The Ben Shapiro Show - December 05, 2025


What Did Ilhan Omar Know, and When Did She Know It?!


Episode Stats

Length

51 minutes

Words per Minute

181.88763

Word Count

9,443

Sentence Count

661

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

14


Summary

As a gigantic welfare fraud is uncovered in the Somali-American community in Minneapolis, we discuss mass migration and what did Ilhan Omar know and when did she know it? Plus, we ll get to the arrest of the January 6th pipe bomber, as well as economy talk.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 As a gigantic welfare fraud is uncovered in the Somali-American community in Minneapolis, we discuss mass migration and what did Ilhan Omar know and when did she know it?
00:00:09.000 Plus, we'll get to the arrest of the January 6th pipe bomber as well as economy talk first.
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00:00:24.000 Well, it seems that the Somali welfare fraud scandal is now breaking into full view and it's hitting a lot of people who are elected officials.
00:00:31.000 That includes, of course, the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, but apparently now it also includes possibly Ilhan Omar.
00:00:39.000 So to understand why this matters so much, we have to understand this is all tied into a couple of major national issues.
00:00:44.000 One, of course, is mass migration from third world countries.
00:00:47.000 Is that something America should be pursuing?
00:00:50.000 The second is a gigantic, unaccountable welfare state in which billions of dollars can simply go missing.
00:00:56.000 And it takes years in order to uncover all of that.
00:00:59.000 And those two stories are intertwined.
00:01:01.000 Obviously, when it comes to the question of mass migration, the Trump administration has taken an incredibly strong position that mass migration, particularly from countries that do not cohere to American values, that that mass migration should be significantly limited or curtailed.
00:01:15.000 The Wall Street Journal reports today, quote, work permits issued to immigrants who have applied for asylum or a range of other humanitarian programs will now be valid for 18 months rather than five years under a new policy announced Thursday by the Trump administration.
00:01:28.000 Of course, the goal there is if people stay here for five years, they then tend to receive full asylum.
00:01:33.000 They tend to become American citizens.
00:01:36.000 If they only stay for 18 months, then it is easier to review their cases and say, okay, well, now you can go back where you came from or to a third-party country.
00:01:43.000 By forcing immigrants to renew their work permits more often, the government will have more opportunities to revet them, said Joe Edlow, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
00:01:51.000 Edlo framed the change, which reverses a Biden-era policy, as the latest action by the administration to crack down on legal immigration in response to the shooting last week in Washington, D.C. of two National Guard members.
00:02:02.000 That shooting, of course, was allegedly carried out by an Afghan national who had been radicalized in the United States after being imported in the aftermath of the Afghanistan withdrawal by Joe Biden.
00:02:13.000 It's clear that USCIS must enforce more frequent vetting of aliens, Edlo said in a statement.
00:02:17.000 All aliens must remember working in the United States is a privilege, not a right.
00:02:20.000 So when it comes to the question of mass migration, now this is a very open question that has been implicated by not only that Afghan national shooting two members of the National Guard and killing one, but also by this gigantic Somali welfare fraud case in Minnesota.
00:02:35.000 As the Wall Street Journal points out, what happens when welfare becomes not a temporary hand up, but an ingrained expectation of American life?
00:02:42.000 For an ugly glimpse, look at the astonishing fraud unfolding in Minnesota.
00:02:46.000 Turns out those GOP reformers were right to call out fraud in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
00:02:50.000 The White House this week published a memo titled, Yes, There's Something Wrong with Walls, and it costs taxpayers a billion dollars, highlighting various swindles in the land of 10,000 lakes.
00:02:58.000 There may be as many fraud schemes as lakes in the state, given the ease in which scammers tapped government funds.
00:03:03.000 Some 86 individuals have been charged with defrauding Medicaid and the federal child nutrition program in Minnesota.
00:03:09.000 Yes, literally stealing lunch money from kids.
00:03:12.000 No one was doing anything about the red flags, one defendant's attorney told the New York Times.
00:03:15.000 It was like someone was stealing money from the cookie jar and they kept refilling it.
00:03:19.000 In one of those alleged schemes, the outfit Feeding Our Future recruited individuals to set up a network of sham companies and sites that claimed to feed children in the pandemic.
00:03:28.000 They then submitted false invoices and fake attendance rosters to the state.
00:03:32.000 In fact, one of those rosters actually grabbed names from another website called listofrandomnames.com.
00:03:39.000 And somehow this worked for years.
00:03:42.000 In another scheme, a 28-year-old woman allegedly launched a company called Smart Therapy, claiming to provide one-on-one behavioral therapy to autistic children.
00:03:50.000 She employed her relatives with no formal education.
00:03:52.000 She recruited parents to enroll their non-autistic kids in her therapy sessions by paying them kickbacks of up to $1,500 a month per child.
00:04:00.000 And in a darkly comic twist, some parents allegedly then extorted the woman by threatening to enroll their children in other autism centers if they weren't paid bigger kickbacks.
00:04:08.000 In another indictment, eight individuals were charged with fraudulently billing Medicaid to help recovering addicts find stable housing.
00:04:15.000 Yes, housing.
00:04:16.000 Minnesota pioneered the use of Medicaid money to help beneficiaries secure housing on the questionable rationale.
00:04:21.000 This improves health and reduces healthcare spending.
00:04:23.000 So, again, they tried to cram housing spending, welfare housing spending into Medicaid.
00:04:31.000 So, again, Democrats built this entire massive infrastructure.
00:04:35.000 And now it turns out lots of people took advantage of that.
00:04:38.000 And those people were, in this particular case, Somali.
00:04:42.000 Now, it's hilarious to watch members of the media try to create a rationale for why Somali immigrants to the United States overall have been a massive boon.
00:04:52.000 We went from, again, 2,500 Somali Americans in 1990 to almost 200,000 today.
00:04:58.000 And that is purely through mass migration and the natural increase.
00:05:02.000 And that mass migration was driven by humanitarian concerns, but it turns out that it's come with some pretty significant costs.
00:05:09.000 So today, there's an article from KSTP in Minnesota.
00:05:13.000 It's the ABC's ABC outlet in Minnesota.
00:05:16.000 And here's the headline: Somali Minnesotans drive economic growth, pay $67 million in tax annually.
