The Ben Shapiro Show - What JD Vance Said on Rogan Should Worry Conservatives

00:00:00.000 Folks, the election of 2028 is fast approaching.

00:00:03.000 And we already know precisely what the Democrats will present on their side of the aisle.

00:00:06.000 A candidate who hates free markets and wants to lay them low.

00:00:09.000 A candidate who sees America as a cancerous force in the world and would like a weaker, less muscular America on the world stage.

00:00:16.000 A candidate who embraces conspiratorial nonsense about systems that place the American dream supposedly beyond our reach. 0.99

00:00:23.000 And I hate that crap. 0.99

00:00:24.000 It's why I've been a lifelong conservative. 0.99

00:00:26.000 So here's what I would not like.

00:00:28.000 A Republican who sounds like a Democrat.

00:00:30.000 I don't want a socialistic big government.

00:00:32.000 I don't want economic policies that could come straight from Bernie Sanders.

00:00:35.000 I don't want a foreign policy that sounds like Ro Khanna or a conspiratorial view of the American meritocracy that reads like Zarnamdani.

00:00:42.000 I don't think if a Republican takes those positions, he's likely to win either.

00:00:46.000 So why am I worried about that?

00:00:48.000 Well, because yesterday I watched Vice President JD Vance on Joe Rogan's show.

00:00:52.000 Let's just say I have some concerns.

00:00:54.000 I'll explain in a moment.

00:00:55.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:01:04.000 So, yesterday, Vice President Vance appeared on Joe Rogan's show.

00:01:07.000 And as always, the VP is charming and he's articulate.

00:01:10.000 I've met him.

00:01:11.000 The Vice President is a very nice person.

00:01:12.000 He's genial.

00:01:13.000 He's funny, obviously, super talented.

00:01:15.000 You don't end up Vice President of the United States in your early 40s without being a very talented person.

00:01:19.000 Usha, his wife, is a delightful person.

00:01:22.000 But now it's time to get down to brass tacks.

00:01:24.000 Would we like a Republican party that is essentially a horseshoe Democratic party?

00:01:28.000 I'm asking because that's kind of what the VP sounded like on Joe Rogan.

00:01:31.000 I'm not sure what he's doing.

00:01:33.000 Now, listen.

00:01:34.000 I want the Democrats to lose, not because I don't share their jersey, but because I do not share their fundamental principles.

00:01:41.000 So I'm looking to support candidates who, number one, actually oppose Democratic policies and two, can also win.

00:01:49.000 So first, opposing Democratic policies, left wing policies.

00:01:53.000 So yesterday on Joe Rogan's show, the vice president made a strong case against free markets and meritocracy.

00:01:58.000 He talked about the necessity of bold, intrusive government interventionism.

00:02:03.000 He made the case for an isolationist foreign policy and relied on a bunch of straw men to do it.

00:02:07.000 And he promoted a conspiratorial view of the world that undermines the meritocracy.

00:02:11.000 Yeah, I find that weird and concerning.

00:02:14.000 Now, let's start from the basics.

00:02:15.000 Again, I'm a conservative.

00:02:17.000 I have always been a conservative.

00:02:19.000 I have not evolved my views.

00:02:21.000 I have not changed my fundamental principles.

00:02:23.000 I'm not evolving on my views or changing my fundamental principles because they are based on extremely basic fundamental truths about politics and human nature.

00:02:32.000 When it comes to the world of American politics, there are essentially two fundamental truths upon which our republic is built.

00:02:38.000 One is built into the Declaration of Independence, and the other is built into the Constitution.

00:02:43.000 The one that's built into the Declaration of Independence is this human beings are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

00:02:49.000 And those rights include freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of religious practice, and the right to private property.

00:02:55.000 All of those things are in turn outgrowths of a fundamental biblical truth that we're made in the image of God, we're imbued with souls, that we are creative and choosing beings.

00:03:04.000 Governments are instituted by the governed in order to protect those rights that we have as ensouled human beings.

00:03:10.000 That's fundamental truth number one.

00:03:12.000 And then there's fundamental truth number two.

00:03:14.000 Human beings are not inherently good.

00:03:16.000 We are, at best, a mixed bag.

00:03:18.000 James Madison famously writes about this in Federalist 51 in the Federalist Papers.

00:03:22.000 He says, It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices, checks and balances, should be necessary to control the abuses of government.

00:03:30.000 But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

00:03:34.000 If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

00:03:37.000 If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

00:03:42.000 In framing a government over which, What does he mean by that?

00:03:53.000 He means human beings are flawed.

00:03:59.000 Therefore, if you give government total power, you will end up with a flawed human being in charge.

00:04:08.000 And if you give the government no power, then you will end up with anarchy.

00:04:11.000 So conservatives look at these two fundamental truths and they come up with a few key propositions.

00:04:16.000 that apply in the political realm.

00:04:18.000 Here are a few of those key propositions.

00:04:20.000 Human beings have a right to economic freedom and private property.

00:04:24.000 This means that your goods and your services and your work and your labor, they are yours.

00:04:29.000 You get to choose what to do with them because again, you are a creative being made in the image of God.

00:04:34.000 Impositions by the collective on those rights had better come with a proportionate return.

00:04:39.000 That's the basis in the constitution of the so-called takings clause.

00:04:42.000 That's the one that says that the government can only take private property from you if they give you just compensation.

00:04:48.000 Free markets are not just a utilitarian concern.

00:04:52.000 We don't like free markets just because they work.

00:04:54.000 We like free markets because they are rooted in human nature, in the basic way that human beings work.

00:05:00.000 And they are, in fact, protected by our system of government.

00:05:02.000 There's a reason the founders were fond of both Adam Smith and John Locke.

00:05:06.000 And yet another proposition the world is filled with nefarious people. 0.96

00:05:10.000 Pretending that there is some sort of family of nations, that we're all best friends, that naturally we all believe the good things, that is specious and it is foolish.

00:05:17.000 Our system, the American system, is in fact superior.

00:05:20.000 Our civilization is in fact superior, and our interests ought to be paramount.

00:05:23.000 Not just because we look out for ourselves in the way that, say, the Greeks or the French do, but because America is indeed an exceptional place.

00:05:30.000 And when it comes to our foreign policy, we ought to keep our own counsel and we ought to see our enemies clearly. 0.98

00:05:35.000 Naivete is dangerous. 0.96

00:05:37.000 Alexander Hamilton wrote about this in Federalist Six.

00:05:46.000 He says, What he means by this is human beings aren't perfect.

00:06:01.000 You gotta look. at your enemies with clear eyes.

00:06:09.000 And finally, traditional conservatives are highly skeptical of unevidenced conspiracy theories.

00:06:13.000 Why?

00:06:14.000 Well, because we believe in the meritocracy and conspiracy views of life are usually excuses for demoralization on the individual level, right?

00:06:22.000 If you can't run your own life, somebody else is running it.

00:06:24.000 Well, that's an excuse for you not to do the thing you're supposed to do.

00:06:27.000 It's also an excuse for tyrannical consolidation of power by evil people in order to crush these unevidenced conspiracies.

