The Ben Shapiro Show - WTH?! McDonald’s Celebrates…Ramadan

00:00:00.000 McDonald's just launched the world's most insane ad campaign in Germany.

00:00:04.000 It's aimed at Muslims observing Ramadan.

00:00:06.000 And we'll talk about what that means for the rise of DEI.

00:00:09.000 Also, is DEI going to make a comeback in the post-Trump era in the United States?

00:00:12.000 Wilford Riley, the host of a new series over at Dailywire Plus, joins us to discuss and State of the Union fallout and Iran negotiations updates.

00:00:19.000 A lot going on.

00:00:20.000 First, the Daily Wire, we are celebrating Black History Month. 0.77

00:00:23.000 I mean, it's almost over, but don't worry, we didn't just let it slide.

00:00:26.000 Here's why.

00:00:26.000 Streaming right now on Daily Wire Plus, the brand new three-part original series, Black Lives Matter, hosted by Professor Wilfred Riley, the breakout voice the world met in one of the biggest documentaries of the decade, Am I Racist?

00:00:38.000 Watch as he dismantles the mythology of systemic racism as it is sold today, separating fact from fiction, data from grievance, and history from hustle.

00:00:46.000 If we're going to have the conversation, we need to have the whole conversation.

00:00:50.000 You know, people wanted Black History Month content, so here it is.

00:00:53.000 We're giving it to you.

00:00:54.000 All the facts, none of the feelings.

00:00:56.000 Watch.

00:00:57.000 Black lives matter right now only on Daily Wire Plus. 0.98

00:01:00.000 The West is in a whole lot of trouble.

00:01:02.000 And one of the reasons that the left is in a whole lot of trouble, there are a bunch of reasons.

00:01:06.000 One is that we have fundamentally failed to distinguish between tolerance of one another's traditions and lifestyles and the sort of bizarre bend over backwards celebration that accompanies an undermining of traditions that are unique to the West.

00:01:25.000 I want to take as an example what's going on in Germany.

00:01:27.000 Now, it seems like a small story, but it is indicative of a broader mindset that has now been setting in throughout the West for generations.

00:01:33.000 So over in Germany, McDonald's has decided on an ad campaign.

00:01:37.000 The German population is something like 6.5% Muslim at this point.

00:01:41.000 And obviously, Muslims, religious Muslims, celebrate Ramadan around this time of year.

00:01:46.000 That means that they are fasting from sunup to sundown.

00:01:50.000 That is the Muslim tradition.

00:01:50.000 Fine.

00:01:52.000 There are a lot of Muslims who live in the West who are perfectly fine Western citizens.

00:01:57.000 So McDonald's, which is not halal.

00:01:59.000 So halal is kosher for Muslims.

00:02:01.000 Halal means that it's food that religious Muslims can eat.

00:02:04.000 If you are a Muslim who is celebrating Ramadan or commemorating Ramadan, then the chances are that you are eating halal in your non-Ramadan hours and in your non-fasting hours, because if you're religious enough to actually not eat all day, you probably then don't go at sunset and find a rasher of bacon and just start downing it.

00:02:22.000 In any case, McDonald's in Germany, McDonald's, which is not halal, has decided to put up an ad campaign.

00:02:29.000 This ad campaign removes the food from the billboards during Ramadan hours out of respect for Islam. 1.00

00:02:40.000 That's weird and self-defeating and bespeaks something that lies at the heart of the cowardice of a lot of both corporations and also people in the West.

00:02:51.000 Here you can see what it looks like.

00:02:53.000 The food appears on the billboard after sunset, but it disappears during the day, presumably so as not to tempt Muslims to feel hunger pangs.

00:03:03.000 So that is bizarre a world.

00:03:06.000 Again, it's bizarre a world because McDonald's is not halal. 0.92

00:03:08.000 The people who are presumably going to be very moved by these billboards are not going to head over to McDonald's after dusk and start chomping down on the cheeseburgers.

00:03:19.000 So what is McDonald's doing?

00:03:21.000 According to Newsweek, the campaign was created by German agency Scholz and Friends, whose concept centers on removing McDonald's most recognizable visual element as a gesture of respect for those observing Ramadan.

00:03:34.000 This is strange.

00:03:35.000 It'd be the equivalent of a non-kosher restaurant like McDonald's deciding to do this on Yom Kippur for Jews. 0.69

00:03:42.000 It'd be really, really weird.

00:03:44.000 Okay, because if I'm keeping Yom Kippur, first of all, there are many more Jews who keep Yom Kippur who don't eat kosher, I'm sure, as a percentage, than Muslims who keep Ramadan, who then don't keep halal in any way and head on over to the local Mickey D's. 0.74

00:03:56.000 It would be weird anyway, because the reality is you are a food company that sells food, and the vast majority of the food that you sell is not to the people who you're presumably appealing to.

00:04:07.000 So, who is McDonald's appealing to?

00:04:11.000 Who's their target audience? 0.95

00:04:12.000 And the answer is the dullards in the West who believe that it is a mark of virtue to subsume your own values beneath the values of other cultures. 0.82

00:04:22.000 That is the part that's strange. 0.66

00:04:24.000 That is the part that's weird, and that is the part that is problematic.

00:04:27.000 It is, in fact, a strange form of cultural reparation.

00:04:32.000 That somehow the West owes it to other cultures to participate in their religious activities to the extent that they're going to subsume their own interests.

00:04:42.000 Now, again, I don't think that McDonald's cares all that much in Germany about whether or not Muslims like McDonald's.

00:04:49.000 I think what German McDonald's cares about is that there are a lot of people in Germany who see this as a form of left-wing social virtue signaling.

00:04:56.000 That's what this is.

00:04:57.000 In the same way that in the United States, you have major corporations that every year decide that they're going to signal for Black History Month or for Gay Pride Month or whatever.

00:05:07.000 The basic idea is not that you are going to earn vast oodles of cash from doing that.

00:05:11.000 The idea is you're appealing to left-wing people in the United States who are going to give you more money because they believe that you share their values.

00:05:20.000 The reason that you see all these companies doing DEI in the United States is not because they think it's going to be good for their balance sheet.

00:05:26.000 It absolutely is not.

00:05:27.000 Hiring on the basis of non-merit is always bad for the balance sheet.

00:05:31.000 The reason these companies do it is because there is an entire group of consumers they believe they can appeal to who will have warm feelings toward them if they take their own corporate business interests and throw those to the side and start signaling their politics.

00:05:48.000 And this is why, you know, this is a problem.

00:05:51.000 It's a problem.

00:05:51.000 It's a problem in American politics as well.

00:05:53.000 It's not unique to Germany.

00:05:54.000 It is a widespread symptom of a disease that has spread across the West where you are supposed to be overtly apologetic about apparently not celebrating Ramadan. 0.97

00:06:06.000 It's strange.

00:06:06.000 It's not a sign of cultural respect.

00:06:08.000 It's a sign of cultural disintegration to do this sort of stuff.

00:06:12.000 It'd be the same thing as if companies in the UK decided that they were suddenly going to take female models and suddenly cover up their faces out of respect for radical Islam.

00:06:26.000 It's saying something, but it's not the thing they think they're saying.

00:06:30.000 The reason I bring this up is because I think that there is an assumption that in the Trump era, DEI is basically dead, that we're never going back to a time when corporations were virtue signaling like this, when policy did not reflect this idea that the dominant American culture ought to be put under the foot of splinter cultures.

00:06:52.000 But the reality is that can very easily come back.

00:06:55.000 It doesn't take a lot for it to come back.

00:06:56.000 All it takes is a group of people who see it as a mark of virtue to yell at their own culture and pretend that it is somehow inferior and owes it to other cultures to demonstrate its own inferiority.

00:07:08.000 There's a piece over at Time magazine today, long piece, by Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow titled Why Donald Trump Can't Kill DEI.

