The Ben Shapiro Show - The Trump-Musk Show ROLLS ON

00:00:00.000 Folks, tons of news to get to today.

00:00:01.000 We're going to get to the Trump-Elon interview on Sean Hannity's show.

00:00:04.000 We're also going to be talking about negotiations over Ukraine, which are getting quite fraught.

00:00:09.000 And, of course, Hamas has now announced that the Bebas family is dead, which many people had suspected, but is going to be a sort of earth-shattering piece of news over in Israel.

00:00:17.000 But begin today with a fascinating realization by Derek Thompson over at The Atlantic, talking about the radical shift that has happened with young people in the United States as far as their voting patterns.

00:00:29.000 What he finds is that COVID and BLM basically shoved an entire generation of people to the right.

00:00:34.000 For decades, America's young voters have been deeply and famously progressive.

00:00:38.000 In 2008, a youth quake sent Barack Obama to the White House.

00:00:41.000 In 2016, voters ages 18 to 29 broke for Hillary Clinton by 18 points. 0.71

00:00:45.000 In 2020, they voted for Biden by 24 points.

00:00:48.000 But in 2024, Donald Trump closed most of the gap, losing voters under 30 by a 51 to 47 margin.

00:00:55.000 In one recent CBS poll, Americans under 30 weren't just evenly split between the parties.

00:01:00.000 They were even more pro-Trump than boomers over the age of 65. So what exactly is happening?

00:01:06.000 Well, Derek Thompson suggests that essentially this is a reaction to the government overreach during COVID, that the bizarre institutional failures during COVID, ranging from the suggestion that you got to riot in the streets if you had the proper political credentials and COVID wouldn't attack you, to the idea that kids had to be locked out of schools, shoved an entire generation of young people to the right.

00:01:27.000 And this, of course, is true.

00:01:29.000 But this does demonstrate, again, this is the warning, that people are incredibly variable and vacillating when it comes to their politics.

00:01:38.000 Exogenous events can shove entire generations of people one way or another.

00:01:41.000 And this has happened several times over the course of my lifetime.

00:01:44.000 I remember after 2001, a whole new security boom happened in which people, particularly suburban moms who had traditionally voted Democrat, suddenly were voting Republican.

00:01:53.000 And then COVID, apparently, shoved a bunch of young people.

00:01:56.000 To the right.

00:01:56.000 Wokeness shoved a bunch of young people to the right.

00:02:00.000 That is a good reminder to everyone in politics that while you think that the pendulum will never shift back over to the other side, it absolutely will.

00:02:07.000 And so two things ought to be taken from that.

00:02:09.000 One, you ought to be very careful in how you use your political power.

00:02:14.000 That doesn't mean you shouldn't move fast and break things.

00:02:16.000 It means that you should be very careful that you don't set into motion a tripwire that is going to blow you up.

00:02:23.000 And number two, it means that you actually do have to move with alacrity while I got to power because the left always does and the right rarely does.

00:02:29.000 This is one of the differences between MAGA and prior conservative Republican movements.

00:02:33.000 Prior Republican movements have taken that first bit of advice.

00:02:36.000 Move cautiously.

00:02:37.000 Don't break too many things.

00:02:39.000 But they've neglected that if you don't break enough things, there's sort of a perfect midpoint here, that if you don't actually move fast enough and break enough things, well then you don't get enough done.

00:02:48.000 And the left comes back in and when they get in power, they move fast and they break things.

00:02:52.000 Barack Obama was not shy about using his power in 2009-2010 in order to shove forward Obamacare and a vast expansion of the federal government.

00:03:00.000 President Trump is doing precisely the opposite.

00:03:02.000 So, yesterday, President Trump set about issuing a number of new executive orders.

00:03:07.000 Some of them are incredibly consequential.

00:03:10.000 One of them is just a reinstatement of his stated purpose, which is to create more governmental transparency.

00:03:17.000 He put about...

00:03:18.000 An executive order titled Radical Transparency About Wasteful Spending, quote, The United States government spends too much money on programs, contracts, and grants that do not promote the interests of the American people.

00:03:27.000 For too long, taxpayers have subsidized ideological projects overseas and domestic organizations engaged in actions that undermine the national interest.

00:03:33.000 The American people have seen their tax dollars used to fund the passion projects of unelected bureaucrats rather than to advance the national interest.

00:03:40.000 The American people have a right to see how the federal government has wasted their hard-earned wages.

00:03:44.000 President Trump therefore directed the heads of the executive departments to take all appropriate actions to make public, to the maximum extent permitted by law, the complete details of every terminated program, canceled contract, terminated grant, or any other discontinued obligation of federal funds.

00:03:58.000 Again, this is all part and parcel of the sort of doge approach to American government.

00:04:02.000 As part of that, President Trump also issued an executive order yesterday, quote, ensuring accountability for all agencies.

00:04:08.000 The goal here is to re-enshrine the unitary executive theory of the federal government.

00:04:14.000 If you go back to the Constitution, there is no unelected fourth branch of government that is sort of half run by Congress and half run by the executive.

00:04:20.000 If Congress delegates power to the executive, it is now the job of the executive to perform those powers, which means that if you have an executive branch agency, that executive branch agency is headed by the President of the United States.

00:04:32.000 This, of course, is the point of this particular executive order.

00:04:35.000 Quote, previous administrations have allowed so-called independent regulatory agencies to operate with minimum presidential supervision.

00:04:41.000 These regulatory agencies currently exercise substantial executive authority without sufficient accountability to the president and through him to the American people.

00:04:49.000 Moreover, these regulatory agencies have been permitted to promulgate significant regulations without review by the president.

00:04:54.000 Therefore, in order to improve the administration of the executive branch and to increase regulatory officials accountability to the American people, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch.

00:05:06.000 And again, this is a restatement of the constitutional principle that the president runs the executive branch.

00:05:13.000 And so all of the sort of pseudo-shock that you are seeing from Democrats on this particular point is because they had always assumed that an independent agency means it's run by Democrats.

00:05:22.000 They had always assumed that career bureaucrat means Democrat.

00:05:26.000 There was, in fact, a deep state.

00:05:28.000 It was permanent political appointees who were supposedly insulated from any Republican president who would take power.

00:05:33.000 And Trump is saying, nope, that's not the way this is going to work.

00:05:35.000 As part and parcel of that, President Trump announced on Truth Social last night, quote, And again, there's a lot of hue and cry over this, but this is not, in fact, a rarity.

00:05:55.000 Barack Obama, when he came into office, cleared out the justice system of a bunch of people who were appointed by George W. Bush.

00:06:01.000 The sort of changeover.

00:06:03.000 of career bureaucrats in these particular agencies, including the DOJ, is not a rarity.

00:06:07.000 It is a regular part of American government.

00:06:09.000 It's only Republicans who are chided about this.

00:06:12.000 Well, one of the driving forces behind the sort of radical transparency slash and burn approach that Trump has taken so far is, of course, Elon Musk.

00:06:20.000 Elon has really contributed a huge amount to the government so far, again, with zero pay.

00:06:26.000 And he has done so because he feels that it is necessary, presumably, to cut the regulatory burdens on the American people and on business.

