The Ben Shapiro Show - What The Left Missed About Trump Assassination Attempt

00:00:00.000 On Saturday night, somebody tried to murder Donald Trump again for the third time in two years.

00:00:05.000 We'll talk about the security shortcomings that led a gun wielding maniac once again within audio distance of the President of the United States.

00:00:12.000 But today, we're really going to talk about something more the permission structures for violence that have been created by the left.

00:00:20.000 This stuff is not going to stop.

00:00:22.000 It's not going to stop because the left has decided to mainstream it.

00:00:26.000 You cannot hug Luigi Mangione and pretend you hate political violence.

00:00:30.000 You cannot celebrate.

00:00:32.000 And hug Hassan Piker and claim to oppose political violence.

00:00:36.000 You can't spread wild, evidence free conspiracy theories about the president of the United States, calling him a pedophile, the Antichrist, a child killer, Hitler, and then pretend that you're kind of shocked when someone picks up a gun and tries to kill him for the third time.

00:00:51.000 We'll get to all of it.

00:00:51.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:57.000 All right, so I'm going to start with the timeline according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:01:02.000 What exactly happened on Saturday night?

00:01:04.000 I came off of Sabbath.

00:01:06.000 And already this news had begun to break.

00:01:08.000 Basically, 8 p.m. Eastern, the White House Correspondents Association dinner had begun.

00:01:15.000 It began a little bit after 8.

00:01:17.000 And a lot of the cabinet was there.

00:01:19.000 The president of the United States was there.

00:01:20.000 The vice president was there.

00:01:21.000 The secretary of defense was there.

00:01:23.000 The White House press secretary, Catherine Caroline Levitt, was there.

00:01:28.000 First Lady Melania Trump was there.

00:01:29.000 They were all on the dais.

00:01:31.000 About 8 30 p.m., as guests were taking their first bites of their meals in the ballroom, Outside the ballroom in the lobby, it's kind of the lobby area.

00:01:40.000 It's not really kind of the main lobby.

00:01:42.000 A man runs right by a Secret Service checkpoint.

00:01:46.000 He sprints across, shooting as he goes.

00:01:49.000 Here is the security footage of the shooter.

00:01:54.000 It's kind of grainy.

00:01:55.000 You can see the Secret Service agents who are standing outside.

00:01:59.000 And then you see from the far left of the screen, you'll see a man charge through.

00:02:05.000 In just a moment, there he comes.

00:02:07.000 He charges through.

00:02:08.000 And he appears to take a shot at somebody, and then the Secret Service agents draw their weapons and begin firing back.

00:02:15.000 Well, moments after this happened, while this was happening, actually, guests inside the ballroom heard the shots.

00:02:24.000 The event host, mentalist Oz Perlman, has been a guest on the program, was entertaining Melania on stage.

00:02:29.000 The president was quickly pulled off the stage by law enforcement.

00:02:33.000 So was JD Vance.

00:02:34.000 So was Melania.

00:02:35.000 Obviously, here is some footage of how it went down in the actual ballroom.

00:02:39.000 You can see Oz Perlman, who is showing the president a card with some numbers on it.

00:02:48.000 Same thing with Melania.

00:02:52.000 Everybody's amazed by the trick.

00:02:55.000 And then you see everybody react.

00:02:57.000 You can see Melania immediately picks up on what's happening.

00:03:04.000 And people start realizing that that isn't a drop tray, that's more than one shot.

00:03:08.000 People start getting down under their tables.

00:03:11.000 And the president and Melania are rushed from the room.

00:03:14.000 Secret Service does a good job of getting them out of there.

00:03:16.000 Here's a better angle of the vice president and the president being evacuated.

00:03:23.000 You can see Vance is pulled from by Secret Service.

00:03:28.000 President Trump is similarly pulled off stage.

00:03:34.000 They first covered him up to make sure that he wasn't a target, as opposed to getting him up and running him out.

00:03:40.000 You can see from this particular angle, President Trump getting evacuated a little bit better.

00:03:45.000 Here he is in the center of the dais.

00:03:50.000 The shots go down.

00:03:52.000 You see people immediately start ducking, getting under.

00:03:59.000 Secret Service sort of stands in front of the president.

00:04:08.000 And you can see him pulled off the stage.

00:04:12.000 Journalists in the attendance, they were hiding under the tables.

00:04:15.000 Obviously, we had some journalists in attendance at this White House correspondence dinner, and people were immediately diving to the ground, getting under the tables.

00:04:24.000 Here's some of that footage as well.

00:04:33.000 Everybody getting down under the tables and all the rest.

00:04:36.000 A very good piece, The Free Press, by Barry Weiss, talking about the reaction of people in the room. 0.70

00:04:40.000 She points out that the natural reaction of the men was to immediately defend and protect the women, which, of course, is the right reaction.

00:04:47.000 Well, security and law enforcement responded inside the lobby. 0.81

00:04:51.000 Here is what that looked like.

00:04:58.000 So you can see there's security and law enforcement with guns drawn approaching the suspect.

00:05:08.000 Trying to clear the area right outside the ballroom.

00:05:11.000 And then, of course, you see armed members of law enforcement and military who are moving through the hallways to ensure that everything is clear.

00:05:21.000 Ladies and gentlemen, stay down.

00:05:21.000 Stay down, everybody.

00:05:23.000 Obviously, scary stuff.

00:05:24.000 We had Wired in Live that was going on live at this time, and we were able to cover this in real time.

00:05:29.000 Our reporter, our editor in chief, Brent Schur, over at Daily Wire News, he was able to report for us directly from the scene.

00:05:38.000 That's one of the reasons we need your subscriptions, to be able to report this kind of stuff and be there.

00:05:43.000 In real time.

00:05:43.000 So shortly before 9 p.m., the White House Correspondents Association president, a person named Wai Zha Zhang, appeared on stage to tell the crowd that the event would actually resume.

00:05:52.000 Trump wanted to resume the event.

00:05:55.000 At 9 17, President Trump went on Truth Social and he posted quite an evening in DC.

00:05:59.000 Secret Service and law enforcement did a fantastic job.

00:06:01.000 They acted quickly and bravely.

00:06:03.000 The shooter has been apprehended.

00:06:04.000 I have recommended that we let the show go on, but we'll be entirely guided by law enforcement.

00:06:08.000 They will make a decision shortly.

00:06:10.000 Regardless of that decision, the evening will be much different than planned and we'll just plain have to do it again.

00:06:14.000 President Trump.

00:06:16.000 And a few minutes later, the president of the White House Correspondents Association got on stage and announced the event was canceled.

00:06:23.000 About 10 30 p.m., the president posted a photo on social media of the alleged shooter face down on the hotel carpet.

00:06:31.000 The shooter, as we'll discuss in a moment, shirtless, face to the ground.

00:06:37.000 The president then put out another statement on Truth Social saying law enforcement has requested we leave the premises consistent with protocol, which we'll do immediately.

