The Ben Shapiro Show - August 27, 2026


Why the Left Loves Criminals


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

195.73

Word count

2,091

Sentence count

140


Transcript

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00:00:00.000 If some dude killed one of my loved ones in a Bronx laundromat with a meat cleaver, I'd feel not great about the mayor of New York lamenting that guy's death on Twitter.
00:00:08.000 Well, that's a true story.
00:00:09.000 It says a lot about where the left is these days.
00:00:11.000 It is not really an exaggeration to say the left, including the communist mayor of New York, Zoram Amdani, they really like the criminals.
00:00:16.000 And guess what?
00:00:17.000 Normal people, we don't.
00:00:20.000 I'll explain precisely why the left is so preoccupied with criminality, why Democrats these days seem to care way more about the people who commit the crimes than the law abiding citizens who suffer from them.
00:00:28.000 Now, to sort of explain why this is, you have to understand that.
00:00:33.000 Hardcore leftism believes that criminality is basically a malformation of society.
00:00:41.000 That criminals are not people who violate the law in their own interests.
00:00:45.000 Criminals are people who are created by terrible, evil, broken systems.
00:00:50.000 Michel Foucault, the left-wing philosopher, he suggested that Western societies create criminal classes by grouping the marginalized together, right?
00:00:59.000 Criminals are the ignored underclass of the evil system.
00:01:02.000 A lot of Democrats believe this sort of crap.
00:01:04.000 That the idea is that criminals Are not people who are doing bad things to other people and deserve to go to jail.
00:01:10.000 They actually are just results of the evil system.
00:01:13.000 Barack Obama, I've read this quote many, many times.
00:01:16.000 And every time I read it, it's just astonishing to me that this man was ever president for two terms.
00:01:21.000 In Dreams for My Father, which is his first memoir, I believe he has three at this point.
00:01:26.000 In Dreams for My Father, Barack Obama wrote, I know I have seen the desperation and disorder of the powerless, how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children.
00:01:37.000 On Chicago's South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair.
00:01:44.000 I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder, alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its prescribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences, and more sophisticated military hardware, is inadequate to the task.
00:01:59.000 I know the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe dooms us all.
00:02:02.000 Okay, so what is he actually saying there?
00:02:05.000 What he's really saying is Western systems are bad.
00:02:07.000 They create marginalized communities, they create terrorism, they create criminality.
00:02:12.000 Western systems are to blame for everything.
00:02:14.000 So, when somebody kills their neighbor with a hatchet and then goes to jail, that is the fault of Western capitalism and our prison industrial complex.
00:02:22.000 Now, by contrast, we should note here if the left likes a system, then even people who are not criminals, as long as you oppose the system, you can take them out and shoot them.
00:02:30.000 This is why the left was perfectly willing to go along with Stalin's show trials.
00:02:34.000 And again, why people like Hassan Piker, who has sympathy for pretty much every terrorist and criminal in America, has no sympathy for people who are imprisoned in Cuba or in China.
00:02:46.000 If you like the system, then the victims of the system are the bad guys.
00:02:49.000 If you hate the system, then the people who are in prison are the good guys.
00:02:53.000 So in the United States, you can tell who likes the criminal.
00:02:55.000 Zoram Amdani, unbelievably mayor of New York, put out a statement yesterday about a Rikers Island inmate.
00:03:02.000 It turns out this Rikers Island inmate, you know, there's some more information about who this guy was.
00:03:07.000 He said, I am deeply saddened by the death of a New Yorker in city custody at a jail on Rikers Island early this morning.
00:03:12.000 My thoughts are with his family and loved ones as they grieve at this loss.
00:03:15.000 We do not yet know the cause of death, but we do know that too many New Yorkers have died on Rikers Island.
00:03:19.000 I love when politicians do this, by the way.
00:03:21.000 I love when they say we don't have enough information to explain why a thing is, but we will say the system is broken.
00:03:28.000 James Tallarico did the same thing in the Carmelo Anthony trial.
00:03:31.000 So, Carmelo Anthony is pretty obviously guilty of murder, but James Tallarico is going around saying that it was a failure of the system that Carmelo Anthony went to jail.
00:03:41.000 Why?
00:03:42.000 He literally stabbed a young man in the chest and killed him.
00:03:46.000 But according to James Tallarico, black people are being failed simply by dint of the fact that a black criminal went to jail.
00:03:51.000 And Zoramam Dhani is doing the same thing.
00:03:52.000 We have no actual information on the cause of death at Rikers Island, but he is saying the system failed.
00:03:58.000 The Department of Correction and its oversight partners will investigate the circumstances surrounding his death.
00:04:02.000 Our administration is fully committed to the critical work of creating better conditions in our city's jail system and closing Rikers Island as quickly as possible.
00:04:08.000 Of course, this is the same mayor who you'll recall went and watched the World Cup at Rikers with the criminals.
00:04:15.000 Now, who exactly was this inmate?
00:04:18.000 Well, local ABC 7 gave you the backstory.
00:04:22.000 Just days ago, two men were stabbed inside.
00:04:26.000 Now, police have arrested and charged the man responsible.
00:04:29.000 Investigators collected Two knives looking like meat cleavers outside the laundromat.