00:06:33.000 To get rid of the wasteful spending, the waste fraud and abuse, and to reorient the American people toward the idea that they don't actually need the government to take care of all of their problems.

00:06:41.000 And President Trump, to his great credit as a human being, has allowed Elon to take sort of a front-leading role in doing all this.

00:06:48.000 Now, that is smart politics by President Trump, because it means that Elon is both going to get the credit and also mostly take the slings and arrows, which is what has happened so far.

00:06:57.000 Also, President Trump does not actually have to fear...

00:07:00.000 For any reason, that Elon Musk is a threat to him.

00:07:03.000 Because Elon, of course, can't run for president.

00:07:06.000 He wasn't born in the United States.

00:07:08.000 Elon's the most successful businessman of our age, which means he's actually not dependent on President Trump for anything.

00:07:13.000 Keeping Elon as part of the system is much better than having Elon outside the tent peeing in.

00:07:18.000 Well, President Trump says Elon Musk is smart, and of course, that is correct.

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00:09:31.000 So yesterday, President Trump and Elon Musk did a joint interview on Sean Hannity's show on Fox News.

00:09:35.000 And it's sort of fascinating, the dynamic between the two of them and some of the statements they're making.

00:09:39.000 So obviously Trump's admiration for Elon Musk is quite real.

00:09:42.000 Here is President Trump talking about Elon's hope to go to Mars.

00:09:47.000 He's going to go into orbit soon.

00:09:49.000 No, he's going to go to Mars.

00:09:51.000 Starlink, at some point, is in orbit.

00:09:53.000 They always ask me, like, do you want to die on Mars?

00:09:55.000 And I say, well, yes, but not on impact.

00:09:58.000 Starlink is in 100 countries.

00:10:00.000 This is going to be hard.

00:10:01.000 I feel like I'm interviewing two brothers here.

00:10:04.000 You go ahead.

00:10:06.000 Starshield, which could be used for national defense.

00:10:08.000 Yeah, it is already being used for national defense.

00:10:10.000 Okay, so again, you can see they have a pretty good dynamic between the two of them.

00:10:14.000 They're very friendly.

00:10:14.000 They get along.

00:10:15.000 President Trump says, I couldn't find anyone smarter than Elon to help me out here, which, again, makes sense since Elon is pretty smart.

00:10:23.000 You know, I wanted to find somebody smarter than him.

00:10:27.000 I searched all over.

00:10:28.000 I just couldn't do it.

00:10:30.000 I couldn't.

00:10:30.000 You really tried hard.

00:10:32.000 I couldn't find anyone smarter, right?

00:10:34.000 So we had it for the country.

00:10:37.000 But this is the thing.

00:10:38.000 We settled on this guy.

00:10:39.000 Well, thanks for having me.

00:10:41.000 I'm just trying to be useful here.

00:10:43.000 So again, the dynamic is pretty important here because President Trump likes to get along with the people that he works with.

00:10:49.000 And one of the things about Musk is that Musk isn't a Trump sycophant.

00:10:52.000 So one thing that President Trump actually does not like is people who are too sycophantic toward him.

00:10:57.000 And you can see this with a number of his former staffers.

00:10:59.000 There's sort of a fine line with President Trump between not offending President Trump, President Trump does not like to be insulted, for example, but also not just bending the knee to him at every possible turn.

00:11:10.000 He likes a little bit of independence.

00:11:12.000 That dynamic is good between Trump and Musk, despite all the attempts to divide them.

00:11:16.000 Here was Elon Musk talking about Trump derangement syndrome in one of the more colorful moments of the interview.

00:11:21.000 They call it like Trump derangement syndrome.

00:11:23.000 And I don't you know, you don't realize how real this is until like it's you can't reason with people.

00:11:29.000 So like I was at a friend's birthday party in LA, just a birthday dinner.

00:11:33.000 And it was like a nice, quiet dinner and everything was everyone was behaving normally.

00:11:36.000 And I have to mention this before the election, like a month or two before I have to mention the president's name.

00:11:41.000 And it was like they got shot with a dart in the jugular that contained like methamphetamine and rabies.

00:11:47.000 OK, and I'm like, what is wrong?

00:11:50.000 Guys, like you can't have like a normal conversation.

00:11:53.000 And it's like it's like they become completely irrational.

00:11:57.000 Now, hilariously, many members of the left took this particular clip and went nuts on it.

00:12:01.000 Why is Elon making weird hand motions again, guys?

00:12:04.000 Stop focusing on Elon's hand motions and start focusing on the fact.

00:12:07.000 That he's going into every government agency and finding hundreds of millions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse.

00:12:11.000 That seems a little more important than these sort of bizarre hand motions that he makes when he is talking about Trump derangement syndrome.

00:12:17.000 Musk and Trump did talk about the media's attempts to divide them one from the other.

00:12:22.000 Here they were.

00:12:23.000 They want you two to start hating each other and they try, oh, President Elon Musk, for example.

00:12:30.000 You do know that they're doing that to you.

00:12:32.000 Oh, I see it all the time.

00:12:33.000 They tried it, then they stopped.

00:12:35.000 They have many different things of hatred.

00:12:38.000 Actually, Elon called me.

00:12:41.000 He said, you know, they're trying to drive us apart.

00:12:43.000 I said, absolutely.

00:12:44.000 No, they said, we have breaking news.

00:12:46.000 Donald Trump has ceded control of the presidency to Elon Musk.

00:12:51.000 President Musk will be attending a cabinet meeting tonight at 8 o'clock.

00:12:55.000 And I say, it's just so obvious.

00:12:58.000 They're so bad at it.

00:12:59.000 I used to think they were good at it.

00:13:00.000 They're actually bad at it because if they were good at it, I'd never be president.

00:13:05.000 Elon himself obviously went out of his way to point out that he and Trump were friendly.

00:13:09.000 He was very praiseworthy of President Trump and Trump was praiseworthy of him.

00:13:12.000 This dynamic is the thing that the media are having a very difficult time with because historically speaking, the best way to divide Trump from his advisors is to basically suggest that they have ambitions on the presidency or on controlling Trump.

00:13:23.000 But Trump clearly does not feel controlled by Elon.

00:13:26.000 Trump feels like they're working in tandem together and that he is, in fact, Elon's superior, which is a pretty good feeling, right?

00:13:31.000 If you're the president of the United States and you're direct inferior, the person who reports to you, is the richest person on Earth who launches things into space and owns the most lucrative car company in existence, that seems like that's pretty flattering to President Trump, actually.

00:13:47.000 So here is Elon talking about Trump.

00:13:49.000 I think President Trump is a good man and he's, you know...

00:13:54.000 That's nice the way he said that, you know?

00:13:56.000 There's something nice about it.

00:13:57.000 It really is.

00:13:58.000 You know, because, I mean, the president's been so unfairly attacked in the media.

00:14:04.000 It's truly outrageous.

00:14:07.000 And at this point, I spent a lot of time with the president, and not once have I seen him do something that was mean or cruel or wrong.

00:14:18.000 Not once.

00:14:19.000 Okay, so again, is...

00:14:21.000 Elon laying it on, maybe a little thick there.