00:06:45.000 I'll be giving a press conference in 30 minutes from the White House press room.

00:06:49.000 And then at about 10 33, the president came out and did a news conference at the White House where he said that a man charged a security checkpoint armed with multiple weapons.

00:06:59.000 Here's the president on Saturday night.

00:07:01.000 Again, a lot of the members of the White House press pool were at the association.

00:07:04.000 So everybody's dressed in their Saturday night finest.

00:07:06.000 I mean, the president's in a tux.

00:07:08.000 Members of the press are in gowns and tuxes themselves.

00:07:11.000 Here's the president saying that we need to put political violence aside, obviously.

00:07:16.000 But in light of this evening's events, I ask that all Americans recommit.

00:07:21.000 With their hearts and resolving our difference peacefully.

00:07:26.000 We have to resolve our differences.

00:07:27.000 Okay, so the president also went on to joke that he was ready to rip into the press at the White House Correspondence Dinner, which is basically a comedy dinner, but he would have to save it.

00:07:38.000 Again, the dinner itself has been rescheduled for about a month from now.

00:07:43.000 They didn't want to take a chance, and I understand it was protocol, but we're going to be doing one hopefully within the next 30 days or sooner.

00:07:51.000 I am ready, willing, and able.

00:07:53.000 And I was all set to really rip it.

00:07:57.000 And I said to my people, this would be the most inappropriate speech ever made if I said so.

00:08:02.000 I'll have to save it.

00:08:03.000 I don't know if I could ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight.

00:08:07.000 I think I'm going to be probably very nice.

00:08:08.000 I'll be very boring the next time, but we're going to have a great event.

00:08:14.000 And so, what exactly went down?

00:08:15.000 Well, apparently, according to the New York Post, a White House Correspondence Dinner volunteer said the suspected gunman appeared to assemble a long weapon.

00:08:23.000 In a lightly monitored area near the terrace level entrance before opening fire and rushing toward the ballroom.

00:08:29.000 The witness described there was a makeshift room apparently near the entrance where bar carts were being stored and where there was no security at the time.

00:08:36.000 Apparently he was in the room.

00:08:37.000 He grabbed it out of a bag or something.

00:08:38.000 It turns out that the attacker was staying at the hotel, had basically known that the event was going to happen, got a room at the hotel.

00:08:44.000 That's how the weapons got into the hotel.

00:08:47.000 And as we'll discuss in a moment, when it comes to security, very light security in terms of people staying at the hotel or people who are entering through the lobby.

00:08:54.000 Security got a lot heavier around the actual ballroom, around the place where everybody was.

00:08:58.000 That's where you had the magnetometers, that's where you had all of the security.

00:09:02.000 The Washington Post apparently estimates, and they created an entire schematic, that the shooter sprinted 60 feet through security before officers fired on him from behind, at which point he fell face first at the top of the stairs.

00:09:15.000 Eyewitnesses originally thought that he'd been shot because he didn't move after he fell, but apparently he was not shot.

00:09:21.000 And this is a sort of rendering of the shooter's path through the hotel.

00:09:25.000 You can see him, you know, in this image, moving again toward these stairs, running through security.

00:09:33.000 And then he stopped at the top of the stairs.

00:09:36.000 According to the interim DC police chief, Jeffrey Carroll, apparently the shooter was carrying a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives.

00:09:44.000 Here is some video of the alleged shooter handcuffed on the ground with U.S. Secret Service.

00:09:51.000 Got it.

00:10:05.000 So, again, pretty scary stuff.

00:10:08.000 Thank God nobody was actually hurt in all this.

00:10:11.000 Nobody was injured.

00:10:12.000 Nobody was killed.

00:10:14.000 An insane breach of security.

00:10:17.000 Now, the president has said this is a good reason to have a White House ballroom.

00:10:19.000 He is not wrong about that.

00:10:21.000 So, what was the shooter thinking?

00:10:23.000 What's his ideology?

00:10:24.000 We now know all of these things and we'll get into it in a moment.

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00:11:37.000 The big question, of course, whenever something like this occurs was what's the background of the shooter?

00:11:41.000 What was the shooter trying to do?

00:11:43.000 Because Not that every movement is responsible for every shooter.

00:11:48.000 Not that every ideology is responsible for every nut.

00:11:51.000 But we obviously have seen a wild uptick in violence.

00:11:55.000 That violence, political violence, is largely oriented at the right by the left or at the moderates by the left.

00:12:01.000 Not entirely, but largely.

00:12:03.000 And this appears to be yet another case of this.

00:12:06.000 So the shooter's name is Cole Allen.

00:12:09.000 Apparently, he graduated Caltech in 2017 with a 3.0 GPA and a BS in mechanical engineering.

00:12:16.000 And then he graduated.

00:12:17.000 Later, with a master's in computer science.

00:12:20.000 Apparently, he worked a few months for a 3D printing company.

00:12:25.000 He did some engineering, and then he did seven years of self employment as an indie game developer.

00:12:30.000 And he was a teacher in California as well.

00:12:33.000 Apparently, he was labeled a teacher of the month where he was teaching in California.

00:12:38.000 But what were his actual political views?

00:12:40.000 So, again, it is very likely whenever you see somebody try to commit an act of assassination that there's a screw loose.

00:12:47.000 That is very, very common.

00:12:48.000 Unless they're a member of an actual honest to God terror group, it is very, very common.

00:12:52.000 That these people are, are, something has broken in them.

00:12:57.000 Here is a video of the shooter.

00:12:59.000 This is some years ago at an engineering conference talking about engineering.

00:13:06.000 Tala student Cole Allen developed a prototype for a wheelchair emergency brake.

00:13:11.000 The wheelchair brakes tend to lock the wheels, but don't actually lock the chair to the ground.

00:13:17.000 The idea with this is to prevent it from moving at all.

00:13:23.000 Recent aging into the Future conference held by St. Barnabas Senior Services and the Eisner Foundation offered a test run on products that have the potential to enrich the lives of seniors.

00:13:35.000 Now, again, seems like a normal engineering student.

00:13:38.000 Something probably went wrong.

00:13:40.000 Okay, but what we do know are the politics of the shooter.

00:13:44.000 So the shooter had a bunch of social media posts, and it is precisely what you would think.

00:13:50.000 First of all, he had a manifesto, which we'll get to in a minute, but you probably could have predicted his manifesto if you had seen his social media.

00:13:56.000 He was very active.

00:13:58.000 On a left wing version of X called Blue Sky, which is filled with nut jobs, filled with radicals. 0.52

00:14:04.000 So, on Blue Sky, for example, he had posted just a few days ago, he had reposted a person saying, Every single one of these effing charlatans would support the Antichrist himself if he spouted enough anti immigrants and anti trans bleep as he rode through town.

00:14:22.000 And then he tweeted himself, he put out a statement delete would, delete everything after himself, and add an S directly after support.

00:14:30.000 So, again, the idea is that the president is the Antichrist, essentially.

00:14:35.000 And that all these people support, all of his supporters support the Antichrist. 0.61

00:14:40.000 He also suggested on Blue Sky quote, from the Epstein files that have been released, it's public knowledge that he is likely is basically a sociopathic mob boss.

00:14:49.000 Like that's just literally who he is.

00:14:50.000 People got to stop treating him like someone who honors agreements.

00:14:54.000 He also called the president on Blue Sky a known traitor quote, we put a known traitor in office who explicitly ran on revenge, who effed up the COVID response with known connections to murderous effort in the Kremlin.

00:15:08.000 I'm mostly surprised by this administration's incompetence in fascism.

00:15:11.000 I was expecting actual fighting to have started much earlier.

00:15:14.000 Now, he did donate about 25 bucks to Kamala Harris back in October 2024.

00:15:18.000 So, again, this is a very, very left wing person, a left wing radical who believes deeply, apparently, in conspiracy theories involving the president.

00:15:25.000 Jeffrey Epstein is into the calling of the president the Antichrist.

00:15:31.000 You may notice some language similarities to lots of members of the Grievance Party, most left, some right.

00:15:37.000 Well, his manifesto, which was sent out 10 minutes before the attack, Is worth perusing because again, it shows the well, the stew of trash from which people can imbibe, and if they have a screw loose, may activate them to do violence.

00:15:52.000 So he starts by apologizing to his family, friends, students, and colleagues for lying to them about where he has been, as well as everyone who was abused and/or murdered before this, to all those who suffered before I was able to attempt this, to all who may still suffer after, regardless of my success or failure.

00:16:08.000 And he writes: Onto why I did any of this.

00:16:10.000 I am a citizen of the United States of America. 0.94

00:16:12.000 What my representatives do reflects on me, and I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.

00:16:19.000 Well, to be completely honest, I was no longer willing a long time ago, but this is the first real opportunity I've had to do something about it. 0.98

00:16:25.000 Okay, so notice the language there pedophile, rapist, and traitor. 0.99

00:16:28.000 There is no evidence that the president is a pedophile or a rapist or a traitor. 1.00

00:16:33.000 The pedophile accusation comes from the extraordinary stupidity and venality of people claiming that the president is in fact engaged in a pedophilic cover up with regard to Jeffrey Epstein. 1.00

00:16:46.000 Again, that is a conspiracy theory promoted very widely on the left and fairly widely on the grievance party right. 1.00

00:16:53.000 The suggestion that he is a rapist, again, unevidenced.

00:16:58.000 The suggestion that he is a traitor, that of course is the kind of language that is frequently used by all sorts of people on the Democratic right and in the grievance, on the Democratic party left and on the grievance party right. 0.95

00:17:09.000 The shooter then went over his rules of engagement, which was basically to kill everyone except for Kash Patel.

00:17:14.000 He says, administration officials, not including Mr. Patel, they are targets prioritized from highest ranking to low.

00:17:19.000 Again, ask yourself why he was trying to leave out Patel.

00:17:23.000 And the answer is because if you are an Epstein conspiracy theorist, then you might think that Kash Patel is the person trying to uncover all the secrets about Epstein.

00:17:32.000 So the Epstein conspiracy theorizing has very real world consequences, just as Pizzagate had very real world consequences.

00:17:39.000 When you spread baseless trash about people trafficking in children, nutjobs might go and do something about it.

00:17:46.000 He then suggested Secret Service, their targets only if necessary, and to be incapacitated non lethally if possible. 0.77

00:17:53.000 AKA, I hope they're wearing body armor because sensor masks with shotguns messes up people who aren't. 0.91

00:17:58.000 And then he specified that hotel security, Capitol Police, National Guard, hotel employees, guests are not targets, if at all possible, unless they shoot at me, but that he would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary, on the basis that most people chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor again, that language and are thus complicit. 0.51

00:18:16.000 But I really hope it doesn't come to that.

00:18:19.000 He then goes through in this little manifesto, and you know, at least it's brief because it's incoherent.

00:18:25.000 He goes through a series of objections.

00:18:27.000 One, as a Christian, you should turn the other cheek.

00:18:29.000 Quote, Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed.

00:18:32.000 I'm not the person raped in a detention camp.

00:18:35.000 I'm not sure what he's talking about there.

00:18:36.000 I'm not the fisherman executed without trial.

00:18:39.000 I assume he is referring here to the suggestion that the president was authorizing the blowing up of fishermen, not Venezuelan drug dealers in the Caribbean.

00:18:48.000 I'm not a school kid blown up.

00:18:50.000 I assume that is a reference to the lie that the president authorized knowingly an attack on an Iranian girls' school, or a child starved, or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration.

00:19:00.000 Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppressed is not Christian behavior.

00:19:02.000 It is complicity in the oppressor's crimes.

00:19:05.000 Objection two, he writes.

00:19:06.000 This is not a convenient time for you to do this.

00:19:07.000 Rebuttal.

00:19:08.000 I need whoever thinks this way to take a couple minutes and realize the world isn't about them.

00:19:12.000 Do you think that when I see someone raped or murdered or abused, I should walk on by because it would be inconvenient for people who aren't the victim?

00:19:18.000 This was the best timing and chance of success I could come up with.

00:19:21.000 Objection three, you didn't get them all.

00:19:22.000 Rebuttal.

00:19:23.000 Gotta start somewhere. 0.98

00:19:24.000 Objection four, as a half black, half white person, you shouldn't be the one doing this. 0.99

00:19:27.000 Rebuttal. 1.00

00:19:28.000 I don't see anyone else picking up the slack.

00:19:30.000 Objection five.

00:19:31.000 Yield unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

00:19:32.000 Rebuttal.

00:19:33.000 The United States of America are ruled by law, not by any one or several people.

00:19:37.000 Insofar as representatives and judges do not follow the law, no one is required to yield them anything so unlawfully ordered.

00:19:44.000 And then he thanked his friends, family, students, and signed off cold force friendly federal assassin Allen.

00:19:50.000 And then apparently he added a PS, and this PS has to do with the security at the hotel, which again, this person has a screw loose, obviously.

00:19:59.000 But having a screw loose doesn't explain.

00:20:01.000 Why we are seeing increasing frequency of political violence in the United States and why that political violence seems largely relegated to the radical left.

00:20:10.000 So he has an entire postscript here that is dedicated to the idea that the secret service is incompetent.

00:20:15.000 Says, sorry, got a rant a bit here and drop the formal tone.

00:20:17.000 Like I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo.

00:20:23.000 What I got, who knows, maybe they're pranking me is nothing.

00:20:25.000 No damn security, not in transport, not in the hotel, not in the event. 0.72

00:20:28.000 Like the one thing I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance. 0.98

00:20:32.000 I walk in with multiple weapons.

00:20:34.000 Not a single person there considers the possibility I could be a threat.

00:20:37.000 By the way, sort of amusing side note amid a dark situation, for all the people who claim that law enforcement is racially profiling, I mean, clearly not.

00:20:47.000 So the security at the event is all outside, focused on protesters and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.

00:20:55.000 Like, this level of incompetence is insane.

00:20:56.000 I very sincerely hope it's corrected by the time this country actually gets competent leadership again. 1.00

00:21:01.000 Like, if I was an Iranian agent instead of an American citizen, I could have brought a damned maddoos in here and no one would have noticed bleep. 0.99

00:21:07.000 Oh, and if anyone is curious how doing something like this feels, it's awful. 0.98

00:21:07.000 Actually, insane. 0.98

00:21:11.000 I want to throw up.

00:21:12.000 I want to cry for all the things I wanted to do and never will, for all the people whose trust this betrays.

00:21:16.000 I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.

00:21:19.000 Can't really recommend it.

00:21:20.000 Stay in school, kids. 1.00

00:21:22.000 I mean, this person obviously is sad and pathetic. 0.99

00:21:26.000 But we need to talk about something broader than this person. 0.97

00:21:30.000 We need to talk about the things this person is saying because let us be very, very clear about this.

00:21:35.000 The permission structures for violence have been set up.

00:21:38.000 And bolstered and put into place for years now.

00:21:43.000 I've been talking about this for a long time permission structures for violence.

00:21:46.000 Ideologies and ideas are not all created equal.

00:21:48.000 It would have been kind of shocking if this person had written a manifesto about how he was upset over the Trump tax cuts.

00:21:54.000 People don't get shot in the United States over differential tax rates.

00:21:57.000 So we need to discuss which ideas and ideologies are the most likely to lead to violence because they're not all equivalent.

00:22:04.000 They're not.

00:22:06.000 In just a second, we're going to get to the ideological environment that is creating all of this because it really is.

00:22:06.000 All right.

00:22:12.000 If you think of American politics as sort of a bubbling pot, the temperature is being steadily raised and then it's boiling over a lot more often.

00:22:18.000 We'll get into why.

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00:24:31.000 So let's talk about the factors, the common factors here first.

00:24:35.000 Ideologies and ideas that lead to violence share typically an evidence free conspiratorial view of the universe, in which shadowy forces of powerful people are responsible for all of your failures and shortcomings, and in which the things they say aren't arguments but actual facades for power.

00:24:52.000 So there's a group of people that are victimizing you, they're shadowy and they are nefarious, conspiratorial, and able to get away with true horrific crimes.

00:25:01.000 Second, ideologies and ideas that lead to violence share a belief.

00:25:05.000 That you, your group, people that you care about are being targeted for destruction by this shadowy cabal.

00:25:11.000 And if that's true, then number three, violence is actually a form of self defense.

00:25:17.000 So, just to take a couple of examples when Charlie Kirk was shot, it was pretty obvious right away, right away, that the ideology that was driving the shooting was a left wing radical trans ideology.

00:25:29.000 Why?

00:25:30.000 Because there's an ideology that says that if I argue a man is not a woman, that is a form of trans genocide, of trans erasure.

00:25:38.000 If you believe a shadowy group of people are trying to destroy you and kill you and your family, you're likely to justify violence in response. 0.98

00:25:45.000 And that is why somebody went and shot Charlie Kirk, because they believed in that bag of nonsense.

00:25:51.000 There's another ideology that is quite prominent in the United States, and it argues that President Trump is responsible for the collapse of America, not because his policies are things you disagree with, but actually involved in crimes, pedophilia, starving children, blowing kids up, and that if you don't stop him, no one will, that he tyrannically controls all aspects of media, that he tyrannically controls all aspects of government, and that the only answer is a form of violence.

00:26:21.000 Now, that's the same sort of ideology that leads to the shooting.

00:26:24.000 Of the United Healthcare CEO.

00:26:26.000 The idea, as Hassan Piker put it in an interview with the New York Times five days ago, that this United Healthcare CEO is engaged in social violence.

00:26:36.000 He was part of a predatory group of people who are literally killing people for profit. 0.52

00:26:41.000 And so you can understand why somebody might want to shoot him.

00:26:43.000 Well, we don't, but you can understand.

00:26:45.000 I mean, it's totally understandable.

00:26:47.000 That is a permission structure for violence.

00:26:49.000 That is a permission structure for violence.

00:26:51.000 So when it comes to President Trump, it is one thing to oppose his policies.

00:26:54.000 I've opposed many of President Trump's policies.

00:26:57.000 But ain't nobody shooting the president over his tariff policy. 0.99

00:27:00.000 It's another thing to say that he is a pedophile, that he is the Antichrist, that he is a child murderer, that he is Hitler. 0.97

00:27:07.000 These are not the same sorts of things. 0.96

00:27:09.000 These are not the same sorts of things.

00:27:12.000 And again, the sort of language that has been routine on the left, truly routine, is a permission structure for violence.

00:27:22.000 Representative Hakeem Jeffries, for example, he says that Republican policies do violence to the American people.

00:27:31.000 Republican policies are doing violence to the American people.

00:27:39.000 Again, violence to the American people.

00:27:41.000 It's not just that Republican policies are wrong, they are malign.

00:27:44.000 They're designed to be malign.

00:27:46.000 And this sort of approach to politics has consequences.

00:27:50.000 The permission structure for violence for the congressional baseball shooting about a decade ago was the Bernie Sanders line that people who disagreed with him about Obamacare or nationalized health care want.

00:28:01.000 50,000 people to die, that they are literally killing grandma because of their policy, and they want grandma to die.

00:28:08.000 That sort of approach to politics is a dangerous approach to politics.

00:28:11.000 What politics is about in the United States is ironing out our differences, not always agreeing, but understanding that the person on the other side of the aisle doesn't want you or people like you to die.

00:28:21.000 They disagree with you.

00:28:23.000 That is not the same thing.

00:28:25.000 That is not the same thing.

00:28:26.000 And now, the most obvious iteration of the left's full scale embrace of violent.

00:28:33.000 Structures, permission structures for violence is the left's full scale embrace of Hassan Piker.

00:28:39.000 Again, just because it's the most obvious, because it's been happening so clearly and openly, and we've been talking about this for months at this point, but it came to its sort of apex last week when Hassan Piker was given the royal treatment by the New York Times to discuss why, in fact, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, even if Hassan Piker didn't want him to get, maybe soared a little bit, had it coming.

00:28:58.000 Here is Hassan Piker with Taylor Lorenz, who used to be a reporter for the Washington Post.

00:29:04.000 Talking about the somebody's got to do it meme about the assassination of President Trump a while back.

00:29:09.000 And you actually wrote about this, and it was a great video where you talked about, you know, someone has to do it.

00:29:18.000 See, when I say that, everyone knows exactly what I mean.

00:29:22.000 Which is, I think that shows that there is a lot of anger, a lot of resentment, and untapped potential, untapped revolutionary potential, as a matter of fact.

00:29:35.000 See, again, that's the permission structure for violence.

00:29:37.000 When people are pushing the somebody got to do it, somebody's got to kill Trump meme, when somebody pushes that, that is a potential for revolutionary activity.

00:29:45.000 That is not an immoral thing to do.

00:29:47.000 It is a potential to build a movement and fuel your movement with that sort of violent rhetoric and idea.

00:29:53.000 And again, here is Hassan Piker over and over and over and over endorsing violence, endorsing terrorism, endorsing murder.

00:30:00.000 Here he is over and over and over doing this.

00:30:02.000 And this guy is embraced by the Democratic mainstream.

00:30:08.000 You have people who are supposed moderates, like Ezra Klein, pushing Hassan Piker as a legit voice inside the Democratic Party.

00:30:15.000 You can't do this and then pretend you hate political violence.

00:30:17.000 You cannot.

00:30:19.000 America deserved 9 11, dude.

00:30:21.000 F it.

00:30:22.000 I'm saying it.

00:30:23.000 We totally brought it on ourselves, dude.

00:30:25.000 Holy sh. 0.99

00:30:26.000 If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott. 0.57

00:30:31.000 Well, my understanding is that the property owners who have properties there choose just not to rent it at all. 1.00

00:30:36.000 Kill those motherfuckers and murder those motherfuckers in the street. 1.00

00:30:36.000 Yeah, kill them. 1.00

00:30:41.000 Let the streets soak in their red capitalist blood. 1.00

00:30:44.000 Left wingers, liberals, you need to be showing your opponents.

00:30:50.000 Guts on there, okay? 0.98

00:30:51.000 You need to be gutting them. 1.00

00:30:53.000 You need to be shanking these motherfuckers and letting their, letting their intestines just ride on stage. 1.00

00:31:01.000 What the is this shit, man? 1.00

00:31:04.000 Slice them up? 1.00

00:31:05.000 Regardless of your background, any kind of Zionist tendency should be treated in the same way as being a rabid neo Nazi.

00:31:14.000 Doesn't matter if rapes happen on October 7th. 0.53

00:31:16.000 Like, that doesn't change the dynamic for me even this much.

00:31:19.000 But there are baby settlers as well.

00:31:21.000 There are babies in the settlements. 0.92

00:31:22.000 I can't believe I'm calling Nazrallah bass. 1.00

00:31:24.000 I mean, listen, these motherfuckers are better read than you by a million. 0.99

00:31:29.000 Like, it's not a broken clock situation. 0.99

00:31:31.000 He's read more books than you could ever imagine.

00:31:35.000 And also, ultimately, he is regarded as a pretty brilliant person in terms of everything that he's done.

00:31:45.000 Let's talk about our favorite flags.

00:31:47.000 Oh, like overall.

00:31:51.000 Again, over and over and over and over.

00:31:54.000 Over and over and over and over.

00:31:55.000 And this person is treated.

00:31:57.000 As a mainstream political figure, he's the bro whisperer to the left.

00:32:02.000 Again, I don't have to play more, it's every time he talks, every time he does an interview.

00:32:02.000 They're fine with this.

00:32:08.000 I'm just using him as an example 1A of the left's embrace of this sort of stuff.

00:32:13.000 Now, the left is trying to then claim that actually political violence is mainly springing from the right.

00:32:19.000 So, Matt Walsh pointed out leftists have tried to kill the president three times now.

00:32:24.000 They killed Charlie.

00:32:25.000 They've shot up churches and Christian schools and rioted in the streets. 0.88

00:32:28.000 They're the party of terrorism.

00:32:29.000 Political violence comes from one side.

00:32:31.000 This led Mehdi Hassan, the Qatari mouthpiece, to then put out a statement.

00:32:36.000 Melissa Hortman was killed by a Trump supporter.

00:32:38.000 Melissa Hortman was a Minnesota state legislator who was shot by a person who, shall we say, had some strange melange of views.

00:32:49.000 He had been apparently appointed and then unappointed by Tim Walz to a particular political position.

00:32:54.000 He identified as a Trump supporter.

00:32:55.000 Okay, so he says the first person to allegedly take a shot at Trump was a registered Republican.

00:33:00.000 Okay, first of all, the idea that the Butler assassin was some sort of Right wing Trump lover is un evidenced, shall we say.

00:33:09.000 Every study, he says, shows more political violence from the right than the left.

00:33:13.000 But sure, other than that great tweet, totally factual and not cynical BS.

00:33:15.000 Okay, so you want to talk about cynical BS?

00:33:17.000 These studies that suggest that right wing political violence outnumbers left wing political violence, in order to achieve those false numbers, you have to say, as Wilfred Riley points out, that all killings by white prison gangs are racially motivated and therefore right wing.

00:33:32.000 But if minority gangs kill somebody who's white, that is not left wing.

00:33:37.000 As Wilfred points out, this is how you get the data. 0.93

00:33:39.000 The mere fact that probably 40% of all murders annually are committed by black members of organized gangs and organizations ought to call it into question.

00:33:46.000 Guy Benson over at Fox News has a non complete list of leftist political violence over the course of the last few years.

00:33:55.000 He points out the attempt to kill GOP Congress members, ending nearly in the death of Steve Scalise, the leftist who was arrested in an assassination plot to kill Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court Justice, the murder of Charlie Kirk.

00:34:11.000 He leftist who was arrested in an assassination plot against the White House budget director, Russ Vaught.

00:34:15.000 Three separate assassination attempts against the president.

00:34:21.000 A man who murdered the Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota.

00:34:23.000 That's the one that Mehdi Hassan is talking about.

00:34:26.000 As Guy points out, the suspect has some right wing beliefs, but was also a former Democratic appointee and said the Democratic governor told him to do it.

00:34:33.000 The man who set the Pennsylvania governor mansion ablaze that would be Josh Shapiro.

00:34:38.000 That person was a globalized the Intifada terrorism anti Semite fan.

00:34:44.000 And of course, you have the litany of trans shooters over the course of the last couple of years, including Tumblridge in Canada, the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis last August, Covenant School in Nashville.

00:34:57.000 There are good studies on this.

00:34:58.000 We don't have to speculate.

00:35:01.000 Network Contagion Research Institute actually did a study on the kinds of public support justifying, for example, the murder of Elon Musk or Donald Trump.

00:35:14.000 And what it found is that 38.5% of respondents overall said that murdering President Trump would be partially justified or more.

00:35:22.000 Of that 38.5%, 56% was left of center, only 20% was right of center.

00:35:29.000 How about justification for the murder of a political leader, just overall, not named, Democrats versus Republicans?

00:35:36.000 So on this chart, a score of one means political violence is never justified.

00:35:41.000 59% of Democrats and 71% of Republicans say political violence is never justified.

00:35:47.000 A score of two to seven, some violence is justified.

00:35:53.000 Okay, the chart shows that again, Democrats outnumber Republicans all the way through.

00:36:01.000 All the way through.

00:36:02.000 So if you believe that violence is justified in political life, you are significantly more likely to be a Democrat than you are to be a Republican.

00:36:11.000 And this is backed by other studies.

00:36:13.000 So, for example, YouGov poll.

00:36:17.000 Shows that younger, more liberal Americans disagree that political violence is never justified.

00:36:22.000 Okay, 72% of Americans say violence is never justified.

00:36:27.000 But 11% of Americans say violence can be justified, and 12% say they're not sure.

00:36:32.000 If you break that down by political ideology, what you find is that very liberal Americans, a quarter of them say that violence can be justified.

00:36:39.000 Only 55% say no.

00:36:42.000 Like a bare majority say that violence in politics can't be justified among very liberal people.

00:36:47.000 Among liberal people, 17% say violence can be justified, 68% say no.

00:36:53.000 Among conservatives, only 6% say political violence can be justified, compared to 83% who say no.

00:37:00.000 Okay, those are shocking numbers or should be shocking numbers to you.

00:37:06.000 Because what they find, again, is that if you are very liberal, you are four times as likely as if you are a conservative to say that violence can be justified in politics.

00:37:14.000 And by age, the numbers are bad as well.

00:37:17.000 People who are aged 18 to 29, almost 20% say that violence can be justified.

00:37:21.000 Ages 45 to 64, 8% say violence can be justified.

00:37:25.000 So, Again, the permission structures for violence that have been created here are skewing young.

00:37:29.000 One of the reasons they're skewing young is because everyone in the younger age group is extraordinarily online.

00:37:34.000 The online incentive structure to be passionate, to be crazy, the echo chamber that facilitates violent language.

00:37:43.000 Again, charged language tends to draw higher numbers, period.

00:37:46.000 This is always true.

00:37:47.000 Not every word is created equal.

00:37:49.000 When people curse, it goes directly to your limbic system.

00:37:52.000 Like it has a different effect on your brain than it does if I use the word trash versus if I use the word sh.

00:37:58.000 That has a different impact on your brain. 0.83

00:38:01.000 If I use passionate language, if Hassan Piker says, cut their guts out, let them writhe on stage, that is a very different.

00:38:01.000 And the same thing is true.

00:38:09.000 Appeal, then I disagree with that person, and I'll tell you why I think his policies are wrong.

00:38:14.000 And when it comes to the sort of virality that can be achieved online, the former will generally do better than the latter.

00:38:20.000 Because invocations of passion tend to hit harder, particularly in short clips when they're fed to you over and over and over and over.

00:38:26.000 So if you're 18 through 29 and you're just imbibing from that well over and over and over, and if mainstream political parties trying to channel that passion into votes start justifying that sort of stuff, you should not be surprised when political violence becomes more common.

00:38:41.000 And this is not just true in the United States, it's true everywhere. 0.86

00:38:43.000 Every violent radical revolution begins with young people. 0.68

00:38:47.000 It always begins with young people who start acting violently and speaking violently. 0.84

00:38:51.000 And then there is always a group of moderates who decide that they need to work with the young people, the young violent people, in order to use their rage and channel it toward political change.

00:39:04.000 And that's how political violence becomes incredibly common.

00:39:06.000 That's how street battles happen.

00:39:09.000 And we are playing with fire here as a society if we continue to pretend that all ideologies and permission structures are created the same.

00:39:15.000 They are not.

00:39:16.000 Conspiracism is bad.

00:39:18.000 It is not just bad in terms of utilitarian.

00:39:20.000 It is wrong.

00:39:21.000 It is evil.

00:39:22.000 Conspiracism, unbacked by evidence, generates violence.

00:39:26.000 It generates mental illness. 1.00

00:39:28.000 It generates stupidity. 1.00

00:39:29.000 And it wrecks our politics and our civilization as a whole. 1.00

00:39:34.000 That is why there's a difference between saying, I disagree with President Trump on tariffs, or I think what he did on January 6th is quite awful and wrong, and saying the president is a pedophile and a rapist and a traitor who should be destroyed because he's blowing up little girls. 0.99

00:39:49.000 It's the latter that's being humored by the Democratic Party these days. 0.99

00:39:53.000 I mean, right outside, literally right outside this event, there were Code Pink protesters who were holding up signs saying, Death to Tyrants.

00:39:59.000 I mean, here's a picture of that.

00:40:04.000 It's unbelievable.

00:40:06.000 So, Van Jones, who is, again, a sane and rational Democrat, Van and I disagree a lot about politics.

00:40:13.000 We are friends.

00:40:14.000 And here is Van pointing out the obvious that everybody should be denouncing this, but there will be a lot of people who don't.

00:40:21.000 The shooter survived, which means on Monday he's going to court, which means there is a danger that people try to make him some sort of hero.

00:40:33.000 You watch what happened with Luigi, who shot a CEO to death and somehow became a hero.

00:40:40.000 So they said tonight you saw the worst of America and you saw the best of America.

00:40:47.000 Tonight you definitely saw the best of America.

00:40:50.000 I hope on Monday we don't see the worst again.

00:40:54.000 So, obviously, I agree with Van Jones, but Van is one of the only Democrats who is going to say that.

00:40:58.000 Most of them will pretend that the sort of fandom doesn't exist.

00:41:02.000 There's this game that gets played a lot on the left, which is nothing like that.

00:41:06.000 No one would support anything like this, but there's a lot of that happening.

00:41:12.000 So, Representative Jamie Raskin, he's doing that.

00:41:14.000 He says, What rhetoric?

00:41:15.000 Us?

00:41:16.000 We?

00:41:18.000 Well, here he was.

00:41:22.000 Heated rhetoric against the president.

00:41:25.000 And do you think twice about that when something like this happens?

00:41:28.000 What rhetoric do you have in mind?

00:41:30.000 Just talking about some of the fact that he is terrible for this country and so on and so forth, I understand that that's your democratic right.

00:41:38.000 But overall, do you have a responsibility?

00:41:42.000 I have no personal problem with Donald Trump at all.

00:41:44.000 I mean, I talk about the policies of this administration, the authoritarianism like we saw on display in Minneapolis, where two of our citizens were gunned down in the streets simply for exercising their First Amendment rights.

00:41:59.000 Again, Barack Obama is doing the same routine.

00:42:02.000 He put out a tweet saying, quote, Although we don't yet have the details about the motives behind last night's shooting at the White House Correspondence Dinner, it's incumbent upon all of us to reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy.

00:42:13.000 Okay, well, again, Bernie Sanders did the same thing.

00:42:16.000 Five seconds ago, he was hanging out with Hassan Piker.

00:42:19.000 Barack Obama was hanging out with Zoran Momdani one second ago.

00:42:22.000 The same Zoran Momdani who was justifying the Holy Land Five.

00:42:26.000 You can't play this game.

00:42:27.000 And by the way, you want to know what kind of rhetoric?

00:42:29.000 I don't know. 0.99

00:42:29.000 If a shooter claims that the president is a pedophile, a rapist, and a traitor, Maybe the rhetoric that is helping to spur that would be people falsely calling him a pedophile, a rapist, and a traitor. 0.99

00:42:40.000 I'm just going to put that out there. 0.98

00:42:41.000 Like, say, for example, James Tallarico.

00:42:43.000 Remember, James Tallarico is supposed to be your kind, friendly, good hearted, liberal Christian neighbor. 0.87

00:42:49.000 I mean, here he is saying that Trump is at the middle of a secret pedophile ring. 0.90

00:42:52.000 This is a lie.

00:42:53.000 He said this on national TV on HBO.

00:42:56.000 The UN was wrong about one big thing.

00:43:00.000 They thought Donald Trump was the one to take down this secret pedophile ring.

00:43:05.000 When he is mentioned 38,000 times in the Epstein files, he flew repeatedly on Epstein's private jet and then lied about it.

00:43:13.000 He sent Epstein a happy birthday card with a picture of a naked woman talking about their quote, wonderful secret.

00:43:20.000 So the fact that QAnon thought that guy was going to take down the secret pedophile ring when he's right in the middle of it, I think was clearly wrong.

00:43:30.000 Again, he was part of it.

00:43:31.000 He was in the middle of the secret pedophile ring.

00:43:33.000 Or how about Hakeem Jeffries saying that Trump was running a pedophile protection program?

00:43:37.000 Again, a lie, not true.

00:43:40.000 Well, the Trump administration and Mike Johnson are running a pedophile protection program.

00:43:46.000 That's what they've been doing. 0.96

00:43:49.000 How about Rosie O'Donnell claiming that the president is a serial pedophile racist? 0.98

00:43:56.000 Wake up. 0.98

00:43:58.000 Wake up. 1.00

00:43:59.000 Our president is a serial pedophile rapist, and that's what he is. 1.00

00:44:04.000 And in America, you're allowed to have an opinion, you're allowed to say what you think. 1.00

00:44:09.000 That's what our country was founded on. 1.00

00:44:12.000 She's certainly allowed to say that the president is a serial pedophile rapist. 1.00

00:44:15.000 It also makes her a liar and kind of a terrible person. 1.00

00:44:17.000 You should not actually put out lies about other people, like full scale lies about other people that lead toward a conspiratorial view of that person, as you know, a person who rapes children, for example. 0.97

00:44:29.000 J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, going out there and saying that America is becoming Nazi Germany under Trump.

00:44:33.000 That's not even remotely true.

00:44:36.000 I'm over here being a little Jewish.

00:44:37.000 I'm pretty sure that the United States is not becoming Nazi Germany under Donald Trump.

00:44:42.000 Meanwhile, this party.

00:44:44.000 Is getting ready to elect to high office people who openly sympathize with Hamas and Hezbollah, the closest thing to Nazis on planet Earth these days.

00:44:52.000 How do you prove to somebody that you're a U.S. citizen?

00:44:56.000 The color of your skin?

00:44:56.000 Your accent?

00:44:58.000 That's not the country we live in.

00:45:00.000 You know, you shouldn't have to walk around with papers the way that they did in the early days of Nazi Germany to prove that you belong and that you're not one of them.

00:45:10.000 And that is essentially the kind of country that we're becoming. 0.51

00:45:16.000 Okay, so, no.

00:45:18.000 No.

00:45:20.000 Obviously, John Favreau, who is a speechwriter for Barack Obama, part of the PodSafe group, who five seconds ago was having Hassan Piker on his program and hugging him while he literally said that he supports Hamas like a thousand times over Israel, like an actual terrorist group.

00:45:34.000 Now he is saying that Trump is the problem.

00:45:37.000 Quote Are we really going to go through another cycle where MAGA folks point out incendiary rhetoric on the left without ever acknowledging that some of the most violent and incendiary rhetoric in America comes from the president and his supporters?

00:45:48.000 Do you not think the rest of the country has eyes and ears?

00:45:49.000 So, first of all, we should point out that were this an act of political violence by a right wing person against the left, obviously there would be conversations about the level of political rhetoric on the right.

00:45:59.000 This has happened before and will happen again.

00:46:02.000 He says it's truly awful that President Trump has been the target of political violence. 1.00

00:46:05.000 It's also truly awful how he's frequently talked about political opponents, accusing them of treason, amplifying calls for their execution, publicly celebrating their death, calling them scum, garbage, vermin, animals. 0.99

00:46:14.000 It was like three weeks ago he threatened the annihilation of an entire civilization. 1.00

00:46:17.000 First of all, that tweet about Iran.

00:46:20.000 No one thinks that he was threatening to nuke Iran. 0.92

00:46:22.000 That's silly.

00:46:23.000 But obviously, I think that what the president said about Rob Reiner was terrible, which would be the publicly celebrating their death kind of stuff. 0.87

00:46:32.000 That was terrible.

00:46:33.000 It was immoral and it was wrong.

00:46:35.000 The question is to the kind of permission structures for violence on the right.

00:46:39.000 There are some, they're not nearly as robust as the permission structures for violence on the left. 0.96

00:46:43.000 And I'm not going to listen to that crap from Jon Favreau, who a second ago was providing a sensual massage to Hassan Piker on his show as he waxed poetic about terrorist groups. 0.98

00:46:53.000 Well, the president of the United States was asked on 60 Minutes about the accusations, the pedophile, racist, traitor stuff in the manifesto. 0.99

00:47:04.000 And here is the president.

00:47:06.000 The so called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President.

00:47:10.000 He appears to reference a motive in it.

00:47:13.000 He writes this Administration officials, they are targets. 0.98

00:47:18.000 And he also wrote this I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. 0.81

00:47:26.000 What's your reaction to that? 1.00

00:47:27.000 Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you're horrible people. 0.99

00:47:32.000 Horrible people. 0.96

00:47:33.000 Yeah, he did write that.

00:47:35.000 I'm not a rapist.

00:47:36.000 I didn't rape anybody.

00:47:39.000 Oh, you didn't even think he was referring to you?

00:47:41.000 Excuse me.

00:47:42.000 I'm not a pedophile. 1.00

00:47:43.000 You read that crap from some sick person. 0.99

00:47:47.000 I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. 1.00

00:47:52.000 I was totally exonerated.

00:47:54.000 Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with.

00:48:00.000 Let's say Epstein or other things.

00:48:05.000 So, again, he is right that these sorts of lies being told over and over and over are a problem, obviously, and people granting them legitimacy is also a problem.

00:48:16.000 Now, one of the ways that you can tell that an entire conspiratorial worldview has been spun out here is the fact that the number one trend on X, the minute this happened, was staged.

00:48:27.000 There's no evidence whatsoever this was staged, there's no evidence Butler was staged. 0.67

00:48:31.000 There's no evidence Charlie Kirk's murder was staged or manipulated by the widow or any of that crap. 0.99

00:48:37.000 Conspiratorial worldviews are disgusting. 0.99

00:48:41.000 They are not just fun and games. 0.88

00:48:43.000 They are disgusting because they are claiming things that are evidence free about other people that lead people to believe that they are part of some coterie of evil people manipulating behind the scenes.

00:48:54.000 The president was asked about the claims that this was staged. 1.00

00:48:56.000 He said, A lot of these people are sick.

00:48:58.000 He is not wrong.

00:49:00.000 I hesitate to ask you about this, but as you know, these conspiracy theories out there on the left.

00:49:06.000 And the right, that the event was staged or that it didn't happen.

00:49:10.000 What did last night didn't happen?

00:49:11.000 That, yeah, that it was because it was your first time there or that Butler didn't happen.

00:49:15.000 These conspiracy theories that are gaining traction on the ground.

00:49:18.000 And October 7th didn't happen, and World War II didn't happen, and the Holocaust didn't happen, and many things didn't happen.

00:49:26.000 Yeah, no, I hear it.

00:49:28.000 I don't know. 0.75

00:49:29.000 I think they're more sick than they are con people, but there's a lot of con in it, too.

00:49:34.000 I haven't heard that last night didn't happen. 0.88

00:49:36.000 Usually it takes a little bit longer.

00:49:40.000 Okay, he is, again, not wrong about this either, obviously.

00:49:46.000 But it doesn't matter, because again, there are people out there who will give credence to this.

00:49:49.000 Like Cenk Uygur, who is Hassan's uncle, and Hassan Piker is his nephew.

00:49:55.000 He put out a statement It's a sign of the times that as soon as you heard there was a shooting at the White House Correspondence Dinner, you heard speculation it might be staged.

00:50:01.000 Why?

00:50:01.000 Because we've lost all faith in our government.

00:50:03.000 We know they lie to cover up the crimes of the powerful.

00:50:05.000 We don't trust anything anymore.

00:50:07.000 Rightly so.

00:50:10.000 Where is the permission structure for violence right there?

00:50:13.000 We know they lie to cover up the crimes.

00:50:15.000 We don't trust anything they say. 0.97

00:50:17.000 So probably even though it's totally specious and bullshit, Probably we should pretend that actually it's fine what they're doing. 0.96

00:50:24.000 Rightly so. 0.98

00:50:24.000 We're right when we promote conspiracy theories about the people we hate. 0.98

00:50:28.000 We're right to do it because it's not our obligation to speak on behalf of truth.

00:50:31.000 It's our obligation to speak on behalf of the way people feel.

00:50:35.000 That's the most important thing.

00:50:36.000 People feel that there's something bad going on.

00:50:39.000 Therefore, it's not our obligation to tell the truth about what's actually happening.

00:50:44.000 See, and this is one of the reasons why, right, left, or center, I've been saying for literally years, decades at this point, The most important obligation that we in my industry have to you is to tell you the truth.

00:50:56.000 That is our most important obligation, not to justify your feelings, not to pretend that your feelings of being victimized are somehow justified by a conspiracy that we can't quite manage.

00:51:06.000 We have to follow the truth.

00:51:07.000 We have to follow the evidence.

00:51:09.000 Here, Cenk is saying precisely the opposite.

00:51:13.000 Nowhere in here does he say, by the way, it wasn't staged.

00:51:18.000 Nowhere in there, right?

00:51:19.000 He says, you heard speculation, it might be staged.

00:51:21.000 Well, why were people speculating?

00:51:22.000 Well, because people lie to you all the time and we don't trust anything, rightly so.

00:51:26.000 Yeah, at some point you might want to say, guys, it wasn't staged.

00:51:29.000 There's no evidence it was staged.

00:51:30.000 At some point you might want to do that.

00:51:32.000 But again, we have moved beyond the realm of facts into the realm of narrative.

00:51:36.000 Once you move from facts to narrative, it is very easy to move from narrative to conspiracism.

00:51:42.000 And of course, Anna Navarro said exactly the same thing.

00:51:46.000 Again, apparently conspiracy theories and nonsense are totally justified so long as you hate Trump enough.

00:51:52.000 It's odd to me that in a place that is teeming with Secret Service, with Washington, D.C. police, with all sorts of law enforcement, this could happen. 0.77

00:52:04.000 But also, I think people jump to that conclusion that it is staged because Trump lies.

00:52:10.000 He lies constantly, daily, and pathologically.

00:52:16.000 Constantly, daily, and pathologically, he lies.

00:52:19.000 True, truly genius level stuff.

00:52:22.000 And that means it's fine. 0.97

00:52:23.000 That means it's all fine and it's all good because, after all, Trump is a very bad man.

00:52:27.000 And so, conspiracy theories are justified.

00:52:29.000 By the way, the crossover in the conspiracy community is very, very large between conspiracy theories.

00:52:34.000 Because if you believe one, you tend to believe a lot of them, which is why Erica Kirk, as this happened, she was taken out of the room.

00:52:41.000 She was crying because, I mean, I can't imagine why.

00:52:45.000 After your husband gets shot to death in front of the entire world, and then you're at another event and gunfire breaks out in the background during an assassination attempt, yeah, it might give you a little bit of a problem, might give you a little bit of PTSD there.

00:52:56.000 There were literally thousands of comments, thousands of comments from people suggesting that Erica was crying wrong.

00:53:06.000 One person put out a tweet, now liked 42,000 times and viewed almost a million times on X.

00:53:12.000 And X is just a cesspool.

00:53:14.000 Giving Erica Kirk assassination CPTSD is so funny, actually. 0.88

00:53:19.000 The torture of a widow. 1.00

00:53:20.000 I mean, well done, guys. 1.00

00:53:22.000 Well done.

00:53:22.000 Because the most important thing is the narrative forever.

00:53:25.000 Thousands of comments saying she was crying fake, that the way she looked in a particular direction meant something sinister.

00:53:32.000 We have brain rotted a large segment of an entire generation of the American public, and then we are surprised when political violence breaks out.

00:53:41.000 There is a soul sickness in the country, but that soul sickness does not start with President Trump.

00:53:47.000 Alrighty, folks, coming up, we're going to jump into the mailbag and take some of your questions.

00:53:52.000 Remember, your questions only get answered if you're a member, so join us.

00:53:55.000 Become a member, use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:53:58.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

The Ben Shapiro Show - April 27, 2026

What The Left Missed About Trump Assassination Attempt

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