00:04:35.000 Police say Woodward stabbed a 45 year old Jose Miranda in the legs and back, ultimately killing him.
00:04:42.000 Woodward also stabbed another man in the back, leaving him in the hospital.
00:04:48.000 Now, again, I'm not sure exactly why Zar Mamdani is doing all of this other than he has a peculiar sympathy for people who, you know, hate the system.
00:04:56.000 The person who died is apparently a McLarence Woodward, 41, and he was arrested.
00:05:01.000 In August 2024, after allegedly walking into a Bronx laundromat early one morning, fatally stabbing Jose Miranda with a meat cleaver in an unprovoked attack and wounding another man named Alex Santiago.
00:05:12.000 And he was charged with murder, manslaughter, and assault.
00:05:14.000 He had an extensive prior record, including multiple stints in state prison for attempted robbery and felony assault.
00:05:19.000 He had roughly two dozen earlier arrests.
00:05:23.000 The cause of death at Rikers still has not been publicly determined.
00:05:26.000 But again, the amount of time that people like Zorhan Mamdani and members of the left spend. On the supposed victims of our jail system, as opposed to, you know, the citizens who need to be protected from those people, is pretty astonishing.
00:05:38.000 And it goes, once again, to the idea that our system is inherently terrible and corrupt, and therefore people who violate the system are the actual real heroes of the story.
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00:06:48.000 So, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who again for some reason thinks he's going to run for president, he's out there saying that on the illegal immigration front, illegal immigration is a fake problem.
00:06:56.000 It's not a real problem.
00:06:58.000 There's no real problem with probably 10 to 15 million illegal immigrants in the country.
00:07:02.000 There's no problem with that at all.
00:07:03.000 It's totally fine.
00:07:04.000 It's all great.
00:07:07.000 What can and should be done to solve this problem?
00:07:11.000 Well, I guess you first have to identify what the problem is.
00:07:15.000 The problem, according to the Trump administration, is a country that has been invaded, a country that is at risk physically because of the presence of people from other countries.
00:07:29.000 That is a fake problem.
00:07:31.000 That is not a real problem.
00:07:32.000 Nobody likes to hear this, but immigrants, first generation immigrants, And undocumented immigrants both commit crimes at rates lower than natural born Americans, than people that are born here in this country.
00:07:48.000 So, if you want to live in a safe community, you are actually better off living in a community with people that just got to the United States of America.
00:07:58.000 Well, I mean, I think that the key there is the word average, on average.
00:08:02.000 But beyond that, the question is why any of the crimes committed by illegal immigrants should be taking place in the United States because they shouldn't be here.
00:08:10.000 They are here illegally.
00:08:12.000 Meanwhile, Abdul El Sayed, the insane Democratic Senate candidate from Michigan, he's out there saying that ICE isn't working because we had fewer illegals when we had INS.
00:08:21.000 This is nonsensical.
00:08:22.000 INS was literally split between Border Patrol and ICE.
00:08:25.000 That's what happened.
00:08:26.000 What the hell is he talking about?
00:08:29.000 Jesse, Jesse, let me just answer the question.
00:08:31.000 To your answer, how many do we have?
00:08:32.000 We had far fewer when we had INS.
00:08:34.000 To your answer, we had far fewer when we had INS.
00:08:37.000 Exactly, we now have.
00:08:38.000 I think that INS worked a lot better.
00:08:39.000 Abdul, listen.
00:08:39.000 We had twice as many illegals now when we had INS.
00:08:43.000 So to your argument, you have to have the manpower to do it.
00:08:46.000 If you want to do that correlation, we have ICE now and we have far, far more undocumented people.
00:08:52.000 So ICE is clearly not working.
00:08:53.000 It's just shooting.
00:08:54.000 Like American citizens in the face and the back of the head.
00:08:56.000 So, illegals are shooting people in the face, too.
00:09:01.000 So, pretty impressive stuff there from Abdullah.
00:09:04.000 Again, it all comes down to soft on criminality.
00:09:07.000 Again, this is the same Abdullah Syed who I may never get over this clip.
00:09:12.000 In discussing the attempted murder of Jewish school children, like toddlers, at a preschool in Detroit, suggested that the terrorist who attacked that school was driven by hurt.
00:09:24.000 Hurt people hurt people, right?
00:09:26.000 What was that hurt?
00:09:27.000 And his brother, who's a member of the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon, was killed by the IDF.
00:09:32.000 This is Abdullah Sayyid.
00:09:33.000 Again, the sympathy for criminality and for terrorism on the left is quite real because that's how much they hate the system.
00:09:38.000 According to people who are hardcore leftists, not kind of your traditional liberal friends, hardcore leftists, criminals are merely victims of an evil system, marginalized, and put out to pasture.
00:09:50.000 Here's Abdullah Sayyid basically defending terrorism in effect.
00:09:54.000 You know, when it comes to Temple Israel, I was profoundly shaken.
00:09:58.000 Many of my friends growing up worshiped at Temple Israel.
00:10:01.000 Nothing justifies the heinous attack that we saw on Temple Israel.
00:10:06.000 And, you know, I stand in solidarity with my Jewish sisters and brothers for an America where that kind of thing never happens again.
00:10:13.000 I also think it's just critical for us to understand that hurt people do hurt people.
00:10:18.000 And the circumstances happening 6,000 miles away can affect the lives that we live here.
00:10:24.000 And if we stand against violence, we've got to stand against violence, all violence.
00:10:29.000 Just insane.
00:10:31.000 Insane.
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