00:06:34.000 It's a big conspiracy of the elite.

00:06:35.000 Give me power.

00:06:36.000 I'll centralize it and then I'll use it against all those people.

00:06:40.000 In order to free you of the conspiracy.

00:06:43.000 Again, conservatives believe in a meritocracy, that a free system, a good free system, rewards the people who deserve it.

00:06:51.000 Conspiratorial slop is the theory that the only people who are successful have rigged the game.

00:06:57.000 And generally, the people who buy into those conspiracies want to overturn all the systems that actually make meritocracy possible in the first place.

00:07:05.000 Okay, so again, I want to sum those principles up because, as we will get to, they are in controversy.

00:07:12.000 So, if you are a conservative, you ought to generally believe, one, in private property and free markets, not just because of utilitarian concerns, but morally, because free markets are good and private property is good.

00:07:24.000 There are exceptions, of course, but that is the general rule.

00:07:26.000 Two, you ought to believe in a realist but moral foreign policy that America has moral interests in the world, but also be realistic about the fact the world is not a kind place.

00:07:36.000 And third, you ought to believe, if you're a conservative, in responsibility and duty and yes, the meritocracy.

00:07:42.000 And one of the big enemies of all of that is baseless conspiracy theorizing.

00:07:47.000 So here's the thing if I want a big, intrusive, anti free markets government or a foreign policy rooted in both moral relativism and weakness, if I want baseless conspiracy slop, I can just vote Democrat.

00:08:00.000 But of course, that's why I don't vote Democrat, because I oppose those things.

00:08:04.000 And listen, I hope the vice president opposes those things too.

00:08:07.000 That's why I'm concerned about the stuff he said on Joe Rogan.

00:08:09.000 This is the front runner for the Republican nomination in 2028.

00:08:12.000 I'm also concerned about the stuff that he has written in his book, because I've read his book.

00:08:16.000 Yesterday, on Joe Rogan, the vice president did not sound very conservative.

00:08:20.000 The vice president seems to want to beat the Democrats by joining them in a lot of key ways.

00:08:24.000 That may sound like a smart strategy.

00:08:26.000 As we'll discuss in a moment, we'll look at the stats.

00:08:27.000 I do not think it is.

00:08:29.000 Maybe it's about being cool.

00:08:31.000 Yesterday, on Joe Rogan, the VP had this to say Republicans still fundamentally have a cool problem, right?

00:08:38.000 There's something more charismatic, more cool about the Democrats as opposed to the right.

00:08:45.000 And so you said something about.

00:08:45.000 Does that?

00:08:49.000 There are too many dorks or something on the right. 1.00

00:08:51.000 There's a lot of dorks. 0.99

00:08:52.000 You know, fair. 1.00

00:08:53.000 I'd say there's a lot of dorks on the left. 1.00

00:08:54.000 There's a lot of dorks on the left, too. 1.00

00:08:55.000 But it's a different kind of dork. 1.00

00:08:56.000 It's a different kind of dork. 0.97

00:08:57.000 But the point is that there's something, you know, like, okay, if you're a pop star, you're a rock star, you're an actor, you're in all these cultural centers, you're more likely to be left than right. 0.91

00:09:08.000 And so I think that a lot of young people who are attracted to these population centers, they sort of move along with the prevailing culture.

00:09:14.000 I think that's one thing that's going on.

00:09:18.000 Okay, but here's the thing truth is often uncool.

00:09:21.000 Truth requires you to say the hard things and to do the right thing.

00:09:24.000 And it turns out there's kind of an attraction in that.

00:09:26.000 There's something cool in just sticking by your guns.

00:09:28.000 So, I'll be honest, I'm not sure how the vice president wants to be cool.

00:09:34.000 If coolness means just warming over some Bernie Sanders ism and heating up a side of Obama ism and spicing it up with some conspiracy theorizing, gotta say, I'm not into it.

00:09:42.000 But unfortunately, unfortunately, that is largely what the vice president spouted on Joe Rogan's show yesterday.

00:09:47.000 Now, maybe I'm reading too much into this.

00:09:49.000 Maybe I am, possible.

00:09:51.000 I don't think so, because I've also read the vice president's book.

00:09:54.000 In a second, we'll get to the vice president's book because it gives you a good window into his worldview.

00:09:59.000 When it comes to my worldview, A big one, don't waste time and don't waste money.

00:10:03.000 This is like actually very important to me.

00:10:05.000 And this is why I love Pure Talk.

00:10:06.000 So Pure Talk is now running the best promotion I've ever seen them offer.

00:10:10.000 And again, I've been with Pure Talk for years and I've been recommending them for years.

00:10:13.000 And so I know what all their promotions look like.

00:10:15.000 This is the right time to switch.

00:10:17.000 For the first time ever, any Pure Talk plan, including their unlimited data plans and even their top tier plan, is just $15 a month for your first three months.

00:10:24.000 That's savings of up to $150.

00:10:26.000 It's the same reliable service, 100% US based customer service, no service contract, no cancellation fees, just a fraction of what the big guys charge.

00:10:33.000 Spend less every month, get great service, support a company that's investing in America's veterans.

00:10:36.000 It's a pretty easy decision.

00:10:38.000 But don't wait.

00:10:38.000 This promotion is only around for a limited time.

00:10:40.000 Go to puretalk.comslash Shapiro to make the switch.

00:10:43.000 Again, that's puretalk.comslash Shapiro to start saving.

00:10:47.000 I know Pure Talk's got great coverage because, again, I've been using them for years.

00:10:50.000 They got the same tower network as the big guys.

00:10:51.000 The coverage is excellent.

00:10:52.000 The price has literally never been better, literally never.

00:10:55.000 So now would be the moment for you to make that switch.

00:10:57.000 Head on over to puretalk.comslash Shapiro to get started right now.

00:11:01.000 So the Vice President's new book.

00:11:05.000 Which is all about his sort of religious journey.

00:11:08.000 The biggest theme in the book is not really about his religious journey.

00:11:12.000 That's obviously a big theme of the book.

00:11:13.000 But the biggest theme that kind of undergirds the book because it's a contrast from his old book, Hillbilly Elegy, is his militant dislike of the meritocracy.

00:11:20.000 Now, again, that's weird because, of course, JD Vance became famous as the guy who praised the American meritocracy in Hillbilly Elegy.

00:11:26.000 They made a movie of it.

00:11:28.000 He warned people about conspiracy theories and a victim mentality that deprives you of agency.

00:11:34.000 But in his new book, he reverses himself.

00:11:37.000 It turns out in his new book, the vice president argues that meritocracy is basically a lie.

00:11:43.000 He argues for an infusion of Catholic integralism into our policy.

00:11:47.000 Basically, we should impose the views of Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical, Rerum Navarum, on our economic policy, on our foreign policy in many ways.

00:11:57.000 And some of the stuff that he says in this book is like over and over, the meritocracy just comes in for a beating.

00:12:01.000 Again, he's not arguing that America is not a meritocracy, he's arguing the meritocracy itself is a spiritual failure.