00:14:23.000 Sure, but you know what?

00:14:24.000 This working relationship is the most important working relationship in possibly modern political history.

00:14:29.000 So, you know, it probably merits that.

00:14:32.000 Here is Elon talking about Doge specifically.

00:14:34.000 And he says, look, the goal here is to carry out the president's will.

00:14:37.000 This is not an independent agency operating outside the purview of President Trump.

00:14:40.000 This is working for President Trump.

00:14:43.000 The president will make these executive orders, which are very sensible and good for the country.

00:14:48.000 But then they don't get implemented, you know?

00:14:50.000 So if you take, for example, all the funding for the migrant hotels, the president issued an executive order.

00:14:57.000 Hey, we need to stop taking taxpayer money and paying for luxury hotels for illegal immigrants. 1.00

00:15:03.000 Which makes no sense.

00:15:04.000 Obviously, people do not want their tax dollars going to fund high-end hotels for illegals. 1.00

00:15:11.000 And yet they were still doing that, even as late as last week.

00:15:15.000 And so, you know, we went in there and we're like, this is a violation of the presidential executive order.

00:15:21.000 It needs to stop.

00:15:22.000 So what we're doing here is one of the biggest functions of the Doge team is just making sure that the presidential executive orders are actually carried out. 0.98

00:15:32.000 Okay, so President Trump yesterday, he did another separate press conference in which he talked about some of the idiotic spending that he was targeting. 0.96

00:15:39.000 Here he was yesterday. 0.99

00:15:41.000 $20 million for fiscal federalism.

00:15:44.000 In Nepal.

00:15:46.000 Listen to these numbers.

00:15:47.000 This is all fraud.

00:15:49.000 $19 million for biodiversity conservation in Nepal.

00:15:55.000 $2 million to develop sustainable recycling models to increase socioeconomic cohesion among marginalized communities in Kosovo and Eskali and in Egypt.

00:16:09.000 We're talking about...

00:16:11.000 Hundreds of billions of dollars.

00:16:13.000 I could, by the way, I could read this all day long, I could go on all day long, and you'll see hundreds of billions of dollars, and we're doing it.

00:16:24.000 Okay, so, one of the things that Trump and Musk are now proposing is the possibility of what they call Doge rebate checks, which is all the money that they are saving, goes back to the taxpayer in the form of actual direct payments.

00:16:36.000 And something that Elon posted yesterday on X, that he would check with the president.

00:16:40.000 On the possibility of sending out Doge dividend checks.

00:16:43.000 This was suggested by the Azoria CEO and co-founder James Fishback, who said, we wanted to help make Doge real for millions of Americans.

00:16:50.000 They deserve a portion of the savings.

00:16:51.000 Doge will deliver under President Trump's leadership.

00:16:54.000 And again, smart politics.

00:16:56.000 Now, the opposing side, people who don't like these sorts of cuts, they are looking for any point of opposition.

00:17:02.000 They've tried, as we have seen over the past few weeks, to blame, for example, air crashes on cuts to the FAA or Doge going into the FAA. They've yet to actually make that connection.

00:17:10.000 See, here's the thing.

00:17:11.000 There are certain areas where Americans have direct interface with the federal government.

00:17:15.000 Those areas usually come in the form of direct payments, like Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid.

00:17:20.000 Those are the ways that people tend to interface with the federal government.

00:17:23.000 Otherwise, in your daily life, you're really not interfacing with the federal government.

00:17:26.000 If you're interfacing with the government, it's usually the local government, right?

00:17:29.000 You're interfacing with the cops or with...

00:17:30.000 Maybe the post office, but you don't really go to the post office all that often anymore.

00:17:35.000 So you just don't have that many sort of moments where you interface with the federal government and then are annoyed by a cut to the federal government.

00:17:42.000 Because the reality is the vast majority of stuff that the federal government does is done indirectly.

00:17:48.000 So, for example, if you're looking at the Department of Education, there are subsidizing loans that go through a whole series of machinations and then end up with the universities in the form of...

00:17:59.000 The sort of direct interface that you have on a daily basis with the feds is usually relatively limited.

00:18:07.000 So, given that fact, Democrats, if they're looking for kind of stories to focus in on, things they can say that are getting broken by the move fast and break things philosophy of the Trump administration, they have to focus in on parks and museums and that sort of thing.

00:18:22.000 Because, again, those are the only place where you might actually drive up and be told no.

00:18:27.000 By somebody who's a federal employee.

00:18:29.000 You just don't have that many opportunities in your normal life.

00:18:32.000 That is why there's been outsized focus over the course of the last 48 hours on the supposed shutdown of the national parks.

00:18:38.000 So according to the Associated Press, the Trump administration has fired about a thousand newly hired National Park Service employees who maintain and clean parks, educate visitors, and perform other functions as part of its broad-based effort to downsize government.

00:18:50.000 The firings, which weren't publicly announced, but were confirmed by Democratic senators and House members, come amid what has been a chaotic rollout of an aggressive program to eliminate thousands of federal jobs.

00:18:58.000 Adding to the confusion, the Park Service now says it is reinstating about 5,000 seasonal jobs that were initially rescinded last month as part of a spending freeze ordered by President Trump.

00:19:08.000 So, just to be clear, they are getting rid of 1,000 new employees who were just hired like a moment ago, but they are reinstating...

00:19:16.000 5,000 seasonal employees.

00:19:18.000 So you really should not have a staffing shortage at the national parks, just on the basis of those numbers.

00:19:24.000 Seasonal workers are routinely added during warm weather months to serve more than 325 million visitors who descend on the nation's 428 parks, historic sites, and other attractions every year.

00:19:34.000 Parks advocates say that permanent staff cuts will leave hundreds of national parks understaffed and facing tough decisions about operating hours, public safety, and resource protection.

00:19:42.000 Okay, now, the sort of idea...

00:19:45.000 That the national parks are somehow going to be unworkable if they have a couple fewer employees.

00:19:50.000 Like a thousand employees.

00:19:51.000 You're talking about, on average, by the way, they just said 428. 428 national parks and areas under the governance of this particular agency.

00:20:00.000 A thousand employees cut.

00:20:01.000 That's two.

00:20:02.000 Like two employees per national park.

00:20:05.000 If you're just going to average it out.

00:20:08.000 So, supposedly, this is going to mean that trash will pile up and restrooms won't be cleaned. 1.00

00:20:12.000 And maintenance problems will grow and guided tours will be cut back or canceled.

00:20:16.000 And they say public safety will be at risk.

00:20:18.000 Uh, no.

00:20:19.000 I'm sorry, no.

00:20:19.000 So first of all, they do this every time there's a government shutdown.

00:20:22.000 So there have been several government shutdowns over the course of the last decade.

00:20:24.000 And every single time, there is some dumbass story about how you can't visit the World War II Memorial because it's been shut down. 0.63

00:20:33.000 Barack Obama famously would do this.

00:20:34.000 Every time there was a government shutdown, he would put out a bunch of pylons around the World War II Memorial and say, you can't walk here because of the federal government shutdown.

00:20:42.000 I'd be like, well, why can't I walk there?

00:20:43.000 It's literally just statuary.

