The Ben Shapiro Show - TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

00:00:00.000 Folks, there is a ton going on in the news.

00:00:02.000 A brand new initiation of a brand new trade war.

00:00:06.000 Everything going on with Doge.

00:00:08.000 Just tons going on.

00:00:09.000 First, America is on the comeback.

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00:00:41.000 Alrighty, so Republicans have some warning signs.

00:00:44.000 One of the things...

00:00:45.000 That I'm always warning folks against in politics is the belief that anything that happens is eternal, that the change is eternal, that there will never be another loss in the future.

00:00:54.000 I'm old enough to remember in 2004, after George W. Bush won re-election and secured the Congress of the United States, that there are Republicans who thought that Republicans would never lose again.

00:01:03.000 This was the initiation of a brand new era.

00:01:06.000 And then, of course, by 2006, Democrats had taken the Congress, and by 2008, they had taken the presidency.

00:01:11.000 I'm also old enough to remember when the Democrats proclaimed in the aftermath of Barack Obama's 2012 victory that they would never lose again.

00:01:17.000 They had a brand new coalition, an undefeatable coalition, that would just continue to grow and Republicans would be in the minority for literally ever.

00:01:26.000 And within four years, Republicans had taken the presidency with Donald Trump.

00:01:30.000 And so now when I hear Republicans who seem triumphalist about the idea that Democrats can never win again, that Democrats will never take power again, that all the trends are against them.

00:01:40.000 It's true, the trends are against Democrats right now, and that's a wonderful thing.

00:01:43.000 That's a good thing.

00:01:44.000 Population movement from north to south, from blue states to red states, electoral votes that will follow, Democratic failures to find any sort of leadership class in the aftermath of the Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders octogenarian triumvirate.

00:01:59.000 However, politics changes quickly.

00:02:02.000 Things happen.

00:02:03.000 And there are warning signs on the horizon.

00:02:05.000 The biggest one is that President Trump's popularity is not, in fact, transferable to every single other Republican candidate.

00:02:10.000 You cannot just take President Trump, stamp him on a thing, and then hope that thing is going to be a winner.

00:02:15.000 That is not how it works.

00:02:16.000 Barack Obama tried the same thing.

00:02:18.000 It doesn't work that way either.

00:02:19.000 Every politician has to build their own coalition.

00:02:22.000 Every politician has to have their own group of people who follow them for their own personal reasons.

00:02:27.000 And so this bizarre idea that everyone in politics seems to have on right and left, Smear that over the bread of the normie politicians or any other politicians and it will taste exactly the same.

00:02:40.000 That is not the truth.

00:02:41.000 That is not how it works.

00:02:42.000 The reason I'm warning about this is because this is why President Trump's administration must be successful.

00:02:48.000 President Trump is doing very important work.

00:02:50.000 He's doing important work on everything from getting rid of DEI to completely restructuring education in the country to changing how we do spending and waste, fraud, and abuse.

00:02:58.000 On foreign policy, he's restoring a sense of American military power and deterrence.

00:03:04.000 He's actually doing peace through strength.

00:03:06.000 He's looking with fresh eyes at situations like the Middle East or the far...

00:03:10.000 These are very important things that President Trump is doing.

00:03:12.000 And that means no mistakes.

00:03:14.000 No mistakes should be the byword inside the Trump administration.

00:03:18.000 And the warning signs are there.

00:03:20.000 Pretending they're not is simply whistling past the graveyard.

00:03:23.000 I know that Republicans, listen, we're all very happy and want to tell ourselves that President Trump won an extraordinarily broad-ranging victory in his race against Kamala Harris.

00:03:32.000 The truth is...

00:03:33.000 That that election result was actually far closer than people would like to acknowledge.

00:03:37.000 And the reason I'm saying this is not as a rip on President Trump by any measure.

00:03:41.000 It's because a narrow win means that a few votes shift and suddenly things are different.

00:03:47.000 And that could happen. 0.96

00:03:48.000 And pretending that it can't happen is a fool's errand.

00:03:51.000 I mean, in the end, President Trump won 77.3 million votes.

00:03:55.000 And Kamala Harris, a horrendous candidate running on the back of a dead candidate, won 75 million votes. 0.99

00:04:02.000 President Trump won 49.8% of the vote and Kamala Harris won 48.3% of the vote.

00:04:07.000 That is a solid electoral victory.

00:04:08.000 It is not by any stretch of the imagination a giant blowout, which is why I'm saying Republicans need to be careful.

00:04:13.000 And you're starting to see some early indicators of the fact that a Democratic electorate could revive itself.

00:04:21.000 One of those sort of warning signs came courtesy of this special election shocker in Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County.

00:04:34.000 Democrats, of course, are suggesting that this is a reaction to President Trump.

00:04:43.000 Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania said, Special election races, it's very hard to generalize from those races because they tend to have lower turnout.

00:05:04.000 And so what you get is opposition turning out at a higher rate and the kind of home party turning out at a lower rate, believing that there's not going to be any sort of competitive election.

00:05:14.000 But, as the Wall Street Journal points out, Republicans might want to take this surprise loss in MAGA country as a warning.

00:05:20.000 And that is not wrong.

00:05:21.000 That is not wrong.

00:05:22.000 That's also true because yesterday, Elise Stefanik, President Trump's excellent nominee, For the UN Ambassador Post, her nomination was withdrawn by President Trump, not because he doesn't like Elise Stefanik.

00:05:35.000 He thinks that she's terrific.

00:05:37.000 The reason he is doing that is because the margin in the Congress of the United States is simply too narrow.

00:05:42.000 President Trump had made a bunch of moves to take representatives from particular districts and put them in his cabinet.

00:05:48.000 That includes the National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz.

00:05:51.000 That was going to include Elise Stefanik.

00:05:53.000 There were three or four different Congress people who'd been pulled into the administration.

00:05:57.000 Leaving their districts open for an election.

00:06:01.000 And President Trump is basically signaling here that the House of Representatives is on a knife's edge and you can't pull good congresspeople from their districts to serve in other aspects of the executive branch for fear that you might lose the district.

00:06:15.000 Speaker Johnson put out a statement saying he would immediately invite Elise Stefanik to return to the leadership table immediately.

00:06:20.000 Quote, it's well-known Republicans have a razor-thin House majority.

00:06:23.000 Elise's agreement to withdraw her nomination will allow us to keep one of the toughest, most resolute members of our conference in place to help drive forward President Trump's America First policies.

00:06:32.000 Please.

00:06:33.000 And again, this is being openly acknowledged.

00:06:35.000 Senate Majority Leader John Thune, he said that Stefanik's withdrawal was just a result of the political realities they're grappling with in the House right now.

00:06:43.000 Every vote counts.

00:06:44.000 For this, you can thank some Congress people like Thomas Massey of Kentucky, whose reliable no vote on every contentious vote in the House of Representatives, meaning that the majority shrinks by one every single time.

00:06:53.000 But you can also point out, That there is concern in other districts that there really should not be concern about.

00:06:59.000 So, for example, Florida's 6th Congressional District, which is Mike Waltz's old seat, that is now a special election seat, and it's really competitive.

00:07:08.000 Democrats are pouring money into that particular race. 0.62

00:07:11.000 That race is far too close.

00:07:13.000 Right now, Randy Fiennes, it's Randy Fine who's running for that seat.

00:07:18.000 Fine has been a state senator in Florida for a while.

00:07:23.000 President Trump, has phoned in teletown halls in a district that he won by 30 points.

00:07:29.000 This should not be a competitive district.

00:07:31.000 Democrats are pouring money in.

