The Ben Shapiro Show - UNHINGED: Top Democrats Label ICE The Enemy

00:00:00.000 Alrighty, we'll get to the latest in Minneapolis, where the state government of Minnesota seems to be threatening the federal government under Tim Wall's astonishing stuff.

00:00:08.000 The rhetoric of the left with regard to ICE keeps ratcheting up.

00:00:11.000 And the latest in Iran, plus, we're joined by the Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright.

00:00:15.000 Big show for you today.

00:00:16.000 For decades, Americans have been taught a version of history designed to shame them, silence them, make certain questions off-limits.

00:00:21.000 Well, that ends right now.

00:00:23.000 Matt Walsh's new series, Real History with Matt Walsh, premieres Monday, January 19th, exclusively on Daily Wire Plus.

00:00:29.000 This series confronts the lies, emissions, and propaganda baked into the history you were told, not to challenge.

00:00:33.000 And it starts with one of the biggest myths of all.

00:00:36.000 Here's your first look at episode one: I thought I knew the story of slavery, who the villains were, who the victims of it.

00:00:42.000 I realized almost everything I've been told was a lie.

00:00:45.000 Why do they always avoid the inconvenient fact that Africans sold the slaves to Europeans? 0.99

00:00:50.000 What were those African kingdoms like?

00:00:52.000 In what grade will we learn about the millions of white Europeans dragged off in chains by North African pirates while the world looked away?

00:00:59.000 Wins the lecture on black slaveholders in the South.

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00:01:02.000 The history they don't teach in public schools.

00:01:05.000 It's real history with Matt Walsh.

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00:01:09.000 Season one of Real History with Matt Walsh premieres, Monday, January 19th.

00:01:13.000 Join now at dailywireplus.com.

00:01:16.000 So, the situation in Minnesota continues to roil.

00:01:20.000 We are looking at the very real possibility of a standoff between the state government led by Tim Walz, the former vice presidential candidate under Kamala Harris and current governor, who just had to step away from a third-term run in Minnesota because of all of the allegations of fraud with which he was caught up.

00:01:39.000 A standoff between that government and the federal government.

00:01:42.000 That is something now being pushed very hard by Tim Walz, even as new details emerge as to who is behind the Minneapolis ICE resistance movement.

00:01:51.000 And new details emerge about Renee Goode, who is the woman who was shot and killed by an ICE officer while apparently in the process of either attempting to escape ICE or to possibly run down an officer who was essentially on the front left bumper of her vehicle.

00:02:07.000 According to the New York Post, Renee Goode, the mom who was killed by a federal agent after veering her car toward him, was an anti-ICE warrior and was part of a group of activists who worked to document and resist the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, according to the New York Post.

00:02:20.000 Now, of course, obstruction of the law enforcement community in its pursuit of the enforcement of law is in and of itself a crime.

00:02:28.000 Good moved to the city last year, linked up with anti-ICE activists through her six-year-old son's Woke Charter School, which boasts that it puts social justice first and prioritizes, quote, involving kids in political and social activism.

00:02:40.000 So, I mean, number one, if you decide that you need to give up your life in pursuit of mildly hindering ICE in finding illegal immigrants from Somalia and deporting them, and you have a child at home, these are bad life decisions.

00:02:56.000 Truly, a mother named Lisa, whose child attends the same school, said she was a warrior.

00:03:01.000 She died doing what was right.

00:03:03.000 I know she was doing the right thing.

00:03:04.000 I watched the video plenty of times, but I also know in my heart, the woman she was, she was doing everything right.

00:03:09.000 Well, again, I think it's very difficult to make the case that she was doing everything right when this happened.

00:03:15.000 The very least, resisting law enforcement is a foolish move.

00:03:20.000 And again, this seems to me more like a tragedy than like a quote-unquote act of terror by the woman who was driving the car by Renee Good.

00:03:29.000 With that said, when you resist the police and when you create a situation in which the officer has a reasonable perception that you are trying to run him down with your motor vehicle, you getting shot is a predictable outcome of this thing.

00:03:41.000 Goode and her wife Rebecca Forty were raising the boy together in the mostly working-class, activist-heavy neighborhood of South Minneapolis, which features tree-lined streets and a large number of homes with windows decked out in LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign flags or signs depicting George Floyd.

00:03:56.000 Just as many others did in the lefty enclave, Good sends her son to a place called Southside Family Charter School, according to the New York Post.

00:04:02.000 That is a K through 5 academy opened in 1972 that from its inception has been unabashedly dedicated to social justice education, according to the co-founder, a person named Susie Oppenheim.

00:04:13.000 So she became involved in something called Ice Watch, which is a loose coalition of activists dedicated to disrupting ICE operations in the city.

00:04:22.000 Apparently, current event topics like the killing of George Floyd were regular parts of the curriculum.

00:04:26.000 Last month, students took a field trip where they learned about Aboriginal issues, a reference to the Indigenous people of faraway Australia.

00:04:35.000 So apparently, she was trained, quote, against these ICE agents, what to do, what not to do.

00:04:40.000 It's a very thorough training.

00:04:41.000 ICE Watch and adjacent groups can also turn confrontational with numerous instances of activists ramming agents with their cars in the past.

00:04:50.000 So, yes, this person was, in fact, a radical activist.

00:04:58.000 And she was a stay-at-home mother of three who dabbled in poetry.

00:05:03.000 And this is being portrayed by the media as having very little to do with activism, but apparently it has an awful lot to do with activism.

00:05:10.000 The New York Post also has a report today on who is behind the Minneapolis ICE resistance movement.

00:05:17.000 According to the New York Post, radical leftist groups, including one financed with $7.8 million from wait for it, progressive billionaire George Soros are behind the anti-ICE protests in Minnesota.

00:05:28.000 Indivisible Twin Cities, which describes itself as a grassroots group of volunteers, has led many of the protests against ICE raids in Minnesota.

00:05:38.000 And that is an offshoot of something called the Indivisible Project in Washington, D.C., which is a movement to defeat the Trump agenda, according to the Open Society Foundation, which granted it something close to $8 million.

00:05:48.000 That group was also behind the recent protests in favor of Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela and the No Kings demonstrations against the Trump administration throughout the country last year.

00:05:57.000 Again, there seems to be some contradiction between no kings and also yes, Venezuelan dictators.

00:06:03.000 Other protest leaders include, wait for it, the Council on American Islamic Relations, an anti-Israel group whose Minnesota chapter's executive director, Jaylani Hussein, has railed against ICE at protests.

00:06:15.000 And the coalition of people who believe that Western civilization must be torn out by its roots is quite strong.

00:06:22.000 It continues to march the scavengers that I talk about in my book.

00:06:24.000 They are quite real.

00:06:26.000 And that coalition is well-funded.

00:06:29.000 Well, as all of this happens, the FBI is making the point that this is a federal issue, that because the ICE officer involved was a federal officer, federal law enforcement preempts state law enforcement issues.

00:06:42.000 And so, according to the Wall Street Journal, Minnesota law enforcement officials said on Thursday the FBI blocked them from participating in an investigation into the fatal shooting of a woman by an ICE agent, intensifying the dispute between the state and federal government over the death.

00:06:55.000 Minnesota Governor Tim Walz denounced the FBI, saying any probe that doesn't include state law enforcement cannot be trusted.

00:07:01.000 I mean, I think it's fair to say that the opposite is also true.

00:07:04.000 Any probe that includes a state law enforcement apparatus run by Tim Walz, who has already effectively declared this murder, is not going to be a relevant or useful piece of law enforcement.