00:12:08.000 Now, again, this is a category error.

00:12:10.000 A meritocracy just means that those with merit ought to rise.

00:12:14.000 It does not mean that you will find spiritual fulfillment in your increased material circumstances.

00:12:20.000 But government is not capable of providing you spiritual fulfillment.

00:12:23.000 If you're looking for God's fulfillment via the grace of government, I would humbly submit you are looking in the wrong place in the first place.

00:12:32.000 The American meritocracy is what has made us the most powerful, prosperous, and free country in the history of the world.

00:12:37.000 Ripping into the meritocracy because you find it spiritually unfulfilling.

00:12:41.000 Is certainly a bizarre view, but that's exactly what the VP does in his new book.

00:12:48.000 So he writes, for example, the meritocracy had made alluring promises, but had failed to reckon with the big questions.

00:12:53.000 I wasn't aware that the meritocracy is supposed to reckon with the question of your relationship with God.

00:12:58.000 That's not what it's built to do.

00:12:59.000 This is like criticizing a hammer for not being a screwdriver.

00:13:02.000 The vice president writes in his book, The meritocracy had focused my mind on the crude and superficial credentials, careers, money.

00:13:09.000 These things might have been necessary, but they could never form the basis of a truly good life.

00:13:12.000 Who made the argument they could?

00:13:14.000 I've been a religious person my entire life, essentially.

00:13:17.000 My parents became full scale Orthodox when I was 11.

00:13:20.000 So since childhood, I've been a very religious person.

00:13:22.000 The meritocracy is wonderful.

00:13:24.000 It has nothing to do with me going to synagogue.

00:13:27.000 The vice president goes on.

00:13:28.000 He says, Ayn Rand's message, the celebration of aspirations and achievements, the refusal to accept excuses, would reorient my entire life in subtle and ultimately destructive ways.

00:13:38.000 So, in other words, if you celebrate aspiration and achievement, if you refuse to accept excuses, that apparently is destructive.

00:13:46.000 He says, it's one thing to celebrate achievement, it's something else to build your life around it.

00:13:50.000 Okay, again, that's fine for a spiritual journey.

00:13:53.000 It is a bad guide for government policy.

00:13:55.000 If meritocracy is the enemy, if meritocracy empties you out, Of spiritual fulfillment, then again, I think that you are geared toward a government policy that's going to look a lot more left wing than it looks like traditional conservatism.

00:14:11.000 Again, if the problem here is that the meritocracy didn't give JD Vance personal fulfillment, that wasn't its job.

00:14:18.000 He became rich and famous because he is smart and because he is clever and because he is glib and all of those things.

00:14:24.000 But if your idea is that the failure of the meritocracy to provide you spiritual fulfillment, Is a failure of the meritocracy, and you need government in order to fix all those problems, you got a problem.

00:14:35.000 And this is the kind of stuff that the vice president was pushing on Joe Rogan.

00:14:39.000 So, Joe Rogan essentially makes the case that what we have to do is we have to essentially get involved in promoting the lie that capitalism rigs the system, and then we have to promote a sort of democratic socialism because if we don't, then we'll get full scale socialism.

00:14:58.000 Okay, look.

00:14:59.000 I mean, the answer to that is no.

00:15:00.000 You could just call out the lie.

00:15:01.000 The system is not, in fact, rigged.

00:15:03.000 And by the way, if we want to talk about rigged systems, probably if we're going to look for people who are rigging supposed free markets to their own benefit, we probably should be looking to the political class, which is constantly getting rich off of its own connections.

00:15:15.000 But I don't see the vice president doing that too much.

00:15:17.000 Here's the vice president yesterday with Joe Rogan.

00:15:21.000 Does the socialism thing scare me?

00:15:22.000 Yes.

00:15:23.000 Is it the wrong solution?

00:15:24.000 Yes.

00:15:25.000 But one thing I try to persuade my fellow Republicans of is socialism is the alternative.

00:15:31.000 If we don't have a pathway to give people a sense that the system is not rigged and that the American dream is attainable, that's like our job.

00:15:40.000 That's what we have to do.

00:15:41.000 I'm not saying Rome was built in a day.

00:15:42.000 It's not going to be easy to undo some of these economic trends.

00:15:46.000 But man, we ran the experiment.

00:15:48.000 We ran the experiment of offshoring all of our industrial jobs, of becoming a services and finance economy, and allowing Wall Street to come in and buy every asset of modern life and turn it into an investable economy.

00:16:03.000 You know, line goes up, asset.

00:16:05.000 And what has that done?

00:16:07.000 It's created a generation of kids who kind of are attracted to socialism.

00:16:11.000 You have to fix that problem.

00:16:13.000 I mean, let's be real about this.

00:16:15.000 Young people in America have always been attracted to left wing economic policy.

00:16:18.000 That is not some sort of giant shock.

00:16:20.000 When the vice president gives credence to all of the straw men and lies of the socialists that America has offshored all of our jobs, not true.

00:16:27.000 That America's services economy is some sort of gigantic failure, not true.

00:16:33.000 Is some sort of rigged system in which no one can get ahead.

00:16:36.000 When you keep giving credence to that, and then you say, we have to, we must, we, the government, we must step in and convince people the system is not rigged.

00:16:36.000 Not true.

00:16:45.000 I don't know how that sounds any different than Gavin Newsom, frankly.

00:16:48.000 I mean, here's Gavin Newsom just the other day.

00:16:50.000 Something's fundamentally broken here.

00:16:53.000 And that wealth is creating power, power locking in rules and regulations, locking everybody else out.

00:17:02.000 You can't play in the margins anymore.

00:17:04.000 We can't fail more efficiently.

00:17:07.000 Certainly, nostalgia is not working.

00:17:09.000 I would argue socialism is not going to work.

00:17:12.000 But capitalism as we know it doesn't work either.

00:17:15.000 Okay, if JD Vance and Gavin Newsom are saying the same thing, that is a problem.

00:17:22.000 And of course, The vice president on Joe Rogan also suggested not only the Rerum Navarum, that encyclical ought to be the guide for America's economic policy, but also that AI tech developers, they're actually today's robber barons, which is, again, kind of strange from a guy who made a name for himself by hanging out with the folks in Silicon Valley.

00:17:40.000 Here's the vice president.

00:17:42.000 He said the main issue, if you go back to the Industrial Revolution, is that there was a lot of demand for workers, but the inequality in the country got completely out of whack.

00:17:52.000 Like this is the era of the robber barons, and then the robber barons in both Europe and the In the United States, it led to fascism, it led to communism.

00:17:59.000 Again, to this point about giving people an option, if you don't give them a good option, then it leads to fascism and communism.

00:18:06.000 Now, there's this fascinating encyclical written by Pope Leo XIII.

00:18:10.000 I'll send it to you.

00:18:11.000 It's one of the best things that I think has ever been written by a Christian leader.

00:18:16.000 It's written in the late 19th century, and the basic argument of it is that in the age of industrial churn, there has to be a middle way between six year olds working on the factory floor and socialism.