00:20:45.000 Why can't I just walk through this area where there are statues?

00:20:47.000 If I go visit the Vietnam War Memorial, which is a giant wall, why exactly do I need federal employees there?

00:20:53.000 Why can't I just walk over there?

00:20:55.000 What exactly is the problem?

00:20:57.000 And by the way, if you are a regular visitor to national parks, and I've gone to several national parks with my kids and with my wife, when you go to a national park, the interface that you have with the employees at the national park, unless you're taking a guided tour, is typically...

00:21:11.000 You paying for parking at the opening.

00:21:15.000 Producer Zach goes to the national parks.

00:21:17.000 He says, once every couple of months.

00:21:19.000 And so I'm now going to ask Producer Zach to tell me in my ear, how often do you interface with federal employees at the national parks?

00:21:26.000 Or is it mostly like you arrive and then you have to pay for parking?

00:21:29.000 And maybe, maybe they have like a gift shop.

00:21:32.000 And then you basically just go explore the park on your own.

00:21:34.000 Yeah, it's pretty much just the people who take my parking money.

00:21:36.000 It's the people who take the parking money.

00:21:37.000 It's the people who take the parking money.

00:21:38.000 So first of all, you can cut all those people by just having an automatic parking meter like every other parking lot in America, which has had an automatic parking meter since 1972. You don't actually need, I mean, like, I like those people, they're nice people, but you don't actually need those people standing there and telling you it's five bucks to enter the national park, to go to the Everglades or something.

00:21:56.000 So this idea that you're talking about like a wildly...

00:22:01.000 You have to shut down hundreds of acres because you don't have the dude who's taking the parking ticket at the front.

00:22:08.000 That's an absurdity. 0.96

00:22:09.000 That is ridiculous. 0.84

00:22:12.000 So what is this really? 0.99

00:22:14.000 It's a mockery.

00:22:16.000 It's just acting.

00:22:17.000 It's just performative.

00:22:18.000 It's, oh my god, we're going to shut down the one place you interface with the federal government in order to show you the cuts to the federal government can impact even you.

00:22:26.000 In reality.

00:22:27.000 Could we run the national parks unless then we are currently running the national parks?

00:22:30.000 I am sure that we could.

00:22:32.000 Is it possible that all those people will be hired back or some of them will be hired back?

00:22:36.000 I'm sure they will.

00:22:38.000 But again, this is the sort of thing that happens every time.

00:22:41.000 Every time there is any level of funding gap in the government, from a government shutdown to what Doge is doing, the left immediately claims millions will die.

00:22:50.000 They're like, okay, how?

00:22:51.000 Like, well, the FAA. Like, no, that's not going to do it.

00:22:54.000 Well, probably, probably.

00:22:55.000 You won't be able to go to a national park.

00:22:57.000 Well, why not?

00:22:58.000 Why can't I just go to that national?

00:22:59.000 Like, it's trees.

00:23:01.000 The trees have been there for literally billions of years at this point.

00:23:05.000 Why should I not be able to walk through the trees?

00:23:08.000 I don't even use a guide.

00:23:08.000 Like, why?

00:23:10.000 Well, but you can't.

00:23:11.000 You can't because there will be a fire probably.

00:23:14.000 Will there be a fire probably?

00:23:15.000 Will there be?

00:23:16.000 And if so, won't they just hire back the fire?

00:23:20.000 Like, aren't the firefighters the first people that are going to get hired back after these cuts?

00:23:24.000 The reason that you're seeing the outside hysteria is because it is performative hysteria.

00:23:28.000 Clearly performative hysteria.

00:23:30.000 Well, people are going hysterical over the national parks.

00:23:33.000 You know, they're worried about whether they can take their family to a national park.

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00:26:01.000 Again, the goal of the Trump administration is not to create bad headlines.

00:26:04.000 That means that when it comes to things like the firefighters, I guarantee you within two days, there'll be a rehiring of many of these firefighters.

00:26:11.000 Because President Trump doesn't want the bad headlines on that sort of stuff.

00:26:14.000 But the people who are like, oh my God, I can't visit Yellowstone anymore.

00:26:18.000 They're only shutting down Yellowstone in order to make you say that.

00:26:22.000 You want to talk about actual deep state and media intervention?

00:26:24.000 That's what this is.

00:26:25.000 I promise you they can open Yellowstone without the guy who's the ticket taker at the front.

00:26:29.000 I promise you it's fine.

00:26:32.000 Okay, and they're doing this with like everything.

00:26:34.000 They're doing this with the FAA. Preemptive panic over everything.

00:26:37.000 So, the Washington Post has a piece today, quote, A team from billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket company will help envision ways to overhaul the nation's aging air traffic control systems, beginning with a visit to the Federal Aviation Administration's Command Center on Monday, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

00:26:52.000 SpaceX rocket launches are regulated by the FAA. The agency has alleged the company violated safety rules in the past.

00:26:57.000 Oh, you see.

00:26:58.000 So now the bad guys are taking over to the FAA. You see, SpaceX is bad.

00:27:04.000 Probably this is regulatory capture. 0.93

00:27:06.000 Probably SpaceX is just going to randomly blow crap up on the tarmac, you know, because they can.

00:27:11.000 Does anyone truly believe that it is worse for SpaceX, one of the most technologically sophisticated companies on planet Earth, to have its employees taking a look at the FAA, which is using computers that are like Apple computers from 1997? 0.97

00:27:25.000 Ridiculous.

00:27:27.000 By the way, The FAA has not laid off massive numbers of workers. 0.75

00:27:31.000 It has laid off roughly 400 probationary employees.

00:27:34.000 That represents a small fraction of the agency's workforce of almost 47,000 frontline workers like air traffic controllers and radar technicians are spared.

00:27:43.000 So they're all preemptively freaking out about cuts to the FAA that don't actually exist.

00:27:49.000 This is why, again, what Trump and Musk are doing here is deeply, deeply important.

00:27:54.000 And it is extending, by the way, over to the contracting rules for federal contracting.

00:28:00.000 So one of the things that the Biden administration did is they said, if you wish to have a company that gets a grant from the federal government or does business with the federal government, you have to abide by DEI.

00:28:08.000 The White House is now killing that.

00:28:09.000 According to The Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is directing federal agencies to no longer consider a company's diversity, equity and inclusion practices when deciding whether to procure its goods or services.

00:28:19.000 According to an announcement from the General Services Administration, that new policy reverses a Biden administration initiative that asked the government to weigh a company's internal DEI practices as one of many factors when considering whether to purchase that company's products or services.

00:28:31.000 The GSA is also ending federal efforts to get rid of plastic straws in favor of the worst thing ever invented, paper straws which do not work, turn into pulp and make your drink taste like trash.

00:28:41.000 And all of this is going to be popular stuff.

00:28:45.000 So, the Trump administration thus far is finding that balance between Being careful enough not to, for example, mass fire all the FAA employees.

00:28:53.000 And also, moving fast enough to actually break many of the things that need to be broken.

00:28:58.000 Now, the other big story of the day from the Trump administration is the ongoing negotiations over the end of the Ukraine war.