00:07:17.000 That any investigative body answerable to Tim Walz, who presided over the burning down of his own major city, Minneapolis in 2020, over what I believe to be a fraudulent take on the George Floyd death.

00:07:31.000 I don't really trust Tim Walz on that very much.

00:07:34.000 Walls has obviously been upping the ante.

00:07:37.000 He continues over and over and over to use extraordinary language with regard to ICE.

00:07:44.000 Yesterday, he announced that he would be staging the Minnesota National Guard.

00:07:50.000 He put out a press statement: quote: Governor Tim Walz has authorized the Minnesota National Guard to be staged and ready to support local and state law enforcement in protecting critical infrastructure and maintaining public safety following a shooting involving federal immigration enforcement agents in South Minneapolis.

00:08:07.000 Now, will the National Guard be protecting infrastructure from rioters or are they there to obstruct ICE in their performance of their federal duties?

00:08:15.000 That's a question because of the way that Walls is talking.

00:08:18.000 Of course, the latter would be a crime.

00:08:21.000 Walls said, Minnesotans have met the moment.

00:08:23.000 Thousands of people have peacefully made their voices heard.

00:08:25.000 Minnesota, thank you.

00:08:26.000 We saw powerful peace.

00:08:28.000 We have every reason to believe that the peace will hold.

00:08:30.000 Yesterday, I directed the National Guard to be ready should all of this be needed.

00:08:33.000 By the way, Minnesota actually canceled classes.

00:08:37.000 They actually canceled school in Minneapolis because of this, which is fairly incredible that a controversial shooting involving an activist who appears to have been aiming her car at an ICE agent at the very least clipped the ICE agent before being shot, that that results in kids being released from school.

00:08:59.000 Because they're so afraid of riots and that that's going to take over the schools?

00:08:59.000 Why?

00:09:03.000 If so, what does that say about Tim Walz' governance in the city?

00:09:07.000 By the way, worth noting, the ICE agent who was involved in this shooting had apparently previously been rammed by a car.

00:09:18.000 That is according to Daily Wire.

00:09:22.000 The officer himself, apparently, was transported to a nearby hospital, was later released.

00:09:28.000 Christy Noam said that the agent involved had already been rammed by a car in a previous encounter, pointing out that ICE alone is facing a 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats against ICE agents.

00:09:44.000 In fact, DHS put out an entire list with evidence of the various attacks and assaults that have been performed on ICE agents.

00:09:54.000 Earlier this year, a Trendar Aragua suspect rammed law enforcement, a vehicle into a tree.

00:10:00.000 There are two separate vehicular assaults in Chicago.

00:10:04.000 I mean, the pictures are evident.

00:10:05.000 They're put out by the Department of Homeland Security.

00:10:08.000 An ICE officer was hit with a car, nearly crushing him.

00:10:11.000 If you go back to September of last year, a sniper, as you'll recall, attacked an ICE facility in Dallas.

00:10:19.000 So something quite dangerous is happening.

00:10:22.000 When you create a permission structure that suggests that ICE is the problem, when you create that permission structure and you say that they are the Gestapo, that they are evil, that they are Nazis, then it shouldn't be a gigantic surprise when people start treating them as such and violence increases.

00:10:41.000 Now, in the midst of all of this, the agent who is involved is actually unmasked online.

00:10:46.000 You want to know why ICE agents are masked?

00:10:48.000 The reason is because their lives come under threat thanks to actions like this.

00:10:53.000 So the ICE agent apparently was unmasked, which puts his life at risk for sure.

00:10:58.000 Get to more on this in a moment.

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00:12:13.000 And the Democrats just cannot stop upping the ante.

00:12:16.000 So yesterday, Tim Walz, again, the governor of Minnesota, who right now is in a world of hurt politically because of that Somali fraud. 1.00

00:12:23.000 Remember, this ICE activity was initiated based on reports of not only Somali fraud, but illegal immigrants from Somalia engaged in fraud.

00:12:32.000 Tim Walz compared this moment to the Civil War.

00:12:36.000 It's now the Civil War.

00:12:37.000 If you send ICE to enforce arrest warrants against criminals in the country, Tim Walz says it's now a civil war.

00:12:45.000 When things looked really bleak, it was Minnesota first that held that line for the nation on that July 3rd, 1863.

00:12:54.000 And I think now we may be in that moment that the nation's looking to us to hold the line on democracy, to hold the line on decency, to hold the line on accountability, and more than that, to rise up as neighbors and simply say, we can look out for one another.

00:13:12.000 We can have differences.

00:13:14.000 But we've proved to the world going on 250 years that our democracy could hold.

00:13:19.000 It feels to me like we're at one of those inflection points.

00:13:22.000 It's an inflection point, like a civil war inflection point.

00:13:25.000 Now, one of the things that I've said many, many times is that when you have high-level politicians talking this way about the country, it is very bad for the country.

00:13:32.000 Truly bad.

00:13:33.000 When you say we are at the point where we are, we are at blows of them.

00:13:37.000 We are going to go to war with one another. 0.85

00:13:38.000 It's a civil war that's about to break out.

00:13:40.000 It's the end of the country.

00:13:42.000 These sorts of things from political leaders turn into self-perpetuating prophecies.

00:13:47.000 They turn into self-fulfilling prophecies because the more people believe that they can't get along with their neighbors and that there is no basis for a common Americanism, the more they are likely to see each other as enemies and not just sometimes political opponents.

00:14:02.000 Yesterday, Tim Walz called for a moment of silence, which is to take place today.

00:14:06.000 And of course, use some pretty charged language.

00:14:10.000 In Minnesota, I'm declaring tomorrow at 10 a.m. on January 9th.

00:14:15.000 I'd ask everyone to pause for a moment of silence to remember Renee Good, also to remember all that's good and right about this nation.

00:14:24.000 And I'm going to ask folks, if they can, I'd ask employers to give their people some space.

00:14:29.000 I'd ask each and everyone to find a way to contribute in your community.

00:14:32.000 It might be shuffling your neighbor's walk.

00:14:34.000 It might be being at a food bank.

00:14:36.000 It might be pausing to talk to someone you haven't talked to before, but to show the goodness to rise up, to make sure that we're being very, very clear about this, that we expect our constitutional rights to be respected, that law enforcement is local, that we expect accountability of our elected leaders, and that we are not going to go quietly.

00:14:56.000 And we're not going to give up on those things that matter so much to us.

00:15:00.000 And Chief amongst those is human dignity, respect, rule of law, all of the things that we know make this country great.

00:15:08.000 I mean, this sort of bizarre Orwellian language that Tim Walz is using right there, he moves very quickly from, you know, we should take this moment of silence to go work at a food bank or talk to someone you've never talked to before.

00:15:19.000 From there to, we need to respect the rule of law while overtly holding a moment of silence for a person who at the very least was involved in obstruction of the performance of law.

00:15:29.000 When he says that law enforcement must be local, what he means is that federal law enforcement shouldn't do its job.

00:15:35.000 And when he says that we should rise up, which is language that he uses right there in that video, when he says that we have an obligation to stand up for our constitutional rights, you do not have a constitutional right to be in this country illegally, nor do you have a constitutional right to thwart federal law enforcement in its pursuit of criminal illegal immigrants and their deportation.

00:15:56.000 You do not have a right to do any of those things.

00:15:59.000 All of this is part and parcel, of course, of Tim Walz' broader agenda, which is to label ICE Gestapo, which is what he did last year.

00:16:06.000 Here he was in May of 2025, the governor of Minnesota.

00:16:10.000 Donald Trump's modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets.

00:16:15.000 They're in unmarked vans, wearing masks, being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons.

00:16:20.000 No chance to mount a defense, not even a chance to kiss a loved one goodbye, just grabbed up by masked agents, shoved into those vans, and disappeared.

00:16:28.000 To be clear, there's no way for us to know whether they were actually criminals or not because they refused to give them a trial.

00:16:35.000 We're supposed to just take their word for it.

00:16:40.000 Again, that was him in 2025, comparing ICE to the Gestapo.

00:16:43.000 And then you wonder why people are out there confronting ICE.

00:16:47.000 And when you put people in a moral position where they feel they must confront federal law enforcement and do it over and over and over again, basic rule.

00:16:56.000 The more people are confronting law enforcement, the more there will be bad situations that emerge from those confrontations.

00:17:03.000 This is just the way the world works.

00:17:06.000 And again, listening to Tim Walz talk about morality is kind of astonishing considering that just last year, he was saying that China might be the global moral authority, a true authoritarian state.

00:17:17.000 Who holds the moral authority?

00:17:19.000 Who holds the ability to do that?

00:17:21.000 Because we are not seen as a neutral actor.

00:17:23.000 And we maybe never were.

00:17:24.000 I don't want to tell anybody that.

00:17:26.000 I think there's a lot of people that say you always leaned one way in this, but I think there was at least an attempt to be somewhat of the arbitrator in this.

00:17:34.000 We saw President Carter do it with Begin and Sadat.

00:17:37.000 We've had certain wins along the way that were actually mutually beneficial both ways.

00:17:42.000 Now I ask who that is.

00:17:44.000 And I mean, consistently over and over again, we're going to have to face the reality, it might be the Chinese. 1.00

00:17:54.000 I mean, unbelievable.

00:17:55.000 Unbelievable.

00:17:56.000 So that person is the person who's now the moral authority talking about authoritarianism.

00:18:00.000 And remember, he presided over the riots in 2020 that shut down not only the city, but a large part of the country because he was unable to handle basic law enforcement function in his state.

00:18:13.000 Meanwhile, the mayor of Minneapolis, who's been similarly outrageous, he told ICE to get the F out of here, which, of course, as the mayor of a city, you do not have the law enforcement power to do.

00:18:25.000 And then he suggested that Renee Good had been murdered, which again, even if you wanted to take the pro-Rene Good side of this equation, the claim that it wasn't at least disputed is insane.

00:18:36.000 You can watch that tape and you can come away with varying interpretations.

00:18:39.000 The point I made yesterday is that it is not about the intent of Renee Good when she is driving the car, whether or not the officer is prosecuted.

00:18:47.000 It is about the intent of the officer and his reasonable perception that there is a deadly threat to his life.

00:18:53.000 And again, all of that presumably will be investigated.

00:18:56.000 There will be investigations held into where the shots were fired from.

00:18:59.000 Were they fired from the front of the car?

00:19:00.000 Were they fired from the side of the car?

00:19:02.000 Which matters because presumably, if you fire from the front of the car while you are theoretically being run over, maybe there's an imminent danger of deadly threat if you're now to the side of the car.

00:19:11.000 Does the same rule now apply?

00:19:15.000 But calling it a plain case of murder is nuts.

00:19:19.000 But this is the Minneapolis mayor.

00:19:21.000 And we should remember that this is part and parcel of a generalized dislike for law enforcement, period.

00:19:27.000 This is the same guy who was doing the ridiculous prostrating himself before the woke gods over George Floyd.

00:19:37.000 Here he was back in 2020 at a struggle session, the Minneapolis mayor.

00:19:42.000 You have to take responsibility here.

00:19:46.000 I've been coming to grips with my own brokenness in this situation, my own failures, my own storm coming, and I know there needs to be dealing with the feelings of how the department operates.

00:20:02.000 The systemic erases system needs to be revamped. 0.96

00:20:09.000 That's who this pathetic person is. 1.00

00:20:11.000 Truly pathetic. 1.00

00:20:12.000 Well, he has a piece in the New York Times today calling the Trump administration liars. 0.99

00:20:16.000 Quote, the actions of the ICE agents deployed to my city are dangerous and now even deadly.

00:20:21.000 But that danger has been compounded by the administration's claim that the victim committed an act of domestic terrorism.

00:20:27.000 The Trump administration's false narrative about this week's shooting and the demonization of the victim are only part of a bigger lie.

00:20:34.000 So, again, I think that the categorization of the woman who has shot here, Renee Goode is a domestic terrorist.

00:20:40.000 I don't see the evidence for that.

00:20:41.000 I see evidence that she was violating federal law by impeding ICE in its pursuit of the law.

00:20:49.000 And I think it's disputed as to whether she was trying to run over the person.

00:20:52.000 Now you get to her intent.

00:20:53.000 But what Jacob Fry says here is truly insane.

00:20:57.000 Quote: The Trump administration's false narrative about this week's shooting and the demonization of the victim are only part of a bigger lie.

00:21:03.000 It wants the American public to believe that ICE's heavily militarized crackdown across this country is an effort to keep cities like Minneapolis safe.

00:21:10.000 It is not.

00:21:11.000 It is about vilifying not just immigrants, but all who welcome them and their contributions to our communities.

00:21:17.000 By defending the lie about this clearly avoidable shooting in Minneapolis, the administration is sending a message to the entire country.

00:21:23.000 If you show up for your immigrant neighbors or even are simply present when those neighbors are taken, your rights will not be protected by the law and your life will be at risk.

00:21:30.000 That is a lie.

00:21:31.000 Renee Goode was parked for three solid minutes by the tape at a 90-degree angle to impede ICE officials from doing their job. 1.00

00:21:38.000 That is a violation of the law.

00:21:41.000 But Jacob Fry is trying to ratchet up the tensions.

00:21:43.000 Again, the idea is that essentially ICE are the foot soldiers of the Trumpian authoritarian regime.

00:21:51.000 And if you keep saying that over and over, of course people are going to go out and target federal law enforcement.

00:21:57.000 Unfortunately, it is not just Tim Walz who is doing this.

00:22:00.000 The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, apparently described the shooting of Renee Good as state-sponsored terrorism.

00:22:07.000 On X, he wrote for almost a year, Donald Trump's personal police force has rampaged across America.

00:22:13.000 Again, describing ICE as Trump's personal police force is totally crazy.

00:22:17.000 I'm sorry, that's wild.

00:22:18.000 That is a crazy statement.

00:22:20.000 And it's obviously meant to draw comparisons to authoritarian leaders who have ramrod control of a storm abtalong, right?

00:22:32.000 Their own SA to go and do their specific bidding.

00:22:36.000 And that's nonsense.

00:22:37.000 It's just nonsense.

00:22:39.000 ICE has to abide by federal law.

00:22:41.000 If they do not abide by federal law, then presumably they will be prosecuted.

00:22:47.000 The governor of California wrote, his administration has driven extremism and cruelty while discarding basic safeguards and accountability.

00:22:53.000 Now, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen is dead.

00:22:55.000 Again, ignoring the circumstances of the death are key to this.

00:22:59.000 I've said that I think that this is a confused and confusing situation.

00:23:03.000 I don't think it's absolutely 100% clear-cut what Renee Good was trying to do.

00:23:07.000 I do think that there is a very, very good case that the officer had a reasonable and objective fear for his life when he fired the shot.

00:23:15.000 They killed her, the shots that killed her.

00:23:18.000 But ignoring that what she was doing, why she was there in the first place, makes it sound as though ICE broke down Renee Good's door and just shot her in her living room.

00:23:25.000 And that is not what happened.

00:23:28.000 On his press office X account, he added state-sponsored terrorism.

00:23:33.000 State-sponsored terrorism.

00:23:36.000 I mean, truly state-sponsored terrorism, right?

00:23:39.000 Terrorism is an attempt to effectuate a political end through violence.

00:23:45.000 That is what terrorism is, definitionally.

00:23:49.000 Through non-legal violence, not law enforcement.

00:23:53.000 It is not state-sponsored terrorism.

00:23:54.000 If the cops even accidentally shoot someone, that is not state-sponsored terrorism, or if they do so under disputed circumstances.

00:24:01.000 State-sponsored terrorism would be that you initiate the law enforcement authorities to go do something broad-scale illegal.

00:24:09.000 What is ICE doing that is broad-scale illegal, according to Gavin Newsom?

00:24:14.000 State-sponsored terrorism.

00:24:15.000 I mean, because that makes every ICE agent a state-sponsored terrorist, does it not?

00:24:19.000 Like, what exactly are we talking about here?

00:24:22.000 What are we talking about here?

00:24:23.000 This is crazy.

00:24:24.000 And not only is it crazy, it's dangerous.

00:24:26.000 It really is.

00:24:27.000 Top-level politicians should not be talking like this.

00:24:31.000 They should not.

00:24:33.000 The notion that is now being promoted by apparently every major Democrat that ICE never should have been in Minneapolis in the first place in order to, again, effectuate federal law with regard to immigration is crazy.

00:24:44.000 But this is what they're doing.

00:24:45.000 Kathy Hochul in New York doing the same thing.

00:24:49.000 I've asked an ICE agent, why are you wearing the mask when I was down there at the 26th Federal Plaza?

00:24:55.000 I said, why do you wear the mask?

00:24:57.000 No other law enforcement does this.

00:24:58.000 Our police don't do it.

00:24:59.000 Our FBI agents don't do it.

00:25:00.000 Why are you doing this?

00:25:02.000 And they said, because we get doxed, our family gets harassed, etc.

00:25:05.000 I said, why do you think you are more than anybody else?

00:25:08.000 I mean, come on, you're just trying to scare people.

00:25:11.000 You're terrorizing people yourselves.

00:25:13.000 And I don't want to see that.

00:25:14.000 So we don't need that here.

00:25:16.000 We're doing just fine in New York.

00:25:18.000 The mayor and I will stand together and reject any efforts to try and militarize our streets, but they never should have been in Minneapolis in the first place.

00:25:28.000 Why should they never have been in Minneapolis in the first place?

00:25:30.000 Why?

00:25:31.000 Because they were effectuating the law.

00:25:33.000 Why?

00:25:34.000 I need an explanation.

00:25:35.000 But again, this is all part and parcel of a broader left-wing argument that we are now living under a dictatorship, which, of course, is not even remotely true.

00:25:43.000 Because if we were, Tim Walz would not be doing what he's doing.

00:25:46.000 Neither would Kathy Hochul.

00:25:47.000 Neither would Jacob Fry. 0.96

00:25:49.000 Here's Joy Behar making the person, the dumb person's case on all of this, as per our usual arrangement.

00:25:56.000 Just this last week, I'm just going to give you a summary of what we've been through. 0.84

00:25:59.000 One week, Pete Hegset started an illegal war for oil in Venezuela.

00:26:05.000 Stephen Miller threatened a military takeover of Greenland.

00:26:09.000 RFK Jr. slashed childhood vaccine recommendations.

00:26:14.000 And ICE shot and killed a United States citizen in Minneapolis.

00:26:18.000 That sort of adds up to me like a dictatorship in the making.

00:26:23.000 That we are now in it.

00:26:24.000 We are in it now.

00:26:30.000 A dictatorship in the making.

00:26:31.000 Again, you keep saying this stuff.

00:26:33.000 You keep saying this stuff.

00:26:34.000 And then you wonder why people are ramming cars into ICE agents because you're telling them.

00:26:38.000 You are telling them that they are a threat to your family.

00:26:41.000 You are telling these people that ICE is a threat to Americans' families.

00:26:45.000 And we've talked about permission structures for violence.

00:26:47.000 We've talked about it over and over again on the show, particularly since the death of Charlie Kirk.

00:26:51.000 We've talked about there are specific ideologies that lead to an increase in violence.

00:26:56.000 Those ideologies posit that there is some sort of conspiratorial force out to get you, that there is specific danger to you and people like you, and that the only way to prevent that force from harming you is to preemptively harm them.

00:27:09.000 And there are certain ideologies that are caught up in this.

00:27:11.000 They threaten your identity. 1.00

00:27:12.000 Therefore, they must be killed. 1.00

00:27:14.000 That is why it took a person who is pro-trans radicalism, apparently, to shoot Charlie. 1.00

00:27:19.000 Okay, well, the same thing is true here.

00:27:22.000 If you keep saying over and over and over that ICE is not just a threat to illegal immigrants, which of course it is because that is their job, but that it is a threat to all Americans, that they are here to promote violence, that they are here to threaten you just for walking down the street, according to Jacob Fry.

00:27:40.000 That if you're on the very street where something is happening with ICE, you have to be afraid for your life.

00:27:44.000 Why are you possibly wondering why people are trying to assassinate ICE officers?

00:27:48.000 This is insane stuff.

00:27:49.000 It really is terrible.

00:27:51.000 And all Democrats have to do, all they have to do is suggest that the way that President Trump is going about enforcing federal immigration law is over-the-top, unspecific, and blunderbuss.

00:28:02.000 Right?

00:28:04.000 If I were going to try to steelman the Democratic position, a position with which I disagree, the case that I would be making is President Trump should be focusing in on true threats to the American people, meaning criminal, illegal immigrants, until he gets rid of all the criminal illegal immigrants deploying large-scale ICE raids to go and get people who are participating in welfare fraud should not be top, top, top priority.

00:28:27.000 Yes, they should be deported, but that can be done in a less militant way or a less obvious way.

00:28:33.000 And it's less effective if you actually show up en masse to do this sort of stuff.

00:28:38.000 You can make that case.

00:28:39.000 You could.

00:28:40.000 Now, I don't think it's a particularly strong case, but that is a case that you can make.

00:28:43.000 You can make the case that the Trump administration has been too overt in its sort of propagandizing on behalf of the joys of deportations, refusing to acknowledge the pain of people, right?

00:28:57.000 This is something that Democrats typically say about law enforcement.

00:29:00.000 Okay, fine.

00:29:01.000 You'd be wrong, but that's at least an argument. 0.88

00:29:03.000 But making the case that ICE itself is a threat to the American way of life because they are doing their jobs is crazy, crazy and dangerous.

00:29:13.000 Well, Christy Noam over at the Department of Homeland Security, she made clear again that if people try to attack police officers or ICE officers, they will be prosecuted.

00:29:23.000 We are warning anyone, if you think you can harm an individual, a citizen of the United States, or a law enforcement officer, we will find you and bring you to justice.

00:29:32.000 If you lay a finger on one of our officers, we will catch you, we will prosecute you, and you will feel the full extent of the law.

00:29:41.000 So, again, that's what law enforcement should do, obviously.

00:29:45.000 JD Vancevice, President of the United States, has been taking a lead role in combating a lot of the rhetoric coming from the left over ICE.

00:29:52.000 So, yesterday, he said that the video is clear and then he slammed the media for its coverage.

00:29:58.000 The way that the media, by and large, has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace, and it puts our law enforcement officers at risk every single day.

00:30:09.000 What that headline leaves out is the fact that that very off ICE officer nearly had his life ended, dragged by a car six months ago, 33 stitches in his leg.

00:30:19.000 So, you think maybe he's a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him with an automobile?

00:30:24.000 What that headline leaves out is that that woman was there to interfere with a legitimate law enforcement operation in the United States of America. 1.00

00:30:32.000 What that headline leaves out is that that woman is part of a broader left-wing network to attack, to dox, to assault, and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job. 0.87

00:30:43.000 If the media wants to tell the truth, they ought to tell the truth that a group of left-wing radicals have been working tirelessly, sometimes using domestic terror techniques to try to make it impossible for the president of the United States to do what the American people elected him to do, which is enforce our immigration laws.

00:31:01.000 The president stands with ICE.

00:31:03.000 I stand with ICE.

00:31:04.000 We stand with all of our law enforcement officers.

00:31:07.000 Again, I think that a huge part of that is true.

00:31:11.000 When he says nobody debates that she was aiming the car at the officer, that's under debate because it's possible that she was trying to avoid the officer, but she did hit the officer with the car.

00:31:19.000 She nudged the officer at the very least with the front bumper of the car on tape. 0.92

00:31:25.000 The vice president also went off on Tim Walz.

00:31:28.000 Our very own Mary Margaret Olihan asked him the question over in the White House pressroom.

00:31:34.000 I wanted to read a quote from Tim Wallace earlier today.

00:31:36.000 He said, when things looked bleak, it was Minnesota's first that held the line for the nation on July 3rd, 1863.

00:31:43.000 And I think we may be in that moment now.

00:31:45.000 Can you comment on his rhetoric and Mayor Jacob Fry and whether they want to see unrest in Minneapolis?

00:31:50.000 Well, it's very tough rhetoric from a guy who just quit because his fraudulent activities have been uncovered.

00:31:55.000 Look, Tim Wallace is a joke.

00:31:57.000 His entire administration has been a joke.

00:31:59.000 The idea that he's some sort of freedom fighter, he's not.

00:32:02.000 He's a guy who has enabled fraud and maybe, in fact, has participated in fraud.

00:32:05.000 That's what this new assistant attorney general position is going to find out.

00:32:10.000 Hey, so again, if the two polarized positions here are Democrats say all law enforcement bad and Republicans say, well, this lady was violating the law and was aiming her car at the police officer. 1.00

00:32:24.000 Again, it is amazing to me that Democrats are going to take the law enforcement is bad position.

00:32:29.000 That is an insane position to take.

00:32:30.000 Just politically speaking, it's bad.

00:32:31.000 JD Vance also pointed out that, yes, the death is a tragedy, but it's a tragedy not just personally.

00:32:37.000 It's a tragedy of far-left ideology that obscures the realities about what law enforcement is doing.

00:32:43.000 But the simple fact is, what you see is what you get in this case.

00:32:46.000 You have a woman who is trying to obstruct a legitimate law enforcement operation. 0.99

00:32:51.000 Nobody debates that.

00:32:52.000 You have a woman who aimed her car at a law enforcement officer and pressed on the accelerator.

00:32:57.000 Nobody debates that.

00:32:58.000 I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it's a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left who has marshaled an entire movement, a lunatic fringe against our law enforcement officers.

00:33:14.000 Again, the vice president is not wrong here.

00:33:17.000 Well, again, a lot of this is also tied up in what's going on in terms of the fraud cases in Minnesota.

00:33:22.000 The reason that Tim Walz is going so hard here is because Tim Walz just had to step away from his third term run because of the fraud in which he has been caught up, a fraud largely emanating from the Somali community, which of course is the community at issue in these immigration raids from ICE. 0.53

00:33:38.000 Again, all of this is tied up with the massive fraud scandal that has engulfed the state of Minnesota.

00:33:44.000 According to Scott Besant, the IRS has uncovered somewhere between $300 and $600 billion in fraud on a national level at this point.

00:33:53.000 We're not going to have that.

00:33:54.000 We are going to hold people accountable.

00:33:57.000 We're going to press this to the full extent possible.

00:34:03.000 And like I said, I think that this may just be, it's a cold day outside, so this could be the tip of the iceberg here in Minnesota, but it's probably may not be as prevalent, but the dollars may be bigger and larger in other states.

00:34:19.000 Yeah, Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, also is now going to use mechanisms for cutting down on fraud to cut down on remittances if you're on public assistance.

00:34:28.000 The idea being if you're receiving welfare, you shouldn't take American taxpayer dollars that are meant to help you and then send those over to al-Shabaab in Somalia.

00:34:37.000 If a certain amount of money gets wired, We're lowering that to 3,000.

00:34:44.000 And we're also targeting the two counties here.

00:34:47.000 And we're going to do enhanced surveillance.

00:34:50.000 And from now on, anyone who wires money out from one of these money service businesses has to check a box saying whether they are on public assistance.

00:35:00.000 And if you are on public assistance, we are going to start pushing that you cannot wire money out of the country.

00:35:09.000 And the Department of Homeland Security, by the way, has now unleashed investigators to go door to door collecting evidence and investigating fraud in Minneapolis and across the country, according to their ex-account.

00:35:20.000 The Trump administration will follow the law and is not afraid to use denaturalization and deportation.

00:35:24.000 If you're complicit in defrauding the American people, they say your days are numbered.

00:35:28.000 Fraud is the thing that is lying at the root of an enormous amount of this.

00:35:31.000 The vice president, JD Vance, he said yesterday that there will be the creation of a new assistant attorney general dedicated specifically to prosecution of fraud.

00:35:41.000 We have over 1,500 subpoenas that the Department of Justice has issued to get to the heart of the fraud ring.

00:35:47.000 We've done almost 100 indictments, mostly Somali immigrants, but also a few others.

00:35:52.000 And of course, we're looking in with broad investigatory authority to a number of the instances of wrongdoing that we've seen in Minneapolis.

00:36:00.000 But we also want to expand this.

00:36:03.000 We know that the fraud isn't just happening in Minneapolis.

00:36:05.000 It's also happening in states like Ohio.

00:36:07.000 It's happening in states like California.

00:36:10.000 And so what we're doing in order to help coordinate this remarkable interagency effort from the Trump administration, but also to make sure that we prosecute the bad guys and do it as swiftly and efficiently as possible, is we are creating a new assistant attorney general position who will have nationwide jurisdiction over the issue of fraud.

00:36:33.000 Apparently, according to KSTP.com as well, Minnesota DHS employees backdated and created documentation in a behavioral health grant program.

00:36:41.000 Fraud in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, this sort of stuff is incredibly, incredibly common.

00:36:48.000 The Equality Learning Center, which of course was the center of a huge amount of ire, given the video from Nick Shirley that went essentially door to door to these various daycare facilities that he claimed were defrauding the Minnesotan taxpayer.

00:37:03.000 Apparently, they have now closed officially.

00:37:04.000 That would be the Quality Learning Center.

00:37:06.000 You remember that their sign was missing an N. Quality Learing Center closed on Tuesday, according to the Minnesota Department of Human Services licensing records.

00:37:15.000 And they're unable to reopen without reapplying for a license, apparently.

00:37:22.000 The biggest problem for Democrats, what's amazing, truly, if you're a Democrat and if you believe in bigger government spending, more welfare, more taxpayer money flowing from certain people to other people, you should hate fraud, right?

00:37:35.000 You should be very anti-fraud because fraud totally undermines your program.

00:37:39.000 Fraud means that the money that you want to go to this poor person is instead going to this person who is buying himself a Mercedes.

00:37:46.000 Fraud means that the money that you are saying to the taxpayer, we are taking from you to give to this other person who's poor, that money is not going to the poor guy.

00:37:54.000 It's going to somebody who's bilking you.

00:37:56.000 They should be the angriest about fraud.

00:37:58.000 In the same way, if I found out that someone was embezzling from our company, I would be very, very, very angry as an owner of the company.

00:38:05.000 If you are a Democrat and you quote unquote own the government, you should be upset about people embezzling, which is what that is, from the government.

00:38:12.000 And yet, Democrats are very, very defensive about fraud.

00:38:15.000 They seem not to care very much about fraud.

00:38:17.000 In fact, they seem to facilitate the fraud in many cases, which is totally crazy.

00:38:21.000 Unless you believe that the fraud is sort of the point, that the way that they want to spread money around is corrupt.

00:38:29.000 Because otherwise they should be angry, right?

00:38:31.000 They should be the first in line to say fraudsters need to be prosecuted.

00:38:34.000 They should be deploying law enforcement themselves to crack down on the fraud.

00:38:37.000 It's their programs, after all.

00:38:39.000 They want to claim credit for them.

00:38:41.000 Well, the mayor of Seattle doesn't feel that way.

00:38:43.000 The mayor of Seattle was asked about looking into fraud claims, and she said, nah, not so interested.

00:38:50.000 Yeah, I mean, I think the fear in the Somali community is real.

00:38:52.000 The fear in immigrant communities are real.

00:38:53.000 So we're taking that very seriously.

00:38:55.000 Along those lines, have you asked anyone to follow up on the fraud claims either to the Department of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs or SPE?

00:39:02.000 No.

00:39:05.000 And again, I think one of the reasons they don't want to look into the fraud is because an inherent part of growing the government this big and making it this intrusive is more fraud, is more fraud.

00:39:05.000 Okay.

00:39:16.000 New York, by the way, is talking about initiating larger programs, larger programs that will be replete with even more fraud.

00:39:23.000 So Kathy Hochul and Zorn Mamdani have announced a plan to make New York child care universal.

00:39:31.000 Mamdani, by the way, says that he wants to focus specifically on home-based providers.

00:39:35.000 Okay, home-based providers, that would be like you pay somebody in their home to stay in their home to care for children, or you hire grandma to care for the kids or whatever.

00:39:44.000 This is a system that is begging for fraud, begging for it.

00:39:48.000 Here is Zor Mamdani happy to facilitate the defrauding of the taxpayer.

00:39:54.000 Not only will we make pre-K truly universal, but expand this care to include all two and three-year-olds across the city.

00:40:06.000 As the governor said, we will deliver to care by working in partnership with child care providers, especially home-based providers.

00:40:17.000 They're very excited about the home-based providers because you know how hard it is to monitor that?

00:40:21.000 It's almost impossible to monitor home-based providers that you're sponsoring with welfare dollars because they're in the home.

00:40:28.000 How do you do it?

00:40:29.000 Really, really, really difficult.

00:40:31.000 By the way, there was a report released in August 2024 in New York in which the state comptroller Thomas D'Anapoli revealed that over the past couple of decades, audits of private preschool special education providers, that is a minor, like tiny subset of child care providers, identified $113 million in mismanaged or fraudulent expenses.

00:40:51.000 The federal government alleges billions of dollars in mismanagement and fraud here, which would not be surprising in the slightest.

00:40:58.000 Meanwhile, Kathy Hochul says New York is going to spend $4.5 billion on childcare.

00:41:03.000 How much of that is going to flow to actual childcare?

00:41:05.000 And how much of that is going to flow to people who are defrauding the system?

00:41:10.000 Oh, this year we're committing an additional $1.7 billion in what we call recurring spending, something my budget director hates, but meaning we're committed.

00:41:20.000 And so that means our total child care investment this year will be $4.5 billion in the state of New York.

00:41:30.000 And by the way, she's going to have to tap existing funding because she doesn't want to increase the taxes. 1.00

00:41:34.000 So we'll see how that works out for her.

00:41:36.000 And according to the New York Times, if and when the funding is secured, the city and state would have to tackle an enormous operational challenge that would involve hiring and training scores of teachers and constructing a high-quality, unified system out of a scattered existing network of child care providers in schools, daycare centers, and private homes.

00:41:52.000 But he says that he wants more private homes involved.

00:41:56.000 This is going to be a disaster area.

00:41:58.000 It's going to be a disaster area.

00:42:01.000 Hochul wants to spend an additional nearly $2 billion on the expansion plan.

00:42:07.000 And this is just going to spread the fraud like wildfire.

00:42:11.000 It is what it's going to satisfy people who will then create, you would imagine, unions to built the taxpayer of even more money.

00:42:19.000 And state growth cannot happen without high levels of fraud.

00:42:23.000 And that is one of the reasons why people are very against even investigating fraud in blue states, where they should be, again, the most in favor of cracking down on fraud.

00:42:32.000 Well, meanwhile, on the international front, protests in Iran have continued to roil the country.

00:42:38.000 In fact, the Iranian government apparently shut down the internet last night entirely, which is usually a cover for them massacring people.

00:42:46.000 Large-scale protests are an amazing thing, but if they don't materialize in terms of actual power, then we've seen this show before where the Iranian government simply goes out in the streets and starts murdering people willy-nilly. 0.76

00:42:56.000 It happened in 2022.

00:42:57.000 It happened back in 2009 under Barack Obama.

00:43:00.000 Would not be a shock to see something like that happen again.

00:43:02.000 President Trump has made clear he does not want to see that happen again.

00:43:06.000 Yesterday, he was on with Hugh Hewitt, and he said that Iran knows that if they engage in this sort of slaughter of people, that the United States will, in fact, stop them from doing that.

00:43:16.000 As you know, probably better than anybody, they're doing very poorly.

00:43:20.000 And I have let them know that if they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots, they have lots of riots. 0.98

00:43:27.000 If they do it, we're going to hit them very hard.

00:43:31.000 Now, President Trump was asked also by Hugh Hewitt about meeting with Reza Pahlavi, who is the son of the former Shah, and he has sort of taken a very public position as the protest leader.

00:43:42.000 Again, it's unclear how many of the protesters there are supportive of the return of a shadow or whether it is an entirely different movement.

00:43:49.000 Trump himself says that's not really the issue.

00:43:51.000 The issue here is the protests themselves.

00:43:55.000 Would you meet with Crown Prince Padlai, who is the heir to the constitutional monarchy?

00:44:02.000 He doesn't want to rule.

00:44:03.000 He would be a symbolic ruler like King Charles.

00:44:07.000 Well, I've watched him, and he seems like a nice person, but I'm not sure that it would be appropriate at this point to do that as president.

00:44:15.000 I think that we should let everybody go out there and we see who emerges.

00:44:21.000 I'm not sure necessarily that it would be an appropriate thing to do.

00:44:27.000 President Trump did say that he is following closely what has been happening in Iran and that if Iran goes out and starts shooting people in the streets, that there will be consequences to that.

00:44:37.000 In the past, they've started shooting the hell out of people, and all of a sudden, people without any weapons whatsoever are standing there and you have machine guns gunning them down. 0.98

00:44:47.000 Or they take them to prisons and then hang them and kill them. 0.98

00:44:50.000 So they played rough. 1.00

00:44:51.000 And I said, if they do that, we're going to hit them very hard. 0.99

00:44:55.000 Well, we're going to hit them hard. 0.99

00:44:56.000 We're ready to do it. 1.00

00:44:57.000 If they do that, we're going to hit them hard. 0.89

00:44:59.000 And so far, for the most part, there's been some of it.

00:45:03.000 But for the most part, they haven't.

00:45:05.000 There have been people killed.

00:45:07.000 Some of them, the crowds are so big that some of them have had really like were stomped on.

00:45:13.000 Literally, it was terrible.

00:45:16.000 The crowds are just.

00:45:20.000 The enthusiasm to overturn that regime is incredible.

00:45:24.000 But there's been people killed, but it's more from death by it's literally stomping.

00:45:31.000 It's people running in a certain direction.

00:45:34.000 So we'll see what happens.

00:45:35.000 We'll see what happens over there.

00:45:37.000 They know, though, that it's a stampede is, I guess, the best word.

00:45:41.000 They have like a stampede.

00:45:42.000 You talk about stampede for cattle.

00:45:45.000 But the people are stampeding, and you're losing a lot of people with the stampedes.

00:45:51.000 There's so many people protesting.

00:45:53.000 Nobody's ever seen anything like what's happening right now.

00:45:57.000 Now, again, it may be that those protests turn into a full-scale regime change.

00:46:01.000 It may also be that you require somebody in the IRGC, in the Iranian echelon, to end the Ayatollah's rule.

00:46:08.000 It is true that if there were some sort of security umbrella provided by the West to prevent protesters from being mowed down in the streets, that would fundamentally change the game.

00:46:15.000 Presumably, that is why Ayatollah Khomeini is lashing out at President Trump.

00:46:19.000 He gave a speech last night in the middle of the internet blackout, in which he essentially told the Iranians that President Trump is the bad guy, which is something Iranians do not believe as a general rule.

00:46:30.000 His hands are stained with the blood of over 1,000 of Iranians The 12-day war over 1,000 people from apart from generals, scientists, and others, from masses of people, they were martyred.

00:46:53.000 And he said that I ordered the war.

00:46:59.000 So he admitted that his hands stained the blood of Iranians.

00:47:05.000 But he's claimed that he supports the Iranian people and a number of people without experience that do not pay attention, without vigilance, believe what he says and acts according to his will.

00:47:21.000 Well, of course, the Israeli operation last year was designed to defenestrate the Iranian nuclear facilities.

00:47:26.000 It was a highly targeted operation directed at the IRGC in particular, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

00:47:31.000 Khomeini, in those remarks, said Trump should mind his own business.

00:47:35.000 We will not tolerate protesters serving foreign interests.

00:47:37.000 Now, what's amazing is that these protesters are, in fact, not propped up by foreign interests.

00:47:41.000 These protesters are apparently in the millions out there protesting in the streets against the Iranian regime that has been unable not only to provide security, but unable to provide even water and power.

00:47:52.000 Here is some of the video from the protests.

00:47:55.000 This would have been the night before last.

00:47:59.000 You can see these are massive, massive protests.

00:48:03.000 In fact, in one city called Kharimabad, the lion and sun flag, which was the flag of the Iranian government prior to the takeover of the country by the Ayatollah, was raised in Haramabad in Luristan province.

00:48:19.000 You can see that happening.

00:48:21.000 So we may be on the verge of something major.

00:48:23.000 And then again, it may be that the Iranians roll out the guns and start mowing people down and the West doesn't respond, which would be true to the West form over the course of the last several decades. 1.00

00:48:33.000 We'll find out in fairly short order.

00:48:35.000 Meanwhile, the United States continues to pursue a change of policy in Venezuela.

00:48:42.000 Obviously, the goal is to have the existing structure in Venezuela change its behavior, leading to elections.

00:48:50.000 Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessant was speaking at the Minnesota Economic Club, and he said this is not in any way like the Iraq war, which of course is true. 0.99

00:48:58.000 The Iraq war required hundreds of thousands of American troops.

00:49:01.000 This is not.

00:49:02.000 Here's Scott Besant explaining.

00:49:04.000 This is the anti-Iraq.

00:49:07.000 In Iraq, Iraq had a big bureaucracy, like hundreds of years, hundreds of years, and it was just wiped out.

00:49:18.000 And it was chaos.

00:49:20.000 So for now, we want to stabilize the existing structure and then go from there.

00:49:29.000 Joining us on the line is Secretary of Energy Chris Wright.

00:49:32.000 Yesterday, the president released a fact sheet talking about Venezuela, the oil industry in Venezuela.

00:49:39.000 Secretary Wright, thanks so much for the time.

00:49:40.000 Really appreciate it.

00:49:42.000 Thanks for having me, Ben.

00:49:45.000 So let's talk about why, first of all, the United States is even interested in oil from Venezuela.

00:49:50.000 The sort of general perception in the United States is that we are fully oil independent.

00:49:54.000 We don't need more oil.

00:49:55.000 Is there a difference between Venezuelan oil and the other kind of oil that we are fracking, for example, in Pennsylvania?

00:50:03.000 The Venezuelan oil is more viscous.

00:50:03.000 There is.

00:50:06.000 It's heavier crude.

00:50:07.000 It's perfect for asphalt and making certain products.

00:50:11.000 Also, in general, it's cheaper.

00:50:14.000 So when a lot of our refineries were built in the 60s and 70s, Venezuela was a major oil supplier to the United States.

00:50:21.000 And we built refineries.

00:50:23.000 It's more capital, more intense refineries that can process this cheaper, high-viscosity crude.

00:50:30.000 And then, of course, Venezuela over this ensuing decades has fallen off a cliff, destroyed its country through socialism and top-down control.

00:50:39.000 And so we have to find that heavy, viscous crude elsewhere.

00:50:43.000 So, yeah, it's beneficial for the U.S. refineries.

00:50:46.000 But really, the short-term agenda with Venezuela is stop the criminality, stop the import of drugs and gangs and violence into the United States.

00:50:55.000 It's just made our hemisphere a worse place to do business and a worse place to prosper.

00:51:00.000 We want to fix Venezuela because that's good for Americans. 1.00

00:51:03.000 Of course, it'll be good for Venezuelans too.

00:51:05.000 So, Secretary, looking at the release that you put out at the Energy Department, you say that it's going to help unleash prosperity and peace across the Western hemisphere, this current U.S.-Venezuela energy deal, which would leave the United States in charge essentially of oil sales and disbursements therefrom.

00:51:20.000 Explain how that would work.

00:51:23.000 Yes.

00:51:24.000 So, look, people for 25 years have tried to stop the slide to destruction that Venezuela has been in.

00:51:31.000 And President Trump just found a more creative idea.

00:51:34.000 Look, there have been sanctions on Venezuelan oil, but unfortunately, they're just poorly enforced.

00:51:39.000 The president said, look, they're so dependent on oil sales and drug sales as a side business, but their biggest cash source is oil sales.

00:51:49.000 We're going to enforce the sanctions and embargo their oil, seal off their ability to export oil.

00:51:56.000 Boy, that got a big change in the ability to dialogue with the Venezuelan government.

00:52:01.000 So the agreement now is, all right, you're going to be able to sell your oil, but we're going to sell your oil.

00:52:07.000 So we're just going to control the flow of Venezuelan oil.

00:52:10.000 When the United States sells it, we're going to get a much higher price than the Venezuelans would get. 1.00

00:52:15.000 It's not black market.

00:52:16.000 It's not shadow market.

00:52:17.000 It's not a criminal regime that's on the other side of that transaction.

00:52:21.000 It's the United States government.

00:52:22.000 So we're going to sell that oil into the marketplace, generate more money than they would have, put it in accounts that are controlled by the United States government, and then at our discretion, just deliver those funds to Venezuela.

00:52:36.000 So it's going to bring more money into the country, but it's going to mean massive U.S. influence that we're only going to deliver the money and continue this arrangement if they make rapid progress on reforms, end the criminality, end the threats to the United States, start to restore rule of law back in Venezuela.

00:52:54.000 I think the president is right.

00:52:56.000 We're going to be able to use this tool to drive them in a positive direction.

00:52:59.000 That's going to benefit Americans, and it's going to benefit Venezuelans as well.

00:53:05.000 Well, it's that latter part that I think is extraordinarily important.

00:53:09.000 A lot of critics of the president's action against Nicolas Maduro have suggested that nothing is fundamentally going to change on the ground in Venezuela, that Maduro will be gone, that Venezuela will continue to be a socialist dictatorship because, of course, the vice president of Venezuela, who has now taken over, Del City Rodriguez, is an ardent socialist herself.

00:53:25.000 In public, she's made very pro-Maduro statements, even after the extradition of the drug offender that is Nicolas Maduro.

00:53:31.000 So the case that the administration seems to be making, correct me if I'm wrong, is that given the fact that the vast majority of income possible to Venezuela will now be flowing through American hands, that money just doesn't get to Venezuela unless reforms occur that move Venezuela in the direction of rule of law and future elections.

00:53:51.000 Very well stated, Ben.

00:53:53.000 That's exactly the thing.

00:53:54.000 And there's huge incentives here.

00:53:57.000 If they start to move in those positive directions, what does that mean?

00:54:00.000 That means American businesses are going to go back into Venezuela.

00:54:04.000 Venezuelans' oil production is going to grow again, which is going to generate more revenue, more money for them.

00:54:10.000 But you're right.

00:54:11.000 We're going to use that leverage.

00:54:14.000 This money is only flowing if things improve in Venezuela.

00:54:18.000 Their interactions with the United States change dramatically and they start to improve their country.

00:54:23.000 Ultimately, this is a process that will take some time.

00:54:26.000 But at the end of the day, we want to see representative government, democracy, freedom, pro-American government in power in Venezuela.

00:54:36.000 That's a transition from where they are today.

00:54:38.000 Absolutely.

00:54:39.000 That's a process.

00:54:40.000 But we want to do that through a process without it becoming a failed state or going back to the narco-terrorist terrorist state it's been for the last 20 years.

00:54:51.000 So, Secretary, one of the other questions that's arisen here is getting American companies involved in the oil industry in Venezuela requires a level of stability and an assurance that things aren't going to take a turn for the worse, that Venezuela isn't going to renationalize its oil fields as soon as, for example, President Trump is out of office or the United States is not going to simply walk away from this arrangement and leave American companies who do require years and years of investment in order to see any sort of recapitalization holding the bag.

00:55:20.000 What sort of measures are the Trump administration looking forward to taking for the long term that ensure the security of investments in that transitional process?

00:55:29.000 Yes.

00:55:30.000 And so there's talk about, oh, they need tens of billions of dollars to rebuild massive infrastructure.

00:55:35.000 That's true.

00:55:36.000 And that'll take a long time.

00:55:38.000 That's not going to start next week.

00:55:40.000 But what is going to happen, Chevron's been there for 100 years continuously.

00:55:45.000 Now going to have a constructive Venezuelan government, a more active involvement from the U.S. government.

00:55:50.000 Can Chevron expand and grow their operations like starting tomorrow?

00:55:54.000 Yes, they can.

00:55:55.000 Do they want to do that? 0.95

00:55:56.000 Yes, they do.

00:55:58.000 So it's not a matter of the government having to twist anyone's arm or make stuff or even give them guarantees.

00:56:04.000 They just see President Trump and the U.S. government's involvement automatically makes business conditions better in Venezuela.

00:56:12.000 And they've been operating under the existing conditions.

00:56:14.000 These are improving business conditions today.

00:56:17.000 And companies that recently left or have been looking to go in, they're like, hey, now I think is a good time.

00:56:23.000 People are going to go in slowly.

00:56:25.000 The rate of investment is going to pick up from near nothing to a meaningful amount.

00:56:30.000 But the $10 billion, you know, 10-year development projects, they may not start for another year or two, but that's okay.

00:56:37.000 The trajectory has been only downward.

00:56:39.000 The trajectory immediately is going to be upward.

00:56:42.000 Ben, I've guessed we could have 30, 40, 50% higher Venezuelan oil production 12 to 18 months from now than we have today.

00:56:51.000 In fact, I think it's quite likely that will happen.

00:56:55.000 That's Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright.

00:56:58.000 Again, it's an amazing thing the Trump administration has done.

00:57:01.000 We look forward to the fulfilling of that sort of potential.

00:57:03.000 Secretary, thanks so much for your time.

00:57:04.000 Really appreciate it.

00:57:06.000 Thanks so much, Ben.

00:57:07.000 Appreciate you.

00:57:09.000 All righty, coming up, we are going to talk about what's going on in Cuba, which may be ready to fall as well.

00:57:14.000 Plus, Conan O'Brien says something true about comedy, and we'll have some economic updates first.

00:57:19.000 In order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:57:20.000 If you're not a member, become a member at Use Coach Apiro.

00:57:23.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

00:57:25.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

00:57:29.000 What was it like, Marlon, to be alone with God?

00:57:38.000 Is that who you think I was alone with?

00:57:44.000 Marathon, I knew your father.

00:57:46.000 I am yet convinced that he was not of this world.

00:57:51.000 All men know of the great Taliesi.

00:57:55.000 Oh, my father, the gods should war for my soul.

00:57:59.000 Princess Garris, savior of our people.

00:58:05.000 I know what the bull got off for you.

00:58:07.000 I was offered the same.

00:58:09.000 And there is a new part of work in the world.

00:58:13.000 I've seen it.

00:58:15.000 A god who sacrifices what he loves for us.

00:58:17.000 We are each given only one life, Singer.

00:58:20.000 No.

00:58:21.000 We're given another.

00:58:26.000 I learned of Yezu the Christ, and I have become his follower.

00:58:29.000 He's waiting on a miracle, and I think you can give him one.

00:58:33.000 Trust in Yezu. 0.87

00:58:34.000 He is the only hope for men like us.

00:58:37.000 Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the Great Life.

00:58:40.000 Great Light, Great Darkness.

00:58:43.000 Such things mattered to me then.

00:58:45.000 What matters to you now, Mistress of Lies?

00:58:49.000 You, nephew.

00:58:54.000 The sword of the High King.

00:58:58.000 How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield?

00:59:06.000 Still clinging to the promises of a god who has abandoned you.

00:59:09.000 I cannot take up that sword again.

00:59:12.000 You know what you must do.

00:59:15.000 Great Life, forgive me.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 09, 2026

UNHINGED: Top Democrats Label ICE The Enemy

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