00:18:30.000 And part of that solution is to give workers a sort of say in what's going on.

00:18:36.000 Give normal people some power in this system.

00:18:41.000 And I think that's the thing we have to figure out with AI.

00:18:45.000 Now, again, this sort of lie that technological advancement admiserates the workers, that income inequality, wealth inequality, these are the problems.

00:18:52.000 It just is not distinguishable from what Bernie Sanders says.

00:18:56.000 I wish it were.

00:18:56.000 It isn't.

00:18:59.000 60% of our people live in paycheck to paycheck, and one guy, Elon Musk, Owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of American households.

00:19:11.000 Think maybe that might be an issue that we should be talking about?

00:19:18.000 And again, in JD Vance's book, Communion, he quotes over and over Rerum Navarum.

00:19:22.000 This is supposed to be the sort of basis for what he thinks of as American economic policy.

00:19:27.000 He writes in his book, The Pope also lays out a vision of society where the state protects the vulnerable, guarantees a just wage for laborers, and ensures that working people have sufficient rest from labor.

00:19:37.000 Not for vicious indulgence.

00:19:38.000 But so they can focus on higher matters, such as their religious and familial obligations.

00:19:44.000 Well, I mean, I should point out at this point, Riram Navaram is not an American founding document.

00:19:48.000 And it is kind of strange, just politically speaking, to be quoting Riram Navaram as the basis for some sort of American economic philosophy.

00:19:58.000 The vice president in his book does bash the Reformation, meaning like Protestantism arising, saying that it's a tragedy the Christian church is so divided in modern times.

00:20:07.000 That is a strange move.

00:20:09.000 It's a strange electoral move.

00:20:11.000 Bernie Sanders plus the Pope is a pretty narrow constituency.

00:20:15.000 And of course, the vice president writes at length in his book about the shortcomings of free markets.

00:20:21.000 I think the most kind of astonishing portion of his book is this portion where he talks about traveling to Japan.

00:20:25.000 He writes this The first and only time I ever visited Japan, I read a bunch of articles by economists about Japan's stagnant economy.

00:20:33.000 Japan's economy has been stagnant since the 90s.

00:20:35.000 This is just a reality.

00:20:36.000 Economists broadly agreed that something had gone terribly wrong with Japanese economic policy.

00:20:41.000 Though they disagreed about what should be done.

00:20:43.000 After about two hours in Tokyo, I realized that the dire predictions of the expert class had nothing in common with the actual Japan I saw.

00:20:49.000 Children seemingly no more than five years old rode the subway without fear, and the public bathrooms in the subway stations were cleaner than the member bathrooms in the United States Senate.

00:20:57.000 Public transportation ran perfectly on time.

00:20:59.000 Meanwhile, the Japanese had apparently perfected the art of cuisine, writes the vice president.

00:21:03.000 Have you ever gone to a grocery store and gotten an excellent batch of strawberries or blueberries?

00:21:07.000 In Japan, every fruit tasted like the best strawberry you've ever eaten, even the most expired pack in a small convenience store.

00:21:12.000 If you're focused on GDP, a $6 pint of Japanese strawberries is no different.

00:21:16.000 From a $6 pint to American strawberries.

00:21:18.000 If you're focused on dollars and cents, each contributes equally to the economic indicators.

00:21:22.000 But if everyone in Japan eats better strawberries than everyone in America, the economic indicators have failed to measure something meaningful. 0.99

00:21:28.000 And again, he writes an entire chapter about economics is pretty stupid. 0.98

00:21:33.000 Now, that particular paragraph is kind of insane. 0.97

00:21:36.000 It's insane for a variety of reasons, including the fact that actually Japan is pretty famous for its strawberry industry, they have a cultivated luxury strawberry industry in Japan.

00:21:47.000 Like, instead of bringing people flowers when you go over to dinner, very often you bring a box of strawberries because Japan has perfected certain methodologies of actually growing strawberries.

00:21:54.000 It would be more expensive to ship that over to the United States.

00:21:59.000 And there are explanations for why things cost what they do.

00:22:03.000 It is also true that Japan's economy has been stagnating for decades.

00:22:06.000 But the sort of disdain that the vice president has for economics, broadly speaking, because he has vague and unspecified desires for things that are not measured by GDP.

00:22:17.000 That is a cheap and easy way of avoiding having to make real political decisions about costs and benefits.

00:22:23.000 And in his book, he suggests that Christians don't care about lower taxes for global corporations or institutional investors.

00:22:30.000 They may even have been actively hostile to those things. 0.50

00:22:33.000 He praises Sean O'Brien, the head of the Teamsters Union, in his book.

00:22:36.000 He says, Some GOP donors complain he sounded like a socialist.

00:22:40.000 I thought Sean's arguments echoed a lot of the themes from traditional Christian social teaching.

00:22:45.000 Again, this is warmed over Sandersism.

00:22:47.000 I wish it were not.

00:22:48.000 It is what it is.

00:22:50.000 All righty, coming up, we'll get to the vice president on his foreign policy.

00:22:53.000 See, a lot of us didn't like the terms and conditions of the MOU.

00:22:57.000 And I think the vice president was surprised that we actually read the terms and conditions of the memorandum of understanding, mainly because nobody actually reads those things, right?

00:23:04.000 Actually, when you're online and you have to sign something in order to get access to another thing, you just scroll right to the bottom, you sign it, you're done.

00:23:11.000 Well, here's the problem that gets you in trouble.

00:23:13.000 I'm excited to talk to you about one of today's sponsors, Super Shore.

00:23:16.000 If you're the owner, CFO, or HR manager of a company with more than 25 employees, Here are the Spark nodes.

00:23:21.000 They are licensed in every state for business insurance and employee benefits.

00:23:24.000 They provide year round support, not just at renewal time.

00:23:27.000 They also have a fine print fax tool that translates your policy into plain English, plus a business value calculator to help you understand what you've actually built and how to protect it.

00:23:35.000 Head on over to supersure.comslash Shapiro.

00:23:38.000 That's supersure.comslash Shapiro.

00:23:41.000 One super agency, one powerful platform, all your policies in one place.

00:23:44.000 Again, that's supersure.comslash Shapiro.

00:23:46.000 You don't have time to scroll through all that stuff.

00:23:48.000 Why not have Supersure do all the work for you?

00:23:50.000 Paid for by Supersure Insurance Agency, LLC, a licensed insurance agency.

00:23:55.000 And on Joe Rogan, he also talked a fair bit about foreign policy.

00:23:59.000 Now, when it comes to foreign policy, the vice president's view of foreign policy is essentially that the United States ought to withdraw more from the world.

00:24:05.000 That is his generalized view of American foreign policy.

00:24:07.000 In his book, he writes at length about his view that essentially global foreign policy, particularly since the 1990s, were rotten.

00:24:16.000 Quote The fruits of your leadership are pointless wars of choice and declining life expectancy in your own country.

00:24:21.000 Perhaps your life's work was for naught.

00:24:23.000 He rips on Ukraine.

00:24:24.000 He sort of avoids criticizing Russia in his book.