00:05:24.000 I mean, I may not be like unbelievable at math, but if you drive $67 million in state and local taxes and you scam $1 billion, there are some zeros missing there if what you're hoping to show is that the mass migration has been a net benefit to the economic health of the United States.
00:05:47.000 Apparently, Somali Minnesotans generate $500 million in income annually.
00:05:51.000 So, in other words, this one big welfare scheme doubled the amount, doubled the amount of income earned by Somali Minnesotans.
00:06:01.000 They took out from just that welfare scheme, okay, not even like legitimate welfare, like fake welfare fraud.
00:06:06.000 They took out twice the amount that they actually earn in income, which is crazy.
00:06:13.000 That's crazy.
00:06:16.000 So, again, the levels of poverty in the Somali American community are incredibly high.
00:06:21.000 The levels of education, dramatically lower than surrounding Minnesotans.
00:06:26.000 And so, that raises the problem, of course, of mass migration, as well as the welfare system.
00:06:31.000 Now, in order for all this to happen, you have to have complicit politicians because when the fraud is this big, when this many people seem to know about it, it seems almost impossible that you don't have elected officials who knew about it.
00:06:44.000 Fascinating piece in today's New York Post by Chadwick Moore: quote: U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar's close ties to the $1 billion welfare scam in her Minnesota congressional district are being uncovered.
00:06:56.000 Omar held parties at one of the key restaurants named in the fraud, knew one of its now-convicted owners, and one of her own staffers has also been convicted for both for stealing millions.
00:07:05.000 Omar even introduced the bill that led to the $250 million in fraud, yet she claims to have been completely unaware of it.
00:07:12.000 Bill Glenn, a policy fellow with the Minnesota-based Center for the American Experiment, said, Representative Omar knew who these people were.
00:07:19.000 Personally, she knew they were making tens of millions of dollars in this program.
00:07:22.000 She had been inside the Safari facility on numerous occasions and couldn't put two and two together.
00:07:27.000 Either she's terminally naive or she knew and she did not care.
00:07:31.000 That $250 million referenced here by Chadwick Moore was handed out by the Minnesota government for those meals for school kids that never actually materialized.
00:07:39.000 Instead, the money just got pocketed by corrupt business owners, including one Salim Ahmed Saeed, who's the co-owner of the Safari restaurant where Omar held her 2018 congressional victory party.
00:07:49.000 He was found guilty in August of stealing $12 million for serving almost 4 million phantom meals during COVID-19.
00:07:57.000 Apparently, he had a pretty significant shopping habit.
00:08:00.000 He blew $2 million on a Minneapolis mansion, and he had a $9,000 a month shopping habit at Nordstrom.
00:08:06.000 That is a lot of money on clothes, my dude.
00:08:08.000 Like, I hope at least you were well-dressed because that is a lot of money on clothes.
00:08:14.000 Omar, again, this happened inside her district.
00:08:17.000 Her defense is.
00:08:18.000 Everybody who mentions this sort of stuff is racist.
00:08:21.000 That is always and forever the defense.
00:08:24.000 So President Trump, of course, has been highly critical of the Somali-American mass migration issue.
00:08:29.000 Ilhan Omar says that Trump is an abusive, deranged old man.
00:08:34.000 This woman who once suggested that 9-11 was something some people did and who herself has written, again, she wrote a letter to a judge asking that a recruit to ISIS be granted mercy because of the evils of having to integrate in America.
00:08:46.000 That is a real thing she did.
00:08:48.000 And here is a sitting Congresswoman in the United States of America calling the president an abusive, deranged old man because he's been critical of Somali mass migration.
00:08:58.000 And I think the press in many ways that covers the White House, I think, have gotten used to his bigotry.
00:09:09.000 They all have, I think, that delayed reaction and they've all gotten used to all of his lies.
00:09:14.000 That's why there's rarely a follow-up.
00:09:17.000 But they also have gotten used to his abuse.
00:09:20.000 You know, you've seen him say to one female reporter, quiet biggie.
00:09:28.000 You see him calling another one stupid and dumb.
00:09:32.000 You know, this is a very abusive, deranged old man.
00:09:37.000 And I think for a lot of people, it's still shocking.
00:09:41.000 It's still jarring.
00:09:45.000 I mean, I think actually what is more shocking and jarring is that a person like Ilhan Omar is in the United States Congress, given her levels of corruption, given the open and very real questions about her own immigration story with regard to her brother, given the fact that she is wildly anti-American in the way that she approaches politics and the Constitution of the United States, given her warm embrace of terrorism-adjacent people.
00:10:09.000 Alrighty, coming up, we'll get into the Democratic response to the problems with Somali welfare fraud.
00:10:14.000 That includes Tim Walz apparently being very, very offended at something.
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00:12:19.000 Well, she has a piece in the New York Times calling herself a victim, of course, because this is the way that the left gets out of this.
00:12:25.000 If you are engaged in something like this, if you know a bunch of people who engage in tremendous welfare fraud, and in fact, they are big donors to you and they are in your district, and you've made your career on pandering to that particular category of people.
00:12:40.000 Well, the best way out of this is to call everybody who notes it racist.
00:12:43.000 So she went to the pages of the New York Times to write a piece called Trump Knows He's Failing, Cue the Bigotry.
00:12:50.000 Quote, Somali Americans remain resilient against the onslaught of attacks from the White House, but I am deeply worried about the ramifications of these tirades.
00:12:57.000 When Mr. Trump maligns me, it increases the number of death threats that my family, staff members, and I receive.
00:13:02.000 As a member of Congress, I am privileged to have access to security when these threats arise.
00:13:06.000 What keeps me up at night is that people who share the identities I hold, black Somali, hijabi immigrant, will suffer the consequences of his words, which so often go unchecked by members of the Republican Party and other elected officials.
00:13:16.000 All Americans have a duty to call out this hateful rhetoric when we hear it.
00:13:20.000 Listening to Ilhan Omar lecture people about calling out hateful rhetoric is truly an astonishing thing.
00:13:24.000 I mean, truly an amazing and astonishing thing.
00:13:27.000 The president's dehumanizing and dangerous attacks on minority immigrant communities are nothing new.
00:13:33.000 And then she notes that the president tried to pause Muslim migration to the country, which of course is not an act of bigotry.
00:13:40.000 That is a debatable proposition, but it is certainly well within the purview of the president.
00:13:45.000 He has since falsely accused Haitian migrants of eating pets and referred to Haiti and African nations as bleepole countries.
00:13:51.000 Again, I'm still confused as to why labeling Haiti a bleephole is remotely controversial.
00:13:57.000 It is a horrible place to live.
00:13:59.000 That is not a slur against the people who have to live in Haiti.
00:14:03.000 It's not a slur against the landscape.
00:14:05.000 That is a terrible place to live.
00:14:07.000 If ever the descriptor bleep poll applied, I mean, Haiti seems like that would be kind of like the place to, I mean, does she disagree?
00:14:17.000 Is it a great place to live?
00:14:18.000 Did I miss it?
00:14:20.000 He has accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug peddlers across our border.
00:14:23.000 Again, like just the litany of he's racist, therefore don't look over here where, you know, I've been pandering to all the people who are committing welfare fraud.
00:14:31.000 Pretty incredible.
00:14:32.000 Pretty incredible stuff from Ilhen Omar.
00:14:34.000 And again, the attempts by some of the most radical people in our society to spin themselves as victims is pretty incredible.
00:14:40.000 It's an amazing thing.
00:14:41.000 So, for example, the Council on American Islamic Relations, Minnesota director, a person named Jaylani Hussein, went on national TV on CNN to claim that actually the real victims in the welfare fraud were not the taxpayers.
00:14:53.000 The real victims were Somali Americans.
00:14:56.000 I mean, sure, the crime was perpetrated by Somali Americans to the tune of a billion dollars, but the real victims, the people who are really victimized in all of this, are, you know, Somali Americans.
00:15:08.000 It's a hot take.
00:15:09.000 It's a weird take, but I guess not that weird from a representative of one of the most dishonest Muslim Brotherhood Associate organizations on planet Earth, the Council on American Islamic Relations.
00:15:20.000 Of the 70 or so people charged in that case, most are members of the Somali community.
00:15:25.000 Do you think that scandal is giving the White House ammunition for these attacks?
00:15:32.000 I think this actually, first of all, fraud is wrong.
00:15:36.000 In fact, this particular fraud impacts specifically low-income families, which many are Somali Americans.
00:15:41.000 And in fact, they were victims in this particular moment.
00:15:48.000 Like that, okay.
00:15:48.000 Really?
00:15:49.000 It's a take.
00:15:50.000 It's a bit of a hot take.
00:15:51.000 Jaylani Hussain then went on to explain that President Trump is actually targeting Somali Americans, not because he is concerned about the impacts of mass migration on American life.
00:16:00.000 No, it's because they're a success story.
00:16:04.000 If I were going to name mass migration success stories, I'm not sure this would come at the top of the list.
00:16:13.000 Attacking the Somali American community is very unfortunate.
00:16:17.000 The Somali American community have been here for now 30 plus years.
00:16:20.000 And we came here predominantly, actually, by George Bush Sr., who provided refugees to come to the United States in the early 90s, like myself.
00:16:30.000 And Somali Americans today pretty much complete the state of Minnesota.
00:16:34.000 We are your educators, your teachers, your nurses, your doctors, and also doing some of the toughest jobs in factories across the state of Minnesota and across this country.
00:16:45.000 Somali Americans are predominantly younger generation today.
00:16:48.000 In fact, majority of us are now born in the United States.
00:16:51.000 We are part and parcel of the success of the state of Minnesota.
00:16:54.000 And not only are we in Congress and other parts of the country, other parts of industries, but the Somali American is actually a success story.
00:17:02.000 And we believe that is at the heart of why President Trump is targeting us.
00:17:08.000 Yeah, well, I'm if it were really that much of a success story, I feel like no one would be targeting it because there wouldn't be a lot to hang your hat on.
00:17:18.000 But I guess this is the line that people are going with.
00:17:21.000 State Senator Zaynab Muhammad, and from the same area, says Minnesota could not succeed or thrive without the Somali community, which is weird because Minnesota was succeeding and thriving without the Somali community prior to 1990, actually.
00:17:32.000 State Senator Zayda Muhammad says these attacks won't stop with Somalis and their contributions can't easily be erased.
00:17:39.000 We are in every industry and Minnesota would not be able to survive nor thrive without the Somali community here.
00:17:48.000 That's, again, a take.
00:17:50.000 Meanwhile, the Minnesota governor who oversaw all of this and note to our friends in the legacy media, this dude was the nominee for vice president under Kamala Harris.
00:18:01.000 And we were told that he was really good at his job.
00:18:03.000 It's weird that no one uncovered any of this, which happened back in 2020, 2021, until after that race was over.
00:18:10.000 Strange.
00:18:11.000 It took until now for this to become a major issue.
00:18:14.000 Just weird how that works.
00:18:16.000 Very strange.
00:18:17.000 Anyway, he's very upset.
00:18:19.000 Tim Wall's a victim.
00:18:19.000 He too is a victim.
00:18:21.000 He's a victim, he says, of the fact that the president of the United States called him retarded.
00:18:26.000 Okay, my dude.
00:18:32.000 I don't even know how to take this seriously.
00:18:33.000 There's no way.
00:18:34.000 It's not possible to take this seriously.
00:18:37.000 Hey, the president calling you retarded.
00:18:40.000 This is really?
00:18:41.000 This is the big issue.
00:18:43.000 Somehow, a billion dollars goes missing.
00:18:45.000 You're presiding over the social breakdown and disorder in Minneapolis attendant to mass migration from third world countries.
00:18:52.000 You have sitting Congress people who spend their days writing letters on behalf of people who tried to join ISIS in your state, and you're upset because people called you retarded?
00:19:04.000 I mean, is I listen, let's be clear about the word retarded.
00:19:09.000 It has re-entered the normal lexicon.
00:19:11.000 It has.
00:19:12.000 There's nothing anybody can do about it.
00:19:13.000 No one is being broken by it.
00:19:15.000 It's not the end of the world.
00:19:16.000 The attempt to treat the word retarded the same way that we treated it 10, 15 years ago.
00:19:21.000 It's silly.
00:19:22.000 It's not real.
00:19:24.000 You can pretend to be as offended now as you were 15 years ago about this, but no one is.
00:19:29.000 And I mean, he's not super great at his job.
00:19:33.000 He doesn't appear to be incredibly smart.
00:19:35.000 I mean, here he was complaining that people were driving past his house, calling him retarded.
00:19:41.000 Now, people, don't drive past people's house calling them retarded.
00:19:43.000 Just as a general rule, don't do it.
00:19:46.000 Also, I mean, this creates danger.
00:19:54.000 And I'll tell you what, in my time on this, I'd never seen this before.
00:19:58.000 People driving my house by my house and using the R-word in front of people.
00:20:02.000 This is shameful.
00:20:04.000 And I have yet to see an elected official, a Republican elected official, say, you're right, that's shameful.
00:20:09.000 He should not say it.
00:20:10.000 So, look, I'm worried.
00:20:11.000 We know how these things go.
00:20:12.000 They start with taunts, they turn to violence.
00:20:15.000 So, deeply concerned.
00:20:21.000 I'm not really certain that the president calling him retarded is going to lead to violence against Tim Walz.
00:20:30.000 By the way, of the things the president has called Tim Walz, this is like eighth on the list of offensiveness.
00:20:34.000 Truly, man, good luck with this argument.
00:20:40.000 Really, really.
00:20:41.000 Good luck for the Democrats with the argument that actually Somali American migration is the thing that has made America historically wonderful and awesome.
00:20:48.000 That welfare fraud is not about the size of the welfare state, that it's about racism, that mass migration itself is a wonderful thing inherently without any attempt to measure assimilation or economic mobility or education levels or anything.
00:21:04.000 And also, that the biggest problem of all is, of course, that someone called Tim Walz the R-word.
00:21:09.000 Okay, then.
00:21:11.000 All righty, coming up, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth under fire from Democrats for something or other.
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00:23:26.000 Okay, meanwhile, Democrats are trying to glom on to another narrative.
00:23:29.000 That narrative remains the Pete Hegseth narrative.
00:23:32.000 I said the other day that no one cares about the Pete Hegseth second strike narrative.
00:23:38.000 And I will amend that.
00:23:40.000 A few Democrats care.
00:23:42.000 No one else cares.
00:23:43.000 And the reason no one else cares is because the story does not appear to be true.
00:23:47.000 It does not appear to be true.
00:23:49.000 Remember, it was one Washington Post story that said that apparently Pete Hegseth said kill them all about the nuking, hitting with a hellfire missile, a cocaine boat coming from Venezuela that may or may not have had fentanyl on it.
00:24:05.000 And then he apparently walked out of the room.
00:24:08.000 The Washington Post didn't report the walking out of the room.
00:24:10.000 The Washington Post said he ordered a second strike.
00:24:12.000 It appears that part isn't true.
00:24:14.000 There are zero witnesses, zero, who say that he ordered the second strike on the people who were in the water.
00:24:20.000 Nonetheless, Democrats are very upset.
00:24:22.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Navy Admiral Frank Mitch Bradley in a closed-door briefing for lawmakers defended a controversial September 2nd attack on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.
00:24:31.000 But Democrats found new grounds to question the legality of the strike after viewing a video of the attack.
00:24:35.000 Bradley told lawmakers the two men who survived an initial strike on the boat attempted to continue their drug run, making them viable legal targets, according to two defense officials.
00:24:43.000 The Admiral played footage of the hours-long incident, including his decision to order that follow-up strike, killing the two survivors.
00:24:51.000 So Representative Adam Smith of Washington and Representative Jim Himes issued a joint statement condemning the strike.
00:24:58.000 They said, quote, the video we saw today showed two shipwrecked individuals who had no means to move, much less pose an immediate threat, and yet they were killed by the United States military.
00:25:06.000 Defense officials said the survivors were aboard the heavily damaged vessel.
00:25:10.000 They were still attempting to salvage packages of drugs, and apparently they were still communicating with fellow narco-traffickers via radio, right?
00:25:17.000 So that's the claim being made by the Defense Department.
00:25:20.000 But apparently, according to Adam Smith, there's no way you could have looked at that video and found a lick of evidence there were any drugs anywhere around the tiny little piece of the boat that was still sticking above the surface of the water.
00:25:29.000 There was nothing to see.
00:25:31.000 So now we have an argument over the tape.
00:25:33.000 And frankly, it seems to me that since we're all talking about it, we may as well just see the tape and then we can have the arguments ourselves.
00:25:39.000 Tom Cotton saw the same exact tape.
00:25:41.000 Here's the senator from Arkansas explaining that actually they were still active.
00:25:44.000 They were not what is called ords of combat.
00:25:46.000 They were not out of combat.
00:25:47.000 They were not disabled.
00:25:48.000 They could still get back in the fight, in other words.
00:25:52.000 If you think these strikes are justified and righteous, as I do, and I want them to continue, then of course the second strike when you have two survivors who are trying to flip their boat back over and continue on their mission remain in the battle.
00:26:11.000 Unlike a subsequent strike in which there was no such indication and they were what's called distressed or shipwrecked under the laws of the sea and the law of armed conflict.
00:26:25.000 And our military went out and picked them up.
00:26:28.000 Now, by the way, Representative Jim Hines, who's one of the people who's still condemning the Defense Department, and in particular this particular Admiral, he says that Hegseth has nothing to do with it.
00:26:38.000 That actually the Admiral cleared Hegseth.
00:26:39.000 He said Hegseth was not in the room.
00:26:40.000 Hegseth did not oversee the second strike.
00:26:43.000 When even the Democrats who are accusing the Defense Department of the problem are admitting that Hegsteth really had nothing to do with it, I'm not sure where the scandal lies.
00:26:51.000 Here's Representative Jim Hines of Connecticut.
00:26:55.000 So the last thing I'm going to say, the last thing I'm going to say is that the Admiral confirmed that there had not been a kill them all order and that there was not an order to grant no quarter.
00:27:08.000 Okay, so, I mean, wasn't that the original story?
00:27:12.000 Wasn't that the locus of the original story?
00:27:14.000 So I guess now they should move off of Hegseth, but apparently not.
00:27:17.000 Apparently not.
00:27:18.000 Mark Warner, the senator from Virginia, he says he remains troubled.
00:27:22.000 Well, good for him, I suppose.
00:27:26.000 I'm going to say what the video was very troubling, and I think more people need to see it.
00:27:32.000 But I want to better understand process justification and some of the items.
00:27:44.000 I had a checklist of items that that I want to see that I think some of my many of my colleagues have asked for as well.
00:27:51.000 Okay, so is this dog going to hunt?
00:27:53.000 Probably, probably not.
00:27:54.000 Mark Thiessen has a good piece over at the Washington POST talking about the so-called double tap strike.
00:28:00.000 He says president Barack Obama did it all the time.
00:28:03.000 Indeed, in targeting cartels it has designated as foreign terrorist organizations, The Trump administration appears to be closely following the playbook pioneered by Obama.
00:28:11.000 On taking office, Obama dramatically escalated the use of drone strikes against terrorism targets after ending the CIA's terrorist interrogation program, finding it was simpler to vaporize enemy combatants rather than capture them alive for questioning.
00:28:22.000 So Obama forged what the New York Times called at the time a take-no-prisoners policy, ordering more than 540 drone strikes on terrorists in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, including one that killed an American citizen, Anwar al-Aliki, who was a terrorist.
00:28:35.000 The strikes that Obama ordered were similar to those Trump has carried out in the waters off Venezuela.
00:28:40.000 Obama used what were called signature strikes, in which the U.S. targeted patterns of behavior denoting terrorist activity, even when the precise identity of the individuals being targeted was unknown.
00:28:50.000 And he routinely carried out so-called double-tap strikes, hitting a target once and then striking again to take out any survivors or other terrorists who rushed to the scene after the initial hit.
00:28:59.000 David Shedd, former deputy director and acting director of the DIA in the Obama administration, said, quote, we used double taps all the time.
00:29:06.000 You would get the initial signature off of a target that's been hit.
00:29:09.000 And if you saw that they squirted and were injured, you hit them again.
00:29:12.000 In fact, he said there was often a second predator ready to go that was fully expected to be used if you didn't have 100% coming out of the first hit and maybe a third hit.
00:29:20.000 He said it was done routinely.
00:29:21.000 There was bipartisan support on the Hill for doing it.
00:29:24.000 Obama personally approved the kill lists.
00:29:28.000 By the way, those kill lists, according to one estimate, killed up to 3,800 people.
00:29:34.000 So, again, I just don't think this is going anywhere for the Democrats.
00:29:39.000 The Democrats do, apparently, in all of this, have one more ripe line of attack.
00:29:43.000 And that line of attack is the fact that people still think things are too expensive.
00:29:47.000 Now, as I've explained many times, President Trump and any president handed an inflationary economy over the course of the last four or five years is going to have a problem.
00:29:58.000 The reason is, even if you stabilize the prices, that's not actually what people want.
00:30:02.000 What people say they want and what they want, two different things.
00:30:04.000 When people say they want the inflation to stop, they don't mean they want the inflation to stop.
00:30:08.000 They mean they want deflation.
00:30:09.000 They want lower prices than currently exist.
00:30:12.000 Not that if a box of cereal cost five bucks a year ago, it should also cost five bucks today.
00:30:18.000 What they mean is that if a box of cereal cost five bucks last year, it should cost four bucks today.
00:30:22.000 That's what they want.
00:30:23.000 They want actual deflation.
00:30:24.000 And what Trump is saying, quite correctly, is, well, you said you wanted me to stop the inflation.
00:30:28.000 The inflation is running a little hotter than normal, but not much.
00:30:31.000 I mean, we're at like 2.5%, 3%, as opposed to 9% to 11% under Joe Biden.
00:30:38.000 And in that sense, Trump's been handed an unenviable job because really the only way to radically decrease prices, as we have discussed many times on the show, is to either radically increase supply or to lower demand.
00:30:49.000 Lowering demand typically comes along with a recession.
00:30:51.000 Increase in supply comes with productivity increases.
00:30:55.000 The problem when it comes to food, for example, is that productivity increases, we're pretty productive.
00:31:00.000 We have a lot of food, like a lot of food.
00:31:03.000 And so the price of food is unlikely to come down unless demand drops off in some significant way.
00:31:09.000 With that said, the polling shows that when people feel stretched, they blame whoever's in office.
00:31:13.000 Politico has a poll out showing that almost half of Americans say the cost of living in the U.S. is the worst they can remember it being, a view held by 37% of 2024 Trump voters.
00:31:22.000 Now, by the way, that can certainly be true.
00:31:26.000 Because again, if it's 3% higher this year than it was last year, and last year, it was 11% higher than the year before.
00:31:33.000 Well, it is, in fact, the worst that it has ever been in terms of affordability, in terms of pricing.
00:31:38.000 I mean, that's reality, but it doesn't mean that things are escalating as poorly under Donald Trump as they were under Joe Biden.
00:31:45.000 They're not, not even remotely.
00:31:47.000 Americans also say the affordability crisis is now Trump's responsibility, with 46% saying it is his economy now and that his administration is responsible for the costs they struggle with.
00:31:57.000 Now, again, that shouldn't be a shock.
00:31:59.000 He's the current president of the United States.
00:32:01.000 What are they going to say?
00:32:03.000 That it was Biden stealing.
00:32:05.000 What difference would that make?
00:32:08.000 GOP strategist Ford O'Connell said after that last Tennessee election, that Tennessee congressional seven election, in which the Republican beat the Democrat by nine points, it's a small warning.
00:32:17.000 It's one that Republicans need to understand.
00:32:21.000 So, again, there need to be radical productivity increases.
00:32:26.000 People do need to feel the economy moving in their direction.
00:32:30.000 Wall Street continues to churn.
00:32:32.000 I mean, there is no question right now that the stock market has been doing quite well.
00:32:38.000 It will continue to do, I believe, quite well for the next few months minimum because there's just so much money churning through the system right now, particularly in the direction of AI, that I say we're in a bubble.
00:32:51.000 I do believe we're in a bubble, but the bubble can continue to expand before a contraction comes.
00:32:57.000 Democrats, meanwhile, are putting their foot on the gas with regard to the affordability argument.
00:33:01.000 The beauty of being a Democrat is that you can propose a horribly inflationary and regulation-ridden system like Obamacare, ram it through in the name of lowering costs.
00:33:12.000 You don't lower costs, and then you blame the Republicans for not lowering the costs.
00:33:15.000 It's beautiful.
00:33:17.000 One of the beautiful things about big government politics is that you get to claim that when it fails, you need more big government.
00:33:24.000 So, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, made that case yesterday.
00:33:27.000 He says, Obamacare isn't broken.
00:33:28.000 Obamacare is awesome.
00:33:29.000 Also, we're going to need another $350 billion to fund it.
00:33:35.000 Shows you how out of touch they are.
00:33:37.000 55% of people who voted for Trump in November of 2024 support extending the credits.
00:33:45.000 55% of Trump voters.
00:33:47.000 The Republicans are so much in a bubble.
00:33:50.000 They're so out of touch.
00:33:52.000 They don't understand the anguish and concern of the American people.
00:33:57.000 Well, I mean, no, Republicans are saying that that's your fault.
00:33:59.000 You designed a system to fail and then it failed, and then you turned around and blamed everybody else.
00:34:03.000 By the way, you can't claim that the system you designed is working when you keep requiring gigantic infusions of taxpayer cash in order to keep it functional.
00:34:10.000 But that's exactly what Chuck Schumer is saying.
00:34:13.000 He says that it is necessary for Trump to extend the ACA tax credits.
00:34:20.000 What Trump ought to do is talk to the Republican senators and say, vote for this proposal.
00:34:27.000 That's the way to solve the problem.
00:34:29.000 That's just about the only way to solve the problem before the January 1st deadline.
00:34:34.000 I mean, look at it.
00:34:35.000 They don't even have a plan.
00:34:37.000 They don't even have two plans they're divided about.
00:34:40.000 They're all over the lot saying many different things, fighting with each other.
00:34:44.000 It's crazy.
00:34:45.000 It's just crazy on such an important issue that they would have that.
00:34:52.000 Well, I mean, again, the reason that they are pushing back is because you keep designing systems that fail and then you ask them to provide you more money.
00:34:59.000 Now, there's some talk on the Republican side about the possibility of at least temporarily extending the ACA subsidies in order to avoid the political blowback from the increase in health care costs while some sort of transitional plan is made.
00:35:12.000 I could see that as a compromise solution if there is an actual alternative plan that takes form over the course of the next year.
00:35:18.000 And so you package ACA tax subsidies, which are basically just giveaways.
00:35:22.000 You package those with actual changes put in place over the course of the next year or two before President Trump has to leave office in order to actually horse correct the system.
00:35:32.000 That would be the only fair trade here.
00:35:34.000 Democrats, however, are saying that they want essentially a clean ACA tax subsidy expansion.
00:35:39.000 They don't want to change anything, which of course is a road to more and more and more government interventionism.
00:35:44.000 That is why Republicans are resisting.
00:35:46.000 Alrighty, coming up, the pipe bomber from January 6th has now been arrested.
00:35:50.000 We'll bring you the details first.
00:35:51.000 This is it, the very last day.
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00:36:16.000 All righty, folks, get ready for some fast facts.
00:36:21.000 The DOJ has now announced that the pipe bomber from January 6th was arrested, which is pretty amazing because, again, January 6th, last I checked your calendar, was over four years ago.
00:36:32.000 So well done by the FBI and the DOJ for actually figuring out who planted a pipe bomb, multiple actually, outside the RNC and the DNC ahead of the January 6th riot.
00:36:43.000 According to the New York Post, accused D.C. pipe bomber Brian Cole Jr.'s face was revealed for the first time since he was busted for allegedly planting those explosive devices.
00:36:53.000 He is a young black man.
00:36:55.000 His politics are unclear.
00:36:58.000 Apparently, according to Pam Bondi, this happened because the Trump administration made the case a priority where the Biden administration had not.
00:37:04.000 Here was the Attorney General.
00:37:07.000 The FBI, along with U.S. Attorney Pierrow and all of our prosecutors, have worked tirelessly for months sifting through evidence that had been sitting at the FBI with the Biden administration for four long years.
00:37:26.000 Let me be clear.
00:37:27.000 There was no new tip.
00:37:29.000 There was no new witness, just good, diligent police work and prosecutorial work.
00:37:38.000 The bomber was charged with the use of an explosive device and the attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials.
00:37:43.000 There'd be more charges to come.
00:37:46.000 Now, again, totally unclear what the politics of this person were, why he did it, but there is something to the idea that if they were using the same exact evidence the Biden administration had, and the Biden administration basically memory-holed this entire case because it, what, misdirected resources away from January 6th prosecutions for trespass inside the Capitol or whatever.
00:38:10.000 Politicization of justice is always a bad thing.
00:38:13.000 Democrats, by the way, are trying to play the reverse.
00:38:15.000 So meanwhile, Mark Warner, Senator from Virginia, he's saying that the DOJ is picking and choosing by actually taking time to find the pipe bomber.
00:38:24.000 It kind of makes me looking at this crowd doing a victory lap when all the senior FBI officials across all key divisions have been fired for political purposes.
00:38:36.000 When in some field offices, up to 45% of the FBI officers who were doing things like counter espionage and cyber have been assigned to do immigration cases.
00:38:48.000 It's a little rich that they're saying they're America safer.
00:38:52.000 How much earlier could we have caught this guy if resources hadn't been diverted?
00:38:57.000 And I hope it would also remind folks that on January 6th, I was here at the Capitol on January 6th.
00:39:03.000 It was an ugly, awful day.
00:39:05.000 And this administration and this president basically pardoned all the perpetrators.
00:39:10.000 You know, it's that kind of picking and choosing of facts from this crowd that makes me a little bit crazy.
00:39:20.000 Okay, so I'm just wondering why you had to look for an angle on how the arrest of the pipe bomber was bad.
00:39:26.000 Why do Democrats do that?
00:39:28.000 Why do they always feel necessary?
00:39:29.000 It's like the magic of Trump.
00:39:30.000 Trump does an obviously good thing.
00:39:32.000 Members of his administration doing an obviously good thing, and Democrats have to somehow come up with a rationale for why it's actually a bad thing.
00:39:38.000 Can't we just say, like, it's good that the pipe bomber was arrested?
00:39:40.000 Meanwhile, there was, in fact, a large-scale screw-up with regard to the pipe bomber.
00:39:45.000 There was a report from the media outlet, The Blaze, that misidentified the alleged pipe bomber.
00:39:50.000 We are now finding out new details about how that happened.
00:39:53.000 Apparently, according to CBS News, multiple sources said a unit overseen by director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabber drafted a memo identifying the woman and describing allegations she had placed the explosive devices outside the RNC and DNC.
00:40:06.000 The memo was written after ODNI was made aware of allegations from an outside source, according to the ODNI.
00:40:12.000 Apparently, the agency received a tip from a person affiliated with the media organization about potential criminal wrongdoing by an individual believing to be working at an intelligence agency and documenting it in a memo.
00:40:23.000 And then a copy of the unfinished memo was given to senior staff at the security officer's workplace.
00:40:28.000 And then a short time after that unfinished memo began to circulate, Blaze News published details similar to those in the draft, including the woman's full name.
00:40:37.000 So that doesn't seem particularly great.
00:40:39.000 That seems like a bad way to do law enforcement, shall we say, and gathering of evidence.
00:40:46.000 All right, meanwhile, in gigantic media news, Netflix is going to buy Warner Brothers, apparently.
00:40:53.000 Of course, that's a big win for Netflix.
00:40:55.000 They were up against Paramount, Skydance, as well as Comcast.
00:40:58.000 Warner Brothers has some pretty significant assets that includes HBO Max.
00:41:02.000 It includes all the Batman properties, for example.
00:41:06.000 The transaction is comprised of cash and stock.
00:41:09.000 It's valued at about $27.75 per Warner Brothers share.
00:41:12.000 So the equity value of the deal is $72 billion, total enterprise value, $82.7 billion.
00:41:18.000 That is a hefty chunk of change right there.
00:41:21.000 That will help Netflix.
00:41:22.000 Netflix has been, I think, struggling to bring aboard excellent content recently.
00:41:28.000 And so bringing on the Wizard of Oz and the Harry Potter franchise and the DC Comics universe, as well as the Sopranos, Game of Thrones, is like big wins for Netflix, for sure, for sure.
00:41:40.000 Netflix co-CEO, Ted Sarando, said, I know some of you are surprised we're making this acquisition.
00:41:44.000 I understand why.
00:41:45.000 We have already made incredible shows and movies and a great business model.
00:41:49.000 It's working for talent, but this is a rare opportunity.
00:41:51.000 Now, again, the reality is that Netflix was having to expend billions of dollars, like billions upon billions of dollars every year to build its own entertainment catalog.
00:41:59.000 It's very, very expensive.
00:42:00.000 And so them buying up all these legacy properties is pretty helpful.
00:42:04.000 It allows the creators they hire to now use that IP as the basis for further IP.
00:42:11.000 Netflix has already agreed to pay an almost $6 billion reverse breakup fee if the deal is not approved.
00:42:17.000 So should this be stopped by regulators?
00:42:19.000 The answer here is no.
00:42:22.000 It'll make consumption better, frankly.
00:42:24.000 So there are two theories of antitrust.
00:42:26.000 Theory one of antitrust is that anybody who gets too big in a particular market is violative of monopoly principles.
00:42:33.000 That is not true here.
00:42:33.000 You don't have to be on Netflix.
00:42:34.000 You can go to Apple TV.
00:42:36.000 You can head on over to Paramount Plus.
00:42:39.000 There are plenty of places you can get your entertainment.
00:42:41.000 This is not a monopoly concern.
00:42:42.000 The other is, does it make it worse for consumers?
00:42:44.000 And the answer here is almost certainly the opposite.
00:42:47.000 It probably makes it better.
00:42:48.000 You'll see consolidation.
00:42:49.000 Instead of you having to get both a subscription to HBO Max and to Netflix, now maybe you only have to get to Netflix.
00:42:55.000 Earlier this week, Paramount raised questions about the fairness and adequacy of the sales process, arguing that Warner Brothers discovery favored Netflix.
00:43:04.000 But, you know, we'd have to see exactly what the offer was from Paramount.
00:43:07.000 Did it outstrip it in terms of money?
00:43:09.000 If not, then this seems like an empty complaint.
00:43:12.000 And meanwhile, speaking of the state of media, Barry Weiss over at CBS News has been making some pretty major moves.
00:43:18.000 She is, of course, slated, I believe, the week after next to interview Erica Kirk, which should be fascinating.
00:43:24.000 Meanwhile, older members of the legacy media, former members, are lamenting the supposed decline of CBS News, which is kind of incredible considering that CBS News was in the toilet before the Ellison family took it over and Barry was put in charge.
00:43:38.000 Here is a Connie Chung lamenting the state of CBS News.
00:43:43.000 What's it like to watch CBS right now?
00:43:46.000 We don't.
00:43:47.000 I mean, I can't.
00:43:49.000 The paradigm has completely changed in news, and we have so much opinion that the truth doesn't hold value anymore.
00:44:00.000 And what we end up doing is trying to, we as consumers, trying to find the truth.
00:44:08.000 We can't find good old-fashioned facts.
00:44:12.000 And it distresses me so terribly.
00:44:16.000 CBS is a whole different organization that I had worked for.
00:44:24.000 Okay, so again, the idea that CBS has been doing a wonderful job up until now, and that Barry is somehow going to challenge their journalistic integrity, reverse, reverse.
00:44:33.000 60 Minutes has been a bleep show.
00:44:35.000 And if Barry can somehow fix it, good for her.
00:44:36.000 Meanwhile, the most salacious media story of the day comes courtesy of the former couple, Olivia Nuzzy and Ryan Lizza.
00:44:45.000 So this one is just people who deserve each other.
00:44:48.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Olivia Nuzzy seemed like she was floating above it all.
00:44:52.000 You'll remember her from, you know, having had a sex dating scandal with RFK Jr.
00:44:58.000 So a year after that, she had a new contract at Vanity Affair, a book coming out where she would finally address the mistakes that cost her a prominent place in DC's media elite.
00:45:06.000 There was a splashy rollout, a glowing New York Times profile, an excerpt to appear in the magazine, accompanied by an audacious abstract nude portrait of the author, which, again, it sounds like from Ryan Liz's descriptions, I'm not sure that half of DC needs a portrait.
00:45:20.000 Then, apparently, Liza started talking.
00:45:22.000 So he's her former fiancé, and he is miffed.
00:45:24.000 He is miffed because they were together.
00:45:26.000 And apparently, she was of questionable moral character, but they were perfectly happy to write books together.
00:45:31.000 They were writing a million-dollar book together for Simon and Schuster.
00:45:36.000 Apparently, after she has now written this new book, he said that the book forced his hand.
00:45:42.000 He launched a series about Nuzzie in his Substack letter Tilos in November ahead of the new book's planned release, offering part one for free and raising the paywall after the first installment.
00:45:50.000 He's like, I should make some money off my ex.
00:45:53.000 Nuzzie said, I knew the second I poked my head up from my exile, I was probably going to be met by some madman charging me with an axe.
00:45:58.000 I didn't know which man it was going to be.
00:46:00.000 Well, I mean, you were engaged to that one.
00:46:02.000 So I mean, there's that.
00:46:05.000 Nuzzie is now promoting her new book, American Kanto, which was published on Tuesday.
00:46:09.000 Lizza continues to unspool a salacious, serialized version of his side of the story on Substack.
00:46:13.000 So he's aiming, I assume, for some sort of magical book deal of his own.
00:46:19.000 Apparently, in the first Substack post, Lizzo took aim at Nuzzie's journalistic integrity, airing alleged text message exchanges, love poetry, and recorded conversations meant to incriminate his ex.
00:46:28.000 So he sounds like a delightful person.
00:46:31.000 But, you know, they deserve each other, as I say.
00:46:33.000 He wrote that her affair with Kennedy was many, was just one of many ethical mistakes she made as a journalist.
00:46:38.000 Apparently, she had another affair with another politician she'd profiled for New York magazine.
00:46:44.000 She had an artist secretly record a session with President Trump in Florida.
00:46:49.000 Nuzzie said, quote, I suggest people refer to what I have said about my own life rather than the distortions or conspiracies promoted by someone I was at least fortunate enough not to marry.
00:46:58.000 Lizza then responded by saying, telling the truth is not harassment.
00:47:01.000 Accountability is not an axe.
00:47:05.000 Again, I feel like this is the world's worst journalistic rom-com.
00:47:08.000 Eventually, they'll end up back together after they both burn themselves to the ground.
00:47:14.000 Honestly, I think that both of these people probably should not earn your trust.
00:47:19.000 Her book, by the way, has been called a tell-nothing memoir by the Atlantic.
00:47:23.000 A New York Times reviewer called it a self-serious and disappointing book.
00:47:29.000 I do love that we live in a country where a journalist is sexting a politician she is covering and then gets a great book deal out of it.
00:47:37.000 Man, oh man, America's a great place.
00:47:40.000 Anyone can succeed here, truly.
00:47:41.000 And meanwhile, the Supreme Court has now allowed Texas to use its new congressional map.
00:47:46.000 So you'll recall that there were some questions about whether Texas's redistricting was ever going to go forward via the court system.
00:47:53.000 That would have been a big defeat for Republicans if they had tried to redistrict in Texas and only in exchange received a redistricting in California, adding Democrat seats.
00:48:02.000 Instead, the Supreme Court said that it will allow Texas to use a congressional map, adding as many as five Republican seats for next year's midterm elections.
00:48:09.000 The justices on Thursday set aside a lower court decision from last month that blocked the new electoral lines in order to Texas to use existing ones.
00:48:18.000 The unsigned order from the Supreme Court said the district court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal state balance in elections.
00:48:28.000 The court's three liberal justices dissented.
00:48:31.000 And Elena Kagan accused the majority of substituting its own judgment for the lower court's factual findings.
00:48:39.000 So this is good news for Republicans, obviously.
00:48:41.000 How does that reshape the map?
00:48:43.000 What you see right now over at Calci, one of our sponsors, is that the Democrats are now heavily favored to take Congress.
00:48:49.000 That has only been growing over the course of the past month.
00:48:52.000 If you go back to October, they were slightly favored, about 60-40.
00:48:57.000 Today, they are favored about 80-20.
00:49:00.000 Obviously, Republicans need every seat they can get, but they are running an uphill race.
00:49:04.000 So had they lost this case and also been facing this uphill battle, it could have been a wipeout.
00:49:10.000 Alrighty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.
00:49:13.000 I'm going to be jumping into that vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag and answering some of your questions.
00:49:17.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
00:49:19.000 If you're not a member, become a member.
00:49:20.000 Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
00:49:22.000 Click that link in the description and join us.
00:49:27.000 Oh, this is an illusion.
00:49:29.000 An echo of a voice that has died.
00:49:34.000 And soon that echo will cease.
00:49:46.000 They say that Merlin is mad.
00:49:54.000 They say he was a king and doved.
00:49:57.000 The son of a princess of lost Atlantis.
00:50:00.000 They say the future and the past are known to him.
00:50:05.000 Let the fire and the wind tell him their secrets.
00:50:09.000 Let the magic of the hill folk and druids come forth at his easy command.
00:50:15.000 They say he slew hundreds.
00:50:19.000 Hundreds, do you hear?
00:50:21.000 That the world burned and trembled at his wrath.
00:50:27.000 The Merlin died long before you and I were born.
00:50:33.000 Merlin Emeris has returned to the land of the living.
00:50:39.000 Vortigan is gone.
00:50:40.000 Rum is gone.
00:50:42.000 The Saxon is here.
00:50:45.000 Saxon Hengist has assembled the greatest war host ever seen in the island of the mighty.
00:50:50.000 And before the summer is through, he means to take the throne.
00:50:55.000 And he will have it.
00:50:56.000 If we are too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to take up arms against him, here is your hope.
00:51:02.000 A king will arise to hold all Britain in his hand.
00:51:06.000 A high king who will be the wonder of the world.
00:51:10.000 You to a future of peace.
00:51:17.000 There'll be no peace in these lands till we are all dust.
00:51:21.000 Men of the island of the mighty!
00:51:24.000 You stand together!
00:51:26.000 You stand as Britons!
00:51:29.000 You stand as one.
00:51:33.000 Great darkness is falling upon this land.
00:51:37.000 These brothers are our only hope to stand against it.
00:51:42.000 Not our only hope.
00:51:44.000 Esay Merthin slew 70 men with his own hands.
00:51:48.000 At Gathay, he slew 500.
00:51:53.000 No man is capable of such a thing.