The Democratic Party is in shambles, Tim Walls is trashing Elon Musk, and Stephen A. Smith has some theories about why our brackets may be imploding. Plus, Ben Shapiro explains why he s running for president.
00:01:22.180Anyway, it's nice to be home and there's plenty of news to keep us propelling forward.
00:01:26.620The Democratic Democratic Party is in shambles. I don't know if you saw this anywhere.
00:01:31.720Yeah, it's it's in shambles. Like you cannot open up a paper, the Internet, your podcast feed without seeing a show talking to you about how badly it has imploded.
00:01:41.960According to the polls, according to the party elders, according to surveys that are figuring out why they lost.
00:01:49.280And it's just basically abject hatred by Democrats of their own party.
00:01:54.060I mean, it's just it's just good luck.
00:02:32.440And now we get a lecture on journalism.
00:02:35.380In fact, a whole Broadway show from George Clooney.
00:02:40.640You know, last year, my pals over at the Daily Wire asked me if I would do the voice of this cartoon character called Wendy Burcham in Adam Carolla's cartoon called Mr. Burcham about a shop teacher.
00:02:55.900So I was, quote, playing the wife of a shop teacher.
00:02:59.480Didn't make me the actual wife of a shop teacher.
00:04:13.740He's going to explain to all of us why our brackets may be imploding and also talk about whether he's going to be running for president.
00:04:20.380But we begin today with my pal Ben Shapiro of The Ben Shapiro Show and editor emeritus of The Daily Wire.
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00:05:33.660All right, Ben, so, you know, let's just kick it off there.
00:05:37.280Just because I was Wendy Burcham doesn't make me actually Wendy Burcham and capable of speaking about what it's like to be married to Mr. Burcham or a shop teacher.
00:05:47.060But George Clooney, I realize this isn't the most important news, but it's interesting, is now starring on Broadway in Good Night and Good Luck.
00:05:55.460And I guess at the end of this show, he turns around and looks at the audience and offers a lecture on how journalism is imploding, that what's happening with the Trump administration is like McCarthyism, that we need a full, free, and fair press to hold this administration's feet to the fire.
00:06:14.540And this is why, I gather, he was profiled on 60 Minutes last night and asked about the fourth estate.
00:06:22.600When the other three estates fail, when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the fourth estate has to succeed.
00:06:57.460So that's him backstage with his Edward R.
00:07:02.360Murrow, like wannabe castmate supporters, lecturing all of us, Ben, on how it needs to be done and how, I mean, you might, you might say democracy dies in darkness if, if the journalism people don't do more journalism-ing.
00:07:18.820Yeah, it's, he is so tiresome just as a human being.
00:07:23.520And, you know, I will acknowledge here that his wife, Amal Clooney, literally was complicit in some of the worst propaganda of the last several years.
00:07:31.580She was involved in the International Court of Justices' attempts to actually prosecute the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes.
00:07:43.940George Clooney has always been part of the power.
00:07:45.420This idea that he's ever speaking truth to power is nonsensical.
00:07:48.180That dude has more, he may have single-handedly been responsible for Joe Biden stepping out of the race.
00:07:52.900You recall that he wrote an op-ed in which he basically called for Joe Biden to step out of the race.
00:07:58.380And then the Democratic Party suddenly magically listened.
00:08:00.300So when he talks about this, like he's, he's speaking truth to power.
00:08:02.960What is the power inside, for example, his own party that he has ever spoken true, like real truth to and not been listened?
00:08:09.900I mean, he, he, he wields outsized powers.
00:08:11.740Again, this idea that he's like a powerless person who's fighting for the rights of the, of the journalistic establishment.
00:08:17.600The journalistic establishment is what brought us here.
00:08:19.620This sort of worship that, that Clooney and others have for the journalismers is truly amazing given how poor they have been at actually exposing truth to the light of day.
00:08:31.380He, he's speaking beyond a point where, where people have any respect for journalistic establishment at all.
00:08:38.160The American approval of the journalistic establishment is in the 20% range.
00:08:42.120So who is he even talking to right now, dreaming of a time when journalists were these speak truth to power, you know, fedora wearing, hard boiled, walking around the streets of Chicago reporting.
00:08:54.300Like who are these people he's talking about?
00:09:13.020We didn't talk about that for five years because you New York times were calling people racist who said it looks like it came from a lab.
00:09:21.280Like, and then Bill Maher the other night had this like aha moment of like, geez, it really looks like Fauci may have been kind of a villain and not, you know, all these leftists are coming around to the truth of things like COVID.
00:09:34.300That's just one example, five years later than the rest of us, because George Clooney's idea of journalism is to just toe the party line when it helps the left and say what needs to be said and bury what needs to be said as so long as it will hurt the right.
00:09:52.620I mean, I'm just wondering, who are these journalists who aren't covering the Trump administration?
00:10:00.600Who are these journalists who are being so nice to the Trump administration all the way through?
