The Ben Shapiro Show - Will Republicans Win In 2026?

00:00:00.000 A GOP lawmaker in the House of Representatives dies, meaning that the GOP majority has now shrunk to the bare minimum.

00:00:05.000 President Trump continues aggressive action against Venezuelan illegal oil shipments.

00:00:11.000 Plus, we bring on Alex Clark of Cultural Apothecary to talk about a major Supreme Court case.

00:00:16.000 And we're joined by Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana to talk about everything going down in Venezuela.

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00:00:53.000 Well, it is an off-year election this year.

00:00:56.000 That means that President Trump is not, of course, on the ballot.

00:00:58.000 And so his coattails will really not apply to House Republicans or Senate Republicans.

00:01:02.000 And that means an uphill battle for Republicans because, again, the incumbent party in off-year elections tends not to do particularly well.

00:01:10.000 Right now, Republicans are running the barest majority humanly possible in the House of Representatives.

00:01:16.000 That is thanks to the untimely death of Republican Representative Doug Lamalfa.

00:01:21.000 He represented a district in Northern California for 13 years.

00:01:24.000 He passed away at 65 years old.

00:01:28.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, his death further shrinks the already thin House GOP majority to 218 to 213.

00:01:36.000 Of course, Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, who wants to run for president herself and seems to be running an anti-Trump campaign, formerly resigned from the House in the middle of her term this week.

00:01:45.000 So there are now four empty seats, two in red-leading districts, two in blue districts.

00:01:49.000 Also, Representative Jim Baird of Indiana was in a car accident, so he is sidelined at least temporarily, which means that in terms of who's going to show up, you are now down to 217.

00:01:59.000 Then you also have people like Thomas Massey, who routinely vote against the president of the United States, and now you're down to 216.

00:02:05.000 And so your majority, your workable majority, is shrinking into the arena of unworkability.

00:02:12.000 If you're a Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, you always had a very, very tough job.

00:02:16.000 Now that job is becoming nearly impossible.

00:02:19.000 And so the question becomes: how does President Trump, how do Republicans somehow get something done this year that allows them to claim victory heading into 2026?

00:02:29.000 Well, one thing the president is trying to do is pressure some of these erstwhile Republicans to do his bidding.

00:02:36.000 That, of course, includes Thomas Massey.

00:02:38.000 The president was slamming Thomas Massey yesterday.

00:02:42.000 Everybody loves him.

00:02:44.000 I would say there's one person he's given up on.

00:02:46.000 I mean, I think he just gave up on this guy.

00:02:48.000 He's so bad.

00:02:49.000 He never votes for us.

00:02:51.000 But no matter how good, he won't vote for us.

00:02:55.000 There's a sickness there.

00:02:56.000 There's something wrong.

00:02:58.000 You can have the greatest bill, the greatest for the country.

00:03:01.000 Forget about for Republicans.

00:03:03.000 Great, great, great for the country.

00:03:06.000 I'm going to no vote.

00:03:08.000 We don't even bother calling him a three in the morning, do we?

00:03:13.000 Well, you know, again, taking a look at the workable House majority right now, it is pretty much unworkable.

00:03:20.000 So, what exactly is the plan going forward?

00:03:23.000 Well, you have a few things.

00:03:24.000 One, yes, foreign policy wins actually do matter.

00:03:29.000 I know that there is this idea that what happens on the foreign policy front doesn't help presidents at all or their parties.

00:03:35.000 That is eminently untrue.

00:03:37.000 Now, what really hurts is foreign policy losses, but foreign policy wins can help at the margins.

00:03:42.000 That is particularly true if you are targeting political constituencies that are drifting away from you.

00:03:47.000 So one of the things about the Trump constituency that is really quite fascinating is that obviously in 2024, he had an outsized blue-collar white vote, but he also radically overperformed with Hispanic Americans.

00:04:00.000 There's a case to be made that what he is doing in places like Venezuela, possibly Cuba, is going to have an outsized impact on voter turnout in 2026, particularly in some of the swing states.

00:04:11.000 President Trump is trying to get his base jazzed up.

00:04:14.000 He spoke at the House Republican retreat yesterday, and he told Republicans that he's given them a roadmap to victory.

00:04:20.000 And I think I gave you something.

00:04:22.000 It's just a roadmap, and it's a roadmap to victory.

00:04:26.000 You have so many good nuggets.

00:04:29.000 You have to use them.

00:04:30.000 If you can sell them, we're going to win.

00:04:32.000 Because we've won two races in like 50 years.

00:04:35.000 It's for whatever reason, I don't know why, but just don't fight it.

00:04:40.000 It doesn't make sense.

00:04:42.000 There have been two, and they were unusual circumstances.

00:04:45.000 So whether it's a Republican or Democrat, whoever wins the presidency, the other party wins the midterm.

00:04:52.000 And it doesn't make sense because we've had the most successful year probably in the history.

00:04:57.000 They say, and now you add what happened essentially yesterday, we've had the most successful first year of any president in history.

00:05:08.000 Now, again, I think there's a lot to that.

00:05:11.000 The president of the United States does have a booming stock market.

00:05:13.000 The president of the United States has a bunch of foreign policy wins under his belt.

00:05:17.000 Doge is targeting waste, fraud, and abuse.

00:05:19.000 And that is now filtering down to the state level, which we'll get to in a little while.

00:05:24.000 Of course, the stakes are very high because if Democrats were to win the House of Representatives, basically the Trump agenda stops dead at that point.

00:05:32.000 As President Trump put it, we need to win or we are going to be in a world of hurt.

00:05:39.000 These things are so important because you guys got to get elected.

00:05:42.000 Because if you don't get elected, we have a country that's going to go to hell.

00:05:46.000 So we can't play games.

00:05:48.000 Ladies and gentlemen, the sun will rise tomorrow.

00:05:50.000 And when it rises, we will all, we don't need this.

00:05:55.000 We need to talk about favorite nations.

00:05:59.000 And your numbers are coming down at levels that nobody's ever seen.

00:06:03.000 We inherited high prices.

00:06:06.000 We inherited a mess.

00:06:08.000 We inherited the greatest inflation in history.

00:06:11.000 And you know what was knocking it down?

00:06:14.000 The bad economy that we inherited.

00:06:16.000 We inherited bad.

00:06:18.000 We now have the hottest economy in the history of our country.

00:06:23.000 When President Trump says that if the Republicans do not win the midterms, he will undoubtedly be impeached.

00:06:28.000 He is likely right about this.

00:06:30.000 Although I will say that I think the Democrats are being a little smarter in their approach to politics than they were during President Trump's first term.

00:06:37.000 They seem to have now recognized that needlessly knocking their head against the wall is actually a bad strategy.

00:06:43.000 I'm not so sure that President Trump gets impeached the minute that the Democrats take over the House.

00:06:48.000 I think that they do start investigating everybody in Trump's orbit.

00:06:51.000 I think they start ruining lives inside Trump's orbit.

00:06:53.000 They did that during Trump number one.

00:06:55.000 But here's President Trump basically saying that everything stops dead.

00:07:01.000 You got to win the midterms, because if we don't win the midterms, it's just going to be, I mean, they'll find a reason to impeach me.

00:07:11.000 I'll get impeached.

00:07:13.000 We don't impeach them.

00:07:14.000 You know why?

00:07:14.000 Because they're meaner than we are.

00:07:17.000 We should have impeached Joe Biden for 100 different things.

00:07:21.000 They are mean and smart, but fortunately for you, they have horrible policy.

00:07:30.000 They can be smart as can be.

00:07:32.000 But when they want open borders, when they want, as I said, men and women's sports, when they want transgender for everyone, bring your kids in. 0.61

00:07:41.000 We're going to change the sex of your child. 1.00

00:07:44.000 Just send them our way.

00:07:45.000 In some cases, like in Minnesota, they don't even tell the parents.

00:07:48.000 Is that right?

00:07:49.000 And nobody believes it when I say, I think we have six states.

00:07:52.000 Nobody, am I correct?

00:07:54.000 Okay, Tom Emers said yes.

00:07:56.000 But it's true.

00:07:58.000 Where the kid comes back, they keep the kid.

00:08:01.000 They operate on the kid.

00:08:02.000 They don't tell the parents.

00:08:04.000 It's not believable.

00:08:07.000 We have great, solid common sense policy.

00:08:12.000 They have horrendous policy.

00:08:14.000 What they do is they stick together.

00:08:17.000 They never have a no vote.

00:08:20.000 Now, what President Trump is doing here, obviously, directing his campaign, directing Republicans against the woke excesses of the left.