00:07:16.000 And the point they make is that the anti-DEI era, which is a backlash to the DEI, Barack Obama, Joe Biden era, that there will be a backlash to the backlash and that all this stuff will come back with a vengeance.

00:07:31.000 As they point out, ideas of inclusion and diversity also permeate everyday institutions, including schools, universities, foundations, nonprofits, and corporations.

00:07:39.000 Many companies have retreated from DEI under legal and political pressure.

00:07:42.000 What makes fewer headlines is that most companies that have sidled away from the acronym continue to affirm the values of DEI under a different name.

00:07:50.000 Boeing stated it will maintain, quote, procedures aimed at encouraging an equality of opportunity.

00:07:55.000 Lowe's has proclaimed that it remained, quote, committed to fostering an environment where individuals are treated fairly, valued, respected, safe, and inspired to serve customers and communities where we live and work.

00:08:04.000 These statements sure sound like DEI to us.

00:08:07.000 The education sector remains even more committed, according to Time magazine.

00:08:12.000 A 2025 review of 262 colleges and universities found that 245 of them still maintained DEI offices and programs.

00:08:22.000 This is only going to continue.

00:08:25.000 And what does it mean?

00:08:26.000 Well, it means it'll come back if Republicans lose the forward momentum.

00:08:32.000 And again, I know that we're also riding high on the horse right now because Donald Trump won and because Republicans are in charge of the legislative branches of the government.

00:08:41.000 But if you think this stuff can't come back, that's just incorrect.

00:08:45.000 Well, the West is apparently not interested in many ways in preserving its own lifespan.

00:08:50.000 You need to protect yourself in case something bad happens.

00:08:52.000 Okay, here is the deal. 0.99

00:08:54.000 You're going to die. 1.00

00:08:54.000 Very simple. 1.00

00:08:55.000 I'm just putting it out there.

00:08:55.000 Okay.

00:08:56.000 You will buy and you can insure against that thing happening to make sure that your family is taken care of.

00:09:01.000 I have insurance on a lot of stuff.

00:09:02.000 I've got memorabilia insurance and car insurance and health insurance.

00:09:05.000 Life insurance is legitimately maybe the most important thing you can do with your money if you got a family.

00:09:10.000 Because God forbid something happens to you, your family is in serious poop.

00:09:14.000 I mean, that's just the way that it works.

00:09:15.000 And trying to navigate life insurance on your own, it's a huge bureaucratic mess.

00:09:19.000 You end up using word of mouth.

00:09:20.000 You don't get the best deal.

00:09:21.000 You need transparency.

00:09:22.000 You need ease.

00:09:23.000 And that's where Policy Genius comes in.

00:09:25.000 They make the process dramatically easier by acting as an online insurance marketplace, not an insurance company.

00:09:30.000 So you can compare quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side for free and actually understand what they're buying.

00:09:36.000 Their license team works for you, not those insurance carriers.

00:09:39.000 And that means their guidance is about your needs, your budget, and your family, not somebody else's commission structure.

00:09:43.000 What really stands out is how quickly you can get coverage.

00:09:46.000 They help you figure out coverage mounts, prices, terms, all of it.

00:09:48.000 So there's no guesswork, just clarity and peace of mind.

00:09:51.000 I mean, seriously, you could theoretically, I don't want to be dark here.

00:09:55.000 You could die tomorrow.

00:09:56.000 It could be a thing that happens.

00:09:57.000 And if you listen to this ad and as you are bleeding out, you think, man, I really should have gone over to Policy Genius.

00:10:04.000 I know dark stuff, but it's real.

00:10:06.000 Go check out Policy Genius right now.

00:10:07.000 It's really important.

00:10:08.000 They'll answer your questions, handle the paperwork, advocate for you throughout the entire process.

00:10:12.000 There's a reason.

00:10:13.000 They have thousands of five-star reviews on Google and TrustPilot from people who found the right policy for their situation.

00:10:18.000 Protect the life you've built.

00:10:19.000 With Policy Genius, you can see if you can find a 20-year life insurance policy starting at just $276 a year for a million dollars in coverage, head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro.

00:10:28.000 Compare life insurance quotes from top companies.

00:10:30.000 See how much you could save.

00:10:31.000 That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro.

00:10:34.000 Joining us on the line is Wilfred Riley.

00:10:36.000 Wilfred is the host of a brand new Daily Wire Plus series.

00:10:39.000 You can only get it at Dailywire Plus called Black Lives Matter, all about what DEI means in the United States, the lies that are told on behalf of the DEI regimen and regime, the dangers of it coming back. 0.85

00:10:50.000 Here's the trailer.

00:10:52.000 This is about targeting women of color. 0.70

00:10:54.000 Systemic racism.

00:10:55.000 Systemic racism that plagues our country.

00:10:59.000 That's Rayvon Martin could have been me.

00:11:01.000 Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids. 1.00

00:11:05.000 Every February, we're told the same story. 0.98

00:11:07.000 Racism is the main thing holding black Americans back. 1.00

00:11:11.000 America is rigged that every gap proves oppression. 0.95

00:11:15.000 But this victim culture isn't empowering anyone. 0.66

00:11:17.000 The American dream still exists, and these are the lies keeping black people from fully experiencing it. 1.00

00:11:24.000 We're not here to attack America's history.

00:11:27.000 Racism exists, but it's not everywhere.

00:11:31.000 You can make a lot of money telling people they're racist.

00:11:34.000 It's time to be relentless.

00:11:36.000 The racial grift in America must come to an end. 0.98

00:11:44.000 You can only get that when you go and subscribe over at Dailywire Plus today.

00:11:48.000 You definitely should.

00:11:50.000 It is an audacious series from Wilfred.

00:11:51.000 Wilfred, thanks so much for joining the show.

00:11:54.000 Thanks for having me on.

00:11:57.000 So let's talk about DEI.

00:11:59.000 Is it about to make a comeback?

00:12:00.000 I mean, I know that everybody sort of thinks that it's dead, that it's gone away, that it's never coming back, that the Trump era has ushered it out.

00:12:07.000 But as these writers of Time magazine point out, it's kind of lurking underneath the surface.

00:12:11.000 And if Democrats take Congress or the presidency in 2028, it could come back with a vengeance.

00:12:17.000 Well, this is something that I've actually been working on professionally.

00:12:21.000 I, along with Brooks Crenshaw, who was an Intel guy for the Navy SEAL teams, and Kevin Jackson, formerly of Fox News, actually started what's sort of the first large anti-woke consulting firm, Unified Solutions America.

00:12:37.000 And our focus is sort of, without going into the full pitch, going into companies and ripping out the DEI nonsense that's come in since about 2010.

00:12:46.000 But what we find when we pitch clients is that, yeah, there's been a lot of rebranding so that when people try to get compliant with some of the things that have been pitched by the Trump administration, you have the VP of diversity, for example, being rebuilt as the VP or the senior lead of belonging.

00:13:07.000 So it's going to be a long fight.

00:13:09.000 I mean, in conservative intellectual circles, we sometimes hear the phrase, you know, left-wing ratchet only turns one way.

00:13:16.000 So there'll be a big move.

00:13:18.000 You see political correctness in the 90s where a whole series of policies, I mean, at that time, you had radical feminism, you had the first wave of critical theory.

00:13:27.000 They'll kind of come in to intellectual salons.

00:13:30.000 And more importantly, I think they'll come into serious business.

00:13:33.000 They'll come into academia and they'll be pushed only so far and there'll be a reaction.

00:13:37.000 I mean, there actually was a big budget movie called PCU and people got kind of disgusted with the whole thing.

00:13:43.000 People were walking around with shirts showing spotted owls on barbecues and so on.

00:13:47.000 And it'll stop.