00:10:04.780And when he talks about settlements that these various outlets are making with President Trump, that's because they literally engaged in slander and libel of President Trump.
00:10:12.940And they thought that they were going to lose a big settlement to him.
00:10:15.060And it's not because they're trying to buy access to the president of the United States by by paying him money.
00:10:19.780And if he's going to make that actual argument, then probably you just make that argument overtly as opposed to this sort of break the fourth wall.
00:10:28.840You're there to watch Good Night and Good Luck.
00:10:30.320And suddenly the actor turns to you and starts lecturing you breaking the fourth wall about modern politics, how obnoxious he is just as a human.
00:11:35.580Then you and I both watched that debate, just like all of our listeners and viewers did, and saw the then sitting president completely implode.
00:11:42.980And it was very clear he had no chance of going forward.
00:11:45.700And it wasn't until July 10th, almost a month after he attended the fundraiser with him, that George Clooney finally wrote that op-ed after it became clear that Joe Biden wasn't stepping down.
00:11:57.500He's such a liar that he just encountered him at the debate and knew what he had to do.
00:12:03.140It's especially crap because you remember we all covered Obama and Biden at that particular event.
00:12:10.760And that was the footage where Obama literally guided Biden off the stage by the arm.
00:12:14.900And we all commented on it at the time.
00:12:16.300We're like, this guy looks like he doesn't know where he is on the stage.
00:12:18.500It looks like he's being physically guided by the former president of the United States off the stage.
00:12:22.160That was when the White House started retailing the line that these were all cheap fakes, right?
00:12:26.340That actually Biden knew exactly where he was and was doing handsprings on the stage.
00:12:29.780And we had sort of cut out of context to all of that.
00:13:57.240You want to, like, see if you can do it.
00:13:58.840But Tom Cruise didn't come out actually believing he was a Navy SEAL.
00:14:01.880He doesn't think he can flight fighter jets because of Top Gun.
00:14:05.240Only George Clooney feels like he's in the position to lecture all of us on how it's done, how it ought to be done after having been silent, you know, conspicuously silent for the last four years.
00:14:17.700Where's his lecture to The New York Times on how to cover brain infirmities, right?
00:14:55.600We've, now more than ever, I'm needed.
00:14:58.380It is a very bizarre relationship these folks have with Hollywood where they still yearn after Martin Sheen because he once played the president on TV.
00:15:06.060And now George Clooney is their moral leader when it comes to, when it comes to journalism.
00:15:09.920Now, how about you actually provide us examples of people in the field that you're talking about who you think are really good at this and use those people as the examples as opposed to the actor who's playing the thing to lecture you about the thing.
00:15:20.000But only when President Trump is president.
00:15:22.420He underwent a four-year kind of missing inaction period where suddenly, apparently, journalism was just fine.
00:15:30.660Like, several years there, journalism was totally fine, except on the one issue where he decided he had to sound off to kind of throw Joe Biden off the back of the bus.
00:15:37.040But apparently, journalism was fine covering the Biden administration until precisely the moment he decided it wasn't.
00:15:42.400So I was, I'm just looking for this text because my friend sent this to me at, um, our school, you know, we fled our New York city schools because they were so insanely woke.
00:15:56.360And now we're out here in Connecticut where we've done no question better, but especially at our daughter's school, they're more woke than I would like.
00:16:03.700And, um, you've got, you know, George Clooney out there with his selective moments on, you know, journalism and when he needs to speak up.
00:16:11.840And our school, this is, my daughter's not in the fourth grade, but somebody who's got a child in the fourth grade sent me this list.
00:16:19.260The girls were supposed to, I think, write, um, do a project about some famous women.
00:16:25.980And they gave them some suggestions on like women they might consider.
00:16:30.880And, uh, I'll give you the, hold on a second.
00:18:07.860It's like, this is how the left operates.
00:18:10.720Megan, this isn't my point where I'm going to lecture you about where you're sending your kids to school, but we're friends and you totally should not be sending your kids to the school.
00:18:49.200But like Katie Couric, that's what they want.
00:18:50.620The school wants them like louding Katie Couric, celebrating Kataji Brown Jackson and looking at Rachel Levine and AOC and Stacey Abrams as politicians to honor.
00:19:38.460I think that, yeah, I did my show on this today.
00:19:40.580I really think that the AOC presidential candidacy that we're all laughing at and scoffing at, I think that we're laughing and scoffing at that a little early.
00:19:47.500I'm old enough to remember 2007 when people were laughing and scoffing at Barack Obama and suggesting Hillary was definitely going to be the nominee.
00:19:54.180And when Republicans were actually crossing party lines to vote in primaries in favor of Obama because they wanted to throw a scare into Hillary Clinton.
00:20:00.520I remember saying that Obama was the actual scary one.
00:20:02.660I think that actually the Bernie AOC movement is something that really needs to be watched here.
00:20:07.880Not because the Democrats are in any position of strength, but my greatest fear for the Trump administration is that if there's an economic downturn, what you're going to get is a turn to wild left-wing populism.