00:08:28.000 Obviously, that was a big winning issue for him in 2024 at the House Republican Leadership Conference here.

00:08:34.000 He went ho-hog on this.

00:08:36.000 Here he was making fun of men weightlifting against women.

00:08:44.000 And you see, I want to be more, but I have somebody watching.

00:08:49.000 I want to be more effusive.

00:08:51.000 I want to really.

00:08:54.000 But she gets in the drops the thing, walks off the stage crying. 1.00

00:09:04.000 Her mother's crying.

00:09:05.000 Her father's crying.

00:09:06.000 Guy gets up.

00:09:08.000 He said, have you lifted before, little bit?

00:09:12.000 And he walks up being, he could have gone ging, ding, ding, ding.

00:09:19.000 I think it was 112 pounds, right?

00:09:21.000 It's crazy.

00:09:25.000 Okay, so he's right about this.

00:09:27.000 But one of the things that Republicans, I think, are not going to be able to count on, because again, they are the party that is in power, not the party that is out of power. 1.00

00:09:34.000 One of the things that they're not going to be able to count on is Democrats being stupid. 1.00

00:09:38.000 I think Democrats are getting less stupid. 1.00

00:09:40.000 They have lost a series of elections. 1.00

00:09:42.000 It has not been good for them.

00:09:44.000 And now they seem to be jettisoning some of their worst baggage, including the trans issue.

00:09:48.000 You do not hear Democrats talking about the trans issue as the social rights issue of our time, the civil rights issue of our time anymore.

00:09:55.000 They just don't do it.

00:09:56.000 You don't hear them talking about DEI anymore.

00:09:59.000 Instead, they are refocusing on quote unquote affordability, right?

00:10:03.000 This is the thing that they are focusing in on over and over and over again.

00:10:09.000 And you can see why, because they believe that that is essentially their only winning path right now, because affordability, as I've said before, is a mushword.

00:10:17.000 No one ever thinks things are affordable.

00:10:19.000 Very few people in their entire life have thought, hey, things are so affordable right now.

00:10:24.000 Maybe when your income goes up, things become, quote, affordable for you.

00:10:27.000 But affordability is a subjective measure.

00:10:29.000 It is not an objective measure.

00:10:31.000 So even though President Trump can look at the inflation statistics and say it was up at 9, 10% under Joe Biden, it is down at 2%, 3% under me, people still understand that the prices are higher now than they were in, say, 2019.

00:10:44.000 And so things are quote unquote unaffordable.

00:10:46.000 And so even though President Trump is winning victories in, for example, Venezuela, which we'll get to in a moment, Democrats are refocusing on affordability.

00:10:53.000 According to Politico, Democrats hoping to win higher office this year are seizing on President Trump's intervention in Venezuela to push a twist on one of his campaign promises, America first.

00:11:03.000 Former Senator Sherrod Brown, who's running to reclaim his seat in Ohio, said Ohioans are facing higher costs across the board and are desperate for leadership that will help deliver relief.

00:11:12.000 We should be more focused on improving the lives of Ohioans, not Caracas, meaning Venezuela.

00:11:18.000 The frame from Democrats, according to Politico, shows how potent the party views affordability as an issue in the midterms, one that President Trump and his team have grown increasingly preoccupied by after across-the-board losses in 2025.

00:11:30.000 Longtime Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson, who's a former spokesperson for Hillary Clinton, said the problem Trump was already having was he looked like he was focused on everything other than what matters in people's daily lives.

00:11:40.000 And now he has just supercharged that.

00:11:42.000 Now, again, I do not think that Americans are under the impression that we cannot, as a country, walk and chew gum at the same time.

00:11:50.000 With that said, there is a line of attack here that Republicans are going to have to use, and they're going to have to use it often.

00:11:56.000 And that is that the amount of fraud, waste, the amount of abuse of the system that is inherent in a bigger government, Democratic administration everywhere from Minnesota to New York City, that is what is going to crush affordability for you.

00:12:12.000 That is the thing Republicans are going to need to focus on.

00:12:15.000 And it works.

00:12:17.000 One of the things that's been fascinating is to watch the collapse of Tim Walz in Minnesota.

00:12:20.000 Now, again, Minnesota is a very blue state.

00:12:23.000 There's been an attempt to proclaim that it's a purple state.

00:12:25.000 It's not particularly purple.

00:12:26.000 It's been a long time since Minnesota went Republican.

00:12:29.000 It is a blue state.

00:12:30.000 And Tim Walz just had to declare that he would not run for reelection again.

00:12:34.000 And he had to declare that because of the extraordinary amount of fraud that existed in his blue state.

00:12:42.000 Now, when you connect that to the immigration policy pursued by Democrats, that is a toxic combination for Democrats.

00:12:48.000 One of the reasons that the fraud in Minnesota has captured the minds of so many Americans is because it does appear to be members of a community who have been imported into the United States, who have not assimilated into American practices and who are then bilking the rest of the taxpayers in Minnesota.

00:13:06.000 When you combine those two things, that is a toxic brew for Democrats.

00:13:10.000 Their immigration policy combined with welfare fraud is a toxic brew and it exists across the spectrum.

00:13:16.000 It is not just in Minnesota.

00:13:17.000 It is in New York.

00:13:18.000 It is in California.

00:13:20.000 Republicans need to focus extraordinary fire on this particular issue because it's not just enough to unleash Doge and say waste, fraud, and abuse have to be cut.

00:13:29.000 You have to actually connect it with Democratic policy.

00:13:32.000 And you have to connect it to something that Republicans have been loath to connect it to for a while, which is the size of government.

00:13:38.000 We'll get to the size and scope of government and why that needs to become a Republican argument.

00:13:42.000 Yes, again, first, this episode is sponsored by Pure Talk.

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00:14:44.000 See, when I was growing up, being a conservative meant that you were against the expansion of the size and scope of government.

00:14:50.000 Nowadays, it seems in vogue for Republicans to be in favor of that expansion, but at the same time to want to quote unquote cut that waste, fraud, and abuse.

00:14:59.000 Well, that's not a great argument because inherent in a bigger government is waste, fraud, and abuse.

00:15:04.000 And when you combine that with loose immigration policy, the way Democrats have, you end up with Minnesota.

00:15:11.000 As the Wall Street Journal points out, defendants allegedly set up sham businesses and falsely claim to provide meals to children, pay kickbacks to parents to enroll kids without autism and autism treatment, build Medicaid for phony housing services to addicts, among other scams.

00:15:25.000 90 of the defendants who are charged of those 90, over 80 of them were of Somali origin.

00:15:32.000 These issues are not relegated to Minnesota by any stretch of the imagination.

00:15:37.000 Again, they are inherent in the size and scope of government and the expansion of the welfare roles and of our immigration roles, particularly with regard to either claims of asylum or illegal immigration itself.

00:15:52.000 It turns out, as always, that a Scandinavian social model can only exist temporarily as long as you don't crush capitalism and in combination with strong border control.

00:16:02.000 And Democrats have pursued weak border control, no controls with regards to waste, fraud, and abuse.

00:16:07.000 And the result is what's happened in Minnesota.

00:16:09.000 And that bears political fruit.

00:16:10.000 That's why Tim Walz is no longer going to be running for that third term in the state of Minnesota.

00:16:17.000 And again, good news for Republicans.

00:16:19.000 This stuff exists across the board.

00:16:22.000 Over in New York, Zorhan Mamdani, of course, has appointed a person to lead his tenancy department.

00:16:33.000 And that person, the leader of the mayor's office to protect tenants, a person named C. Weaver, who we discussed yesterday on the show.

00:16:41.000 She's causing a crisis in New York government. 1.00

00:16:43.000 Well, because she has openly talked about racial discrimination and private property seizures, the need to collectivize private property.

00:16:43.000 Why?

00:16:53.000 I mean, this is a target-rich environment for Republicans.

00:16:56.000 If you want to talk about affordability, you know what makes things unaffordable: people bilking other taxpayers out of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.

00:17:03.000 The government cracking down on private property ownership and preventing the building of new housing units, by the way, because of things like rent control.

00:17:11.000 Zorhan Mamdani is sticking with her.

00:17:13.000 Here's Zorhan Mamdani defending C. Weaver, a person who has spent the last several years on Twitter railing against basically the existence of white people and in particular, rich white people.

00:17:26.000 Have you ever rented an apartment in New York only to find yourself not just paying rent, but application fees, amenity fees, credit score checks?

00:17:32.000 In a city filled with old buildings that could use some tender-loving care, some landlords are taking advantage of the housing market to gouge tenants with outrageous fees, all while leaving them trying to survive in homes with collapsing ceilings and sinking floors.

00:17:44.000 It's time for that to change.

00:17:46.000 We need a citywide crackdown on rental ripoffs.

00:17:48.000 We need to take on the indignities from those landlords who demand more than their fair share.

00:17:52.000 That's why our administration is organizing a series of rental ripoff hearings in every borough.

00:17:56.000 This is a chance for you and your neighbors to speak directly with us about how you're getting ripped off.

00:18:01.000 For the first time, our city is bringing this discussion directly to you.

00:18:04.000 And it's only just the start.

00:18:05.000 We're excited to share more information about these hearings soon.

00:18:08.000 In the meantime, start taking notes so you can share with us how you're getting ripped off.

00:18:14.000 So come complain and then attack your landlord.

00:18:17.000 You think that's going to contribute to affordability in any way?

00:18:19.000 Harmeet Dillon, who, of course, runs the civil rights division over at the DOJ.

00:18:24.000 She talked about C. Weaver and the fact that this is a violation of federal law, the sort of discrimination she's been talking about.

00:18:30.000 Quote: We have several federal statutes that explicitly protect people of all colors and all different kinds of backgrounds and military status and so forth from the exact kind of land grabs and reallocation and redistribution being promised in New York.

00:18:41.000 Mamdani put out a statement: quote, We made the decision to have C. Weaver serve as our executive director for the mayor's office to protect tenants to build on the work that she has done to protect tenants across the city.

00:18:52.000 We were already seeing the results of that work.

00:18:54.000 Really, they're already seeing the results.

00:18:56.000 Incredible how the results are already seen.

00:19:00.000 In 2021, C. Weaver argued the state can, quote, further decommodify housing and land by canceling rents outright and shuttering eviction courts.

00:19:10.000 Now, again, you want to talk about affordability?

00:19:12.000 Let's do it.

00:19:12.000 This is an argument Republicans absolutely should have about affordability because of the fraud in places like Minnesota.

00:19:20.000 By the way, how deep is the fraud in Minnesota?

00:19:22.000 Incredibly, a person named Abu Khar Dahir Asman, according to Breitbart.com, the permanent representative of Somalia in the United Nations, is actually linked to a home healthcare agency in Cincinnati, Ohio that was prosecuted for Medicaid fraud.

00:19:37.000 You have permanent representatives of foreign countries in the United States linked to Medicaid fraud in American domestic states.

00:19:44.000 Apparently, Osman had ties to progressive health care services allegedly, that is a home healthcare company plagued by a Medicaid fraud investigation.

00:19:52.000 HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill confirmed that Osman is in fact linked to that particular business and that the federal agency previously took action against the company after a conviction for Medicaid fraud.

00:20:05.000 This, again, is a place where Republicans certainly ought to drill down.

00:20:09.000 So when it comes to the affordability issue, obviously Republicans do have some room to run, given the fact that you have people like Zorhan Mamdani or Tim Walz or Say Gavin Newsom in California who radically want to expand the size and scope of government while maintaining an open border system that increases the possibility of huge fraud.

00:20:28.000 And those sorts of stories are very damaging to Democrats.

00:20:31.000 Now, where Democrats are really fighting back on the affordability issue has to do, obviously, with that Obamacare cliff, the time bomb that was placed by Joe Biden in expanding Obamacare subsidies to people earning four times the poverty level of the United States, to people who really did not need Obamacare subsidies.

00:20:48.000 But when those subsidies went away, you saw a radical escalation in the price of Obamacare for people, particularly who are elderly or people who are on family plans under Obamacare.

00:20:58.000 So President Trump yesterday was speaking at this House Republican leadership conference, and he suggested that when it came to Obamacare, we should let those subsidies continue to expire.

00:21:07.000 We should just put money directly into health savings accounts for people and then allow those health savings accounts to be used in order to pay off not just the deductible, but also to pay off the premiums.

00:21:20.000 You can own healthcare.

00:21:22.000 Figure it out.

00:21:24.000 Let the money go directly to the people.

00:21:28.000 It goes in a healthcare account.

00:21:31.000 There are numerous things you can do, but you have to let no money for the insurance companies.

00:21:38.000 Okay, now, here's the problem with this particular line.

00:21:41.000 This is a problem.

00:21:42.000 The problem for this particular line is that the insurance companies actually are not making that much money.

00:21:46.000 Just on a profit level, the insurance companies are not making that much money because of the extraordinary regulations that they have to go through in order to work with the federal government.

00:21:56.000 The fact is that Obamacare consolidated the industry pretty radically.

00:22:01.000 Obamacare forces young people who want insurance to get comprehensive coverage as opposed to catastrophic coverage as a sort of backdoor subsidy to elderly people who they group together.

00:22:11.000 The Obamacare coverage, it has not bent the cost curve in any material way.

00:22:15.000 Costs are still up on Obamacare.

00:22:18.000 And again, those subsidies have been rising radically.

00:22:21.000 The problem, of course, is that when you hit that cliff, the amount that the Trump administration is talking about putting in HSAs is probably not going to compensate the people who really, really need the help.

00:22:32.000 Right now, the average annual deposit that Trump is talking about, $1,000 annual deposit, that's insufficient to cover the premium increases, particularly for people who are elderly and people who have families.

00:22:46.000 The average premium increases under Obamacare that just kicked into place are like $1,000 a year.

00:22:50.000 So you think, okay, $1,000 a year in the HSA, $1,000 a year increase, those cancel each other out.

00:22:55.000 But the problem is that that's unevenly distributed because the high-end premium increase can be over $12,000 per year for older couples or families.

00:23:04.000 The average bronze deductible is $7,476.

00:23:09.000 People are spending above and beyond their premiums, obviously.

00:23:13.000 So what is probably the best case solution, at least in the short term, to get us through the midterms, if you're not going to do a full-scale restructure of Obamacare, which is what Republicans should have been pursuing when they had a much larger majority in Congress during Trump's first term?

00:23:28.000 Well, since they didn't fix it then, they're not going to fix it now.

00:23:32.000 The proposal that's being put forth by Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Susan Collins of Maine is a two-year Obamacare extension of the subsidies in order to prevent that cliff from just destroying a huge number of Americans' livelihoods.

00:23:44.000 It would require enrollees to pay $25 per month to do away with zero premium plans because those zero premium plans where people basically are just handed Obamacare for free, that is rife with fraud.

00:23:55.000 You can just apply and then not take advantage of it and just take the money home, basically.

00:23:59.000 It would reintroduce the subsidy cliff, meaning if you make $200,000 a year, you don't get the subsidy.

00:24:04.000 It would toughen identity and income verification and remove current caps on how much an individual has to pay back to the IRS.

00:24:10.000 If you estimate that your income is going to be X and it turns out to be 2X, then you have to pay money back to the IRS.

00:24:17.000 So it crops out a bunch of people who are taking advantage of the system.

00:24:22.000 That may be the best available solution if the goal is not to get absolutely clobbered in 2026, because this is what Democrats are going to focus on from now all the way to the election.

00:24:33.000 So what's the advice for 2026 for Republicans?

00:24:36.000 Focus in, yes, on affordability, but they should be focusing in on what Democrats would do if they gained power, radically expand government, which radically expands fraud, which radically expands waste, and which radically increases cost.

00:24:50.000 Then there's what Republicans have to not do, and that is follow every rabbit hole.

00:24:54.000 Vivek Ramaswamy, who's running for governor of Ohio right now, has a great piece over at the Wall Street Journal pointing out that social media is a trap for politicians, particularly Republican politicians, get sucked into the maw of social media and start talking about nonsense that nobody cares about.

00:25:11.000 He says, my campaign team will still use social media to distribute messages and videos on my behalf, but I won't browse any of it myself.

00:25:18.000 There's a fine line between using the internet to distribute your message and inadvertently allowing constant internet feedback to alter your message.

00:25:25.000 That isn't using social media.

00:25:26.000 It's letting social media use you.

00:25:28.000 He says modern social media is increasingly disconnected from the electorate.

00:25:31.000 The messages you're most likely to see are the most negative and bombastic because they are the most likely to receive rapid likes and reposts, which, of course, drives revenue for social media content creators.

00:25:43.000 And he points out the online polls politicians glean from social media is increasingly manufactured by foreign actors and non-human bots.

00:25:51.000 He is right about this.

00:25:53.000 Republicans have to avoid chasing rabbit holes.

00:25:56.000 Stop going down every rabbit hole.