00:13:47.000 It'll go away for a little bit.

00:13:49.000 But the core individuals involved don't go anywhere.

00:13:54.000 The people that were on those tenure and hiring committees never left.

00:13:58.000 And that is the risk now.

00:14:01.000 And so from, I mean, unified solutions on my corporate side to the serious academic debates we're having, the question has to be, how do you actually get rid of them?

00:14:10.000 I mean, yeah, and I will say, I think there are ways to do that.

00:14:16.000 Elon Musk and the Donald and his administration seem to feel that one way is just to fire large blocks of people.

00:14:24.000 I mean, there are areas where this is concentrated.

00:14:26.000 And if you get rid of them, the concentration is gone to some extent.

00:14:32.000 I mean, the deep state in politics, last line, but the deep state is just those people that are in an administration over administrative cycles.

00:14:44.000 So in DC, you've got guys that weren't just hired under Mr. Biden.

00:14:47.000 You've got guys that were hired under Mr. Carter.

00:14:50.000 And they're there and they're opposing you if you are president.

00:14:54.000 And they're often not very useful.

00:14:55.000 These are brandy bottle in the desk kind of guys.

00:14:58.000 What do you do?

00:14:59.000 I mean, you can say, well, a whole sector of jobs isn't really needed.

00:15:03.000 It often isn't.

00:15:04.000 You can cut that out.

00:15:05.000 And that's one way to fight DEI.

00:15:07.000 Do you need 240 HR people if you have 2,000 employees?

00:15:14.000 So I think one of the big questions that a lot of people have, Wilfred, is why corporations don't take advantage of this moment to just really get rid of this.

00:15:22.000 Because obviously it is anti-meritocracy.

00:15:25.000 It is anti-market performance to embrace DEI in these ways.

00:15:29.000 But as you say, a lot of this has sort of gone undercover and will probably re-emerge from the chrysalis if Democrats retake power.

00:15:37.000 Why are corporations doing this?

00:15:39.000 Because some of it has to be pandering, but I think a lot of it is pandering to a broad spectrum of people on the left, mainly white liberals actually, who seem to think that companies are better if DEI is attached to the company.

00:15:54.000 Yeah, and there's a lot of debate about this.

00:15:56.000 I mean, first of all, one of the problems is that you now have an entrenched base within the company.

00:16:02.000 So, again, when myself or Kevin goes into a company, you find that there is opposition there.

00:16:09.000 You have HR, you have diversity, you have, again, those people that have come in since the PCU era.

00:16:15.000 So, I mean, I'm an Illinois man in terms of college, I-L-L, I-N-I.

00:16:19.000 And at the University of Michigan, our friendly rival, the department of whatever they called it, I think it was diversity, at one point employed 240 people.

00:16:29.000 And this, this became a joke across the Big Ten.

00:16:32.000 People started making fun of it in the Ivy League.

00:16:35.000 It became known. 0.96

00:16:36.000 But that's ridiculous.

00:16:39.000 I didn't have a witty line there, just sort of all these people had six-figure salaries. 0.54

00:16:44.000 All of them were looking around the campus in pleasant Ann Arbor for hate offenses, so on.

00:16:51.000 And the problem is that when you have a base like that, people start looking for something to do.

00:16:57.000 So I would imagine that very often racial tensions and so on are going to get much worse in that kind of environment.

00:17:05.000 And that's where you tend to have staff privilege walking, for example, people being set down for endless seminars on how America hasn't improved since 1904, you know, the pronouns in the bio line, because you're employing people that are there to put that stuff in.

00:17:23.000 So when you ask, why doesn't the C-level just get them out?

00:17:26.000 Because there's inherent bite, there are people in the company that are fighting for those jobs because they hold those jobs.

00:17:33.000 And second thing, quickly, there also is kind of a literature that argues this works.

00:17:39.000 So there's what's known as the McKinsey report, which found a correlation between DEI and profitability.

00:17:48.000 And when we looked at that for unified solutions, what we found is that I think it cuts the other way, right?

00:17:54.000 So if you're a big player and you make a lot of money, you can afford to do a lot of, let's say, BS on a family show.

00:18:02.000 So like the bigger you are, the more money you can give to charity on the side, so on down the line.

00:18:08.000 And I think other companies kind of pursuing a second mover advantage try to do what the big guys do.

00:18:15.000 The issue is that none of that actually is why they're making money.

00:18:20.000 So as Mr. Michael Jordan of Chicago once said, if you're a shoe company, you ought to remember that your business is selling shoes.

00:18:29.000 It's not actually outreach to the black community or something like that.

00:18:33.000 You can do a little of that.

00:18:34.000 You can tithe is how I would think of it.

00:18:36.000 But if you start thinking of diversity as your number one priority on Nike sales team, you're probably going to struggle.

00:18:44.000 Your sales team is probably going to be a lot of white and African-American pros for Nike.

00:18:49.000 And the more you move beyond that, the fewer shoes you're going to sell, which is an issue because that's what your business is.

00:18:56.000 So Wilfred, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you to sort of give a pitch for the new Black Lives Matter series over at Daily Wire Plus.

00:19:03.000 What are the things that you cover why should people watch it?

00:19:07.000 Yeah.

00:19:08.000 And I mean, actually, thanks for letting me talk more about some of the things I'm doing in writing and business.

00:19:14.000 Yeah, Black Lives Matter is the thing I'm working on with the Daily Wire right now.

00:19:19.000 And I had great fun doing this.

00:19:20.000 I came down to Florida.

00:19:22.000 I got to experience the joy of Florida driving, interestingly enough, which I talked about on Twitter.

00:19:26.000 Drew kind of a mob.

00:19:28.000 People were telling me that it's wonderful down there.

00:19:31.000 But yeah, Black Lives Matter is a breakdown of some of the things that are said in race relations discourse, which is what I write about professionally.

00:19:40.000 And I'm sort of saying that a lot of this is absolutely nonsensical.

00:19:44.000 There's not a wave of police officers killing African-American men.

00:19:49.000 For those of you that don't know the stats by this point, I think most on the intellectual right do, but that's not 10,000 a year.

00:19:55.000 That number's about 12.

00:19:57.000 There's not a wave of interracial crime, certainly from whites against blacks.

00:20:03.000 Interracial violent crime is in a typical year, it's about 3% of total index crime, 3 to 5.

00:20:09.000 It's also about 80 to 90% black on white, by the way.

00:20:13.000 But you go beyond that.

00:20:14.000 Many hate crimes.

00:20:15.000 I wouldn't say all or anything like that, but many of these high-profile crimes, maybe most, Jossie Smollett, Yasmin Saweed, they're fakes.

00:20:22.000 They're immediate, not immediately, but within months to years, they're exposed to just completely untrue.

00:20:27.000 That story, unlike the original, runs in agate type in the, you know, ladies' garden and pet cat section of the paper, but it is, it is a reality.

00:20:38.000 And beyond that, is America particularly racist?

00:20:41.000 Well, certainly against black middle-class people. 1.00

00:20:45.000 You could argue in the other direction, but no.

00:20:47.000 I mean, we've had institutional affirmative action in place since the Philadelphia plan, I'd argue fully implemented in 1967.

00:20:54.000 So a lot of these things that the average stable black or Latino taxpayer believes, no, they're just not true.

00:21:03.000 And the focus of the series is, why has it become almost taboo to say these things that are just obviously true?

00:21:13.000 Last slide, but if you see a pregnant nurse scuffling with eight black men, why are we supposed to pretend that she stole a bicycle from them? 0.99

00:21:24.000 It could be nothing happened.

00:21:25.000 It could be the young men were at fault, but why is the default that Karen is abusing them?

00:21:31.000 When you're expected to believe nonsense, there's a reason behind that.

00:21:35.000 What's the reason here?