00:29:05.000 And there are some slightly different messages that are emerging from Trump world over these negotiations.

00:29:12.000 On the one hand, you have people like, for example, the special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, who's now arrived in Kiev.

00:29:19.000 Who says, quote, we understand the need for security guarantees.

00:29:21.000 We're very clear about the importance of the sovereignty of this nation and the defense of this nation as well.

00:29:26.000 Which, of course, is a very pro-Ukraine message.

00:29:28.000 And then there's some of the messaging that's being put out by President Trump himself.

00:29:33.000 So according to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. and Russia agreed to appoint teams to negotiate a settlement of the war in Ukraine.

00:29:40.000 Mike Walls, the National Security Advisor, he says, we are now talking to the Russians.

00:29:44.000 We are also talking to the Ukrainians.

00:29:45.000 Here he was yesterday.

00:29:47.000 It's common sense.

00:29:48.000 If you're going to bring both sides together, you have to talk to both sides.

00:29:52.000 And we'll continue to remind everyone, literally, within minutes of President Trump hanging up with President Putin, he called and spoke with President Zelensky.

00:30:05.000 So shuttle diplomacy has happened throughout history.

00:30:08.000 It's happened all over the world.

00:30:09.000 We are absolutely talking to both sides.

00:30:12.000 The Secretary of State just met with...

00:30:14.000 President Zelensky, days ago, along with the vice president, seven cabinet members in Europe at the same time, really showing the importance of engaging our allies.

00:30:25.000 Mike Walls added that the goal here is to just get to the end of this war, like continued death and destruction.

00:30:30.000 That's not in the interest of the United States or anybody else.

00:30:33.000 The president has stated his desire, his determination to end this war, to end the killing that is going on.

00:30:42.000 The death and destruction that is happening as this war, you know, goes on and on month after month after month in the killing fields of eastern and southern Ukraine is unacceptable.

00:30:55.000 It is not in the interest of either country.

00:30:58.000 It's not in the interest of the world and certainly not in the interest of the United States and Europe.

00:31:02.000 That, of course, is true. 0.83

00:31:04.000 Secretary of State Marco Rubio is there as well.

00:31:05.000 So was the Special Envoy Steve Whitcoff.

00:31:07.000 Here was Rubio explaining.

00:31:09.000 That, you know, the Europeans are complaining about not being part of the negotiations.

00:31:12.000 Guys, you could have involved yourselves at any point over the last four years.

00:31:16.000 For three and a half years while this conflict has raged, or three years while it's raged, no one else has been able to bring something together like what we saw today because Donald Trump is the only leader in the world that can.

00:31:27.000 So no one is being sidelined here.

00:31:28.000 But President Trump is in a position that he campaigned on to initiate a process that could bring about an end to this conflict.

00:31:35.000 And from that could emerge some very positive things for the United States, for Europe, for Ukraine, for the world.

00:31:40.000 But first it begins by the end of this conflict.

00:31:42.000 And so the only thing President Trump's trying to do is bring about peace.

00:31:45.000 It's what he campaigned on.

00:31:46.000 It's something the world should be thanking President Trump for doing.

00:31:49.000 As we discussed yesterday on the show, one of the goals of the Trump administration in this negotiation is to get the Europeans to actually involve themselves in the process.

00:31:56.000 He wants the Europeans in. 1.00

00:31:57.000 He wants the Europeans to pay more.

00:31:59.000 He wants the Europeans to take care of peacekeeping.

00:32:01.000 In fact, President Trump did a presser yesterday and he said this.

00:32:03.000 He said, listen.

00:32:04.000 You want European peacekeepers there?

00:32:05.000 Sounds great.

00:32:06.000 You know, pony up.

00:32:07.000 In other words, you want to be part of this negotiation.

00:32:09.000 Anytime you want to put some skin in the game, guys, we're willing to hear it.

00:32:13.000 Do you support stationing European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine as part of this peace deal?

00:32:19.000 If they want to do that, that's great.

00:32:20.000 I'm all for it.

00:32:21.000 If they want to do that, I think that'd be fine.

00:32:25.000 I mean, I know France has mentioned it.

00:32:27.000 Others have mentioned it.

00:32:29.000 UK has mentioned it, but yeah, well, if we have a peace deal, I think having troops over there from the standpoint of Europe, we won't have to put any over there because, you know, we're very far away.

00:32:41.000 But having troops over there would be fine.

00:32:44.000 I would not object to it at all.

00:32:46.000 So again, all this is part and parcel of a solid negotiation.

00:32:49.000 And then there is the sort of public-facing side of the negotiation.

00:32:53.000 And here is where things get a little bit complicated.

00:32:56.000 So yesterday, President Trump...

00:32:57.000 In this particular press conference went extraordinarily hard on Ukraine, much less hard on Russia.

00:33:03.000 Now, you can make the case that pragmatically what he is attempting to do is sort of wheedle Vladimir Putin into coming to the table.

00:33:09.000 That basically what he's saying to Vladimir Putin is, listen, I'm not taking an antagonistic position toward you.

00:33:15.000 I share some of your concerns.

00:33:17.000 Let's just get to the end of this thing.

00:33:19.000 That is a positive read.

00:33:20.000 The negative read is that President Trump is getting some of this stuff wrong.

00:33:24.000 That includes some of the demands that he is now making on Ukraine, which are harsher than the demands that he is currently making on Russia.

00:33:30.000 Now again, from a pragmatic point of view, perhaps the idea here is that it's harder to bring Russia to the table than it is to bring Ukraine to the table after all.

00:33:36.000 The United States has the ability to cudgel Ukraine. 0.96

00:33:40.000 The United States is giving billions and hundreds of billions of dollars in aid.

00:33:43.000 The United States has power over enormous swaths of the European continent.

00:33:46.000 And it's hard to get Russia to come to the table, and so you have to make more concerns.

00:33:50.000 Maybe that's the pragmatic concern here.

00:33:52.000 However, negotiating from a position of weakness with regard to Putin is likely to result in a worse deal in the end, unless you think that basically the terms of the deal are already set and we're all just dancing to the tune until the clock runs out, essentially, at which point everybody knows what happens.

00:34:06.000 There are security guarantees to Ukraine, including money flying to Ukraine, European peacekeepers in the region, Russia keeping Donbass in Crimea.

00:34:13.000 And so here's President Trump saying some stuff about Ukraine.

00:34:16.000 Again, I have some moral objections to the stuff that he is saying.

00:34:19.000 About Ukraine here, because I don't think that it is true.

00:34:22.000 So, for example, at one point during this press conference, he made the signally false statement that Ukraine started the war.

00:34:27.000 This is not true.

00:34:28.000 Ukraine absolutely did not start the war.

00:34:30.000 You can argue with Ukrainian policy toward both Europe and Russia over the period 2013 to 2022. But Russia invaded a sovereign country and tried to take Kiev and has killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people.

00:34:48.000 Here's President Trump suggesting sort of the opposite, that somehow Ukraine is the problem here.

00:34:54.000 Today I heard, oh, we weren't invited.

00:34:56.000 Well, you've been there for three years.

00:34:57.000 You should have ended it three years.

00:34:59.000 You should have never started it.