00:07:33.000 Josh Weil, who is Fein's Democratic opponent, has raised $10 million for his campaign.

00:07:40.000 Meanwhile, a super PAC tied to Elon is getting involved by spending 20 grand to support both Fein and a guy named Jimmy Patronis, who is the Florida chief financial officer.

00:07:49.000 The seat again is vacant because Mike Walls is now the national security advisor.

00:07:53.000 One poll from St. Pete Poll suggests the race is within the margin of error despite the fact that Trump won that race by 30 points.

00:07:59.000 Now again, I expect that Republicans will hold the seat.

00:08:02.000 I do not think that Republicans are going to lose that seat.

00:08:05.000 The fact that it's even competitive signals that any sort of sort of overweening confidence that Republicans have is misguided.

00:08:14.000 You got to act like every possession matters.

00:08:19.000 You can't act like you're up 30 points when you're up 2 and there's a couple minutes left in the ballgame.

00:08:24.000 You can't do that.

00:08:26.000 This is the reason that I think that what President Trump is doing with tariffs right now could be a massive mistake.

00:08:32.000 Now again, I've said a thousand times, there are many good reasons to do tariffs.

00:08:36.000 You can do tariffs because you want to protect a national security-laden industry.

00:08:40.000 So there are certain parts that you need manufactured in the United States because in case of war, you don't want the supply chain broken and then you can't manufacture the parts in the United States.

00:08:47.000 So you need to have A subsidized domestic industry for those parts, for example.

00:08:52.000 That's a good reason to have a protective tariff around a particular industry.

00:08:55.000 You can use a tariff as a punishment for another country.

00:08:58.000 A country is doing something you don't like, so you use tariffs as a form of economic sanctions against that country.

00:09:03.000 That's another good reason.

00:09:04.000 You can use tariffs as a way of leveraging down other tariffs.

00:09:07.000 This is something that William McKinley famously attempted to do.

00:09:09.000 So President Trump likes to see himself in the mold of President William McKinley, of course, was president in the late 19th century.

00:09:16.000 McKinley's tariffs were designed in order to get other places to lower their tariffs.

00:09:21.000 He openly said so.

00:09:23.000 So, if that's the agenda, other countries have higher tariffs on us than we have on them.

00:09:27.000 And so the idea is that we are going to increase our tariffs as a lever to force them to lower their tariffs.

00:09:32.000 That's just a piece of leveraging.

00:09:34.000 I'm hopeful that President Trump is doing that.

00:09:36.000 However, it seems more and more like President Trump is not doing that.

00:09:39.000 Like he has an actual ideological predilection for tariffs.

00:09:43.000 The reason I say that...

00:09:44.000 It's because yesterday, President Trump announced 25% tariffs on all cars, quote, not made in the United States.

00:09:50.000 This is a massive tariff.

00:09:51.000 This is a very, very large and powerful tariff that President Trump is placing on the importation of automobiles.

00:09:56.000 And that's going to affect American companies because an enormous number of American cars from American companies are actually finished in Mexico or Canada before they're shipped down into the United States.

00:10:07.000 It's very difficult to tell what is even American-made anymore.

00:10:10.000 I remember when I was growing up, there's a big focus.

00:10:12.000 I'm buying American.

00:10:13.000 So my family always bought Ford, for example.

00:10:16.000 And I remember over time, that taboo sort of went away.

00:10:19.000 Why? Well, because it turns out that Honda was making like three quarters of its car in the United States.

00:10:23.000 And meanwhile, companies like Ford were making a bunch of their car abroad.

00:10:27.000 There are just too many parts in the car.

00:10:28.000 So how do you determine whether it's an American car or a not-American car?

00:10:32.000 A bunch of a Toyota is made in Georgia, for example.

00:10:35.000 Like this sort of stuff.

00:10:36.000 It's quite real.

00:10:36.000 But it's difficult to tell what parts of what car are actually made in America, and it's also difficult to do things like trust your internet service provider.

00:10:43.000 There's good reason not to.

00:10:45.000 Depending on where you live, internet service providers may be required to keep logs of your online activity.

00:10:48.000 In the United States, it's even worse.

00:10:50.000 ISPs can legally sell your browsing history.

00:10:52.000 So what can you do about it?

00:10:53.000 The solution is to get a VPN.

00:10:55.000 The one I use is ExpressVPN.

00:10:56.000 It's an app that reroutes my online traffic through encrypted servers, so my ISP can't access it.

00:11:01.000 Neither can data brokers or other third parties.

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00:12:54.000 So, what are these tariffs designed to do?

00:12:57.000 Well, President Trump announced this tariff yesterday.

00:13:00.000 He said he would impose 25% tariffs on all cars not made in the United States.

00:13:04.000 He said there would be absolutely no tariff for cars that are built in the United States.

00:13:07.000 These tariffs are going to go into effect on April 2nd.

00:13:10.000 He said we start collecting April 3rd.

00:13:12.000 Trump White House aide Will Scharf said the new tariffs apply to foreign-made cars and light trucks.

00:13:16.000 These come in addition to duties that are already in place.

00:13:19.000 Scharf said that the tariffs will result in over $100 billion of new annual revenue to the United States.

00:13:23.000 Now, let's be clear.

00:13:25.000 When they say that these tariffs are going to result in new annual revenue to the United States government, they mean you are going to pay a higher price for your Hyundai, and the government is going to take a piece of that.

00:13:35.000 That's what they mean.

00:13:37.000 Because it's not just the companies pay tariffs.

00:13:39.000 They then increase their prices.

00:13:41.000 President Trump said there will be very strong policing on which parts of a car are hit with tariffs.

00:13:46.000 European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen quickly criticized the new U.S. tariffs and vowed the EU will continue to seek negotiated solutions while safeguarding its own economic interests.

00:13:55.000 Auto stocks fell in after-hours trading.

00:13:58.000 By the way, this includes major American motor vehicle companies.

00:14:03.000 On March 5th, President Trump gave three automakers, General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford Motor, a one-month exemption from his 25% tariffs.

00:14:16.000 Go away.

00:14:17.000 The only company that really is unaffected by this is apparently Tesla, which is manufactured almost wholly in the United States at this point.

00:14:26.000 The two companies, in fact, that are assembled most in the United States are Rivian, which is an electric car company that makes vehicles that are, in my opinion, too expensive, and Tesla, which, again, is a great car company.

00:14:37.000 But Tesla and Rivian represent a very small segment of the American car market.

00:14:43.000 Most people who are buying a car in the United States are not buying a Rivian or buying a Tesla.

00:14:47.000 For Ford, only 78% of Fords are assembled in the United States.

00:14:51.000 So that means that 22% of all Ford vehicles are going to hit with a 25% tax.

00:14:56.000 Honda, 64% are assembled in the United States.

00:15:00.000 As I said, foreign-owned car companies are still very often assembled in the United States or parts are manufactured in the United States, which is why this is also confusing.

00:15:08.000 Honda is 64% assembled in the United States.

00:15:12.000 Stellantis is an American company, 57%.

00:15:14.000 Subaru, 56%.

00:15:16.000 Nissan, 53%.

00:15:18.000 GM, an American car company, like a classic, 52%.

00:15:21.000 Toyota, 48%.

00:15:23.000 BMW, 48%.

00:15:24.000 Mercedes, 43%.

00:15:25.000 Mazda, 19%.

00:15:27.000 Volvo. Volvo hardest hit.

00:15:29.000 The problems with this are that when it comes to your price when you're buying a new vehicle, it is going to go up.

00:15:37.000 Period. End of story.

00:15:38.000 It will.

00:15:39.000 That is what tariffs are designed to do.