00:21:38.000 Well, that's Wilfred Riley.

00:21:39.000 Go check out his brand new series over at Dailywire Plus right now.

00:21:42.000 It's available Black Lives Matter.

00:21:44.000 Wilfred, thanks so much for the time and congrats on the series.

00:21:48.000 Thank you.

00:21:49.000 Thank you, Ben, for having me on.

00:21:50.000 Well, folks, I've told you my wife is pregnant with our fifth baby right now.

00:21:53.000 And that means that we are looking forward to months of no sleep, but we need our sleep right now.

00:21:57.000 We got to stock up.

00:21:58.000 And that's why we rely on Helix Sleep.

00:22:00.000 Finding that right mattress, it doesn't have to be complicated.

00:22:02.000 Our sponsors over at Helix actually make it incredibly straightforward with their sleep quiz, which matches you to the perfect mattress based on your specific preferences and sleep needs.

00:22:10.000 They're not just another mattress company either.

00:22:12.000 Helix is the most awarded mattress brand out there with glowing reviews from major publications like Forbes and Wired.

00:22:17.000 And I took the sleep quiz, got the mattress that's right for me.

00:22:21.000 You're personalizing literally everything in your life.

00:22:22.000 Why would you not do that for the thing you sleep on every single night?

00:22:26.000 According to a study they conducted, 82% of participants actually saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle while sleeping on that Helix mattress.

00:22:33.000 Pretty impressive when you think about how crucial quality sleep is for everything in life.

00:22:37.000 I know the founders, the mattress is awesome.

00:22:38.000 They offer free shipping directly to your door and a 120-night sleep trial so you can actually test it out in your own home.

00:22:44.000 Start sleeping right tonight.

00:22:45.000 Order that Helix mattress today. 0.71

00:22:47.000 Head on over to helixleep.com slash Ben for 27% offsite-wide.

00:22:51.000 That's helixleep.com slash Ben for 27% off-site-wide.

00:22:54.000 Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helixleep.com slash Ben.

00:22:59.000 All righty, folks.

00:22:59.000 Well, we're going to do something new on the show today, a new segment sponsored by our friends over at PeerTalk, where I answer some listener questions.

00:23:06.000 So let's hear them.

00:23:07.000 My question is on school choice.

00:23:09.000 What is taking Republicans so long to build a national platform around school choice, around charter schools, around vouchers?

00:23:18.000 Schools in this country, public schools spend $20,000 or $30,000 failing to educate children.

00:23:23.000 I'm wondering why Republicans haven't built a large platform around school choice yet.

00:23:30.000 Love to hear your thoughts.

00:23:31.000 Thanks again.

00:23:32.000 Love the show.

00:23:33.000 The real answer here is that Republicans have built a lot of state policy around school choice.

00:23:37.000 Obviously, Florida has spent an enormous amount of time and money promoting school choice because the vast majority of education spending is done at the state and local level.

00:23:46.000 The federal government usually covers like 10%, 15% through subsidies of school monies across the nation.

00:23:54.000 The Department of Education has been trying to promote school choice.

00:23:58.000 It would require a big piece of federal legislation, I would imagine, at pretty significant cost in order to subsidize this from the federal governmental level.

00:24:06.000 But it is one of the reasons you are seeing population movement from people with young kids from blue states to red states is because, again, this really is a sort of state thing.

00:24:14.000 And listen, as a big fan of federalism, I think the federal government should be involved in fewer things generally.

00:24:19.000 I think that the federal government, the Department of Education should be eliminated.

00:24:23.000 I don't think it should be paying for school choice.

00:24:25.000 I think it shouldn't exist.

00:24:26.000 And all of this should be kicked down to the state and local level.

00:24:29.000 All righty, who's next?

00:24:31.000 Lately, I've seen you on a bunch of more left-leaning podcasts.

00:24:34.000 And while obviously I agree with talking to those with opposing views, sometimes it seems like those shows are just trying to focus on the areas where you differ with Trump and or other conservatives rather than your full set of views.

00:24:45.000 How do you view the value of those conversations?

00:24:48.000 And what do you hope comes from them?

00:24:50.000 So I think each one of these conversations has a different audience.

00:24:52.000 Whenever you're determining whether to do a show or how to do a show, you have to consider who you're talking to.

00:24:56.000 So of course, when I go on a left-wing show, the left-wingers are trying to get me to rip into Trump.

00:25:02.000 And I'm always going to give my honest opinions.

00:25:04.000 I mean, that's what I do for a living.

00:25:05.000 I have no problem criticizing the president where I think that it is worthwhile doing that.

00:25:10.000 However, it provides me a unique opportunity to not only provide, I think, a reasonable conservative viewpoint to people who may not love President Trump, but also to hold some of these hosts accountable for their own failures.

00:25:21.000 So, for example, when I was on Gavin Newsom's podcast, that turned pretty quickly from me criticizing some aspects of things that Trump has done to me pushing Gavin Newsom pretty hard on a wide variety of issues.

00:25:31.000 And he started to cave on those issues.

00:25:33.000 Well, if I can get him to do that, then maybe a more moderate politics can be found on the left.

00:25:39.000 So it depends who you're talking to.

00:25:40.000 What is the goal of the conversation?

00:25:42.000 And of course, everybody comes in with an agenda.

00:25:46.000 But the reality is that I never feel the necessity on this show or any other show to defend every single thing the president of the United States does.

00:25:54.000 And if they push me on a thing where I disagree with Trump, I'm happy to say, listen, I disagree with Trump on that.

00:25:58.000 Now, do you disagree with your own party on these set of radical policies?

00:26:03.000 Because that's what they don't want to talk about.

00:26:04.000 That's the thing they really don't want to talk about.

00:26:06.000 And I can't have that conversation with them unless I'm talking with them.

00:26:10.000 So how great is the danger at this point that Democrats end up taking over Congress and that the era of DEI, the era of transgender ideology, that all of that comes back? 0.96

00:26:19.000 The answer is that the danger is relatively high.

00:26:22.000 And pretending that away is not going to make it go away.

00:26:25.000 According to the 2006 generic congressional polling, right now, Democrats have about a five-point lead in the generic congressional polling.

00:26:34.000 Latest Emerson poll has Democrats up eight.

00:26:36.000 The Economist YouGov has him up four.

00:26:40.000 Gavin Newsom correctly says that if the Democrats win the midterm elections, then President Trump's presidency is effectively stymied.

00:26:50.000 States for the next three years.

00:26:52.000 Good news he's temporary.

00:26:54.000 That's just three years.

00:26:55.000 And the presidency, as we know, it will de facto end this November when we get the gavel back and Speaker Jeffries becomes the next speaker, as long as we remain vigilant.

00:27:09.000 So again, Democrats are saying it openly.

00:27:12.000 What are the chances that that happens?

00:27:13.000 The answer is pretty good.

00:27:16.000 The chances that Democrats take the House are very, very high right now.

00:27:20.000 And we'll discuss in a little while what Republicans can do to lower those chances.

00:27:23.000 But that is just the reality.

00:27:25.000 Now, the biggest problem for Republicans would occur if the Democrats were to somehow take the Senate.

00:27:30.000 If Democrats were to take the Senate, that sets them up for what the kids call a generational run.

00:27:35.000 Because right now, the map in 2026, the Senate map is stacked in favor of Republicans.

00:27:39.000 2028, not the same thing.

00:27:41.000 Plus, 2028, you could actually see a shift in the party of the presidency.

00:27:45.000 I know right now that everybody is sort of taking for granted the idea on the right that JD Vance will be not only the nominee, but the next president.

00:27:53.000 That is not what the polling totally suggests right now.

00:27:57.000 They have been taking polls of, for example, Gavin Newsom versus JD Vance.