00:35:00.000 You could have made a deal.

00:35:01.000 I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed and no city would have been demolished and not one dome would have been knocked down. 0.92

00:35:14.000 But they chose not to do it that way.

00:35:17.000 And President Biden, in all fairness, he doesn't have a clue.

00:35:20.000 So, President Trump there saying Ukraine never should have started it.

00:35:23.000 Ukraine did not, in fact, start it.

00:35:25.000 You can blame them for not coming to the table sooner.

00:35:27.000 You can say that a deal should have been taken sooner.

00:35:28.000 I've said that myself.

00:35:30.000 But Ukraine absolutely did not start the war, and Russia should have stopped this war at any point.

00:35:34.000 President Trump then continued by suggesting that he wants elections in Ukraine.

00:35:37.000 This has been in demand of the Russians, mainly because the Russians wish to intervene.

00:35:41.000 It turns out it's very difficult to hold an election in wartime conditions where literally hundreds of thousands of fighting-age men are still on the front lines in Ukraine.

00:35:50.000 That is a situation rife for election manipulation by the Russians, who, of course, are bordering on Ukraine and have many agents inside Ukraine as well.

00:36:00.000 It is also noteworthy here that if you're going to call for new elections, perhaps Russia at some point should hold, you know, an actual decent election in which Vladimir Putin does not win 98% of the vote while throwing his opponents off third-story buildings.

00:36:10.000 Here's President Trump.

00:36:12.000 We're hearing that Russia wants to force Ukraine to hold new elections in order to sign any kind of a peace deal.

00:36:18.000 Is that something that the U.S. would ever support?

00:36:22.000 Well, we have a situation where we haven't had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he's down at 4% approval rating.

00:36:38.000 And where a country has been blown to smithereens, when they want a seat at the table, you could say the people have to, wouldn't the people of Ukraine have to say, like, you know, it's been a long time since we've had an election.

00:36:49.000 That's not a Russia thing.

00:36:51.000 That's something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.

00:36:55.000 Okay, it is not coming from any other countries.

00:36:57.000 I mean, the reality is, by the way, that Vladimir Zelensky's approval rating, and again, I think Zelensky has botched many things here, including his relationship with President Trump.

00:37:06.000 But his approval rating is at 52%.

00:37:07.000 It is not, in fact, at 4%.

00:37:09.000 The election was due in May of 2024. They are currently under martial law.

00:37:13.000 Again, it is very difficult to hold an election in the middle of a gigantic existential war with your much larger neighbor.

00:37:20.000 And if he's talking about how the people should really sound off on whether or not they like the war, you kind of have to have that on both sides.

00:37:27.000 There needs to be an election in Russia as well.

00:37:29.000 But Trump, I think that some of this is just personal peek at Zelensky.

00:37:32.000 I think that President Trump...

00:37:34.000 Does not like Zelensky's approach to him.

00:37:35.000 He doesn't like Zelensky's approach to Joe Biden.

00:37:37.000 And so he's sounding off about that.

00:37:39.000 And again, I don't disagree with him on how Zelensky has approached both Biden and President Trump.

00:37:44.000 But when he is ripping on Zelensky in the middle of the negotiation, that obviously is going to strengthen whatever hand Vladimir Putin thinks he has to play here.

00:37:51.000 Here's Trump saying that Zelensky is not getting the job done.

00:37:55.000 How would you counter the perception, because Russia's pushing for this obviously, they don't really hold true elections, that that would be a capitulation of some sort?

00:38:03.000 How would you guard against potentially Russia installing a puppet government?

00:38:07.000 And then finally, how would that new election have an impact on getting Zelensky to sign the rare earth minerals deal?

00:38:14.000 Look, you have leadership, and I like him personally.

00:38:18.000 He's fine.

00:38:20.000 No, he doesn't.

00:38:21.000 I don't care about personally.

00:38:22.000 I care about getting the job done.

00:38:24.000 You have leadership now that's allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened, even without the United States.

00:38:30.000 Again, this sort of reversal of blame here, that they've allowed a war that never should have happened.

00:38:36.000 Again, why exactly is he doing this?

00:38:40.000 Now again, there are a couple of different reads here.

00:38:42.000 One is the personal peak read.

00:38:44.000 He doesn't like Vladimir Zelensky.

00:38:45.000 He's going to say whatever he wants about Vladimir Zelensky.

00:38:47.000 It makes no difference to the final status of negotiations.

00:38:49.000 Because in the end, the United States' realist position in the world is that Russia should not take over Ukraine, and we should pay for as little of that as possible.

00:38:58.000 There's the sort of personality clash possibility.

00:39:02.000 Then, there's the strategic possibility that maybe there's actually something going on here in which Trump is basically dumping Zelensky under the bus here in order to achieve some sort of deal with the Russians.

00:39:11.000 And then Zelensky can go back to his people and say, listen, I got undercut by the president who's openly attacking me in the middle of this.

00:39:16.000 Now, that wouldn't be unprecedented either.

00:39:18.000 And the fact is that we've actually seen something like that with regard to Joe Biden and Bibi Netanyahu in Israel.

00:39:24.000 Joe Biden, in the middle of an existential war that Israel is fighting with its enemies, deployed all of his Democrats to basically call for a new election in Israel in which Netanyahu would be ousted.

00:39:33.000 And Netanyahu used that as the basis for increasing his own popularity in Israel.

00:39:37.000 So it's possible something like that could be going on, whether that is conscious or unconscious, between Trump and Zelensky.

00:39:43.000 And then, finally, there's the possibility, which is that...

00:39:47.000 Everybody's just kind of saying things, and in the end, none of it's really going to matter very much. 0.94

00:39:51.000 Whatever the reality, Vladimir Putin is, in fact, a cruel dictator. 0.97

00:39:57.000 He's a vicious dictator who kills his political opponents domestically and internationally. 0.96

00:40:01.000 He is, in fact, an expansionist. 0.95

00:40:03.000 He's always been a territorial expansionist.

00:40:05.000 Whether you're talking about Georgia, whether you're talking about Ukraine, whether you're talking about Crimea, he likes territorial expansion because the history of Russia is a history of a territorially expansionist power.

00:40:18.000 For President Trump to put the blame on Ukraine, again, I am not in favor of that.

00:40:22.000 I don't think that that's a good thing.

00:40:24.000 Is that going to sink negotiations?

00:40:25.000 Is that going to have any real effect?

00:40:26.000 I think the real effect of that is going to be to scare the hell.

00:40:29.000 It might actually have one more counterintuitive impact, which would be salutary, which is that it might force the Europeans to actually step up.

00:40:36.000 If they don't like all the stuff that Trump is saying, any time in here, they can step up and say, listen, we're going to take the lead here.

00:40:42.000 We're going to pay the money.

00:40:43.000 We're going to provide the peacekeeping forces.

00:40:45.000 You don't want to lead the way on this peace deal?

00:40:47.000 Fine, don't lead the way on this peace deal.

00:40:49.000 We'll do it.

00:40:49.000 Maybe the Europeans will finally do the thing they should have done all along in this war.