00:20:17.400And Bernie is consolidating that crowd really quickly and bringing AOC on stage to tap her on the shoulder is obviously a tactic.
00:20:23.840So, you know, I think that that is a very real thing.
00:20:27.480And she is trying to knit together whatever is left of the Democratic coalition, right?
00:20:33.940She's trying to knit together minorities.
00:20:35.520She's trying to knit together what she thinks are going to be blue-collar, blue-collar workers with her sort of anti-rich, you know, eat-the-rich appeal.
00:20:45.440That, I think, is the next move for the Democratic Party, actually, if you're gaming out where they go after this.
00:20:49.780So you think that she could have mass appeal?
00:20:52.780I mean, right now she's polling at, I think, 5% or under in the national polls of who should be the Democratic nominee amongst Democrats.
00:21:06.280But you think this person who is far, far left in her politics, notwithstanding her Green New Deal where she wants to get rid of hamburgers, actually has a shot?
00:21:15.480I think that she's playing for an economic downturn.
00:21:18.200And if there's an economic downturn, I think anybody has a shot.
00:21:20.420I mean, if you look at that primary poll among Democrats, yeah, Kamala's at 36% because she just ran.
00:21:25.120But the next closest person is Buttigieg at 10, right?
00:21:27.860So now you're talking about a scrum, right?
00:21:29.520It's like Buttigieg at 10, Walls at 5, AOC at 5.
00:21:32.700And so anybody there really sort of has a shot.
00:21:35.400And if you're talking about a built-in audience, remember Bernie almost won the nomination in 2020 over Joe Biden.
00:21:40.340So if he takes her on the road and he gives her his donor list and he sort of taps her on the shoulder, she's going to start with a lot of systemic advantage.
00:22:04.640I think the entire Democratic Party is.
00:22:06.580But economic downturns have peculiar effects, which is why I'm very much focused on – like the Trump administration needs to focus first more than anything else.
00:22:15.480They've already turned the border from the number one issue into like the number five issue because they shut down all illegal immigration at the border already.
00:22:21.820They need to be spending their time ensuring that we do not suffer an economic downturn.
00:22:25.520Because if there's an economic downturn, as high as I think people are on the right side of the aisle about our political prospects, things turn very quickly in the United States.
00:22:33.140Okay, so I want to spend some time on Bernie and AOC because they go out there.
00:22:38.540They get – supposedly they get these record crowds.
00:22:40.660There are questions about whether this is an AstroTurf crowd or this is just like the same group of protesters that shows up at all of these things or supporters, depending on what the daily cause is or not.
00:22:50.960But let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say even though neither one is running for anything right now, it was organic and people just wanted to hear two Democrat socialists get up there and talk about making America more socialist.
00:24:44.740But then he's saying we should decriminalize border crossings, which is basically a red carpet invitation.
00:24:50.320But what he wants ABC News and Jonathan Karl to think is he's pro-Trump's moves at the border, even though he called the first Trump administration wall ridiculous.
00:24:59.800He thought Trump's policies were way too tough, that he was cracking down too much on.
00:26:27.440Well, again, what they're doing is shockingly smart.
00:26:30.940So Bernie, I mean, I say that because I think that they have a combined IQ of a kumquat.
00:26:34.440But Bernie Sanders, who is a lifelong leech on the ass of American society and has switched his tune with regards to illegal immigration many times,
00:26:42.880he used to actually be very closed border because he used to acknowledge a reality,
00:26:46.660which is that if you have socialist redistribution in a country, you can't have an open border.
00:26:50.280That's just a giant magnet for everybody to come in and take government benefits.
00:26:53.260So he actually used to be in favor of a much more closed border.
00:26:55.980And now he's reverting back to that stance, which, of course, is a much more popular stance.
00:26:59.480You see her doing what Democrats are now attempting to do, which is they don't want to reverse themselves completely the way that Gavin Newsom tried to in order to in order to get away from the transition.
00:27:10.240Instead, they're saying, why are we even talking about this?
00:27:48.000He obviously is the richest person in the world.
00:27:49.680He doesn't really seem to care what people think.
00:27:51.300But if they can tie together the idea that Elon and Trump are part of a corrupt oligarchy together who are manipulating American economics and impoverishing the poor,
00:28:01.000and then if the economy goes south, then they can have a sort of horseshoe theory thing happen with sort of the populist right.
00:28:07.180And they can hope for enough crossover to actually be competitive in a national election.
00:28:11.560I think they're pretty openly playing for a recession right now.
00:28:13.940I think it's – again, I don't think it's stupid.
00:28:15.860I think the tactic itself is smart even if the messengers are not particularly bright.
00:28:19.180I just don't think they should be betting on it because Trump, while he's saying we're going to have some short-term pain,
00:28:24.560hopefully for longer-term gain as he imposes the tariffs and so on, he's just never going to let it get to the point where somebody has a political advantage over him.