00:28:02.000 There are two polls that were taken in the last two weeks, a big data poll with a margin of error of 2% that has Newsom up 4439 over Vance and a Yahoo News poll that has Newsom up 4943 over Vance.

00:28:15.000 Those are the two most recent polls.

00:28:18.000 So, before Republicans get a little bit ahead of their skis, win the next election and then the election after that.

00:28:26.000 Right now, Republican turnout numbers are looking low.

00:28:29.000 Harry Enton over at CNN points out that Democrats actually lead in the Texas primary polls in terms of their numbers for the first time since 2002, which is a very bad indicator for Republicans.

00:28:44.000 Mind-blown to quote the show, Blossom Joey.

00:28:47.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:28:48.000 I mean, look at this.

00:28:50.000 Okay, share of Texas midterm primary ballots at this point in the cycle, cast in Democratic primaries or Republican primaries.

00:28:57.000 In 2022, the last midterm, overwhelmingly, the votes were being cast in Republican primary, 62%.

00:29:02.000 But look at what's going on now in the 2026 cycle.

00:29:06.000 More votes are being cast on the Democratic side.

00:29:10.000 What a shift from where we were four years ago at this point.

00:29:13.000 More people in Texas picking up the Democratic ballot.

00:29:16.000 More Democrats are voting in Texas than Republicans.

00:29:20.000 I mean, how unusual is that?

00:29:21.000 Just how unusual.

00:29:22.000 Well, you see the massive shift from 2022.

00:29:25.000 But look at history.

00:29:26.000 Go all the way back.

00:29:27.000 When was the last time that more people actually picked up a Democratic ballot, cast a ball in the Democratic primary in Texas in the midterm?

00:29:34.000 You have to go all the way back to 2002.

00:29:38.000 So this could break.

00:29:39.000 This could break an over 20-year stretch.

00:29:42.000 My goodness gracious.

00:29:45.000 Okay, and the reality is, actually, that if you go all the way back to 2002, how do those elections go in Texas in 2002?

00:29:54.000 Well, the 2002 U.S. House of Representative elections in Texas, believe it or not, Democrats won 17 seats and Republicans won 15 in that election cycle.

00:30:04.000 So not great is the answer.

00:30:08.000 This is presumably why it would be smart for Republicans to run better candidates rather than worse candidates.

00:30:14.000 That Texas Senate primary features a three-way battle between Wesley Hunt, John Cornyn, and Ken Paxton.

00:30:21.000 Cornyn is the sitting senator.

00:30:25.000 I think politicos believe that Cornyn would be the heavy favorite in a Senate race against, say, James Tallarico.

00:30:32.000 They're a lot more sketchy when it comes to Ken Paxton, who has an enormous amount of baggage.

00:30:38.000 I mean, that dude is basically an entire train car filled with baggage, Ken Paxton.

00:30:43.000 And I understand people like that he's quite militant in his affect.

00:30:46.000 But the reality is that if you wish to secure the seat, then you probably want to, you know, nominate the person most likely to win the seat when it comes to the election in the fall.

00:30:57.000 John Thun, the Senate majority leader, is saying as much.

00:31:01.000 Well, we've had multiple conversations about that, and I'm hopeful at some point that he will weigh in.

00:31:06.000 We believe that John Cornyn is the best person to win that general election to make sure that Texas stays red in the United States Senate and to save a lot of money that we could invest in other places where we have really good opportunities to win some seats, places like Michigan and New Hampshire.

00:31:22.000 And we're defending seats this year as well, Aisha.

00:31:25.000 So we need to take Texas off the map.

00:31:27.000 The best way to do that is for John Cornyn to be the nominee, and we need to have the president hopefully in his corner before this is all said and done.

00:31:35.000 Speaking of which, I've said before that there are certain election cycles where one scandal can turn into the driving force behind the entire election cycle.

00:31:43.000 I do not think that we have seen the end of the story surrounding Tony Gonzalez, the Texas representative whose former staffer committed suicide by dousing herself in gasoline and setting herself on fire.

00:31:55.000 I know that the House majority wants Gonzalez to stick around until he is somehow prosecuted or some investigation is done.

00:32:04.000 The reality is the longer you wait on this sort of stuff, the more it's going to be fodder for Democrats.

00:32:08.000 Democrats would be engaging in political malpractice not to jump on this, obviously.

00:32:13.000 Here is the husband of the woman who doused herself in gasoline and set herself on fire after apparently she had an affair with Tony Gonzalez.

00:32:22.000 Here he was on CNN.

00:32:24.000 Actually, it makes me even angrier because, again, he's deflecting and, you know, he just he has the man has no values.

00:32:31.000 You know, he runs his whole campaign on family values and he runs everything, you know, saying that he's some family man. 0.95

00:32:38.000 You know, he's, he's actually quite of a sick man.

00:32:40.000 You know, I have all the messages that shared between them two.

00:32:44.000 And, you know, the things that, you know, I just released a tip of the iceberg of the things that this man was telling her.

00:32:53.000 I released just what was, you know, enough information for the people to understand who this person and who they were dealing with.

00:33:01.000 If I were to release everything, you know, again, my biggest thing is protecting my son.

00:33:11.000 I will not release, you know, the salacious messages that went back and forth much deeper than what, and much more graphic than what I presented to the American people.

00:33:25.000 Okay, now, again, the danger for the Republicans is that Tony Gonzalez's district, the Texas 23rd, that is a very hard-fought district.

00:33:35.000 It has become increasingly tight.

00:33:38.000 In 2024, for example, Ted Cruz won that district 53 to 45.

00:33:45.000 Historically speaking, that district has sort of switched hands a few times.

00:33:50.000 The district was represented by Pete Gallego, if you go back to 2013, 2015, and then by Will Heard, and now by Tony Gonzalez.

00:33:58.000 So it's sort of a checkered district.

00:34:00.000 There's the possibility that if Republicans give up that seat and there's a special election, they lose the seat.

00:34:05.000 And right now, the Republican majority is basically razor thin.

00:34:09.000 However, I will say that there is some short-term pain that could lead to long-term gain if you actually get rid of people who are nailing their staffers and their ugly texts to show it.

00:34:22.000 And there might be some short-term gain, but long-term pain if you do not do all of that.

00:34:27.000 Now, with all that said, is it possible for Democrats to blow this thing?

00:34:29.000 Sure.

00:34:30.000 President Trump, as I said yesterday on the program, his State of the Union address was a masterclass in getting Democrats to decline themselves. 0.99

00:34:39.000 The Democrats made fools of themselves. 0.99

00:34:41.000 They looked terrible. 0.99

00:34:42.000 The Republicans are already cutting campaign ads showing what Democrats were sitting down for, showing them jeering the president.

00:34:49.000 Here is an ad that was already cut by the Republicans.

00:34:54.000 If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support.

00:34:59.000 The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. 0.61

00:35:15.000 Democrats, it shows them all sleeping and sitting and doing nothing.

00:35:19.000 Republicans, cheer.

00:35:22.000 It says, Democrats are for illegal immigrants, Republicans are for you, which, of course, is an echo of the Democrats are for they, them, Donald Trump is for you. 0.64

00:35:30.000 So could that be an issue for Democrats?

00:35:32.000 Absolutely.

00:35:33.000 Absolutely.

00:35:34.000 The Democratic leadership, for its part, continues to defend this sort of behavior.

00:35:39.000 Ilhan Omar, who, I mean, just the seething scorn she has for Americans, it flows off of her in waves.

00:35:46.000 It's really astonishing that this person is respected on the Democratic side of the aisle.

00:35:52.000 Anyway, here she was on CNN saying that there was no way for her to help screaming at the president. 0.99

00:36:00.000 I think it was really unavoidable.

00:36:04.000 The president talked about protecting Americans, and I just had to remind him that his administration was responsible for killing two of my constituents.

