 He's the one-stop shop.

00:53:15.000 All right.

00:53:16.000 Fair enough.

00:53:17.000 Again, this is the big question in all of this is whether Combs is just engaging in routine rapper horrifying behavior or worse than normal for a rapper, which is saying an awful lot, or whether he was actually engaged in trafficking.

00:53:29.000 Again, the indictment revolves around two females that Combs is alleged to have engaged in commercial acts as a result of force, fraud, and coercion. 1.00

00:53:39.000 And then there was a superseding indictment that added a second count.

00:53:42.000 Trafficking against another victim.

00:53:43.000 Combs is saying, these both were my girlfriends.

00:53:46.000 So, I guess one of the females is Cassie Ventura. 1.00

00:53:50.000 I will say, I do not have tremendous sympathy for the idea that she was a trafficking victim.

00:53:54.000 She does appear to have been there voluntarily, and yes, the fact that he was abusing the living hell out of her speaks to him being evil, but it doesn't mean that he was engaged in trafficking if she is, in fact, the person at issue in the trafficking charge.

00:54:10.000 We'll have Megan Kelly on to discuss all this because, frankly, Megan watches this stuff a lot more closely than I do and has a greater level of expertise.

00:54:16.000 Meanwhile, in other entertainment news, it is kind of amazing to watch elderly people who are now desperately attempting to maintain attention.

00:54:26.000 Jennifer Lopez is 55 years old.

00:54:28.000 Now, granted, she's an amazing-looking 55-year-old person, but the desperate need for attention by our celebrity class, like Jennifer Lopez, is worth a lot of money. 1.00

00:54:37.000 Like, a lot of money.

00:54:38.000 She is supposedly worth at least $400 million.

00:54:42.000 You don't have to do this, Jennifer, just to be provocative.

00:54:45.000 So she is now making out with her backup dancers. 1.00

00:54:48.000 Now, I thought that this is a routine that's been around for a long time.

00:54:51.000 I'm old enough to remember when Madonna did this, like 20 years ago, 25 years ago.

00:54:55.000 So I'm not sure what the controversy here is.

00:54:57.000 Everything is just old and played out, including J-Lo.

00:55:00.000 So here she was at one of her shows, desperate for attention.

00:55:02.000 I lose control.

00:55:07.000 Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Okay, so there she's making out with her backup dancers. 1.00

00:55:15.000 Oh, and multiple backup dancers. 0.85

00:55:17.000 She's like kissing and making out with. 1.00

00:55:19.000 So, this is old and tired.

00:55:23.000 Listen, Grandmama.

00:55:25.000 She's 55 years old.

00:55:26.000 I mean, come on.

00:55:28.000 Come on.

00:55:28.000 What are you doing at this point?

00:55:30.000 I have to say it is trashy and gross and stupid, obviously.

00:55:35.000 But there is this thing that's happening in our culture where a bunch of people It kind of is amazing.

00:55:44.000 It really is kind of an amazing thing.

00:55:46.000 Like, if you are of middle-aged, you should act like you are of middle-aged.

00:55:48.000 I don't mean you have to be a fuddy-duddy.

00:55:50.000 I do mean that you should act like an adult.

00:55:52.000 Like, you're not a 17-year-old or a 21-year-old trying desperately to gain attention.

00:55:56.000 You see this with Katy Perry also, right?

00:55:57.000 Katy Perry is also making a fool of herself doing her international tours right now, being silly.

00:56:02.000 And you see it in the lyrics of a Taylor Swift also, who pretends to be a lovelorn 16-year-old girl.

00:56:07.000 When, in fact, Taylor Swift is currently age 35. But you see it all over the place.

00:56:14.000 I mean, truly.

00:56:15.000 You see it in the manosphere, too.

00:56:17.000 You see a bunch of people who are sort of in the podcast space, who are cosplaying at being 17-year-old Beavis and Butthead types.

00:56:24.000 I enjoy Theo Vaughn as much as the next guy, although I think that his political takes are insanely stupid much of the time, because I just don't think that he focuses on that sort of stuff.

00:56:33.000 And if you don't focus on it, he's not claiming to be an expert.

00:56:35.000 That's fine.

00:56:36.000 But if you're not claiming to be an expert, I'm not going to take your opinions on these matters particularly seriously.

00:56:41.000 And Theo Vaughn's a comedian.

00:56:43.000 That's fine.

00:56:43.000 It's also worth noting, Theo Vaughn is 45 years old.

00:56:46.000 Theo Vaughn is four years older than I am.

00:56:49.000 Theo Vaughn is like, in the olden days, Theo Vaughn would be closing in on the gold watch in retirement.

00:56:57.000 And he dresses like a skater who's 16 years old, wears his hat backwards, and acts as though he's a refugee.

00:57:06.000 From the Stoners Club in junior high.

00:57:09.000 It's a little weird.

00:57:11.000 Again, he's very funny.

00:57:14.000 And this is kind of the entire branding now.

00:57:16.000 There's a whole generation of people who are 40 and up who are acting as though they are 20 and under.

00:57:23.000 And at some point, it's got to become a bit of how do you do, fellow kids?

00:57:27.000 Now, to be fair, I've been 80 since I was like 15. I am a fuddy-duddy.

00:57:31.000 I am a grumpy old man.

00:57:34.000 I've always been a grumpy old man.

00:57:35.000 I was a grumpy old man when I was a teenager.

00:57:38.000 That said, there is something strange about a country that is rapidly aging in which, because we are rapidly aging and we don't have enough kids, we have decided that adults are going to be the new kids.

00:57:49.000 We're going to treat 40-year-olds as though they are 20 and 60-year-olds as though they are 30. It's a strange look.

00:57:56.000 It's very, very weird.

00:57:57.000 At a certain point, shouldn't you just become a responsible adult, you know, able to make responsible decisions?

00:58:04.000 Or are we just going to do this forever?

00:58:06.000 Is everybody just going to turn into Madonna, twerking her way to glory with two artificial hips at the age of 92?

00:58:13.000 That's just a question, I suppose.

00:58:15.000 Alrighty, folks, the show is continuing for members right now.

00:58:18.000 We're going to be jumping into the mailbag.

00:58:19.000 This is why you should become a member.

00:58:20.000 Your question might be next.

00:58:21.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:58:23.000 Use code Shapiro.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - May 28, 2025

The Trump 2026 VICTORY Plan

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