The Ben Shapiro Show - June 11, 2026


The Truth About the Downed US Apache Helicopter In Iran


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

199.76

Word count

1,698

Sentence count

137

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

12

sentences flagged

Hate speech

26

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A U.S. helicopter was shot down by an Iranian drone over the Strait of Hormuz, and two of its crew members managed to escape. Iran claims it was a false flag attack. Alex Jones says the shoot down may have been an act of war.

Transcript

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Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Folks, it's confusing what is happening in Iran.
00:00:02.000 Will a deal be made?
00:00:03.000 If so, when?
00:00:04.000 Is it better to have no deal than a bad deal?
00:00:07.000 What's going on with this ceasefire?
00:00:08.000 What is a proportional strike?
00:00:09.000 What the hell is going on?
00:00:11.000 Well, there may be more questions than answers at the moment. 0.98
00:00:13.000 One thing remains clear Iran is lying.
00:00:16.000 They've been lying for weeks at this point, and President Trump should know this, and maybe he does. 0.98
00:00:21.000 Yesterday, an Apache helicopter was shot down by the Iranians, according to the Wall Street Journal. 0.92
00:00:27.000 It was hit off the coast of Oman.
00:00:29.000 It was hit by an Iranian drone, apparently.
00:00:33.000 The downing of the helicopter actually set off a race to find two American crew members who had escaped the Apache, a small attack helicopter that doesn't have ejection seats.
00:00:41.000 The Apache crew spent two hours in the water.
00:00:45.000 And, I mean, unbelievable technology, incredible performance by our military.
00:00:48.000 They were rescued by a U.S. drone boat.
00:00:52.000 So, with U.S. MQ 9 Reaper drones and jet fighters providing cover overhead, the crew members were rescued by a remotely piloted drone boat, which is unbelievable.
00:00:59.000 The vessel is a 24 foot Ceronic Corsair that can travel more than 1,000 miles and carry 1,000 pounds.
00:01:05.000 And it transported the crew to safer waters.
00:01:06.000 They were lifted from the deck of the drone to a rescue helicopter.
00:01:10.000 So thank God they are fine.
00:01:13.000 The president put out a statement suggesting that the United States, quote unquote, had to respond.
00:01:19.000 Quote, I've just been informed by our great military that last night the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache helicopters while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz.
00:01:27.000 There are two pilots involved.
00:01:28.000 Both are safe and uninjured.
00:01:29.000 Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.
00:01:32.000 Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Trump.
00:01:35.000 Now, when I first read this statement, I have to say, I was unenthused.
00:01:38.000 I was unenthused because we must, by necessity, we have to respond.
00:01:41.000 Well, you know, it turns out that if you attack American material, it's not a matter of like, well, maybe we should do a proportionate response. 1.00
00:01:48.000 Maybe we should just hit a camel in the ass. 0.99
00:01:50.000 I mean, no one died after all. 1.00
00:01:52.000 The reality is the Iranians believe that they have the screws to President Trump. 0.99
00:01:55.000 This is what they believe. 0.63
00:01:57.000 And they believe that if they keep upping the ante, Trump will sign a bad deal.
00:02:00.000 They believe he'll either run away or that he will sign a bad deal.
00:02:03.000 Clearly, this is what they believe.
00:02:04.000 It's why they keep upping the ante, it is why they fired missiles at Israel a couple of days ago.
00:02:09.000 It is why last night they responded by firing missiles at American bases in Jordan, in Kuwait, and in Bahrain.
00:02:15.000 Mohammed Khalibaf, supposedly one of the moderates that we're dealing with in this negotiation, he is not a moderate.
00:02:19.000 He is an IRGC member.
00:02:22.000 He said, We prefer the language of diplomacy, but we speak other languages far more fluently.
00:02:26.000 Break your commitments and we'll switch to what we speak best.
00:02:28.000 You ride the horse you saddled.
00:02:33.000 Meanwhile, Ismail Bakaye, who is an Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, suggested it was a false flag.
00:02:40.000 Quote, the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place with remarkable speed.
00:02:43.000 They carried out a false flag operation by deploying a copied Lucas drone to strike Kuwait airport, manufacturing the perfect pretext to market their power developed anti drone air defense systems under the guise of protecting against Iranian attacks.
00:02:55.000 But by the way, what he's saying is a false flag there was a shoot down of Iranian material aimed at Kuwait.
00:03:01.000 This is where the horseshoe comes together.
00:03:04.000 Alex Jones says the shoot down also has to be investigated as a false flag.
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00:04:14.000 Hey, so here is the reality Iran will not keep any commitment that it supposedly makes. 0.79
00:04:19.000 A deal that is bad would be a deal that does not involve Full scale dismantlement of the Iranian nuclear facilities, a turnover of the nuclear dust, a dismantling of their ballistic missile capacity, and an end to their support for international terror. 0.84
00:04:33.000 If we're not going to do that, at the very least, we should turn over those goals to our allies. 0.83
00:04:38.000 We should work with them to open up the Strait of Hormuz so the oil flows once again.
00:04:42.000 And then we should let our allies have overwatch.
00:04:44.000 But signing a bad deal is significantly worse than no deal.
00:04:49.000 Now, CENTCOM announced a proportional response at 5 p.m.
00:04:52.000 Now, proportional is. 1.00
00:04:54.000 A great synonym in diplomacy for stupidity. 0.99
00:04:59.000 There's proportional typically has two meanings. 0.99
00:05:03.000 There's the legal meaning of proportional, which is designed to achieve the necessary outcome at minimum cost, right?
00:05:11.000 That's what proportional means.
00:05:13.000 However, when you're talking in this way, proportionate means they hit our Apache helicopter and we knocked out a couple of radar installations.
00:05:21.000 So, Sentinel Comet announced that strikes were completed by around 9 p.m. Eastern.
00:05:24.000 We hit a bunch of targets in Iran.
00:05:27.000 And they said the mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression.
00:05:30.000 Why are we doing?
00:05:32.000 Why are we doing a proportional response? 0.98
00:05:33.000 It seems to me that if there's unjustified Iranian aggression, we should do a very disproportionate response because that is the entire goal of war. 0.96
00:05:40.000 The goal of war, not on the legal level, but on a colloquial level, is to be disproportionate in response to people attempting to attack you. 0.99
00:05:49.000 In war, if they shoot one of your soldiers and you shoot one of their soldiers, that doesn't stop anything.
00:05:53.000 If they shoot one of your soldiers and you shoot a thousand of their soldiers, that stops the thing. 1.00
00:05:58.000 Proportionality in numerical terms is stupidity when it comes to war. 1.00
00:06:03.000 It makes no sense. 1.00
00:06:05.000 President Trump allegedly said to the Wall Street Journal that the blockade was making Iran very poor.
00:06:10.000 And then he downplayed the helicopter incident, saying it wasn't a big deal and stressing that the pilot is fine.
00:06:15.000 Well, it seems like kind of a big deal, honestly.
00:06:18.000 Like they're attacking Americans.
00:06:19.000 So that's kind of a big deal.
00:06:21.000 Meanwhile, JD Vance is pushing the timeline out.
00:06:24.000 The vice president has been at the center of these ill begotten negotiations for months at this point.
00:06:31.000 What exactly has Iran offered?
00:06:33.000 We have no idea.
00:06:33.000 We just have a bunch of different stories.
00:06:35.000 The Trump administration keeps retelling that they're offering up their nuclear program or they're offering serious concessions or half their oil.
00:06:41.000 And the Iranians keep saying consistently, we are offering nothing of the sword. 0.94
00:06:44.000 Because it turns out that when you keep showing the Iranians your neck by showing you desperately want an outcome, they prevent you from getting it. 0.99
00:06:53.000 JD Vance said, there could be an Iranian deal, you know, like this week or maybe months from now. 0.98
00:06:58.000 All right.
00:07:01.000 You say very close.
00:07:02.000 How soon could the deal happen before the midterm elections?
00:07:05.000 Oh, absolutely.
00:07:06.000 No, I think we're going to know a lot before the midterm elections.
00:07:09.000 Look, I think that the deal could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.
00:07:17.000 Oh, well, I mean, cool.
00:07:19.000 By that standard, I could be the owner of SpaceX a week from now or months from now, or maybe never.
00:07:23.000 Who knows?
00:07:25.000 Who knows?
00:07:27.000 And this approach is not likely to end in victory.
00:07:31.000 Perhaps the president is changing his approach.
00:07:33.000 As he ought, he posted on Truth Social this morning. 0.94
00:07:36.000 Iran's military is a complete and total mess. 0.93
00:07:38.000 Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn't even exist anymore.
00:07:41.000 They've been completely defeated. 1.00
00:07:42.000 Iran is all talk and no action. 0.98
00:07:43.000 The bully of the Middle East is dead. 0.89
00:07:44.000 They've taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them. 0.99
00:07:47.000 Now they will have to pay the price.
00:07:50.000 Well, I mean, one can only hope.
00:07:52.000 And there is action the United States can take here.
00:07:55.000 That action would involve heavy strikes again on their newly uncovered ballistic missile launchers, attacks on their energy facilities, Kharga Island and the South Pars gas field, totally defenestrating, destroying their economy for the foreseeable future so that they cannot recover. 0.54
00:08:11.000 And then that flips China, by the way, because at that point, Iranian oil is no longer on the table.
00:08:15.000 And actually, China has an interest in the Strait of Hormuz opening.
00:08:19.000 That would be the solution. 1.00
00:08:21.000 I hope the president takes.
00:08:23.000 The reality of this situation into account.
00:08:25.000 Iran is not on the verge, in any way, shape, or form, of making a good deal, it appears.