00:24:29.000 He saves his most ardent rage for George W. Bush in his book on Joe Rogan.

00:24:35.000 He pushes, again, a bizarrely conciliatory policy toward Iran, and he sets up a series of straw men that he then sets on fire in order to promote the memorandum of understanding that he himself negotiated and then defended.

00:24:50.000 Now, let me point out day one of the MOU, I said it was a bad deal.

00:24:54.000 Because it's a bad deal.

00:24:54.000 Why?

00:24:55.000 You know who agreed with me?

00:24:56.000 68% of Americans who thought the MOU was poorly negotiated and a bad deal.

00:25:02.000 But the vice president, in order to defend his bad deal and his bizarre view of foreign policy, in which Iran is, you know, a potential friendly, and the Pakistanis are friendlies, and the Qataris are friendlies, and they're all friendlies, but also Israel manipulates our foreign policy, in order for the vice president to back that, he has to set up a series of straw men and then set them aflame.

00:25:19.000 So on Joe Rogan, he suggests that the people criticizing the MOU have no alternative. 0.72

00:25:27.000 The people who are like, you cannot negotiate with the Iranians, the reason why that's fundamentally idiotic is because so long as you have. 0.60

00:25:36.000 Some person who's willing to fire off a few cheap drones, you're going to have some ship captains who say, no, no, no, we're not willing to do this. 1.00

00:25:44.000 So we got to kind of use all tools at our disposal.

00:25:47.000 The military is one tool, but diplomacy is another tool. 1.00

00:25:50.000 And I'm very frustrated by the Americans and frankly by people in other countries who are like, you cannot negotiate with the Iranians. 0.77

00:25:58.000 Well, then what is your proposal to get people to stop shooting at ships in the Strait of Hormuz? 0.99

00:26:03.000 You can bomb them, you can take away their radar, you can take away some of their drones and some of their missiles.

00:26:08.000 But it's just too easy to fire at ships in the Straits.

00:26:14.000 Okay, so I would like to point out at this point, no one says you can't negotiate with the bad guys.

00:26:17.000 The question is, what kind of bad deal you cut with the bad guys?

00:26:21.000 And the sort of refuge of every bad argument when it comes to cutting a bad deal is to suggest there's no alternative to cutting the bad deal.

00:26:28.000 Barack Obama did this in 2015 when he was promoting what Donald Trump has called the worst deal in history.

00:26:36.000 For all the objections of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Or, for that matter, some of the Republican leadership that's already spoken.

00:26:45.000 None of them have presented to me or the American people a better alternative.

00:26:53.000 Yeah, and this is always the shtick.

00:26:56.000 By the way, I've presented about 1,000 alternatives on this show to the bad MOU.

00:27:01.000 And they include just walking away, which is still better than a bad MOU.

00:27:05.000 Maintaining the blockade, walking away, keeping the sanctions on was a better answer than the MOU.

00:27:11.000 And as we'll get to, when it comes to the MOU, you know who sank the MOU?

00:27:15.000 It wasn't me.

00:27:17.000 I was critical of the MOU. 0.99

00:27:19.000 I thought the MOU is trash because it is. 0.99

00:27:21.000 But the reason I thought it was trash is because I think that the Iranian government is a government of tyrannical theocratic thugs. 0.99

00:27:27.000 And I had full faith that they would break the agreement in short order, which they did. 0.99

00:27:31.000 It was the Iranians who tossed the MOU in the garbage. 0.98

00:27:35.000 But of course, the vice president set up again a series of straw men that are essentially indistinguishable in many ways.

00:27:41.000 From the kinds of policy that would be promoted by radicals in the Democratic Party. 0.94

00:27:47.000 So, JD Vance, for example, suggested that we should not be in favor of any sort of regime change or collapse in Iran because then the Iranian people would all flee the country and they're all terrorists, which, again, like this is just an incredibly ignorant take on Iran. 0.76

00:28:05.000 What is in our interest?

00:28:07.000 How is it in the United States' interest to have 94 million desperate people flooding into Europe, flooding into the United States, to have You know, sort of the terrorist infrastructure that can get established when you fan terrorists all over the world.

00:28:21.000 We've run this experiment before. 0.53

00:28:25.000 I mean, it definitely would be a problem if you had, say, a regime that was fostering terrorism literally all over the world.

00:28:30.000 That'd be terrible.

00:28:31.000 I mean, that regime already exists. 0.98

00:28:32.000 And the idea that 94 million Iranians are terrorists, that, of course, is quite silly. 0.99

00:28:39.000 It is quite silly, but it's a bunch of straw men. 0.90

00:28:42.000 And when faced with the fact that his MOU was just a bad deal, the vice president then fell back on conspiracy theorizing about how everyone who opposed him is naturally in the pay of the nefarious Israelis, which is just dummy stuff. 1.00

00:28:56.000 I'm sorry, it's stupid. 1.00

00:28:58.000 It's dumb. 0.99

00:28:59.000 You know who opposed the MOU? 0.99

00:29:01.000 Anyone who had an ounce of brain power with regard to how Iran acts in the Middle East and has been acting for full on half a century. 0.95

00:29:09.000 It's just silly talk. 0.98

00:29:10.000 It's silly talk. 0.97

00:29:11.000 Well, here's the vice president doing some rather conspiratorial, silly talk, citing an article, by the way, from Time magazine that was essentially planted by his allies in the first place. 0.85

00:29:22.000 I definitely think you have seen this very discreet, extremely well funded.

00:29:28.000 Campaign to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal.

00:29:34.000 And, you know, there was again, there's this Time article that came out yesterday.

00:29:37.000 A friend sent it to me.

00:29:39.000 It's like worth reading because it lists a bunch of people who have quite literally been paid by a former Trump campaign person who was himself paid by certain elements within the Israeli government.

00:29:54.000 And those people are attacking me viciously for quite literally trying to accomplish the negotiation objective that the president set for the country.

00:30:02.000 So, what is their position?

00:30:03.000 Like, they're attacking you.

00:30:04.000 How?

00:30:05.000 Oh, it's social media posts.

00:30:07.000 It's, you know, they're leaking to reporters.

00:30:09.000 They're attacking me obsessively, saying that we should not be negotiating with Iran.

00:30:14.000 We should just keep the military campaign going indefinitely.

00:30:19.000 Keep it going indefinitely. 1.00

00:30:20.000 I've argued for bombing Karg Island, bombing South Pars, and getting the hell out. 1.00

00:30:23.000 So, I mean, there's that. 0.98

00:30:24.000 But again, this idea that everyone you don't like is in the pay of your opposition is just silly.

00:30:29.000 That article in Time magazine, by the way, doesn't even say that.

00:30:32.000 It was planted by, quote, a senior U.S. official.

00:30:36.000 Who could it be?

00:30:37.000 I don't know.

00:30:38.000 I don't know.

00:30:39.000 It's so mysterious.

00:30:40.000 A senior U.S. official plants a piece in Time magazine about how there is some sort of paid operation against him.

00:30:47.000 The only person who is named is Trump's former presidential campaign manager and digital guru, a guy named Brad Parscale.