00:25:58.000 We don't need more discussions about Curtis Yarvin's fascist proposals from politicians.

00:26:02.000 We don't need politicians talking about the vagaries of quote-unquote, what is an American in a way that is likely to both alienate voters and not achieve anything substantial.

00:26:11.000 And by the way, avoid the topic entirely.

00:26:14.000 So avoid all of that would be one recommendation.

00:26:17.000 And meanwhile, on the foreign front, yes, foreign victories do matter.

00:26:22.000 The president of the United States, the seizure of Maduro, and now the continued seizure of tankers fleeing Venezuela.

00:26:30.000 So Russia has been playing a game in which they re-flag a bunch of what are called ghost ships.

00:26:36.000 They reflag a bunch of ships that don't have a flag on them and claim they're Russian ships to try and prevent the United States from stopping illegal oil tankers coming from Venezuela.

00:26:47.000 Well, it's not working.

00:26:48.000 The Trump administration said no.

00:26:50.000 The U.S. this morning seized two oil tankers on Wednesday, including one that had fled a U.S. blockade of sanctioned vessels near Venezuela and was actually being escorted by a Russian submarine and a Russian Navy ship in the Atlantic.

00:27:02.000 Helicopters and at least one Coast Guard vessel south of Iceland were used to take control of that tanker, formerly known as Bella One, that had eluded the United States for more than two weeks.

00:27:12.000 Apparently, the Russian submarine had been communicating with the tanker over the past three days, and President Trump was not going to be deterred.

00:27:18.000 He was not going to pretend that this was the hunt for Red October, and we have to avoid the Russian subs. 0.94

00:27:23.000 The idea was this is an illegal tanker.

00:27:26.000 It is carrying oil that is in international waters.

00:27:29.000 And no, we are not going to allow the Russians to pretend that this is a Russian ship.

00:27:33.000 The Bella One had begun sailing under a Russian flag in recent days.

00:27:36.000 It had changed its name.

00:27:38.000 It was being escorted by Russian military vessels.

00:27:41.000 The Coast Guard took it anyway, which, again, this is great for American deterrent power. 0.78

00:27:47.000 It is excellent.

00:27:48.000 That is a very, very good thing, good for the president of the United States.

00:27:51.000 The president also announced yesterday that Venezuela would be immediately selling us 30 to 50 million barrels of oil.

00:27:58.000 He put out a statement on Truth Social quote.

00:28:00.000 I am pleased to announce that the interim authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 million barrels of high-quality sanctions oil to the United States of America.

00:28:08.000 This oil will be sold at its market price.

00:28:10.000 That money will be controlled by me as president of the United States to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.

00:28:16.000 I've asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan immediately.

00:28:19.000 It will be taken by storage ships and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States.

00:28:23.000 Thank you for your attention to this matter.

00:28:25.000 Would not surprise me in the slightest if that amount of oil sold off at market prices was used to subsidize the rebuilding of the Venezuelan oil industry under American auspices, which is probably the best use of that money at this point.

00:28:38.000 That is not enough oil, by the way, to markedly lower the global price in any serious way.

00:28:43.000 30 to 50 million barrels of oil, 50 million barrels of oil represents one-sixth, perhaps, of Venezuelan total output on an annualized basis.

00:28:52.000 America is so oil-rich that that represents somewhere between three and five days of American produced oil.

00:28:58.000 So, how about the polling?

00:29:00.000 There have been a lot of people on both the horseshoe left and the horseshoe right suggesting this is wildly unpopular.

00:29:04.000 It's just terrible.

00:29:05.000 How could we possibly do this?

00:29:06.000 The American people don't approve.

00:29:08.000 And the answer is actually the American people are pretty split.

00:29:12.000 It's kind of one-third, one-third, one-third.

00:29:14.000 According to the polling, basically one-third of Americans support the ouster.

00:29:19.000 One-third of Americans disapprove of the action because Trump did it.

00:29:22.000 And one-third have no opinion.

00:29:25.000 And if you have no opinion, you're not against it.

00:29:27.000 So that kind of falls more.

00:29:29.000 Here's the rule with President Trump.

00:29:31.000 If you ain't against him, then you're kind of for him.

00:29:34.000 You may not want to say it, but that's the rule.

00:29:36.000 If it's one-third pro-Trump, one-third anti-Trump, one-third in the middle, that one-third in the middle is much more likely to be quietly pro-Trump than to be.

00:29:43.000 There's no such thing as quietly anti-Trump in America.

00:29:45.000 It just doesn't exist.

00:29:46.000 Quietly anti-Trump is not a thing.

00:29:49.000 And again, people are sort of holding off because they want to see what happens next.

00:29:53.000 Understandable.

00:29:53.000 Totally get it.

00:29:54.000 I'm with you.

00:29:55.000 We don't know what's going to happen next.

00:29:57.000 However, I seriously doubt that the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and the President of the United States, Donald Trump, decided that they were going to arrest and extradite Maduro without any plan for what comes next.

00:30:07.000 That obviously is not true.

00:30:09.000 Meanwhile, where are the American people on this?

00:30:12.000 Well, according to Harry Enton over at CNN, 50% of Americans favor Maduro being tried as opposed to just 14% who oppose.

00:30:21.000 They simply put don't like Nicholas Maduro.

00:30:25.000 And in fact, they believe that he should be on trial for drug trafficking.

00:30:28.000 Look at this.

00:30:29.000 50% of Americans favor compared to just 14% who oppose.

00:30:34.000 So there are very few Americans here who oppose it.

00:30:37.000 Even among Democrats, the opposition number is below, get this, just 24% is below 25%.

00:30:46.000 So this is something that unites Republicans.

00:30:48.000 It divides Democrats.

00:30:49.000 And at this particular point, support for the operation way up.

00:30:52.000 And in terms of those who favor the drug trafficking trial for Maduro, that is a clear plurality.

00:30:57.000 He doesn't really even divide Democrats on the idea of a trial.

00:31:00.000 They all seem to support it by and large.

00:31:01.000 Only 24% oppose it for Democrats.

00:31:06.000 Now, again, these are not terrible numbers for the president of the United States.

00:31:09.000 As far as people on the right who are suggesting there is a rift in the GOP over this, no, there's not.

00:31:14.000 No, there's not.

00:31:14.000 As always, as always, the isolationists on the right and the horseshoe right anti-Americans, they're just wrong.

00:31:22.000 They don't represent a large percentage of Republicans.

00:31:25.000 It wasn't true with Iran.

00:31:26.000 It's not true with Venezuela.

00:31:28.000 Here's Harry Ensign explaining.

00:31:30.000 Let me be very clear.

00:31:32.000 There is no rift in the Republican Party.

00:31:36.000 Yes, there are some folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey who are quite skeptical of this.

00:31:41.000 They are very much in the minority.

00:31:43.000 What are we talking about here?

00:31:44.000 Well, why don't we just talk the GOP on the U.S. military out to Maduro?

00:31:48.000 Hypsos, 65% support, 6% opposed.

00:31:52.000 How about the Washington Post poll?

00:31:54.000 74% support, just 10% opposed.

00:31:57.000 If you look among 2024 Trump supporters, we're talking about 80% support.

00:32:03.000 The vast, vast majority of Republicans are with Donald Trump on this issue.

00:32:10.000 Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene are very much in the minority.

00:32:14.000 Very few Republicans are with him.

00:32:17.000 Hey, so again, all of this talk about how Trump is splitting his own base, it's always not true.

00:32:22.000 It is not true.

00:32:24.000 This is why the entire attempt to say there's an America first program that Trump is betraying, he's betraying his base.

00:32:30.000 No, Make America Great, again, is Donald Trump's movement.

00:32:33.000 People trying to seize that movement are delusional and dishonest.

00:32:37.000 And that is perfectly obvious in every poll that is taken of Republicans on all of these issues.

00:32:42.000 Well, joining us on the line to discuss is Senator Tim Sheehy.

00:32:44.000 He is a combat veteran and Trump entrepreneur and junior U.S. Senator from Montana.

00:32:48.000 Of course, he served as a Navy SEAL officer and team leader, deploying to Iraq, Afghanistan, South America, and the Pacific region.

00:32:54.000 Senator, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:32:56.000 I really appreciate it.

00:32:57.000 Great to see you, Ben.

00:32:59.000 So let's talk about what the Trump administration and the U.S. military just pulled off an astonishing operation.

00:33:06.000 The capacity to launch within, apparently, hours, a gigantic sortie in the air, taking out whatever air defense had to be taken out and then putting people on the ground with zero casualties to take the leader of another country and arrest him and extradite him to the United States is an extraordinary thing.

00:33:25.000 What do you make of it?

00:33:27.000 That was fantastic.

00:33:28.000 I mean, listen, for those of us who come from the special operations community, we've long known that we have these capabilities, and it's wonderful to be able to see them exhibited like this.

00:33:37.000 It's obviously a solemn duty to do anything that involves taking the lives of others or putting your life at risk.

00:33:43.000 But this is exactly what our special operations task forces were designed to do.

00:33:48.000 And what a lot of folks don't know is the history of where special ops came from.

00:33:51.000 And there was a mission not unlike this called Eagle Claw in 1980.

00:33:54.000 That was an abject failure where we attempted to rescue our hostages out of Iran, being held in the embassy there.

00:33:59.000 That message was a failure.

00:34:01.000 That mission was a failure.

00:34:02.000 And as a result, we created the very capable task force that Americans saw execute this mission last weekend.

00:34:07.000 And they just said it was a resounding success.

00:34:09.000 So I'm incredibly proud of our troops for doing so.

00:34:10.000 I'm proud of the president and grateful for the president for making this decision to finally take this criminal out, a criminal who wasn't just a drug dealer or narco-terrorist, but acted as a regional hub for the worst rogue regimes and terrorist groups in the world.

00:34:25.000 As you know, Venezuela was not just a narco-terrorist state.

00:34:27.000 It also served as money laundering, logistics hub for literally a laundry list of every single bad actor in the world, from North Korea to Iran, to China, to Russia, to worst of all, money laundering for groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthi rebels.

00:34:41.000 They allowed their ghost fleet and oil reserves to be used as a global financing hub for the worst of the worst.

00:34:47.000 And this was a great thing for the world.

00:34:50.000 You know, Senator, it has been astonishing to watch many of the people who criticized President Trump in term one over not doing what they thought was enough about Maduro, now criticizing him for taking Maduro out of power in Venezuela.

00:35:02.000 I want to get to what comes next, but the hypocrisy of many of the people who are now signing into chat to talk about violations of international law and how horrible all of this is, it's pretty astonishing.

00:35:14.000 It's laughable.

00:35:15.000 It would be funny if it wasn't so disgraceful.

00:35:16.000 I mean, this is the same party, of course, whether it's Chris Murphy or Zorwan Momdani, that demand that Benjamin Netanyahu be arrested.

00:35:24.000 They're lombasting arresting a foreign leader for crimes when every single day they call for the arrest of Netanyahu as a war criminal.

00:35:32.000 So they demand that we arrest other heads of state.

00:35:34.000 These are the same party that tried to arrest our own head of state, Donald Trump, and depose him from power.

00:35:39.000 So they clearly don't have a problem arresting or indicting or going after heads of state because they've been doing it all the time. 0.87

00:35:46.000 So spare me this bullshit where they're like, how dare we touch the head of state of a foreign country that's so off their reservation, it's so not allowed, which is what they've been advocating for, specifically Maduro. 0.76

00:35:56.000 As you know, Chuck Schumer himself stood on the Senate floor five years ago and demanded that Trump do more to unseat Maduro. 0.98

00:36:03.000 So the simple fact is this is politics, plain and simple.

00:36:06.000 I wish they would not play politics with the lies of Americans because Maduro's regime, obviously, because it predated Maduro, as Chavez before him, actively illicit, supported the illicit networks that kill Americans every day, tens of thousands of them, by pushing fentanyl and cocaine into our country, by funding these Marxist movements within our own country that are constantly trying to tear our own government down and create unrest within the strongest economy and the strongest democracy in the world.

00:36:33.000 So this guy was a bad actor.

00:36:35.000 His entire regime had been bad actors for the last 30 years.

00:36:38.000 And the Democrats themselves have said so.

00:36:40.000 So my hope is for the good of the country and the good of the world, that they will eventually come around on this.

00:36:45.000 But as we know, Trump during syndrome is a very serious disease and they haven't been cured from it yet.

00:36:53.000 Yesterday on the show, Senator, I made the case that President Trump, I think, has ended the Iraq syndrome. 0.70

00:36:57.000 So we had the Vietnam syndrome, which was the idea that America was a bad actor in the world, that America ought to retreat from the world.

00:37:03.000 And then under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, that came to an end with targeted military action in places ranging from Grenada to Panama to the first Gulf War.

00:37:13.000 After the Iraq war, after the Afghanistan war, there seemed to be an Iraq syndrome in American politics, the idea that American force abroad used in any way was somehow going to lead to hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground, gigantic quagmires, and that America was a negative force in the world.

00:37:26.000 Twice in the last year, the president has used targeted military actions to effectuate extraordinary change.

00:37:31.000 And it feels as though the Trump administration has put the Iraq syndrome to bed in a way.

00:37:37.000 I would agree.

00:37:38.000 And in many ways, you know, foreign policy, of course, is constantly an evolving ecosystem of ideas and policies and actions.

00:37:45.000 And I think throughout American history, we've seen various phases of foreign policy, of engagement, of isolationism, of the decision of whether we will engage in global affairs and whether we won't.

00:37:56.000 And if we do, how we do so.

00:37:57.000 And I think you're absolutely right, Ben.

00:37:58.000 We're turning the page now to a new era that actually harkens back to kind of our original foreign policy playbook in the early days of our founding republic that said, listen, yes, we have formed our republic to get away from the ills of the old world and we don't want to get sucked into old world conflicts.

00:38:14.000 But at the same time, we recognize we must stand up for ourselves.

00:38:17.000 And the earliest conflicts we fought as Americans were the Barbary Wars of the Mediterranean, where we saw that our commerce was threatened, our sailors were being impressed.

00:38:25.000 And we said, you know what, we're going to take targeted action.

00:38:27.000 And as a young nation in 1798 through 1805, you know, we took targeted action very much like this, where we went into specific locations from Tripoli to Morocco, from Gibraltar, all through that region to protect our citizens and our national interest.

00:38:43.000 And that's what this comes back to, Ben.

00:38:45.000 As you well know, as Mark Aruby, who's done an amazing job.

00:38:48.000 I mean, those of us who've known Marco, of course, have known this all along, but the rest of the nation is now finally seeing just what a genius this guy is and how lucky we are to have him at the top of our foreign policy construct because what we're seeing is actions being taken for our national interest.

00:39:03.000 And believe it or not, Ben, that's the job of our government is to do things that are good for America and good for Americans.

00:39:09.000 And this was good for America. 0.87

00:39:11.000 It was good for the American people.

00:39:12.000 And frankly, it was good for the world.

00:39:14.000 So I think you're absolutely right.

00:39:16.000 This phase of foreign policy we're seeing is a targeted campaign of specific actions that have limited scope, but have very intentional outcomes.

00:39:26.000 And those outcomes are what we're seeing in Iran now, which with everything in Venezuela, what folks are not seeing is, as you all know, riots in the streets in Tehran.

00:39:34.000 Tehran is at the weakest point it has been in in 46 years since the Ayatollah took over in 1980.

00:39:39.000 We are finally seeing that this other terrible, murderous regime is finally on the rocks.

00:39:46.000 A years of sanctions through our good friends and allies in Israel, targeted strikes to disable their capabilities, of course, the Midnight Hammer mission and other things, quite simply like the drought that has starved Tehran of the ability to sustain population.

00:39:59.000 So there's a combination of factors that have put yet another murderous regime at a tipping point.

00:40:04.000 And it's not an accident we got there.

00:40:06.000 It's because the very focused policies of Secretary Rubio and the president here are taking our adversaries and letting them know that we're not going to sit there and let them constantly stab us in the back and undermine our republic.

00:40:18.000 You know, Senator, one of the things that's fascinating is obviously what comes next in Venezuela.

00:40:22.000 There's apparently street gangs who have been going around threatening people.

00:40:24.000 These are people loyal to Maduro have been threatening folks.

00:40:27.000 Obviously, Delsi Rodriguez, who's the vice president, who has now taken over as the leader, she is under the thumb of the U.S. military. 1.00

00:40:34.000 There's a lot of wondering about is that a long-term relationship?

00:40:37.000 Is she going to eventually transition to democracy? 1.00

00:40:39.000 What does that look like?

00:40:40.000 Obviously, we're on like day four of this thing.

00:40:42.000 And the decision that was made by the Trump administration was clearly that we're not going to put hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground in Venezuela.

00:40:48.000 We're going to use the forces available to us.