00:40:54.000 And again, the Europeans have been dilly-dallying around all this stuff for quite a long time. 0.99

00:41:00.000 Wild incompetence from Europe. 0.98

00:41:02.000 According to Axios, Europe has experienced subpar economic growth for a generation and has under-invested in its own defense.

00:41:07.000 Both problems are coming to a head with the Trump administration's hostility as the catalyst.

00:41:11.000 European elites.

00:41:12.000 Are increasingly acknowledging a lack of competitive fire in both the economic and national security arenas, which has resulted in over-dependence on both U.S. companies to drive innovation and the U.S. government to defend Europe from Russia.

00:41:24.000 So, if President Trump's language about Zelensky causes Europe to step into the gap, that is actually a very good thing for Europe, for Ukraine, and for the United States as well.

00:41:35.000 All right, in just a moment, we'll get to the latest on the illegal immigration front.

00:41:39.000 Plus, Hamas announces that they killed...

00:41:41.000 A couple of babies, which is, of course, not a shock at all.

00:41:44.000 If you were with us for election night or the inauguration, you already know the Daily Wire doesn't just show up.

00:41:49.000 We take over.

00:41:49.000 Now we are headed back to D.C. to do that at CPAC. Join me, along with Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boring, all on stage live tomorrow night, February 20th.

00:41:58.000 Check it out.

00:41:59.000 Check it out.

00:42:28.000 streaming live on Daily Wire Plus.

00:42:31.000 And we are taking your questions.

00:42:32.000 Don't just watch CPAC. Be part of it.

00:42:34.000 Live tomorrow night, February 20th on Daily Wire Plus.

00:42:37.000 Meanwhile, President Trump is moving forward with alacrity with regard to illegal immigration.

00:42:40.000 And one of the things that has happened is that the signals sent by this administration are very consistent and very strong.

00:42:46.000 Do not come here illegally.

00:42:47.000 You will not get in.

00:42:48.000 Illegal border crossings have plummeted even further in the first weeks of the Trump administration, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:42:53.000 The Border Patrol made roughly 29,000 arrests in January, according to newly released government data that is down from 47,000 in December.

00:43:00.000 Those arrest numbers continue to drop precipitously because no one is showing up at the southern border.

00:43:06.000 President Trump calls it the Trump effect, and of course that is exactly right.

00:43:10.000 The kind of notion that this is all a coincidence is clearly wrong.

00:43:14.000 Meanwhile, Democrats are freaking out because it turns out that actually it's pretty popular for illegal immigrants not to mass immigrate to America.

00:43:22.000 According to Politico, the close relationship between congressional Democrats and immigration advocacy groups has grown strained since last year's election as lawmakers shift rightward on border issues.

00:43:30.000 Now those groups are asserting themselves as Republicans prepare to pursue a crackdown on so-called sanctuary cities.

00:43:35.000 Failing to rally together in opposition to planned GOP legislation, they say, would risk a more profound break between the Democratic Party and its progressive base.

00:43:42.000 So it's fun to watch Democrats.

00:43:43.000 They're now caught between a rock and a hard place, the rock of reality in which Americans really do not like illegal immigration, and the hard place of all of these interest advocacy groups that they have been feeding for literally decades, who now are angry at them.

00:43:57.000 Again, this administration continues to be incredibly aggressive about its approach to all of these issues.

00:44:03.000 Meanwhile, in other international news, horrifying news, Hamas has now announced, as was suspected, That it would release dead bodies, four dead bodies, in exchange for these four dead bodies.

00:44:19.000 Israel is going to release all Palestinian women and minors under the age of 19 who were detained in Gaza after October 8th and who quote-unquote weren't involved in the fighting.

00:44:28.000 But again, those are detentions.

00:44:30.000 When they say under 19, you're talking about 16, 17, 18-year-old people and recognize that in the Gaza Strip for Hamas, those are like military-age recruits.

00:44:39.000 Many women are also... 1.00

00:44:40.000 Involved militarily with Hamas.

00:44:43.000 The bodies that are being released include the bodies of Shiri Bibas, who's 33, and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, who were four years old and nine months old when they were kidnapped, not by Hamas.

00:44:57.000 Okay, this is important.

00:44:58.000 They were not kidnapped by Hamas.

00:44:59.000 They were kidnapped by Palestinian civilians who joined in on the murder spree of October 7th. 0.95

00:45:04.000 The reason this is important is because the great lie that there is a vast gap between the civilian population.

00:45:09.000 In the Gaza Strip and Hamas, that has always been a lie. 0.98

00:45:12.000 It remains a lie.

00:45:13.000 That does not mean that Israel and any other military power shouldn't attempt to distinguish between members of Hamas and civilians.

00:45:19.000 Israel has expended hundreds of its own soldiers in efforts to do precisely that, which is why it's achieved such a signally successful kill ratio in terms of terrorists killed to civilians killed in battle.

00:45:32.000 With that said, the civilians in the Gaza Strip supported Hamas.

00:45:36.000 They supported the agenda of Hamas for a year, for a year. 0.84

00:45:39.000 The bodies of a mother, a toddler, and a baby were held as hostages in the Gaza Strip, and not one Palestinian turned over information to the Israelis.

00:45:49.000 While these people were alive, they were taken alive into Gaza.

00:45:52.000 They're coming out dead.

00:45:52.000 While they were alive, there was no attempt by any Palestinian to achieve their liberty.

00:45:57.000 There was no attempt to shield them from the predations.

00:46:00.000 In fact, they were held by civilians, as we know.

00:46:02.000 Many of the hostages were, in fact, held in civilian homes.

00:46:05.000 Just so you remember who these people are, here is a video of the kidnapping of Shiri Bibas and her toddlers.

00:46:12.000 This is what Hamas is. 0.97

00:46:14.000 This is who the people who celebrate Hamas and have sided with Hamas are. 1.00

00:46:18.000 Human trash. 0.99

00:46:20.000 The people who do this kind of stuff and who support this kind of stuff. 0.99

00:46:23.000 Here's the imagery from October 7th.

00:46:29.000 There's a mother, a terrified mother, who is now dead, who's been murdered, carrying a toddler and a baby.

00:46:36.000 She's being kidnapped by, again.

00:46:39.000 These are people in civilian garb.

00:46:41.000 These are not people in Hamas terrorist garb.

00:46:48.000 Those children are dead.

00:46:50.000 The mother is dead.

00:46:52.000 Anybody who suggested Israel's war in Gaza is not, in fact, justified?

00:46:57.000 Is morally blind at best and complicit in evil, much more likely.

00:47:03.000 Now, there are still hostages who are being released, live hostages.

00:47:07.000 Some six hostages are supposed to be released on Saturday.

00:47:11.000 That includes Ethiopian-born Israeli, Avera Mengistu, and Bedouin Israeli, Hisham al-Sayed.

00:47:17.000 Okay, that's an Arab and an Ethiopian.

00:47:20.000 So for all of those who claim that Israel is sort of homogenous, that, of course, is not true.

00:47:24.000 Hamas is famous for staging these celebratory releases of hostages and hostage bodies.

00:47:32.000 Just horrifying, horrifying stuff.

00:47:34.000 And by the way, there's still an American being held hostage.

00:47:36.000 The last American being held hostage is a young man, 20 years old, named Adon Alexander.

00:47:40.000 I know his family.

00:47:42.000 His family lives in Tenafly, New Jersey.

00:47:44.000 I introduced them to President Trump on the anniversary of October 7th.

00:47:48.000 And they're still waiting for their son to come home.

00:47:52.000 Hamas is evil. 0.94

00:47:53.000 Hamas needs to be extirpated. 0.80

00:47:54.000 That is something that President Trump full well understands.

00:47:57.000 And President Trump also understands that the great lie that there will ever be a two-state solution involving the sorts of people who kidnap babies and celebrate their kidnapping and cheer in the streets as the body of Shani Luke, the broken, murdered body of Shani Luke, is paraded through the streets of Gaza City.

00:48:14.000 That that is not going to be a peaceful two-state solution in any way, shape, or form.

00:48:18.000 Because one side is interested in peace and the other side is interested in murdering every Jew they can find and extirpating the state of Israel utterly. 0.94

00:48:24.000 Meanwhile, some clouds on the horizon with regard to the economy.

00:48:29.000 So inflation continues to hover around 3%.

00:48:32.000 There are significant worries that it might go the wrong way.

00:48:34.000 President Trump did, in fact, address this a little bit yesterday.

00:48:36.000 He was talking about inflation during his interview with Elon Musk.

00:48:41.000 And he suggested...

00:48:43.000 That inflation is, in fact, back.

00:48:46.000 But he also suggested that it would militate and that he had nothing to do with that inflation.

00:48:51.000 Now, that's true.

00:48:52.000 He suggested during this interview that we inherited the inflation.

00:48:59.000 Inflation is back.

00:48:59.000 I'm only here for two and a half weeks.

00:49:00.000 Inflation is back.

00:49:02.000 They said, oh, Trump, I had nothing to do with it.

00:49:03.000 These people have run the country.

00:49:04.000 They spent money like nobody's ever spent.

00:49:06.000 That is true.

00:49:07.000 That is 100% true.

00:49:09.000 Moving forward, it's going to be on his permanent record.

00:49:11.000 So obviously, inflation is going to be an issue.

00:49:13.000 There are a couple of ways of bringing down inflation.

00:49:16.000 One way is through productivity growth.

00:49:17.000 When you have brand new products and services and more competition, the prices are going to come down.

00:49:21.000 That is something that President Trump is trying to do by having more companies founded in the United States, deregulating.

00:49:28.000 Tariffs are probably not going to help that purpose.

00:49:30.000 Tariffs at the best are going to be neutral in terms of pricing.

00:49:34.000 They're certainly not going to lower prices.

00:49:36.000 So when President Trump says that tariffs are somehow going to lead to an economic boon that somehow lowers inflation, he's playing a little bit with fire here, economically speaking, just in terms of the basic doctrine.

00:49:47.000 Here's President Trump saying companies want to return to the United States specifically because of tariffs.

00:49:52.000 I've been contacted by some of the biggest companies in the world.

00:49:56.000 And because of what we're doing economically and through tariffs and taxes and incentives, they want to come back into the United States. 0.91

00:50:04.000 And we'll be announcing various, very large companies, the biggest actually, and they'll be coming back having to do with chips and having to do also with cars and lots of other things.

00:50:15.000 We're going to be announcing some very, very big, very big, momentous, I think, momentous decisions are being made by companies all around the world, the biggest, and they want to come back into the U.S. And by the way, it is true that as we become a more...

00:50:31.000 Deregulatory environment with lower taxes.

00:50:33.000 Businesses will want to come back here.

00:50:34.000 But if the idea is that we reassure business because of tariffs, that also means that there is limited supply.

00:50:40.000 Limited supply with retained demand tends to increase prices over time.

00:50:45.000 So when President Trump is pledging more reciprocal tariffs, again, if he's doing this as a tactic, I've said this all along, tariffs as a tactic to get other countries to lower their tariffs, not a bad idea.

00:50:53.000 Tariffs is sort of a panacea that that is not a great idea.

00:50:56.000 Here's President Trump on tariffs.

00:50:58.000 What can the EU do to sort of avoid the reciprocal tariffs that you've talked about?

00:51:05.000 And you've talked a lot about the VAT. Do you expect them to reduce that?

00:51:11.000 Well, they did already, as I understand it, reduce their car tariff all the way down to what we have.

00:51:16.000 And a lot of that will take place, and I think some won't do it, and some will do it.

00:51:20.000 But the EU had a 10% tax on cars, and now they have a 2.5% tax, which is the exact same as us.

00:51:26.000 So already we've saved a tremendous amount.

00:51:28.000 That would be great.

00:51:29.000 If everybody would do that, then we'd all be on the same playing field.

00:51:32.000 Because essentially what we're doing with the tariffs is, you know, they charge us, we charge them, same amount.

00:51:40.000 It's called reciprocal, actually.

00:51:42.000 And whatever they charge us, we're charging them.

00:51:45.000 Again, not a bad idea to get them to lower their tariffs.

00:51:48.000 If the idea is that somehow makes us stronger, economically speaking, that tends not to be true, which is why many Republicans are trying to curb Trump of some of the tariff talk.

00:51:55.000 According to The Wall Street Journal, U.S. Trade Representative nominee Jamison Greer still doesn't have a slot for confirmation before the full Senate.

00:52:02.000 commerce secretary nominee howard lutnik was confirmed last night but in their absence a singular figure has risen as leader of the traded agenda you'll remember him from trump number one that'd be peter navarro the president's special counselor on trade and manufacturing known for his pugnacious personality and maximalist approach to tariffs now again i think that the influence of navarro is in fact going to be sort of washed out in terms of the rest of the

00:52:25.000 The rest of Trump's cabinet understands that meritless tariffs only increase prices in the United States and make things significantly less...

00:52:36.000 Affordable and efficient.

00:52:38.000 However, we'll have to make sure that we keep an eye on that because the last thing we want is some sort of economic downturn under President Trump. 1.00

00:52:44.000 Joy Behar, who is entirely an idiot, she is making a case about inflation, and right now it's a stupid case. 0.99

00:52:51.000 But if the inflation remains this way for another year, then it's going to be hung around Trump's neck whether he likes it or not. 1.00

00:52:58.000 There's incompetence and chaos going on, and we should not put up with it.

00:53:02.000 And by the way, egg prices are supposed to come down, not airplanes. 0.96

00:53:06.000 Okay, now again, that's a stupid take because the airplanes are not coming down because of President Trump, and the egg prices are up because of Joe Biden. 0.91

00:53:13.000 But inflation is an all-purpose acid that eats through everything. 0.99

00:53:18.000 Everything.

00:53:19.000 It is the single biggest factor in Joe Biden losing his re-elect.

00:53:22.000 So that does need to come down and come down quickly.

00:53:24.000 All right, coming up, we'll get to Democratic responses.

00:53:27.000 Their desperation is setting in at pretty much every level.

00:53:30.000 First, you need to head on over to Daily Wire Plus and subscribe.

00:53:34.000 And we've got so much great stuff over there.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - February 19, 2025

The Trump-Musk Show ROLLS ON

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