00:31:49.660And almost entirely, Columbia just caved because it wants its $400 million back from the feds.
00:31:55.400And then there's what he's doing to these law firms.
00:31:57.600So he decides to target a couple of law firms, including Paul Weiss, who hired that one guy who wanted to prosecute Trump when he worked for Alvin Bragg.
00:32:11.900They tried to target me or they at least rewarded somebody who tried to target me.
00:32:15.260And there's going to be all sorts of punishments to this law firm.
00:32:17.960Like, I don't think the federal federal government wants to be in business with them, which is his prerogative.
00:32:22.380And it took about two minutes for them to completely cave on everything Trump wanted.
00:32:28.640They went in there with a bouquet of roses and then some.
00:32:32.000You know, he only wanted roses, but they brought chocolates and diamonds and were on the knee begging him to let up.
00:32:37.240So Trump is he's having success in these tactics, Ben.
00:32:41.700But I wonder what you make of the overall strategy and the successes and the not not losses so far, but the thwarting that we're seeing judicially.
00:32:50.000I mean, I think that the thwarting judicially isn't going to matter until we get to the Supreme Court level.
00:32:53.920So you're seeing all the Democrats complain it's a constitutional crisis.
00:32:57.200No, it's not a constitutional crisis until you get to the point where the Supreme Court issues an order.
00:33:01.240And then the executive branch just ignores the Supreme Court order.
00:33:04.080Like maybe if they said that you're not allowed to unilaterally relieve student loan debt.
00:33:08.280And then, you know, the administration just went ahead and tried to do it anyway, which happened like two years ago.
00:33:12.720But it's but I think that the real question here for the Supreme Court is, was and will be what restrictions are they going to put on district court judges and the district court judge's ability to issue these nationwide temporary restraining orders on the basis of I'm a judge in Texas.
00:33:27.620And now the entire country is now going to be governed by the thing that I say about a nationwide order from the White House.
00:33:33.420The fact that the Supreme Court turned that down a few weeks ago was a huge mistake, in my opinion.
00:33:38.080And Justice Roberts kind of signing into chat to rip on President Trump for ripping on district court judges.
00:33:43.260Justice Roberts, I'm one of the few people on the right who objected to Justice Roberts back in 2005 when he was nominated by George W. Bush.
00:33:50.400I didn't think he was going to be a good pick. And that was one of my predictions.
00:33:53.380I've made many predictions in my career that have been bad. That one was actually quite good.
00:33:56.660I think Justice Roberts has been a bit of a disaster as chief justice of the Supreme Court.
00:34:00.960And I think that his kind of notion that that he restores the legitimacy of the court by yelling at President Trump is really stupid.
00:34:07.500If he wants to restore the legitimacy of the court, then the court needs to draw very clear lines as to what district court judge.
00:34:12.720The judges can and cannot do. And that is a thing that they absolutely have not done.
00:34:16.600I mean, they're leaving it up to these district court judges to do everything from mandate that the military allow trans members in to turning flights around in the middle of the air over international waters.
00:34:26.980And can they do that? Can they not? We don't know the answer.
00:34:29.520And so this idea that Trump is sort of redefining what the judiciary can and cannot do, that's not true.
00:34:34.340The judicial, the low level judges are redefining their own jurisdiction.
00:34:38.220And then the Supreme Court hasn't weighed in yet. So I think that that is a narrative battle that Trump is not losing.
00:34:43.540And I think certainly forcing Democrats to defend Trenderau Agua members being in the United States, these Venezuelan gang members in the like, that's a narrative win.
00:34:51.960If you're the person on the side of the gang members, that that's a pretty obvious fail.
00:34:56.400And Democrats keep being forced into the 20 percent position in every 80-20 fight.
00:35:00.200So for sure there when it comes to the private sector and pressure that he's putting on particular places.
00:35:04.640So Columbia University is in violation of the Civil Rights Act.
00:35:08.440I mean the thing that the Trump administration is saying to Columbia is you have a set of standards that apply to black students, gay students, every other minority student.
00:35:19.180And it applies to Jews too under the Civil Rights Act.
00:35:21.520You may not like the Civil Rights Act. You may think that it's an overreach.
00:35:25.040I've actually made that case myself in the past.
00:35:27.100But if those laws apply, if these anti-discrimination laws apply, they apply across the board.
00:35:30.820And that means you can't just allow gigantic harassment conferences against Jews in the middle of your campus where Jews are being barred from getting to class or anything like that.
00:36:03.460It's the White House governmental affairs office or something like that.
00:36:06.880I think people, number one, need to understand that $40 million of billable hours at Paul Weiss, that's like two partners for three days.
00:36:12.960The amount of money that these partners charge for pro bono is like insane.
00:36:17.920And they don't charge it, but that's what they rack up.
00:36:19.680And they're charging $3,000, $4,000 an hour in many of these cases.
00:36:22.860And so you're not talking about, you know, endless amounts of hours here.
00:36:26.060It's a good kind of win for President Trump on a narrative level.
00:36:29.780And the outsized, oh, my God, how could he be leveraging people?
00:36:33.180I think the thing that President Trump is doing that no other Republican in my lifetime has done is he's making the left play by their own rules.
00:36:38.980The left does this kind of stuff all the time.
00:36:41.500And I'm old enough to remember when Barack Obama called in the heads of every major car company in America in 2009 and basically said that I'm the only thing.
00:36:50.120He actually said, I'm the person standing between you and the pitchforks.
00:36:53.160And then he leveraged concessions out of them.
00:36:55.500This sort of thing happens all the time, but only from Democrats.
00:36:58.600And President Trump is doing, and this is why I think people are freaking out, is he's saying you built this system.
00:37:04.140You gave all these powers to the executive branch, and now I'm going to use all the powers that you built against the thing that you want.
00:37:13.280If you don't like any of this, why don't we make a deal where we minimize the powers of the executive branch via the Constitution or via the legislation?
00:37:31.640You handled this one case in a way that we didn't like, and therefore you're going to have to run every decision by the Department of Justice for the next 10 years or longer.
00:37:39.440There wasn't a peep out of these leftists now complaining about that.
00:37:43.360But if it's the DOJ or some other federal government looking at Maine saying, you know what, we may see a Title IX violation here, or we may pull your funding from the Department of Agriculture because you're so out of line when it comes to the funding that we're giving you and you're using it to let boys play in girls sports.
00:38:00.600Now we have an autocrat running the government.
00:38:03.540Well, what makes Trump historic is that for my entire lifetime, the basic notion from conservatives is that the growth of government was a one-way ratchet, that all the powers that were accruing in the executive branch were just going to continue to accrue, but only to the benefit of the left.
00:38:17.800At a certain point, he might get a George W. Bush, and he would kind of just go slower, right?
00:38:21.840The ratchet would continue to move in the left-wing direction, but slower.
00:38:24.840Trump is coming in, and he's saying, listen, you gave me all these powers, and you meant these powers for Joe Biden or for Barack Obama, but guess what?
00:38:30.780I'm the guy who's here, and I'm going to use every bit of power that you gave me, and I'm going to push as hard as I possibly can.
00:38:36.600And again, he's not saying he's not going to listen to the judiciary.
00:38:40.020A lot of people attribute that to him, but he's never actually said it, and people are caterwauling.
00:38:44.740And so the proper answer to all of this should be, okay, well, if you don't like what the president is now capable of doing, maybe you shouldn't have built that machine in the first place where you centralized all power in administrative bureaucracy, but instead the complaint is that Donald Trump is a tyrant.
00:39:00.040The thing they should be objecting to is the power itself.
00:39:02.780The thing they're objecting to is his use of the power, but they'd be perfectly happy if it were Kamala Harris using that exact same power in ways that they like.
00:40:32.260The thing they paid, they spent $170 million to make the thing, and it had the lowest opening, under $50 million, of any of these live-action Disney remakes that they've ever had.
00:40:43.000Even the one that was their worst, Dumbo, did better than this has done.
00:40:47.300And they postponed the release of this thing, Ben, for a year because their star, Rachel Zegler, was so unlikable, told all Trump supporters that they could fuck off.
00:41:10.900I mean, the most predictable fail of all time.
00:41:13.120And you forget, I think, the funniest thing, which was that release of the original picture of the dwarves, who were played by all tall people and one actual dwarf.
00:41:21.280And then everybody laughed at it so hard that they went back to the drawing board and they came up with these bizarre, uncanny valley dwarves who are about as creepy as anything has ever been on screen.
00:41:30.760And then they got rid of two of the original songs from the originally fantastic score and replaced it by a couple of generic pop songs by Pasek and Paul.
00:41:38.760And they cast as Snow White, Rachel Zegler, and they cast as the evil queen who's supposed to be not as fair as Snow White, Gal Gadot, who is by any objective metric significantly more beautiful than Rachel Zegler.
00:41:52.280I mean, there's just I'm sorry for being one of the most beautiful people on Earth.
00:42:12.540Number two, please stop changing all of the historic plots, which actually have meaning to generations of people to to instead become generic woke story about how woman leads revolutionary uprising and she don't need no man.
00:43:31.140And every time you see her, she's being obnoxious.
00:43:33.020And so these studios really ought to go to their stars and they ought to stop trotting them out to say dumb political nonsense before releasing a kid's flick.
00:43:41.080Every time she speaks, she gets less likable.
00:43:42.600There's some clip of her on the Internet in her Snow White outfit saying every hour I am in the outfit of Snow White wearing the dress all 18 hours.
00:43:51.360I deserve to be paid for every single one.
00:45:50.840I mean, on the pragmatic level, I don't think that that's a terrible argument.
00:45:53.920I think that on a moral level, if you're going to build a groundswell for the pardon of a person who I believe to be in jail and innocent, then you actually start that groundswell somewhere.
00:46:02.020And so actually opening the door to that conversation is something that I'm trying to do at PardonDerek.com.
00:46:07.500By the way, we are working with their legal team.
00:46:09.340So this idea that the legal team is not interested in this or that they're against it or anything, that's not true.
00:46:15.400I mean, the actual fact of the matter is that if you were to receive a pardon on the federal charges, you would almost certainly serve less time in jail than he is currently going to serve because you get certain time off under the Minnesota state statute that you wouldn't get under the federal statute.
00:46:28.460But as far as the sort of pragmatic argument, my view of that is that that's President Trump's decision, and I totally understand if he doesn't want to do that until, say, after he is – after the next election.
00:46:39.700But it takes a groundswell of support for a thing to happen, and that groundswell needs to start building somewhere.
00:46:45.940The argument that Jason isn't making there, which obviously I think he agrees with my argument, is that Chauvin is actually in jail unjustly.
00:46:55.660If he's in jail unjustly, then we should all be saying that he should receive a pardon.
00:46:59.060And then if the – again, I'm not saying that he has to be pardoned today.
00:47:02.200I'm not in Trump's chair, and I'm not his chief political advisor, nor is that my job.
00:47:06.200My job is to speak up where I think an injustice is being done.
00:47:09.440In the case of Chauvin, it certainly is an injustice being done.
00:47:12.280He definitely did not get a fair trial, and there is zero doubt of that.
00:47:16.600I mean the in-depth documentary done by Alpha News out in Minnesota will convince anybody of that.
00:47:22.260If you take a look at that thing, it's just absolutely horrifying what they did.
00:47:25.660To pressure their way into a guilty verdict.
00:47:28.060Okay, and then last but not least, the so-called god king of the Daily Wire, Jeremy Boring, who's been on this podcast many times, who is your partner in founding the Daily Wire, is no longer co-CEO, along with Caleb, who was his co-CEO for years.
00:47:43.780And now he's going to be doing something else.
00:47:46.000So there's all sorts of chatter about this online, Ben.
00:47:58.380I mean, the truth is that Jeremy stepped down to pursue things like Pendragon, which is the single biggest, I think, entertainment offering ever put forward on the right side of the aisle, like ever by a long stretch.
00:48:15.440Yeah, I mean, it's like high fantasy, Arthurian legend, seven episodes at very high cost.
00:48:21.080I mean, it is a major, massive project, and he has to go and he has to edit that.
00:48:24.720We have to figure out exactly how we're going to market that.
00:48:27.100We have other creative projects that Jeremy is going to work on, that Jeremy wants to work on, and that Jeremy is involved with.
00:48:31.580And frankly, the day-to-day management of a very large and growing company was not, I think, in his view, consilient with that mission, which is for him to do more creative projects, to do more on the entertainment side.
00:48:43.580And frankly, I think for Jeremy, that's where a lot of his heart is as well.
00:48:46.520And so he wanted to put more focus in that as we mature as a company.
00:48:49.880As far as all of these sort of bizarre rumors that we're in, oh, we're in serious trouble.
00:48:54.240Oh, no, everything is, yeah, bullshit.
00:48:56.660I mean, as somebody who looks at the balance sheet, I can tell you that is certainly not the case.
00:49:01.920And we are healthy, we are growing, we are thriving, and we have extremely big moves that we are looking forward to making this year.
00:56:06.060NIL trade portal, here's what happens.
00:56:08.500Because there's money out there for the college athletes now, Megan, what happens is that if you are a program, even if you're a mid-major and there's somebody that's lower than you, you've got more money to offer that athlete to come to your program.
00:56:22.060If you're a big-time program, you've got money, they don't have any money for you at this institution, we got about $250,000 for you from the trade, you know, for the NIL, you can come over to us.
00:56:33.940So those individuals that had talent that were at mid-majors or lesser schools are having an opportunity to upgrade their stature in terms of the programs they get associated with because those programs have money that the smaller programs don't have, NIL and beyond.
00:56:50.420And that is what has compromised it because you – I just said today on First Take, my show on ESPN, I said, let me tell y'all something.
00:56:57.080If this continues, it's going to be the death of college basketball because at this point, college basketball is all about March Madness.
00:57:03.320And if you can't look at a Cinderella, if you can't look at a team that would come up with an engine that could per se, if you don't have that because athletes are departing from those programs to go to bigger programs, okay, then college basketball is going to cease to exist the way we know and love it as it pertains to March Madness.
00:57:25.320I remember a couple years ago, my little guy had a serious injury while skiing and he was laid up in the ICU for a week.
00:57:32.060And we were watching the March Madness tournament, totally got him through it.
00:57:35.160And that was the year that Gonzaga had that guy, Timmy.
00:57:37.760I don't remember his full name, but he was amazing.
00:57:39.980He got – they were getting beaten down.
00:57:42.020They went into the locker room at halftime and he turned around that team and it was – they came back and they made it – they didn't win the tournament, but they made it far.
