The Ben Shapiro Show - WINNING: Trump’s EPA WRECKS The Radical Green Agenda

00:00:00.000 All righty, folks.

00:00:00.000 Jam-packed show as always, brand new GDP news.

00:00:03.000 Very good for the President of the United States.

00:00:06.000 A big quarter plus.

00:00:07.000 We're joined by the Secretary of Energy to discuss an enormous move by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department, really, one of the biggest moves in regulatory history.

00:00:17.000 And we'll get to the breakdown of the Democratic Party, Senator Corey Booker, bringing out those angry eyes yet again.

00:00:21.000 But first, This is it, my first book in four years.

00:00:25.000 Behold, it is called Lions and Scavengers.

00:00:27.000 It's about strength, cowardice, and the fight we are all in on, whether we like it or not.

00:00:32.000 Go to dailywire.com/slash Ben to order from any retailer, including Amazon, Walmart, Target, Barnes Noble, and of course, from the Daily Wire.

00:00:39.000 That's the only place signed copies are available.

00:00:41.000 Again, that's dailywire.com/slash Ben, my brand new book.

00:00:44.000 I think it's really important.

00:00:45.000 You're going to love it, and it's really important that your kids read it.

00:00:48.000 Lions and scavengers, available everywhere, September 2nd.

00:00:50.000 Well, huge news for the Trump administration.

00:00:53.000 According to the Commerce Department, U.S. GDP, which is, of course, the value of all goods and services produced across the country in the sort of final market effect, rose at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted 3.0% annual rate in the second quarter, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:01:08.000 That is wildly exceeding expectations from economists who thought that it was going to be 2.3%.

00:01:14.000 Those are economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal.

00:01:16.000 It followed a first quarter where GDP shrank at a 0.5% annual rate because businesses were loading up on imports to get ahead of the Trump administration's anticipated tariffs.

00:01:26.000 And again, this is despite all of the economic uncertainty surrounding the tariffs.

00:01:29.000 This is despite all of the foreign policy conflagrations ranging from the Middle East to Ukraine.

00:01:35.000 Consumer spending, the engine of the U.S. economy, increased at a 1.4% pace, picking up from the first quarter as a steady labor market underpinned households spending power.

00:01:44.000 Consumer spending was offset by weaker business spending.

00:01:48.000 So it is certainly possible to read this as very, very optimistic news for the Trump administration.

00:01:54.000 It is also possible to read this as an inflection point where things could theoretically go the other way, where businesses are spending less, consumers are sort of lagging at this point as businesses spend less in anticipation of future tariffs or an economic slowdown.

00:02:06.000 We're still going to have to see hiring numbers, for example.

00:02:09.000 Are businesses loading up right now?

00:02:10.000 Are they spending less because they understand that prices are about to go up and that consumer spending they expect is going to go down?

00:02:18.000 It's sort of unclear where things go.

00:02:20.000 As the Wall Street Journal points out, consumers and businesses are in wait and see mode ahead of Trump's Friday deadline as far as the tariffs.

00:02:27.000 And the unemployment rate continues to tick in at 4.1% in June.

00:02:31.000 Consumer sentiment is ticking up.

00:02:34.000 So we will see kind of where things go from here.

00:02:36.000 But this is certainly very good news for the Trump administration.

00:02:40.000 And of course, this sort of number exceeds what the Biden administration had foresaw as the future of growth in the United States.

00:02:46.000 The Biden administration had seen slow but steady growth for the next 10 years in the United States.

00:02:52.000 And they had foreseen, according to our sponsors at Perplexity, their forecast, according to their final economic report of the president in January 2025, was an average growth rate of approximately 2.2% per year for the latter half of the 2025 to 2034 period.

00:03:07.000 Okay, which, again, if we get these 3% numbers across the rest of the year, we will exceed.

00:03:13.000 Right now, if you average what the Trump administration is doing, things are ticking in around 2% because you had a 0.5% and then you had a 3%.

00:03:21.000 And so when you average everything out, you're going to end up in the 2% area.

00:03:25.000 But if the economy continues to churn along, then President Trump's numbers are going to continue to go up.

00:03:32.000 The economy is going to continue to be solid.

00:03:34.000 President Trump is putting a lot of pressure on the Federal Reserve, of course, to lower the interest rates, hoping that's going to spur consumer sentiment, make it easier for people to get loans and all the rest.

00:03:44.000 And in fact, he's seeing some support among Federal Reserve governors.

00:03:48.000 Some of the Federal Reserve governors are disagreeing openly with Jerome Powell.

00:03:51.000 As Jerome Powell nears the end of his term, there are some of these Federal Reserve governors who presumably are lobbying for the job.

00:03:56.000 They would have to be appointed by the president.

00:03:58.000 And so agreeing with the president is a good way to do that politically.

00:04:01.000 But they also, I assume, feel that we have now reached the point where inflation is stable and steady, that the tariffs are not going to radically increase prices, and that monetary policy is not turning money into the economy right now.

00:04:15.000 And so it's time to lower those interest rates.

00:04:17.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, this week's Fed meeting could produce something that has not happened since 1993.

00:04:22.000 More than one governor voting against the Fed chair.

00:04:25.000 The groundwork was laid weeks ago.

00:04:26.000 Welcome to monetary policy in the age of the succession campaign.

00:04:30.000 Fed chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues have signaled they favor maintaining a wait-and-see approach at this week's meeting.

00:04:34.000 The potential dissenters, Governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, happen to be President Trump's two appointees, both have voiced support for cutting rates, which, of course, President Trump has also publicly demanded.

00:04:44.000 The last time that more than one governor dissented in a single meeting was more than 30 years ago.

00:04:49.000 That's a streak of 259 policy meetings.

00:04:53.000 The Fed's 12-person rate-setting committee includes all seven presidentially appointed governors on the Washington-based boards.

00:04:58.000 And then the other members are members of regional banks, the regional bank presidents.

00:05:02.000 Five of those take turns voting every year.

00:05:05.000 Dissents used to be a lot more common in the 1980s when Federal Reserve policy was much more controversial.

00:05:10.000 Paul Volcker was pushing for higher interest rates in order to crush inflation.

00:05:14.000 There were some people who dissented at the time.

00:05:17.000 It'll be fascinating to see as we move forward in time here whether Jerome Powell is too late again, as President Trump suggests, or whether the wait-and-see approach is the appropriate approach, given the fact that we still don't know sort of what the impact of these tariffs are.

00:05:29.000 Again, President Trump is negotiating these tariff deals in real time, and that includes, apparently, tariff deals with India.

00:05:36.000 So right now, the president apparently is looking at placing a 20 to 25 percent tariff on India, which is a very significant tariff, obviously.

00:05:45.000 He was gaggling aboard Air Force One, according to Breitbart, en route to the United States from Scotland.

00:05:50.000 And one reporter asked Trump if he was tracking toward a 20 to 25 percent tariff on India, citing a Reuters report that India was preparing for tariffs that could rise to that.

00:05:59.000 And Trump said, I think so.

00:06:01.000 And then regarding a precise rate, he added, we're going to see.

00:06:03.000 He said, India has been a good friend, but India has charged basically more tariffs than almost any other country over the years.

00:06:07.000 Now I'm in charge and you just can't do that.

00:06:10.000 Now, the president does have a very warm relationship with the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi.

00:06:16.000 And so it is possible that it goes lower than that.

00:06:20.000 With that said, is that going to escalate prices in the United States?

00:06:23.000 It's difficult to say that decreasing supply or artificially increasing prices through a higher pricing mechanism, which is what a tariff is, is not going to increase prices to the American consumer.

00:06:35.000 However, is that the same thing as the Federal Reserve or the federal government injecting massive amounts of money into the system, creating systemic inflation?

00:06:42.000 In reality, if the prices go up, what you will likely see is a concomitant drop in consumer demand because people are just not going to spend that money.

00:06:50.000 And if the consumer demand goes down, it may actually Even out the impact of what would be inflationary pricing.

00:06:57.000 Milton Friedman famously said that inflation is anywhere and everywhere a monetary policy issue, meaning that if you're not injecting actual dollars into the economy, that everything is likely to even out in terms of pricing, because if the prices go up, the demand goes down.

00:07:12.000 And that is likely to happen here.

00:07:14.000 We will see whether innovation, new investment in the United States outweighs that in terms of economic growth.

00:07:19.000 That's sort of the open question at this point.

00:07:22.000 Now, meanwhile, President Trump continues to avoid the worst excesses of a gigantic tariff on China.

00:07:28.000 Now, again, my preferred tariff policy, and I've said this many times, would be free trade with everybody but China, that China is a country that deserves to be isolated. 0.96

00:07:35.000 They're a nefarious actor in the world.

00:07:37.000 They are the lodestar of an anti-American alliance that spans from Russia to China to Iran to North Korea.

00:07:43.000 And so targeting them economically by essentially cutting extremely warm relationship deals with everybody else except for China would be my preferred policy.

00:07:52.000 President Trump, however, is not doing that.

00:07:54.000 President Trump is pursuing tariffs against pretty much everybody at a baseline 10% rate.

00:07:58.000 It may be higher for the EU, 15%, maybe higher for India, 20%.

00:08:02.000 We'll have to see where he lands, much higher than it has been in the past.

00:08:05.000 But he's also attempting to mitigate many of the tariffs that he was placing on China.

00:08:10.000 According to Breitbart, trade officials from the United States and China concluded their third round of talks in Stockholm, Sweden on Tuesday with a pledge to extend the current tariff truce between the two countries, provided President Trump approves.

00:08:21.000 U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer said at a press conference in Stockholm, we're going to head back to Washington, D.C. We're going to talk to the president about whether that's something he wants to do.

00:08:29.000 The president can make a final call.

00:08:32.000 He said that the Chinese have been very pragmatic in their approach to negotiations.

00:08:35.000 He said, we have tensions now, but the fact that we are regularly meeting with them to address these issues gives us a good footing for negotiations.

00:08:41.000 Now, remember, President Trump had threatened tariffs as high as 145%, and then it was sort of put on postpone, and it was back down to 30, 35%.

00:08:53.000 The Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson, has said that an extension needs to be negotiated before August 12th, or the U.S. tariffs are going to boomerang back to those triple-digit levels.

00:09:01.000 That's essentially effectually a trade embargo against China.

00:09:06.000 I have a feeling that President Trump is going to avoid all of that because the fallout economically would be pretty significant, obviously, if you were to essentially trade embargo China without putting all of your ducks in a row first.

00:09:17.000 President Trump himself has said that he may travel to China to try and negotiate something personally with the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.

00:09:25.000 He wants me to go there, and he's going to come here, and we're just going to work out dates.

00:09:30.000 But we look forward to it, actually.

00:09:32.000 It was one of the most incredible trips in my first term.

00:09:35.000 It was, I think maybe the most incredible trip nobody's ever seen.

00:09:39.000 And Saudi Arabia was incredible also, in particular.

00:09:42.000 Those two trips were nobody's ever seen anything like them.

00:09:46.000 Very different, but equally incredible.

00:09:50.000 But the China trip was with the Great Hall.

00:09:53.000 And I don't think you were there.

00:09:55.000 Was I?

00:09:56.000 But it was something that was unparalleled.

00:10:00.000 There's never been anything.

00:10:01.000 And they said they're going to do it bigger and better this time.

00:10:04.000 So we'll see what happens.

00:10:06.000 But we'll most likely be going to China in the not too distant future, maybe before this year is out.

00:10:12.000 And he'll be coming here.

00:10:15.000 So obviously the president is looking for some sort of détente with China.

00:10:19.000 And it'll be interesting to see whether he's able to actually accomplish that, given China's threats to Taiwan, given China's attempts to spread its sort of belt and road economic initiative all around the world as a challenge to the United States and its support for countries that obviously oppose the United States in terms of foreign policy.

00:10:34.000 China itself, of course, opposes the United States.

00:10:36.000 Already coming up, we'll be joined by the Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, to talk about the energy revolution in the United States.

00:10:43.000 We'll be talking about the New York Times totally botching a story on the Gaza Strip, and it really isn't a botcher.

00:10:47.000 It's just they really, really hate Israel over there.

00:10:50.000 Plus, Corey Booker pops in the angry eyes yet again.

00:10:53.000 First, how many times have you told somebody, if it ain't broke, don't fix it?

00:10:56.000 Well, that's great advice for most things.

00:10:57.000 Not so much for your cell phone, because over time, the battery life fades, the processor can't keep up, and it's fallen in the toilet one too many times.

00:11:04.000 Fortunately, thanks to Pure Talk, your cell phone is something you can replace without feeling guilty.

00:11:08.000 When you switch to PureTalk this month, they're going to give you a Samsung Galaxy 836 for free with a $35 qualifying plan, just $35 a month for talk, text, data, and a free Samsung phone with scratch-resistant Corolla Glass and a battery that lasts all day, all on America's most dependable 5G network.

00:11:24.000 And we use PureTalk all the time here at the office.

00:11:26.000 I use it for my business calls.

00:11:28.000 I think my business call is pretty important.

00:11:29.000 So, you know, I wouldn't trust this company unless their coverage were excellent.

00:11:33.000 You win by cutting your cell phone bill in half when you switch on over to PureTalk.

00:11:36.000 They win by hiring more Americans and helping more veterans.

00:11:38.000 Make that switch in as little as 10 minutes.

00:11:40.000 Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

00:11:42.000 Get your free phone today.

00:11:43.000 Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to switch to my wireless company, America's wireless company, PureTalk.

00:11:51.000 Also, I've discovered an incredible tool.

00:11:53.000 It gives me real-time insights into my metabolism through something as simple as my breath.

00:11:56.000 It's called Lumen.

00:11:57.000 Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach.

00:12:00.000 All you need to do is breathe into it first thing in the morning.

00:12:02.000 You'll know exactly what's happening with your metabolism, whether you're burning fats or carbs.

00:12:05.000 Based on your measurements, Lumen creates a personalized nutrition plan just for you.

00:12:09.000 Since your metabolism is basically the engine behind everything your body does, when it's working really well, you get all kinds of great benefits.

00:12:15.000 You'll find it easier to manage your weight.

00:12:16.000 You'll have more energy throughout the day.

00:12:17.000 You'll see better results from your workouts.

00:12:19.000 You'll even sleep better.

00:12:20.000 It connects back to having that healthy metabolism.

00:12:22.000 The warmer months are coming.

00:12:23.000 Spring back into your health and fitness.

00:12:25.000 Go to lumen.me slash Shapiro.

00:12:27.000 Get 10% off your Lumen.

00:12:29.000 That is l-um-e-n.m-e slash Shapiro for 10% off your purchase.

00:12:34.000 Thanks to Lumen for sponsoring this episode.

00:12:37.000 I'm willing to do pretty much anything in order to get healthier.

00:12:39.000 And Lumen is a major component of my nutritional life.

00:12:41.000 Spring back into your health and fitness.

00:12:43.000 Go to lumen.me slash Shapiro.

00:12:44.000 Get 10% off your Lumen today.

00:12:46.000 L-U-M-E-N.m-E slash Shapiro and get 10% off your purchase.

00:12:51.000 So one of the questions you may be asking yourself is with all this turmoil, with all the tariff turmoil, with all of the concern about foreign relations and all the uncertainty in the markets, why are the markets so optimistic?

00:13:02.000 Well, there are a couple of reasons that the markets remain pretty optimistic.

00:13:04.000 One, of course, is AI.

00:13:06.000 I talk with a lot of investors.

00:13:08.000 I talk with a lot of sophisticated VC and hedge fund folks.

00:13:11.000 And the amount of money that is pouring into AI as a sort of cure-all for economic woes, increasing labor productivity by orders of magnitude, I think justifiably that Amount of optimism remains extremely high, and the United States remains the home of that sort of innovation.

00:13:28.000 And so, the United States, as sort of the hub of the next step of the global economy, remains a place where money is going to come.

00:13:34.000 But there's something else that's happening here, and it's connected with, again, the Trump administration's generalized policy with regard to business.

00:13:40.000 Even if, like me, you do not love the president's tariff policy, if you think the president's trade policy is creating a dampening effect on the economy, that if it weren't there, the economy would be growing at 4% or 4.5% or 5%.

00:13:52.000 Even if you believe that, the question becomes, what are the supporting factors that are leading to 3% GDP growth despite the uncertainty?

00:13:58.000 And the biggest one, the biggest one is that President Trump cut taxes with the one big beautiful bill.

00:14:02.000 And two, the president of the United States is radically deregulatory.

00:14:06.000 The president looks at the regulatory state and he sees it as a threat to the growth of the American economy.

00:14:12.000 And one of the biggest moves that has been made in modern history in the regulatory state has happened this week.

00:14:18.000 The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Journal, declared Liberation Day from climate imperialism by moving to repeal the 2009 so-called endangerment finding for greenhouse gas emissions.

00:14:29.000 So basically, the Clean Air Act, which was put into place in the 1970s, authorized the EPA to regulate pollutants like ozone, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and others that might reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.

00:14:43.000 Well, the EPA suggested under Barack Obama that you could use the Clean Air Act in order to regulate carbon emissions, which is insane.

00:14:52.000 That's totally crazy.

00:14:53.000 The kinds of stuff the Clean Air Act was meant to stop was, again, particulate matter.

00:14:58.000 It was meant to stop ozone that was breaking down the ozone layer.

00:15:02.000 It was not meant to deal with carbon and particularly carbon dioxide, which is a thing that, you know, is a natural byproduct of, for example, breathing.

00:15:12.000 Carbon dioxide is not a danger to human beings in the environment.

00:15:17.000 You may not like what it does in terms of global climate change, but the idea that the EPA has authority under the Clean Air Act is wrong.

00:15:24.000 If Congress wants to give the EPA that authority, then it certainly could, but it never did.

00:15:28.000 The Supreme Court found in 2007 that greenhouse gases could qualify as pollutants under an extraordinarily broad misreading of the law.

00:15:37.000 But now the EPA is walking that back, and the EPA is suggesting that this is not correct.

00:15:43.000 Quote, there is some evidence that elevated carbon dioxide concentrations and climate changes can lead to changes in aero-allergens that could increase the potential for allergenic illnesses, said the Supreme Court and the EPA under their 2009 ruling.

00:15:57.000 Well, the Energy Department has now walked that back.

00:15:59.000 They published a comprehensive analysis of climate science and its uncertainties by five outside scientists.

00:16:03.000 One of those is Stephen Kunin, who served in the Obama administration.

00:16:07.000 The crucial point is that CO2 is different from the pollutants Congress expressly authorized the EPA to regulate.

00:16:12.000 Those pollutants are, quote, subject to regulatory control because they cause local problems depending on concentrations, including nuisances, damages to plants, and at high enough exposure levels, toxological effects on humans.

00:16:24.000 In contrast, CO2 is odorless, does not affect visibility, and it has no toxicological effects at ambient levels.

00:16:30.000 So you're not going to get sick from CO2 in the air.

00:16:34.000 Okay, so the EPA Administrator Lise Elden and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are taking this on.

00:16:41.000 They've said the Clean Air Act no longer applies in our interpretation to greenhouse gases.

00:16:45.000 Well, what does that mean?

00:16:46.000 It means something extraordinary for the American economy, among other things, which is a massive deregulatory environment.

00:16:54.000 The alleged cost of regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act amounts to something like $54 billion per year.

00:17:03.000 So if you multiply that out over the course of the last decade and a half, you're talking about a cost of in excess of $800 billion based again on a regulatory agency radically exceeding its boundaries.

00:17:15.000 Joining us online to discuss this massive move by the Trump administration is the Energy Secretary, Chris Wright.

00:17:21.000 Secretary, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:17:22.000 Really appreciate it.

00:17:23.000 Thanks for having me, Ben.

00:17:26.000 So first of all, why don't we discuss what the EPA just did, what that actually means, how's the Energy Department involved?

00:17:33.000 And what does it mean for sort of the future of things like energy development in the United States?

00:17:38.000 Well, the endangerment finding, you know, 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts and a bunch of environmental groups sued the EPA and said, you must regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

00:17:50.000 Climate activists, basically.

00:17:52.000 Unfortunately, the Supreme Court decided five to four in 2007 that greenhouse gases could become endangerments.

00:18:01.000 And if they were, the EPA had the option, but not the compulsion, to regulate greenhouse gases.

00:18:07.000 As soon as the Obama administration came in in 2009, they did kind of a tortured process to say greenhouse gases endanger the lives of Americans.

00:18:17.000 And that gave the regulatory state, the EPA, the ability to regulate greenhouse gases that the Obama administration and others had failed to pass through Congress.

00:18:29.000 If you pass a law through the House and the Senate and the president signs it, then you can do that.

00:18:33.000 But they just did it through a regulatory backdoor.

00:18:37.000 And now those regulations disinfuse everything we do.

00:18:42.000 Maybe most famously automobiles, the EV mandates, the continual lowering of or increasing in fuel economy standards that brought us the SUV and everyone buying trucks because they don't want to buy small cars.

00:18:55.000 But it's regulating you appliances and power plants and home hair dryers and outdoor heaters.

00:19:02.000 So it's just been a huge entanglement into American life, big brother climate regulations from the government.

00:19:08.000 They don't do anything meaningful for global greenhouse gas emissions.

00:19:12.000 They don't change any health outcomes for Americans, but they massively grow the government.

00:19:17.000 They increase costs and they grow the reach of the government.

00:19:20.000 So Administrator Lee Zeldin is reviewing that and saying, hey, we don't believe that greenhouse gases are a significant endangerment to the American public and they shouldn't be regulated by the EPA.

00:19:34.000 The APA does not have authority to regulate them because Congress never passed such a law.

00:19:39.000 And what we did at the Department of Energy, sorry for the long answer, is I reached out to five prestigious climate scientists that are real scientists in my mind, meaning they follow the data wherever it leads, not only if it aligns with their politics or their views otherwise.

00:19:56.000 And we published a long sort of critical overview of climate science and its impact on Americans.

00:20:02.000 And that was released yesterday on the DOE website.

00:20:05.000 And I highly recommend everyone to give it a read.

00:20:10.000 And in synopsis, it's a big report, obviously.

00:20:13.000 What are the biggest findings from that report that you commissioned at the Department of Energy with regard to this stuff?

00:20:19.000 Maybe the single biggest one that everyone should be aware of is the ceaseless repeating that climate change is making storms more frequent and more severe and more dangerous.

00:20:29.000 It's just nonsense.

00:20:31.000 That's never been in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.

00:20:35.000 It's just not true.

00:20:37.000 But media and politicians and activists just repeatedly repeat it.

00:20:42.000 And in fact, I saw The Hill had a piece right away when our press release went out yesterday morning.

00:20:47.000 Despite decades of data and scientific consensus that climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of storms, the EPA has reversed the endangerment finding.

00:20:57.000 Like just the headlines are just wrong.

00:21:00.000 One of my goals for 20 years, Ben, is just for people to be a little more knowledgeable of what actually is true with climate change and what actually are the trade-offs between trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by top-down government actions and what does that mean for the energy system?

00:21:17.000 We've just driven up the price of energy, reduced choice to American consumers without meaningfully moving global greenhouse gas emissions at all.

00:21:26.000 And when I talk to activists or politicians about it, they're not even that concerned about it.

00:21:30.000 They don't act as if their real goal is to incrementally reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

00:21:36.000 Their real goal is for the government and them, you know, a small number of people to decide what's appropriate behavior for all Americans.

00:21:46.000 Just creepy top-down control sold in the name of protecting the future of the planet.

00:21:52.000 If it was really about that, they'd know a little bit more about climate change, but they almost never do.

00:22:00.000 Well, this is the part that's always astonishing to me.

00:22:02.000 I get in a room with climate scientists from places like MIT or Caltech, and we'll discuss what exactly is going on.

00:22:08.000 These are people who believe that there is anthropogenic climate change, that human activity is causing some sort of market impact on the climate.

00:22:15.000 But when you discuss with them, okay, so what are the solutions?

00:22:18.000 The solutions that are proposed are never in line with the kind of risk that is being sought to be prevented.

00:22:24.000 I mean, there's a point that the Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus has made, is that there are certain things that you could do economically that would totally destroy your economy and might save you an incremental amount of climate change on the other end.

00:22:35.000 And then there are the things that we actually could do that are practical, things like building seawalls, things like hardening infrastructure, moving toward nuclear energy would be a big one.

00:22:45.000 To me, the litmus test of whether somebody is serious or not about climate change is what their feelings about nuclear energy.

00:22:50.000 If they're anti-nuclear energy, but somehow want to curb climate change, then you know one of those things is false.

00:22:55.000 It cannot be that you wish to oppose nuclear energy development, but also your chief goal is to lower carbon emissions.

00:23:01.000 That's just a lie.

00:23:03.000 Exactly.

00:23:03.000 I mean, the biggest driver of reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. by far has been natural gas displacing coal in the power sector.

00:23:12.000 It's about 60% of all the U.S. reduction in emissions.

00:23:16.000 But they hate natural gas, you know, because again, it's a movement against hydrocarbons towards a society that somehow they think is better.

00:23:24.000 It is helping more on the left become pro-nuclear.

00:23:28.000 So I'll view that as one of the positive side effects of the climate movement and probably is going to help nuclear energy start going again.

00:23:36.000 Of course, there are plenty that are anti-nuclear and climate crazies.

00:23:39.000 So there's plenty of them still left.

00:23:42.000 But as you just mentioned, what Nordhaus said in his lecture was do the things where the benefits are greater than the cost, sort of common sense.

00:23:50.000 And in his proposed optimal scenario, you know, we reduce the warming through this century by about 20%, not net zero, not any, because those things are you spend $100 trillion and maybe you get $10 trillion of benefits.

00:24:05.000 You know, that's not, and then people tell me, well, it's an admirable goal.

00:24:08.000 It's aspirational.

00:24:10.000 I'm like, turning dollars into dimes is not aspirational.

00:24:13.000 It's human impoverishing.

00:24:15.000 And we can look over to the United Kingdom.

00:24:17.000 They very proudly announced, you know, they have the largest percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 40%.

00:24:23.000 What they don't tell you is they've had an almost 30% reduction in energy consumption in the United Kingdom.

00:24:30.000 So their main, their dominant mechanism to drive down their greenhouse gas emissions is simply to consume less energy in England.

00:24:36.000 That comes from two factors.

00:24:38.000 The biggest one is their energy intensive industry has just shut down in the country and all those jobs have gone overseas.

00:24:43.000 That stuff is now made in China, loaded on a diesel-powered ship, shipped back to the United Kingdom, and they call that green.

00:24:50.000 And the other mechanism is they made energy so expensive that people don't heat their houses as warm in the summer.

00:24:56.000 They don't travel as much.

00:24:58.000 They don't cool their houses as much in the hot summer days.

00:25:01.000 And they live, they've impoverished their people so they can afford less energy.

00:25:05.000 This isn't victory, and this isn't changing the global future of the world.

00:25:09.000 Like we just need some common sense back around energy and climate change.

00:25:13.000 That's where the Trump administration is headed across the administration, not just administer Zeldon and myself, but everyone in the administration.

00:25:21.000 We just want Americans to have a government that follows basic common sense.

00:25:28.000 Now, Secretary Wright, we were discussing a little bit earlier on in the show this excellent second quarter GDP number, some of which is being driven certainly by mass investment in technologies like AI.

00:25:38.000 If you talk to folks who are in sort of the capital intensive arenas, pretty much all the money right now is going into AI that's a race the United States must win.

00:25:46.000 And one of the huge components there is the energy that is going to be necessary in order to pursue the sorts of processing that AI is going to require.

00:25:54.000 The gigantic data centers that are now being built are going to require inordinate amounts of energy.

00:25:59.000 Everybody knows this.

00:26:00.000 Everybody acknowledges this.

00:26:01.000 China is producing energy at a rate that far outstrips the United States at this point.

00:26:05.000 So if we wish to actually win the AI race, we have to unleash in all of the above strategy with regard to energy production.

00:26:11.000 That's obviously something you're very focused on.

00:26:13.000 And if we don't win the AI race, China becomes the dominant economic power on planet Earth in all likelihood. 0.84

00:26:18.000 So how important is AI to this?

00:26:21.000 And what does it mean for the energy Sector.

00:26:23.000 It's massively important.

00:26:25.000 As you just said, I've called it Manhattan Project 2.0, because in the Manhattan Project, when we developed an atomic bomb in World War II, we could not have come in second.

00:26:34.000 If Nazi Germany had developed an atomic weapon before us, we would live in a different world. 0.91

00:26:39.000 It's a similar risk here.

00:26:41.000 If China gets a meaningful lead on the U.S. in artificial intelligence, because it's not just economics and science, it's national defense, it's the military.

00:26:50.000 Now we are under serious threat from China and we go into a very different world. 1.00

00:26:55.000 We must lead in this area.

00:26:57.000 We have the leading scientists.

00:26:59.000 We have businesses.

00:27:00.000 We have the ability to invest these huge amounts of capital, again, from private markets and private businesses, which a free market capitalist like myself loves.

00:27:08.000 The biggest limiter, as you set up, is electricity.

00:27:12.000 The highest form and most expensive type of energy there is is to turn it into electricity.

00:27:17.000 And as you just said, China's been growing their electricity production massively.

00:27:21.000 Ours has barely grown in the last 20 years.

00:27:24.000 In fact, it grew like 2% or 3% in the Obama years, but yet they got the Biden years, but yet they got prices up over 25%.

00:27:33.000 They helped elect President Trump by just doing everything wrong on energy.

00:27:38.000 And they certainly weren't all of the above.

00:27:40.000 They were all about wind, solar, and batteries.

00:27:43.000 And congratulations, they got them to rounds to 3% of total U.S. energy at the end of the Biden years.

00:27:51.000 Hydrocarbons went from 82% in 2019 when Biden promised, guaranteed he would end fossil fuels, to 82% his last year in office.

00:28:01.000 Zero change in market share.

00:28:04.000 So they just believe and cling to too many silly things about energy.

00:28:09.000 So today, the world, the United States' biggest source of electricity by far is natural gas.

00:28:15.000 And that will be the dominant growth that will enable us to build all these tens of gigawatts of data centers.

00:28:22.000 It's abundant, it's affordable, and it works all the time.

00:28:25.000 I've never been an all of the above guy because subsidizing wind and solar, you know, globally, a few trillions of dollars have gone into it.

00:28:34.000 And the main result is if you get high penetration, you get expensive electricity and a less stable grid.

00:28:40.000 That's not good.

00:28:41.000 You know, the crazy amount of money the United States government spent on wind and solar hasn't grown, as we talked before, hasn't grown our electricity production because they're not there at peak demand time.

00:28:54.000 You know, whether you look at Washington, D.C. or Texas is the biggest penetration of wind and second biggest penetration of solar.

00:29:01.000 It's 35% of the capacity on the Texas grid.

00:29:04.000 But at peak demand, like these cold, high pressure systems or cold or warm high pressure systems, the wind is gone.

00:29:12.000 Peak demand time is after the sun goes down and you get almost nothing from wind and solar.

00:29:18.000 What they really are is just parasites that in the middle of the day, you know, when demand is low and all the power plants that have to be there to supply at peak demand, they just all have to turn down.

00:29:28.000 And then the sun goes behind a cloud and they got to turn up again.

00:29:30.000 And then when peak demand comes, when it's very cold, you know, in the evening time, well, all the existing thermal capacity and nuclear capacity has to run and drive the grid.

00:29:39.000 So if you don't add to the product, reliable production at peak demand time, you're not adding to the capacity of the grid.

00:29:45.000 You're just adding to the complexity and cost of the grid.

00:29:49.000 I mean, if Harris had won the election, you know, we would not only have no chance to win the AI race against China, we would just have increasing blackouts and brownouts today, let alone with the extra demand, some extra demand that would have come from AI, even if they had won the race.

00:30:06.000 But because President Trump won, common sense came back in spades, and we're allowing American businesses to invest and lead in AI.

00:30:14.000 We're in a very different trajectory, a very different trajectory.

00:30:19.000 Well, that's U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright doing a fantastic job over there.

00:30:22.000 One of the big reasons that the Trump economy continues to churn along.

00:30:26.000 Secretary Wright, really appreciate the time and the insight.

00:30:29.000 Thanks so much for having me, Ben.

00:30:30.000 Appreciate all you do.

00:30:31.000 All righty, coming up, Corey Booker is trying to become president of the United States.

00:30:35.000 And he thinks, does Mr. Potato Head, that if he pops in those angry eyes often enough, it'll work for him.

00:30:39.000 But now even fellow Democrats are getting upset.

00:30:41.000 We'll get to that in a moment.

00:30:42.000 First, let's talk about poison in the water, the kind that doesn't go away.

00:30:45.000 Toxic industrial waste leaches into our water supply, leaving PFAS in your water.

00:30:50.000 These are called forever chemicals because once they're in the water supply, they stay, you know, forever.

00:30:55.000 Up to 95 million Americans have PFAS in their drinking water.

00:30:57.000 They've been linked to all sorts of issues like cancer, hormonal effects, developmental issues in kids.

00:31:01.000 As a parent, two four kids, my wife and I don't take risks.

00:31:04.000 That's why we purify our water with the best filtration system on the market called Cove Pure.

00:31:09.000 Not only is it third-party tested, remove over 99% of PFAS, but Cove Pure also removes heavy metals, nitrates, microplastics, and hundreds of other contaminants.

00:31:17.000 You think bottled water is a good alternative?

00:31:18.000 Well, not precisely.

00:31:20.000 Researchers have actually discovered 38% of U.S. bottled water samples had PFAS in them.

00:31:24.000 Plus, the bottles have tons of microplastics.

00:31:26.000 What I love most about Cove Pure is it gives you water at whatever temperature you want instantly, hot, cold, warm.

00:31:31.000 Just press a button and it tastes great.

00:31:33.000 We use Cove Pure in our office.

00:31:34.000 It makes a huge difference.

00:31:36.000 Clean water is one of the best investments you can make for you and your family.

00:31:39.000 It'll be healthier.

00:31:40.000 Water tastes better because we've partnered with them.

00:31:42.000 They're giving you 200 bucks off if you use my link in the description box, covepure.com slash Shapiro.

00:31:48.000 Also, America is back.

00:31:50.000 Look at those GDP numbers.

00:31:51.000 Thanks to President Trump and Leader John Thune's working family tax cuts, we stopped the biggest tax hike in history.

00:31:57.000 But that's only the beginning.

00:31:58.000 The big beautiful bill also cut taxes on tips and overtime, secures the border, finishes the wall, and protects Medicaid for Americans, not illegals. 0.89

00:32:04.000 Leader Thune and Senate Republicans got President Trump's conservative agenda done, providing real relief for every hardworking American that's up early and home late, or bringing back manufacturing jobs home and making America great again.

00:32:16.000 Tell Leader John Thune and Senate Republicans thank you for delivering President Trump's agenda.

00:32:20.000 Learn more at onenationamerica.org.

00:32:22.000 Meanwhile, as the Trump economy churns along, the Democrats continue to struggle amongst themselves for relevance.

00:32:29.000 Corey Booker, who desperately wishes to run for president of the United States, despite his obvious lack of political acumen, charm, and skill, he continues to do these sort of poser things in the United States Senate in an attempt to garner attention.

00:32:43.000 Now, he pops, he's Mr. Potato Head, he pops out the angry always, pops them in, and he gets very angry.

00:32:48.000 So that happened again yesterday.

00:32:50.000 And every time he does so, the left-wing media go gaga Over Mr. Potato Head.

00:32:55.000 It's very awkward.

00:32:55.000 So, what happened yesterday?

00:32:57.000 Well, apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, a routine move to pass bipartisan policing bills turned into a heated exchange between Democrats after Senator Corey Booker accused his colleagues of not fighting hard enough against the Trump administration.

00:33:10.000 And this is the big thing from Democrats: the more you can appear to be fighting the Trump administration while actually accomplishing nothing, the more apparently Democrats and the media are happy.

00:33:20.000 So yelling at the walls like a crazy person is the thing that is going to win you the Democratic nomination, I suppose.

00:33:26.000 So the fight apparently began when Booker rose in opposition to a proposal from Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto of Nevada.

00:33:33.000 She had a request to pass a bipartisan bill by unanimous consent that was going to fund policing.

00:33:40.000 And Booker got mad.

00:33:41.000 He cited concerns that the Trump administration would, quote, weaponize public safety grants to punish blue states.

00:33:48.000 Cortez-Masto fired back at Booker and said, you're trying to add some sort of poison pill provision to what is a bipartisan bill that's going to go through with unanimous approval.

00:33:56.000 Here is the senator from Nevada.

00:33:58.000 I agree.

00:33:59.000 Withholding funding for law enforcement anywhere in the country, across the country, is just not acceptable and it should not be done.

00:34:08.000 And it should not be based on party affiliation, playing favoritism.

00:34:13.000 I absolutely agree.

00:34:15.000 But I also agree that two wrongs don't make a right.

00:34:19.000 And where we are today, these bills passed unanimously out of the Judiciary Committee weeks ago.

00:34:27.000 And my colleague from New Jersey, I have respect for him.

00:34:30.000 He's on the committee.

00:34:31.000 He voted to pass these bills.

00:34:35.000 He had an opportunity at that time to present this amendment.

00:34:39.000 This is the first time we're ever hearing about it.

00:34:41.000 Tacking on a poison pill language to these bills won't guarantee any additional funding makes it to New Jersey, Nevada, or any other state.

00:34:51.000 Instead, what it will do, it will keep critical bills from passing in the first place.

00:34:59.000 Well, this prompted Corey Booker to go full angry eyes.

00:35:03.000 Hop him in.

00:35:04.000 Mr. Potato Head, go.

00:35:06.000 It's time for Democrats to have a backbone.

00:35:08.000 It's time for us to fight.

00:35:09.000 It's time for us to draw lines.

00:35:11.000 And when it comes to the safety of my state being denied these grants, that's why I'm standing here.

00:35:16.000 Don't question my integrity.

00:35:18.000 Don't question my motives.

00:35:20.000 I'm standing for Jersey.

00:35:22.000 I am standing for my police officers.

00:35:24.000 I'm standing for the Constitution.

00:35:26.000 And I'm standing for what's right.

00:35:28.000 And dear God, if you want to come at me that way, you're going to have to take it up with me because there's too much on the line right now in America.

00:35:37.000 As people's due process rights and freedom of the speech rights and secret police are running around this country, picking people up off the streets who have a legal right to be here, there's too much going on in this country.

00:35:51.000 When are we going to stand together?

00:35:53.000 Sorry, Victor.

00:35:54.000 For principles that I just heard that were agreed with.

00:35:58.000 When are we going to stand together?

00:36:01.000 If we don't stand as Democrats, we deserve to lose.

00:36:06.000 He's got the full-scale Judge Doom eyes.

00:36:08.000 He just does from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

00:36:10.000 The more angry he gets, the more that one button on his coat seems like it is going to burst open.

00:36:16.000 And what's going to come out is the cartoon of Christopher Lloyd.

00:36:20.000 That seems like that's where we are going here.

00:36:23.000 What in the world?

00:36:24.000 Like, this is the best you've got, guys?

00:36:26.000 I know you all went crazy when he spoke for 25 hours, because I guess that since you had a president already who had to be calfed because he was senile, now you're looking for another president who's going to calf just so he can speak for a very long time.

00:36:38.000 So if he speaks for 25 hours, you're super excited.

00:36:40.000 If Hakeem Jeffries jabbers for seven hours, you guys get really, really excited and all this sort of thing. 0.93

00:36:46.000 But it's ridiculous.

00:36:47.000 You know who I have a sneaking enjoyment of Senator Amy Klobuchar. 0.92

00:36:52.000 I do, because she's like, you got to be kidding me.

00:36:56.000 She's actually a relatively serious person, the senator from Minnesota.

00:36:59.000 And she's looking at Corey Booker like, what the hell, dude? 0.98

00:37:01.000 What is wrong with you, you posing provocateur, you joke? 0.97

00:37:06.000 Here's Amy Klobuchar, who's about to throw a binder at Corey Booker. 1.00

00:37:10.000 And I will note that Senator Booker objected to my police reauthorization bill, the cops funding, the Clinton cops funding, long before Donald Trump came into office.

00:37:22.000 These and the other police bills passed during police week, while those police officers are sitting there in the hearing room, when no one objected, they are bipartisan common sense legislation.

00:37:34.000 They passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously.

00:37:38.000 And I can't help it if someone couldn't change their schedule to be there.

00:37:43.000 I think that these hearings should mean something and that people should be saying the same thing they say on police week when those people are sitting out there in the uniform who have lost loved ones as they say on this Senate floor.

00:37:58.000 I mean, Klobuchar is one of the last sane Democrats.

00:38:00.000 Corey Booker, my goodness.

00:38:02.000 So his campaign for president is just going to be to stand there and scream about how he Spartacus and all the rest.

00:38:08.000 Meanwhile, the Democratic Party cannot let go.

00:38:11.000 They cannot let go of their radicalism.

00:38:13.000 It's insane.

00:38:14.000 I mean, truly, some of the most backward policymaking and politics I have ever seen, they cannot let go of it because they have trained their base to be ever more leftward.

00:38:23.000 And so even the supposed moderates, like for example, Governor Westmore of Maryland, he was on the At Our Table podcast with Jamie Harrison, the former head of the DNC, unsuccessful head of the DNC.

00:38:33.000 And he was asked why black people are not voting Democrat as often as they were.

00:38:36.000 His answer, because of wait for it, wait for it, wait for it.

00:38:42.000 Racism. 0.93

00:38:43.000 It is true that we have a justice system that has been targeting and weighted against black men. 0.90

00:38:50.000 We have an education system that has been deliberate about the way that we are criminalizing and punishing black boys when we're watching the results of our young black boys continue to downgrade. 0.81

00:39:02.000 And we are actually then turning around and blaming the black boys for their failure. 0.59

00:39:06.000 Not the system, not the structure, but the young men blaming them. 0.95

00:39:12.000 We do have a system of employment where we make it more difficult for black men to be able to enter into the employment market.

00:39:18.000 We do have a system that makes basically every sentence a life sentence that when someone comes back from incarceration, we make it deeply challenging for them to be able to get public housing, challenging for them to be able to get a student loan, challenging for them to get a home loan, challenging for them to reintegrate with their families.

00:39:33.000 And then we wonder what's going on with black men and why they're not voting for us.

00:39:39.000 I'm, I'm, wow, wow.

00:39:42.000 So, the problem with America, according to Wes Moore, and the problem with the Democratic Party is that they are not DEI enough.

00:39:48.000 They need to do more of this.

00:39:49.000 Meanwhile, Democrats cannot get over the Zoran Mom dominification of their party. 1.00

00:39:53.000 Governor Kathy Hochul, who again has failed upward into every job she has ever held.

00:39:58.000 You'll recall that she became governor when Andrew Cuomo, who now wants to run for mayor of New York, basically grabbed to mass and then had to resign.

00:40:06.000 Well, now she's out there defending Zoran Momdani and saying she doesn't care that Zoran Momdani once wanted to defund the police and probably still does. 0.96

00:40:15.000 That's about as pathetic as it gets. 0.84

00:40:18.000 I mean, seriously, going after an unelected official who said something back in 2020 when many people were. 0.99

00:40:27.000 I mean, come on, give me a break.

00:40:31.000 Give you a break.

00:40:32.000 I mean, he's running for mayor.

00:40:33.000 He's the current frontrunner for mayor of New York.

00:40:35.000 And the things that he said like five years ago on Twitter are still somewhat relevant, but they can't get over the Mamdanification of the party because in essence, the entire Democratic Party is moving dramatically in the direction of Zorin Mamdani. 1.00

00:40:47.000 Pete Budijej, again, another one of these supposed moderates in the Democratic Party.

00:40:51.000 He says that he's going to talk about endorsing Zorin Mamdani on NPR.

00:40:56.000 Yeah, I mean, again, it's kind of distinguishing between tactics and ideology.

00:41:00.000 And I would say, you know, he's further left than I am.

00:41:03.000 But also, I think that what he's been able to do is something that our party ought to learn from.

00:41:09.000 Would you endorse him?

00:41:10.000 Say, Big Ten approach.

00:41:11.000 I don't agree with him about everything, but I endorse him.

00:41:14.000 He hasn't asked me to endorse.

00:41:15.000 I'm not really a player in New York City municipal politics, but I've seen that he asked.

00:41:19.000 I would talk to him about it.

00:41:20.000 Sure.

00:41:22.000 He would talk to him about it.

00:41:23.000 Sure.

00:41:24.000 I mean, of course.

00:41:24.000 Of course they would.

00:41:25.000 They all would.

00:41:26.000 And here's the thing.

00:41:27.000 A lot of people on the right have pointed out that Zorin Mamdani, aside from being like an overt communist, Zorin Mamdani also happens to be a supporter of terrorism.

00:41:36.000 He is.

00:41:37.000 He is a person who literally rapped about freeing people who are in jail for support of terrorism, what he called the Holy Land Five, people who went to jail for overt financial support of the terrorist group Hamas.

00:41:47.000 There's a reason he will not separate off from the message of globalize the antifati.

00:41:51.000 So I wouldn't say it publicly, but the general underlying idea is the right idea.

00:41:55.000 The reason that didn't hurt him in the Democratic primary is because Democratic voters increasingly agree with him.

00:42:01.000 They are increasingly radical.

00:42:03.000 There's a poll that just came out from Semaphore, and it shows that among Democratic primary voters in New York City, 78% said we should reduce U.S. support for Israel.

00:42:18.000 The reality is the Democratic support base is increasingly anti-Israel.

00:42:23.000 They believe in a conspiracy theory about the world that suggests that the world is broken down into oppressed and oppressors.

00:42:28.000 You can identify the oppressed by lack of economic prosperity and also by skin color.

00:42:35.000 There's a third worldification that has happened to the Democratic Party in which they seem to believe that America and her allies are bad and that every other country is a victim of America and her allies.

00:42:46.000 And so when you look at the Democratic Party and why they're struggling with the mainstream American people, this would be the reason.

00:42:51.000 And part of that is also because they've created a massive media echo chamber.

00:42:55.000 And this brings us to the current situation in Gaza. 0.99

00:42:58.000 So I have to say, the media are just trash. 1.00

00:43:02.000 Legacy media are absolute sheer garbage. 1.00

00:43:04.000 And this has been true for decades. 0.99

00:43:05.000 There's nothing new here.

00:43:07.000 I remember when my parents first canceled the Los Angeles Times.

00:43:10.000 Los Angeles Times used to use the wire for the New York Times.

00:43:14.000 The Los Angeles Times used to share content with the New York Times.

00:43:17.000 It was back when people actually got physical newspapers back in the 90s.

00:43:20.000 I remember when I was a kid, I was like 16 years old, 15, 16 years old.

00:43:25.000 And there's a picture that appeared on the front page of the New York Times.

00:43:28.000 That picture was, according to the New York Times, a picture of an Israeli policeman beating up a Palestinian on the Temple Mount.

00:43:34.000 It was a picture in the foreground of a young man profusely bleeding from the head and an Israeli soldier with a baton yelling.

00:43:42.000 And it turned out that that story was not true.

00:43:44.000 It turned out that what had actually happened is that this young man was a Jew from Chicago who'd been beaten by 40 Arabs, had run away to a gas station, and the police officer was yelling over his head at the Arabs who were chasing him to move away or they would end up themselves meeting with force.

00:44:01.000 The New York Times ran that on the front page as an example of Israeli oppression in the middle of the second Intifada.

00:44:07.000 And I remember my parents canceling their LA Times subscription over that, which, you know, I think was justified, although I will say I missed the sports section.

00:44:14.000 The New York Times has been garbage for legitimately my entire life on this issue and on many other issues as well.

00:44:21.000 And because the New York Times and the legacy media have created this bizarre steel-coated bubble, this echo chamber of left-wing messaging, it is shaping more and more how Democrats think. 0.94

00:44:32.000 They think everybody agrees with them.

00:44:34.000 There's a famous phrase from the movie critic Pauline Kahle back during the 1972 election cycle when Richard Nixon blew out George McGovern, won 49 states.

00:44:44.000 And Pauline Kahle expressed supposedly shock at this saying, I don't understand how Nixon could have won.

00:44:50.000 Everyone I know voted for McGovern.

00:44:52.000 Well, that is the Democratic Party in a nutshell.

00:44:54.000 Everybody that they know agrees with them because they all read the same media outlets, because they all consume the same information.

00:45:01.000 Now that's being transferred all the way down to the youngest generation via things like TikTok and X.com, which are wild sources of just untrue information.

00:45:10.000 But the reason I bring this up in the context of Gaza is because the New York Times just did, again, an incredibly egregious thing.

00:45:16.000 We've discussed this on the show already this week.

00:45:19.000 There was a picture that went out.

00:45:20.000 It was printed on the front page of the New York Times.

00:45:24.000 It was a picture showing an 18-month-old named Muhammad Zakaria al-Mutawak.

00:45:29.000 Hey, this kid suffered from, I believe, cystic fibrosis.

00:45:33.000 And there's a picture of mom holding this kid.

00:45:36.000 We talked about this on the strip, I believe, yesterday.

00:45:39.000 Holding this kid.

00:45:40.000 The kid, you can see his spine through his skin.

00:45:41.000 You can see his ribs.

00:45:42.000 It's a horrifying picture.

00:45:44.000 And the New York Times ran this picture as evidence of starvation in the Gaza Strip.

00:45:48.000 Now, there's mixed information coming out from the Gaza Strip, and no one really has great transparency into what is happening because Hamas, the Gaza Health Ministry, they lie routinely.

00:45:57.000 They've been lying since the beginning of the war every single day, every single hour.

00:46:00.000 This is their tactic.

00:46:01.000 Their tactic was launch a war on Israel that they could not win militarily and then win in the press and hope to get something out of it. 0.99

00:46:07.000 And right now, it seems to be working with the French, who are deeply afraid of their own Islamic population, and with the UK, where Kira Starmer has his head so far up his own ass that it's coming out his head again. 0.96

00:46:18.000 Well, this story rocketed around the world. 0.98

00:46:21.000 This picture rocketed around the world.

00:46:22.000 And as we showed on the program yesterday, if you expand the frame of that picture, you see that Muhammad has a brother.

00:46:30.000 His brother is perfectly well-fed.

00:46:31.000 In fact, mom, who's holding him, seems perfectly well-fed.

00:46:35.000 So what exactly was happening?

00:46:36.000 This kid has a congenital condition, a horrifying congenital condition.

00:46:41.000 This is not due to starvation, in other words.

00:46:43.000 So the New York Times had to walk this back.

00:46:45.000 So what did they do?

00:46:46.000 Well, the New York Times has a Twitter account, an X account.

00:46:50.000 Their X account has 55 million followers.

00:46:53.000 That is where the original story went out on their original X account.

00:46:56.000 Then they have a comms account, New York Times PR.

00:46:58.000 It has 80,000 followers.

00:47:00.000 They put out a statement admitting that they got the story wrong.

00:47:04.000 Now, they didn't get the story wrong.

00:47:06.000 They lied because the way that this works is that if you are a publication of record, you are supposed to actually track down the source of the information.

00:47:06.000 They lied.

00:47:17.000 You're supposed to actually know what the hell you are printing in your pages.

00:47:20.000 And if you print a retraction, you're supposed to do so in the same manner and mode that you printed the original story.

00:47:25.000 If the original story gets blasted to 55 million people and your retraction gets printed on page A14 at the bottom with the classifieds, that ain't doing it.

00:47:33.000 Well, that's what the New York Times did.

00:47:34.000 But not only did the New York Times do that and admit their error, but they also, in the admission, talk about how brave and wonderful they are.

00:47:41.000 Here is their actual editor's note appended.

00:47:43.000 And again, blasted out to their account of 80,000, not their account of 55 million.

00:47:47.000 Quote, children in Gaza are malnourished and starving, as New York Times reporters and others have documented.

00:47:53.000 We recently ran a story about Gaza's most vulnerable civilians, including Mohammad Zakaria Al-Mutawak, who is about 18 months old and suffers from severe malnutrition.

00:48:00.000 We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems.

00:48:07.000 This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his situation.

00:48:10.000 Our reporters and photographers continue to report from Gaza bravely, sensitively, and at personal risk so that readers can see the first-hand consequences of the war.

00:48:18.000 Okay, that's a lie.

00:48:19.000 They are using stringers on the ground who work with Hamas because if you are working in the Gaza Strip, you are working with Hamas.

00:48:25.000 Otherwise, you are dead.

00:48:26.000 That is the way that it works in the Gaza Strip.

00:48:28.000 It's been true for the AP.

00:48:29.000 It's true for the New York Times.

00:48:31.000 They put out active misinformation.

00:48:33.000 And this is a thing that legacy media are doing all over the world.

00:48:36.000 In fact, according to The Spectator in the UK, the BBC has actively told all of its own reporters what political line to tow on Gaza.

00:48:45.000 Quote, a leaked internal email from a BBC executive editor reveals that the corporation has issued prescriptive instructions to staff on how to cover the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

00:48:54.000 The memo, titled, covering the food crisis in Gaza, amounts to a top-down editorial diktot that discards impartiality, elevates one side of a deeply contested narrative, and imposes a specific anti-Israel legal political framing as settled fact.

00:49:06.000 The email begins by declaring that, quote, the argument over how much aid has crossed into Gaza is irrelevant.

00:49:13.000 How is that irrelevant?

00:49:14.000 That's literally the core of the entire argument.

00:49:16.000 If Israel has shipped in enough aid for the population and Hamas is stealing it, that goes directly to who is responsible for the starvation to the extent that it is occurring of any Palestinians. 0.54

00:49:27.000 And we know for a fact that Hamas is stealing it. 0.73

00:49:29.000 We show you video yesterday of Hamas on the aid trucks.

00:49:33.000 This is the reason the UN, which is a tool of Hamas, will not work with the IDF to ship the aid in. 0.71

00:49:39.000 They insist that they go in alone so Hamas can steal the aid and thus continue the war.

00:49:43.000 Because the UN RWA is an arm of Hamas.

00:49:45.000 If Hamas dies, so does the UN RWA and its control and its funding and all of its support.

00:49:51.000 The BBC explicitly favors a particular explanation of suffering in Gaza, one that blames the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is an aid body established between the United States and Israel, which seeks an orderly distribution of aid.

00:50:03.000 And by the way, you can see video online of how it works at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, which is an orderly queue, people waiting to get their food, as opposed to when the UN brings in a truck, in which people descend en masse on these trucks, try to get everything before Hamas can shoot them.

00:50:20.000 That sort of media misinformation is the crux of what is happening in the Gaza Strip right now.

00:50:28.000 And it provides the support for absolute ridiculous politicians like Keir Sarmer, who again has to deal with the increased Islamification of his country, suggesting that unless Israel suddenly radically establishes a Palestinian state with no territory, no government, and no functioning systems, that the UK is going to recognize a Palestinian. 0.91

00:50:47.000 I mean, first of all, the UK should just recognize it in London right now, because it seems like London has seen already a radical Islamic takeover. 0.99

00:50:53.000 Maybe Kir Starmer should worry more about his own country.

00:50:55.000 But here is Kir Starmer saying that essentially, because Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, now there should be a Palestinian state.

00:51:03.000 Well, last time Israel withdrew from a territory and attempted to hand full authority over to a Palestinian entity, it was Hamas in 2006, and it ended with October 7th.

00:51:16.000 So today, as part of this process towards peace, I can confirm the UK will recognize the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September, unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire, and commit to a long-term sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution.

00:51:46.000 And this includes allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid and making clear that there will be no annexations in the West Bank.

00:51:55.000 Meanwhile, our message to the terrorists of Hamas is unchanged and unequivocal.

00:52:03.000 They must immediately release all of the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm, and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza. 0.56

00:52:16.000 Or, you may have noticed that there's a consequence attached to his demands on the Israelis, which amount to handing More sovereignty over to Hamas, ensuring that the UN can continue to ship aid into Hamas, signing on to a ceasefire that doesn't amount to release of hostages.

00:52:32.000 It was Hamas that walked away from the table, not Israel.

00:52:35.000 But it doesn't matter.

00:52:36.000 Unless Israel does all of that unilaterally, apparently, he's going to declare a Palestinian state.

00:52:39.000 Well, whoop Dee Doo! 0.99

00:52:40.000 That's like Michael Scott's declaring bankruptcy.

00:52:42.000 Who cares?

00:52:43.000 But you notice he said, Hamas must put down its weapons and release the hostages.

00:52:47.000 Or what?

00:52:47.000 Or what are you going to do?

00:52:50.000 Because it seems to me that all of this would be over and could have been over in the first, first of all, never would have started if Hamas didn't actually launch October 7th. 0.76

00:52:58.000 But number two, it seems to me that if you're going to make demands, it should be on the party that is continuing the conflict, namely Hamas, which is shooting its own people in order to prevent them from getting aid so it can monopolize the aid and continue its fight to dominate the Gaza Strip that is still holding hostages and refuses to go into exile. 0.74

00:53:15.000 But again, typical Islamicized country in Europe. 1.00

00:53:19.000 That's Kiera Starmer.

00:53:20.000 President Trump remains the only morally clear figure on this issue, perhaps in the West. 0.99

00:53:26.000 Here was President Trump on this idiocy from Kierist Armer. 0.84

00:53:29.000 Is there any use at all in pressuring Israel now to come to some sort of longer-term solution? 0.98

00:53:35.000 Well, you could make the case that you're rewarding people, that you're rewarding Hamas if you do that. 0.79

00:53:41.000 And I don't think they should be rewarded.

00:53:43.000 So I'm not in that camp, to be honest.

00:53:47.000 We'll let you know where we are, but I am not in that case.

00:53:52.000 President Trump, a man of actual moral clarity.

00:53:55.000 Well, the good news is, for at least the anti-Israel radical right, the horseshoe theory right, they have an avatar, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, again, is one of the more unintelligent people in Congress.

00:54:07.000 She's called an avatar of MAGA on Capitol Hill by the New York Times, but suffice it to say that if you poll people who vote MAGA on who they like more, President Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene, she doesn't chart.

00:54:19.000 There's a reason the media are trying to play up the comments on this matter of, for example, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Steve Bannon as though they are the avatar of MAGA.

00:54:27.000 They are trying to create conflict inside MAGA where very little conflict exists by the polling data.

00:54:32.000 Today, there is higher support among Republicans for Israeli action in Gaza than there was back in September of 2024.

00:54:40.000 So there is at 71% approval, by the way.

00:54:43.000 So that is not a lot of dissent inside the Republican Party over the finishing of Hamas.

00:54:48.000 Marjorie Taylor Greene, however, is now horseshoe theorying around to the AOC side of the almost shock there, suggesting that there is a genocide in Gaza.

00:54:57.000 So, you know, suffice it to say that she has very little to no support inside the Republican Party for this proposition.

00:55:05.000 And this is part and parcel of a broader attempt by some members of MAGA to try and wrest control of the MAGA movement away from President Trump. 0.92

00:55:11.000 It's ridiculous on its face.

00:55:13.000 The same people who are going hog wild on the idea that President Trump is somehow covering up an Epstein scandal are the same people who disagree with President Trump on foreign policy. 0.83

00:55:22.000 That is not a coincidence.

00:55:24.000 That is a deliberate attempt to undermine President Trump.

00:55:26.000 It's a deliberate attempt to undermine his agenda.

00:55:29.000 And they will use any tool at their disposal in order to build support for an alternative, quote-unquote, MAGA agenda that they have nothing to do with in the first place.

00:55:36.000 Meanwhile, they're horseshoe theorying around all the way to the Potsey of America, bros.

00:55:40.000 Yesterday, the Padse of America Bros totally lost their mind. 1.00

00:55:43.000 And so we're going to go through what they had to say about this.

00:55:45.000 They're now just representatives for Hamas.

00:55:47.000 This is the takedown.

00:55:51.000 And I don't think Democratic candidates should take money from AIPAC or vote to fund military support for Israel anymore.

00:55:57.000 Like, I really don't.

00:55:58.000 This government, absolutely not.

00:55:59.000 And that especially includes, I think, the next Democratic nominee for president.

00:56:03.000 Things I want to see Democrats at least calling for is cutting off military assistance to Israel.

00:56:06.000 It's a rich country, by the way.

00:56:07.000 They don't need our $3 billion a year.

00:56:08.000 And hands up, right, Barack Obama signed a 10-year MOU for $3.3 billion a year.

00:56:12.000 Like, so we're part of the problem here.

00:56:14.000 Let's correct it. 0.95

00:56:16.000 These guys are psychotics.

00:56:18.000 They've basically now taken the position that the United States should not militarily support Israel in any way.

00:56:21.000 You can make that argument on the basis of Israel's a sovereign country and they should, instead of getting a subsidy for $3 billion a year, which all goes back, by the way, to American-made weaponry.

00:56:31.000 It's actually a subsidy to American defense manufacturers.

00:56:34.000 You can make an argument that among other countries, we basically should provide no military aid to anybody.

00:56:38.000 And if countries want to buy our military material, then they can damn well fund it themselves.

00:56:42.000 That's an argument that I'm willing to hear.

00:56:44.000 But listening to these guys say that in the aftermath of October 7th, this is literally what they said, that they can't go back to October 6th mentality about Israel.

00:56:53.000 That's insane.

00:56:54.000 So in other words, on October 6th, they were fine with supporting Israel.

00:56:57.000 After Hamas attacked Israel and killed 1,200 people and kept 250 hostages, that's when they turned.

00:57:04.000 That's when they turned.

00:57:05.000 So they were fine with Israel until Israel defended itself and fought Hamas, at which point they got angry.

00:57:10.000 Not a shock from the Positive America bros, who of course are allied with Ben Rhodes, the former national security advisor to Barack Obama, whose literal nickname in the White House, no joke, was Hamas.

00:57:21.000 That's who the left have become.

00:57:23.000 So if you're on the right and you find yourself in the same category as the Positive America Bros, you might want to check your priors because something has gone deeply, deeply wrong, obviously.

00:57:34.000 But the Positive America bros didn't just stop at the military funding, which, of course, you could make an argument in favor of.

00:57:38.000 They went even further.

00:57:39.000 They said that the United States should sanction Israel as opposed to, you know, Hamas.

00:57:43.000 Here we go.

00:57:44.000 I would like to see talk about sanctioning Israeli government officials who use genocidal rhetoric or who talk about ethnic cleansing openly.

00:57:51.000 We should support a ceasefire resolution at the UN.

00:57:53.000 We should demand that international press be allowed into the Gaza Strip to report on what's happening without an IDF minder. 0.51

00:57:59.000 It's insane.

00:57:59.000 The press still can't go into Gaza and cover what's happening.

00:58:02.000 And I also think like there has to be a total mindset change in the Democratic Party.

00:58:05.000 When the war ends, we are not going back to the pre-October 7th status quo because it's not where the party is.

00:58:10.000 It's not where the world is.

00:58:10.000 We are not going to shovel billions a year in military aid.

00:58:13.000 We're not going to veto every effort to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN.

00:58:16.000 We should not take money from AIPAC.

00:58:18.000 And like I will hold out hope for better political leadership in the U.S. and in Israel.

00:58:22.000 But we have to also recognize that the Biden-era hug B.B. Netanyahu strategy has to be thrown in the trash can for forever.

00:58:29.000 Netanyahu is a bad actor. 0.66

00:58:30.000 He's continuing a war for political purposes. 0.56

00:58:33.000 He bombs Lebanon when he wants to. 1.00

00:58:34.000 He bombs Iran when he wants to. 1.00

00:58:36.000 He bombs Syria when he wants to. 1.00

00:58:37.000 This is not a partner we can count on.

00:58:39.000 This is not someone who is like leading to calm and stability in the region, which should be a core interest.

00:58:45.000 It sounded better in the original Persian when it was actually being said by the leadership in Iran.

00:58:51.000 I mean, that's great. 0.78

00:58:52.000 He can Bomb Lebanon. 1.00

00:58:53.000 Do you mean when Hezbollah is threatening Israel with hundreds of thousands of rockets? 0.85

00:58:57.000 He can bomb Syria whenever he wants to. 0.98

00:58:58.000 Do you mean when he took out the gigantic weapon stores that Syria had under Bashar Assad so they would not be stolen by terrorist groups?

00:59:06.000 Or when he's protecting the Druze in southern Syria?

00:59:09.000 He bombs Iran whenever. 1.00

00:59:10.000 Do you mean he bombs Iran when Iran is developing a nuclear weapon to wipe the Jewish state off the map? 0.59

00:59:14.000 Is that what you mean?

00:59:15.000 Again, this is where the Democratic Party is.

00:59:17.000 And we should just recognize that this is the future of the Democratic Party.

00:59:20.000 He's not wrong about that.

00:59:21.000 The future of the Democratic Party is in catering to people who hate the state of Israel and who side with terrorism all over the world.

00:59:28.000 That is where the Democratic Party's future is going to be.

00:59:32.000 Here's John Lovett saying the same thing.

00:59:35.000 Especially if we're going to head into a primary, like table stakes, there's going to be no more military aid for Israel.

00:59:40.000 So there will just have to be a shift.

00:59:42.000 And I do think that will mean putting far more pressure on Israel. 0.72

00:59:45.000 And that's what I think Democrats want.

00:59:46.000 By the way, that's what the country wants.

00:59:48.000 And when you poll Israelis, they say they want a ceasefire.

00:59:51.000 Israelis want the hostages returned through a negotiated settlement.

00:59:54.000 And by the way, that's the way in which the vast majority of hostages who were returned were able to be returned.

01:00:00.000 Okay, they were returned after Israel bombed the hell out of Hamas, went house to house, eviscerating Hamas, and then Hamas was forced to the table. 0.70

01:00:08.000 Do you think that Hamas just handed over the hostages like the day after October 7th?

01:00:12.000 But again, they're not wrong.

01:00:14.000 This is where the Democratic Party is moving. 0.99

01:00:16.000 It's a frightening direction, but the moral relativism, stupidity, oppressor-oppressed matrix within which they work means that they were eventually going to end up here. 0.99

01:00:27.000 And it turned out it was a very short road. 0.99

01:00:29.000 It turned out all it took was the greatest terror attack on Jews in half a century to get the Democratic Party to abandon Israel and move towards solidarity with Hamas.

01:00:40.000 I love when people say, by the way, the Israelis should sign a ceasefire. 0.98

01:00:43.000 There's another party to that prospective ceasefire who keeps walking away from the table.

01:00:49.000 You think Joe Biden didn't want a more durable ceasefire?

01:00:53.000 Even Joe Biden couldn't get Hamas to the table through concessions. 0.83

01:00:57.000 Insanity.

01:00:58.000 But that is the insane nature of the Democratic Party these days.

01:01:01.000 Well, you know, it's a lot of bad news, but there is some good news.

01:01:04.000 According to a piece in The Atlantic by Brad Wilcox, marriage rates in the United States appear to be on the rise.

01:01:10.000 Actually, there's some good news about marriage.

01:01:12.000 Joining us on the line to discuss is Professor Brad Wilcox.

01:01:14.000 Brad, thanks so much for taking the time.

01:01:16.000 I really appreciate it.

01:01:17.000 Good to be here with you, Ben.

01:01:20.000 So it is rare on this show that we got to cover any good news, particularly in the social arena, but you have a piece in The Atlantic talking about the durability of the marital institution.

01:01:28.000 Obviously, one of the major concerns in the United States for decades was the divorce rate. 1.00

01:01:32.000 And then there are concerns about the fact that people are not having kids.

01:01:35.000 But you have some good news about the durability of marriage.

01:01:38.000 Why don't we start with the good news?

01:01:40.000 The good news, Ben, is that divorce is down.

01:01:42.000 Most marriages in America are going to make it today. 1.00

01:01:45.000 We think divorces come down from about 50% in 1970s to about 40% today.

01:01:51.000 And we're also seeing an uptick in the share of kids who are being raised by their own married parent family.

01:01:56.000 So that's the good news, Ben.

01:02:00.000 So what is the bad news?

01:02:02.000 Because obviously there has been a radical campaign against marriage that is now horseshoeed around.

01:02:06.000 It used to be a campaign largely from the left talking about marriage as a sort of patriarchal institution that kept women underfoot.

01:02:13.000 And now you've seen a horseshoe theory move from some parts of the so-called manosphere to claim that marriage is actually a matriarchal institution that is designed to keep men underfoot. 0.99

01:02:24.000 What is the current state of the marital debate?

01:02:27.000 Yeah, so Ben, we've seen from the left a long time women kind of saying things like there was a New York Times piece a few years ago that said, married motherhood in America is a game that no one wins. 0.99

01:02:36.000 So kind of painting a pretty anti-nuptial message from the left targeting women. 0.94

01:02:41.000 But in recent years, as you well know, we've gotten people on the right, like Andrew Tater, telling men now that there is, quote, zero advantage to marriage in the Western world for a man.

01:02:50.000 And he's obviously discouraging men from going ahead and getting married.

01:02:55.000 So that's kind of the bad news is there are elements both the left now and the right, on the far left, in a sense in the far right, who are kind of encouraging women on the left and men on the right to steer clear of marriage.

01:03:06.000 And what our research shows is that married moms and married dads in America are the happiest men and women out there in this country today.

01:03:17.000 Well, one of the things that you're pointing out in terms of the statistics is that we may have, in fact, hit the bottom of the valley in terms of marital rates because fewer and fewer Americans were getting married.

01:03:26.000 That seems to have leveled off that the percentage of Americans who are starting to get married is actually, it seems like moderately increasing at this point.

01:03:33.000 How optimistic are you that that's an actual turnaround and not just a dead cat bounce?

01:03:38.000 So I think we have reached the nadir when it comes to, you know, kids and families.

01:03:43.000 We're seeing an uptick in the share of kids raised by their married parent families.

01:03:46.000 What's not clear to me, Ben, is whether or not kind of this plateau we're seeing with the marriage rate for adults is going to kind of dip again in the future or if it's going to kind of rebound.

01:03:54.000 I think one of the big challenges is technology.

01:03:57.000 If we can kind of figure a way to help young adults kind of embrace in-person socializing, in-person living, I can see marriage coming back.

01:04:06.000 But if we're going to be kind of basically slaves to our devices, then I would see kind of this potentially marriage rate coming down even more and then family life becoming just more selective for people who are more educated, more affluent, and more religious, which is what we've been seeing in recent decades in the U.S. So you mentioned more religious and some of the social science data is showing an uptick in the number of young people particularly who are attempting to re-engage with church or becoming more religious, particularly true among men.

01:04:34.000 Are you optimistic that that's going to continue, that there's going to be a sort of return to faith and family?

01:04:39.000 Or again, is this sort of us looking for glimmers of light in a very dark tunnel here?

01:04:44.000 No, I do think we are seeing some signs that Gen Z men are more religious today, Ben.

01:04:48.000 And I think there is a kind of upswing in both influencers like yourself and your peers at Deli Wire, and then, you know, local clergy and other religious leaders are kind of helping to sort of usher younger adults, particularly younger men, back into the church.

01:05:04.000 So I do see that kind of trend increasing, and that's encouraging.

01:05:09.000 But I am also kind of keeping an eye on what's happening among a lot of more secular and progressive young adults, as well as working class and poor young adults.

01:05:16.000 And I think for a lot of those young adults, the future is more so bred.

01:05:25.000 So, let's talk for a second about the economics of all this.

01:05:27.000 There's been an argument that's made by both the populist right and the progressive left that essentially the reason people are not getting married and having kids is because of lack of economic opportunity.

01:05:36.000 That if you pour money into people's pockets, then they're more likely to get married, more likely to have kids.

01:05:42.000 That all of this is a function of lack of upward mobility in American society.

01:05:46.000 I see very little evidence of that, considering the fact that there is an extraordinarily high correlation, actually, between societal wealth and not getting married and not having kids.

01:05:53.000 Actually, it turns out that poorer societies have many, many more kids than rich societies.

01:05:57.000 What do you think is the sort of economic aspect of this?

01:06:00.000 Is this a problem that can be solved by economic redistributionism?

01:06:03.000 Or in the end, is marriage and family building more reliant, as it is in my life, on sort of a religious belief in the morality of the institution?

01:06:13.000 Well, but I think there's actually both an economic story here and a cultural story.

01:06:16.000 And there's just no question that people kind of who embrace marriage and family life are more likely to get married, stay married, and to be flourishing in their families today.

01:06:22.000 And that's true for both religious Americans and oftentimes more conservative Americans, both of whom are more likely so that they're happily married.

01:06:29.000 But there is, as you know, also a class story.

01:06:31.000 What we see is that a majority of prime-aged adults who are college educated are married today, and only a minority of less educated adults are married today.

01:06:40.000 So I think there's part, you know, there's a class dynamic, but it's primarily about the employment of men.

01:06:45.000 What we see is that particularly working class and poor men are much less likely men to be employed full-time.

01:06:51.000 And that's still a huge predictor both of getting married and staying married.

01:06:55.000 So I think until and unless we can kind of figure out how do we reconnect poor and working class men to the labor force on a full-time basis, we are not going to see kind of the revival of marriage across the board, across class lines.

01:07:12.000 One of the questions that I've always had about that is whether we are looking at a correlation and then drawing a reverse causation.

01:07:17.000 So suggesting people can't get jobs and therefore they're not getting married.

01:07:21.000 Right now, the unemployment rate in the United States is 4.1%, which is close to full employment.

01:07:26.000 We have many more job openings in the United States than applicants for those job openings by several measures.

01:07:32.000 The question is, I think, one also of government dependency, meaning if you are dependent on a government check, that is not going to jog you into getting married.

01:07:42.000 It used to be that when those welfare benefits were not nearly as easy to come by, people actually had to go get a job.

01:07:48.000 And actually, one of the predictors of wealth is doing all of these things will make you wealthier.

01:07:51.000 Meaning, if you get married and then you get a job, you are more likely to end up in the upper quintiles of income earning.

01:07:58.000 It's not sort of the other way around that you're poor, therefore you can't get married.

01:08:01.000 It's if you don't get married and you don't get a job, you are going to remain poor.

01:08:06.000 So there are a few steps, as you know, called the success sequence.

01:08:09.000 And Americans get at least a high school degree, who work full-time in their 20s and who get married before having any children are basically 97% likely to avoid poverty.

01:08:18.000 Only 3% of those young adults are poor, who follow all three steps.

01:08:22.000 And 86% of them reach the middle class or higher.

01:08:24.000 So it's no, kind of, there's no question that, again, a certain modicum of education, work, and marriage are conducive to realizing the American dream.

01:08:34.000 But it is the case that I think for a variety of technological, cultural, and educational reasons, a lot of our young men are floundering.

01:08:41.000 And we've got to figure out a way to kind of get them back on track so they can be flourishing and be more attractive as boyfriends and potential husbands and fathers as well.

01:08:51.000 That's Brad Wilcox.

01:08:52.000 Go check out all of his work over at The Atlantic, among other places, and check out his book, Get Married, Why Americans Should Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, a really important book, especially in the face of dullards, particularly in the Manosphere right and the progressive left, who suggest that marriage is bad for you. 0.99

01:09:08.000 Precisely the opposite is true.

01:09:10.000 Marriage is actually quite good for you. 0.81

01:09:11.000 Brad, really appreciate the time.

01:09:13.000 Thanks, Brad.

01:09:14.000 All righty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.

01:09:16.000 We'll get into the polling regarding the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

01:09:19.000 Is it hurting President Trump?

01:09:20.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:09:22.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

01:09:23.000 Use Coach Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 30, 2025

WINNING: Trump’s EPA WRECKS The Radical Green Agenda

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript