The Ben Shapiro Show - September 07, 2026


Why Russia and China Are Getting Bolder


Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

201.77

Word count

2,502

Sentence count

181


Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
00:00:00.000 So geopolitics, they're confusing, but something happening in the middle of the ocean near Japan can in fact affect us all the way over here.
00:00:07.000 So what is happening between China and Japan, Russia and the EU and NATO?
00:00:12.000 Why is all this happening?
00:00:13.000 What can we do about it?
00:00:14.000 What are other countries doing about it?
00:00:16.000 We're going to jump into all of that.
00:00:17.000 So according to the Associated Press, the European Union on Wednesday weighed how to best respond to an attempted drone attack at a German airport blamed on Russia, but struggled to find new ways to meet the challenge without resorting to military means.
00:00:29.000 Yeah, it turns out that when people attack you, you sometimes have to use your military.
00:00:32.000 The German government said Tuesday Russia was responsible for a failed attack at Leipzig Halley Airport on August 4th using a drone laden with explosives.
00:00:40.000 They announced they would shut down a Russian consulate, among other measures.
00:00:44.000 The drone was found near a Ukrainian cargo plane.
00:00:46.000 The device was defused.
00:00:47.000 The airport is a major international freight hub used for providing support to Ukraine.
00:00:53.000 So the French and the Germans are protesting strongly.
00:00:55.000 Well, I'm sure that the Russians will take that under advisement.
00:00:58.000 Meanwhile, the leader of the UK Conservative Party says that Russia could certainly attack a NATO country's Kemi Badnok.
00:01:07.000 Russia could certainly attack a NATO country by 2030.
00:01:11.000 Russia could launch an attack on NATO as soon as 2030.
00:01:18.000 Not enough politicians in Parliament have fully appreciated what that means.
00:01:22.000 By that, of course, I mean Labour politicians.
00:01:25.000 What this means is that within the next four years, the UK could be at war with the world's biggest nuclear armed state.
00:01:35.000 Because under Article 5, an attack on any NATO country is an attack on.
00:01:40.000 On all of them.
00:01:43.000 And she's not wrong about that.
00:01:44.000 Obviously, Russia is pushing back against NATO in the belief that the United States is not going to answer the Article 5 call, or in the belief that basically, if you attack any of the Baltics, if you attack Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, then everybody will just go, oh, well, you know, that's a thing that happens.
00:01:58.000 Meanwhile, the Chinese are harassing Japan.
00:02:01.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Japanese surveillance has recorded Chinese destroyers passing through the strait near Amami Oshima at least 10 times this year.
00:02:08.000 That follows zero such transits in 2025.
00:02:11.000 It is on pace to exceed the 15 recorded in 2024.
00:02:14.000 Japan is facing what its officials describe as the most severe security environment since World War II.
00:02:20.000 China is flexing its growing military might, pressing its maritime claims across Eastern Asia and pushing deeper into the Western Pacific, where the United States has held sway for years.
00:02:29.000 So here's the thing.
00:02:30.000 Our enemies sense our weakness.
00:02:32.000 China, Russia, they believe we're vulnerable and they're challenging us because of it.
00:02:37.000 Well, what's the reason for that?
00:02:38.000 Well, first of all, we kind of made ourselves vulnerable.
00:02:41.000 We decided to fund our entire welfare state on the basis of debt.
00:02:45.000 China owns about $600 billion of our bonds.
00:02:49.000 If they even threaten to sell them tomorrow, guess what happens to the bond markets?
00:02:52.000 They crater still further.
00:02:55.000 But Russia and China and Iran, all of our enemies, in the end are banking on something else.
00:02:59.000 That the United States, we make the same choice that the British Empire once made.
00:03:04.000 And essentially, we decide to embrace declining welfareism instead of economic and military health.
00:03:09.000 So, as I said right at the top, empires typically die because they run out of money.
00:03:12.000 But that can happen in a couple of ways.
00:03:14.000 You can run out of money a couple of ways.
00:03:16.000 Before the advent of democracy and capitalism, empires were very largely supported by their imperialism.
00:03:21.000 You invade a foreign state.
00:03:23.000 You strip it of its resources, you bring that back home.
00:03:27.000 So, Rome would conquer foreign lands in order to spread the money around at home or extend its territorial holdings.
00:03:33.000 Empires like Spain would do so not because they wanted a welfare state at home, but because they felt a divine duty to extend territorial holdings, Catholics at the expense of Protestants or against the Ottoman Empire or growing in the New World, right?
00:03:46.000 And then you overextend, you run out of money.
00:03:48.000 Since the advent of democratic capitalism, that's not necessarily how it works.
00:03:52.000 In essence, Empires now choose suicide by welfarism.
00:03:56.000 So the UK is a great example of this, right?
00:03:58.000 The British Empire, the sun never set on it, presiding over territories literally all across the world, ranging from the Far East to the New World.
00:04:07.000 Well, after World Wars I and II, the UK basically decided to trade in its empire for welfarism at home.
00:04:14.000 It wasn't fully intentional.
00:04:15.000 They thought they could create, as former British Prime Minister Clement Attlee said, a welfare commonwealth.
00:04:20.000 But it turns out that's unaffordable because you can't run endless guns and endless butter.
00:04:26.000 And it turns out that butter is actually way more expensive than guns.
00:04:30.000 Welfarism is unaffordable.
00:04:32.000 And this means that the UK is at best a second rate power.
00:04:35.000 This is what poet Philip Larkin described in his poem Homage to a Government.
00:04:39.000 He wrote, Next year, we are to bring all the soldiers home for lack of money.
00:04:43.000 And it is all right.
00:04:44.000 Places they guarded or kept orderly must guard themselves and keep themselves orderly.
00:04:48.000 We want the money for ourselves at home instead of working.
00:04:51.000 And this is all right.
00:04:52.000 It's hard to say who wanted it to happen, but now it's been decided nobody minds.
00:04:55.000 The places are a long way off, not here, which is all right.
00:04:58.000 And from what we hear, the soldiers there only made trouble happen.
00:05:00.000 Next year, we shall be easier in our minds.
00:05:02.000 Next year, we shall be living in a country that brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
00:05:06.000 The statues will still be standing in the same tree muffled squares and look nearly the same.
00:05:10.000 Our children will not know it's a different country.
00:05:12.000 All we can hope to leave them now is money.
00:05:13.000 Now, as it turns out, you can't even hope to leave them money because when you let the welfarism conquer your society, you end up with low growth rates, overregulation, no one's working, and so you end up importing gigantic swaths of people who hate your society.
00:05:25.000 And that is the story of Great Britain.
00:05:27.000 Here's the reality America needs better people than this.
00:05:30.000 We just need better people than this.
00:05:31.000 And if you run a business, you also need better people, which is why you need ZipRecruiter.
00:05:35.000 On ZipRecruiter, Qualified candidates add a personal note to tell you why they're interested in your job so you see the most motivated people right away because you can't teach grit.
00:05:42.000 You can't teach wanting it.
00:05:44.000 Zip Recruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates first so you meet the right people faster.
00:05:50.000 Their powerful matching technology finds qualified candidates quickly.
00:05:53.000 Less time searching, more time talking to people who could actually help your business.
00:05:56.000 Right now, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.comslash dailywire.
00:06:00.000 Save time, meet great candidates sooner with Zip Recruiter.
00:06:03.000 Four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter get a quality candidate within the very first day.
00:06:07.000 Try it for free at ziprecruiter.comslash dailywire.
00:06:10.000 At ziprecruiter.com slash daily wire.
00:06:13.000 Meet your match over at ziprecruiter again.
00:06:15.000 Try it for free right now.
00:06:17.000 ziprecruiter.com slash daily wire.
00:06:19.000 If you need better employees, the best way to do it is ziprecruiter.
00:06:22.000 It's why we use it here at daily wire.
00:06:23.000 Go check them out now.
00:06:24.000 ziprecruiter.com slash daily wire.
00:06:27.000 Again, I'll go back to one of those charts that we looked at at the very beginning here.
00:06:30.000 Government spending in the United States.
00:06:32.000 Look at the spending by category.
00:06:34.000 Look at the spending by category.
00:06:35.000 So we have been told that national defense is where we spent all our money, right?
00:06:39.000 It was the wars.
00:06:40.000 Is where he spent all of our money.
00:06:42.000 Nope.
00:06:44.000 Wrongo.
00:06:45.000 On this chart, it is the gigantic yellow line.
00:06:50.000 That is the vast increase in spending.
00:06:52.000 Look at the size of that line in 1962.
00:06:55.000 Look at the size of that line in 2020.
00:07:00.000 The vast expansion of our welfare state is the thing that is bankrupting us.
00:07:04.000 This, by the way, is historically true in the United States.
00:07:07.000 During the Vietnam War, LBJ was actually told by his own cabinet that he would eventually have to choose between guns, like the Vietnam War, and butter, the war on poverty.
00:07:15.000 He told his cabinet to lie and say that we actually didn't have to choose.
00:07:18.000 There's no choice, right?
00:07:19.000 This is what populism is about.
00:07:20.000 Populism is about telling you the lie that you never have to make a choice.
00:07:22.000 You have everything.
00:07:23.000 You can have no innovation, high rates of welfare.
00:07:27.000 You can have all the things.
00:07:30.000 You can have a strong military without having to pay for it.
00:07:33.000 Nothing will ever end up coming home to roost.
00:07:37.000 When asked publicly during the Vietnam War about the choice between guns and butter, LBJ literally said there is no choice.
00:07:43.000 We don't have to choose.
00:07:44.000 He was asked this in July 1965.
00:07:48.000 Do you have any idea right now, though, that down the road of peace, the American people may have to face the problem of guns or butter?
00:07:58.000 I have not the slightest doubt, but whatever it's necessary to face, the American people will face.
00:08:04.000 I think that all of us know that we are now in the 52nd month of the prosperity that's been unequaled in this nation.
00:08:12.000 And I see no reason for declaring a national emergency.
00:08:18.000 I rejected that course of action earlier today when I made my decision.
00:08:23.000 I cannot foresee what next year, the following year, the following year would hold.
00:08:28.000 I only know that the Americans will do whatever is necessary.
00:08:32.000 And at the moment, we enjoy the good fortune of having an unparalleled period of prosperity with us.
00:08:38.000 And this government's going to do all it can to see it continue.
00:08:42.000 So, never making a choice, here's what ends up happening.
00:08:44.000 Here's what government spending looks like percentage change year over year during the LBJ term.
00:08:50.000 11% average year over year increase.
00:08:52.000 And by the way, most of the consequences for that were actually pushed off beyond LBJ's term.
00:08:58.000 The 1970s sucked.
00:08:59.000 They were really bad.
00:09:00.000 Massive stagflation, meaning stagnation and inflation.
00:09:04.000 Military defeat.
00:09:06.000 Again, he was able to delay it, but then it hit.
00:09:08.000 And by the way, we're still paying for both today because all of LBJ's welfare programs that he put in place in the 60s are way bigger today.
00:09:14.000 And we still have a Vietnam syndrome with regard to American military might, which is why we have not won a hot war since.
00:09:21.000 We're still mired in all of this.
00:09:23.000 So.
00:09:24.000 No, what's happening right now isn't that we're spending too much on our military.
00:09:27.000 We need to bring it back home and spend it at home.
00:09:29.000 That is, again, populist crap.
00:09:31.000 It's untrue at a fundamental level.
00:09:32.000 What's happening is that there are a lot of people on all sides who are perfectly willing to give up on American global leadership, destroy the freedom of the seas, facilitate the rise of Russia and China, and do it all in the name of a corrupt, bankrupt welfare state that will run out of money and throttle the economy sooner rather than later.
00:09:49.000 I know it's depressing, but this is why we need to talk truth here.
00:09:53.000 We need to talk some turkey.
00:09:55.000 Now, the founders knew all this.
00:09:57.000 This is not a shock because they knew their history.
00:09:59.000 Read the Federalist Papers, references to Roman history abound.
00:10:03.000 And they would have been appalled by all of this.
00:10:05.000 It's why they opposed governmental welfarism on a federal level.
00:10:08.000 It's why it is not a delegated power of the federal government.
00:10:10.000 It's why they also opposed the rule of the mob because they knew that if you got three guys in a room and two vote to rob the other guy, that's still not okay.
00:10:18.000 And they knew that the rule of the mob and welfarism and decline are two sides of the same coin.
00:10:23.000 It's why James Madison said, I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse.
00:10:29.000 And in a representative government, a greater than in any other.
00:10:33.000 It's why Benjamin Franklin said, think what you do when you run in debt.
00:10:35.000 You give another power over your liberty.
00:10:38.000 It's why Jefferson said, I sincerely believe the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
00:10:47.000 It's why Washington, in his famous farewell address, said, avoid likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.
00:11:06.000 Again, this is why we are fundamentally unserious about politics right now.
00:11:12.000 So, Paul Ryan, I know a lot of people are upset about Paul Ryan, former Speaker of the House.
00:11:15.000 He wasn't sufficiently pro Trump.
00:11:16.000 Okay, there are many areas in which I disagree with Paul Ryan, but Paul Ryan may have been the last actual fiscal conservative in a position of power in the United States government.
00:11:25.000 He was not remotely wrong about our spending addiction.
00:11:27.000 And he is not remotely wrong now when he says that our politics is fundamentally unserious.
00:11:31.000 Here he was on CNBC yesterday.
00:11:34.000 Is the Overton window in our politics open for all these crazy ideas, but it's closed for things like debt reduction?
00:11:44.000 Yep.
00:11:45.000 Yep.
00:11:45.000 So when people talk about the uniparty, let us be clear.
00:11:48.000 There is, in fact, a uniparty.
00:11:49.000 The only question right now in American politics, when it comes to the future of size and scope of American government, seems to be how we ought to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
00:11:58.000 The Democrats want to stack all those deck chairs directly at the front of the boat in front of the iceberg, and Republicans seem to want to pack them nearer the back of the boat and delay it a little bit.
00:12:06.000 But nobody is arguing that we ought to change course, even as the Titanic plows into the iceberg, because it turns out all the passengers are cheering because.
00:12:14.000 Populism.
00:12:15.000 What an amazing video you just watched!
00:12:17.000 Wasn't that amazing?
00:12:18.000 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.