The Ben Shapiro Show - TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

00:00:00.000 Well, folks, President Trump lives in the world of reality, as I've been saying for a very long time.

00:00:04.000 When the headlines change, so does the president's opinion on things.

00:00:08.000 We'll get to that in a moment.

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00:00:28.000 subscribe. So yesterday at one o'clock in the afternoon, the president of the United States made a U-turn on his tariff policy.

00:00:34.000 He put out a statement on Truth Social that read, quote, Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the world's markets, I am hereby raising the tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125% effective immediately.

00:00:46.000 At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the United States and other countries is no longer sustainable or acceptable. 0.95

00:00:52.000 Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 countries have called representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the U.S. Trade Representative, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to trade trade barriers, tariffs, currency manipulation, and non-monetary tariffs, and that these countries have

00:01:07.000 not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90-day pause and a substantially lowered reciprocal tariff during this period of 10%, also effective immediately.

00:01:17.000 Thank you for your attention to this matter.

00:01:19.000 So that is in fact a U-turn for the President.

00:01:22.000 ...of the United States, who was suggesting just a couple of days earlier that there would be no postponement.

00:01:26.000 That was suggested by pretty much everybody in the president's cabinet.

00:01:29.000 It was said over and over and over again.

00:01:32.000 This is the right thing to do.

00:01:34.000 The president did the right thing here.

00:01:35.000 He reversed what was going to be a meltdown moment for the global markets.

00:01:40.000 And the question is why?

00:01:41.000 What made him reverse everything?

00:01:43.000 And the answer is pretty obvious.

00:01:45.000 Basically, the entire global economic system was shouting at him that he needed to reverse this tariff system that he was about to put into place.

00:01:53.000 Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan appeared on Fox Business specifically to message to the president because the president watches Fox News.

00:01:58.000 Jamie Dimon has essentially admitted as much.

00:02:01.000 Here he was Wednesday morning explaining that a tariff war would bring a almost certain recession.

00:02:05.000 Do you personally expect a recession?

00:02:09.000 I am going to defer to my economy to this point, but I think probably that's a likely outcome.

00:02:16.000 Okay, between him saying that and also the bond market completely Wrecking itself.

00:02:21.000 On Wednesday morning, the President of the United States saw the reality and he reversed himself.

00:02:27.000 The bond market sell-off that was initiated by President Trump's statements about tariffs, meaning that people started selling their bonds in the market.

00:02:35.000 They were so disquieted by what was happening that they realized they couldn't be in stocks.

00:02:39.000 The stock market was about to tank.

00:02:41.000 And they realized they couldn't shift their money over to bonds because inflation was going to kick in, which meant that the bonds would be worthless as inflation increased.

00:02:47.000 So bonds were not a safe haven.

00:02:49.000 And so people started selling their bonds off.

00:02:51.000 The bond yield spiked yesterday morning all the way up to the 30-year bond yield spiked all the way up to 5%, meaning that no one was buying bonds.

00:03:00.000 Everybody was selling bonds at a particular time.

00:03:03.000 And so the president of the United States did what he was supposed to do, and he saw reality, and he changed his mind.

00:03:08.000 That is the thing that actually happened.

00:03:10.000 And naturally, the stocks rallied.

00:03:12.000 So again, for all the people who believe that the stock market didn't matter five seconds ago, when the stock market was declining, we were told the stock market didn't matter.

00:03:19.000 And then when the stock market spiked after President Trump did this, we were told that the stock market now mattered an awful lot.

00:03:24.000 One of the same people who a moment ago were saying a giant global tariff war would actually be salutary and good for the United States, who then reversed themselves and said, actually, it was all part of the plan.

00:03:34.000 A tariff war would have been super bad, and we're glad the president actually planned it out this way.

00:03:38.000 Why don't we just get your position at the outset, and then we can tell whether you are fibbing or not in order to achieve a particular political end.

00:03:46.000 Okay, President Trump made that announcement, and naturally, the market spiked.

00:03:49.000 Of course, because everyone in the investment community, everybody who understands how basic economics 101 works, understood that when the president backed off of the most severe tariff regime in modern history, that that would spike the markets.

00:04:03.000 That was perfectly obvious.

00:04:04.000 I remember I was at the gym yesterday, working out, when this went down, and I was watching the stock tickers, and suddenly the markets jumped 2,000 points, and I turned and said to a friend, he must have paused the tariffs.

00:04:15.000 Because that was obviously the only reason that the markets would spike.

00:04:18.000 Which suggests that, again, the investment community is not stupid when it comes to, you know, investment and economics.

00:04:25.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, investors had spent nearly a week dumping everything American when seven minutes after markets opened on Wednesday, the president posted on social media it was time to buy.

00:04:33.000 By the day's end, U.S. stocks staged a historic rally after another Trump post announced a 90-day pause on some tariffs and signaled a willingness to negotiate on trade.

00:04:42.000 Wednesday's surge added a record $5.1 trillion in value.

00:04:45.000 To the market.

00:04:46.000 So, the president did what he was supposed to do.

00:04:49.000 He prevented a global market sell-off, a complete tanking.

00:04:53.000 President Trump then came out and he said, we will be making deals with every country that is not China.

00:04:57.000 Again, this is the thing that he should be doing.

00:05:00.000 Kudos to the president for doing the right thing and you turning on the policy that he announced last week with that corkboard.

00:05:06.000 Here he was.

00:05:08.000 Yeah, a deal can be made with every one of them.

00:05:10.000 A deal's going to be made with China.

00:05:13.000 A deal's going to be made with every one of them.

00:05:16.000 And they'll be fair deals.

00:05:17.000 I just want fair.

00:05:19.000 They will be fair deals for everybody.

00:05:24.000 Okay, so, that's what everybody's talking about.

00:05:26.000 That's what people want.

00:05:27.000 I said this literally the day that he announced the tariff regime.

00:05:31.000 That if it was a negotiating tactic to get everybody back to the table, then fine, but you actually have to say that.

00:05:36.000 And then you have to give people time to negotiate those deals.

00:05:38.000 I was not the only one saying this.

00:05:40.000 Of course, Elon Musk was saying this.

00:05:41.000 Bill Ackman was saying this.

00:05:42.000 A number of people.

00:05:43.000 We're saying this.

00:05:44.000 Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, who essentially talked the President into the reversal.

00:05:48.000 He louded the negotiating strategy yesterday.

00:05:52.000 We saw the successful negotiating strategy that President Trump implemented a week ago today.

00:05:59.000 It has brought more than 75 countries forward to negotiate.

00:06:03.000 It took great courage, great courage, for him to stay the course until this moment.

00:06:08.000 And what we have ended up with here, as I told everyone a week ago, in this very spot, do not retaliate, and you will be rewarded.

00:06:22.000 Okay, Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary who lost this argument, the Commerce Secretary Lutnick, He was the one who was arguing for these tariffs to basically remain.

00:06:30.000 He thought that was just good for the economy, period.

00:06:32.000 Besant always saw them as a way of achieving reciprocal tariffs.

00:06:36.000 Howard Letnick put out a statement.

00:06:37.000 Scott Besant and I sat with the president while he wrote one of the most extraordinary truth posts of his presidency.

00:06:41.000 The world is ready to work with President Trump to fix global trade, and China has chosen the opposite direction.

00:06:45.000 Okay, so the big argument that's now broken out online is whether this is all part of a 40 chess plan, an underwater, upside-down, hungry, hungry hippo's plan in order to somehow achieve A 5% drop in the markets, a 125% tariff on China, tremendous uncertainty with regard to investment futures and tariff deals with a bunch of countries that we could have called up on the phone.

00:07:07.000 Why does this matter?

00:07:08.000 The answer is it really doesn't.

00:07:09.000 It doesn't matter in one sense.

00:07:10.000 If the president gets to the right policy, I don't really care how he got to the policy, but he's getting to the right policy.

00:07:15.000 And again, I think there are two going theories here of what President Trump did.

00:07:19.000 Theory number one is the theory that I have posited.

00:07:21.000 The president lives in the world of reality.

00:07:23.000 Meaning, if he puts out a proposal, and that proposal does not work, he is not ideologically tied to his own proposal such that he is willing to undergo enormous pain in order to prove the veracity of his ideology.

00:07:35.000 So if he puts out a tariff plan, and it turns out the markets hate it, and it turns out people are calling him up day and night telling him it's a bad plan, and it turns out the bond market experiences a mass sell-off, that he reverses himself and then finds a better policy.

00:07:47.000 Which is one of the good things about, that's not a criticism of President Trump, that is a praise of President Trump.

00:07:51.000 That is good.

00:07:52.000 You don't want a president who keeps just driving off the cliff once it is clear that this thing is headed for a cliff.

00:07:57.000 You want him to change course.

00:07:58.000 The president made a U-turn.

00:08:00.000 That's a good thing.

00:08:01.000 The U-turn is not a sign of weakness.

00:08:02.000 The U-turn is a sign of strength.

00:08:04.000 Because making a U-turn in the middle of a bad policy shows that you are more interested in getting the right outcome than you are in your own perception of ego.

00:08:13.000 The U-turn matters.

00:08:14.000 It is a good thing.

00:08:15.000 And I think there's this bizarre setup in politics where if a politician Makes a mistake and then walks back the mistake.

00:08:22.000 Somehow, this is a sign of cuckery.

00:08:24.000 Somehow, this is a sign of weakness by the politician.

00:08:27.000 Or maybe it's a sign of strength because, number one, you can get away with it.

00:08:30.000 And number two, it shows that you actually care about the end outcome.

00:08:34.000 The argument I've made about President Trump over and over and over to people who would not vote for President Trump in the last election cycle is even if you don't like what President Trump is selling, he is utilitarian enough that if the outcome is likely to be bad, he will change his policy.

00:08:46.000 And that's exactly what you saw here.

00:08:48.000 So that's opinion number one.

00:08:49.000 And then there's opinion number two, which was, again, that this was 5D chess existing in dimensions beyond time and space, that it was all planned out, every element of this.

00:09:00.000 Now, in order for you to believe that every element of this was, in fact, planned out, you would have to believe that the president, a month ago, at his State of the Union, laid out a hardcore tariff regime in order to not do it within 13 hours after announcing that it was now in place,

00:09:18.000 a month later.

00:09:20.000 And that he couldn't have just achieved the actual goals that he achieved here without all this sort of manipulation.

00:09:26.000 So he would have to lay out a giant Liberation Day plan at the State of the Union address.

00:09:31.000 Then he would have to unleash gigantic tariffs based not on reciprocal tariff rates, but based on trade deficits that would include islands, including penguins.

00:09:40.000 And then you would have to have the stock market talk.

00:09:43.000 This is all necessary, right?

00:09:43.000 This is all part of the plan.

00:09:44.000 The stock market would have to tumble 10% and come to the precipice of complete nuclear meltdown.

00:09:49.000 You'd have to assume that President Trump then wanted his entire team to fight with each other publicly.

00:09:54.000 He would want Elon Musk calling Peter Navarro Peter Retardo and Peter Navarro calling President Trump and Peter Navarro calling Elon Musk a car assembler as opposed to a car manufacturer and Scott Besant and Howard Lutnick retailing completely different messages.

00:10:06.000 All of this was necessary to the plan.

00:10:09.000 And then, let the tariffs go into place to spark a bond market sell-off.

00:10:15.000 A historic bond market sell-off.

00:10:17.000 All to achieve a reversal of all of those things within 13 hours of implementing those things.

00:10:22.000 That would have to be the plan.

00:10:23.000 That would be the art of the deal sort of strategy here.

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00:12:38.000 Now again, I don't care whether it was the art of the deal, whether it was a plan or whether it was not a plan.

00:12:42.000 The only reason That it makes any difference at all, whether it was quote-unquote part of the plan or not part of the plan, is because the suggestion from people who say that it was all part of the plan is that if you criticize bad policy, somehow it undermines the plan.

00:12:53.000 But here's the thing.

00:12:55.000 If it was all part of the plan, you need people to criticize the bad policy so as to push the president into doing the reversal.

00:13:01.000 If it's all part of the plan, then so is the criticism.

00:13:04.000 Again, this is part of the problem with these very sophisticated theories of it was all part of the plan.

00:13:08.000 Okay, so it was all part of the plan except for what?

00:13:10.000 The people who said that it was bad policy?

00:13:12.000 So if those people had shut up, then he still would have done exactly the same thing.

00:13:16.000 Or maybe, or maybe the president, because he is a smart, capable man who is able to read tea leaves and see headlines and adjust and stick and move, because he's able to do that, actually, it is quite important that honest commentators actually say the thing.

00:13:32.000 That when a policy is bad, they say it's a bad policy.

00:13:34.000 And when a policy is good, they say it is a good policy.

00:13:37.000 Because otherwise you can't tell what the hell they think.

00:13:39.000 And you can't tell what is good policy and what is bad policy.

00:13:43.000 And so again, both of these lines are sort of being retailed.

00:13:46.000 And then the president, it turns out, just basically said, one of the things I love about President Trump, he's totally transparent.

00:13:51.000 He really is.

00:13:51.000 He's very, very transparent about the reasons he does, the things that he does.

00:13:55.000 So there were, again, multiple lines being retailed yesterday after the reversal.

00:14:00.000 One was that it was all part of the plan.

00:14:01.000 So Howard Letnick, the Commerce Secretary.

00:14:04.000 He said, no, no, no.

00:14:05.000 It wasn't the bond markets or the stock.

00:14:08.000 None of that made the president change his mind.

00:14:10.000 This is Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary.

00:14:12.000 Did the market reaction cause the administration to rethink its tariff plan?

00:14:19.000 Absolutely not.

00:14:21.000 Absolutely not.

00:14:21.000 The tariff plan...

00:14:23.000 For the president.

00:14:24.000 Look, he's trying to fix the fundamental trade imbalances that have been going on for this country for 35 years.

00:14:31.000 I mean, we were just in the Oval Office and he said, I don't blame China.

00:14:35.000 I blame the people who sat behind the desk of the Oval Office for letting this occur.

00:14:40.000 It is time to take back the ability to trade with America and Donald Trump is leading the charge to do that.

00:14:48.000 Okay, so apparently, according to Commerce Secretary Lutnick, the markets, the bond markets, nothing of this had any impact on Trump.

00:14:53.000 This is all part of the 40 hungry, hungry hippos upside down underwater chess plan.

00:14:58.000 And then Caroline Lovett, I understand, all these people work for the Trump administration, and so they have an interest in suggesting, of course, that this is all part of the plan.

00:15:06.000 I get it.

00:15:08.000 I get it, because they think that they have to project strength, and that if you say that it was all part of the plan, as opposed to the reality, which is that the president is utilitarian enough and smart enough to react to circumstance.

00:15:17.000 That somehow that undercuts him.

00:15:19.000 Again, I disagree, but I understand why they're doing it.

00:15:21.000 Here was Caroline Leavitt, White House press secretary, saying, you know, this is all the art of the deal.

00:15:25.000 Again, you'd have to assume that all of this was designed in order to achieve what?

00:15:30.000 That couldn't have been achieved by picking up the phone or just doing the tariffs on China.

00:15:35.000 Many of you in the media clearly missed the art of the deal.

00:15:39.000 You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.

00:15:42.000 You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moved closer to China, when in fact we've seen the opposite effect.

00:15:48.000 The entire world is calling the United States of America, not China, because they need our markets, they need our consumers, and they need this president in the Oval Office to talk to them.

00:16:00.000 Okay, we'll get to that in a minute, because what China's going to do next, what every other country's going to do next, still remains sort of an open question.

00:16:06.000 Yes, they want to negotiate an off-ramp with the United States to avoid these tariffs.

00:16:09.000 That doesn't necessarily mean that they are not also going to triangulate with China.

00:16:13.000 However, then there's the other theory, okay?

00:16:15.000 The theory that I have retailed, which is that the president changed his mind because the circumstances changed.

00:16:19.000 That he put in place a tariff regime that was unsustainable for the global economy, and the markets reacted.

00:16:26.000 As they do when they take in new information.

00:16:28.000 And then he saw the markets react and he didn't like it.

00:16:30.000 And as Exhibit A, in the explanation for his activity, that market activity, bond sell-offs, market sell-offs, criticism changed the President's opinion.

00:16:41.000 I present to you Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, saying exactly that yesterday.

00:16:46.000 So here is the President saying it.

00:16:49.000 Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line.

00:16:54.000 They were getting...

00:16:55.000 Yippee, you know?

00:16:56.000 We're getting a little bit yippee, a little bit afraid, unlike these champions, because we have a big job to do.

00:17:02.000 No other president would have done what I did.

00:17:06.000 Okay, and then the president went on to say the bond markets were getting queasy.

00:17:09.000 So, in other words, the people who are getting yippee and queasy shaped what exactly was happening with his opinion on that.

00:17:15.000 And if everybody else had stayed strong, then presumably he would have gone forward with the plan.

00:17:18.000 So if you're happy that he reversed the plan, which apparently Trump fans are today, as they should be.

00:17:24.000 Then what caused it?

00:17:27.000 This is a question because it does relate to who is trustworthy in the public space when you're talking about these issues.

00:17:35.000 The people who would be just as happy if he left the tariffs on or the people who are happy that he took the tariffs off and always thought he should take the tariffs off except for on China.

00:17:44.000 And again, President Trump just says the quiet part out loud.

00:17:46.000 He says it.

00:17:47.000 Again, the people who are positing that this was all part of the magical Ocean's Eleven plan.

00:17:54.000 All those people keep getting undercut by the fact that the President of the United States is telling them openly that that's not what happened.

00:17:59.000 Here was the President yesterday.

00:18:00.000 He said the stock market is doing great.

00:18:01.000 But wait, I thought five seconds ago that Wall Street and Main Street were in complete opposition.

00:18:05.000 We should pay no attention to the stock market. 0.99

00:18:06.000 They were just filled with a bunch of dullards and queasy yipsters. 1.00

00:18:11.000 There's a lot of winning out there, and we're having a good day in the stock market, as you can see. 0.95

00:18:15.000 An all-time record day, and hopefully it continues.

00:18:17.000 I think it should.

00:18:18.000 Our country's stronger than it's ever been.

00:18:21.000 And somebody had to do that with, we had to take the medicine.

00:18:25.000 We had to go through the operation, and that's what we've been through.

00:18:30.000 Okay, so, whether you think we had to go through the operation or we didn't have to go through the operation, bottom line is, we ended up in a spot that is a much better spot than we were in three days ago.

00:18:38.000 And again, all of the reporting suggests precisely the theory that the president changed where he was on this because of the reaction.

00:18:46.000 Again, that is a praise of the president, not a rip on him.

00:18:49.000 If the president changes his opinion for utilitarian reasons in order to achieve a better end goal, that's him being smart. 0.99

00:18:55.000 It would be stupid to continue running full speed into a wall in the name of Peter Navarro's benighted idiocy with regard to trade. 0.98

00:19:04.000 You don't need Ron Vera guiding you on trade, Mr. President. 0.99

00:19:08.000 If you want to see a real bull market, the president should fire Peter Navarro today if he wants to see an actual bull market run.

00:19:14.000 Charlie Gasparino at Fox News.

00:19:16.000 He was reporting from the White House.

00:19:18.000 He said, yeah, pretty clearly this was sparked by the bond market sell-off.

00:19:21.000 What happened in the bond market overnight, the spike in yields on the 30-year and the 10-year bond, which showed that people were dumping our bonds.

00:19:31.000 And who were those people dumping our bonds?

00:19:33.000 Japan. I mean,

00:20:01.000 historically speaking, this is correct.

00:20:03.000 He, of course, is exactly right.

00:20:05.000 When you're talking about bond yields dramatically spiking, very often that presages serious economic turmoil, downturns, and all the rest of the signals, an underlying real problem.

00:20:15.000 In fact, I asked my sponsor, Perplexity, about this.

00:20:19.000 I asked, quote, can you please provide historical examples of situations in which U.S. bond yields spike dramatically?

00:20:23.000 How often do they presage serious economic turmoil?

00:20:26.000 Perplexity says.

00:20:27.000 Historically, spikes in U.S. bond yields have often signaled economic stress or shifts in fiscal and monetary policy.

00:20:32.000 In some cases, they've preceded serious economic turmoil.

00:20:34.000 And then it gives a bunch of examples, including the 1980-81 inflation and Paul Volcker's rate hikes.

00:20:40.000 So bond yields surged because investors anticipated aggressive action by Paul Volcker to combat inflation, and he got a recession.

00:20:46.000 1993-94, the yields on 10-year treasuries rose from around 5% to 8% as bond traders reacted to increased government spending.

00:20:54.000 And what ended up happening?

00:20:56.000 Clinton ended up reversing.

00:20:57.000 He's got absolutely clocked in midterm elections in 1994.

00:21:00.000 Republicans won Congress for the first time in like 50 years.

00:21:03.000 And then he reversed his policy.

00:21:05.000 2009-2010, following the 2008 financial crisis, bond yields rose amid concerns over inflation and unsustainable debt levels.

00:21:11.000 And then the Federal Reserve had to step in.

00:21:14.000 2013, yields spiked after Ben Bernanke hinted at reducing quantitative easing.

00:21:20.000 2020-21, pandemic, it happened.

00:21:22.000 And then, of course, it just happened the other day.

00:21:25.000 So as Perplexity AI points out, while not all yield spikes lead directly to economic crises, they frequently signal underlying vulnerabilities in fiscal or monetary policy that may contribute to turmoil if left unaddressed.

00:21:35.000 In other words, bond yields don't spike for no reason at all.

00:21:38.000 There is a reason the bond yield spikes, and there's a reason why President Trump saw that and went, you know, maybe I should do a U-turn here.

00:21:44.000 Fox News also reported that even staffers in the White House were taken by surprise by President Trump's about-face.

00:21:49.000 So the idea, again, that this was like a well-thought-out plan with everybody involved.

00:21:53.000 Clearly not for the staffers of the White House.

00:21:56.000 Yo, this is really interesting what's happened.

00:21:58.000 I was actually the one who walked into lower press here.

00:22:01.000 That's where a number of the press communication folks are at the White House.

00:22:04.000 And I asked them, is it true a 90-day pause?

00:22:06.000 And they looked at me with blank stares.

00:22:07.000 I had to tell the press folks that the president had put on true social that he's considered the 90-day pause on tariffs.

00:22:13.000 So this is news to the White House.

00:22:16.000 The Wall Street Journal itself has a long report today on exactly why President Trump changed his opinion.

00:22:21.000 And he did.

00:22:22.000 Okay, let's be clear.

00:22:23.000 He changed his approach here.

00:22:24.000 Why did that happen?

00:22:25.000 Because he responds to reality.

00:22:27.000 He's a president who lives in reality.

00:22:30.000 And I don't know why this is so offensive to people who are big Trump fans.

00:22:33.000 That's a good thing.

00:22:34.000 And yet it's also offensive to people on the left who think that President Trump lives in fantasy land.

00:22:38.000 Clearly he does not.

00:22:38.000 He puts forward a proposal.

00:22:39.000 If the proposal breaks all the rules, and the rules were stupid, he maintains the proposal. 0.93

00:22:44.000 If it breaks all the rules and it turns out that things are going to crater, then he changes where he was. 0.93

00:22:49.000 And that's precisely what he did here.

00:22:51.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, quote, President Trump finally blinked.

00:22:54.000 It took a week for the plunge in the stock and bond markets, along with the sustained campaign by executives, lawmakers, lobbyists and foreign leaders to prompt Trump to roll back for 90 days, a major element of his sweeping tariff plan.

00:23:03.000 The president said the reaction to the tariffs was getting a bit yippy, like a nervous athlete unable to perform.

00:23:08.000 And he relied on his instincts to change course as he watched the bond market tank and listened to business leaders, including Jamie Dimon, expressed fears of recession.

00:23:15.000 The episode was classic Trump.

00:23:17.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, So,

00:23:36.000 So what exactly happened?

00:23:38.000 Quote, Besant was flooded with worried calls from Wall Street over the weekend and felt strongly he had to persuade Trump a pause was needed.

00:23:44.000 It wouldn't be a capitulation, Besant argued, because they were going to have so many deals.

00:23:47.000 He revealed little publicly about why the president and his team waited until Wednesday afternoon to enact it, with Trump saying he decided on the move Wednesday morning.

00:23:55.000 So he openly said he decided on a Wednesday morning.

00:23:58.000 It's all part of the plan, but he decided.

00:24:00.000 Besson said more than 75 countries have reached out seeking a deal to ease tariffs with Japan at the front of the queue.

00:24:05.000 One key to the change, Trump's decision to give Besson more authority within his team of trade advisors, people close to the discussion said, along with the talks on Sunday.

00:24:13.000 Besson flew down Sunday to Florida.

00:24:14.000 I reported on this yesterday.

00:24:16.000 Politico had reported on this.

00:24:17.000 Besson flew down Sunday to Florida and afterward was authorized to make comments publicly about deals, which heartened many people close to Trump who believed the Treasury Secretary could find an exit ramp.

00:24:25.000 And indeed, on Wednesday morning, as Scott Besson went out there and retailed deal after deal after deal, the markets were kind of roiling, but they had not yet dumped.

00:24:33.000 And I tweeted, Shortly before President Trump actually U-turned, I tweeted that Besant was single-handedly holding the markets up.

00:24:40.000 Because that was absolutely true.

00:24:41.000 If you were an investor and you were watching Howard Lutnick, you were selling.

00:24:44.000 And if you were watching Scott Besant, you were not selling.

00:24:46.000 And it was pretty much that simple.

00:24:47.000 Because Besant represented the off-ramps.

00:24:50.000 When the two men returned to Washington together on Air Force One, Besant encouraged Trump to focus on negotiations according to a person familiar with the conversation.

00:24:58.000 Another factor that made Trump more willing to relent on tariffs...was that so many countries are in negotiations with the administration.

00:25:03.000 Trump was also swayed by the stock market and the parade of business leaders expressing concerns about the tariffs.

00:25:08.000 So in other words, all the people who he labeled panic hands, who were in his ear telling him this was a bad idea, he listened to them, as he should have.

00:25:15.000 Over the past few days, executives and lobbyists had flooded White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles' phone according to a person close to her.

00:25:21.000 A White House aide noted it was standard for the President's Chief of Staff to field calls on his behalf.

00:25:25.000 The message delivered to Trump and his top advisors by chief executives was that they needed to find an off ramp.

00:25:31.000 He privately acknowledged his trade policy, Trump did, could trigger a recession, but said he wanted to be sure it didn't cause a depression, according to people familiar with the conversations.

00:25:39.000 Trump was also in listening mode.

00:25:40.000 Over the past few days, he has been asking friends and advisors about the markets, and he was indicating he was closely watching them.

00:25:46.000 Again, this is all the Wall Street Journal.

00:25:47.000 This is being reported.

00:25:48.000 At the White House on Wednesday, he had lunch with financier and investor Charles Schwab, and with Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who had warned Michigan was already feeling the impact of the tariffs throughout its automotive industry.

00:25:59.000 On Tuesday evening, Trump said he absorbed the bad news about the plummeting bond market.

00:26:02.000 Quote, I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.

00:26:05.000 He then watched Diamond's interview Wednesday morning with Maria Bartiromo.

00:26:09.000 That's when we played a few minutes ago.

00:26:10.000 During the interview, Diamond said a recession was a likely outcome.

00:26:13.000 Diamond has not had a substantive conversation with Trump for years, apparently, but his appearance on Fox Business had been in place for some time and Diamond knew Trump and his inner circle often watched Fox.

00:26:24.000 Trump told reporters he'd been thinking about pausing tariffs over the last few days.

00:26:27.000 Adding, quote, it probably came together early this morning, fairly early this morning.

00:26:31.000 We wrote it up from our hearts, Trump said.

00:26:33.000 We don't want to hurt countries that don't need to be hurt, and they all want to negotiate.

00:26:37.000 So, again, this idea that this was sort of like brilliantly negotiated all the way back a week ago or a month ago, it's not true, but that doesn't matter.

00:26:45.000 That's good.

00:26:45.000 It means he is listening to outside advice.

00:26:47.000 It means he's listening to the markets.

00:26:49.000 It means he watches the realities of the world, and these are all good things. 1.00

00:26:53.000 President Trump listened because he is not a stupid man. 0.99

00:26:55.000 He is a smart business person. 0.99

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00:29:10.000 And so now the off-ramp is becoming available.

00:29:12.000 Canada's Mark Carney, the Prime Minister, who replaced Justin Trudeau, he says that this is a welcome reprieve.

00:29:18.000 He put out a tweet, quote, This pause on reciprocal tariffs announced by President Trump is a welcome reprieve for the global economy.

00:29:22.000 As President Trump and I have agreed, the US President and Canadian Prime Minister will commence negotiations on a new economic and security relationship immediately following the federal election.

00:29:30.000 As part of today's announcement, the President has signaled that the US will engage in bilateral negotiations with a number of other countries.

00:29:35.000 This will likely result in a fundamental restructuring of the global trading system.

00:29:39.000 In that context, Canada must also continue to deepen its relationships with trading partners that share our values, including the free and open exchange of goods, services and ideas.

00:29:47.000 And

00:29:48.000 This election is importantly about who can best fight for Canadian families, workers, and businessmen at the negotiating tables with the United States and other potential partner countries.

00:29:56.000 So, that is Canada looking for an off-ramp.

00:29:59.000 The tariffs on China remain, and that is going to be the big sort of push down on the economy in the near future.

00:30:05.000 Now, that may be pain that is worthy of going through.

00:30:08.000 I've been an advocate of tariffing the living hell out of China for as long as I can remember. 1.00

00:30:12.000 I've said for years, I'm not even sure it was good policy in the 1970s for Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon to open China.

00:30:17.000 Maybe we should have just let them collapse from within instead of ushering them into the global trading system with the bizarre hope that this was somehow going to moderate their politics.

00:30:25.000 Instead, they've retained all of their authoritarianism, but they've also gained an enormous amount of global economic power.

00:30:33.000 With that said, the shock and awe of the tariffs that President Trump is putting on, those will have ramifications, there's no question.

00:30:39.000 The pre-markets, Really, really,

00:31:08.000 really hard.

00:31:10.000 So, Scott Pesant, he's going after China hard.

00:31:13.000 Again, I'm all in on this.

00:31:14.000 I think this is good.

00:31:14.000 I think we should be going after China hard.

00:31:16.000 The question is going to be the sort of approach that is being taken.

00:31:19.000 Is this a negotiating tactic?

00:31:21.000 What is the off-ramp with China if there is one?

00:31:24.000 Because there are risks that attend on upping the ante with China in this sort of dramatic, non-escalatory fashion, just kind of like ramping up to zero to 60 in 2.6 seconds.

00:31:34.000 Here's Scott Pesant going after China yesterday.

00:31:37.000 But in terms of escalation, unfortunately, the biggest offender in the global trading system is China. 0.95

00:31:44.000 And they're the only country who's escalated.

00:31:49.000 And I can tell the rest of the world that I'm not sure whether it was the prime minister or the economic minister in Spain made some comments this morning.

00:31:58.000 Oh, well, maybe we should align ourselves more with China.

00:32:02.000 That would be cutting your own throat.

00:32:07.000 So, Besant, again, is basically saying, choose China or choose us. 0.98

00:32:11.000 And then he says, we will keep slapping China. 0.94

00:32:13.000 This is yesterday after the U-turn and reversal by President Trump.

00:32:17.000 As I said a week ago today, don't retaliate.

00:32:21.000 Hold your ground.

00:32:22.000 Let's see what happens.

00:32:23.000 And China, they kept escalating and escalating. 0.58

00:32:28.000 And now they have 125% tariffs that will be effective immediately.

00:32:35.000 Okay, then he continued along these lines.

00:32:37.000 He says, listen, China can hurt us, but we're going to hurt them more in a trade war, which is true, actually. 1.00

00:32:43.000 In terms of certainty, we will see what China does, but what I am certain of, what I'm certain of is that what China is doing...

00:32:52.000 ...will affect their economy much more than it will ours because they have an export-driven, flood the world with cheap export models and the rest of the world now understands because when we put up our tariff wall, those exports are already flowing to the rest of the G7 and to the global south.

00:33:14.000 Okay, so, he's pointing out here that, again, we do an enormous amount of trade with Europe, we do an enormous amount of trade with the Global South.

00:33:20.000 Now, there are countries that trade much more with China than they trade with us.

00:33:23.000 Japan is one of those countries, for example.

00:33:26.000 Kind of approximately the same percentage of Japan's export market goes to the United States as goes to China.

00:33:31.000 They import significantly more from China, Japan does, than they import from the United States, for example.

00:33:37.000 However, there is, in fact, bipartisan consensus that China cheats.

00:33:40.000 And they do.

00:33:40.000 They steal intellectual property.

00:33:41.000 They make it impossible to do actual, solid, honest business in their country.

00:33:45.000 If you contravene their belief system, they will shut down your business and in some cases just steal your property.

00:33:51.000 Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin, no ally of the president, she was out there stumping against China yesterday on CNN. 0.85

00:33:58.000 I believe that China cheats, that the government there subsidizes industry, which creates an unlevel playing field for Wisconsin workers.

00:34:09.000 You know, Wisconsin is a state that makes things.

00:34:11.000 We're a big manufacturing state.

00:34:12.000 But when you have an unlevel playing field, you see the results.

00:34:17.000 We lose jobs.

00:34:18.000 We see China being able to undercut and underprice.

00:34:24.000 We see steel dumping, aluminum dumping.

00:34:26.000 I think it's absolutely appropriate to have targeted tariffs or countervailing duties when China cheats.

00:34:36.000 So, again, there's bipartisan consensus for this.

00:34:39.000 So what actually is going to happen next?

00:34:40.000 And this is one of the big questions.

00:34:41.000 And this, again, is why the market is roiled.

00:34:43.000 Because China does have tools it can use against the United States. 0.59

00:34:47.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the escalating trade conflict between the United States and China has reignited fears that Beijing could use financial markets to hit back at Washington.

00:34:54.000 China is one of the largest overseas owners of U.S. government debt.

00:34:58.000 There have long been fears that China could dump U.S. treasuries that make up a large chunk of its foreign exchange reserves.

00:35:03.000 China owned about $1.2 trillion in U.S. treasury securities in January.

00:35:08.000 But they might be able to actually own more because they have third parties that are buying them and all the rest.

00:35:12.000 U.S. government data showed China owned There's a bunch of stuff that China could try to do.

00:35:39.000 All of it would hurt China. 0.92

00:35:41.000 The real question is, Is there an off-ramp here for China that forces them to, for example, abide by IP regulations?

00:35:51.000 Is there some sort of goal that the United States is attempting to implement with regard to China?

00:35:55.000 Can we isolate China without actually provoking them into doing the biggest thing, which would be blockading Taiwan?

00:36:01.000 So one of the things that we do have to watch out for with regard to China is let's say we go to 125% tariffs, which we have on China, and let's say we maintain those.

00:36:08.000 And let's say everything goes swimmingly the way that I would want it to go.

00:36:12.000 We signed zero tariff agreements with Vietnam, with Japan, with South Korea.

00:36:15.000 We signed zero tariff agreements with the EU.

00:36:18.000 Suddenly, you basically have a free world trading system that excludes China.

00:36:21.000 And we start using the levers of financial power against China in the world markets in a much more severe way.

00:36:26.000 And China becomes more and more isolated.

00:36:28.000 well then you do run the risk that China at some point will attempt to blockade Taiwan as a negotiating chip against the rest of the world economy because they figure if they're in serious trouble anyway they may as well threaten to melt down the entire global economy by basically destroying the semiconductor industry.

00:36:43.000 That's something that China very well could do which is one of the reasons why you need a simultaneous military build-up and a stronger position in the in the Indo-Pacific region.

00:36:52.000 It's actually quite important.

00:36:54.000 I assume that's one of the reasons why the Trump administration is also pushing on the budget for $1 trillion Pentagon budget.

00:37:02.000 If you're going to box in China, you've got to box them in along every line, not just some lines. 1.00

00:37:07.000 It's also one of the reasons, by the way, why some people, or even China hawks, have suggested that going directly to 125% tariff on China, it would be better to go a little bit slower and sort of boil the frog more slowly.

00:37:20.000 Go to 20% tariffs, then go to 40% tariffs.

00:37:22.000 Allow people to reshore, gradually tighten the noose around China, and make it so that it buys us some time to actually up our game. 0.93

00:37:29.000 In the South China Sea, in the Taiwan Straits, before China tries to melt everything down if they feel too much pressure.

00:37:37.000 I mean, all this is complex.

00:37:38.000 The bottom line is that the situation that we are now in, that President Trump has put us in, is way better than the position we were in eight days ago when the President of the United States was announcing Liberation Day.

00:37:49.000 The markets, again, are nervous.

00:37:51.000 I understand the nervousness of the markets.

00:37:53.000 It's not clear what's going to happen with the trade deal.

00:37:55.000 It's not going to clear what happened.

00:37:57.000 Do these 10% blanket tariffs go away at any point?

00:37:59.000 What is the purpose of a 10% blanket?

00:38:00.000 Is that an emergency tariff?

00:38:02.000 That's still a very, very large tariff.

00:38:04.000 It's just not nearly as large as the tariffs that were going to be put on a moment ago.

00:38:07.000 That's why the markets are still hovering below where they were before President Trump announced the Liberation Day stuff.

00:38:12.000 So yeah, there was a big recovery yesterday, and there's a bit of a sell-off today.

00:38:16.000 We're not back to where we were before because, again, nervousness in the markets.

00:38:18.000 When you talk to investor types, they don't know what's coming down the pike.

00:38:21.000 There's too much uncertainty in the markets.

00:38:22.000 The next step for the Trump administration is to establish that certainty.

00:38:26.000 The next step for the Trump administration, start announcing trade deals like tomorrow.

00:38:31.000 He announced a 90-day postponement.

00:38:33.000 Get some good trade deals.

00:38:35.000 Explain how the tariffs on China are going to be implemented, what the future looks like.

00:38:40.000 Now you're all on the same page.

00:38:41.000 Now you have an administration where presumably you don't have internal battles and everybody is aimed in the same direction.

00:38:46.000 The president has shifted course, which is a very good thing.

00:38:49.000 Now let's hear the entire spell out, the entire rollout, and then you'll see a much more solid stock market, a much more sanguine investment community.

00:38:56.000 Joining us is Mary Margaret Olihan, our White House reporter.

00:38:59.000 She joined Pete Hegseth on a trip down to Panama.

00:39:01.000 She's getting her travel hours in.

00:39:03.000 Mary Margaret, thanks so much for joining the show.

00:39:06.000 Good morning, Ben.

00:39:07.000 Thanks so much for having me.

00:39:08.000 It's great to be here.

00:39:11.000 So, how was the beautiful country of Panama, and what was that experience like traveling with Pete Hegseth?

00:39:17.000 Well, this is one of the coolest trips I've ever been on, honestly.

00:39:20.000 We went down on Monday evening, flew down with the secretary to Panama.

00:39:24.000 It was a small group of reporters, and I was honored to be one of them.

00:39:28.000 And what was really interesting about this trip was we learned on the way down there that this...

00:39:33.000 ...trip was focused on protecting the Panama Canal from China.

00:39:37.000 And so Secretary Hegseth and his team had a little bit of a daunting task.

00:39:40.000 They had to convince Panama that it was in their interest, too, to protect the Panama Canal from China.

00:39:46.000 And so the Secretary and his team were really focused on making sure that all of the reporters understood what we were getting into, where we were going.

00:39:53.000 You know, this was a diverse group of reporters.

00:39:55.000 There was Breitbart, National Pulse, Reuters, and a military...

00:39:59.000 Defense publication and all of us were interested in finding out how this was going to go.

00:40:03.000 And it was interesting because the secretary and his team were a little cautiously optimistic, but they seemed like they too were ready for things to go in a couple different directions, but they were very eager and ready to get on the ground.

00:40:14.000 So we went down there and the secretary went to the Panama president's palace and engaged in a number of bilateral meetings.

00:40:21.000 With these Panamanian officials.

00:40:23.000 And the end result of this trip was that they came out of it with multiple agreements signed between the United States and Panama.

00:40:29.000 And they did, in fact, successfully convince the president of Panama and the minister of defense to agree to protect the Panama Canal from China.

00:40:37.000 So huge win.

00:40:38.000 Secretary Hegseth told us last night that this was a historic visit and that the effects of this visit will hopefully continue on throughout this administration and the next.

00:40:48.000 So part of these agreements, Ben, We're not only to protect the canal, but also to engage in sort of joint military exercises between the United States and Panama at places like Fort Sherman where they can engage in jungle training.

00:41:02.000 And Fort Sherman was a really cool old military base that the United States used to have and then turned over to Panama.

00:41:08.000 And it looks like that might be up and running again soon, and these soldiers will be able to participate in jungle training there, which is very cool and really neat to be on the ground and to see the secretary interacting with the troops in these places.

00:41:21.000 So I could go on and on about this for hours.

00:41:23.000 I'm not going to forget it anytime soon, but a very historic visit and so neat to be there while this diplomacy was in action.

00:41:31.000 So, Mary Margaret, for those who don't understand the situation with the Panama Canal, it is not that the United States needs total control over the Panama Canal.

00:41:38.000 I believe that what was negotiated was really about what happens at either end of the Panama Canal.

00:41:42.000 So basically, the Chinese were controlling essentially territory embassies.

00:41:47.000 They had a firm that was controlling one of the ends of the other end of the Panama Canal.

00:41:51.000 And I think the concern for the United States was, in case of a wartime scenario, China could essentially just sink things at either end of the canal and then prevent transit of American ships through.

00:41:59.000 Is that one of the major concerns?

00:42:02.000 Yes, absolutely.

00:42:03.000 And as we know, Ben, the Trump administration, one of its very highest concerns is the control that the Chinese Communist Party has throughout the world. 0.97

00:42:12.000 They've been paying very close attention to how China has interacted with Panama, with the Panama Canal, with Venezuela.

00:42:18.000 And as they watched these things and began to grow more and more concerned, President Trump put out a bunch of different statements on social media earlier this year saying that we were going to retake the Panama Canal.

00:42:29.000 And obviously some people thought this might be a dead serious assertion, that we might be going in with our military to retake the canal.

00:42:37.000 And I heard that there were some Panamanians that were concerned about this as well.

00:42:41.000 And so part of Secretary Hegseth and his team's job yesterday was to emphasize the importance of Panamanian sovereignty.

00:42:47.000 That the United States is not going to come in and take over the canal, but instead wants to work with Panama to ensure that the canal is actually safe from Chinese interference, and that the historic partnerships between Panama and the United States can grow and flourish and protect both of our countries' interests in a different way.

00:43:06.000 So it was a nuanced approach.

00:43:07.000 I think it was a very delicate situation to handle.

00:43:10.000 I did not envy the Secretary this task, but...

00:43:13.000 He was very optimistic when we spoke with him last night before he got on the plane and we all went with him back to D.C. It was very hot, by the way, 90 degrees down there and super humid.

00:43:23.000 And all of these military men are in their military uniforms and braving the heat.

00:43:28.000 And Hegsa told us, you know, I specifically asked him, are you worried about China's retaliation from these negotiations this week and this diplomacy?

00:43:36.000 And he looked me in the eye and said, no, not worried about it at all.

00:43:39.000 He said, we'll continue to stand our ground and we're going to move forward with the United States plans in this area.

00:43:45.000 And he was very confident.

00:43:47.000 So I think he'll be back here today at the White House, hopefully speaking with the president about these negotiations.

00:43:53.000 And as far as we know, this is going to go on into the future with more talks between Panama and the United States on how they can best secure both our countries' interests.

00:44:03.000 Well, Mary Margaret, really appreciate the time and congrats on another successful foray into the wilderness with members of the Trump administration.

00:44:10.000 Appreciate it.

00:44:11.000 Good to see you.

00:44:13.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:44:14.000 It's great to be here.

00:44:15.000 Okay. All of this also relies on the Republicans doing what they actually need to do with regard to taxes.

00:44:22.000 So the Congress has been attempting to negotiate a budget plan.

00:44:26.000 This is the big, beautiful bill.

00:44:28.000 The Senate budget.

00:44:29.000 Does not include many of the cuts that the House budget originally included, and so both houses of Congress are now sort of fighting with each other.

00:44:36.000 There was a press conference earlier on Thursday morning in which the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader got together and they talked about a commitment to, in fact, find cuts in the budget.

00:44:48.000 According to Politico, House Republicans cleared a key hurdle Wednesday afternoon toward advancing a budget framework.

00:44:53.000 Final adoption is far from certain.

00:44:55.000 The House voted 216 to 215.

00:44:56.000 Man, these margins are just non-existent.

00:44:59.000 On the rule to tee up floor debate on the Senate approved budget resolution and a vote on approval.

00:45:03.000 While many fiscal hawks said throughout the week they would vote against the budget itself, some of those holdouts are now working with a group of GOP senators to hammer out an agreement on spending cuts.

00:45:11.000 That burgeoning deal could boost House Republican support for the budget framework.

00:45:14.000 If the measure fails, it would be an embarrassing setback for the House GOP and for President Trump.

00:45:17.000 Trump himself is pushing very hard for the budget, as he should.

00:45:21.000 That budget does include a massive spending upgrade with regards to the Department of Defense.

00:45:26.000 Pete Hegseth posted from his personal account that,

00:45:32.000 P.S. We intend to spend every taxpayer dollar wisely on lethality and readiness.

00:45:36.000 That's a significant increase from the $892 billion funding Congress allocated for national defense programs this year.

00:45:41.000 Peace through strength requires an arsenal, pretty obviously.

00:45:46.000 President Trump said, quote, nobody's seen anything like it.

00:45:48.000 We have to build our military.

00:45:50.000 We're very cost conscious.

00:45:51.000 Military is something that we have to build.

00:45:52.000 We have to be strong because you have a lot of bad forces out there now.

00:45:55.000 That, of course, is true. 0.83

00:45:57.000 Meanwhile, again, there's significant negotiation going on between the House and the Senate with regard to this budget bill.

00:46:07.000 Members of the House would like to see more cuts embedded.

00:46:11.000 Members of the Senate just want to get something done.

00:46:15.000 GOP holdouts forced a delay in a vote on the Trump budget plan yesterday.

00:46:18.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Republican leaders postponed a vote on the blueprint for President Trump's big, beautiful bill, throwing the GOP legislative agenda into temporary uncertainty as they try to find a path forward on tax cuts and spending.

00:46:28.000 A handful of hard right conservatives resisted the pleas from Republican leaders and Trump who had urged wavering House members to close your eyes and get there.

00:46:35.000 The holdouts argued the plan that came out of the Senate on Saturday did not lock in enough spending cuts alongside extensions of those expiring tax cuts.

00:46:42.000 Key members of the holdout group met with top Republican senators and then with Mike Johnson for more than an hour.

00:46:47.000 Those sessions yielded progress.

00:46:48.000 According to lawmakers, they did not produce enough of a breakthrough to get the budget adopted on Wednesday.

00:46:53.000 The big beautiful bill is going to happen because if it doesn't, then the economy really will dump.

00:46:56.000 If it turns out that the tax cuts that President Trump put into place in his first term are not extended and reinstated, then of course the economy is going to sink pretty significantly.

00:47:07.000 Meanwhile, President Trump was in a good mood the rest of the day yesterday after having announced the reversal on the tariff plans.

00:47:14.000 He signed an executive order restoring the ability of Americans to get high-pressure showerheads, which, you know, This alone is worth your vote for President Trump.

00:47:25.000 There's nothing worse than low water pressure in a shower.

00:47:28.000 It is just awful.

00:47:28.000 Here's the President signing one of the most significant of his executive orders.

00:47:33.000 With this executive order, we're effectively going to be reversing that set of regulations to ensure that Americans have choice in the consumer market.

00:47:41.000 If they want a low-flow showerhead, they can buy one.

00:47:43.000 If they want a real-deal showerhead, they should have the ability to get one.

00:47:47.000 That's true.

00:47:48.000 You buy a new house, you pay a lot of money, and the developers, you're not allowed to do anything more.

00:47:54.000 They put restrictors on.

00:47:55.000 They used to have a restrictor where you could take it out, but now they weld it in.

00:47:59.000 And you take a shower, wash your hands, whatever you do, including dishwashers when no water comes out, but you wash your hands, and in my case, I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair.

00:48:12.000 I have to stand in the shower for 15 minutes until it gets wet.

00:48:16.000 It comes out drip, drip, drip. 0.88

00:48:18.000 It's ridiculous. 0.98

00:48:22.000 He's right about that. 0.98

00:48:23.000 Those low-flow shower heads are indeed the worst.

00:48:27.000 Also, yesterday, The Senate did confirm the appointment of Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas.

00:48:33.000 As the ambassador to Israel, Huckabee is an amazing pick.

00:48:37.000 He will be terrific.

00:48:38.000 He has all the right principles on this particular subject.

00:48:42.000 President Trump then made one of the better jokes of his presidency, actually.

00:48:45.000 And that's saying a lot.

00:48:46.000 He's a super funny guy.

00:48:47.000 Here he was yesterday making a joke about Mike Huckabee's appointment.

00:48:50.000 And then we also have a transmittal letter to the president of Israel.

00:48:56.000 Requesting that he accept Governor Huckabee's, or excuse me, Ambassador Huckabee's credentials.

00:49:03.000 He's going to be fantastic.

00:49:05.000 He's going to bring home the bacon.

00:49:08.000 Even though bacon isn't too big it is yet.

00:49:12.000 I had to clear that up.

00:49:19.000 Good stuff there from the President.

00:49:21.000 President Trump also reiterated yesterday.

00:49:23.000 That with regard to the negotiations that are supposed to take place with Iran over the weekend, that they better get on board or bad things are going to happen.

00:49:30.000 This, of course, is the right approach to Iran. 1.00

00:49:34.000 Peace through strength remains the only solid foreign policy approach.

00:49:40.000 You said the other day that if they do not agree to a potential nuclear deal, that it would be very dangerous for them.

00:49:47.000 What specifically did you mean?

00:49:49.000 Did you mean military action, though, if they don't agree?

00:49:52.000 Oh, if necessary?

00:49:54.000 Absolutely. Yeah.

00:49:57.000 Yeah, what's Iran going to do? 0.65

00:50:15.000 Attack Hawaii?

00:50:16.000 This president authorized the killing of Qasem Soleimani.

00:50:19.000 And it resulted in zero repercussions from the Iranians, because it turns out Iran is a particularly weak state that does not have projective power against the United States.

00:50:28.000 If they get a nuclear weapon, a lot of that changes.

00:50:31.000 That's President Trump's whole point.

00:50:33.000 And meanwhile, the president should be avoiding distractions.

00:50:36.000 Again, I've been saying since he was elected, before he was elected, that if this administration does all the things President Trump wants it to do, that is only going to happen if distractions are avoided.

00:50:47.000 And that means avoiding the sort of water torture that is drips and drops of action that are unpopular with the American people because the way that relationships go bad is a bunch of smaller things and then the floor goes out and there isn't enough goodwill to hold up the relationship with the politician.

00:51:04.000 Yesterday, the president announced that he was revoking the security clearance as belonging.

00:51:08.000 To former CISA leader Chris Krebs and also ex-DHS official Miles Taylor.

00:51:12.000 Now, Miles Taylor is a bit of a different story because Miles Taylor was writing anonymous op-eds from inside the Trump administration while the president was the president.

00:51:19.000 Chris Krebs is a bit of a different story.

00:51:21.000 So Chris Krebs is an appointee of President Trump, and he was leading the cybersecurity agency.

00:51:28.000 It's not just that he decided that he was going to revoke security clearances, which of course he has the power to do.

00:51:32.000 He also signed an executive order calling for the DOJ to investigate their...

00:51:37.000 So again, Taylor was the chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary during the first Trump administration.

00:51:44.000 Then he started writing anonymous accounts ripping into President Trump.

00:51:48.000 He fired Krebs by tweet after Krebs fact-checked the president and said that the 2020 election was the most secure in American history.

00:51:55.000 Trump called Krebs a wise guy, a fraud, and a disgrace during Wednesday's signing.

00:52:01.000 I'm not sure that any of that is criminal.

00:52:03.000 Here he was instructing the DOJ to investigate.

00:52:06.000 His own former cybersecurity head.

00:52:09.000 This is an honor.

00:52:11.000 We're going to find out whether or not he was right.

00:52:14.000 This was a disgraceful election.

00:52:16.000 And this guy sat back saying, well, I'm a member or like he's a Republican or something.

00:52:22.000 And right, almost right from the beginning.

00:52:25.000 And he he's tried to make the case that this election was a safe election.

00:52:32.000 I think he said this is the safest election we've ever had.

00:52:36.000 And yet every day you read in the papers about more and more fraud that's discovered.

00:52:41.000 He's the fraud. 1.00

00:52:42.000 He's a disgrace. 0.99

00:52:43.000 So we'll find out whether or not it was a safe election. 0.98

00:52:46.000 And if it wasn't, he's got a big price to pay.

00:52:51.000 So again, this sort of stuff is a distraction and it's a mistake by the president.

00:52:55.000 He should not be sicking the DOJ on people who have a different opinion about the 2020 election.

00:53:03.000 Again, including people who are inside his own administration.

00:53:05.000 Even if you disagree with Chris Krebs' viewpoint on this, that doesn't make it criminal activity.

00:53:09.000 And if it's bad when the Democrats do it to President Trump, you know, using the DOJ to simply go after political opponents is not good when President Trump does it either.

00:53:17.000 All right, folks, now it's time for a segment that we are now initiating in which I break down a terrible argument of the week piece by piece.

00:53:23.000 Today's featured takedown is John Oliver from HBO.

00:53:28.000 Somehow that dude still has a show.

00:53:29.000 Not sure why, but he did an entire monologue this week.

00:53:32.000 About why men who want to play with ladies in sports should be allowed to do so.

00:53:37.000 It is not a good argument, so let's go through it.

00:53:39.000 This is The Takedown. 1.00

00:53:42.000 The stupidest segment of the week. 1.00

00:53:45.000 It comes courtesy of John Oliver, who should immediately have his citizenship revoked and he should be deported. 1.00

00:53:50.000 I understand.

00:53:51.000 He's a citizen now.

00:53:52.000 I don't know why we gave him citizenship, truly.

00:53:54.000 I don't know what he added to the country, except for obnoxious smarminess and a British accent. 1.00

00:53:59.000 He did one of the dumber... 0.99

00:54:02.000 Monologues the other night I've ever seen. 1.00

00:54:04.000 John Oliver is so trapped inside the left-wing echo chamber that he actually believes that it's necessary for him to defend the idea that men should punch women in a boxing ring.

00:54:12.000 That quote-unquote trans athletes must be allowed to play with members of the opposite biological sex. 0.93

00:54:19.000 And in order to make this claim, he somehow has to square the circle of pretending that men playing with women is not unfair to the women.

00:54:26.000 Which means he now has to pretend that actually men are not better at sports than women.

00:54:30.000 Here we go.

00:54:31.000 When it comes to trans athletes who've medically transitioned, studies of cis athletes are not necessarily relevant.

00:54:37.000 A lot of medical gender-affirming treatments, like hormone therapy, have a meaningful impact on body and hormone composition.

00:54:43.000 So the question then becomes, what do those impacts mean for athletic performance?

00:54:48.000 We spoke to scientists on all sides of this issue, and the one thing they actually agree on is that in part because the number of trans athletes is so small, the body of research specifically about them is extremely limited.

00:55:00.000 Okay, pause it there for a second.

00:55:03.000 Okay, first of all, this is amazing.

00:55:05.000 I love this.

00:55:05.000 Okay, so, he's like, you know, we can't look at studies that say that men are stronger than women.

00:55:09.000 Because we're now talking about men who have had a bunch of hormone treatments.

00:55:13.000 So we don't know.

00:55:15.000 And so we have to look at the studies of men who have had hormone treatments.

00:55:18.000 But there are no studies.

00:55:20.000 Therefore, men who have hormone treatments don't have any sort of accessibilities over women.

00:55:24.000 Therefore, they should be allowed to play with women. 1.00

00:55:26.000 This is a classic in the genre of absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence.

00:55:31.000 In other words, absence of evidence that men with hormone treatments have an advantage over women does not mean evidence of absence of that advantage.

00:55:40.000 This is like a classic logical fallacy in which he is engaging right here.

00:55:44.000 So he's like, we can't look at these studies that say that men are stronger than women.

00:55:47.000 We have to look at the non-existent studies.

00:55:49.000 But those studies don't exist, and therefore men don't have an advantage over women.

00:55:53.000 Okay, my dude, that is not how logic works.

00:55:57.000 ...studies comparing specific anatomical features like muscle mass in women who transition but which don't directly speak to their impact on athletic performance, but we were only able to find 12 studies that actually tested trans adult women's physical fitness in a lab or other performance scenario.

00:56:12.000 Eight have a sample size of less than 20. And two are of a single athlete.

00:56:17.000 And look, I don't have any scientific experience, even though I look like a cross between a scientist and the profoundly sick mice he's studying, but you probably shouldn't draw broad conclusions off a sample size of one.

00:56:30.000 Those 12 studies generally find that medically transitioning does impact trans women's performance, but disagree on how or by how much.

00:56:38.000 That researcher you saw earlier.

00:56:40.000 Okay, pause it there.

00:56:41.000 This is hilarious.

00:56:42.000 Again, this is hilarious.

00:56:42.000 He's laying out a bunch of studies that don't support his own position, but then he's dismissing the studies because the sample size is too small.

00:56:49.000 So he has literally cited zero evidence for his proposition so far.

00:56:53.000 And somehow he's going to magic that into the idea that men playing against women is somehow fair.

00:56:58.000 Actually published the only longitudinal study to date of multiple athletes studying the impact of transitioning on eight long-distance runners.

00:57:06.000 She found after at least a year on hormone therapy, their race times turned out to be more athletically similar to those of cisgender women. 0.95

00:57:13.000 It is undoubtedly true that trans women will maintain advantages in some sports.

00:57:32.000 Probably not so much in endurance sports, but in size and strength sports.

00:57:38.000 Trans women will also have... 1.00

00:57:41.000 Some physiological disadvantages.

00:57:44.000 Our larger frames are now being powered by reduced muscle mass and reduced aerobic capacity, and that can lead to disadvantages in terms like quickness, recovery, endurance, things that maybe aren't quite as obvious as being bigger and stronger.

00:57:59.000 Right, bigger and stronger bodies are not automatically advantaged in every scenario.

00:58:03.000 I mean, put the rock in a pure bar class and see what happens.

00:58:07.000 I mean...

00:58:09.000 Okay, pause it for a second.

00:58:15.000 I just gotta say, he has still provided no evidence to the proposition that it's fair for men to play with the ladies.

00:58:21.000 We should point out that the expert he is citing is a former man, meaning a man.

00:58:26.000 This is a person named Joanna Harper.

00:58:28.000 Joanna Harper transitioned to female in 2004-2005.

00:58:35.000 Joanna Harper is... 0.72

00:58:37.000 In his 60s.

00:58:40.000 And he cites his proudest athletic achievement as running a 223 marathon as a young man.

00:58:47.000 And that's the person who's being cited as the unbiased source on trans athletes in opposite sex sports.

00:58:57.000 Does this go anywhere?

00:58:58.000 I mean, the answer is it goes nowhere.

00:58:59.000 The answer is it goes nowhere.

00:59:01.000 He just continues to argue based on no evidence that it's totally fair for men to play with the ladies because he says so, essentially.

00:59:10.000 After having come up with zero evidence to the proposition that it's fair for men to play with the women, he then says it shouldn't be an issue anyway because no man is transitioning just to play with the women.

00:59:19.000 Which is weird because there actually are a bunch of men who are transitioning to play with the women.

00:59:25.000 By this I mean not that they would not do whatever they are doing, hormone treatments and surgery.

00:59:30.000 in the absence of playing athletics,

00:59:38.000 They could continue to race with the men, but they would lose.

00:59:43.000 And you don't see a lot of women who are transitioning into quote-unquote men who are desperate to play with the men, I noticed.

00:59:51.000 It's kind of weird, isn't it?

00:59:52.000 You don't see a lot of women who are like, you know what? 1.00

00:59:54.000 I'm cutting off my breasts and I'm having a fake penis attached, and now I want to box the men. 1.00

00:59:59.000 It never happens. 1.00

01:00:00.000 I wonder why.

01:00:01.000 It's strange.

01:00:02.000 So here's John Oliver moving away from his zero evidence to his proposition that the only reason you would care about...

01:00:08.000 Why are you even noticing?

01:00:09.000 Why do you even care?

01:00:10.000 Like, sure, there are people doing this, but they're not doing it because they want to beat up on the women. 0.99

01:00:14.000 What does that matter to the women? 1.00

01:00:16.000 Why should the women care about the motivation for why a gigantic man like Leah Thomas is now racing against Riley Gaines? 0.99

01:00:22.000 Why should Riley Gaines care what the motivation is?

01:00:24.000 She now has to race against a dude who was a low-ranked male swimmer but blows the other women out of the water because he's a dude.

01:00:32.000 The thing is, hypotheticals like that circulate constantly and often centre around someone transitioning solely to gain a competitive advantage.

01:00:41.000 But as this trans researcher points out, that is an absurd proposition.

01:00:45.000 Trans women don't transition for sports. 1.00

01:00:50.000 No one has ever said, oh yeah.

01:00:55.000 I think I'd like to be a woman so I can do well in women's sports. 1.00

01:00:59.000 When you go through a gender transition, you lose so many things in life. 1.00

01:01:04.000 My own mother said she never wanted to speak to me again.

01:01:08.000 I lost friends, family, got divorced.

01:01:11.000 You'd go through all of that just to win a medal in sports?

01:01:15.000 No. Trans people transition because it's the only way that we can live happily. 1.00

01:01:23.000 Right. No one says, I'm going to transition just for the sake of sports.

01:01:27.000 The same way no one says, could you please send me more messages about two-factor authentication?

01:01:33.000 Or, when I walk down the aisle, I'd like a solo violin cover of a bar with a bar by Kid Rock.

01:01:37.000 That is just a made-up person.

01:01:40.000 Still, let's...

01:01:42.000 Okay, pause it there.

01:01:42.000 Who cares?

01:01:44.000 Who cares?

01:01:45.000 Who cares about the motivation of the person who wants to play with the ladies? 1.00

01:01:48.000 I mean, by the way, you can have two different motivations.

01:01:50.000 A motivation to, you know... 1.00

01:01:53.000 Add some fake boobs and cut off your penis, and that might be a very different motivation than the motivation for wanting to play with the ladies now that you are bigger and stronger than all the ladies. 1.00

01:02:00.000 It doesn't have to be the same motivation. 1.00

01:02:03.000 That's silly. 0.95

01:02:04.000 And reductive. 0.98

01:02:05.000 But silly and reductive is... 0.96

01:02:07.000 That should actually be the name of John Oliver's show. 0.99

01:02:08.000 Silly and Reductive, starring John Oliver.

01:02:12.000 underlying premise of that question from the world's most famous sports cheater, that those assigned male at birth are automatically going to have certain immutable physical advantages.

01:02:21.000 That gets raised constantly, which is why we're going to spend most of our time talking about trans women and girls, even though in these five states, these bans impact trans boys in schools, too.

01:02:32.000 It is obviously true that on average, cisgender men and post-pubescent boys have some specific athletic performance advantages, though the relative size of that advantage also depends on the sport and the event in swimming.

01:02:45.000 For instance, male athletic performance advantage is roughly 13% in the 50-meter freestyle, but less than 6% in the 1,500-meter free, which is still clearly significant.

01:02:58.000 That wasn't the argument.

01:03:08.000 No, the thing that gets implied is that if you are looking at the ends of the bell curve, which is where top athletic performance happens, The end of the bell curve.

01:03:15.000 Not the average.

01:03:16.000 The ends of the bell curve.

01:03:17.000 If you have men who have transitioned into women at the end of the bell curve, they are almost always going to out-compete women because they're at the end of the bell curve. 0.97

01:03:26.000 By necessity. 0.97

01:03:27.000 And by the way, you can make this dumb argument about anything. 0.94

01:03:30.000 Why should we have age ranges in sports? 0.98

01:03:33.000 Seriously. Why not have a bunch of 12-year-old little leaguers play the major leaguers in baseball?

01:03:37.000 Because, I mean, every so often you might have a 12-year-old who's huge, like a gigantic 12-year-old kid, who can actually hit the ball.

01:03:43.000 I mean, hey, if the bell curves overlap at all, then probably we should probably, you know, just get rid of the categories entirely.

01:03:48.000 We should do this with everything.

01:03:50.000 Makes perfect sense. 1.00

01:03:52.000 Or maybe what you're saying is stupid. 1.00

01:03:55.000 Because it is entirely stupid. 1.00

01:03:57.000 Then, of course, he gets mad at Mike Johnson because Mike Johnson cited Scripture to the effect that men and women exist. 0.99

01:04:01.000 You don't have to cite Scripture to the effect that men and women exist, but Scripture does in fact say it. 0.99

01:04:04.000 And Scripture has a much better record than John Oliver and his stupid glasses. 0.99

01:04:09.000 It is not just about denying trans women the right to play. 1.00

01:04:13.000 It's about denying them the right to exist.

01:04:16.000 Mike Johnson basically said as much after the House passed its ban on trans athletes when he said this.

01:04:21.000 We know from scripture and from nature that men are men and women are women and men cannot become women. 0.98

01:04:29.000 That's right, Mike.

01:04:30.000 As scripture tells us, men are men and women are women and God is his own son and some mothers are virgins and some mothers-in-law are pillars of salt and some daughters are sex partners and colorful coats of dream tellers and brothers are murderers but also brothers are backup husbands for wives and babies can be for splitting in half and water is wine and also with you,

01:04:47.000 sorry, and with your spirit.

01:04:52.000 And so, making fun of the Bible, good times from John Oliver.

01:04:55.000 You'll notice that he completely elides Speaker Johnson's statement, And nature.

01:05:00.000 So he's saying, for those who believe in the Bible, the Bible says this.

01:05:03.000 And for those who don't, there's a thing called nature, which is the thing John Oliver is ignoring.

01:05:07.000 But then he does get to dunk on his peculiarly simplistic read on the Bible, which I'm sure has made him a very happy person.

01:05:16.000 Deliberately misinterpreting biblical scripture and religious belief.

01:05:20.000 And good for you.

01:05:21.000 That particular argument isn't played out at all.

01:05:23.000 Just making fun of miracle stories in the Bible.

01:05:26.000 No one's ever tried that before, John.

01:05:28.000 Wow. Unique.

01:05:29.000 Unique brand of humor.

01:05:30.000 Well, John Oliver is clearly not the brightest bulb in the basket.

01:05:36.000 But, you know, at least he somehow parlayed that into an American citizenship without having to pay President Trump $5 million.

01:05:41.000 So I guess good for him on that score.

01:05:43.000 Alrighty, folks.

01:05:44.000 Coming up, we're going to jump into the mailbag.

01:05:46.000 Remember, the only way to have your question answered or to see my answers is to become a member.

01:05:50.000 Head on over to Daily Wire.

01:05:51.000 Plus, become a member.

01:05:52.000 Use code Shapiro.

01:05:53.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - April 10, 2025

TRUMP U-TURN WIN: Tariff War Paused, China Isolated!

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