00:40:50.000 And then we're going to put such extraordinary pressure on the current regime that they're forced to essentially do our bidding.

00:40:55.000 That seems to be the way that things are unfolding so far.

00:40:58.000 What do you make of the plan thus far?

00:41:00.000 Well, that's exactly right.

00:41:01.000 And thank you for reminding folks it's day four.

00:41:03.000 Cause I mean, even on Sunday, it was laughable to hear all of our critics out there, you know, oh my God, there's no, it's not stabilized.

00:41:09.000 We don't have a functioning democracy in Venezuela.

00:41:11.000 It's like, it's been 24 hours.

00:41:12.000 Are you kidding me?

00:41:13.000 It took us, you know, 15 years to get a constitution in place in America, 1775 to 1789.

00:41:19.000 It's going to take some time to stabilize this.

00:41:22.000 It's not going to be perfect on day four.

00:41:24.000 And to your point, actually, to go back to kind of the Iraq doctrine, which listen, we all know that there were mistakes made and being someone who served there.

00:41:31.000 Trust me, I understand that.

00:41:32.000 But what also gets lost in the history is Iraq actually became quite a functional place relatively quickly.

00:41:38.000 And if Barack Obama had not pulled us out in 2011 to just fill a shallow campaign promise, we were on a pretty good track there.

00:41:45.000 And ultimately, Iraq is on a better track now.

00:41:47.000 But I think with Venezuela, as far as next steps, Rubio, Stephen Miller, the president, are very focused on that.

00:41:53.000 And what they didn't do specifically, Ben, was regime change.

00:41:56.000 They didn't go in and bomb out the regime and turn Venezuela into a parking lot and drop 300,000 troops in and establish a provisional government.

00:42:03.000 That's exactly what they did not do.

00:42:04.000 What they did do was arrest a criminal, remove him from power and said to the existing regime, listen, we don't really like you very much, but here's the four corners of the expectations that we will have around you.

00:42:15.000 We're going to continue to sanction you. 0.73

00:42:17.000 We're going to continue to put guardrails around your ability to destroy a fabric of our nation with drugs and criminal activity, mass migration into America. 0.99

00:42:27.000 We're going to put a box around you and set expectations for your actions.

00:42:31.000 And if you violate those expectations, there'll be further consequences.

00:42:34.000 And I think you said very clearly, they said very clearly yesterday they expect elections to take place because as you all know, this regime was defeated in elections two years ago.

00:42:45.000 And the Machado movement very clearly was preferred by the Venezuelan people.

00:42:50.000 And I think there's been demands that why don't we just parachute them in to take over?

00:42:55.000 Well, the reality is the regime is not loyal to them.

00:42:57.000 The bureaucracy is not in place to conduct that kind of a change.

00:43:00.000 And to do that regime change that everyone's accusing us of would invite the kind of stability that we're instability we're all trying to avoid.

00:43:07.000 So I think it's very important that we use the existing regime to the extent possible in a transition period to where we can effect a change in government that will reflect the democratic values of the Venezuelan people.

00:43:18.000 Who, by the way, everyone demonstrating in the streets that's happy about this are, guess what? Venezuelans.

00:43:24.000 All the people who are against it are all like, you know, the white liberal college kids, you know, who yesterday were marching for Palestine and Hamas.

00:43:32.000 Today they switched out their Kafiyas for sombreros and now they're marching for Maduro. 0.85

00:43:38.000 It's ridiculous that this is a shallow astroturf movement paid for by Roy Singen, who's hiding out in China using his capitalist-earned fortune to fund communist exercises in America from anti-Semitism to, of course, now ridiculous opposition to us taking out a drug dealer.

00:43:53.000 So I think the next phase is going to be, of course, complex.

00:43:56.000 This is going to be a delicate time.

00:43:58.000 And I'm just thankful we have Secretary Rubio there who's going to carry out the president's vision and get us the other side of this.

00:44:05.000 Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana.

00:44:07.000 Senator, thanks so much for your time and your insight.

00:44:09.000 Really appreciate it.

00:44:10.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:44:11.000 Take care.

00:44:12.000 Speaking of dishonest, I have to say that the New York Times takes the cake this morning for a piece talking about how China is now going to take advantage of what happened to Maduro in order to expand its own power.

00:44:27.000 Quote, the speed with which U.S. forces acted to capture Mr. Maduro sent a blunt message to Beijing about the limits of its influence in a region Washington treats as its own.

00:44:37.000 China now risks losing ground in Venezuela after Saturday's assault in Caracas, despite decades of investment and billions of dollars in loans.

00:44:43.000 But the assault also reinforces a broader logic that ultimately favors President Xi Jinping's vision of China and its status in Asia.

00:44:50.000 When powerful countries impose their will close to home, others tend to step back.

00:44:55.000 Excuse me.

00:44:56.000 Excuse me.

00:44:57.000 The idea that China has been waiting around to see whether the United States would be aggressive in Venezuela to determine whether to be aggressive in Taiwan, or that the lesson they're going to take away from the United States being aggressive in Venezuela is that the United States will not act to defend allies in Taiwan is this is insipid.

00:45:15.000 It's totally insane.

00:45:16.000 It is an absolute projection.

00:45:17.000 If you think China is sleeping easier tonight because Donald Trump decided to do what he just did to Nicholas Maduro, you're out of your mind.

00:45:24.000 It is just untrue. 0.99

00:45:26.000 It is ridiculous on its face. 0.95

00:45:29.000 Now, meanwhile, there are other dictators all over the world who are a little bit worried. 0.94

00:45:34.000 So in Iran, things are getting incredibly spicy.

00:45:37.000 Yesterday, there was chaos in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, right?

00:45:40.000 This is the capital of Iran.

00:45:43.000 And there are reports that there are certain cities, particularly in the border areas of Iran, that have essentially already fallen to many of the people who no longer want to live under the thumb of the Ayatollah.

00:45:55.000 Here's some of the video from the Grand Bazaar in Tehran.

00:45:59.000 That's a lot of people out there.

00:46:01.000 Protesters are being fired upon, by the way, by the Iranian forces.

00:46:11.000 Large crowds have been demonstrating in Iran, in Bajnord, which is in the country's northeast.

00:46:16.000 Again, certain areas of the country are becoming very, very difficult to govern for the Ayatollah.

00:46:23.000 Shiraz is apparently now the victim of security forces being heavily deployed across multiple parts of the city.

00:46:30.000 Huge numbers of people out in the streets.

00:46:33.000 So the Iranian regime may be in trouble.

00:46:36.000 Now, as I've said before, the only real force in Iran that has the power to govern is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

00:46:44.000 There's the Iranian military.

00:46:45.000 The IRGC is sort of the praetorian guard for the Ayatollahs.

00:46:50.000 But if there is somebody inside that infrastructure who wants to do the same thing that just happened in Venezuela, I am sure that that would be fairly easy to effectuate.

00:46:59.000 Crowds are out in the streets.

00:47:00.000 They are not happy.

00:47:02.000 And this is not going to let up, it seems, because Iran's centralized government does not seem to have the wherewithal, the power, or the will to actually just start shooting people en masse.

00:47:12.000 They're afraid that President Trump might do something like what just happened in Venezuela.

00:47:16.000 Trump has, of course, openly threatened the Iranian regime if they start shooting people in the streets.

00:47:22.000 Meanwhile, closer to the West, President Trump's obsession with Greenland continues apace.

00:47:28.000 So the other day, President Trump suggested that we need Greenland.

00:47:31.000 I'm just going to point out right now that under a current treaty that we have with Denmark, we actually have the ability to build kind of whatever bases we want in Greenland.

00:47:39.000 So we should probably just do that.

00:47:41.000 If we want to buy Greenland, great.

00:47:44.000 Apparently, they don't want to sell Greenland.

00:47:45.000 Denmark doesn't want to.

00:47:46.000 Harry Truman tried to.

00:47:47.000 He tried to offer Denmark $100 million in gold back in 1946 for Greenland.

00:47:52.000 And Denmark was like, nah, not so interested.

00:47:55.000 Right now, it would actually be illegal for Denmark to just sell Greenland because they have a level of home rule and self-government.

00:48:02.000 A referendum would likely not result in Greenland joining the United States, which I don't understand the logic there.

00:48:08.000 If you're a member of the Greenland population, it seems to me you should damn well want to join the United States.

00:48:13.000 You have a choice between independent Greenland and being part of the greatest country on the planet by far, being under the protection of the U.S. military and also benefiting from our magnificent free market system.

00:48:26.000 And it seems to me that would be a better use of time.

00:48:29.000 But, you know, I'm not from Greenland.

00:48:31.000 I'm not, you know, unlike Fezwick from the Princess Bride.

00:48:33.000 I'm not from Greenland.

00:48:35.000 But apparently they don't want to join.

00:48:37.000 Okay.

00:48:38.000 We're not going to go grab Greenland, but President Trump enjoys talking about it.

00:48:42.000 I will say this about Greenland.

00:48:45.000 We need Greenland from a national security situation. 0.50

00:48:49.000 It's so strategic.

00:48:51.000 Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.

00:48:56.000 We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security.

00:49:01.000 And Denmark is not going to be able to do it, I can tell you.

00:49:06.000 Okay, so, you know, again, this idea that we're going to grab Greenland, I don't think so.

00:49:10.000 But Stephen Miller does enjoy going on cable TV and being very aggressive about his approach to places like Greenland.

00:49:19.000 It has been the formal position of the U.S. government since the beginning of this administration.

00:49:25.000 Frankly, going back into the previous Trump administration, that Greenland should be part of the United States.

00:49:31.000 The president has been very clear about that.

00:49:33.000 That is the formal position of the U.S. government.

00:49:35.000 Right, but can you say that military action against Greenland is off the table?

00:49:39.000 You're going to need military action against Greenland.

00:49:42.000 Greenland has a population of 30,000 people, Jake.

00:49:46.000 The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland?

00:49:50.000 What is the basis of their territorial claim?

00:49:52.000 What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark?

00:49:56.000 The United States is the power of NATO.

00:50:00.000 For the United States to secure the Arctic region to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States.

00:50:10.000 So, you know, it'll be interesting to see how all this plays out.

00:50:13.000 Doesn't mean that the United States is about to invade Greenland.

00:50:16.000 I have serious, serious doubts.

00:50:18.000 In other news, the Health and Human Services Department has now overhauled the childhood vaccine schedule, trying to mirror countries, apparently more like Denmark, Japan.

00:50:18.000 All right.

00:50:28.000 There's been an attempt in the media to portray this as a gigantic revamping cut to vaccine guidance that people are being told not to take crucial childhood vaccines.

00:50:39.000 Actually, it just changes the advice with regard to, for example, hepatitis A, flu shots, rotavirus.

00:50:47.000 And the idea is that now you should go talk to your healthcare provider, your clinical decision maker, as opposed to guidance that you should just get it sort of automatically.

00:50:59.000 According to American Academy of Pediatrics President Andrew Racine, he said, at a time when parents, pediatricians, and the public are looking for clear guidance and accurate information, this ill-considered decision will sow further chaos and confusion and erode confidence in immunizations.

00:51:13.000 Okay, I mean, saying go talk to your doctor about those ones, well, still maintaining, by the way, that kids be vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, polio, whooping cough, tetanus, diphtheria, and HPV.

00:51:25.000 You know, that also for chickenpox.

00:51:28.000 That does not seem like a massive, massive change to me.

00:51:31.000 They're not saying don't take the vaccine.

00:51:32.000 They're saying go talk to your doctor about the vaccine schedule.

00:51:35.000 Again, pointing out Denmark, Germany, and Japan as pure developed nations with slimmer schedules. 0.96

00:51:40.000 Again, the best sort of counter argument that I've seen seems to be Americans are too dumb to understand that you should go talk to your doctor and say they just won't take things unless the doctor tells them to take it. 0.64

00:51:49.000 The reality on a practical level, most doctors are going to tell people that they should give it to their kids. 0.97

00:51:53.000 That is the reality because doctors are trained in medical school and they know medicine.

00:51:58.000 And so doctors tend to be quite pro-vaccine as a general rule because they understand also how herd immunity works.

00:52:04.000 Joining me on the line to discuss this and more is Alex Clark.

00:52:06.000 She's host of Culture Apothecary, a health and wellness podcast produced by Turning Point USA.

00:52:11.000 And of course, she's a leading activist in Maha, the Make America Healthy Again movement.

00:52:15.000 Alex, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:52:16.000 I really appreciate it.

00:52:18.000 I really appreciate it because there's a lot going on, Ben.

00:52:22.000 So let's talk about what's going on.

00:52:24.000 We don't tend to cover Maha probably as much as we should here on the program.

00:52:28.000 What do you think are the big wins delivered by RFK Jr.'s Health and Human Services Department thus far?

00:52:34.000 Man, so far, I mean, there's a lot.

00:52:35.000 Obviously, we ban food dyes.

00:52:37.000 We are looking into what's involved in baby formula ingredients that are allowed there.

00:52:42.000 There's supposed to be a very big announcement happening this week.

00:52:45.000 We're thinking on the dietary guidelines.

00:52:47.000 They've brought back the presidential fitness test in elementary schools.

00:52:50.000 That's really going to kind of culturally transform how we think about health at, you know, a huge level when you're talking about, you know, teaching children about these issues.

00:53:00.000 So there's a lot that we've done, but there's a really, really big thing happening at the Supreme Court this Friday that's very important.

00:53:11.000 Okay, so let's talk about that.

00:53:12.000 What is happening at the Supreme Court?

00:53:14.000 Yeah, so this should actually really matter to every American family, especially parents.

00:53:19.000 And this is why people should be paying attention.

00:53:22.000 So on Friday, the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear a case brought by Bayer.

00:53:26.000 Bayer is the company that owns Monsanto and sells Roundup.

00:53:30.000 And so the question at stake is, do American families still have the right to hold chemical companies accountable when their products make people sick or not?

00:53:39.000 And Bayer wants the court to give them immunity from lawsuits.

00:53:42.000 They're arguing that if the EPA approved their product label, then no one should ever be able to sue them for failing to warn, even if people get cancer, even if new science comes out, and if kids are harmed.

00:53:54.000 And so if the court agrees, this wouldn't just apply to Roundup.

00:53:58.000 What's really important for you to understand is that this would apply to over 57,000 pesticide products currently on the market.

00:54:05.000 So we're talking about weed killers.

00:54:06.000 We're talking about bug sprays, ant traps, disinfectants, chemicals used in homes, backyards, schools, playgrounds, chemicals that many families, your family might assume are safe because they're sold at the store and they don't have a warning label.

00:54:20.000 So the part that makes this even more disturbing is that the EPA approved Roundup without a cancer warning based on science that we now know was fraudulent.

00:54:30.000 So one of the key studies that the EPA relied on was ghostwritten by Monsanto.

00:54:36.000 Their own internal emails prove it.

00:54:37.000 And just recently, that study was officially retracted in the last month.

00:54:41.000 So Bayer is asking the Supreme Court to protect them using an approval that was based on fake science.

00:54:48.000 And that should really stop everybody cold because when real people, juries, were allowed to hear the full truth, they overwhelmingly held Monsanto responsible.

00:54:57.000 Five appellate courts upheld those verdicts because juries saw what regulators didn't.

00:55:01.000 They saw that Monsanto never tested the actual Roundup formula for long-term cancer risk.

00:55:07.000 They saw internal emails where Monsanto scientists admitted, you can't say that Roundup doesn't cause cancer.

00:55:14.000 We haven't done the testing.

00:55:15.000 They saw evidence showing that Roundup absorbs through the skin and that matters for kids because parents are spraying Roundup on playgrounds, on lawns, around swing sets.

00:55:26.000 Kids are running barefoot.

00:55:27.000 They fall.

00:55:28.000 They crawl.

00:55:29.000 You know, their skin is thinner.

00:55:30.000 Their bodies are still developing.

00:55:32.000 There's no warning on the bottle telling parents that this chemical can soak through skin or that it's been linked to cancer or that it could disrupt hormones during critical developmental windows.

00:55:42.000 It can actually affect sexual development in the womb and cause genital abnormalities.

00:55:47.000 So it can really also affect child's fertility later in life.

00:55:52.000 And if parents walked into a store, Ben, and they saw a label that said warning, linked to cancer, absorbs through the skin, not safe for children, a lot of them would put it right back on the shelf.

00:56:02.000 And so that's the point.

00:56:03.000 Bayer has billions of dollars on the line.

00:56:05.000 They know that informed consent changes behavior.

00:56:08.000 And so instead, they're wanting the Supreme Court Friday to say that once the EPA signs off, even if that approval was based on manipulated data, that companies will be untouchable.

00:56:19.000 Even if new evidence emerges, kids are going to pay the price.

00:56:22.000 And so this is bigger than one company.

00:56:25.000 What the American people need to understand is that if Bayer wins, this opens the door to immunity for all 57,000 pesticide products regulated under federal law that are linked to cancer, Parkinson's, infertility.

00:56:39.000 It would even protect foreign companies, chemical companies, Chinese manufacturers selling products in the United States that are banned in their own country.

00:56:47.000 So we are potentially looking, Ben, at the United States government awarding immunity for bio-terrorism.

00:56:54.000 So the claim in this case is about, I guess, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.

00:57:00.000 Again, this is when the federal government gets involved, things get very messy.

00:57:03.000 They have labeling requirements under what's called FIFRA.

00:57:05.000 And I guess the question at issue here is whether FIFRA preempts state tort claims, because what we're talking about here is really not whether it preempts warning labels on the state level.

00:57:16.000 It's whether you got damaged by the thing and you can now sue in state court and whether this act preempts.

00:57:21.000 It'll be interesting to see.

00:57:23.000 As you say, the circuits have been a little bit split on this.

00:57:25.000 The Supreme Court has not been active on it.

00:57:27.000 It'll be interesting to see how that case comes down, but it is a very, very important case because, again, the question is whether the duty should be on the companies to ensure their products are safe or whether as soon as they've gotten some sort of stamp from the federal government, now they're good to go and do whatever they want, essentially.

00:57:42.000 Yeah.

00:57:42.000 And this is a big deal because if you remember, we basically have been through this before, but with vaccines.

00:57:47.000 So back in the 80s, you know, it was ruled that you can't sue vaccine companies if you're injured.

00:57:51.000 This is what the chemical companies are wanting to do to the American people now.

00:57:55.000 And it's a very big deal.

00:57:56.000 And the reason they're doing this is because they have millions and millions of dollars in lawsuits that are on the line right now that they don't want to be responsible for.

00:58:04.000 And we did have a huge win this week.

00:58:05.000 Congress explicitly said that EPA registration is not a defense against failure to warrant claims.

00:58:12.000 So they knew regulators rely on company submitted data and they know that state courts exist to catch what regulators miss, especially when companies lie.

00:58:20.000 So, you know, this case would blow that safeguard up.

00:58:23.000 And point blank, the message this could potentially send is terrifying.

00:58:27.000 If you deceive regulators well enough, you're protected.

00:58:30.000 If families get hurt too bad, if children absorb toxic chemicals through their skin, there's no accountability.

00:58:36.000 That isn't conservative.

00:58:37.000 That's not pro-family.

00:58:39.000 That isn't pro-freedom.

00:58:41.000 It's corporate immunity at the expense of informed consent.

00:58:45.000 And so the question in front of the court this week is really not complicated.

00:58:49.000 It's do we reward fraud or do we protect families?

00:58:52.000 Because once accountability is gone, safety is going to completely disappear.

00:58:56.000 And American parents deserve better than that.

00:58:59.000 So if the Supreme Court decides that fake science and weak labels matter more than informed consent, then they're telling American parents that their children's health is negotiable.

00:59:08.000 And I believe that is a line that we should never cross.

00:59:11.000 And I believe that is truly Maha.

00:59:13.000 And limited government was never supposed to mean unlimited immunity for corporations that lie and hurt families.

00:59:19.000 And I know that you agree with that.

00:59:21.000 I know.

00:59:21.000 No, I mean, bizarrely enough, this actually isn't a limited government issue.

00:59:24.000 It's actually the government trying to protect things that normally would not be protected.

00:59:28.000 That's the part that's sort of astonishing is that what we're talking about here is a federal act that would preempt normal sort of state level activity.

00:59:36.000 And so what you're talking about is growth of federal government actually crowding out the kinds of answerability that you're asking for.

00:59:43.000 The Maha movement, as you've talked about, is also obviously much more than just the federal government.

00:59:47.000 It is now extended to the state level.

00:59:49.000 A number of states just a few days ago enacted snap bans on soda, candy, and other foods.

00:59:54.000 There are five states that have done that.

00:59:55.000 I know you've testified in front of the Arizona legislature about that particular issue.

00:59:59.000 Where do we stand on that?

01:00:00.000 Because that is a big one.

01:00:01.000 I mean, the fact is that a huge number, particularly of low-income people in the United States who are reliant on food stamps, are using those food stamps to buy food for their kids or for themselves that really unhealthy sponsored by the taxpayer, which then lead to all sorts of health issues down the line that putting aside the difficulties of the person suffering the health issue also tosses more cost at the taxpayer because then we end up paying for the medical care.

01:00:24.000 Yeah.

01:00:25.000 I mean, listen, we've all all week, we've been talking about, you know, little Somalia or whatever and all the fraud that's going on there and how taxpayers are subsidizing them. 0.98

01:00:33.000 Taxpayers should also not be subsidizing the obesity epidemic, right?

01:00:37.000 So that's essentially what's going on when you have the American Beverage Association and people lobbying and saying, you know, it's really imperative that soda is on snap.

01:00:45.000 This hurts poor people.

01:00:47.000 Poor people, there's no rule that says like they have to be drinking sugary soda. 0.99

01:00:52.000 That's ridiculous.

01:00:53.000 What we should be subsidizing is healthier food options, organic food options.

01:00:56.000 And I know that's something that Bobby Kennedy has talked about immensely and something that we're working towards.

01:01:01.000 But I'm very proud that so many states have stepped up and said, we're not going to have soda on SNAP.

01:01:07.000 That's another huge Maha win.

01:01:10.000 And, you know, there's stuff that with vaccines, we just announced that we're taking the childhood recommended vaccine schedule from over 70 down to, I don't know, what is it, 11 this week?

01:01:21.000 That was a massive win from President Trump that I think a lot of people were kind of wondering if he was going to be able to do that.

01:01:27.000 And he did.

01:01:28.000 So there's a lot of good stuff with this administration.

01:01:30.000 And there's a lot of stuff that we need to be keeping our feet to the fire on.

01:01:34.000 And, you know, the thing with the Supreme Court is they don't really care about public opinion, right?

01:01:39.000 They're appointed for life.

01:01:40.000 And so noise from the public doesn't usually matter.

01:01:44.000 But what could matter is us getting loud online and talking about the fact that if they do choose to do this hearing with Monsanto, that it is based on completely fraudulent science about how safe glyphosate is, that was all redacted.

01:01:57.000 So that's the thing that we should be talking about because that could make its way to the hill and kind of alert people there.

01:02:04.000 So that's why it was really important for me to bring that up.

01:02:08.000 Well, that's Alex Clark.

01:02:09.000 She's host of Culture Apothecary. 1.00

01:02:10.000 Go check out her podcast everywhere.

01:02:12.000 It's produced by TP USA.

01:02:13.000 Alex, thanks so much for the time and the updates.

01:02:15.000 Thank you, Ben.

01:02:17.000 All righty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.

01:02:19.000 We'll get into the latest with regard to Ukraine, where negotiations continue.

01:02:23.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:02:24.000 If you're not a member, become a member and use Code Shapiro.

01:02:26.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

01:02:28.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

01:02:33.000 What was it like, Marlon, to be alone with God?

01:02:41.000 Is that who you think I was alone with?

01:02:47.000 Mardin, I knew your father.

01:02:49.000 I am yet convinced that he was not of this world.

01:02:55.000 All men know of the great Taliesin.

01:02:58.000 You are my father.

01:02:59.000 Other gods should war for my soul.

01:03:03.000 Princess Garris, savior of our people.

01:03:08.000 I know what the Bull God offered you.

01:03:11.000 I was offered the same.

01:03:13.000 And there is a new pirate work in the world.

01:03:16.000 I've seen it.

01:03:18.000 A god who sacrifices what he loves for us.

01:03:21.000 We are each given only one life, Singer.

01:03:24.000 No.

01:03:25.000 We're given another.

01:03:29.000 I learned of Yezu the Christ, and I have become his follower.

01:03:33.000 He's waiting on a miracle, and I think you can give him one.

01:03:36.000 Trust in Yezu. 0.87

01:03:38.000 He is the only hope for men like us.

01:03:41.000 Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the Great Light.

01:03:44.000 Great Light, Great Darkness.

01:03:46.000 Such things mattered to me then.

01:03:49.000 What matters to you now, Mistress of Lies?

01:03:53.000 You, nephew.

01:03:58.000 The sword of a high king.

01:04:02.000 How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield?

01:04:09.000 Still clinging to the promises of a god who has abandoned you.

01:04:12.000 I cannot take up that sword again.

01:04:15.000 You know what you must do.

01:04:19.000 Great light, forgive me.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 07, 2026

Will Republicans Win In 2026?

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