00:15:41.000 They are designed to make foreign imports more expensive, and that allows more room for domestic manufacturers to increase their own prices.

00:15:49.000 45% of all U.S.

00:15:50.000 sold vehicles are imported, with the largest percentage coming from Mexico and Canada.

00:15:56.000 Yeah.

00:15:57.000 So, what exactly is the purpose of this?

00:16:01.000 Well, some of it is surely a payoff to some of the auto workers unions who supported President Trump.

00:16:07.000 UAW President Sean Fain said he's ecstatic.

00:16:10.000 I'm sure he is.

00:16:11.000 Because this is an artificial subsidy to his union.

00:16:14.000 We are ecstatic to see an administration finally address the unfair trade laws in this country.

00:16:21.000 These laws have destroyed the American working class.

00:16:24.000 They've destroyed communities in this country and virtually every state for decades.

00:16:30.000 Okay, so this idea, by the way, that American car companies have suffered because of foreign competition, the real reason that American car companies have suffered, historically speaking, is because of...

00:16:40.000 Extraordinarily overpaid union contracts.

00:16:42.000 That is the actual reason.

00:16:44.000 The UAW is the reason why American cars for decades were uncompetitive with foreign competitors.

00:16:50.000 So there's a payoff to the UAW.

00:16:52.000 Sean Fain actually spoke at the DNC, but then was sort of like half warm toward president.

00:16:56.000 So maybe it's a payoff to the unions.

00:16:59.000 Caroline Lovett said this is a big deal for auto workers and the nation.

00:17:02.000 Again, this is a subsidy for one segment of the economy at the expense of the rest of the American economy.

00:17:06.000 I do not think that this is going to pay off well in the markets.

00:17:09.000 The reason I'm critical of this is not just because I think it's bad policy, I do, but also because if the economy goes down, if President Trump experiences a significant market correction, it is going to impact the rest of his agenda.

00:17:21.000 Here's the White House Press Secretary Caroline Lovett celebrating the 25% tariffs.

00:17:26.000 And I would just like to emphasize these auto tariffs yesterday are a big deal for auto workers in the industry.

00:17:32.000 And you saw the United Auto Workers Union, Sean Fain, who wasn't the greatest fan of the president on the campaign trail, came out this morning and applauded the president for this move, saying it's a great thing for auto workers who have been sold out by unfair trade practices.

00:17:47.000 So the president is determined to rebuild our manufacturing base.

00:17:52.000 We want more jobs, more products made right here in the United States, which means...

00:17:56.000 More money in the pockets of the American people at the end of the day.

00:17:59.000 Okay, that last part, more products made in the United States, means more money in the pocket of the American people.

00:18:04.000 Actually, autarky does not necessarily mean more money in the pocket of the American people.

00:18:08.000 You can manufacture literally everything on Earth in the United States if you are willing to radically increase the price on consumers.

00:18:14.000 So it's a thing that sounds good in theory and doesn't actually work particularly well in practice, and you're going to see the stock market react to this if President Trump continues to stick with it.

00:18:21.000 One of the things that President Trump is doing with the tariffs is he's actually now doing a thing I remember from the Obama administration.

00:18:27.000 He's calling business people on the carpet and he's telling them they can't do the thing that is the natural economic consequence of the thing that he is doing.

00:18:34.000 So back during the Obama administration, when Obamacare first broke and he brought in all the health insurers and he said, you're not allowed to raise prices.

00:18:41.000 And if you raise prices because you're bad and you're mean and you're terrible and all the health insurers went, well, hold up a second.

00:18:46.000 You just increased our cost structure.

00:18:47.000 Of course we have to raise prices.

00:18:49.000 What are you even talking about?

00:18:50.000 And Democrats were screaming to the heavens because businesses were raising their price based on their increased health care costs, for example.

00:18:57.000 And then they're saying, well, that's unpatriotic.

00:18:59.000 Joe Biden, who was the vice president at the time, actually said that. 0.97

00:19:01.000 It was ridiculous on its face.

00:19:02.000 When you force people to pay more money for things, they are going to raise their prices on the things that they produce.

00:19:08.000 Well, President Trump is doing that now, apparently, with regard to some of these car companies.

00:19:12.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, when President Trump convened CEOs of some of the country's top automakers for a call earlier this month, he issued a warning.

00:19:18.000 They better not raise car prices because of tariffs.

00:19:21.000 He said that the White House would look unfavorably on such a move, leaving some of them rattled and worried they would face punishment if they increased prices.

00:19:28.000 Well, I'm sorry, but that is how economics works.

00:19:32.000 That is how economics works.

00:19:34.000 This bizarre notion that you can radically increase the cost structure for State Stellantis and they're not going to increase their prices.

00:19:39.000 What do you expect them to do?

00:19:41.000 Go bankrupt?

00:19:41.000 I understand that President Trump did something amazing by getting rid of the electric vehicle mandate.

00:19:45.000 I totally agree with that.

00:19:46.000 I think it's great.

00:19:47.000 But the laws of the economy do not randomly shape themselves around the whim of any president.

00:19:54.000 Meanwhile, this tariff program is actually propping up in Canada, which is a country that we are largely targeting, the worst person in Canadian politics right now, who's the current Prime Minister, Mark Carney.

00:20:05.000 So Justin Trudeau, handsome Bernie Sanders, he is gone.

00:20:07.000 He was replaced by Mark Carney, who is a Green New Deal type, a net zero type, and a person who's totally fine with reorienting trade away from the United States and toward China, which is the predictable result of tariff wars between the United States and Canada.

00:20:20.000 Canada will start reorienting its economy toward China, which is precisely the opposite of the result, I think, that the Trump administration reorienting.

00:20:27.000 When there was no trade war, when President Trump had just won, what we saw in the Canadian polling was that Pierre Polyev He was the head of the Canadian Conservative Party, was destroying the Liberal Party, just destroying it.

00:20:43.000 This is why Justin Trudeau had to step out.

00:20:45.000 He stepped out because he had basically become dead man walking, politically speaking.

00:20:48.000 There was no shot that he was going to be the next Prime Minister of Canada.

00:20:52.000 He replaced himself with Mark Carney.

00:20:54.000 The Liberal Party put Mark Carney in place.

00:20:56.000 And simultaneously, the talks about the tariff war and the trade war broke out.

00:21:00.000 And Pierre Polyev started to slide.

00:21:02.000 And the reason he started to slide is because Mark Carney and the Liberal Party accused the Conservative Party of being in cahoots.

00:21:07.000 With President Trump on all of this, while President Trump was making jokes or perhaps half-serious remarks about Canada becoming the 51st state in territorial contiguity and all the rest of it, while that was happening, Mark Carney was gaining in the polls.

00:21:21.000 Right now, Mark Carney has called a snap election that is set to take place in about one month.

00:21:25.000 In that snap election, he is now running dead even with the Conservative Party and gaining momentum.

00:21:29.000 So he is perfectly happy to increase the trade war.

00:21:31.000 He wants the trade war.

00:21:33.000 Number one, he's fine with a bigger relationship with China.

00:21:35.000 Number two, he hates President Trump and is perfectly fine with using his opposition to Trump to jack his poll ratings up in Canada.

00:21:44.000 None of this is salutary for the United States.

00:21:47.000 We'd be much better off with Pierre Polyev as the Prime Minister of Canada, a significantly friendlier government, a government that will be tougher on immigration, tougher on fentanyl, better on economics, better on social policy.

00:21:59.000 Mark Carney is the happiest man in the world that this trade war is happening right now.

00:22:04.000 The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over.

00:22:15.000 What exactly the United States does next is unclear.

00:22:20.000 But what is clear?

00:22:22.000 What is clear?

00:22:23.000 Is that we, as Canadians, have agency.

00:22:26.000 We have power.

00:22:29.000 We are masters in our own home.

00:22:35.000 Okay, so he is super excited about this.

00:22:42.000 So the worst people in Canadian politics are really excited about this.

00:22:45.000 That should be a bad sign.

00:22:46.000 And meanwhile, again, right now, Americans are giving President Trump the benefit of the doubt, as they should.

00:22:51.000 He's doing a lot of great things, which we'll get to in a moment, particularly with regard to Doge.

00:22:55.000 However, this is having an impact on President Trump's approval ratings, particularly on the economy.

00:23:00.000 And as I've said before, The way that people's relationship with politicians works in terms of public approval rating is sort of like a marriage.

00:23:08.000 If the marriage is good, it's people doing little things for each other.

00:23:11.000 It's people with a shared sense of values that carries out over time.

00:23:15.000 If things go bad, typically there are a bunch of things that are small and that eat away at the back of your mind that are bad.

00:23:21.000 And then suddenly the bottom goes out.

00:23:24.000 And right now, if the bottom goes out on the economy, it will take the rest of President Trump's agenda with it.

00:23:30.000 CNN's Harry Enten was analyzing the polls with regard to the economy, and they are not where they should be for President Trump.

00:23:36.000 They want him prioritizing inflation.

00:23:38.000 They don't want him prioritizing tariffs.

00:23:41.000 Yet that is exactly what he is doing.

00:23:44.000 So on this particular issue, Donald Trump is simply put not with the American public.

00:23:50.000 They oppose the tariffs, and yet they believe Donald Trump is going ahead with them.

00:23:53.000 And that is a big reason why we've seen Donald Trump's overall approval rating take a pretty big dip.

00:24:00.000 Okay, so, again, President Trump is still riding pretty high, but all of that is predicated on no serious economic downturn.

00:24:07.000 And there's no reason for this, because the rest of Trump's agenda is highly popular with the American people.

00:24:12.000 So yesterday, there was a fantastic interview on Fox News between Brett Baier and the Doge team.

00:24:18.000 It was really tremendous.

00:24:19.000 And it was particularly tremendous because the left is absolutely bewildered by the fact that they've created all these obstacles To efficacy, both in the governmental sphere and in the private sphere.

00:24:32.000 On that note, yesterday, Ezra Klein, who has a brand new book out called Abundance with Derek Thompson of The Atlantic, he went on Jon Stewart's show.

00:24:41.000 Here is Jon Stewart with Ezra Klein, Ezra Klein explaining all the steps that you need to go through in order to achieve a grant or a contract under Build Back Better.

00:24:49.000 This clip is cut down because this isn't remotely the actual full process.

00:24:54.000 We have to issue the notice of funding opportunity within 180 days.

00:24:58.000 That's step one.

00:24:59.000 Step two is states who want to participate must submit a letter of intent.

00:25:03.000 Step three, they can request up to $5 million in planning grants.

00:25:07.000 Just planning.

00:25:08.000 Just planning.

00:25:09.000 Step four, the requests are reviewed, approved, and awarded by the NDIA.

00:25:15.000 Three years later, all 56 applicants had passed through at least step five.

00:25:20.000 States must submit a five-year action plan.

00:25:23.000 Then the FCC must publish the broadband data maps before NTIA allocates funds.

00:25:31.000 So then the NTIA, step seven, has to use the FCC maps to make allocation decisions.

00:25:37.000 It's hard even to talk about this, man.

00:25:39.000 Step eight is states must submit an initial proposal. 0.88

00:25:43.000 What the f*** did they apply for?

00:25:45.000 Step nine, NTIA must review and approve each state's, again, initial proposal. 0.89

00:25:52.000 Step 10. States must publish their own map and allow internal challenges to their own map.

00:26:00.000 This is the Biden administration's process for its own bill.

00:26:04.000 They wanted this to happen.

00:26:05.000 This is how liberal government works now.

00:26:08.000 This is a bill passed by Democrats with a regulatory structure written by Democratic administration.

00:26:14.000 Okay. Step 11. The NTIA must review and improve...

00:26:19.000 The challenge results and the final map.

00:26:22.000 Step 12. States must run a competitive sub-granting process.

00:26:28.000 Oh my god!

00:26:31.000 At step 12, after all this has been done.

00:26:35.000 Step 13. States must submit a final proposal.

00:26:38.000 All the proposals weren't enough to NTIA.

00:26:41.000 So we've gone in the last couple steps from 56 had gone to this point to 3 of 56. Step 14. The NTIA must review and approve the state's final proposal.

00:26:53.000 And that is three of the 56 jurisdictions and states are there.

00:26:58.000 In summary, colon, states are nearly at the finish line.

00:27:03.000 And it says to stop their progress now, or worse, to make them go backwards, would be a stick in the spokes of the most promising broadband deployment plans we have ever seen.

00:27:17.000 End of scene.

00:27:21.000 I'm speechless.

00:27:22.000 Why are you shocked?

00:27:23.000 Why are you speechless?

00:27:25.000 You built it.

00:27:26.000 This is the thing you wanted.

00:27:27.000 You wanted a government that was so large and intrusive and also ridden with bureaucratic corruption.

00:27:33.000 This is what you wanted.

00:27:34.000 Please name all of the steps you wish were removed from that process and who would be damaged from them, please.

00:27:40.000 That's exactly what Elon's team is trying to do.

00:27:41.000 They're trying to go through these regulatory structures, through these spending structures.

00:27:44.000 You want to know why that's popular?

00:27:46.000 The reason it's popular is because of all the things Ezra Klein just said.

00:27:49.000 It's hilarious to watch some of these people discover conservatism in real time.

00:27:53.000 Oh, you mean the giant bureaucratic snafu that you have created that spends $7 trillion a year is bad at things and takes too much money and time?

00:28:02.000 That's unbelievable.

00:28:03.000 By the way, this is the reason why Democrats are constantly attempting to declare wars on things because once they've declared a war on poverty or a war on housing shortages, then they can cut out all of the steps and simply ram down what they want to do, which is the thing they really wish they could do.

00:28:17.000 But it turns out that in a democratic polity, there are a lot of people who have their piece of the game and they want to know what's going on.

00:28:24.000 So when we are talking here about the wild growth in government that apparently Jon Stewart and Ezra Klein are lamenting, let's be real about this.

00:28:33.000 The left was responsible for this.

00:28:35.000 I asked our friends at Perplexity, which of course is the sponsor of the show, how much of both the number and complexity of federal regulations increased from, say, 1950 to 2025.

00:28:43.000 And here's Perplexity's answer.

00:28:44.000 In 1950, the Code of Federal Regulations contained approximately 9,562 pages.

00:28:50.000 By 2020, the Code of Federal Regulations had grown to 87,000.

00:28:55.000 351 pages.

00:28:57.000 That is almost a tenfold increase.

00:28:59.000 The number of restrictive words, meaning words that restrict action, in the Code of Federal Regulations grew from about 400,000 in 1970 to over 1 million by the late 2010s.

00:29:11.000 As far as complexity, in 1970, it would have taken just under a year for a person to read all the federal regulations assuming that they read 250 words per minute, 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year.

00:29:21.000 By 2016, It would have required three years, 177 days, and 10 hours to read through all the federal regulations.

00:29:27.000 The total word count of the Code of Federal Regulations increased from 35.4 million words in 1970 to 104.6 million words in 2016.

00:29:39.000 This means complexity, regulatory incomprehensibility, and all the sort of stuff that you're seeing Jon Stewart lament.

00:29:46.000 But who do you think did it, guys?

00:29:47.000 Obviously, Jon Stewart, Ezra Klein, it's taking them a while to get with it, but here is the reality.

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00:32:02.000 In any case, this is why Doge is inherently popular.

00:32:05.000 And I wish that the Doge team...

00:32:07.000 Had done this interview with Brett Baer that they did last night, a little bit earlier, but it was really good.

00:32:10.000 So, last night, as I mentioned, Doge team sat with Brett Baer.

00:32:15.000 Tyler Hassan, who's a member of the Doge team, he was talking about the Interior Department and the fact that there was basically zero oversight of spending initiatives at the Interior Department during Biden.

00:32:25.000 Well, Elon and Steve kind of stole my thunder a little bit, but I actually found that customer service survey contract.

00:32:33.000 I actually have an example of one right here.

00:32:35.000 I could have done this in high school.

00:32:38.000 I found it on the weekends because under the Biden administration, there was no departmental oversight within the Department of Interior whatsoever.

00:32:48.000 None. We are now reviewing every single contract, every single grant, and when things come to my attention that don't make sense, I'm bringing them to Secretary Burgum, and he's been fantastic.

00:32:59.000 He's a businessman.

00:33:00.000 He's very supportive of Doge.

00:33:02.000 It's been wonderful to work with him.

00:33:05.000 And here is Elon Musk explaining that the federal government has spent a billion dollars on a survey that would cost 10 grand on SurveyMonkey.

00:33:14.000 For you, what's the most astonishing thing you've found out in this process?

00:33:18.000 The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government.

00:33:20.000 It is astonishing.

00:33:22.000 It's mind-blowing.

00:33:24.000 We routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more.

00:33:29.000 Casually. You know, for example, the simple survey that was literally a 10-question survey that you could do with survey monkey, it cost you about $10,000, the government was being charged almost a billion dollars for that.

00:33:46.000 For just the survey?

00:33:47.000 A billion dollars for a simple online survey.

00:33:50.000 Okay, again, all of this is stuff that, when Americans see it, they resonate to it.

00:34:01.000 Musk was joined by the Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who's working with Doge.

00:34:05.000 To digitize the government's antiquated retirement process.

00:34:07.000 You remember that crazy story a few weeks ago where it turns out that the government retirement process is run from like a salt mine.

00:34:13.000 It's run from a cave with like actual physical files that have to go up and down an elevator.

00:34:18.000 Here was Joe Gebbia talking about modernizing that.

00:34:21.000 I bumped into Anthony and Elon probably back in February and they told me something about a mine that was dealt with retirement and they said they needed somebody to help out to fix retirement in the government.

00:34:33.000 I love the challenge, so I jumped on board.

00:34:36.000 And it turns out there is actually a mine in Pennsylvania that houses every paper document for the retirement process in the government.

00:34:44.000 Now picture this.

00:34:45.000 This giant cave has 22,000 filing cabinets, stacked 10 high to house 400 million pieces of paper.

00:34:54.000 It's a process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't changed in the last 70 years.

00:34:59.000 And so, as you dug into it, we found retirement cases that had so much paper, they had to fit it on a shipping pallet.

00:35:07.000 So, the process takes many months, and we're going to make it just many days.

00:35:11.000 Will it be digitized?

00:35:13.000 Absolutely. So, this will be an online digital process that will take just a few days at most.

00:35:17.000 And I really think, you know, it's an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to these processes that are older than the age of half the people watching your show tonight.

00:35:29.000 So, we really believe that the government can have an Apple Store-like experience.

00:35:34.000 Beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems.

00:35:37.000 Okay, now, remember, these are the people you were told were going in with a chainsaw and it was a bunch of 18-year-old kids named Big Balls who are actually just willy-nilly chopping people out of the government.

00:35:45.000 Is that what it sounds like to you?

00:35:47.000 Right there?

00:35:48.000 This is the stuff I want the Trump administration focusing on because when you see this interview, you think, this is great.

00:35:53.000 This is fantastic.

00:35:55.000 You know what I really don't want to be focused on?

00:35:56.000 I really don't want to be focused on increases in car prices because we have to make a payoff to the UAW or because there is a misbegotten notion that tariffs themselves are enriching to the United States.

00:36:08.000 Again, if you want to argue that tariffs were necessary in 1870 when, you know, we had no income tax, then sure, you can make that case.

00:36:16.000 But if you think that the levels of international trade today are anything remotely like the levels of international trade in 1870, or that the world is remotely as competitive today as the world was in 1870, that there is an apples to oranges comparison, the tariff wars are unlikely to be easily won or to be wildly productive for the Trump administration.

00:36:37.000 Now, the thing I know about President Trump more than anything else, I've said this before, is that President Trump knows what a bad headline looks like if the Dow Jones Industrial Average tanks I have faith he will do that.

00:36:49.000 The problem, of course, is that...

00:36:51.000 Uncertainty in markets is its own form of threat.

00:36:54.000 Predictability in markets is what you're looking for.

00:36:57.000 Again, as somebody who invests a lot of money, as somebody who knows many main investors, big investors, market makers, and all the rest, what they are looking for is a predictable understanding of what the economic environment looks like on a day-to-day level when they put their money in the markets.

00:37:11.000 And if not, when they see uncertainty, they tend to withdraw their money and wait with their dry powder for the prices to go down.

00:37:18.000 That is the thing.

00:37:20.000 That I think President Trump needs to watch out for.

00:37:22.000 Again, I think that if things do go the wrong way, I think he's going to shift and he's going to move.

00:37:26.000 And I'm hoping that what these tariffs really are about are, again, prying some sort of serious concession out of Canada on immigration or on fentanyl.

00:37:34.000 Maybe that's a thing that can happen.

00:37:37.000 What this administration and what the country cannot afford is a serious economic downturn, not just because of the economic damage, but because the reaction to an economic downturn will be to swivel into hard left economic progressivism that truly will cripple the American economy for a generation.

00:37:52.000 I mean, these are very serious things that we are talking about in both the short, mid, and long term.

00:37:58.000 Meanwhile, the fallout supposedly continues from Signalgate, that of course is the gigantic scandal in which a bunch of members of the Trump national security team accidentally included a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, in their group chat.

00:38:12.000 Democrats are seeking a head on a pike. 1.00

00:38:14.000 They, of course, would love to be able to say that President Trump surrendered to them and they got ahead and all the rest of this sort of stuff.

00:38:20.000 Trump is very unlikely to grant that to them, as well he should be.

00:38:23.000 It's very silly of him to fire a well-regarded and smart national security official because of a screw-up on who was included in the Signal Chat, seriously.

00:38:34.000 That's what we are talking about right here.

00:38:35.000 And as we've mentioned before, if the standard is mishandling of classified information on sort of just a raw level, Pretty much every major official of the last 20 years would be out, ridden out of town on a rail.

00:38:49.000 I mean, that's the reality.

00:38:51.000 That's not what this is about.

00:38:52.000 Caroline Lovett says President Trump's perspective on this is clear.

00:38:56.000 Mike Waltz has taken responsibility.

00:38:57.000 Pete Hegseth has done nothing wrong.

00:38:59.000 He's fine.

00:39:00.000 This, I think, is the right attitude.

00:39:02.000 Well, we have never denied that this was a mistake, and the National Security Advisor took responsibility for that.

00:39:09.000 And we have said we are making changes.

00:39:12.000 We are looking into the matter to ensure it can never happen again.

00:39:15.000 But, of course, the President has put together a team.

00:39:18.000 Look at the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who was voted in by the United States Senate, putting our warfighters first, making the world a safer place for the American people and for all people, and we're going to stay focused on that.

00:39:30.000 That, of course, I think is the right attitude.

00:39:32.000 Democrats are trying to ride this thing to electoral victory.

00:39:35.000 I don't think that's going to work.

00:39:36.000 The House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, is suggesting that Pete Hegseth needs to be fired because Pete Hegseth shared all of these updates about what was going on in the strike on Yemen in the Signal chat and Jeffrey Goldberg was in the chat.

00:39:51.000 So somehow this is Pete Hegseth's fault.

00:39:53.000 We're in the middle of a fight right now as it relates to Pete Hegseth.

00:39:58.000 He needs to resign or be fired by Donald Trump.

00:40:03.000 We've made that clear across the caucus.

00:40:06.000 And Democrats, I think, showed fight in the Senate hearing on Tuesday and in the House hearing on Wednesday.

00:40:18.000 So, again, good luck with this.

00:40:20.000 I don't think that Americans deeply care about this.

00:40:22.000 And again, that's what the polling data tends to show.

00:40:24.000 So Americans say that they think that it's a problem.

00:40:26.000 But when asked if they believe that something criminal happened, then the answer actually is overall no.

00:40:32.000 So, there's the YouGov poll that came out yesterday.

00:40:35.000 Did Trump administration members break the law by sharing military plans with a journalist in an unclassified chat app?

00:40:40.000 All U.S. adults, 48% say broke the law, which means 52% say not sure or did not break the law.

00:40:47.000 So only a minority of Americans actually believe that somebody broke the law in this particular case.

00:40:54.000 As far as whether Americans believe that this is a huge deal or not enough of a big deal, basically only 37% of Americans believe that the media are not making a big enough deal about it.

00:41:07.000 22% say making too big a deal.

00:41:09.000 17% say just about right.

00:41:11.000 23% say not sure.

00:41:13.000 So only a little over a third of Americans actually believe that the media need to be playing this up, that we need more about all of this.

00:41:20.000 Bottom line, is any of this going to wear?

00:41:22.000 I really do not think so.

00:41:23.000 I think that this has already played itself out. 0.97

00:41:25.000 And again, Democrats exaggerating the risk here is pretty ridiculous.

00:41:30.000 They literally presided over the collapse of Afghanistan and didn't seem to have any problem with that at all.

00:41:35.000 Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, he said only by the grace of God were there no casualties.

00:41:39.000 Well, I mean, it's not by the grace of God.

00:41:40.000 They included an American journalist accidentally in the chat.

00:41:43.000 It wasn't like they were going to include the leader of the Houthis.

00:41:46.000 Only by good luck.

00:41:49.000 And the grace of a higher power, are we not undertaking an after-action report on pilots downed and killed?

00:41:59.000 Remember, the Houthis have highly sophisticated, lethal, Iran-supplied air defense missiles that can bring down the type of aircraft that were used.

00:42:10.000 They had every reason to know when those planes would be over targets because they can calculate where they were coming from on aircraft carriers and how long it would take them to get there.

00:42:22.000 So this information posed a clear and present danger to those pilots and other men and women in New York.

00:42:29.000 Yeah, except that we eviscerated the Houthis, which is something that Joe Biden really never did.

00:42:35.000 Meanwhile, Democrats continue to caterwaul over deportations of people who are sympathetic to terrorism, who are here on student visas.

00:42:42.000 So, the Trump administration...

00:42:45.000 is going after people who violate their visa requirements basically by lawing to get in.

00:42:49.000 They say that they're not going to be activists on behalf of terrorism and then they're activists on behalf of terrorism, for example.

00:42:55.000 One of the people who has now been detained is a Tufts University PhD student whose name is Rumaysa Ozturk.

00:43:02.000 According to CNN, which of course is biased against the Trump administration, they say that she was on her way to meet friends at an iftar dinner where they would break their Ramadan fast, but instead she was arrested and physically restrained by immigration officers near her apartment.

00:43:13.000 She's one of several foreign nationals affiliated with American universities to be arrested for purported activities related to terrorist organizations amid the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

00:43:23.000 A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that Ostrich engaged in activities in support of Hamas.

00:43:28.000 Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained what the standards are for why your visa will be removed and you will be deported.

00:43:34.000 If you go apply for a visa right now anywhere in the world, let me just send this message out.

00:43:39.000 If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, We're not going to give you a visa. 0.99

00:43:58.000 If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we're going to take away your visa.

00:44:05.000 So this all makes perfect sense.

00:44:08.000 With that said, the Trump administration should be trotting out.

00:44:12.000 The entire litany of things that these people do when their visas are removed.

00:44:16.000 Because otherwise it is going to leave the impression that if you say the wrong thing, not if you're associated with terrorists or even if you stand for Hamas, but you just say the wrong thing in some way that you will be deported.

00:44:27.000 Now again, I think that we don't have to take anybody in this country we don't want to take into this country. 1.00

00:44:30.000 And so if you express support for a terrorist organization, you shouldn't have been granted a visa in the first place, which is the point that Rubio is making.

00:44:36.000 But the administration should make very clear on what grounds they are doing this.

00:44:40.000 Because the sort of countervailing argument is that anybody who comes in at any time could have their visa revoked if they violate the sort of taboos set by any administration, Democrat or Republican.

00:44:51.000 And so I think that it would behoove the Trump administration to be very, very clear about why each person they are detaining and deporting is being detained and deport, what kind of activity they were engaged in in support of a terrorist group or a terrorist agenda and all the like.

00:45:05.000 Because otherwise there is going to be a justified free speech backlash that says, well, you're only detaining people because of the things that they are saying that really have nothing to do.

00:45:12.000 I don't think that's what the Trump administration is doing, by the way.

00:45:16.000 I do think that they should be very clear about why they are doing what they are doing in each particular case.

00:45:21.000 Otherwise, it just makes for easy headlines for people who oppose the Trump administration agenda. 0.99

00:45:26.000 Okay, in the stupid news of the day, I do have to bring you the stupid news of the day. 0.99

00:45:30.000 The UK is now finally cracking down on the thing that matters most, ninja swords. 1.00

00:45:36.000 Not even kidding.

00:45:37.000 According to Sky News, a law banning ninja swords is set to come into force by summer after a relentless campaign by the family of a murdered teenager.

00:45:45.000 So there was a 16-year-old who was stabbed to death tragically with ninja swords yards from his home in 2022.

00:45:52.000 So there is a law, it is called Ronan's Law, not Ronan's Law, a series of anti-knife crime measures that make it illegal to possess, sell, make, or import ninja swords beginning August 1st.

00:46:03.000 This led Keir Starmer The ridiculous Prime Minister of Great Britain to announce his magical ban, celebrating the magic of getting rid of ninja swords.

00:46:15.000 So I assume this will just lead to a massive upsurge in nunchuck crime in Great Britain. 1.00

00:46:21.000 Because it turns out that when people want to commit crimes, typically they are fully capable of committing crimes.

00:46:26.000 Like Katana's ban?

00:46:27.000 What do you do here?

00:46:29.000 It's just hands are banned.

00:46:32.000 People do strangulation and assault with them.

00:46:34.000 No more hands in Great Britain.

00:46:36.000 This is one of the reasons why the revolution was a very, very good idea in 1776.

00:46:40.000 Well, joining me on the line is Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles Show.

00:46:45.000 And I will say that, obviously, for folks who have listened to my show for a long time, they know that I don't not enjoy making Michael Knowles suffer.

00:46:53.000 And so we made him suffer this week.

00:46:54.000 He went to see the brand new Snow White movie.

00:46:57.000 Yeah, the double negative.

00:46:58.000 The vaunted double negative.

00:47:00.000 Michael went to see the Snow White movie.

00:47:01.000 And Michael.

00:47:03.000 I have to get your take on the horrors and the sufferings that you experienced on a personal level.

00:47:07.000 Well, the primary suffering is being sent in by my company.

00:47:11.000 To watch a children's movie as a single man, like 2pm on a Thursday.

00:47:18.000 That was the first part that was a little bit weird.

00:47:20.000 But I was basically the only person in the theater.

00:47:22.000 Very few people wanted to see this.

00:47:24.000 Even the little kids who like Disney movies.

00:47:26.000 Even they don't seem to be turning up in droves for the movie.

00:47:29.000 Because the movie is really, really bad.

00:47:33.000 And Ben, you know.

00:47:34.000 You and I have gone back and forth.

00:47:36.000 You're very harsh on a lot of movies.

00:47:37.000 I tend to see some redeeming features.

00:47:40.000 I liked the Barbie movie.

00:47:41.000 I like Reddy Gerwig generally.

00:47:43.000 I like movies that conservatives often don't like and liberals do like.

00:47:47.000 And so I've got some bona fides here on being fair.

00:47:50.000 The movie was absolutely terrible.

00:47:52.000 It's not the single worst movie I've ever seen, but in every way that the movie differed from the beloved 1937 original, it was worse.

00:48:02.000 The way I would describe it is, you know how right now on social media...

00:48:05.000 Everyone is turning every image ever produced into a Ghibli-style Japanese anime picture.

00:48:12.000 Basically, this movie was like you took the original Snow White and just put everything through this filter.

00:48:21.000 Of liberalism.

00:48:22.000 It wasn't through a filter of Japanese anime.

00:48:23.000 It was through a filter of liberalism.

00:48:25.000 So from the casting to the class politics, the sexual politics, the regime politics, everything about it was liberal.

00:48:33.000 The most obvious difference being, and I don't know if we're allowed, can we point out that Snow White is generally understood to be a very, very white person.

00:48:45.000 And in this case, they decided, nope, no, that doesn't make any sense.

00:48:48.000 You know, I don't think that's...

00:48:50.000 We're allowed to say that, right?

00:48:51.000 I was referring to the movie as Sandbeige, and it was so noticeable off the top, but it's no really knock on her.

00:48:59.000 If you did the autobiography of Malcolm X, would you cast Tom Hanks?

00:49:03.000 If you remade Moana, would you cast a little Irish guy? 0.98

00:49:06.000 No, you wouldn't.

00:49:07.000 So that was off the top.

00:49:08.000 And then from there, the sexual politics, the regime politics, the class politics, it all was just bad.

00:49:16.000 No, I mean, I think to start with that first point.

00:49:19.000 It is not racist to suggest that a character who is described in the original as skin white as snow, that is literally how the character is described in the original, that's a character description in the same way that, as you mentioned, in Moana, presumably the character is supposed to be Hawaiian in some way, and it would be bizarre to recast that.

00:49:35.000 In Mulan, if you cast a white lady, this is very weird that Mulan is white considering that we are now in feudal China. 0.71

00:49:41.000 This is sort of strange.

00:49:43.000 And so this bizarre fixation.

00:49:46.000 With race-shifting everything, but only in one direction by Disney, obviously is quite strange.

00:49:51.000 That is the least of the concerns, though.

00:49:53.000 I want to get to the sexual politics of it, because obviously this is a big thing for Rachel Zegler, the star of the film. 0.99

00:49:58.000 It was a big thing for all the left-wingers who made the movie.

00:50:01.000 We have this clip that I want to play for you of Rachel Zegler talking about the love story in Snow White and how it has changed.

00:50:07.000 There was Rachel Zegler talking about this.

00:50:09.000 The original cartoon came out in 1937, and very evidently so.

00:50:14.000 There's a big focus on her love story.

00:50:18.000 With a guy who literally stalks her.

00:50:21.000 Yeah. Weird.

00:50:22.000 Weird. Super weird.

00:50:23.000 So we didn't do that this time.

00:50:25.000 So no prince or a different kind of prince?

00:50:27.000 We have a different approach to what I'm sure a lot of people will assume is a love story just because we cast a guy in the movie, Andrew Burnham.

00:50:35.000 Great dude.

00:50:37.000 It's one of those things that I think everyone's going to have their assumptions about what it's actually going to be, but it's really not about the love story at all, which is really, really wonderful.

00:50:46.000 And whether or not she finds love along the way is anybody's guess until 2024.

00:50:49.000 All of Andrew's scenes could get cut.

00:50:52.000 Who knows?

00:50:52.000 It's Hollywood, baby.

00:50:53.000 We...

00:50:55.000 Michael, your take.

00:50:57.000 Sorry, she renders me almost speechless.

00:51:01.000 She's right.

00:51:02.000 There are spoiler alerts here if you intend to see the movie, which most likely 100% of your audience does not.

00:51:08.000 They replace the prince with a common criminal.

00:51:12.000 So there is a prince-like figure, but he's no longer a prince.

00:51:15.000 He's a criminal.

00:51:15.000 And I think this plays first into the class politics of the left, which hates even the very idea of aristocracy or nobility.

00:51:23.000 Then on the sexual politics front, she's right.

00:51:25.000 They clearly want to diminish the love story, I think after the backlash.

00:51:28.000 From those comments a year and a half ago, whenever they were, they did beef up the love story a little bit.

00:51:34.000 But nevertheless, he plays an ancillary role.

00:51:37.000 And you see this in the fuller scope of the sexual politics.

00:51:41.000 One of the most annoying contrivances of Hollywood in the last 10 years is the notion that a woman can physically beat up a man.

00:51:48.000 You saw it in Star Wars.

00:51:49.000 You see it in practically every movie out of Hollywood.

00:51:51.000 And they go for that.

00:51:53.000 You know, this little girl is physically beating up men with crawlers. 1.00

00:51:58.000 Cospos in armor. 0.97

00:51:59.000 It's totally preposterous.

00:52:01.000 Then the common criminal comes in.

00:52:03.000 He does sort of win her heart.

00:52:05.000 They team up together.

00:52:06.000 And this leads you, beyond the class politics, even to just the regime politics.

00:52:10.000 In the original fairy tale, going back to the 19th century and then up through the 1937 movie, it's about a kingdom.

00:52:17.000 You know, she's a princess. 1.00

00:52:18.000 Her father is a king.

00:52:20.000 She's inheriting a kingdom. 0.99

00:52:21.000 Here, they've kept the minimum amount of kingliness that you possibly can to maintain the story, but they've replaced all of those elements with lowercase d democratic elements.

00:52:32.000 So the way that she wins over the kingdom is not by taking her... 0.79

00:52:36.000 her rightful throne.

00:52:37.000 It's by flattering the guards who are trying to kill her.

00:52:41.000 It's basically by being a good retail politician.

00:52:43.000 The fact that she can shake Kiss babies is how she does it. 1.00

00:52:47.000 The way that she defeats the queen is not through some deus ex machina as in the original movie, and it's not through any kind of orderly politics.

00:52:55.000 It's by effectively leading an insurrection of the mob of people to go in and push her out. 0.55

00:53:01.000 So, you know...

00:53:03.000 I know that this is reading a little deeply into a kid's movie, but obviously these choices were made for a reason.

00:53:11.000 Every deviation from the original story was done for a reason.

00:53:15.000 I guess what's so tedious about this movie is that every single deviation was in favor of liberalism and a radical kind of liberalism at that.

00:53:24.000 So it just takes a beloved movie and makes it much more boring and much less realistic.

00:53:31.000 Kind of like society on liberalism.

00:53:36.000 So, obviously, these changes were made deliberately.

00:53:40.000 Rachel Lindsay, the host of some podcast or another, she was talking about this movie when it was first being made.

00:53:47.000 She said it should never have been remade at all.

00:53:49.000 They should have just dumped the story.

00:53:50.000 The story is just, it's too dated.

00:53:51.000 Here's Rachel Lindsay talking about this.

00:53:54.000 Let's be honest.

00:53:55.000 This movie should have never been made.

00:53:57.000 Snow White, when it came out, was huge back in 1937.

00:54:01.000 But that movie has so many problems.

00:54:05.000 Where we were in 1937 versus 2025, more than the other Disney movies, this should have never been a movie to remake.

00:54:12.000 Because think about it.

00:54:12.000 She's so perfect because her skin is white as snow.

00:54:17.000 Right. One problem.

00:54:18.000 She goes and finds the dwarf's house. 0.54

00:54:20.000 She cooks.

00:54:20.000 She cleans the house.

00:54:22.000 And why does she get to stay? 0.99

00:54:24.000 Because she agrees to cook and clean for them. 0.75

00:54:27.000 Pull your weight.

00:54:28.000 Pull your weight.

00:54:29.000 For these seven men.

00:54:31.000 Yeah. Why couldn't she go mine with them? 0.71

00:54:34.000 Why couldn't she go hi-ho, hi-ho?

00:54:37.000 They didn't ask her to hi-ho.

00:54:39.000 They could have asked her to hi-ho. 0.61

00:54:41.000 Then, beauty was the defining factor of a woman.

00:54:45.000 Oh, that never happens, right?

00:54:46.000 Obviously, the depiction of the dwarfs.

00:54:48.000 Oh, oh.

00:54:49.000 She was this damsel in distress.

00:54:51.000 She had to be rescued by a man in order to go on and live this beautiful, happy life.

00:54:58.000 Only a man could save her.

00:55:00.000 The movie is problematic.

00:55:06.000 Certainly for the left.

00:55:07.000 There's no question.

00:55:08.000 She hit on a great point there that I actually...

00:55:10.000 It had escaped my memory, which is when Snow White stumbles upon the dwarves' house in the original, what does she do?

00:55:16.000 She sweeps the floor, she cleans, she cooks, and the dwarves really like this, and they all live together, and it's really nice.

00:55:21.000 The change in the new movie is...

00:55:23.000 She just decides to take a nap.

00:55:25.000 And if that is not the depiction of modern feminism, I don't know what is.

00:55:30.000 You don't have to contribute anything.

00:55:32.000 You're perfect just the way you are.

00:55:34.000 You're entitled to everything in the world.

00:55:35.000 You're going to be a girl boss. 1.00

00:55:36.000 She does become a girl boss in as much as when the dwarves wake her up. 0.98

00:55:40.000 She just bosses them around and tells them to clean the home. 1.00

00:55:43.000 And so you wonder, okay, well, why are these dwarves tolerating her? 0.98

00:55:46.000 I know she towers over them, but even at that stature, she's not going to go.

00:55:50.000 Pick minerals out of the mines, as this random podcaster suggests.

00:55:56.000 I mean, that is such an amazing point, because the reality is that if you watch the original Snow White, it is a story between her and the dwarves about her actually civilizing the men.

00:56:05.000 She comes in and she cleans the house, but there's a whole number about how they haven't taken a bath in like a year, and she's going to force them to go and bathe so that they can then come in the house and eat while she makes the dinner. 0.81

00:56:15.000 And this, by the way, is a trope in Hollywood films that stretches for a few decades, from the 30s to the 50s, where one of the ways that women affect men is by civilizing them, by requiring certain behavior of them.

00:56:25.000 The movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers comes to mind here, but that is no longer something that we're allowed to talk about, which, of course, is ridiculous because men require civilization.

00:56:35.000 And women have to sacrifice, and so do men, in order for there to be a relationship between women and men, and for both of them to become better. 0.98

00:56:42.000 But the idea in feminism is that there's nothing wrong with anyone the way that they are, except for men who are naturally pigs, obviously. 1.00

00:56:48.000 Of course, when this podcaster lady, or Rachel Zegler for that matter, when they scoff at the notion that Snow White would need a man, what they're missing is that also... 0.97

00:56:59.000 Implicit in this story and in all of these great stories is that men need women.

00:57:03.000 Men don't need women in the same way that women need men. 0.98

00:57:06.000 Men and women do different things because men and women are different. 0.99

00:57:09.000 But this is part of that leveling impulse of liberalism that you're seeing.

00:57:14.000 On the sexual front, the racial front, the regime front, the class front, is this notion that we're all basically just indiscernible individuals.

00:57:22.000 There's no difference in physical strength between this criminal, this outlaw, and a damsel, you know, who was raised in a castle.

00:57:29.000 There's no difference, frankly, in stature between the dwarves and the tall people.

00:57:34.000 You know, it's all just kind of the same.

00:57:36.000 And so, this is why I say it makes it so tedious.

00:57:40.000 One, we know that it's not true.

00:57:42.000 So when we watch these scenes, we just don't believe them.

00:57:45.000 But two, it just takes away the spice of life.

00:57:48.000 There was a time when we said, vive la différence.

00:57:50.000 There was a time when the left at least pretended to believe that diversity is our strength.

00:57:55.000 But here you have just this bland homogeneity where I can't tell the difference between a prince and a criminal and a dwarf and a snow white princess.

00:58:03.000 success.

00:58:04.000 I mean, in the original, my grandmother saw the original in the theaters, obviously, and I remember she told us that...

00:58:11.000 When people watched it originally in 1937 in the theaters, it was an amazing experience because for most people, it was the first color movie.

00:58:17.000 And so, first of all, there was the visual of it.

00:58:19.000 But second of all, people had so connected emotionally with the character of Snow White that when she eats from the apple and she dies, people were literally weeping in the theater because they liked the character of Snow White so much.

00:58:28.000 It seems like it's difficult to imagine a situation in which anyone was weeping in the theater as Rachel Ziegler's character goes into a coma after eating an apple.

00:58:35.000 There were actually raucous rounds of applause in the theater.

00:58:38.000 Of course, I was the only person in the theater, so maybe that might explain it.

00:58:41.000 Probably in other theaters around the country.

00:58:44.000 Well, Michael Knowles, I appreciate you undertaking true sacrifice by going to the theater.

00:58:49.000 It sounds like you were one of the only ones there, just like Rachel Ziegler, as it turns out.

00:58:53.000 And we part with this video of Rachel Zegler alone in a theater watching herself.

00:58:56.000 Oh, no.

00:58:57.000 Bye. Bye.

00:59:05.000 One of the most unlikable humans. 0.81

00:59:06.000 That is sadder than when the original Snow White eats the apple.

00:59:12.000 Michael Knowles, they'll enjoy your show.

00:59:14.000 I'm sure I won't.

00:59:15.000 I'll catch you in a little bit.

00:59:16.000 See you later.

00:59:17.000 Alrighty, coming up.

00:59:18.000 There is a brand new book and it claims the Democrats actually had a plan to pull Joe Biden as early as 2023.

00:59:23.000 We'll get to that plus the mailbag in a moment.

00:59:25.000 Remember, you can only watch my responses to your questions and even ask those questions when you become a member.

00:59:30.000 Join Daily Wire Plus right now.

00:59:32.000 If you're not a member, now's the time.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - March 28, 2025

TRADE WAR: Trump Declares Massive Car Tariffs

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