00:36:15.000 In Minneapolis, many members of your Democratic Party criticized their Republican counterparts when they interrupted President Biden's State of the Union address.

00:36:23.000 As a lot of us remember, do you have any regrets at all about the interaction we played between you and President Trump just last night?

00:36:33.000 I do not.

00:36:34.000 And I think many people look at that moment when the president says it is our responsibility to protect Americans.

00:36:44.000 And he does not acknowledge the fact that two Americans, two of my constituents, two of our neighbors, were killed.

00:36:53.000 And it was important for me to just remind the American people that the president and his administration was responsible for killing two American citizens.

00:37:08.000 I mean, and that's so she was screaming at him when he made a very obvious statement that we should protect Americans, and that's the first job of the government and not illegal immigrants. 0.91

00:37:16.000 Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader who hopes to become Speaker in November, defended the outbursts yesterday.

00:37:23.000 I thought the Democratic response was appropriately restrained and forceful at the same period of time.

00:37:29.000 And that was obvious to anybody who was watching.

00:37:33.000 Obvious to anyone who was watching in terms of the members who were there.

00:37:38.000 With respect to Representative Green's response, it was both appropriate and restrained at the same period of time.

00:37:49.000 Now, his message that he communicated was obviously on point.

00:37:58.000 So, again, this is amazing stuff.

00:38:00.000 The Democratic leadership endorsing all of this.

00:38:04.000 Chuck Schumer, same sort of thing.

00:38:06.000 He says it wasn't a state of the union.

00:38:08.000 It was a state of delusion.

00:38:10.000 Oh, my gosh, the wordplay Manude.

00:38:14.000 This was not America's State of the Union.

00:38:17.000 It was Donald Trump's state of delusion.

00:38:20.000 He sat up there, you know, he has a huge ego.

00:38:23.000 He loves saying, patting himself on the back.

00:38:26.000 But the average American was sitting there saying, I'm paying 6% more for electricity.

00:38:31.000 I'm paying 10% more for meat.

00:38:34.000 My health care bills are going up.

00:38:35.000 And Donald Trump isn't even talking about it.

00:38:38.000 In fact, he had so little good to say about what he's doing that he had to spend most, so much of the time talking about really true American heroes that he had nothing to do with.

00:38:48.000 He'd had nothing to do with the hockey team, for instance, winning, and they're great.

00:38:53.000 Donald Trump, this speech was an utter failure for Donald Trump.

00:38:58.000 Meanwhile, Al Green, the representative that you heard Hakeem Jeffries praising a moment ago, he says that President Trump wants to take us back to the days of saying the N-word.

00:39:06.000 And then he showed a picture of himself as resistance hero.

00:39:10.000 This is one of my favorite things about politics, about business.

00:39:15.000 You always know who is the rather douchey person in the room by whether they are flanked by a gigantic picture of themselves.

00:39:22.000 If there's that gigantic picture of you behind you, Anthony Fauci had one too.

00:39:28.000 Yeah, man, not great.

00:39:31.000 I believe in what I did.

00:39:34.000 The president should not portray persons of African ancestry as apes.

00:39:41.000 This is unacceptable given the history in this country of caricatures such as this being utilized against people of color at an earlier time.

00:39:51.000 And the president would take us back to those ugly days when you could call black people in words with impunity, when you could demand that black people show respect that was not deserved, when the black people were relegated to the back of the bus, they were relegated to the balcony of the movie and the bottom of the jails.

00:40:10.000 This is unacceptable. 0.97

00:40:12.000 Black people are not going back, Mr. President. 0.97

00:40:14.000 Black people are going to move forward with the rest of this country. 0.96

00:40:19.000 And I'm giving notice today that we will not tolerate this level of injustice emanating from the highest office in this country, from the presidency.

00:40:29.000 Okay, so this is what Democrats want to do.

00:40:31.000 I mean, that is a, that's a bold strategy.

00:40:34.000 We'll see how it works out for him.

00:40:35.000 Then President Trump put out a statement on Truth Social about the response by Democrats to his State of the Union.

00:40:40.000 Quote, when you watch low IQ Ilhan Omar and Rashid Talib as they screamed uncontrollably last night at the very elegant State of the Union, such an important and beautiful event. 0.97

00:40:49.000 They had the bulging bloodshot eyes of crazy people, lunatics, mentally deranged and sick, who frankly look like they should be institutionalized. 0.60

00:40:57.000 When the man is cooking, he's cooking. 0.99

00:40:58.000 When people can behave like that, and knowing that they are crooked and corrupt politicians so bad for our country, we should send them back from where they came as fast as possible.

00:41:07.000 They can only damage the United States of America.

00:41:09.000 They can do nothing to help it. 0.98

00:41:10.000 They should actually get on a boat with Trump-deranged Robert De Niro, another sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely low IQ, who has absolutely no idea what he is doing or saying, some of which is seriously criminal. 0.98

00:41:20.000 I don't know if what he's saying or doing is criminal. 0.98

00:41:22.000 And when I watched him break down in tears last night, much like a child would do, like a baby child, like a child, I realized he may be even sicker than crazy Rosie O'Donnell, who is right now in Ireland trying to figure out how to come back into our beautiful United States.

00:41:35.000 The only difference between De Niro and Rosie is that she is probably somewhat smarter than him, which isn't saying much.

00:41:39.000 The good news is that America is now bigger, better, richer, and stronger than ever before, and it's driving them absolutely crazy.

00:41:45.000 So, you know, listen, I'm a fan of letting Democrats be clowned themselves.

00:41:52.000 I'm not sure that that is the best form of the dunk, but you understand President Trump's annoyance for sure.

00:41:59.000 Meanwhile, Kamala Harris will not go away.

00:42:01.000 It is amazing to me that she is still traipsing around the political landscape pretending that she is going to be the next Democratic presidential. 1.00

00:42:08.000 Listen, maybe there's not enough to do it.

00:42:09.000 Maybe.

00:42:10.000 Could be.

00:42:11.000 I hope.

00:42:12.000 Here's Kamala Harris yesterday saying that the State of the Union reminded her of show and tell at school.

00:42:19.000 I watched it.

00:42:22.000 It was full of lies.

00:42:24.000 And, you know, when he wasn't lying, he was, it reminded me of our kids going to show and tell at school.

00:42:31.000 It was nothing that was true about really how the American people right now, so many are suffering under the weight of high prices, unaffordable health care, unaffordable housing.

00:42:44.000 And it was, you know, we've come to expect it.

00:42:47.000 And, you know, some people have said it was really quite boring and that there was nothing very interesting about it because it was the same old, same old.

00:42:54.000 The guy lying about what he intends to do, what he has done, and the state of our economy and the state of the world.

00:43:06.000 Wow.

00:43:07.000 I'm sorry, I zoned out.

00:43:08.000 I completely zoned out, which is what happened with her candidacy.

00:43:12.000 And then, of course, she suggests there are powerful forces attempting to destroy democracy.

00:43:16.000 I assume here she is not talking about the Democratic attempt to leverage into all American law ballot harvesting, the most corrupt form of voting.

00:43:26.000 We've got momentum and we must be alert because there are powerful forces intentionally attempting to destroy our democracy and the voice of the people.

00:43:44.000 And then, of course, she claimed that the Republicans are trying to stymie the vote.

00:43:48.000 This is one of these big Democrat myths that really is untrue, that Republicans are trying to stop people from voting.

00:43:54.000 Democrats vote in extraordinarily high percentages.

00:43:56.000 Black Americans vote, actually, in increasingly high percentages in the United States.

00:44:00.000 But here she is claiming that voter idea is inherently racist and all the rest.

00:44:05.000 You know what the SAVE Act would do?

00:44:06.000 Require that people show a birth certificate or a passport to register to vote.

00:44:12.000 I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but something like 40% of Americans don't have those documents.

