The Ben Shapiro Show - Will The Shutdown FINALLY End?!

00:00:00.000 Is the government shutdown ending?

00:00:01.000 If so, how?

00:00:02.000 And did Democrats just lose?

00:00:04.000 Plus, are Republicans falling into the trap of believing that big government is the answer?

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00:00:43.000 Well, folks, at long last, over well over a month, it appears that we are now nearing the end of the beginning of the end of the government shutdown because last night, Democrats in the Senate caved.

00:00:54.000 They gave their approval, 60-40 vote to moving forward with a procedural vote, which would move toward the end of the government shutdown.

00:01:01.000 And make no mistake, Democrats lost.

00:01:03.000 President Trump wins.

00:01:04.000 The Republicans win.

00:01:05.000 Democrats themselves know that they lost.

00:01:07.000 Now, they did get a win out of this.

00:01:09.000 The win that they got was by showing that they are resistant to President Trump's agenda.

00:01:13.000 They did better than they might otherwise have in places like Virginia or Georgia or Mississippi or New Jersey or even in New York.

00:01:21.000 In other words, there is a very rabid base of Democrats who are very interested in resisting President Trump.

00:01:28.000 But the reason that the Democratic dam is breaking regarding the government shutdown is because Democrats who are in purple states recognize that if they continue to aimlessly pound their heads against the Trumpian wall, they are going to lose their Senate seats.

00:01:41.000 That's what actually happened last night.

00:01:43.000 So, according to Axios, which first reported what was going on yesterday, shutdown fatigue triumphed over anger among moderate Democrats in the Senate, which took a crucial procedural step late last night toward ending the country's longest government shutdown, now in day 41.

00:01:56.000 The crucial Democrats folded on the party's biggest shutdown demand.

00:02:00.000 They wanted a one-year extension on those Affordable Care Act tax credits, which you will recall: Obamacare already provides heavy subsidies to people living in states all across the country.

00:02:10.000 The Biden administration during COVID radically increased those subsidies, just as they did with SNAP.

00:02:16.000 And then Republicans were going to let those things expire because the idea is we cannot forever continue to pay additional subsidies.

00:02:23.000 And Democrats lost back on the one big beautiful bill, which did, in fact, cut back those subsidies or allow them to expire.

00:02:30.000 Democrats were attempting to use the fiscal cliff here.

00:02:33.000 They were attempting to use the non-funding of the government as a way to pry open the coffers again to continue those Obamacare subsidies, which, of course, is worth asking at this point.

00:02:43.000 Why Obamacare, which we were told is going to make healthcare cheaper for the federal government, that it was going to make healthcare ever so much more efficient.

00:02:51.000 Why is it that now Democrats are claiming there is a crisis when Obamacare is fully funded, but just doesn't have supplemental funding added on in the COVID era?

00:03:00.000 So it appears that federal workers will get paid, food assistance will flow, and flights should resume normal schedules in time for Thanksgiving.

00:03:06.000 According to Axios, after final passage by the Senate, the bill, which advanced last night on a 60-40 vote, will go to the House where it's expected to pass and then be sent to President Trump for his signature.

00:03:16.000 So what exactly did Democrats get out of this?

00:03:19.000 Well, they got some sort of guarantee that people who were fired during the government shutdown would come back to work.

00:03:25.000 The government will remain funded until late January, and it promises a future vote, but not a guarantee on extending that Obamacare subsidy.

00:03:32.000 Now, again, that's something that Senator Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, had promised weeks ago.

00:03:36.000 That was one of his early offers: okay, here's the deal: you extend the CR, and then we will, in three weeks, have a vote, like an open vote, on whether to extend the Obamacare subsidies.

00:03:46.000 You guys will probably lose because you don't have a majority, and then we'll move on with our lives.

00:03:49.000 Democrats rejected that because they were using the shutdown as leverage to apparently get Republicans to restore funding for these Obamacare supplemental subsidies.

00:04:00.000 Four former governors, Senators Gene Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, which is a state that is very, very purplish.

00:04:06.000 Independent Senator Angus King of Maine, again, a purplish state.

00:04:09.000 And Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, which has a bunch of civilian federal workers, right?

00:04:13.000 Tim Kaine is vulnerable because the more he votes for a government shutdown, the easier it is for his opponents to claim that he is keeping his constituents out of work.

00:04:20.000 They broke the six-week stalemate joining people like Senator John Fetterman, as well as Nevada senators Catherine Cortez-Masto and Jackie Rosen.

00:04:29.000 And the thing that you notice is that all of these people are from purple states.

00:04:32.000 So it's very easy for Senator Chuck Schumer from New York, not a purple state, to vote no on opening the government.

00:04:38.000 Very, very easy for Senator Alex Padilla from California to vote no on opening the government.

00:04:43.000 It's a blue state, or for Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts to do so.

00:04:47.000 She ain't going to lose her seat.

00:04:48.000 But if you're a Democrat and you are looking at the possibility of losing your seat because you're in a purple state, then it was not in your interest for this government shutdown to continue.

00:04:58.000 Angus King said it wasn't working.

00:05:00.000 It's been six weeks.

00:05:01.000 Republicans made it clear they weren't going to discuss the health care issue, the Affordable Care Act tax credits, until the shutdown was over.

00:05:08.000 Gene Shaheen said, when I talk to my constituents in New Hampshire, you know what they say to me?

00:05:11.000 They say, why can't y'all just work together to address the problems that are facing the country?

00:05:16.000 Minority whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, who's the number two Senate Democrat, joined six centrist Democrats and one independent to vote with the 52 Republicans, which, of course, Dick Durbin is in a very blue state, but he understands that he has to provide enough cover for these purple state Democrats to maintain their seats.

00:05:31.000 Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, he did what he always does, which is he basically gave permission for the vote to happen, and then he voted against it.

00:05:38.000 This is his favorite thing to do.

00:05:40.000 He likes to allow things that he's supposed to not allow.

00:05:44.000 He likes to allow those things to happen and then vote against them to show that he really, really opposed them.

00:05:49.000 So we are not clear of the woods just yet.

00:05:52.000 Apparently, the Senate will come in today.

00:05:54.000 Senators are supposed to finish voting on the CR minibus package, but that would require consent from all 100 senators.

00:05:59.000 I cannot imagine they will get that.

00:06:00.000 Instead, I assume that this whole process will be dragged out and then the House will take up the package.

00:06:07.000 The GOP leadership in the House is saying that Congress people should be on notice that within 48 hours, 36 hours, perhaps, they need to be back at the Capitol in order to vote on all of this.

00:06:17.000 Already coming up, the Democrats are super duper angry with the other Democrats, you know, like the sane ones.

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00:08:28.000 Democrats are very, very angry, sort of typical Democrats are very, very angry at this because, of course, they had staked their political stance on the idea that under no circumstances would they reopen the government unless they got what they wanted.

00:08:41.000 So just before the shutdown, for example, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said, we're going to keep it going.

00:08:46.000 This is literally right before the Senate voted in order to shut down the shutdown.

00:08:51.000 Here was Jeffries.

00:08:52.000 Well, we need to end the Trump Republican shutdown, the longest shutdown, of course, in American history.

00:08:58.000 And as Democrats, we've repeatedly maintained that we will sit down anytime, any place with anyone in order to reopen the government to find a bipartisan path forward to enacting a spending agreement that actually meets the needs of the American people,

00:09:13.000 which means trying to drive down the high cost of living because America under Donald Trump and Republican policies has become far too expensive, while at the same time dealing with the Republican health care crisis that threatens to drive up premiums, co-pays, and deductibles to levels that will be unaffordable for working class Americans because of the Republican refusal to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

00:09:39.000 I love that this is somehow a Republican health care crisis when Obamacare was created purely by Democrats.

00:09:45.000 It was subsidized increasingly by Democrats.

00:09:47.000 And so basically, it's a Republican crisis if Democrats can't get the cost curve down.

00:09:52.000 It's a Democratic crisis because Obamacare is a gigantic fail.

00:09:55.000 It is a big fail.

00:09:56.000 It has not made Americans healthier in any measurable way, and it has not bent the cost curve in any serious way.

00:10:03.000 Meanwhile, Democrats, particularly in purple states, were recognizing that the shutdown was getting worse and worse.

00:10:07.000 This is a point that was made by the Treasury Secretary on Sunday morning.

00:10:10.000 He said, the impact of the shutdown continues to get worse.

00:10:16.000 Are we starting to see a permanent impact on the economy?

00:10:20.000 Sure, George.

00:10:21.000 And good to be with you.

00:10:23.000 And we've seen an impact on the economy from day one, but it's getting worse and worse.

00:10:29.000 We had a fantastic economy under President Trump the past two quarters.

00:10:33.000 And now there are estimates that the economy, economic growth for this quarter could be cut by as much as half if the shutdown continues.

00:10:45.000 And this is something that the American people were getting very, very tired of.

00:10:48.000 It was beginning to hit home for people who are not government employees.

00:10:51.000 People are having their flights delayed.

00:10:52.000 For example, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, he said that even if the shutdown ends, it's going to take a while for these kinks to work themselves through the system. 1.00

00:11:01.000 I think the number is going to be substantial.

00:11:04.000 Again, you look at the trend line, Jake, and it's only gotten worse as we've gone through the shutdown.

00:11:09.000 We're day 40 now.

00:11:11.000 And, you know, we saw the largest number of outage of controllers was on Halloween, the 31st.

00:11:17.000 Those numbers were 61.

00:11:20.000 Yesterday it was 81.

00:11:22.000 And the controllers that I've talked to said, a lot of them, we can miss one paycheck.

00:11:25.000 They told me that virtually none of them can miss two paychecks.

00:11:29.000 And so they're going to be confronted with the idea of, as you mentioned, going to get a side job, a second job, to make ends meet, to put food on the table, put gas in the car, to pay their rent.

00:11:39.000 And a lot of these controllers who are young, Jake, They don't make a lot of money.

00:11:44.000 They're just getting into the business of being an air traffic controller.

00:11:47.000 So they make less than $100,000 and they live in a really expensive place.

00:11:50.000 They're the single income earner and they have a kid or two at home.

00:11:55.000 It's very challenging.

00:11:58.000 Okay, so again, he's not wrong about this.

00:12:01.000 And this is what Purple State Democrats were feeling.

00:12:02.000 Now, the problem for Democrats is that we have been highlighting for a while the split in the Democratic Party.

00:12:07.000 And it is a very real split in the Democratic Party between people who actually want to get things done and people who do not want to get things done, between the so-called moderate Democrats, people like presumably Abigail Spanberger in Virginia or John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, and the increasingly progressive, wild-eyed Democrats.

00:12:25.000 And so a lot of these Democrats who broke ranks here are coming under significant fire.

00:12:31.000 According to Fox News, John Fetterman put out a statement saying, after 40 days as a consistent voice against shutting our government down, I voted yes for the 15th time to reopen.

00:12:41.000 I'm sorry to our military snap recipients, government workers and capital police who haven't been paid in weeks.

00:12:45.000 It never should have come to this.

00:12:46.000 It was a failure.

00:12:47.000 Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto of Nevada, she said, I've consistently voted against shutting down the government because I know the pain it's causing working families from TSA agents to government contractors.

00:12:56.000 We must extend the ACA enhanced premium tax credits, but that can't come at the expense of millions of Americans across our country impacted by the shutdown.

00:13:06.000 She said, with the government open, we can focus on passing a full bipartisan budget for 2026.

00:13:11.000 Similar sentiments from Senator Jackie Rosen of Nevada, who narrowly, like very narrowly retained her seat, as you recall, over Sam Brown in Nevada.

00:13:20.000 Very, very tight race there.

00:13:21.000 She barely kept her seat. 0.73

00:13:22.000 The concession we've been able to extract to get closer to extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits is a vote on a bill drafted and negotiated by Senate Democrats.

00:13:29.000 Let me be clear: I will keep fighting like hell to ensure we force Republicans to get this done.

00:13:32.000 But here's the thing: this was a misbegotten strategy from the very beginning.

00:13:36.000 The only thing it got them was a political win because, again, it got Democrats out to the ballot box.

00:13:41.000 That's all.

00:13:42.000 It got a bunch of Democrats out to the, and I guess that is a political win.

00:13:45.000 I mean, right?

00:13:46.000 They did better than they might otherwise have been expected to be in, say, the Virginia House of Delegates.

00:13:50.000 But they were willing to take the American people hostage, politically speaking, in order to get what they wanted here.

00:13:55.000 And this is the first government shutdown that I can remember, that I can recall, in which the government was shut down not in order to exact concessions to lower spending, but in order to exact concessions to increase spending.

00:14:08.000 That's an amazing thing.

00:14:09.000 Saying, I'm not going to fund the government so I can get more funding for the government is a pretty insane proposition.

00:14:14.000 And that's what Democrats were doing here. 0.80

00:14:17.000 Senator Gene Shaheen, she said, with the government reopened, it's time to move quickly to ensure we keep health care premiums from skyrocketing.

00:14:25.000 Senator Tim Kaine, similar statement.

00:14:27.000 The legislation will protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay.

00:14:35.000 Now, again, as I say, Democrats are very, very upset.

00:14:38.000 Many Democrats are really upset.

00:14:40.000 So Democrats are trying to pretend there's no crack within the coalition.

00:14:42.000 Senator Adam Schiff, one of the worst senators in the United States Senate from California, just this Sunday, he was saying there are no cracks in the Democratic coalition.

00:14:49.000 Well, I noticed a few.

00:14:52.000 There have been some talks in the Senate between Republicans and Democrats trying to forge a possible compromise.

00:14:59.000 Is Democratic unity crumbling on this?

00:15:03.000 No, I think what we're seeing is a lot of cracks within Republicans.

00:15:07.000 As you see now, over a dozen Republicans in the House, for example, say they want to fix the Affordable Care Act problems.

00:15:14.000 Those are the cracks I'm seeing.

00:15:16.000 You see cracks, I think, even within the White House as the president acknowledges that their lack of focus on bringing down costs, the shutdown and all its economic impacts are affecting him.

00:15:27.000 They're dragging him down.

00:15:30.000 Okay, so again, this is week T because as you can see, Democrats are very, very, very upset.

00:15:39.000 Immediately upon the announcement that enough Democrats had voted to end the shutdown, that the shutdown will, in fact, come to an end, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, who has her eye on 2028, put out a statement.

00:15:49.000 The average monthly SNAP benefit is $177 a person.

00:15:53.000 The average ACA benefit is up to $550 a person per month.

00:15:57.000 By the way, we should note at this point that that's actually a fair bit of money.

00:16:00.000 I mean, you're talking about 42 million Americans who are on SNAP, and you are talking about tens of millions of Americans who are on ACA.

00:16:08.000 So when you're talking about increasing the federal debt and the deficit, this would be your giant driver right here.

00:16:14.000 People want us to hold the line for a reason, says AOC.

00:16:16.000 This is not a matter of appealing to a base.

00:16:17.000 It's about people's lives.

00:16:19.000 Working people want leaders whose word means something.

00:16:21.000 So apparently what working people want is for Democrats to run headlong at a wall repeatedly in order to demonstrate their fealty to the principal.

00:16:28.000 This, by the way, seems to be the common sort of perspective on government shutdowns.

00:16:32.000 The enthusiastic members of the base constantly want members of their party to run headlong at walls to achieve, in the end, very little.

00:16:41.000 Government shutdowns typically just don't work.

00:16:43.000 They don't tend to work for the party that is out of power.

00:16:46.000 But they do provide an excellent way for politicians to pretend to be uber committed to the cause.

00:16:53.000 So for example, Chris Murphy, who again, I have no idea why Chris Murphy thinks that he is a thing.

00:16:57.000 You're not going to make fetch a thing, my dude.

00:17:00.000 And, you know, as a person with pretty weak facial hair game, I got to say, Chris Murphy makes me look like Matt Walsh.

00:17:07.000 Here's Chris Murphy trying to explain that it's just terrible that they ended the government shutdown.

00:17:13.000 After the elections on Tuesday, it just became absolutely clear that the American people do not want Democrats to be bullied into submission.

00:17:22.000 They want Democrats to fight for their health care.

00:17:24.000 They want Democrats to fight Trump's illegality.

00:17:27.000 Bullies gain power when righteous people yield in the face of their wrongdoing.

00:17:35.000 I didn't want this shutdown.

00:17:38.000 I want it to end, but not at any cost.

00:17:41.000 And of course, I wish that there was a path to saving this democracy and saving people's health care that didn't involve pain.

00:17:50.000 This shutdown hurt.

00:17:52.000 It did.

00:17:54.000 But unfortunately, I don't think there is a way to save this country, to save our democracy, without there being some difficult, hard moments along the way.

00:18:09.000 Okay, so, you know, again, that is an angle.

00:18:13.000 That's an angle.

00:18:14.000 Chris Murphy attacking his own party, suggesting that his own party is insufficiently committed to the fight.

00:18:19.000 Bernie Sanders, of course, has made his entire bones over doing this.

00:18:22.000 This is Bernie Sanders stick.

00:18:24.000 So here it was, old man ranting at Moon, talking about how it's very bad that Republicans and Democrats will work together to fund the government.

00:18:32.000 We need the government to be unfunded so that it will be even more funded forever.

00:18:36.000 There we go.

00:18:39.000 Tonight, eight Democrats voted with the Republicans to allow them to go forward on this continuing resolution.

00:18:47.000 And to my mind, this was a very, very bad vote.

00:18:53.000 What it does, first of all, is it raises health care premiums for over 20 million Americans by doubling, and in some cases, tripling or quadrupling.

00:19:04.000 People can't afford that when we are already paying the highest prices in the world for health care.

00:19:09.000 Number two, it paves the way for 15 million people to be thrown off of Medicaid in the Affordable Care Act study show that will mean that some 50,000 Americans will die every year unnecessarily.

00:19:22.000 And all of that was done to give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1%.

00:19:30.000 Okay, so as per his usual arrangement, all this is nonsense.

00:19:32.000 The idea that 50,000 Americans will die because you didn't vote the way Bernie Sanders wanted you to vote is totally specious.

00:19:38.000 There is no evidence to support this proposition.

00:19:41.000 But in the end, for Sanders, again, it's always about looking for some sort of dragon to slay that never quite gets slain.

00:19:47.000 But if you give him enough power, then maybe the dragon will get slain.

00:19:50.000 Here's Bernie Sanders saying, America wants us to fight against Trump.

00:19:53.000 We do Americans.

00:19:53.000 They what they want.

00:19:54.000 What the thing else is for us to just say, trump, come, trump, and then fight and then lose and then fight tomorrow.

00:20:01.000 As everybody knows, just on Tuesday, we had an election all over this country.

00:20:06.000 And what the election showed is that the American people want us to stand up to Trumpism, to his war against working class people, to his authoritarianism.

00:20:16.000 That is what the American people wanted.

00:20:18.000 But tonight, that is not what happened.

00:20:22.000 So we've got to go forward, do the best that we can to try to protect working class people, to make sure that the United States not only does not throw people off of health care, but ends the absurdity of being the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee healthcare to all people.

00:20:39.000 We got a lot of work to do.

00:20:42.000 But to be honest with you, tonight was not a good night.

00:20:45.000 Thank you.

00:20:47.000 Well, it was a tubbled.

00:20:49.000 Okay, but it was a good night for him because now he gets to divide the Democratic Party even further.

00:20:54.000 Alrighty, coming up, Gavin Newsom, Sounds Off, Zarn Mamdani, AOC, the entire left wing of the Democratic Party up in arms over, you know, people actually going back to work first.

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00:23:23.000 Gavin Newsom doing the same thing.

00:23:24.000 Gavin Newsom says that the Democrats are galvanizing people with the shutdown.

00:23:28.000 This sort of performative politics is very bad for the American people.

00:23:31.000 Unfortunately, it has become dirigor.

00:23:34.000 The more that you yell at your own party, the more that you are perceived as authentic by the segment of the base that wants you to be president, I guess.

00:23:40.000 Here's Gavin Newsom.

00:23:42.000 Bottom line is: the president of the United States canceled a meeting with the two leaders because of public pressure before the government shutdown.

00:23:50.000 He decided to have that meeting.

00:23:52.000 He didn't invite you and others in, which for Donald Trump in and of itself is remarkable.

00:23:56.000 He just instead sent out a true social with Trump 2028 hats.

00:24:00.000 And then he went golfing that weekend before the shutdown, shortly thereafter.

00:24:05.000 He had no interest or energy into avoiding this government shutdown.

00:24:09.000 He has no interest or energy to end it today.

00:24:12.000 He's the president of the United States.

00:24:14.000 As someone who's an executive chief executive of a state larger than 21 state populations combined, the fourth large economy, you have a responsibility in that role to convene to bring people together.

00:24:25.000 That's why there's a government shutdown, period. 0.53

00:24:28.000 Full stop.

00:24:28.000 What the Democrats, though, have done, and I give Jeffries and Schumer tremendous credit, is they've galvanized people of all political stripes, rural, urban, suburban.

00:24:42.000 So, again, this is Gavin Newsom running for president.

00:24:45.000 And this is the thing. 0.93

00:24:46.000 As much as these so-called moderate Democrats are voting with Republicans to end the government shutdown, the reality is their base is captured by this brand of crazy.

00:24:54.000 And this brand of crazy is probably going to decide their next presidential candidate, which is why, again, while Democrats keep saying that Abigail Spanberger is the future of the party, I have some doubts.

00:25:03.000 I have some doubts.

00:25:04.000 I think that Zorin Mondani is far likelier to be the future of the Democratic Party because I've yet to see a moderate movement, a truly moderate movement arise from the Democratic Party anytime in my lifetime.

00:25:16.000 Every time you think they're going to moderate, they move even further to the left.

00:25:19.000 Even when they elect somebody like Joe Biden, who's supposed to be a moderating anti-Bernie influence, he then adopts Bernie's exact plan and starts implementing those at scale.

00:25:29.000 Zorhan Mamdani, by the way, the mask is coming off for Zorn Mamdani.

00:25:31.000 It was all fun and games when he was just talking about affordability.

00:25:35.000 But now, as the Washington Post is pointing out, of all places, by the way, got to point out, the Washington Post op-ed page seems to have changed their orientation pretty significantly since Jeff Bezos made some changes over there.

00:25:45.000 It makes it one of the more interesting reads now.

00:25:48.000 According to the Washington Post editorial board, a new era of class warfare has begun in New York, and no one is more excited than General Lissimo Zorin Mondani.

00:25:56.000 Witnessed the mayor-elect's change of character since his Tuesday election victory.

00:25:59.000 Momdani ran an upbeat campaign with a nice guy demeanor and perpetual smile, papering over a long history of divisive and demagogic statements.

00:26:06.000 New Yorkers periodically checking in on politics could understandably believe he simply wanted to bring the city together and make it more affordable.

00:26:12.000 That interpretation became much harder after his victory speech.

00:26:15.000 Across 23 angry minutes laced with identity politics and seething with resentment, Momdani abandoned his cool disposition and made clear his view of politics isn't about unity.

00:26:24.000 It isn't about letting people build better lives for themselves.

00:26:26.000 It's about identifying class enemies, from landlords who take advantage of tenants to the bosses who exploit workers and then crushing them.

00:26:33.000 His goal is not to increase wealth, but to dole it out to favored groups.

00:26:36.000 The word growth didn't appear in the speech, but President Donald Trump garnered eight mentions.

00:26:41.000 In the days since winning, Mamdani's favorite word has become mandate.

00:26:44.000 He won decisively and now he wants to pursue his agenda.

00:26:46.000 From the rent freeze to free child care and buses, yet as mayor of New York, his control over taxes and transportation is limited.

00:26:51.000 He needs approval from the state to raise taxes.

00:26:53.000 His transition team includes several New York political insiders who understand how to pull the levers of power.

00:27:00.000 So it'll be interesting to see whether Mamdani gets away with it.

00:27:03.000 By the way, it is fascinating to see.

00:27:05.000 Mamdani's first move was to go to Puerto Rico as mayor of New York, where he promptly went to a mosque and people chanted Allahu Akbar for him.

00:27:16.000 Allahu Akbar.

00:27:20.000 We are so proud of you together, so all yours.

00:27:23.000 Takbir! Allahu Akbar! Takbir! Allahu Akbar! Takbir! Allahu Akbar!

00:27:30.000 And the guy standing next to him is wearing some sort of garment that has on it the word Palestine with the Palestinian flag.

00:27:39.000 I mean, Mamdani was running for mayor because that is his number one issue.

00:27:42.000 It always was his number one issue from the time that he was young.

00:27:45.000 Yeah, the fact is that everything else is sort of slathering over the Students for Justice in Palestine politics with a Marxist patina.

00:27:52.000 Meanwhile, the biggest problem for Mamdani and for the Democratic Party is which way does the state of New York go?

00:27:57.000 So it'll be fascinating because the state of New York is now a microcosm of Democratic politics.

00:28:02.000 Which way does the state of New York go?

00:28:04.000 Toward Mamdani or toward Kathy Hochul.

00:28:07.000 So Kathy Hochl is the governor of the state.

00:28:09.000 She is running a very, very tight race right now with the newly announced Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who's now the newly announced Republican candidate for the governorship in New York. 1.00

00:28:18.000 Very tight race.

00:28:19.000 And she has to, on the one hand, fend off Stefanik, who's critical of her, and on the other hand, fend off Zorhan Mamdani, who wants to radically increase taxes in the state.

00:28:27.000 And here she was saying, well, no, we're not going to do what Momdani wants.

00:28:30.000 We'll see how long that lasts, because if she loses that Democratic base, it's quite possible she loses the election as well. 0.98

00:28:37.000 I cannot set forth a plan right now that takes money out of a system that relies on the fares of the buses and the subways.

00:28:46.000 But can we find a path to make it more affordable for people who need help?

00:28:50.000 Of course we can.

00:28:51.000 And so child care, though.

00:28:52.000 Child care, I already committed to.

00:28:54.000 So we'll be on a path to get there because I'm committed to this as mom governor.

00:28:59.000 I get it.

00:29:00.000 But also to do it statewide right now, it's about $15 billion, the entire amount of my reserves.

00:29:07.000 Okay, so again, she is stuck.

00:29:09.000 She's stuck in a rock in a hard place. 0.97

00:29:10.000 Meanwhile, Mamdani's hypocrisy knows no bounds.

00:29:13.000 So Zar Mamdani, of course, is reliant on other people's money, which presumably is why his victory party in New York City, according to the New York Post, was charging $22 for espresso martini coolers, $15 for glasses of Riesling white wine, and for water, for water, like $13 a pop, $10 or $12 a pop for hot dogs.

00:29:34.000 I mean, like, again, the socialism, it costs a lot of money, it turns out.

00:29:38.000 Joining us online is Senator Rick Scott.

00:29:40.000 He, of course, was elected to the Senate in 2018 from my great state of Florida.

00:29:44.000 And he has been all over this story broken by the New York Post originally about the Zar Mamdani mayoral campaign and how it was powered, at least in part, by foreign influences.

00:29:54.000 Senator Scott, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:29:56.000 Really appreciate it.

00:29:57.000 Does it make you mad?

00:29:59.000 You know, we have laws in this country.

00:30:02.000 Follow the law, okay?

00:30:04.000 Get elected the right way.

00:30:06.000 So I think what we have to do on all these things is make sure people do the right thing, they follow the law.

00:30:13.000 And if they don't, they need to be investigated.

00:30:16.000 So, what exactly is the allegation here and how does it violate the law?

00:30:21.000 Well, we can't take contributions from foreigners. 1.00

00:30:25.000 And so, and foreigners are not supposed to influence our elections. 0.91

00:30:28.000 And so, when you get a donation, you have to look at who it is and you shouldn't be accepting donations from foreigners. 1.00

00:30:34.000 And it sure appears they did.

00:30:35.000 Now, after the election, they're sending the money back.

00:30:38.000 But the other thing we have to look at is we have to look at these.

00:30:40.000 I think we need to really look at these foreign organizations that went to get out the vote and things like that and look at the legality of that is also.

00:30:48.000 Because it's not just money into your campaign, it's these groups that come in that are foreign, foreign-backed, or trying to influence our elections.

00:30:56.000 They should not be able to influence our elections.

00:31:00.000 So, Senator Scott, you know, I assume here we're talking about the nonprofit DESIS rising up and moving, call itself drum, and its political arm drum beats.

00:31:08.000 What apparently, according to the New York Post, they've built the most effective field operation in city politics in recent memory.

00:31:14.000 So, they describe themselves as essentially a domestic program that, sure, it's filled with South Asian and Indo-Caribbean immigrants, but it's essentially an American organization.

00:31:24.000 You seem to suggest, and the New York Post seems to suggest that there is some untruth to that.

00:31:29.000 I think we've got to get the facts.

00:31:31.000 Let's get the facts.

00:31:32.000 Tell us who their donors are and what did they do.

00:31:35.000 Right.

00:31:36.000 And, you know, so if, you know, look, if it's legitimate, it's legitimate.

00:31:40.000 Prove it's legitimate.

00:31:41.000 But it doesn't look pretty bad.

00:31:44.000 And, you know, Ben, the other thing, the other thing when you're in politics, what you don't want to do is do things that look bad.

00:31:50.000 So if you have nothing to hide, put the information out there and let people make a good decision.

00:31:56.000 So obviously there's been a lot of suspicion also about the gaming of algorithms surrounding Zara Mamdani.

00:32:01.000 I know that there's been a lot of concern that particularly on TikTok and also on X, that there is foreign bot-driven influence regarding Mamdani.

00:32:08.000 Have you heard anything about that?

00:32:10.000 Well, it's what you read, but look, it's clear.

00:32:13.000 Okay.

00:32:14.000 TikTok is controlled by the Communist Party of China.

00:32:18.000 It's anti-America.

00:32:20.000 It's anti-Our way of life. 0.91

00:32:22.000 It's a despicable government.

00:32:24.000 Okay.

00:32:25.000 They're using every influence they can.

00:32:27.000 So the problem with TikTok is if you look at, if you, if you, you can do all the analysis you want, if you look at TikTok versus Instagram and look at how they treat the Tinnerman Square, how they treat, you know, Trump, how they, you know, how they do all this stuff, it's clearly anti-American values.

00:32:45.000 And Daily Wire reports, quote, independent analyses show that networks manipulated engagements to summon foreign audiences to Mamdani on Instagram.

00:32:51.000 By the end of his campaign, fewer than 50% of his online engagements from viral posts came from American users, which is a complete reversal from the clear domestic majority at the start on TikTok, content favorable to Momdani and hostile to Andrew Cuomo search, 55% beyond organic reach.

00:33:07.000 And apparently, again, as we mentioned, on the ground, the patterns seem to be identical, that there are foreign political movements that apparently have been, at the very least, they appear to have been influencing operations inside the United States.

00:33:18.000 That requires more explication.

00:33:19.000 So, Senator Scott, what's the next step in investigating all of this?

00:33:23.000 Well, number one, we need to look into it.

00:33:25.000 Number two, let's follow the law.

00:33:27.000 TikTok has to be sold.

00:33:27.000 Okay.

00:33:29.000 It has to be controlled.

00:33:30.000 It can't be not.

00:33:31.000 It cannot have any control by the Communist Party of China.

00:33:34.000 None.

00:33:35.000 That's the law.

00:33:35.000 Can have none.

00:33:36.000 And that needs to get done as quickly as possible.

00:33:41.000 Well, that is Senator Rick Scott from Florida.

00:33:44.000 He's all over this particular story, and we will keep tabs on it as it unfolds.

00:33:47.000 Senator Scott, thanks so much for the time.

00:33:49.000 Ben, I'm glad you're in Florida.

00:33:51.000 And thanks for your voice, by the way.

00:33:54.000 Thank you.

00:33:56.000 One of the problems here is just for the American body politic, because one of the things that we have seen here, look, I'm pointing out the problems inside the Democratic Party.

00:34:03.000 Obviously, we've spent a lot of time talking about the problems inside the Republican Party.

00:34:07.000 But the American people are deeply unhappy with our politics right now, like truly unhappy with our politics.

00:34:13.000 And I think there is a reason for that.

00:34:14.000 And the reason is everyone is lying to them and they are buying the lies.

00:34:18.000 And then it turns out the consequences of those lies do not result in people awakening.

00:34:22.000 They just result in people turning to the next grifter who walks up the block.

00:34:27.000 I point this out because there's an interesting Wall Street Journal piece today looking at the polling data, quote, U.S. elections are sending a consistent message.

00:34:35.000 Americans are deeply frustrated with their government's inability to solve problems.

00:34:39.000 The latest example arrived Tuesday in a rebuke of President Trump as voters rallied to Democrats in hopes they can better address affordability and other major challenges.

00:34:46.000 That pushback was delivered just 12 months after the president swept all seven of the top battleground states in a show of Republican dominance.

00:34:53.000 The rapid-fire swing in fortunes for both parties is the result of a narrowly divided nation quick to throw out elected officials seen as slow to improve their lives.

00:35:00.000 To many Americans, government is literally not working, as evidenced by a federal shutdown that has now stretched into the longest in U.S. history.

00:35:08.000 So if you look at the last couple of decades, control of Congress in the White House has seesawed between the parties significantly more frequently, with the Senate, House, and White House all changing hands four times.

00:35:18.000 Propelling the shift is the fact that many voters want bigger changes from Washington.

00:35:23.000 Nationwide in the 2024 election, according to the journal, roughly three in 10 voters said they wanted total upheaval in how the country is run.

00:35:32.000 Now, there is a fascinating graphic that I want to show you about public trust in government, which is now near its historic lows.

00:35:40.000 It is down in the 20% range.

00:35:44.000 So, take a look at this.

00:35:46.000 Back in the mid-1960s, early 1960s, trust in government was very, very high, like up near 80%.

00:35:54.000 And then, as government radically grew over the course of the great society programs from LBJ and in the era that followed, the Nixon and Carter era, it absolutely nosedived all the way from almost 80% all the way down to below 30%.

00:36:10.000 That's as the government grew.

00:36:11.000 It's as the government became quote unquote more helpful to your lives, as the government intervened more and more and spent more and more.

00:36:17.000 That is not a coincidence.

00:36:19.000 As government grows, people expect more from the government.

00:36:22.000 And when the government fails to deliver, they get disappointed.

00:36:26.000 So during the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan said the government is not going to fix your problems, you're going to fix your problems.

00:36:31.000 And I'm going to get government out of the way.

00:36:33.000 Trust in government went up again.

00:36:36.000 I can see it in the polling data.

00:36:37.000 It went from about 30% into the mid-40s.

00:36:41.000 And then near the end of the 1980s, it started to decline again.

00:36:44.000 It declined all the way until the mid-1990s.

00:36:48.000 And then in the mid-1990s, something happened.

00:36:50.000 What happened in the mid-1990s?

00:36:52.000 The Gingrich Revolution.

00:36:53.000 Bill Clinton started to make deals to cut the size and scope of government, including on things like welfare reform.

00:36:59.000 And then trust in government started to go up again.

00:37:02.000 It started to increase all the way up to 50% by about 2000.

00:37:08.000 And then what happened?

00:37:08.000 The government started to radically grow again under George W. Bush.

00:37:11.000 People forget George W. Bush was not a fiscal conservative.

00:37:14.000 George W. Bush was a quote unquote compassionate conservative.

00:37:18.000 And leaving aside the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he spent an awful lot of money.

00:37:23.000 It was he who expanded Medicare Part D.

00:37:25.000 It was he who expanded the No Child Left Behind Act.

00:37:28.000 It was he who did steel tariffs.

00:37:30.000 And the trust in government continued to decline until finally it seemed to crater out around 2010 in the aftermath of the Great Recession at around 20%.

00:37:41.000 And it has been there basically ever since.

00:37:44.000 So for people who are big proponents of big government, I have a question.

00:37:46.000 Explain this chart.

00:37:48.000 Why is it that there seems to be an inverse relationship between the size and growth of government and trust in government?

00:37:53.000 If government is so amazing at everything, if government is so great at everything, why is it that in the eras where government is cut, trust goes up?

00:37:59.000 And in the era where government grows, trust goes down.

00:38:03.000 Why is that happening?

00:38:05.000 This is a deeply important point, really important, because you have politicians on both sides who are fully incapable of just saying the truth.

00:38:13.000 They're afraid the American people will get angry at them if they say the truth.

00:38:15.000 The truth is, the vast majority of problems in the lives of Americans are not solvable by the government.

00:38:23.000 There are many problems created by the government, skewing of markets.

00:38:27.000 If you look at a chart of the products in American life that have grown more expensive over the course of the last 30 years and the products that have grown less expensive, significantly less expensive over the course of the last 30 years, something shocking occurs.

00:38:39.000 The products that have grown more expensive are all subsidized by the government.

00:38:44.000 Education, college education, healthcare, health insurance, right?

00:38:49.000 All these things have continued to go up because they are subsidized by the government and the government skews the markets.

00:38:55.000 And then there are the everyday products you use, like your TV, like your phone, right?

00:39:01.000 These things have all gone down.

00:39:03.000 Your dishwasher, all these things are less expensive and better.

00:39:05.000 Why?

00:39:06.000 Because markets work to make things cheaper and more plentiful.

00:39:09.000 And government makes things significantly more expensive by skewing the incentive structures.

00:39:14.000 And yet no politician will say this.

00:39:15.000 Every politician is doing a version of what Zorhan Mamdani did in New York.

00:39:19.000 It's why you see people on the right who are praising Zor Madison.

00:39:22.000 Well, he said affordability a lot.

00:39:23.000 I hear this a lot from people on the right.

00:39:26.000 He did talk about affordability.

00:39:27.000 And if President Trump just talks more about affordability, that means that he'll win.

00:39:31.000 No, it doesn't.

00:39:32.000 The party in power is going to be blamed for lack of affordability.

00:39:36.000 The party out of power is going to claim that if you gave them power, they will solve the affordability problem by having more power.

00:39:43.000 This is a race to the bottom in terms of centralized government control.

00:39:46.000 But here's the thing: it doesn't get better.

00:39:47.000 It doesn't get better because if each party pledges that they will expand government in ways and times of their own choosing, and then they fail, and then the other party just does the same thing, then trusting government is going to continue to crater.

00:40:02.000 It's going to continue to go down.

00:40:04.000 We need someone, for the love of Mike, we need someone to just say the truth.

00:40:09.000 I can't fix a lot of these problems.

00:40:12.000 You can fix many of these problems.

00:40:13.000 The best thing that I can do is get out of your way, deregulation, lower taxes, less government interventionism in your life.

00:40:21.000 Now, again, this doesn't mean getting rid of the benefits immediately that people need to live on because they've been made dependent on the government.

00:40:29.000 But yes, transitional plans away from those things would be a good thing because otherwise they will eat our federal budget, as indeed they already have.

00:40:35.000 If you wonder how we got to a $38 trillion debt, that is how we got to a $38 trillion debt.

00:40:41.000 The convenient thing is to blame discretionary spending.

00:40:43.000 It is not, in fact, discretionary spending in the main.

00:40:46.000 It is the fact that people constantly come in and say they're going to solve all your problems if you just give them more money and more power and more centralized control.

00:40:53.000 And then people, this is why people are ping-ponging between the parties, because Republicans say that and then they don't fix it.

00:40:58.000 And then Democrats say it and they don't fix it.

00:41:00.000 And then Republicans say it and they don't fix it.

00:41:03.000 Well, at some point, the American people are going to have to get wise to this political grift.

00:41:07.000 Now, Peter Thiel, he did an interview at the Free Press, pretty interesting, in which he was talking about capitalism in ways I didn't particularly like.

00:41:14.000 But one thing he said is that we are in what he called a political boom market.

00:41:17.000 And I think that's right because we now live in a time where people so little trust themselves and risk-taking and the free markets that they're willing to toss their power at any demagogue who will tell them that he can solve their problems.

00:41:30.000 And guess what?

00:41:31.000 Your problems ain't getting solved this way.

00:41:33.000 They are not.

00:41:34.000 Zora Mamdani is not going to make your world more affordable. 1.00

00:41:37.000 Tariffs, centralized government policy will not make your world more affordable.

00:41:41.000 They will not.

00:41:44.000 Signing giant stimulus checks is not going to make your world more affordable.

00:41:47.000 We've tried it.

00:41:47.000 It fails.

00:41:49.000 You know what makes your world more affordable?

00:41:51.000 People being left alone to produce and trade and live the free lives that they were guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

00:41:58.000 That's what makes things better and more affordable.

00:41:59.000 It's why America is the envy of the world.

00:42:01.000 Every other country on earth tries this centralized government policy junk and has been trying it for legitimately centuries, going all the way back to mercantilism.

00:42:08.000 The notion that if we just try it hard enough this time, it's going to fix it.

00:42:11.000 I see zero evidence that that is in fact the case.

00:42:14.000 All righty, in a moment, we'll get to the state of the economy.

00:42:17.000 Can the Trump administration really lower the prices?

00:42:17.000 What is going to change?

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00:43:40.000 Point your toes west.

00:43:41.000 Now, the reason I'm talking here about the sort of model of politics that has broken into the mainstream and now seems to be rising on both sides is because it's not going to fix our problems.

00:43:50.000 It's not going to fix our problems.

00:43:52.000 If you actually want to bring down prices, if you actually want affordability, we know the things that make affordability happen here on planet Earth.

00:43:58.000 They are free markets, deregulation.

00:44:01.000 They are free trade, comparative advantage.

00:44:04.000 That's what brings prices down.

00:44:05.000 Now, that's not going to affect everybody equally beneficially.

00:44:08.000 Some people are going to do a lot better than others.

00:44:10.000 Some people, presumably, will be the victims of what Joseph Schumpeter, the economist, called creative destruction.

00:44:17.000 Every time you have a new industry or a more competitive business that comes up, somebody loses in that particular zero-sum game.

00:44:23.000 But the thing about the market is that it has many iterations.

00:44:26.000 And so even if you lose in that particular game, you then get to come back and do it again and become even more competitive.

00:44:33.000 That is why free markets always drive prices down.

00:44:35.000 It's why when there are people out there who are critical of quote-unquote luxury products, we have to understand that everything that you now consider to be a necessity, a staple of your life, was once a luxury product.

00:44:46.000 The food that you eat at your table is significantly more diverse than the food that your great-grandparents ate.

00:44:52.000 Why?

00:44:52.000 Because at one point it was a luxury for rich people, and then it turned out a lot of people wanted it.

00:44:56.000 And there was competition to bring it to the people and the prices went down.

00:44:59.000 That was true of cars.

00:44:59.000 It's true of microwaves.

00:45:01.000 It's true of centralized air conditioning.

00:45:02.000 It is true of your cell phone.

00:45:04.000 Literally every product that you use was once a luxury product.

00:45:08.000 It's why when you go back, we go back and watch the old movie Wall Street and you see Gordon Gekka walking around with a cell phone, everybody's like, ooh, and it looks like a shoebox that he's holding to his head.

00:45:16.000 And now every single person, including the poorest American, has a cell phone.

00:45:20.000 Hey, that's what free markets do. 0.89

00:45:21.000 But it seems that no one is even willing to argue for free markets these days anymore.

00:45:27.000 And then why are we surprised when we disappoint?

00:45:30.000 Because if you keep using a screwdriver to try and knock in the nail, you're unlikely to be successful.

00:45:37.000 So there's a lot of angst on the Republican side of the aisle about the state of the economy and also about the Trump affordability issues.

00:45:45.000 Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessett, who of course understands capitalism better than I do.

00:45:49.000 Scott Bessett, he says that we are going to bring prices down over the next years and months.

00:45:53.000 I can tell you, what we're not going to do is what happened under the Biden administration, where the administration and the media gaslit everyone and said, oh, you know, there's a vibe session.

00:46:06.000 You don't understand how good you have it.

00:46:09.000 And what happened then was we had the worst inflation 40 or 50 years, 22, 23%, but the basket of goods and services for working Americans was up more than 30%.

00:46:21.000 And what we're seeing is we had to stop the increase first.

00:46:26.000 Now we are starting to see prices level off, come down.

00:46:30.000 Gasoline is down.

00:46:31.000 Interest rates are down.

00:46:32.000 So mortgages are down.

00:46:34.000 And I think we are making substantial progress on that.

00:46:38.000 And I think over the coming months and the next year, prices are going to come down.

00:46:46.000 Okay, well, that may very well be true.

00:46:48.000 I hope that that's true.

00:46:49.000 I think one of the ways that prices probably come down is if sometime next year, when the Supreme Court rules on tariffs and probably strikes down a lot of the tariffs, the markets open up again, which would be very, very good.

00:46:59.000 But I'll tell you what's not going to bring prices down is things like proposing 50-year mortgages.

00:47:03.000 So President Trump over the weekend decided that he was going to promote what he called 50-year mortgages.

00:47:09.000 That President FDR had promoted the 30-year mortgage.

00:47:13.000 And under President Trump, there would be a 50-year mortgage.

00:47:16.000 Okay, the problem, of course, of the 50-year mortgage is that it skews the risk incentive cycle.

00:47:20.000 What a 50-year mortgage actually will do is create a bubble in real estate as more and more people take out a 50-year mortgage on which they will presumably pay tons and tons and tons of interest.

00:47:31.000 And then don't worry, 20 years down the road, everybody will complain about the interest payments that they are making and how much more they are paying than the actual principal.

00:47:37.000 And then we'll have a 75-year mortgage.

00:47:39.000 And meanwhile, the prices will continue to go up.

00:47:41.000 That doesn't generate actual lowering of prices.

00:47:45.000 What generates actual, again, when you have a supply-demand problem, increasing the demand without increasing the supply does not actually lower the price.

00:47:52.000 It increases the price.

00:47:54.000 If you want to increase the supply and lower the demand, or just increase the supply and maintain the same demand, or even increase supply faster than demand, you will get lowered prices.

00:48:05.000 For the same reason, when President Trump says that he is going to push out a $2,000 tariff dividend to Americans, that the amount of money the federal government has received in via the tariffs allows for the payment of $2,000 to every American family.

00:48:19.000 That is inflationary.

00:48:20.000 It's a stimulus check that is going to increase prices because that's just helicopter money. 0.98

00:48:24.000 Helicopter money means that everyone has more money in their pocket, and then they take that money and they spend that money, and then the prices temporarily go up.

00:48:31.000 None of this is counter-inflationary. 0.97

00:48:34.000 President Trump put out a statement saying people that are against tariffs are fools. 0.91

00:48:37.000 We are now, I assume that means Milton Friedman and Frederick Hayek and Ludwig Vlamis. 0.84

00:48:44.000 We are now the richest, most respected country in the world with almost no inflation and a record stock market price.

00:48:48.000 401k is our highest ever.

00:48:50.000 We are taking in trillions of dollars and we'll soon begin paying down our enormous debt, $37 trillion.

00:48:54.000 Record investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place.

00:48:57.000 A dividend of at least $2,000 a person, not including high-income people, will be paid to everyone.

00:49:02.000 Well, Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, is like, well, I don't know about that $2,000 dividend thing.

00:49:06.000 He also promises $500.

00:49:07.000 No, no, no.

00:49:08.000 A dividend of at least $2,000 a person, not including high-income people.

00:49:12.000 How is he going to pay that dividend of $2,000 a person?

00:49:16.000 It's not about taking in the revenue.

00:49:17.000 It's about rebalancing.

00:49:19.000 And the revenue occurs early on.

00:49:23.000 And then as we rebalance and the jobs come home, then it becomes domestic tax revenue.

00:49:29.000 The $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms and lots of ways, George.

00:49:34.000 You know, it could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president's agenda.

00:49:41.000 No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, deductibility of auto loans.

00:49:51.000 Okay, so, you know, again, yeah, the fact that they have to keep walking this back.

00:49:55.000 Centralized government policy is not going to fix the affordability problem.

00:49:58.000 It isn't.

00:49:59.000 Historically, it has not.

00:50:01.000 Name a massive government intervention that made the cost curve go down.

00:50:05.000 Really, name like one.

00:50:07.000 Please explain how, unless what you're talking about is so thoroughly screwing the economy that you end up with a deflationary cycle like the 1930s.

00:50:15.000 That you could theoretically do.

00:50:16.000 You could really screw up the economy so badly that demand drops off a cliff, and then you have people burning their grain in their backyard to artificially inflate the prices.

00:50:24.000 I guess I suppose you could do that.

00:50:27.000 Scott Besson was trying to explain President Trump's tariffs on Sunday as well.

00:50:30.000 He said the goal is to rebalance trade.

00:50:32.000 It's completely consistent that the revenues come in at the beginning, then as we rebalance, which is the goal of this, bring back high-paid manufacturing jobs to the U.S., then it will then morph into domestic tax revenues.

00:50:47.000 You know, President Trump has consistently fought for the American worker, and we are seeing trillions of investments in the U.S. that would not have occurred without the tariffs.

00:51:02.000 Well, you know, again, I have doubts, and we'll find out if the American people feel the same way.

00:51:07.000 It turns out that the classical economic thoughts about tariffs, in my view, tend to be correct.

00:51:13.000 And we'll see how this all pays off. 0.98

00:51:14.000 Meanwhile, the media are indeed complete trash. 1.00

00:51:17.000 They have been complete trash for a very long time. 1.00

00:51:19.000 This became extraordinarily clear. 0.99

00:51:21.000 And I mean, this is really an amazing thing.

00:51:23.000 Apparently, the director general of the BBC resigned on Sunday amid scandal after the British state broadcaster shared doctored footage of President Trump speaking on January 6th.

00:51:32.000 This is according to the New York Post.

00:51:33.000 Tim Davey, who's headed up the BBC for five years, said he was taking ultimate responsibility for recent mistakes made in a statement that was published by the BBC.

00:51:43.000 Apparently, that came after it was revealed that their flagship news program, Panorama, spliced together two separate clips of President Trump talking on January 6th, 2021, implying he had directly told his supporters to storm the Capitol, which, of course, is not true.

00:51:58.000 The program, which was aired one week before the 2024 presidential election, completely misled viewers by showing Trump telling supporters he was going to walk with them to the Capitol and fight like hell.

00:52:07.000 But his full quote was that he would walk with supporters to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

00:52:12.000 But then the BBC cut out the part that was relevant to make it sound like he was going to lead them in storming the Capitol.

00:52:19.000 Apparently, senior executives at the BBC ignored and dismissed a series of serious internal complaints, according to a 19-page memo.

00:52:26.000 And now the head of the BBC is gone, which is perfectly appropriate, but it demonstrates the lengths to which the media tried to go in 2024 in order to prop up the ailing candidacy of Kamala Harris.

00:52:37.000 Pretty impressive, impressive stuff.

00:52:39.000 Joining me on the line is six-time Emmy Award-winning actor Kelsey Grammer.

00:52:43.000 Of course, you know him from a wide variety of amazing shows, ranging from Frasier to Cheers and so much more.

00:52:49.000 He has a brand new movie that just came out.

00:52:50.000 It's called The Christmas Ring.

00:52:51.000 Kelsey, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:52:53.000 I really appreciate it.

00:52:56.000 It's a pleasure.

00:52:57.000 Thanks.

00:52:59.000 So why don't you tell me the story of The Christmas Ring, at least the premise of it, and why people should go see it.

00:53:05.000 Sure.

00:53:06.000 The Christmas Ring, we didn't reinvent the wheel.

00:53:08.000 Karen Kingsbury has written a lovely, lovely tale about redemption, forgiveness, love, looking for love, loss, a bit of grief, and you throw in some Christmas miracle stuff and the idea that we are children of God.

00:53:22.000 We're all children of God and we all look for the blessings of Christmas.

00:53:26.000 You know, the redemption story and love is what defines it all.

00:53:34.000 It's for kids.

00:53:36.000 It's for anybody that still cares about just their love and their life and their family.

00:53:42.000 And it's also, it honors the veterans in quite a way.

00:53:44.000 And it's premiering on Veterans Day 11, 11, 11, which is, you know, 11th hour, 11th day, Veterans Day.

00:53:54.000 So let's talk about that angle of it because it really is quite beautiful.

00:53:57.000 Apparently, the film features 100 background actors who are active or retired military members.

00:54:02.000 Is that right?

00:54:05.000 Yeah, and they featured them in the scene.

00:54:07.000 There's a scene at the end toward the end of the movie where they feature in a tribute to those who serve.

00:54:14.000 And yeah, it's actually quite lovely.

00:54:15.000 There was even a World War II veteran among them who I think is 102 years old named James Daniels.

00:54:21.000 And it's a cool thing.

00:54:23.000 I mean, my own family, my granddad served in World War II, and he would have been 122 right now instead of 102, but he was quite a guy and their lives were defined by service.

00:54:36.000 And that was an interesting thing.

00:54:39.000 Great to be raised by him.

00:54:42.000 It does seem as though there is a revival that's happening right now in Hollywood, or at least outside of Hollywood, in terms of material that actually is friendly to conservatives, that isn't looking down at conservatives, and that actually is quality-driven as opposed to sort of just pandering.

00:54:57.000 What do you make of that?

00:55:00.000 Right.

00:55:00.000 Well, you know what?

00:55:02.000 I look on it as a kind of a, it's about time groundswell of A rebirth of a sense of faith and the sort of the consistent interweaving of both conservative principles, which is basically to save what's good about us and faith, which is also that saves what's good about us.

00:55:22.000 And I think those two things are twinned in the new movement.

00:55:27.000 And I do think there is a sense of entertainment.

00:55:29.000 People finally caught on that these people have money too, and that they'd like to see some entertainment that's geared toward them at the same time.

00:55:40.000 Well, Kelsey, I would be remiss if I didn't ask.

00:55:42.000 As per one of my producers, he's very excited also, just as a side note, that you are going to be in Adventures Doomsday.

00:55:47.000 So that's very exciting news as well for a lot of folks.

00:55:52.000 It was very exciting news for me because, you know, 20 years ago, I did it and we premiered the film in Cannes.

00:55:58.000 And all the producers came up to me and said, we've just cracked this whole new idea for the ongoing series.

00:56:03.000 And I thought, I finally, in a big franchise, I've made it.

00:56:06.000 And they said, we're going younger, and you guys are all gone.

00:56:11.000 So I thought, oh, well, that's sort of a bit crestfallen after that.

00:56:15.000 But it was a fun kind of, you know, a dish best served cold when they came back 20 years later.

00:56:22.000 And I did a little revival.

00:56:23.000 I did a little appearance on what was called the Marvels, and people really responded to it.

00:56:30.000 It's been great.

00:56:30.000 I've been going around the world there, actually.

00:56:33.000 And people go, oh my God, you're back, you're beast.

00:56:37.000 So it's been really fun.

00:56:40.000 Well, that is Kelsey Grammar.

00:56:42.000 You can go check out his brand new movie again.

00:56:44.000 It'll be available in theaters on Veterans Day.

00:56:44.000 It's coming out.

00:56:47.000 It's titled The Christmas Ring.

00:56:48.000 Definitely worth the watch.

00:56:48.000 Kelsey, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:56:51.000 Thank you.

00:56:52.000 Nice to talk with you, Ben.

00:56:54.000 All righty, folks.

00:56:55.000 Coming up, we're going to jump into a little bit of foreign policy and a shocking story about apparently discriminatory hiring at Coca-Cola.

00:57:02.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:57:04.000 If you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro.

00:57:06.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 10, 2025

Will The Shutdown FINALLY End?!

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