00:57:49.360And it was so exciting and it was a Cinderella kind of thing.
00:57:52.040And that's kind of what I thought might happen with some of these other schools, but so far, no.
00:57:55.120I think he's still about Ruth Timmy, if I remember correctly.
01:03:36.160You go to the Carrier Dome, 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 people watching a basketball game.
01:03:42.420That's what the Carrier Dome and the Syracuse program gave to you.
01:03:45.920And I think them being out of the Big East somewhat compromises their allure to some degree.
01:03:52.700It's just my opinion, but I think it's an educated one.
01:03:54.860You know what's crazy, too, is I didn't follow it as closely in basketball, but when I was there, I dated the captain of the lacrosse team that won three Division I national championships.
01:04:04.440And so I followed lacrosse, and they got their medals, like their first place trophies taken away from them after the fact for some alleged recruiting violations that, as memory serves, had to do with like, you know, they bent some of the rules around like driving players, parents around in limousines, that kind of stuff.
01:04:23.020All of which they all do now, Stephen A.
01:04:25.240You know, it's like, and by the way, they were all doing it then, too.
01:04:28.080It just seems so unfair that I think that's what happened to the basketball program is it got its hands slapped for some of these violations.
01:04:35.380And then once you get slapped hard enough, it's very hard to get back up as a basketball team.
01:04:40.940They've never quite rebounded to steal a sports phrase.
01:04:48.260And they sort of compromised college sports where it's harmed, particularly the sport of college basketball at this particular moment in time.
01:04:56.600Here, certainly, guys were getting paid back in the day or whatever.
01:04:59.400But you're talking about you having a star player and, you know what, he couldn't go home to see and get some money to go home to see his family for the holidays when you know he couldn't afford it.
01:05:11.980Or he could go in a bookstore and there's jerseys in his name or whatever, and if somebody gave him a free jersey, it was an NCAA violation, even though he's generating millions of dollars for the program.
01:05:26.400This is the ridiculousness and the hypocrisy of the NCAA that reigned supreme for many, many years.
01:05:32.380So now that their comeuppance has arrived, when we're talking about NIL, when we're talking about the trade portal, when we're talking about players being paid, when we're talking about agents being involved, where coaches feel embezzled for crying out loud by these agents and stuff like that, it's something that the NCAA brought upon itself.
01:05:50.440Because for so long, they took advantage of guys that came from depraved environments or poverty-stricken environments.
01:05:58.320You knew that you said, OK, they're at our mercy.
01:06:01.480You gave them a scholarship and called it a day while you were collecting a boatload of the benefits that they generated.
01:06:06.960And so ultimately, that change has come, and as a result, these folks are taking full advantage of it.
01:06:12.980But in the process, the real authentic feel that you had, the purity of the sport itself and what you loved about it most, seems to be evaporated before our very eyes because of it all now.
01:06:25.340You're so right. God, that really captures it.
01:06:27.740All right, so we talked about how smart it is to put Cooper Flagg in front of a flag, and we did see him all over the ads when we watched NCAA.
01:06:34.040But what's not smart? A disturbing collection of young people on spring break.
01:06:40.740Now, I left off here with Ben Shapiro, and I've got to pick it back up with you because it's just too delicious.
01:06:45.580And again, props to the gal who went down there and got all these folks on camera.
01:06:49.460I think her name is Caitlin Bennett, and she posts under Liberty Hangout TV.
01:06:55.360She used to be with Turning Point, Charlie Kirk's group.
01:06:58.220So what you missed, Stephen, was we played a long clip.
01:07:01.960I'm going to play another one where they were asked, how many U.S. senators are there?
01:07:06.120And we heard answers like six, six total U.S. senators.
01:07:11.060How many amendments are in the Bill of Rights?
01:07:13.500Which, of course, is the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.
01:08:10.120Your thoughts on—this is just a rando look into Gen Z.
01:08:16.940I realize very few people can name even one Supreme Court justice, but I feel like most people know the FBI as an institution does not hold one of the seats.
01:08:42.360You got all of these outlets, and everybody's got a podcast, and everybody's got something going on, right?
01:08:46.900And I think that unlike years in the past where you had to go to school, capture an education, and find a way to finagle that into building a prosperous life for yourself,
01:09:00.220something that could sustain and hopefully elevate your quality of life, I don't think you have a lot of kids looking at that today.
01:09:07.060The late, great coach John Chaney from Temple University lamented decades ago that we're living in a microwave society.
01:24:21.580But what about the hundreds of millions of American citizens that have no clue and are sitting in fear that World War III or a nuclear holocaust is going to take place?
01:24:31.860How stressed do you think their lives are?
01:24:33.980I don't think we think enough about that, which is why I think it's incredibly important for a centrist, a moderate on either side of the aisle to be in office because you're showing decorum.
01:24:46.080You're showing an ability to work with one another and you're assuaging the concerns of the American public so we don't the rest of us don't lose our damn minds.
01:25:41.280The left does need to come to terms with how they lost and not just that, but why the Republicans won, which aren't exactly the same thing.
01:25:51.100Like, why is the Republican Party so popular right now?
01:25:53.540Why is a whole generation of young people turning Republican or and or conservative?
01:25:58.600Those questions need to be answered by both sides in order for the Republicans to build on it in order for the Democrats to try to stop it and get back to where they once were.
01:26:06.580So Ezra Klein, who's one of the gods on the left, he's got a podcast that the lefties listen to.
01:26:13.900He went on with Bill Maher this past Friday night and they were on the subject of the deportations that were doing of these Venezuelan gang members.
01:26:23.860And it led to a weird place in which Ezra Klein said the following.
01:27:28.720Because, I mean, obviously, my audience is well aware that Republicans follow news.
01:27:32.020But I just pulled it up just for kicks.
01:27:34.200Morning consult poll from September of 2024, this past September.
01:27:38.520Nearly three in five Democrats and nearly three in five Republicans say they still watch broadcast news.
01:27:44.820Partisan outlets have wide gaps in viewership.
01:27:47.040Democrats, 23 percentage points more likely to watch CNN.
01:27:49.620Republicans, 23 points more likely to watch Fox News.
01:27:52.960The most frequent news consumption happens on social media.
01:27:57.500Half of Democrats, 51 percent, and half of Republicans, 52 percent, say they turn to social media for news at least once a day, more frequently than any other news source.
01:28:08.320And yet he wants you to believe that only the Democrats consume news.
01:28:13.320And that's what caused them to vote for Kamala Harris.
01:28:16.700And just the dumb, Neanderthal, uninformed people who didn't consume any news, you see, were wowed by Donald Trump's personality and charisma and went into the polling booth not understanding, Stephen A., what they were voting for.
01:28:30.680To encapsulate what he said, y'all are a bunch of deplorables.
01:29:43.740And even in the throes of trying to teach them or discipline them, call them an idiot and then ask yourself, how often are they going to listen to you?
01:29:52.520How often are they going to even come in front of you to hear what you have to say?
01:29:55.960Yet somehow, some way, folks on the left don't get this.
01:29:58.480I've said to them on many occasions, I said, listen, over the last few months, I said, I'm not saying you sit idly by and be mute.
01:30:05.460But in the same breath, the man won the election.
01:30:11.460Speak against what you want to speak against in an effort to try to win the midterms.
01:30:17.000OK, outside of that, that's your only recourse.
01:30:20.320Because anything else you do, especially anything that remotely resembles the rhetoric that you were spewing on the campaign, you're dead in the water.
01:30:30.640You don't have a chance because people are going to say that's the kind of nonsense we don't want to deal with.
01:30:37.120And as I said on Real Time with Bill Maher, as crazy as Trump can come across as being sometimes, particularly with his rhetoric and his stances when he's going up against them and what have you,
01:30:46.420the reality is, no matter all the things that he's been through, he was considered closer to normal than the Democratic Party to the American people.
01:32:01.380I've got to take a break, but I do want to say this.
01:32:03.220Last week, we devoted almost an hour to a debate between, it wound up being between yours truly and Charles C.W. Cook of National Review on the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
01:32:15.320Now, in the cable news business, when I was hosting The Kelly File, they would have looked at me like I was a nutcase if I said I wanted to do that.
01:32:21.880They'd say nobody will be interested in that.
01:32:23.860It's going to be like watching paint dry.
01:32:52.180I would put my audience's knowledge about any of these subjects up against his audience any day of the week.
01:33:00.240They're not offended by ideas with which they disagree.
01:33:03.520They will suffer through somebody who they might not even love that much just to hear the ideas and hear them tested and hear my ideas, which represent a lot of my audience, tested as well.
01:33:12.920That's what a normal, intellectually curious person does as opposed to a partisan hack.
01:33:18.980Quick word from you, Stephen A., then I'll take the break.
01:33:20.720That's the best form of education in this day and age.
01:33:26.120Because if we've seen the newspaper industry disintegrate, as we've seen journalistic outlets being bored up by whomever, as we've seen so many things transpire before our very eyes in our society,
01:33:39.460what we trust is to see two respectful, intelligent, opposite points of view expressing their ideas one up against one another,
01:33:51.340because the audience views it as having healthy perspectives upon which to lean on and to contemplate before drawing a conclusion as to how they should feel.
01:34:01.940If you insult one side or the other, you don't trust it because there's an absence of objectivity.
01:34:06.860So if I see Ezra Klein and I see him, no matter how great his work may have been, now I'm looking at you and I'm saying, so that's how you feel about the other side.
01:34:13.760So anything you say about the other side is tainted because you're not being respectful about the competition.
01:34:19.380I can't trust that you're going to be objective and fair.
01:34:23.360And I don't want to hear you if I can't trust that.
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01:37:23.180I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
01:37:28.360It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today.
01:37:36.580You can catch The Megan Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love.
01:37:43.540Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.
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