00:44:23.000 Yeah, that's what it is.

00:44:24.000 It's a big voter suppression attempt.

00:44:26.000 It's so hard to register to vote.

00:44:27.000 It is not hard to register to vote.

00:44:29.000 I mean, come on.

00:44:30.000 Really, really, come on.

00:44:33.000 And as far as the Democratic push, I mean, they continue to not jettison their radicalism, which is truly insane.

00:44:39.000 The fact that Bernie Sanders, I will never get over the fact that Democrats decided to make a bloviating socialist, career-useless person who's in his 130s, the ideological thought leader there.

00:44:51.000 I will never get over it.

00:44:52.000 Yesterday, Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma and Senator Bernie Sanders went at it over the ACA, Bernie claiming that it's up to Republicans to fix the ACA and Mullen saying, dude, you've been here for longer than I have been alive.

00:45:06.000 When we start talking about healthcare not being affordable, Ranking Member and I actually agree on that.

00:45:12.000 The problem is you supported the same tools that got us to where healthcare is unaffordable because ACA affordable health care, which is completely unaffordable, has risen three times faster than inflation itself.

00:45:26.000 Yet we still support it.

00:45:28.000 Not we, you, the Democrats, I support a national health care program, which will cut the cost of the health care.

00:45:34.000 I'm sorry, it's my time.

00:45:35.000 But you're attacking me.

00:45:36.000 No, you're going to attack me.

00:45:37.000 I'm not a response.

00:45:38.000 I'm pointing out facts.

00:45:40.000 You can say what you want.

00:45:41.000 I'm just pointing out facts.

00:45:42.000 No, what is that it is rising three times faster and we know it.

00:45:46.000 So how about we work together and say, hey, scrap ACA, admit it doesn't work.

00:45:50.000 Admit you guys made a mistake and let's work at something with President Trump to make affordable health care healthy and affordable for everybody.

00:45:57.000 But there's zero chance you guys could do that.

00:45:59.000 Zero chance.

00:46:00.000 Yet everybody we bring up here, you guys chastise for trying to make changes.

00:46:03.000 God forbid we change and go after us and try to fix our broken system.

00:46:09.000 Anyways, I ranted too long.

00:46:11.000 Let's talk about some.

00:46:12.000 Yes, you did.

00:46:13.000 I'm sorry, I didn't ask your opinion on that.

00:46:15.000 And if I cared about you, I would ask you, but I don't care about your opinion.

00:46:18.000 You're part of the system.

00:46:19.000 You're part of the problem.

00:46:20.000 You've been sitting here longer than I've even been alive.

00:46:23.000 This is your problem.

00:46:24.000 You should have fixed this a long time ago.

00:46:25.000 You've been rel on it so long.

00:46:26.000 What do you think?

00:46:27.000 I decided not to run for Surgeon General.

00:46:31.000 You're the nominee.

00:46:32.000 I've decided nominee.

00:46:34.000 That is definitely something that we would never accept.

00:46:40.000 Okay, so here's the thing.

00:46:42.000 Obviously, Democrats are not in connection with normality.

00:46:46.000 Republicans need to keep pointing that out in calm and cohesive fashion.

00:46:51.000 Meanwhile, JD Vance has been deployed to fight fraud in the federal government.

00:46:55.000 This is something that the president of the United States announced at the State of the Union address yesterday.

00:47:00.000 The vice president gave a presser in which he explained that he is going to be cracking down on fraud, particularly in the Medicaid system while being flanked by Dr. Oz here was the vice president.

00:47:10.000 Far too many people have gotten rich by taking what is the best of the American spirit and getting rich off of it instead of providing services to kids who need it.

00:47:20.000 That is stopping today.

00:47:21.000 We're taking a whole of government approach in the Trump administration to take this fraud seriously.

00:47:26.000 What Mehmet Oz and his team at CMS have done is really remarkable.

00:47:33.000 He also announced that there would be a pause put on Minnesota Medicaid funding given the allegations of fraud inside the state.

00:47:41.000 As a lot of you know, there are way too many Americans who are being defrauded by very bad actors in our society.

00:47:48.000 People who take the goodwill and the trust of the American taxpayer and they decide to use it against us.

00:47:53.000 They decide to make themselves rich instead of allowing these programs that are set up to make it easier for people to take care of their families, to make it easier for Autistic Kids to get the after-school services they need, to make it easier for people to get the health care that they need.

00:48:08.000 And we are going to start very aggressively in the administration cracking down on the people and the organizations that are defrauding Americans.

00:48:15.000 So we're announcing today that we have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money.

00:48:36.000 That pause amounts to about $260 million in funds that would normally be essentially a credit from the state of Minnesota toward the federal government.

00:48:45.000 Vice President Van said that Minnesota, according to the Wall Street Journal, was the first state targeted because the fraud there was operating at industrial scale.

00:48:53.000 There have been investigations into Minnesota fraud starting in 2022.

00:48:57.000 That's when the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis actually charged 47 defendants with allegedly exploiting a federally funded child nutrition program during the COVID-19 pandemic.

00:49:08.000 Now, we should be real about the nature of fraud in public programs.

00:49:12.000 It is large.

00:49:14.000 It is extensive.

00:49:15.000 The biggest problem with these gigantic welfare programs, of course, is that you don't have to defraud them in order to take advantage of them.

00:49:20.000 There are people all over the United States of a wide variety of groups who are taking advantage of welfare programs, knowing that the taxpayers are subsidizing them.

00:49:30.000 This has always been a problem with the gigantic welfare system itself, which is why I have always opposed it and believe that welfare ought to start at the local level.

00:49:38.000 It should not predominantly be done at the federal level.

00:49:41.000 Because at least in your local community, if somebody wants to receive charity, they have to know the person from whom they are taking the charity and they have to answer to the local community for their own failures, economically speaking.

00:49:54.000 They have to show that they're trying to get a job or whatever.

00:49:57.000 The more you abstract this to the government level, the more people are going to abuse the system.

00:50:01.000 And there is a difference, by the way, between fraud and abuse.

00:50:04.000 Obviously, when you're talking about fraud, you're talking about people who overtly lie.

00:50:07.000 They say that they're running some sort of child learning center in Minneapolis.

00:50:11.000 And it turns out that maybe they're not, that actually there are no kids there.

00:50:15.000 That's actual fraud.

00:50:16.000 That's criminal fraud.

00:50:17.000 And then there is abuse.

00:50:19.000 People who, for example, could go get a job and then they don't get a job because they're receiving too much in welfare for them to want to get a job.

00:50:26.000 They just make the lifestyle decision that it's easier to take the public cash and do what they want to do in the time that they could be working.

00:50:33.000 That is abuse of the system.

00:50:34.000 We like to focus on fraud because criminality is prosecutable.

00:50:38.000 The reality is that abuse is the bigger problem because abuse is incentive driven.

00:50:42.000 It is a huge, enormous problem.

00:50:45.000 When you change the incentive structure for human beings, when you tell them you will give them free money to do a thing, they do more of the thing.

00:50:52.000 And then the programs grow and then they grow some more and they grow some more after that.

00:50:56.000 Neither party is willing to take on serious abuse of the system because to do so would be to recognize that the system itself is incapable of preventing abuse.

00:51:05.000 It is not possible because you can work perfectly within the limits of the law and still be abusing the system.

00:51:11.000 And Americans inherently sort of respond to the nastiness of that as they should, going all the way back to the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was talking about welfare queens, right?

00:51:22.000 People who are taking advantage of the system.

00:51:24.000 They were operating within the bounds of the law.

00:51:25.000 They weren't lying about their income.

00:51:27.000 They just weren't working.

00:51:28.000 They were receiving tremendous government benefits.

00:51:30.000 That is a problem with the system because human beings are incentive driven.

00:51:35.000 But both parties have basically decided that the era of small government is over.

00:51:38.000 And so we are going to maintain these gigantic systems and then pretend that by wiping out a couple hundred million dollars in payments, that's somehow going to fix our systemic debt problems and our welfare payment problem.

00:51:48.000 It is not.

00:51:49.000 It is not in the end.

00:51:50.000 Okay, meanwhile, on the foreign policy front, very weird story near Cuba.

00:51:56.000 Unclear what exactly happened here.

00:51:59.000 The Cubans are saying that there were Americans on a U.S. speedboat who actually tried to infiltrate into Cuba and then were killed.

00:52:06.000 The Cuban embassy put out a statement on the morning of February 25th, 2026, a violating speedboat was detected within Cuban territorial waters.

00:52:13.000 The vessel, registered in Florida, approached up to one nautical mile northeast of the El Pino Channel in Cayofalcone's Correlillo municipality.

00:52:21.000 Forgive my pronunciation.

00:52:23.000 When a surface unit of the Border Guard troops of the Ministry of the Interior carrying five service members approached the vessel, the crew of the violating speedboat opened fire on the Cuban personnel.

00:52:31.000 As a consequence, four aggressors on the foreign vessel were killed and six were injured.

00:52:36.000 So, is that an international?

00:52:38.000 It kind of depends on what the speedboat was doing.

00:52:39.000 Was it somebody trying to run drugs?

00:52:42.000 Unclear what exactly was happening.

00:52:43.000 Secretary of State Rubio also said he basically has no idea what's happening.

00:52:47.000 He said that he's going to try and track down what exactly happened.

00:52:50.000 Obviously, tensions are very high with the Cuban regime right now because Cuba is no longer being supported by Venezuela, which means that they're basically on their last legs.

00:53:00.000 So again, it would make very little sense for the Cubans to provoke the United States at this point.

00:53:05.000 I'm going to assume that there is some sort of nefarious activity taking place on that speedboat rather than suggesting that the Cuban government is randomly targeting American speedboats in the general area.

00:53:13.000 Again, if you look at the map, this speedboat was very, very close to Cuban actual territory.

00:53:18.000 They were within one nautical mile of actual Cuban territory.

00:53:21.000 And meanwhile, the bigger international story, obviously, is the negotiations taking place in Geneva today between the United States and Iran.

00:53:29.000 The United States has put out a list of its demands, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:53:34.000 That list of demands includes that Iran should dismantle its three main nuclear sites at Fort Onatans and Isfahan and deliver all its remaining enriched uranium to the United States. 0.65

00:53:44.000 Now, you'll remember that those facilities were largely destroyed by the United States military and the Israeli IAF.

00:53:51.000 It is also true, however, that the Iranians have been attempting to rebuild those facilities.

00:53:55.000 And also, it was true that certain amounts of enriched uranium were moved before the actual airstrikes.

00:54:01.000 And so people are concerned that that's still hanging out out there and that the Iranians won't just be able to spin up their centrifuges, but you can use some of that uranium for things like dirty bombs.

00:54:12.000 The demands also include that any nuclear deal must last forever and never sunset, not like the JCPOA, which was the Obama plan, which basically sunset it after 10 years and then said, hey, have fun building yourself a nuke.

00:54:27.000 There would be allowance for nuclear development to the extent necessary for medical purposes.

00:54:34.000 So, for example, radiation therapy for cancer and such.

00:54:37.000 Apparently, there has not been a demand with regard to ballistic missiles murdering their own citizens or spreading of terrorism, which, again, is weak.

00:54:44.000 That is weak.

00:54:46.000 These demands are stronger than what Barack Obama was pushing, but overall, is it everything that the United States requires in order to ensure the security of itself and its allies?

00:54:56.000 I think not.

00:54:58.000 According to the latest reports, the ballistic missile program was ruled off the table by the IRGC, speaking to the NUR News Agency.

00:55:09.000 Also, apparently, a senior Iranian official has also said in an Al Jazeera interview that they reject dismantling nuclear facilities, handing over uranium stockpiles, and the principle of zero enrichment forever.

00:55:21.000 So those would be like the core demands that it's completely rejected.

00:55:28.000 So the Iranians are clearly playing chicken with the Trump administration.

00:55:31.000 That historically does not go particularly well for Iran.

00:55:36.000 JD Vance, the vice president, says that they've seen evidence that Iran is trying to rebuild its nuclear program.

00:55:43.000 Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

00:55:45.000 If they try to rebuild a nuclear weapon, that causes problems for us.

00:55:48.000 And in fact, we've seen evidence that they have tried to do exactly that.

00:55:52.000 So the president sending those negotiators to try to address that problem.

00:55:56.000 As the president has said repeatedly, he wants to address that problem diplomatically.

00:56:00.000 But of course, the president has other options as well.

00:56:05.000 Hey, so the Secretary of State also added that Iran has refused to talk about its ballistic missiles, and that is not an acceptable position for the United States.

00:56:12.000 Now, again, there has been a bit of a gap in the administration's talk about this.

00:56:16.000 The negotiators seem not to be discussing ballistic missiles.

00:56:18.000 The Secretary of State very much is.

00:56:20.000 Obviously, I think that Secretary of State Rubio is correct.

00:56:24.000 But it's also important to remember that Iran refuses, refuses to talk about the ballistic missiles to us or to anyone.

00:56:32.000 And that's a big problem.

00:56:36.000 Of course, that is right.

00:56:37.000 So we will see what happens next.

00:56:40.000 There are some reports from Politico that the United States would like for Israel to strike first, believing that if Israel strikes and then Iran shoots off a bunch of missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel in retaliation, that will justify domestically a retaliation from the United States against Iran.

00:56:56.000 And I'm fine with Israel doing whatever it needs to do to guarantee its own national security.

00:57:01.000 That seems separate and apart from the United States' own interests in the region, which include, by the way, not just protecting Israel, but also protecting Saudi Arabia, also protecting our assets in the region and beyond, and preventing the Iranian government from exporting terrorism all over the world.

00:57:16.000 These are all real interests of the United States.

00:57:20.000 The attempt to suggest that this is just the United States fighting Israel's war or some such.

00:57:24.000 First of all, Israel fought its own war back last year.

00:57:27.000 Second of all, it was the president of the United States who issued a statement to the Iranians saying they needed to stop slaughtering their people in the streets. 0.99

00:57:35.000 In fact, the early reports were that President Trump was considering some sort of minimalistic airstrike, and the Israelis said, no, don't do it.

00:57:43.000 Either go whole hog or go home.

00:57:47.000 Which, again, I think makes a lot of sense.

00:57:49.000 If you're going to do something, do it. 0.99

00:57:51.000 Don't hit a camel in the ass and then claim victory. 0.98

00:57:54.000 So it'll be interesting to see where things go over the course of the next 48 hours. 0.99

00:57:59.000 We'll keep an eye on all of it, of course.

00:58:02.000 All righty, in just a moment, we'll get to the latest on the Guthrie case.

00:58:05.000 It seems to be hitting a dead end.

00:58:07.000 Plus, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton headed to Congress to talk about Jeffrey Epstein.

00:58:11.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

00:58:12.000 If you are not a member, become a member, use Code Shapiro.

00:58:15.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

00:58:16.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

00:58:19.000 Okay.

00:58:33.000 No, not even close.

00:58:35.000 Two, three.

00:58:36.000 Whatever.

00:58:37.000 You know what?

00:58:38.000 Two.

00:58:39.000 Three.

00:58:40.000 I cannot believe we're back here again, Ben.

00:58:49.000 If Ben Shapiro shows a mom, then Ben After Dark is a cool mom.

00:58:54.000 Gang. 0.66

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 26, 2026

WTH?! McDonald’s Celebrates…Ramadan

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript