The Ben Shapiro Show - US SEIZES Venezuelan Tanker!

00:00:00.000 The United States seizes a Venezuelan oil tanker.

00:00:03.000 Is war near or is something else happening?

00:00:05.000 Plus, what is our strategy on Russia on China?

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00:00:33.000 So the big news of the day is that the United States has now seized a very large oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast.

00:00:40.000 President Trump announced this yesterday.

00:00:42.000 He announced that the United States had pursued the seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker.

00:00:46.000 It was headed to Cuba.

00:00:47.000 Attorney General Pam Bondi said the U.S. Coast Guard, the FBI, and Homeland Security investigations executed that seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport oil from Venezuela and Iran in defiance of sanctions.

00:00:59.000 This is according to the Washington Post.

00:01:01.000 Here was the president yesterday.

00:01:02.000 As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela.

00:01:09.000 Large tanker, very large.

00:01:12.000 Largest one ever seized actually.

00:01:15.000 And other things are happening.

00:01:18.000 So you'll be seeing that later, and you'll be talking about that later with some other people.

00:01:23.000 The president did not, in fact, make clear what all those other things might be, although, of course, he has said before that there may be some operations that are authorized not just in the water, but also on the land.

00:01:33.000 And there's been talk about a no-fly zone established above Venezuela.

00:01:36.000 All of this is external pressure, presumably to force the possibility of a regime change in Venezuela without serious threat to American troops going in en masse on the ground.

00:01:46.000 That oil tanker, according to the Washington Post, had been sanctioned by the United States, according to Attorney General Bondi, due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.

00:01:56.000 And then she also shared a video that shows U.S. forces jumping out of helicopters and searching the large vessel on foot.

00:02:02.000 Here's what that looks like.

00:02:06.000 So here you can see this gigantic oil tanker, huge oil tanker, and an American helicopter.

00:02:11.000 And you can see soldiers repelling down onto this oil tanker, presumably to go look for the oil, to confiscate it, to stop the ship from moving toward its target.

00:02:25.000 Yeah, again, the United States military is unparalleled at what it does.

00:02:28.000 You can see these soldiers with their guns drawn toward the control booth.

00:02:37.000 That's an impressive thing.

00:02:39.000 Again, when the United States military comes, it doesn't play around.

00:02:44.000 President Trump described the vessel as both very large and the largest one ever seized, actually.

00:02:49.000 He also said when asked what would happen to the oil, well, maybe we'll keep it.

00:02:54.000 What happens to the oil on this ship?

00:02:57.000 Well, we keep it, I guess.

00:02:58.000 Where does it go?

00:02:59.000 What forces it goes to?

00:03:01.000 Well, you have to follow the tanker.

00:03:02.000 You don't hear good news, man.

00:03:04.000 Just follow the tanker.

00:03:06.000 Follow it.

00:03:09.000 But we're going to, like you assume, we're going to keep the oil.

00:03:13.000 Well, the president of the United States has always made no bones about the fact that he believes that if the United States is engaged in armed conflict somewhere, that we should keep the spoils that we reap.

00:03:23.000 You remember he said that about the Iraq war.

00:03:24.000 He suggested, hey, if you're going to actually do that war, then you may as well take the oil as some form of compensation.

00:03:30.000 When it comes to the Venezuelan government shipping oil over to Iran in violation of sanctions or allowing the Iranians to combine their oil with Venezuelan oil and ship that elsewhere and ship the money back to Iran, obviously keeping the spoils would be worthwhile.

00:03:44.000 One person familiar with the seizure in the administration told the Washington Post, quote, depending on what legal justification they use to seize the vessel, it could create a lot of problems for the regime.

00:03:53.000 This, of course, comes amidst the Trump administration blowing Venezuelan drug boats out of the water.

00:03:59.000 Venezuelan oil is one of the biggest sponsors of Cuba.

00:04:03.000 Cuba, of course, has heavy sanctions on it.

00:04:04.000 It doesn't have a very strong independent economy at all.

00:04:07.000 The communist island nation has had extensive blackouts this year.

00:04:11.000 Very little of that Venezuelan oil is going to Cuba.

00:04:14.000 But if it turns out that the United States is now prepared to interdict all oil that may or may not be headed for Iran or from Iran, then this could absolutely cripple the Venezuelan economy even more than it already has.

00:04:30.000 Again, according to Francisco Minaldi, a director of Latin America Energy Program at Rice University, if the Trump administration continues to seize oil tankers in a systematic way, targeting those particularly destined for China, that could significantly limit the willingness of black market fleets to go to Venezuela, dealing a major economic blow to Nicolas Maduro.

00:04:49.000 And again, the economic crisis could easily precipitate some sort of palace coup or the military deciding to overthrow Maduro if you could find somebody to actually do it.

00:04:59.000 A huge percentage of Venezuela's economy is dependent on oil exports.

00:05:03.000 We asked our friends and sponsors over at Comet, a project of perplexity, what percentage of Venezuela's economy is dependent on oil exports.

00:05:10.000 And according to Comet, Venezuela's economy is highly dependent on oil, mainly through its impact on exports and government revenue.

00:05:19.000 Apparently, oil accounts for over 80 to 90% of all total export earnings in recent years.

00:05:26.000 So, if that were to shut down, you'd basically collapse whatever is left of the Venezuelan economy.

00:05:32.000 And that seems to be something that the United States is pursuing at this point.

00:05:36.000 The president also has been making clear that he is going to put pressure on Gustavo Petro over in Colombia.

00:05:42.000 Colombia, of course, is historically a relatively conservative state.

00:05:45.000 Gustavo Petro, the Colombian president, is more oriented toward China, toward Iran.

00:05:50.000 He is a far-left socialist.

00:05:52.000 President Trump was asked about Petro's criticism of U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.

00:05:57.000 Petro referred to those efforts as barbarian.

00:05:59.000 Here's President Trump warning Petro that he better wise up.

00:06:03.000 Have you considered talking to the president of Colombia who you called a drug dealer?

00:06:08.000 No, I haven't really thought too much about him.

00:06:10.000 He's been fairly hostile to the United States.

00:06:14.000 I haven't given him a lot of thought.

00:06:17.000 He's going to have himself some big problems if he doesn't wise up.

00:06:21.000 Did you say that?

00:06:22.000 Colombia is producing a lot of drugs.

00:06:24.000 They have cocaine factories that make cocaine, as you know, and they sell it right into the United States.

00:06:29.000 So he better wise up or he'll be next.

00:06:32.000 He'll be next.

00:06:35.000 I hope he's listening.

00:06:36.000 He's going to be next.

00:06:38.000 Mr. President, we don't like people where they kill people.

00:06:42.000 They sell drugs, they kill them in the United States, and Colombia is a major manufacturer of drugs, meaning cocaine in particular.

00:06:51.000 Okay, so the United States could obviously put pressure on the Petro regime in Colombia.

00:06:57.000 The next scheduled election for president in Colombia happens next May.

00:07:01.000 So there's every possibility that Petro could be in trouble as well.

00:07:03.000 All of this seems to be part of a broader national security strategy pursued by the White House.

00:07:08.000 That national security strategy, which we talked about at length just the other day, focuses a lot on South America, on Latin America.

00:07:17.000 It focuses specifically on the idea that the United States ought to be the dominant power in our own hemisphere.

00:07:24.000 So, according to that national security document, the foreign influence of China or of Iran or Russia in the Western hemisphere ought to stop.

00:07:35.000 Quote, the United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity, a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region.

00:07:45.000 The terms of our alliances and the terms upon which we may provide any kind of aid must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets, broadly defined.

00:07:59.000 The United States has achieved success as the national security strategy in rolling back outside influence in the Western Hemisphere by demonstrating with specificity how many hidden costs are embedded in allegedly low-cost foreign assistance.

00:08:11.000 In other words, we've told other countries that if they take Chinese help, well, they may be also taking Chinese surveillance and debt traps.

00:08:20.000 In the Western Hemisphere, according to the National Security Strategy, the United States should make clear that American goods, services, and technologies are a far better buy in the long run because they are higher quality and do not come with the same kind of strings as other countries' assistance.

00:08:34.000 So, the national security strategy of the United States is very much a sort of muscular Monroe doctrine suggesting that the Western Hemisphere be made clear of outside influence.

00:08:47.000 Alrighty, coming up, we'll get to other threats to the United States.

00:08:50.000 Which ones are we facing down first?

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00:10:55.000 Let's get back to the table.

00:10:57.000 Now, realistically speaking, the threats to the United States, other than immigration, which of course has been a threat, but is a threat that has been largely mitigated by closing our southern border.

00:11:05.000 The threats to the United States are predominantly not from South America and Latin America.

00:11:10.000 Yes, what happens in the Western hemisphere has an impact on us.

00:11:13.000 What happens with regards to China and Russia has an even larger impact on us because the world is much, much smaller than it was when James Monroe was president.

00:11:21.000 And thus, I find it sort of bizarre that the Trump administration is at the same time attempting to overthrow the Maduro regime via economic pressure.

00:11:31.000 That appears to be what they're doing.

00:11:33.000 But also at the same time, to somehow allow for the possibility of an increased Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

00:11:41.000 This makes zero sense to me.

00:11:42.000 Russia, Venezuela, these are allies.

00:11:46.000 China is an ally.

00:11:47.000 Iran is an ally.

00:11:48.000 North Korea is an ally. 0.67

00:11:49.000 It is a network of allied far-left states and or Islamist states.

00:11:55.000 And fighting one but making nice with the others is unlikely to result in anything to America's benefit.

00:12:02.000 A broadening of the Russian sphere of influence is not going to make America stronger.

00:12:07.000 And the reality is, as much as President Trump likes to dunk on the Europeans, and hell, I enjoy a good windmill jam on the Europeans from time to time, the notion that we somehow hold more in common with Vladimir Putin than we do with the Europeans, broadly speaking, is nonsense.

00:12:20.000 It is not true.

00:12:21.000 We hold virtually nothing in common with Vladimir Putin.

00:12:25.000 Contrary to popular expectation and opinion, Russia is not, in fact, a state that is wildly pro-religion.

00:12:34.000 Russia is not, in fact, a state that agrees with us on foreign policy perspectives.

00:12:41.000 It is not a country that seeks its own sphere of influence without any reference to the United States.

00:12:47.000 It actually believes it ought to be not just a regional power, but a global power in opposition to the United States.

00:12:53.000 Which is why a brand new plan apparently unveiled by the Wall Street Journal with regards to Ukraine is somewhat disturbing.

00:12:58.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration in recent weeks has handed its European counterparts a series of documents, each a single page, laying out its vision for the reconstruction of Ukraine and the return of Russia to the global economy.

00:13:09.000 The proposals have sparked an intense battle at the negotiating table between America and its traditional allies in Europe.

00:13:15.000 The outcome stands to profoundly alter the economic map of the continent.

00:13:19.000 The U.S. blueprint has been spelled out apparently in appendices to current peace proposals.

00:13:23.000 They're not public, but they've been described to the Wall Street Journal.

00:13:26.000 Those documents detail plans for U.S. financial firms and other businesses to tap roughly $200 billion of frozen Russian assets for projects in Ukraine, including a massive new data center to be powered by a nuclear plant currently occupied by Russian troops.

00:13:40.000 Another appendix, however, offers America's broad strokes vision for bringing Russia's economy in from the cold, with the U.S. investing in strategic sectors from rare earth extraction to drilling for oil in the Arctic and helping to restore Russian energy flows to Western Europe and the rest of the world.

00:13:56.000 Which, again, is pretty astonishing.

00:13:59.000 And basically, it is saying, okay, we'll take a little bit of your money to pay for some projects and rebuilding in Ukraine, and maybe that sweetens the deal for Ukraine.

00:14:09.000 But we'll then reopen the world economy to Russia. 0.93

00:14:11.000 Well, if that happens and Russia has a vast influx of cash, you think they're going to sit still on Ukraine for very long?

00:14:16.000 The minute that they sense vulnerability, they will move.

00:14:21.000 Apparently, in a call Wednesday, President Trump discussed the peace process with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Murz and British Prime Minister Kier Starmer.

00:14:33.000 The rumor is, very strong rumor, that the Trump administration has basically told the Ukrainians they need to sign on the dotted line by Christmas or U.S. support will go away, which of course would be incredibly self-defeating.

00:14:44.000 Russia would love for U.S. support to go away.

00:14:48.000 And by the way, the Europeans are beginning to act. 0.81

00:14:50.000 The European Parliament and member state governments, according to the journal, finalized a legislative agreement to phase out all Russian pipeline gas within two years.

00:15:00.000 Again, this move by the Trump administration to make nice with the Russians, it's hard to see that as anything other than a bizarre attempt to allow for spheres of influence, not just with regard to Russia, but also, as we'll discuss momentarily, with China.

00:15:15.000 For Ukraine, the question is: why would you sign a deal when the United States is cutting support to Ukraine in the middle of a war now?

00:15:23.000 Why would Ukraine believe that if Russia attacks again, the United States will rush back in with all of its resources?

00:15:29.000 Apparently, according to Axios, Ukraine has now given the Trump administration its point-by-point response to the latest draft of the U.S. peace plan.

00:15:38.000 Apparently, Zelensky's national security advisor and chief negotiator, Rustem Umarov, sent the Ukrainian response to Jared Kushner, President Trump's advisor and son-in-law.

00:15:47.000 A Ukrainian official said the response includes comments and proposed amendments to make the whole thing doable.

00:15:53.000 So is there a middle ground here?

00:15:55.000 Here's my problem.

00:15:56.000 Have we heard any response from the Russians whatsoever on what they are willing to do?

00:16:00.000 Have they moved one iota?

00:16:01.000 Have they moved one inch since the beginning of the war in terms of their demands?

00:16:07.000 Or at least since the latest iteration of demands, which mostly happened about three years ago?

00:16:12.000 The answer seems to be no.

00:16:14.000 Meanwhile, what exactly are we doing with China?

00:16:17.000 Now, it may very well be that right now, we have some military problems in the Far East that make China the favorite in a local or regional war in that arena. 0.93

00:16:27.000 According to the UK Telegraph, China would defeat the U.S. military in a war over Taiwan, according to a top secret U.S. government assessment.

00:16:34.000 U.S. reliance on costly, sophisticated weapons leaves it exposed to China's ability to mass-produce cheaper systems in overwhelming numbers, according to a highly classified overmatch brief.

00:16:45.000 A national security official under President Biden, who reviewed the document, is said to have turned pale on realizing Beijing had redundancy and after redundancy for every trick we had up our sleeve.

00:16:57.000 So in the brief, which examines what would happen if the U.S. went to war with China over Taiwan, for example, the USS Gerald R. Ford would be sent to that arena where it would likely be destroyed.

00:17:09.000 Again, that's because China is engaged in drone warfare. 0.64

00:17:13.000 Also, they have ship-destroying YJ-17 missiles that travel at eight times the speed of sound.

00:17:19.000 And yet the United States continues to play a bizarre game with its defense industries where we fight yesterday's war.

00:17:26.000 Apparently, the Pentagon is planning to build nine additional Ford-class aircraft carriers, but it hasn't deployed a single hypersonic missile as of yet.

00:17:35.000 According to Eric Gomez, a research fellow at the Taiwan Security Monitor, he said he did his own war game between the United States and China over Taiwan.

00:17:43.000 He said, even if the U.S. would win, the U.S. would suffer heavy losses, including a lot of ships.

00:17:48.000 A lot of F-35s and other tactical aircraft in the theater are degraded pretty rapidly as well.

00:17:55.000 He said, I think the high cost of it was really sobering when we did the after-action summaries.

00:17:59.000 We were like, okay, you guys lost 100-plus fifth-generation aircraft, multiple destroyers, a couple of submarines, a couple of carriers.

00:18:07.000 So, is our advantage in that arena real enough for us to take on China?

00:18:14.000 Again, this is why rebuilding the military is absolutely necessary and getting creative about how exactly we do that would be absolutely necessary as well.

00:18:24.000 It's also why it would be worthwhile to listen to Sham Sankar, who's been a guest on our program, the CTO at Palanzir, who's been talking for a while about modernizing our military procurement strategy and fighting future wars, not the wars of the past.

00:18:37.000 Well, if we are going to face down China, is it a good idea for the president to let NVIDIA sell its H-200 chip to China?

00:18:45.000 According to the Wall Street Journal editorial board, President Trump's move to ease export controls on computer trips illustrates his confusing China policy to the extent he has one.

00:18:54.000 In the first term, he changed America's China debate as a trade and security hawk.

00:18:58.000 Eight years later, he's sounding like the post-Cold War globalist he denounces who thought the lure of commerce would make the world safer.

00:19:05.000 According to the journal, one reason is that Beijing's semiconductor industrial policy has resulted in colossal waste and mismanagement.

00:19:12.000 Huawei has struggled designing high-end and high-powered chips needed to train those advanced AI models.

00:19:17.000 And this has frustrated Beijing, which presumably is why China keeps trying to smuggle NVIDIA H-200 chips into the country.

00:19:25.000 Now, President Trump wants to allow China to just buy those H-200s without any strings attached.

00:19:32.000 So is that a smart move?

00:19:35.000 The 25% tax payments that NVIDIA will pay to the Treasury Department, that is not enough to pay for the possibility of a competitive China in the AI sphere.

00:19:44.000 And it's hard to read that as anything other than a sort of tacit recognition of Chinese power in the Far East or Russian power in Eastern Europe, none of which is going to redound to the benefit of the world. 0.70

00:19:57.000 The United States, as the world's global hegemon, you're going to miss it when it's gone.

00:20:02.000 That doesn't mean that we ought to police every single thing happening on planet Earth.

00:20:05.000 It does mean that we do have to push our opponents geopolitically off the ball.

00:20:09.000 Well, I will say that at least the House seems to be moving towards something useful.

00:20:12.000 The House on Wednesday apparently approved a $900 billion defense policy bill that gives U.S. troops a raise and codifies a lot of President Trump's national security agenda.

00:20:21.000 It seeks to curb his pullback from Europe and mandate more Pentagon consultation with Congress.

00:20:26.000 The bill goes to the Senate.

00:20:27.000 It will probably pass there as well.

00:20:31.000 So, again, we actually do need a military rebuild.

00:20:35.000 That means contracting to do more sophisticated things, newer things, robotics, AI, all the rest.

00:20:42.000 We can't just build yesterday's aircraft carriers anymore and hope to defeat our enemies.

00:20:47.000 More on the economy in just one moment.

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00:23:22.000 Now, meanwhile, all of this is dependent on a robust American economy.

00:23:26.000 Yesterday, the Federal Reserve cut the rates as expected by the prediction markets at our sponsor Calci.

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00:23:35.000 It wasn't unanimous.

00:23:36.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve officials cut interest rates for a third straight meeting, but signaled they might be done for now in the midst of unusual divisions over the path forward.

00:23:45.000 That decision to cut the benchmark federal funds rate by a quarter point is aimed at protecting against a slowdown in hiring.

00:23:52.000 The Fed voted nine to three.

00:23:54.000 That is the first time in six years that there were three officials casting dissents.

00:23:58.000 Two thought there was no use in the reduction.

00:24:00.000 Another actually wanted a much larger reduction, like half a point, as opposed to 0.25%.

00:24:06.000 Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, he said, well, you know, the reason we cut is because job markets actually might be shrinking.

00:24:13.000 It's possible we're missing some data here.

00:24:15.000 In October, I said that there was no certainty of moving, and that was indeed correct. 0.89

00:24:23.000 I said it's possible you could think about it that way, but I was careful to say other people could look at it differently.

00:24:29.000 So why did we move today?

00:24:31.000 You know, I would say point to a couple of things.

00:24:33.000 First of all, gradual cooling in the labor market has continued.

00:24:36.000 Unemployment is now up three-tenths from June through September.

00:24:40.000 Payroll jobs averaging 40,000 per month since April.

00:24:46.000 We think there's an overstatement in these numbers by about 60,000.

00:24:50.000 So that would be negative 20,000 per month.

00:24:54.000 And also, just to point out one other thing, surveys of households and businesses both show declining supply and demand for workers.

00:25:01.000 So I think you can say that the labor market has continued to cool gradually, maybe just a touch more gradually than we thought.

00:25:12.000 Okay, so that presumably is what prompted the Federal Reserve to lower those interest rates because again, there's liquidity in the economy, but the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate: keep inflation low and keep unemployment low.

00:25:23.000 And so if they feel like people are losing their jobs, the idea is to inject more liquidity into the economy, put more money in there.

00:25:29.000 That will cause people to spend more, which will cause more people to have jobs.

00:25:32.000 That at least is the logic.

00:25:35.000 Now, with that said, it's also possible that the jobs market is at least in part stagnant or shrinking, partially because of, for example, things like, yes, wait for it, tariffs.

00:25:46.000 Jerome Powell pointed out that inflation on the price of goods is in fact up because of tariffs.

00:25:50.000 So when you're talking affordability, the tariffs do have an impact.

00:25:54.000 Total PCE prices rose 2.8% over the 12 months ending in September.

00:25:59.000 And excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core PCE prices also rose 2.8%.

00:26:07.000 These readings are higher than earlier in the year as inflation for goods has picked up, reflecting the effects of tariffs.

00:26:14.000 Okay, so, and he said the thing that he's not supposed to say, if you don't want to tick off President Trump, but it also happens to be true.

00:26:21.000 When you see an increase in the price of goods that you buy at the grocery store because there is a tax on the goods coming from abroad, obviously you're going to see some inflation.

00:26:30.000 So we have the beginnings of what looks like, not in major measure, but at least a little inkling of what you would call stagflation, continued too high pricing, combined with a jobs market that might be shrinking.

00:26:46.000 Now, is any of that a serious problem?

00:26:49.000 Again, inflation is way down from where it was a year ago.

00:26:51.000 That's true.

00:26:52.000 Also, the employment market continues to remain robust.

00:26:54.000 That is also true.

00:26:56.000 And President Trump is not wrong when he says that the economic pain people are feeling is largely because of Joe Biden.

00:27:02.000 As we've discussed, the vast majority of the inflation that people are currently feeling, meaning like the much higher prices now than there were in 2019, a huge portion of that happened under not President Trump, but under Joe Biden.

00:27:14.000 I inherited very simply the highest prices in history, and I'm bringing them down really fast, led by energy.

00:27:23.000 And when energy comes down, everything else comes down.

00:27:26.000 But I've only been here a short while, and we gave them a beautiful, beautiful thing, and they destroyed it.

00:27:32.000 They would have destroyed our country had they been allowed to stay.

00:27:36.000 If we didn't win this election, if we had Kamala, who's the same as Joe, low IQ people, but if we had Kamala, you would have a country that would be right now in ruins.

00:27:50.000 I believe that 100%.

00:27:54.000 So he's not wrong about that either.

00:27:56.000 With that said, Democrats are, of course, jumping on the political train that is taking them somewhere.

00:28:01.000 And that is suggesting that President Trump is uncaring about the economy.

00:28:05.000 And Chuck Schumer, who, again, helped preside over much of this for Joe Biden, is out there rallying against the president.

00:28:11.000 What was Donald Trump's solution to affordability?

00:28:15.000 Well, last night, Trump said parents should buy their kids fewer dolls for Christmas.

00:28:20.000 We're not talking about fewer dolls for Christmas.

00:28:23.000 We're talking about necessities like food, like medicine, like fixing your car when it gets damaged, like maybe going to see the grandkids who you haven't seen in two years because you can't afford the trip.

00:28:40.000 He said kids at school should have fewer pencils.

00:28:44.000 And then he repeated his favorite, that his favorite word was tariffs.

00:28:48.000 What kind of world does he live in?

00:28:50.000 Does he understand that these tariffs are raising prices through the roof?

00:28:55.000 Now, again, one of my great annoyances here is that Chuck Schumer is not one to talk.

00:29:00.000 With that said, obviously, if people are concerned about affordability, then you do have to get rid of the policies that are likely to continue to cause inflationary policy.

00:29:09.000 Now, Jerome Powell is going to be gone pretty soon.

00:29:11.000 Kevin Hassett is the person most likely to replace him over the National Economic Council.

00:29:16.000 He also is blaming Democrats for people's dyspepsia about the economy.

00:29:20.000 And again, he's not wrong.

00:29:22.000 I'm not saying Republicans are wrong when they say this.

00:29:23.000 I'm saying it's not an effective political tactic, generally speaking.

00:29:27.000 The pot of light is that the Democrats are out there saying things that are false and like they're not holding up charts telling you what's going on.

00:29:34.000 But, you know, we have a chart that showed that the typical family buying a new home saw their mortgage rate go up at an annual rate by $14,000 because of Biden's inflation and the high interest rates that followed from it.

00:29:47.000 And so people who have to pay $14,000 a year more just to have their home, of course they were harmed a lot by Biden.

00:29:54.000 But already because we've been getting closer to a balanced budget and leading interest rates down even before we control the Fed more, that we've saved a couple thousand dollars of that $14,000 already.

00:30:08.000 Now, again, none of this is wrong.

00:30:10.000 If, however, you wish for people to see you as an affordability presidency, then you need to announce more policies that lead to affordability.

00:30:17.000 Hassett is likely, again, to chair the Federal Reserve in the near future.

00:30:20.000 And he says that the Fed has been way behind on reducing rates.

00:30:23.000 I just, I'm sorry.

00:30:24.000 The reality is that our inflation rate is still riding 50% higher than it normally is supposed to.

00:30:29.000 So hard for me to believe that they've been that wrong in refusing to reduce the rates.

00:30:34.000 The fact is that they've been way behind getting the rates down.

00:30:39.000 The economy is doing well, but because of all the supply-side action that we've taken, we've got high growth with declining inflation.

00:30:47.000 And so they've got plenty of room to cut rates.

00:30:50.000 They'll do a little bit this time, but they'll probably need to do some more.

00:30:55.000 So, you know, we'll see if that's true.

00:30:57.000 But again, if you are reliant, if yelling at the Federal Reserve or changing Federal Reserve policy is your way of somehow establishing economic affordability, and you're talking about lowering the interest rates, not increasing them.

00:31:09.000 You're not going to do the Paul Volcker thing under Ronald Reagan, where inflation is running in double digits.

00:31:14.000 And so you radically increase those interest rates to get the extra money out of the economy.

00:31:18.000 If you're talking about how affordability is a problem, now let me lower the interest rates.

00:31:23.000 I'm not sure that that totally scans.

00:31:26.000 Now, meanwhile, again, Democrats are making hay over problems they created in the first place.

00:31:30.000 This is particularly true when it comes to health care.

00:31:33.000 So, some frustrated Republicans, according to Politico, are going to force a vote on extending Obamacare health insurance subsidies expiring in just three weeks.

00:31:42.000 These are all Republicans from swing states.

00:31:45.000 They're all set to lose their seats, probably, if there's a gigantic spike in the health insurance rates.

00:31:51.000 According to Politico, at least six Republicans have signed a discharge petition filed Wednesday on a bill authored by Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Jared Golden of Maine that would extend the expiring tax credits for two years while imposing some new eligibility requirements.

00:32:05.000 Fitzpatrick said it's a time-sensitive matter.

00:32:07.000 It's an existential matter.

00:32:08.000 You try to do things through the normal course.

00:32:10.000 You try to do them through regular order.

00:32:13.000 This is a move to sidestep Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, who, of course, is trying to unify against extending those subsidies.

00:32:20.000 And you can see why the Trump administration and the Speaker of the House, they're not interested in continuing to spend money like water the way the Democrats have.

00:32:28.000 It also happens to be the case that if those insurance rates spike, Republicans will be blamed at the polls.

00:32:36.000 Representative John Rutherford of Florida said, quote, if we fumble this health care ball, nothing else is going to matter.

00:32:40.000 If we don't win the majority in the midterms, none of it matters.

00:32:42.000 We can't do anything good then.

00:32:43.000 I think everybody understands that.

00:32:46.000 Well, Speaker Johnson has presented another menu of options to Republicans.

00:32:53.000 But that menu of options seems to be relatively non-popular with other Republicans who are in those swing state areas.

00:33:03.000 According to Meredith Lee Hill of Politico, House Republican leaders presented no firm plan yesterday for advancing health care legislation as anxiety rose in GOP ranks over the impending expiration of key Obamacare subsidies at the end of the year.

00:33:17.000 So there are some 10 policies that could get votes in the coming weeks or months.

00:33:21.000 Some were specific, like expansion of AHSA's health savings accounts or overhauling pharmaceutical benefit manager oversight.

00:33:29.000 Others were pretty vague.

00:33:31.000 The most likely scenario here is a partial extension of the Obamacare subsidies for, say, a year or two years in exchange for some policies, like, for example, the gradual sunsetting of that and the addition of new health savings accounts, for example, or the higher funding of health savings accounts.

00:33:51.000 Meanwhile, President Trump correctly slammed Obamacare at the White House, saying, you know, it's weird.

00:33:55.000 You guys keep coming back to me for money after telling me it was all going to work.

00:33:58.000 Well, the Unaffordable Care Act, which is Obamacare, they call it now the unaffordable because it's unaffordable.

00:34:04.000 It used to be called the affordable, but it was never affordable.

00:34:07.000 It was always been.

00:34:08.000 It was basically designed for the benefit of insurance companies.

00:34:11.000 And what we're doing is we want all of the billions and billions of dollars that went to insurance companies to go directly to the people and they can buy their own health care.

00:34:22.000 And people love it.

00:34:24.000 I don't know if the Democrats are going to approve it because they want the insurance companies to make money.

00:34:29.000 It was a scam.

00:34:29.000 Obamacare was a scam.

00:34:32.000 And again, he is not wrong about this.

00:34:34.000 However, the American people, you know, once you get people dependent on government benefits, very difficult to get them non-dependent on those government benefits again.

00:34:43.000 Amy Klobuchar, senator from Minnesota, she's taking full advantage. 1.00

00:34:48.000 The plan that we're offering is something that they've had in place before that allows people who are on the Affordable Care Act, 20 million people, to be able to get their insurance premiums that they can pay for and continue their plan.

00:35:03.000 The plans they have is just a made-up thing that is not going to help these people for what they need to be able to afford insurance.

00:35:12.000 Now, again, your plan seems to be continuous subsidies for literally ever.

00:35:17.000 But this is why Republicans in the end are going to have to offer free market-based solutions that are at the state and local level.

00:35:23.000 Because once you start playing this game, once you start playing the we can make everything more affordable at the federal government level through subsidies game, you're never going to outbid the Democrats.

00:35:31.000 It's just not going to happen.

00:35:33.000 Alrighty, coming up, Christy Noam, is she on the shopping block or not really?

00:35:37.000 First, America is approaching its 250th birthday.

00:35:39.000 It should be a time of celebration.

00:35:41.000 But did you know only 41% of Gen Z say they are actually proud to be American?

00:35:45.000 Why is that number not 100%?

00:35:47.000 We need to fix that fast.

00:35:48.000 Thankfully, there's no organization better positioned to educate young people about the true history of this country than Prager U. For years, young Americans have been fed a steady diet of misinformation, taught to believe this country is racist, sexist, and bigoted.

00:36:01.000 PragerU is correcting the record.

00:36:03.000 They tell the whole story, the good and the bad, but always with accuracy and appreciation for the patriots who sacrificed everything to create the greatest country in human history.

00:36:11.000 Through powerful storytelling, engaging videos, and family-friendly resources, PragerU is reaching the next generation.

00:36:16.000 Millions of young people are finally hearing a message that inspires pride, not shame.

00:36:20.000 And here's something you need to know.

00:36:22.000 While plenty of nonprofits line up for government money, PragerU refused it, even when partnering with the White House.

00:36:27.000 They will not let the government fund their message.

00:36:29.000 That's why they rely on patriotic Americans like you.

00:36:32.000 I've worked with PragerU.

00:36:33.000 I've seen what they do.

00:36:33.000 If we're going to win the fight for the next generation, we need PragerU well-funded.

00:36:37.000 Right now, every dollar you give to PragerU will be triple match, which means every dollar you give will have three times the impact.

00:36:43.000 Go to PragerU.com slash DW during the triple match and make your gift today.

00:36:47.000 That's PragerU.com slash DW.

00:36:50.000 Also, the Daily Wire Shop's best deals of the year are still live right now, and we're taking up to 70% off conservative gifts for everybody on your list.

00:36:58.000 Gifts like my New York Times bestseller, Lions and Scavengers, signed copies only available at the Daily Wire shop, plus merchant inspired by the book, the new Truth Bomb Golf Driver and Putter covers.

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00:37:32.000 That's dailywire.com/slash shop.

00:37:34.000 Meanwhile, President Trump has announced that he has no intentions of firing the Department of Homeland Security head Christy Noam.

00:37:40.000 There had been a lot of speculation about that possibility earlier this week.

00:37:44.000 The president made that clear yesterday.

00:37:46.000 I read the same stories that I'm unhappy with this one or that one and I'm not.

00:37:50.000 I think the cabinet's done a great job.

00:37:53.000 I read a story that I was unhappy with Pete because he was attacking drug dealers.

00:38:00.000 I said, that's not exactly right.

00:38:02.000 I would say very much the opposite.

00:38:04.000 Pete Hegsab has been phenomenal.

00:38:07.000 I read a story recently, I'm unhappy with Christy.

00:38:12.000 I'm so happy with it.

00:38:13.000 I mean, we have a closed border.

00:38:15.000 We have a border that's the best border in the history of our country.

00:38:19.000 Why would I be unhappy?

00:38:20.000 She's fantastic, actually.

00:38:22.000 So I guess that one is put to bed.

00:38:24.000 Meanwhile, the president has announced his gold card.

00:38:27.000 This would be a $1 million gold card, which is a visa fast track for wealthy foreigners.

00:38:33.000 Here's the president announcing this yesterday.

00:38:35.000 We've just launched the Trump gold card.

00:38:38.000 It was about 30 minutes from now.

00:38:44.000 The site goes up and all funds go to the United States government.

00:38:49.000 Could be a tremendous amount of money.

00:38:51.000 It'll also be able to help people like this keep, as an example, just one example.

00:38:56.000 There are a lot of examples, people just buying that.

00:38:58.000 It's somewhat like a green card, but with big advantages over a green card.

00:39:04.000 So apparently, Howard Luttnick believes that this will raise $100 billion to lower taxes or pay down the federal debt, according to Politico.

00:39:12.000 Howard Luttnick, the commerce secretary, said we were taking in the bottom quartile.

00:39:15.000 We're going to stop doing that.

00:39:16.000 We're going to take only extraordinary people at the very top instead of people trying to take jobs from Americans.

00:39:21.000 So apparently, it's similar to the green card model.

00:39:24.000 The individual will pay global tax just as a U.S. citizen or permanent resident would.

00:39:28.000 Individuals will be charged $1 million for the gold card, $2 million for corporations sponsoring an employee in addition to a $15,000 vetting fee.

00:39:36.000 There's also going to be a Trump platinum card.

00:39:38.000 All these, by the way, do have the president's face on them.

00:39:40.000 But that one's not coming anytime soon.

00:39:42.000 It would apparently cost $5 million and allow holders to spend up to 270 days in the United States without being taxed on their non-U.S. based income.

00:39:51.000 So again, not a terrible idea.

00:39:52.000 It'll be interesting to see how many people take the United States up on it.

00:39:55.000 Better to have people paying a million dollars to get the Trump gold card than to continue to import refugees from various areas of the world who are then wildly dependent on welfare. 0.96

00:40:05.000 New report out of the Center for Immigration Studies.

00:40:09.000 Breitbart reports it.

00:40:10.000 More than eight in 10 households headed by Somali refugees in the state of Minnesota are on one or more forms of American taxpayer welfare.

00:40:17.000 The data is based on 10 years of data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, and it shows drastic disparities between native-born American households and Somali-born households in Minnesota, where nearly 80,000 residents have Somali ancestry compared to zero who had Somali ancestry back in 1990.

00:40:34.000 81%, 81% of all Minnesota households headed by Somali refugees are on one or more forms of welfare, including 27% on cash welfare, 54% on food stamps, 73% who are on Medicaid.

00:40:48.000 How about native-born Americans?

00:40:50.000 21% are on one or more forms of welfare.

00:40:53.000 So yeah, we may not be importing the people who are the greatest assets to the future of the country.

00:41:00.000 Meanwhile, it is always amusing whenever there are Republicans who appear with Democrats to watch Republicans go out of their way to condemn bigotry on their own side.

00:41:08.000 Very often this happens, not always, but very often.

00:41:11.000 And to watch Democrats then completely ignore the bigotry on their own side.

00:41:14.000 So there was a sit-down recently between Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who's a quite moderate Republican in Utah, and Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania.

00:41:26.000 Josh Shapiro said that it's very important that all leaders must condemn all political violence.

00:41:30.000 Very, very important.

00:41:31.000 This is for NBC's Finding Common Ground series.

00:41:35.000 Let's be clear: political violence has hit people on the left and the right.

00:41:41.000 It's been engaged in by some people on the political left and the political right.

00:41:46.000 Let's remember when you pick up a gun and try and shoot someone, you are not sane and rational and a linear thinker.

00:41:53.000 And so sometimes your views can be characterized on the political right or the political left.

00:41:58.000 In just the last few months, you've seen Charlie Kirk, a conservative, and Speaker Hortman in Minnesota murdered people on the left and right in my home state.

00:42:12.000 You've seen an assassination attempt on the president of the United States on the right and myself and my family on the political left.

00:42:22.000 We need to begin by saying that all leaders must condemn all political violence, not cherry pick which violence to condemn and which violence to accept.

00:42:36.000 So, again, all of that is well and good.

00:42:40.000 The only problem, of course, is that Democrats, then when asked for specifics on who on their own side, they will condemn, they can come up with no one.

00:42:47.000 It's very easy to say, I condemn political violence on the political right and I condemn it on the political left.

00:42:51.000 But then when it comes time to name names, then all of a sudden everybody goes silent.

00:42:57.000 And no mention of Black Lives Matter.

00:42:59.000 No mention of the political identity of Charlie Kirk's murderer, for example.

00:43:05.000 It is a constant irritant to me when people will sort of say both sides are responsible for a thing.

00:43:10.000 And then when it comes to their own side, they will go completely silent.

00:43:14.000 Chuck Schumer did this yesterday.

00:43:15.000 So Chuck Schumer was at a congressional menorah lighting ceremony in Washington, D.C.

00:43:19.000 And again, as an Orthodox Jew, Chuck Schumer's continual attempts to call upon his ethnic Judaism in order to cover for his shameful behavior in office is of high irritation to me.

00:43:31.000 He condemned anti-Semitism and Nazism and other forms of bigotry.

00:43:35.000 He has yet to say a word in anger about any of the anti-Semitic nonsense in his own party, ranging from Zarn Mamdani in New York to Ilhan Omar.

00:43:44.000 Here he was yesterday.

00:43:46.000 The evil forces of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and other forms of hatred and bigotry are running rampant in our society.

00:43:56.000 And too many, far too many, are silent against these threats.

00:44:02.000 But when it comes to anti-Semitism, silence is dangerous.

00:44:05.000 When we stay silent, that's when the poison of anti-Semitism spreads like wildfire.

00:44:11.000 We have seen that throughout our history.

00:44:13.000 Okay, well, I mean, you did stay silent on your own side, and you remain silent on your own side.

00:44:18.000 If you actually want to fight bigotry, you actually have to call it out on your own side.

00:44:22.000 I know, difficult lessons for everybody to learn.

00:44:25.000 Okay, meanwhile, the Warner Brothers deal continues to be a little bit up in the air.

00:44:29.000 Netflix, of course, had issued a deal that was taken up by Warner Brothers, but the deal is still up in the air.

00:44:40.000 According to The Verge, Netflix is still the frontrunner to become Warner Brothers' new owner, but the war for control of the legacy studio is not yet over.

00:44:47.000 Paramount Skydance has now made its own outsize offer for the company.

00:44:50.000 It would give CEO David Ellison even more control over the news and entertainment landscape.

00:44:54.000 While Warner Brothers Discovery has repeatedly turned down Paramount Skydance's previous offers, Netflix's bid could also fall apart because it is subject to regulatory scrutiny by the FTC and the Department of Justice.

00:45:07.000 Apparently, Warner Brothers has signaled it's open to the Netflix $82.7 billion acquisition proposal, which would include both stray cash and stock options, and would follow the split of Warner Brothers Discovery into two companies.

00:45:22.000 Netflix would only acquire part of the company, would not acquire, for example, CNN.

00:45:28.000 Paramount Skydance is trying to buy all of it for $108.4 billion in cash, like with no stock.

00:45:36.000 That deal would give Paramount Skydance control of Warner Brothers movie and TV production studios, the HBO Max brands, and unlike Netflix's proposal, all of WBD's cable networks like Discovery Channel and TNT as well.

00:45:51.000 So really interesting to see how this is going to work out.

00:45:56.000 So apparently, there is talk that if Larry Ellison and David Ellison take over Warner Brothers, including CNN, that there will be changes made to CNN in the same way as changes were made by the Ellisons to CBS News, which, by the way, for the country, it'd be great.

00:46:12.000 CNN has been for a very long time a dying channel on the verge of collapse that is very left-oriented while claiming objectivity.

00:46:22.000 Apparently, in recent days, David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he would make sweeping changes to CNN.

00:46:31.000 Now, again, we will have to see what legal boundaries are tied up here.

00:46:37.000 It seems difficult for me to see how Paramount ends up pulling this out, given that Netflix has already been accepted by WBD.

00:46:47.000 President Trump, for his part, of course, on a political level, would love to see Paramount acquire Warner Brothers.

00:46:54.000 He said that he believes that any deal for Warner Brothers has to include CNN right now.

00:46:58.000 Of course, Netflix doesn't want to buy CNN because, you know, frankly, who would unless you want to change it?

00:47:04.000 But I think CNN should be sold because I think the people that are running CNN right now, CNN right now, are either corrupt or incompetent.

00:47:13.000 And that may not be a factor in decision making because you know we've got some.

00:47:16.000 Well, in my mind, but I can be talked out of that by some very talented people that we have, antitrust people.

00:47:23.000 But I just think that the people that have run CNN into the ground, by the way, nobody watches, very few people watch, I don't think they should be entrusted with running CNN any longer.

00:47:34.000 So I think any deal it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it.

00:47:42.000 Now, generally, you know, I do not think that the government should be involved in these sorts of decisions, and that generally applies specifically here.

00:47:48.000 Regardless of my personal feelings on which corporation would be better for the country in terms of acquiring Warner Brothers.

00:47:56.000 And again, I'm a fan of what the Ellisons are doing. 1.00

00:47:59.000 I do not think that the federal government should be using its regulatory leverage in order to make certain deals that it finds more politically palatable because I don't like it when the shoe is on the other foot.

00:48:10.000 With that said, Bernie Sanders ripped into Jared Kushner because Kushner is involved in that takeover bid of WB.

00:48:16.000 He tweeted a handful of giant corporations already control much of the media.

00:48:19.000 Trump wants to make it worse.

00:48:21.000 He vows to be involved in allowing his billionaire allies, his son-in-law and the Saudis, Qataris, and Emirates, to buy Warner Brothers.

00:48:26.000 That's authoritarianism, not democracy.

00:48:29.000 Well, I mean, it sort of depends on the outcome.

00:48:32.000 But also, I noticed that Bernie Sanders is not particularly concerned about the other giant corporation that is trying to, you know, take over Warner Brothers.

00:48:40.000 So I guess certain giant corporations, according to Bernie, are better than other giant corporations.

00:48:44.000 All righty, folks.

00:48:45.000 Coming up, we are going to jump into that vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag.

00:48:48.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:48:50.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:48:51.000 Use code Shapiro.

00:48:52.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

00:48:54.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

00:48:58.000 All of this is an illusion.

00:49:00.000 An echo of a voice that has died.

00:49:05.000 and soon that echo will cease they say that merlin is mad They say he was a king in David.

00:49:28.000 The son of a princess of lost Atlantis.

00:49:32.000 They say the future and the past are known to him.

00:49:37.000 That the fire and the wind tell him their secrets.

00:49:40.000 That the magic of the hillfolk and druids come forth at his easy command.

00:49:47.000 They say he slew hundreds.

00:49:50.000 Hundreds, do you hear?

00:49:52.000 That the world burned and trembled at his wrath.

00:49:59.000 The Merlin died long before you and I were born.

00:50:04.000 Merlin Emirus has returned to the land of the living.

00:50:10.000 Vortiger is gone.

00:50:12.000 Room is gone.

00:50:14.000 The Saxon is here. 0.76

00:50:16.000 Saxon Hengist has assembled the greatest war host ever seen in the island of the mighty. 0.84

00:50:21.000 And before the summer is through, he means to take the throne.

00:50:26.000 And he will have it.

00:50:27.000 If we are too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to take up arms against him, here is your hope.

00:50:33.000 A king will arise to hold all Britain in his hand.

00:50:37.000 A high king who will be the wonder of the world.

00:50:42.000 You to a future of peace.

00:50:49.000 There'll be no peace in these lands till we are all dust.

00:50:52.000 Men of the island of the mighty, you stand together.

00:50:58.000 You stand as Britons.

00:51:00.000 You stand as one.

00:51:05.000 Great darkness is falling upon this land.

00:51:09.000 These brothers are our only hope to stand against it.

00:51:13.000 Not our only hope.

00:51:16.000 Esse Merden slew 70 men with his own hands.

00:51:20.000 At Cathay, he slew 500.

00:51:24.000 No man is capable of such a thing.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 11, 2025

US SEIZES Venezuelan Tanker!

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