00:30:52.000 Brad Parscale is literally registered.

00:30:54.000 I mean, this is not a hidden story.

00:30:55.000 He registered under Farah, and he himself denied having been a part of any of this.

00:31:00.000 And by the way, if he had paid anyone to actually go and make those posts, they too would have had to register under Farah.

00:31:07.000 So, again, this is just conspiratorial nonsense.

00:31:09.000 The reality is that the MOU did not die because people in the United States were opposed to the MOU. 0.85

00:31:14.000 The MOU died because Iran is Iran. 0.89

00:31:17.000 And the people who oppose the MOU oppose the MOU also because Iran is Iran. 0.93

00:31:21.000 I mean, Iran has been spending this week unveiling murals of President Trump in a coffin.

00:31:26.000 This is literally a picture from Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Square.

00:31:30.000 This is on Fox News two days ago.

00:31:35.000 There is a mural of the late Senator Lindsey Graham with devil horns painted on his head.

00:31:40.000 And there's another giant mural of President Trump in a coffin.

00:31:43.000 President Trump was asked yesterday what he thought about these threats toward him.

00:31:47.000 He says he doesn't spend much time thinking about them.

00:31:52.000 So, again, the vice president attributing opposition to what is a bad MOU to everyone that he doesn't like being paid by someone else.

00:32:00.000 It's quite reminiscent of the newfound Graham Plattner, Abdul El Sayed strategy of everyone who doesn't like me is AIPAC.

00:32:07.000 The vice president would go on to say on Joe Rogan's show, That he is not influenced, that people are accusing him of being influenced by Qatar or by Tucker Carlson.

00:32:14.000 I don't think the vice president is influenced by Qatar.

00:32:17.000 I think that the vice president is very close friends with Tucker Carlson.

00:32:20.000 He's made that absolutely and abundantly clear.

00:32:22.000 Here was the vice president yesterday on Joe Rogan.

00:32:25.000 People have come after me and say that I'm influenced by Qatar, that I'm influenced by foreign governments, that I take my marching orders from Tucker Carlson.

00:32:34.000 And there's just so much bullshit out there when what I'm actually trying to do is accomplish what the president of the United States told me to accomplish, which is a settlement of this that accomplishes our objectives.

00:32:47.000 Now, again, when it comes to the Tucker Carlson of all of this, the vice president is obviously and very clearly close to Tucker Carlson. 0.97

00:32:53.000 Clearly.

00:32:54.000 Forever.

00:32:55.000 For the past two years, Tucker Carlson, by the way, the criticism that the vice president is leveling at his critics here, I've noticed he has directed not one ounce, not one iota, not one word of criticism in Tucker Carlson, who has called the president of the United States the Antichrist, who has said he wants to start a third party, which presumably would run against JD Vance, who has promoted feudalism and Russian propaganda and Iranian propaganda and all the rest.

00:33:17.000 And the vice president hasn't said a single word about any of that, which, again, is kind of strange.

00:33:23.000 Listen, the reason that we are critical of the vice president on this show in terms of how he has Performed his job when it comes to foreign policy is because he didn't do a good job in this negotiation.

00:33:34.000 He did not.

00:33:36.000 Sorry, he went to this negotiation and he said, We love Pakistan.

00:33:41.000 And five minutes later, the prime minister of Pakistan was in Iran at the funeral of the Ayatollah praising Iran.

00:33:47.000 I mean, this is just bad diplomacy.

00:33:50.000 Forget about whether diplomacy should be used.

00:33:52.000 Diplomacy is a tool in your arsenal, it is not an end in and of itself.

00:33:57.000 When you earn the criticism, you earn the criticism. 0.86

00:34:00.000 And trying to blame that on outside nefarious forces is silly. 0.98

00:34:02.000 It's just silly and unbecoming. 0.96

00:34:05.000 Thank you. 0.93

00:34:09.000 Pakistan and Iran are two brotherly countries.

00:34:17.000 Our hearts beat together and we will stand together.

00:34:25.000 We shall march together under all circumstances.

00:34:28.000 Okay, so in short, does this sound like peace through strength?

00:34:33.000 It did not to me when he was on Joe Rogan's show.

00:34:35.000 And then finally, there was JD Vance's embrace of conspiracism.

00:34:39.000 Now, the vice president has full scale admitted that he tends to fall down rabbit holes of conspiracy that's been widely reported.

00:34:46.000 Obviously, one of those conspiracies is the idea that everyone who criticized the MOU is in the pay of the nefarious Jews or something.

00:34:51.000 But JD Vance, he also decided to retail again.

00:34:55.000 And again, this is just maybe he's trying to appeal to the conspiratorial side of Joe Rogan here.

00:35:00.000 Maybe it's a tactic.

00:35:01.000 Maybe it is. 0.97

00:35:02.000 But when JD Vance goes on Joe Rogan's show and unleashes, Yet another dumb theory about Jeffrey Epstein. 0.77

00:35:09.000 But he says it in the form of the vice president of the United States claiming connections with the highest levels of American and Israeli intelligence on behalf of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

00:35:20.000 I have one question.

00:35:21.000 You're the vice president.

00:35:23.000 Why not release your evidence, sir?

00:35:26.000 Anytime.

00:35:27.000 All righty, coming up, the vice president of the United States, he's not just doing the sort of conspiracy game around opposition to his pretty bad MOU.

00:35:34.000 He's just doing it generally.

00:35:36.000 We'll get to that in a second.

00:35:37.000 But first, I need to play a game with you.

00:35:38.000 I'm going to describe a country to you, and you're going to tell me what country it is.

00:35:41.000 A small group of resentful radicals seizes power.

00:35:43.000 They go after the family.

00:35:44.000 They go after the church.

00:35:45.000 They flood the streets with criminals. 0.98

00:35:46.000 They legalize abortion. 0.71

00:35:48.000 They gut the institution of marriage.

00:35:49.000 They persecute anybody who disagrees with them politically.

00:35:52.000 Now, you might think that sounds a lot like 2020 America.

00:35:55.000 It kind of does.

00:35:56.000 What I'm actually describing is Russia in 1917.

00:35:58.000 That's the subject of the latest episode of Real History with Matt Walsh, streaming now on Daily Wire Plus.

00:36:03.000 In this episode, Matt traces the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, rule by rule, and matches each one against what's happening in our country over the last several years.

00:36:11.000 These are sourced and documented accounts.

00:36:12.000 What is unsettling is how well everything kind of lines up.

00:36:15.000 Watch the episode.

00:36:16.000 Tell me that the same rules that lead to the Russian communist takeover don't sound a lot like what's happening on the streets of American cities today.

00:36:22.000 This is one of the most important episodes Matt has made so far.

00:36:26.000 Go check out the real history of communism today at dailywireplus.com.

00:36:30.000 If you were elected to uncover all of this, you're doing a pretty bad job of it.

00:36:35.000 If you have questions on what's going on between Jeffrey Epstein and, say, American intelligence, the CIA, or Mossad, or whatever, if you have questions, there's a person who's very, very high ranking in the United States government.

00:36:47.000 The plenary capacity to gather that information.

00:36:50.000 He exists in the mirror for the vice president.

00:36:53.000 So, pushing unbased conspiracy theorizing on Joe Rogan is unworthy of the office.

00:37:03.000 Well, most people think he was Mossad.

00:37:05.000 Yeah, Mossad or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country.

00:37:11.000 The highest levels of American intelligence.

00:37:11.000 Or both.

00:37:20.000 He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence.

00:37:24.000 In fact, one of the interesting things the Epstein saga reveals about - and I try to make this point - is one of the reasons why I'm always careful and I say there are some elements within the Israeli government who don't like our peace process because there are a lot of elements within the Israeli government that actually do like our peace process.

00:37:42.000 They recognize that this indefinite campaign is not good for them either.

00:37:46.000 The Epstein thing is interesting because as much as I know - Prime Minister Netanyahu, not a particularly popular person in the United States of America right now, Epstein seemed to be connected to the elements of the Israeli deep state that were left of center.

00:38:04.000 I've always found that fascinating.

00:38:05.000 It wasn't like he was super connected to the right of center of Israeli politics.

00:38:12.000 America, he was connected across the board. 0.93

00:38:15.000 Okay, so again, if you're going to claim connections between Jeffrey Epstein and the highest levels of American and Israeli intelligence, That is a different thing than he was friends with Ehud Barak, the scumbag former prime minister of Israel.

00:38:27.000 Obviously, he had connections in high places, but that doesn't mean that he was an agent, which is the thing that Vance has talked about.

00:38:33.000 And Vance, by the way, would go on to acknowledge he had no documentary evidence of any of this.

00:38:36.000 No documentary evidence.

00:38:38.000 So I just want to go back for a second.

00:38:39.000 Conservatism has certain fundamental principles.

00:38:41.000 I articulated three of them that we are generally in favor of private property and free markets, that generally we favor a peace through strength foreign policy that is rooted in understanding the world is a rough place.

00:38:55.000 That conservatives generally are not in favor of baseless conspiracy theorizing because that undermines the idea that you have capacity in the world to act and duty to act in a particular way.

00:39:09.000 And the vice president goes on Joe Rogan, and he seems to cut against a lot of those things.

00:39:14.000 So I've talked about the vice president's heterodox views, shall we say.

00:39:18.000 The question is what he's doing politically speaking, okay?

00:39:21.000 Because that brings us to question two.

00:39:22.000 I said earlier on, I want two things from my Republican candidate one, to reflect my principles.

00:39:27.000 And two, I want them to defeat the Democrats.

00:39:31.000 Now, I've talked about the ways in which the vice president is skewing away from a lot of those principles, but the second question is still very alive.

00:39:38.000 Is he likely to beat the Democrats because of this?

00:39:40.000 Maybe it's just a tactic.

00:39:41.000 Maybe it's a tactic.

00:39:42.000 Maybe the idea from the vice president is that he can't be president somehow if he doesn't win over Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson, if he doesn't win them over. 0.99

00:39:51.000 If so, this is a very, very foolish tactic. 0.97

00:39:54.000 It is a mistake. 0.99

00:39:55.000 It is a political error of cataclysmic proportions.

00:40:00.000 Now, I want to bring up here what is called the political tribe profiles from Echelon Insights.

00:40:05.000 Echelon Insights, which is Kristen Sultan Sanderson's group, excellent polling outfit.

00:40:09.000 Outfit.

00:40:10.000 They break down the political tribes in the United States into eight political tribes.

00:40:15.000 Into eight political tribes.

00:40:16.000 Okay.

00:40:17.000 On the right, you have the loyal right, which represents about 18% of Americans, staunch conservatives across the social and economic spectrum, who also take consistently anti establishment positions, skews older and male.

00:40:29.000 The moderate right, that's 13%, take right leaning positions on most issues, but trust experts, support free trade, are pro gay marriage, and believe there are obstacles for women.

00:40:38.000 The new Republican populace, this is where the vice president seems to be placing himself.

00:40:42.000 Socially to the right, economically to the left, Medicare for all, abortions for none, rural heavy, very anti establishment, and pessimistic.

00:40:50.000 That represents 6%, count them 6% of Americans.

00:40:55.000 11% of Americans are middle American optimists, middle of the road on most issues, pro choice, optimistic about the ability to get ahead through hard work.

00:41:03.000 And then you get to the groups that voted Democrat in the last election cycle the young and disillusioned, young female, racially diverse, skeptical of regulation, but for a robust welfare state and anti establishment, the American institutionalists, these would be Firmly pro establishment, a cluster unified by a belief that the system basically works from faith and hard work police and the United States economic system.

00:41:24.000 That's about 11% of the population.

00:41:26.000 10% would be electability Democrats, left leaning on most issues, but diverges from those unpopular left wing positions like defunding the police or trans athletes in sports.

00:41:34.000 And the loyal left, socially and economically liberal, largely pro establishment.

00:41:38.000 Okay, so JD Vance in the smallest contingent of the American body politic by this poll.

00:41:45.000 6%.

00:41:45.000 Not close.

00:41:46.000 He's in the 6%.

00:41:47.000 That is where he's aiming.

00:41:49.000 Right, socially to the right, economically to the left, Riram Navaram and all the rest.

00:41:53.000 That is 6% of the American body politic.

00:41:56.000 And what's more, that 6% tends to alienate all the other groups that you need in order to cobble together a majority.

00:42:05.000 That 6%, let's say that you're socially to the right and economically to the left.

00:42:08.000 Okay, well, now you've alienated the loyal right, which is economically conservative.

00:42:12.000 You've alienated the moderate right because you're socially conservative.

00:42:16.000 You've alienated the middle American optimists because you're pessimistic, like deeply pessimistic about America.

00:42:21.000 So, where are you going to draw your additional support?

00:42:24.000 From the young and disillusioned?

00:42:25.000 Does anyone believe that JD Vance is going to outperform with young female and racially diverse people?

00:42:31.000 Do people think he's going to outperform with American institutionalists, people who believe that the system basically works, or electability Democrats?

00:42:39.000 And where does he draw his additional support from?

00:42:43.000 This is political malpractice. 0.99

00:42:45.000 Aiming for Joe Rogan as like your bellwether vote is a fool's errand. 0.85

00:42:50.000 And here's the thing Joe Rogan is not conservative, he doesn't pretend to be conservative.

00:42:54.000 Joe Rogan is economically on the left.

00:42:56.000 He voted for Bernie Sanders.

00:42:58.000 He loves conspiracy theories, obviously.

00:43:01.000 He'll have on pretty much any old dummy to jabber about foreign policy, so long as that person is promoting a sort of generic Howard Zinn anti American isolationism.

00:43:11.000 But listen, Joe's not running for office.

00:43:13.000 He's entitled to listen to James Tallarico on social policy or Tim Dillon on foreign policy if he wants to.

00:43:21.000 Hell, he's entitled to listen to Terrence Howard on math if he feels like it.

00:43:24.000 That's his prerogative.

00:43:26.000 Joe would say he's an entertainer, and of course, he's right.

00:43:29.000 But the vice president is not.

00:43:31.000 For some reason, the vice president seems to think that his path to the presidency is to unify that anti left base of the Republican Party with a sort of horseshoe left.

00:43:40.000 The VP seems to think he can sort of abstract a form of Trumpism, a philosophy of Trumpism, and sell that soap back to the same crowd.

00:43:47.000 It's not going to work.

00:43:49.000 JD Vance is not Trump.

00:43:51.000 Trump didn't win because he had some sort of coherent new economic populist philosophy.

00:43:56.000 Here's the thing about Trump.

00:43:57.000 The gestalt of Trump is extremely anti left.

00:44:01.000 JD Vance has praised Bernie Sanders and Zoram Omdani and Ro Khanna.

00:44:05.000 President Trump doesn't like any of those people.

00:44:08.000 On policy, the president has been far closer to my policies or traditionally conservative policies than to Tucker Carlson, which is why he and Tucker are on the outs.

00:44:17.000 That's why Tucker is calling him the Antichrist to the deafening silence of the vice president.

00:44:21.000 Trump went over a lot of people in a lot of groups for a couple of reasons.

00:44:24.000 First, President Trump attracted a lot of disaffected voters because he is just a different cat.

00:44:29.000 He is uniquely transgressive, he is sui generis, he can encompass a wide variety of viewpoints.

00:44:35.000 He's funny, he's outside the box, he's anti establishment.

00:44:39.000 Second, he won over these people because the left lost its mind.

00:44:41.000 They ran Hillary Clinton, a horrible candidate, and then they ran a dead person followed by Kamala Harris.

00:44:47.000 I mean, Donald Trump did not grant the premise to the left.

00:44:51.000 He mocked them openly.

00:44:53.000 And the left is mockable and they're beatable, but only if you oppose them.

00:44:57.000 You can't fight the Democrats by basically granting their premise.

00:45:01.000 You're not going to defeat the Democrats by imitating them.

00:45:03.000 That's not a thing.

00:45:05.000 I believe that the vice president can form his own coalition.

00:45:08.000 I don't think he needs to maintain President Trump's exact coalition.

00:45:11.000 Any politician, by the way, Who tries to do that fails.

00:45:14.000 I've said this over and over and over. 1.00

00:45:15.000 Hillary cannot inherit Barack Obama's coalition.

00:45:19.000 Joe Biden cannot inherit Hillary's coalition.

00:45:21.000 That's not the way this works.

00:45:24.000 The vice president could put together a group of people who oppose the left.

00:45:28.000 He can dip into the kind of unique talent that made him such a successful figure.

00:45:34.000 But there are certain things that are not possible.

00:45:36.000 You cannot put together the philosophy of Tucker Carlson and Zarnamdani, Bernie Sanders.

00:45:43.000 You can't mix all that stuff up and then pretend.

00:45:46.000 That's going to somehow comfortably coexist inside a base that also includes traditional conservatives, say my philosophy.

00:45:52.000 These are mutually exclusive things.

00:45:55.000 This was one of the issues of contention back in late 2025.

00:45:58.000 I made a case that conservatism is a word with a meaning and that any movement has to have ideological borders.

00:46:05.000 And the vice president made the case at TPUSA for open borders, essentially.

00:46:12.000 I mean, all of you, each and every one.

00:46:16.000 President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless self defeating purity tests.

00:46:26.000 He says, Make America great again because every American is invited.

00:46:32.000 I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de platform, and I don't really care if some people out there, I'm sure we'll have the fake news media denounce me after this speech.

00:46:45.000 Okay, now I'm just going to point out.

00:46:47.000 The job of the vice president is not to kick people out of his voting base.

00:46:50.000 It is to articulate principles around which we can center.

00:46:53.000 The president has said, make America great again.

00:46:55.000 And then he has a set of impulses that kind of fall under that broader rubric.

00:46:59.000 The vice president is setting out a series of philosophies and policies that are alienating to some and attractive to others.

00:47:07.000 I think that the smartest thing the vice president could do is to actually move back toward traditional conservative principles and to pitch those principles as he runs and tries to define his own coalition.

00:47:19.000 He obviously doesn't think that that's the case.

00:47:22.000 But I will say this. 0.85

00:47:23.000 If you pretend that the future of the Republican Party is going to be the policies that, say, Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson like, that is a rough road to hoe, both morally as well as electorally.

00:47:35.000 Now, again, I'm not threatening to vote Democrat the way that Tucker has. 0.77

00:47:39.000 I'm not threatening to start a third party the way that Tucker has.

00:47:42.000 All I'm saying is if you want a winning coalition, you actually have to root yourself in something.

00:47:45.000 That something cannot be a bunch of warmed over economic anti free market slop, slathered over with conspiratorial podcastistan silliness, accompanied By sort of side helping of John Mearsheimer foreign policy.

00:47:58.000 That dog's not going to hunt because the people who traditionally love that stuff already have the Democratic Party.

00:48:03.000 They already have the Democratic Party, which, again, you could see from the Joe Rogan interview.

00:48:08.000 Joe Rogan keeps praising over and over, he's been doing it for months.

00:48:11.000 James Tallarico.

00:48:13.000 James Tallarico is the Texas Senate candidate for the Democrats who wants to trans the kids, but also quotes the Bible.

00:48:20.000 Here is Joe Rogan praising Tallarico.

00:48:23.000 I don't know.

00:48:24.000 You need to run for president.

00:48:27.000 We need someone who's actually a good person.

00:48:31.000 I mean, with James Tallarico, with JD Vance, Joe Rogan praised James Tallarico literally yesterday because he said he liked Tallarico's view on not displaying the Ten Commandments in Texas schools.

00:48:40.000 Do you think that Joe Rogan is going to vote for the Catholic integralist adjacent candidate here?

00:48:47.000 Does that seem likely to you?

00:48:51.000 I had James Tallarico on the podcast, and one of the things that I think he has a really good point about, even though I know you're Catholic and you're very religious, putting the Ten Commandments in schools, I don't Think is the right way to do it.

00:49:05.000 And this is a guy, Tallarico, who was in seminary and is very Christian.

00:49:11.000 He just thinks that even though he believes in the Ten Commandments, if you're just only representing the Christian faith in these schools, you're forcing your religion into other people's lives and that this is going to push people away from Christianity rather than encourage them to pursue it.

00:49:34.000 Strategically, gang, if you're aiming for the crossover vote between the people who love James Tallarico, And voted for Donald Trump, you're looking for love in all the wrong places.

00:49:41.000 They ain't going to do it.

00:49:42.000 And here's the thing the reason I'm exercised about this is not merely because of the principle, it's also because beating the Democrats is really important.

00:49:49.000 They need to lose because they just keep getting more and more and more extreme.

00:49:54.000 What an amazing video you just watched.

00:49:56.000 Wasn't that amazing?

00:49:57.000 Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 16, 2026

What JD Vance Said on Rogan Should Worry Conservatives

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript