All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 24, 2024 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:18
My Debate With Destiny
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Well, folks, last night was the New Hampshire primary, and as expected, Donald Trump blew away the field.
This, of course, was not a giant shock.
The polling just before this particular primary had Donald Trump up 20-plus points in many of the polls.
Donald Trump actually went and visited a bunch of these sites.
Big crowds there, and he was very Trumpy.
Here's what it sounded like.
You have a big crowd here.
Are you pretty confident here?
I'm very confident.
I mean, this is it.
Look, we just stopped here.
We stopped at a polling site.
We picked it at random.
We may stop at one more.
And nobody knew we were coming.
This is pretty amazing.
Mr. President, is she staying in through Super Tuesday?
Is she a threat to you?
No, no.
And I don't care if she stays in.
Let her do whatever she wants.
It doesn't matter.
I can just say that There's never been a movement like this, Make America Great Again, in the history of our country.
I just stopped here and I figured I'd see three or four people and maybe walk inside and you see a crowd like this and this is, this is organic.
So, he wins.
The primaries are over.
They're over after Iowa.
I'm not sure what else there is to say about that.
It does raise the question of just why Nikki Haley failed to resonate as sort of the anti-Trump candidate.
Now part of it is that there just isn't an anti-Trump wing of the Republican Party sufficient to actually overcome the pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party.
When Donald Trump became the nominee in 2016, Everybody came home, and then everybody came home again in 2020, and everybody's coming home again in 2024.
That is not a giant shock.
That is, in fact, the way politics works.
And so people who are looking at his results in, say, New Hampshire in 2016, and saying he was going to replicate his 35% in New Hampshire in 2024, are ignoring the fact that in the intervening period, he became the President of the United States, and then ran another election cycle, and now is running yet a third election cycle.
But the outsized animus for Nikki Haley that you see on some parts of the right, and I do think it's outsized.
Part of that is because if you oppose Trump, there's a part of the base that just is angry at you for having opposed Trump.
And a lot of it has to do with that.
I mean, Nikki Haley, again, was his UN ambassador.
She was somebody who worked for him.
She's somebody who's praised his presidency.
And so the idea that she's some sort of wild anti-Trump force, I think, is wrong.
But what Nikki Haley does have is an affect problem that is out of, I would say, pattern with the modern Republican Party.
The Republican Party at this point is, in fact, a party that is angry.
And I think justifiably angry on a number of scores.
One of the things the Republican Party is angry about, the base particularly, they're very angry about hearing about racial divisions.
They've been lectured since 2008, since Barack Obama ran for president in 2007, they've been lectured that America was coming close to racial unity only to have that ripped away from them.
And to watch as everybody sort of retreated back into tribalistic corners.
And this is how you end up with critical race theory and DEI and equity throughout the Biden administration.
So when they hear from members of the Republican Party about how America is a place that was replete with discrimination even 20 years ago or 30 years ago, They tend to think, I'm not sure that the person who's saying that is the person that I want fighting this fight today.
Not that people are lying about their experiences of 20 or 30 years ago, but to point out that your experience of 20 or 30 years ago, does that make you the person who is best suited to fight against the DEI culture today?
The reason that's coming up is because there's a clip of Nikki Haley that went viral just before the primaries, in which she was talking about her childhood.
And again, what she says here I don't think is actually wildly controversial, except that it is very much at odds with the attitude of many members of the Republican base, which is to say, are you going to stand up against the predations of the D.E.I.C.R.T.
culture?
Are you going to stand up against the idea that America is a place of racial division with sufficient alacrity, or are you going to try to play a little bit of identity politics for gain?
Here's the clip of Nikki Haley that went totally viral.
We were the only Indian family in our small southern town.
I was teased every day for being brown.
So anyone that wants to question it can go back and look at what I've said on how hard it was to grow up in the deep south as a brown girl.
What I will tell you is, saying that I had black friends is a source of pride.
Saying that I had white friends is a source of pride.
If you want to know what it was like growing up, I was disqualified from a beauty pageant because I wasn't white or black.
Because they didn't know where to put me.
So look, I know the hardships, the pain that come with racism.
It's the reason that I fight bullies every day when it comes to racism, anti-semitism, or hate.
And I always will.
So, the reason that clip went viral on the right is because, again, the question is, is she saying that sort of stuff to pander to legacy media, or is she doing what Tim Scott sort of did during the campaign, where he says, look how far we've come, I've suffered from racism, I know what that's like, but America is a place of opportunity, and to pretend that America today is what America was yesterday is foolish.
Or is this a, I'm a diverse candidate, vote for me, kind of play?
I think a lot of Republicans took away the latter message from clips like that one and it obviously did not help Nikki Haley.
Now again, I think that's combined with a lot of people who are very pro-Trump and very angry that anybody would deign to run against Trump.
Whatever the result, it didn't end up well for Nikki Haley in New Hampshire overall.
Now she says that she is not going to drop out of the race just yet.
She said yesterday that she was not going to talk political obituaries.
I didn't get here because of luck.
I got here because I outworked and outsmarted all the rest of those fellas.
So I'm running against Donald Trump.
And I'm not going to talk about an obituary just because y'all think we have to talk about it.
I'm going to talk about running the tape and saving this country.
I think we have to do it.
I'm a fighter.
I work hard.
And I do it because I love this country.
And we're going to go and fight until the very last poll closes, and then we're headed to my sweet state of South Carolina, and we're going to make the case there as well.
Now, it's a couple of weeks until South Carolina.
Do I think that Nikki Haley is going to stay in all the way until South Carolina?
I'm not sure exactly why she would.
Maybe she wants to rack up some delegates in case there's an act of God and something happens to Trump and they go to the convention and she says, I'm the person with the second most delegates and make her case there.
Maybe she wants to trade her delegates for some sort of slot in the administration.
That's quite possible too.
Whatever it is, the primaries are over.
They've been over since Iowa.
Everything else is merely a sort of waste of time and effort, I think, spending more time on it.
Now with all that said...
If you're a Democrat, you sort of feel like the trap may have just snapped closed on your opponents.
For a long time, Democrats, particularly in the legacy media, have been saying that all of Donald Trump's opponents, they're terrible, they're awful, they're no good, they're very bad, except for Nikki Haley, who is kind of okay.
And the reason you say she was kind of okay is because, again, of that sort of softer affect that she has.
But don't worry, if Nikki Haley had actually become the Republican nominee, she would have been just as bad as Trump, worse than Trump, because she's more seductive in terms of her politics and in terms of her mean than Trump is.
That would have been the play.
But now that Trump is the nominee, you're starting to see polls that are emerging in the swing states.
A poll from Pennsylvania with Trump down 8 to Joe Biden.
The attempt to move from Donald Trump is the scariest person in the world.
You can't nominate him.
Plus, all of Donald Trump's opponents are even worse than Donald Trump.
Rip on DeSantis.
Rip on Haley.
Rip on everybody else in the media.
Buy the media.
And then Trump gets the nomination.
All of a sudden, it's like, oh, look at that.
He's losing in the swing states.
Watch for that move from the legacy media.
And of course, it is way too early to tell who's going to win this election and who's going to lose this election.
So just keep your eye on that polling data.
Just a second, I want to talk about a fascinating discussion slash debate that I did with a liberal streamer who calls himself Destiny.
Actual name Stephen Bunnell.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, you have to use a VPN whenever you connect to the internet.
So why exactly would you not do that?
I know that adding an extra step to anything you do, it sounds like a giant hassle.
But if you knew how easy it is to protect your connection with ExpressVPN, well, you'd be doing it already.
ExpressVPN is the easiest way to browse the internet safely and securely.
ExpressVPN gets rid of all the things you hate about VPNs.
Other VPNs slow your connection to the point where it's not even worth it to connect.
But ExpressVPN doesn't lag or buffer.
You can stream in HD with no issues.
All you need to do is open that ExpressVPN app, click one button, and enjoy instant protection across all your devices.
Once you connect to ExpressVPN, You don't even realize you have it on, but your connection is in fact secure.
Your data is in fact encrypted.
ExpressVPN has been called the best VPN by Business Insider and Tech Writer.
Obviously, I agree.
I use ExpressVPN myself.
Right now, you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free.
Just go to expressvpn.com slash ben.
That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash ben to get three extra months of ExpressVPN For free at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
It is the world's best VPN.
I've used it for years.
You should use it as well.
Protect your data because it is your data today.
ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
Okay, so about a week ago, week and a half ago, I sat down with a liberal streamer named Stephen Bunnell.
He calls himself Destiny Online.
He got a big following online.
And frankly, I really hadn't heard much about him or viewed his videos much until I agreed to debate him On Lex Friedman's show.
And you can listen to the entire debate over at Lex's YouTube channel.
And it's really, I think, worth the listen.
It's a couple of hours long.
The reason it's sort of fascinating is because we covered a lot of ground.
And one of the biggest pieces of ground we covered is the debate between Biden and Trump.
And so I want to play a little bit of that for you right here, because I think that this is going to be the debate, obviously, going into the 2024 election, is this debate between Biden and Trump.
The debate did not center particularly much on Joe Biden's record because the truth is that Joe Biden's record is deeply flawed.
And we're going to get to more of that in just one second.
Instead, it centered on the central contention that is being made by people who are voting for Biden, which is that Donald Trump ought to be ruled out just right away.
Just right off the bat, Donald Trump cannot be president of the United States because he's just too scary.
He's too divisive.
He's too tyrannical.
So what Destiny said was that Donald Trump is the most divisive political figure in American history.
And what I pointed out to Stephen is that Joe Biden is in many ways more divisive.
Why?
Because when Donald Trump came into office, Donald Trump was expected to be divisive.
There weren't any secrets about Donald Trump being a divisive character.
He came into office, he did not have a positive approval rating for but maybe two days of his entire presidency.
Joe Biden was expected to be a person who united the country, and then he completely failed.
Here's what I had to say.
Can I ask you, like, for our head of state, our chief executive, shouldn't rhetoric be arguably one of the most important things that he does?
I mean, the answer would be yes.
And now I've been given a choice between a person who I think in calibrated ways says things that are divisive and a person who in uncalibrated ways says things that are divisive.
And so the evidence that Joe Biden is divisive is every poll taken.
since essentially August of 2021.
He is, by all available metrics, incredibly divisive.
A huge percentage of Americans are deeply unhappy, not only with his performance, but don't believe he's a uniter.
And this is one of the things that I think that Democrats ought to keep in mind, is that Democrats are thinking, just right off the bat, that Donald Trump is so divisive because of his rhetoric and all the things he says.
But are people disappointed with Trump?
Or is Trump kind of what he always was?
Because one of the feelings I get is that people are deeply disappointed in Joe Biden.
That's a very difficult feeling to shake.
If you're disappointed in a political candidate, you tend to turn away from that political candidate.
That was actually the story of the 2012 election.
Between 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama actually lost votes.
He's the first incumbent president to lose votes and somehow retain the presidency.
Now, why did that happen?
How could he retain the presidency?
And the answer is he got people who were largely unenthusiastic about voting to vote.
And that was particularly true for black voters in swing states.
A performance that has not yet been replicated by any Democrat, Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.
When it comes to presidents who are expected to unite and then divide, the American people don't like that.
They kind of would rather know what they're getting than be disappointed in a promise that is unfulfilled.
There is no promise that Trump has made that is unfulfilled.
Good and bad.
But Joe Biden came into office on the wings of eagles.
Joe Biden came into office pledging that he was going to unite the country.
He was going to bring honor and the adults back to the White House.
And instead, he has provided terrible leadership and divisive rhetoric and speeches in which he labels half the country terrible and awful and threats to democracy.
We also talked about the idea of tyranny.
So Stephen focused a lot on January 6th.
He focused a lot on the idea that Trump would, if he could, be a tyrant.
And the point that I made is that Donald Trump Would he exercise power, if he could exercise power, in ways that I would not like?
Sure.
He has said that he would.
I mean, he recently went on a Twitter spree, or a truth social spree, in which he claimed that the president has what he called absolute immunity, like for any crime ever.
So do I think that he would effectuate that if he could?
Sure.
Is he going to do any of that?
No, he's not.
Here's how I explained it to Steven when we were talking about which character is more tyrannical.
Joe Biden has used executive power in ways that far outstrip anything that Trump has done.
Every president has been stretching and stretching and stretching executive power.
Joe Biden is going, like, Joe Biden has gone well beyond anything Trump even remotely attempted to maintain via just pure executive power.
I mean, Joe Biden literally used the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration to try to cram down VAX mandates on 80 million Americans.
That's insane.
He literally said, I cannot relieve student loan debt and then tried to relieve hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt.
Yeah, but what happened to that?
It got struck down by the Supreme Court, and then they still did it!
They still did it!
Biden bragged about it!
So again, I think that a lot of the points that are being used against Trump are not actually dispositive.
And I think that really is the name of the game for Democrats.
If they cannot kill Trump right off the bat, if they can't kill his candidacy right off the bat, they got a problem.
Because what exactly is the fuel they are going to add to the fire between now and November?
What exactly is the information that's going to come out about Trump that's going to change anything?
I don't really see it.
And the biggest problem of all for Joe Biden is not just that he is bad on policy, which again, we'll get to in a moment.
The biggest problem for Joe Biden is that there is a conflict of visions between Joe Biden's view of the world and what the American people think.
He is guided by an upper crust liberal elite, a coterie that does not think like the rest of the United States thinks.
And that refuses to kind of engage in the conversations that the rest of Americans are engaged in.
There's a poll that I want to get to in just one second that explains where a lot of the Democratic Party agenda is coming from.
And it is not coming from the same place that most Americans are coming from.
We'll get to that momentarily first.
In a world filled with uncertainty, you need to be prepared for any possibility.
What you actually need is My Patriot Supply.
My Patriot Supply is your trusted partner for emergency preparedness.
They're the country's largest preparedness company.
They're more than equipped to stock your shelves.
So, whether it's a natural disaster or a sudden emergency or unforeseen circumstances, MyPatriotSupply's high-quality food storage solutions ensure you and your loved ones are always well-fed no matter what comes your way.
If you want to be prepared for anything, you need to visit preparewithben.com.
Right now, you'll get $200 off a much-needed 3-month emergency supply from MyPatriotSupply Their three-month emergency food supply provides delicious breakfast, lunches, and dinners that last up to 25 years in storage.
You can even customize your supply with a mega-protein kit with real meal or gluten-free options.
These kits provide over 2,000 calories every day.
They are simple to prepare.
Just add some water and heat and then eat.
If you order by 3 p.m., your food kit is going to ship fast on the same day with free shipping.
Again, this is a great way to invest in your safety and well-being.
Secure that food storage, you put it in the closet, you forget about it, and then, God forbid, an emergency happens, you're already ready.
Go to preparewithben.com.
Start your three-month emergency supply.
Again, go to preparewithben.com right now.
That's preparewithben.com.
Okay, so the conflict of visions may be the story of not only this election, but the election of 2016 between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
So there is a person named Yuval Noah Harari.
Yuval Noah Harari is an author, and a professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
But don't let that title fool you.
He is sort of a pop sociologist, to a certain extent, a pop anthropologist.
And he happens to be a militant atheist.
And here is his view on life.
And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think this is actually the view of a huge number of liberal-minded elites in the United States.
And it is completely at odds with the way that most people, I think, think.
Here is Yuval Noah Harari.
He's giving a TED Talk.
Here's what it sounded like.
Many, maybe most, legal systems are based on this idea, this belief in human rights.
But human rights are just like heaven and like God.
It's just a fictional story that we've invented and spread around.
States and nations are also like human rights and like God and like heaven.
They too They're realities.
are just stories. Israel or the United States, they are just stories, very powerful stories,
stories we might want to believe very much, but still they are just stories. You can't really see
the United States. You cannot touch it. You cannot smell it.
Okay, the reality. Once you create this fact-value disconnect, once you get rid of
the divine or any rational basis at all, or faith basis for fundamental first principles,
then you fall very quickly into moral relativism.
And once you're in moral relativism, it is very hard to escape it.
And that's why there's a really fascinating poll that came out recently from Rasmussen.
And it looked at the people who are sort of that we describe as the elites.
Here's how the Rasmussen polling group describes it.
They say, the people who run America, or at least think they do, live in a bubble of their own construction.
They've isolated themselves from everyday American realities.
To such a degree, their views about what is and what should be happening in this country differ widely from the average Americans.
An analysis of their thinking, conducted for the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, finds that on a variety of economic, social, and political issues, there exists a wide gap between how the top 1%, the elites, think things should be and how the rest of America looks to them.
So, how do they define the elites?
These would be defined as people having at least one post-grad degree.
Okay, so these are people, they just graduated college, they have a JD, an MBA, an MD, earning at least 150 grand annually, living in a high population density area.
So that'd be like a New York lawyer who graduated from NYU or something.
And then it compares what these elites think to what the rest of America thinks.
And what they find is this vast disconnect, a serious and vast disconnect.
So, for example, in a time when most Americans have suffered a loss of real take-home pay, 74% of elites say they are financially better off today than in the past, versus 20% of all Americans.
And that disconnect makes sense.
A lot of these people sat home during COVID, and they did just fine.
And they don't really understand why other people don't feel that way.
I get that.
I have a lot of friends who made money over the last several years.
But that's not the experience of most Americans.
That is really not the experience.
And if you don't understand that, then you have a disconnect.
You don't have to experience what other people experience to understand that what they're saying is correct.
When most Americans say, the economy is not good for me, they are right.
The economy is not good for them.
Nearly 6 in 10 of these elites say there is too much individual freedom in America, double the rate of all Americans.
So how do they get to that?
These are people who are experiencing the highest levels of freedom of any subgroup in the United States.
They have more monetary freedom.
Many of them, they have more educational freedom.
They have more freedom to move about.
They have more choices in life, presumably.
But they say there's too much individual freedom in America.
Why?
Because like Yuval Noah Harari, they don't believe that freedom is an inherent right.
Because rights are social constructions.
They're stories that we make up to tell ourselves at night.
And these are the sophisticates.
And these sophisticates are interested in building a system of their own making for you.
More than two-thirds of these people favor rationing of vital energy and food sources to combat the threat of climate change.
Now again, that's because they can avoid all of this.
They don't believe that they should go back to living in a nature preserve or a log cabin.
They may say they do because they don't actually have to live like that right now.
And that seems very far away from them, so easy for them to say.
But they say that sort of stuff.
Again, why?
Because to them, property rights are kind of irrelevant because they already own the things.
In fact, the people who need property rights the most typically are not the people who already own, but the people who are going to need to own in order to get out of the situation in which they currently live.
I'll get to more of this polling in just one second.
First, are you struggling with back taxes or have unfiled returns this year?
Well, the IRS is escalating collections by adding 20,000 new agents.
In these challenging times, your best defense is to use Tax Network USA.
With over 14 years of experience, Tax Network USA has saved their clients over a billion dollars in back taxes.
They specialize in negotiating with the IRS.
They aim to reduce your debt significantly.
Tax Network USA doesn't just negotiate.
They protect your assets from IRS seizures and manage your yearly returns for ongoing compliance.
Importantly, they're licensed to help with all state tax issues, regardless of where you live in the United States.
Seize control of your financial future right now.
Don't let tax issues overpower you.
Contact Tax Network USA for immediate relief and expert guidance.
Call 1-800-RELIEF.
245,000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro.
Turn to Tax Network USA, find your path to financial peace of mind.
Again, that's tnusa.com slash Shapiro.
That's tnusa.com slash Shapiro.
Don't get caught behind the tax eight ball.
It's very difficult to get out from behind that.
Get help that you need right now.
Tax Network USA.com slash Shapiro or 1-800-245-6000.
Okay, back to this fascinating poll of the elites from Rasmussen.
Apparently, somewhere between half and two thirds of these elites favor banning things like SUVs,
gas stoves, air conditioning, and non-essential air travel to protect the environment.
About six of these ten elites have a favorable opinion of the so-called talking professions to be lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, and journalists.
Now, again, I think normies in America look at that and they're like, lawyers?
Those are people who make things more complicated and cost me money.
Lobbyists?
Those are people who work for industry and then engage in regulatory capture.
Politicians?
Those are people who stand in the way of my prosperity.
Journalists are people who lie to me.
I think it's how many Americans feel about our institutions right now.
But the elites, because these are the circles in which they walk, have a lot of faith in institutions that the rest of America has been disabused about.
Well, here is the key stat here.
President Biden has an 84% job approval rating from this group.
That is roughly twice as high as the general public.
That is a massive gap.
A massive gap.
Again, when it says, does the United States provide too much individual freedom, too much government control, or is the balance about right?
57% of Americans say about too much control.
Ivy League graduates, 55% say too much freedom.
That gap defines the Biden administration.
The Biden administration is defined by this gap.
Now again, I think that normal people are not thinking like this.
I don't think normal people think that things like country and borders are artificial abstractions created out of thin air.
They're stories that we just tell ourselves.
Arbitrary stories that we can change at any time.
And in fact, I think that the stories that replace those stories, even if you buy Yuval Noah Harari's framework here, the stories that replace those stories are much worse than the stories that have historically been accepted by human beings.
The replacement for stories about church, for example, has not been a better story that we tell ourselves.
It's been a much worse story.
This is why it was fascinating.
During that debate with Destiny, the liberal streamer, the question of low birth rates came up.
And you all know Harari might say, well, that's because of a story that we tell ourselves about human freedom and contraceptive freedom.
Okay, fine.
But the answer to that story is a better story.
And that story could be answered not with puzzlement and bewilderment, But with a simple three-word answer, here's what that sounded like.
The one kind of weird thing that we're coming up against, that we have been coming up against now for some number of decades and will continue to, is as societies progress, seems like people are having less children.
And I actually don't know 100% what the answer is to that question.
I do.
I'm sure you do, yeah.
I mean, an implementable answer that works, that we know we can get everybody on board with.
And the answer, my answer was, go to church.
Religion, yeah.
Yes, actually, yes.
Now, there's two ways for people who are liberal to get out of that.
One is to say, well, that's a story you tell yourself.
It's a false story.
And so we're just not going to do it.
The other way is to say, well, maybe if the thing has worked over time, it is worth actually examining whether it is a true story.
Maybe there is some truth to that story.
But that's the thing that the elites can't abide.
Because if there's truth to many of the narratives that pre-exist them, Then they got a problem.
Because these are the intellectuals.
These are the post-grads.
These are the people who are the successful elite in our society.
They want to restructure society according to their own story.
But what if the story that pre-existed them was not an arbitrary story?
Maybe that story was there for a reason.
Actually, of all people, Dean Phillips, the Democratic Minnesota Congressperson, I think, kind of stumbled upon this.
He was jousting with the media.
He's running against Joe Biden in an exotic campaign in New Hampshire against the current president.
But he went off on the media because they're asking a bunch of questions.
And he said, listen, you're not even asking the questions Americans care about.
And that makes perfect sense because journalists, many of them are part of this elite coterie who have a different value system from the rest of America.
I've said this 18,000 times.
I'm only doing this to defeat Donald Trump.
Nobody seems to want to do that in the Democratic Party right now, other than me, because Joe Biden can't, is my proposition, because the data says he can't.
No one in the country right now cares.
In fact, most of the people in the country are going to the Trump rally right now, because he's listening to them.
No one's asking about this stuff.
I'm just frustrated.
I hope you understand why.
I'm getting tired of it.
You're doing your jobs, but you're not asking the questions that Americans give a shit about.
He happens to be correct.
He happens to be correct.
Democrats are not giving answers to the questions that Americans care about, and journalists aren't even asking the questions that Americans give a crap about.
In fact, their definition of freedom is so wildly different from the definition that most Americans hold that it's gonna get them in an awful lot of trouble.
So for example, Senator Tammy Duckworth was asked what 2024 was about, and she said freedom.
And so the question is, what do you mean by freedom?
Listen to her answer.
Well, I think that it's about Freedom, right?
It's about protecting democracy, but protecting freedoms.
And 1 of our freedoms is the right to control our bodies and control our reproductive cycles.
Also talking about the right to the freedom from student loans, the freedom to walk down the streets and not have to worry about being target of.
That's amazing.
How does she describe freedom?
She names three things.
Freedom to do abortion.
Which, again, I think there are a lot of Americans who are not on board with the idea that freedom is abortion.
Most shockingly, she says freedom is freedom from student loans.
That's an amazing statement.
So freedom is other people pay your bills.
That's true freedom.
And that's the elite version of freedom.
That's the society they want to structure.
Freedom from responsibility, say the elites.
That's all most Americans are talking about.
If that's the democratic proposition for 2024, I think that that is a vast gap from what most Americans feel.
Remember a few months back, there was this song that went absolutely viral.
And that song, it was Oliver Anthony, and the song was called Rich Men North of Richmond, you'll recall.
And the lyrics of Rich Men North of Richmond absolutely puzzled many members of the left.
They literally did not know what he was talking about.
Because in the song, he talked about people basically taxing too much, and also spending too much money.
He talks about the abuse of welfare, for example.
And people who are in this elite coterie, they're like, why is he whining about?
He's a blue-collar guy.
Shouldn't he be in favor of that?
Shouldn't he want a restructured way of life?
And what he's talking about is the things that most Americans actually care about.
The things that are, the stories that have always worked.
The stories about family and freedom and the ability to use your merit to rise to the top.
And one of the things that he's saying about He said, if you're 5'3 and you're 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds.
Young men are putting themselves six feet in the ground because all this damn country does is keep kicking them down.
And people are like, why is he doing the welfare queen routine?
Well, it turns out that most Americans actually are not in favor of the basic proposition that freedom means freedom from student loans, for example.
And this is Joe Biden's core problem.
Joe Biden is not speaking a language the American people recognize.
And that's going to come back to bite him in the butt, along with his policy failures, which we'll get to momentarily.
First, let's talk about staying healthy on the road.
So we're on the road.
We're in Poland.
We just went to Auschwitz with Elon Musk.
We spent a day filming.
And producer Zach, he keeps healthy.
How?
Well, he uses his balance of nature, fruit and veggie capsules.
When we are on the road, which is a smart thing to do, Bounce of Nature fruits and veggies are a great way to make sure you are getting essential nutritional ingredients every single day.
Bounce of Nature uses an advanced cold vacuum process that encapsulates fruits and veggies into whole food supplements without sacrificing their natural antioxidants.
The capsules are completely void of additives, fillers, extracts, synthetics, pesticides, or added sugar.
The only thing in Bounce of Nature fruit and veggie capsules are, you know, like fruits and veggies.
Right now, not only will my listeners get 35% off your first order, you'll get a free fiber and spice supplement as well.
Balance of Nature Fiber and Spice Supplement is a revolutionary fiber drink with a unique blend of 12 spices and whole foods.
Experience Balance of Nature for yourself today.
Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code SHAPIRO, get 35% off your first order as a preferred customer, plus get a free bottle of Fiber and Spice.
That's balanceofnature.com, promo code SHAPIRO, get 35% off your first preferred order, plus that free bottle of Fiber and Spice.
Okay, so speaking of Joe Biden's policy, you know, the most undercovered story of this of this cycle, this new cycle so far, is the fact that we have two dead Navy SEALs.
I mean, like, how is this not the biggest story in America?
So these two Navy SEALs actually died.
They were lost at sea during an operation attempting to seize Iranian-made missile parts that were bound for Houthi rebels in Yemen.
All of this, by the way, an outgrowth of the gigantically weak foreign policy of this administration with regard to Iran.
CENTCOM said in a statement the military had declared the two deal seals dead.
It was now conducting recovery operations following a 10-day exhaustive search.
The search covered 21,000 square miles, apparently.
The seals were reported lost earlier this month when they took part in a nighttime operation to board a boat in the international waters of the Arabian Sea, according to the U.S.
military.
That is an attempt to ensure freedom of shipping, which has been completely obstructed under Joe Biden through the Red Sea.
Joe Biden's attempts to fire missiles that hit camels in the ass has so far had very little effect on the actual prevention of who the terror attacks on ship and which continue unabated.
Meanwhile, We have two Americans dead in an attempt to stop the Houthis.
We have other Americans who have been severely wounded, including one with apparently brain injuries, thanks to Iranian attacks on American bases in Iraq.
And Joe Biden is just trying to walk through this thing.
Here is Joe Biden literally just trying to stumble across grass and avoiding questions about these two dead Navy SEALs.
Mr. President!
Two Navy SEALs are dead!
What's your response?
There he is walking, as Donald Trump likes to say, looking like he's trying to walk on toothpicks.
And again, it's not just these two dead Navy SEALs.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-backed militias launched another missile and rocket barrage at U.S.
forces in Iraq on Saturday.
Several Americans may have been injured.
Will Iran pay any price for this latest assault?
CENTCOM said in a statement most of the missiles were intercepted by the al-Assad airbase air defense systems while others impacted the base.
Damage assessments are ongoing and added a number of U.S.
personnel are undergoing evaluation for traumatic brain injury.
At least one Iraqi service member was wounded.
This is one of the largest of the 140 or so attacks by Iranian-backed militias since October 7th against the United States in Iraq and Syria.
And all of that is designed to put pressure on the United States, to put pressure on Israel to stop and leave Hamas in place in the Gaza Strip after the worst terror attack on Jews since World War II.
Now, why is all that happening?
The reason Iran is doing this is because Iran believes that in an election year, Joe Biden is so all-fired frightened of getting into a war with Iran that they can push the United States around to their heart's content.
They can shut down shipping in the Red Sea.
They can continue to have Hezbollah fire missiles into northern Israel and kill Jews.
They can continue to fire directly at American bases.
They can have their proxy forces fire directly at American air bases in Iraq, and Joe Biden will run away.
In fact, that is not a bad analysis by the Iranians because that's how weak Joe Biden is.
Peter Baker at the New York Times reports as much.
He says, Another day, another barrage of rockets and another spark that American officials fear could set off a wildfire of violence across the Middle East.
The assault on American troops based at Al Asad Air Base in Western Iraq Saturday night was by one measure the most successful bleed to be carried out by a militia sponsored by Iran since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th.
Two out of an estimated 17 rockets and short-range ballistic missiles fired at the base made it through air defense systems.
American forces have at times mounted retaliations, but in limited fashion to avoid instigating a full-fledged conflict.
Biden administration officials have regularly debated the proper strategy.
They don't want to let such attacks go without a response.
But on the other hand, They don't want to go so far, the conflict would escalate into a full-fledged war, particularly by striking Iran directly.
They privately say they may not have no choice if American troops are killed.
That's a red line that has not been crossed, but if Iranian-backed militias ever have a day of better aim or better luck, it easily could be.
What do you call it when you have two dead Navy SEALs in an attempt to stop the Houthis from shipping a bunch of missiles into their territory?
Again, the fear of Iran is dictating this administration's foreign policy and it's dictating Iran's aggression.
Now, the reality is that Iran really, really does not want to direct war with the United States.
What they do want to do is humiliate the United States and pressure the United States into pressuring Israel to leaving their proxy force in Hamas in place.
That is their goal.
But there's an entire article in the New York Times by rule Mark Garrett and Ray Take talking about exactly what Iran wants.
And what they say, correctly, is while Iran is clearly asserting its military strength amid the widening regional turmoil, that doesn't mean its leaders want to be drawn into a wider war.
They've said as much publicly.
Perhaps more important, they've meticulously avoided taking direct military action against either Israel or the United States.
The regime appears to be content for now to lean into its longtime strategy of proxy warfare.
The groups they back are fighting Iran's foes.
So far, neither Israel nor the United States has signaled any interest in retaliating directly.
Why?
Well, because they're afraid that if they go to war, if they get in like a direct firing war with the United States or Israel, they're afraid their regime is over.
The elderly supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is seeking to secure his legacy.
That means not getting dragged into a wider war.
They're busily rounding up protesters and executing them right now.
So, you know, Iran doesn't want the war, certainly more than the West doesn't want the war.
But Joe Biden is making clear, just like Barack Obama did in 2012 to the Russians, if you guys want to get aggressive, like now would probably be your best move.
Because if you like, please, please, please don't make me get aggressive with you because I want to get reelected.
And Joe Biden is basically saying that to the Iranians.
And the Iranians are like, well, that gives us a window of opportunity.
Now, there could be a miscalculation here.
Iran could go too far and the United States might be forced, even under Joe Biden, to do something.
But the best way to do this would be to be predictably unpredictable.
The reason they never did this under Trump is that they didn't know what the hell Trump was going to do.
Trump might have fired a missile and taken out the Ayatollahs.
He might have done that.
Nobody believes that Biden is going to do that.
Instead, Joe Biden continues to signal to the Iranians and their proxies that he will, in fact, do their work.
That he will, in fact, attempt to leverage down a bad deal on Israel after the Hamas attack.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a proposal submitted to Israel via the United States suggests a post-war Gaza that would create a pathway toward a Palestinian state in exchange for Saudi recognition of Israel.
Now, the reason that's totally insane is because if Israel grants a pathway to a Palestinian state on the heels of the worst terror attack in Israeli history, you are simply saying to people that if they attack you and kill lots of your citizens, you will give them stuff.
That is what you are doing.
By the way, Hamas, for its part, doesn't even want a ceasefire.
According to the Associated Press, Hamas was offered a two-month full ceasefire in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages and some Palestinian security prisoners being released as well, and allowing Hamas leaders to relocate to other countries to get out.
Hamas rejected that.
So for all the, we need a ceasefire now crowd, Hamas rejected a ceasefire again.
Biden's weakness on foreign policy is radically increasing the risk of actual serious war in the Middle East.
Moving beyond what's already going on over there.
And it's not just obviously the Middle East.
There's also continued chaos on our southern border.
We'll get to that momentarily.
First, Lady Ballers is the hilarious story of how a group of male losers who can't win against other men decide to identify as women and join a women's basketball league.
Yes, it's absurd.
It's ridiculous and laughable.
And also it's kind of happening like right now.
Here's a quick look at what is being called the most triggering movie of the decade.
Leftists are losing it over Lady Ballers.
Nothing's changed.
This movie is a straight-up and intentional transphobic hate crime.
What?
I see you.
The Lady Ballers movie needs to be banned.
I'll cancel you.
Can I get the blinds, please?
Go to 11.
The most toxic BS you've ever seen.
You're a monster.
Yeah!
Next-level hate speech propaganda.
That's it?
That's the pitch?
Watch the most triggering comedy of the decade.
Lady Ballers, streaming exclusively on DeliWire Plus.
Don't wait, watch Lady Ballers, the movie Hollywood didn't make.
So we did, exclusively at Daily Wire Plus, right now.
Meanwhile, again, Democrats are not connecting with the American people, and so they're trying to walk their way past the issues.
The latest example comes courtesy of the New York Times.
So this is an insane thing.
The New York Times printed a piece in which they claimed that there's bipartisan polarization around immigration.
So the New York Times runs this headline, Things Fall Apart, How the Middle Ground on Immigration Collapsed.
And what they show is Pew Research Center polling with regard to feelings about illegal immigration and open borders.
And for those who can't actually see the graphic that we're showing right now, this is why you should subscribe so you can actually see it because it's hysterically funny.
Basically what it shows is that the American right has had perfectly consistent feelings on immigration since 1994.
Like with very little play in the joints.
And when asked whether they support broader and looser immigration, only about 30% of Republicans said yes back in 1994.
And that number is like 38% today.
And it's always been between those two numbers.
It's like just a straight line between 1994 and 2019.
For Democrats, the number went from 32% pro more open borders to 83% today.
But what the New York Times did is they drew fake trend lines suggesting that there was a radical decrease for Republican support for borders, for open borders, and a radical increase for Democrats.
That's not true.
Republicans have been perfectly consistent for 30 years on this question.
Democrats have been utterly inconsistent.
They've moved from 32% support for open borders to 83% support for more open borders.
So what is the New York Times trying to do?
They're trying to pretend that there's been bipartisan polarization when in fact there has not.
When in fact, the reality is that Democrats are the ones who have gotten more radical.
You can try whistling your way past this graveyard, but man, it is a stupid political move.
In fact, fascinating piece over at Barry Weiss's Free Press today by a reporter, Olivia Reingold, talking about black Democrats suing Chicago over migrants.
According to the Free Press, Black residents said that Chicago, which calls itself a welcoming city, has been very welcoming, just not to them.
Since October 2022, Chicago has greeted nearly 35,000 new arrivals with resources like laundry services, mental health screenings, and $15,000 in rental support per person.
All funds that could have gone a long way in Amundsen Park in Chicago's Austin district, where nearly 28% of residents live below the poverty line.
So, last October, a day before the Fieldhouse was set to become a migrant shelter, A Black Democrat rushed to the local courthouse along with three of her neighbors plus the head of the local NAACP chapter for moral support and then drafted a lawsuit in a notebook, ripped out the pages, and handed them to a clerk.
So now Black Democrats are suing over this.
And when we say there's a disconnect between the elites that run the Democratic Party and the rest of the country, we mean, like, the rest of the country.
That disconnect extends throughout American policy.
And things are only going to get worse, by the way.
Because again, weakness on a foreign policy level is likely to make things really bad economically speaking.
Like right now, for example, China could effectively quarantine or blockade Taiwan.
There's a poll from Axios, an expert opinion poll on whether Beijing could effectively quarantine, blockade, or invade Taiwan.
According to these quote-unquote experts, a law enforcement-led quarantine of Taiwan, almost 90% of American experts strongly agree or somewhat agree that there could be a law enforcement-led quarantine of Taiwan.
How about a Chinese army-led blockade of Taiwan?
Well over 80% of U.S.
experts believe there could be an effective Chinese-led blockade of Taiwan.
How about an amphibious invasion of Taiwan?
Well, that's less likely because that would involve mass death, but they don't need to do that.
A blockade would do it.
A blockade of Taiwan, in which the Taiwan Straits are effectively closed to all trade, in which microchips just stop being shipped all over the world because China looks at what's going on in the Red Sea and they say, hell, if a bunch of ragtag pirates can do that in the Red Sea, why can't we, with a very, very large greywater navy, And a huge army.
Why can't we do the same thing?
Blockade Taiwan until they cry uncle and give us some more sophisticated military microchips.
Why can't we actually do this?
Now again, that blockade...
Would involve both commercial and military activity.
That would be a disaster area for the world economy, and it is becoming more and more likely.
Because again, imagine this.
The Chinese government right now, maybe they're holding out for a Biden victory because they think, okay, if they get a full second term of Joe Biden, they can push him around as much as they want.
But what if Donald Trump is leading in a couple of months?
Do they just say, you know what, forget it, let's go for broke at this point?
Interesting article over at the Wall Street Journal from a couple of years ago talking about what exactly a Chinese blockade of Taiwan would mean for global business.
And the answer is a gigantic disaster.
Taiwan accounts for roughly 70% of the world's microchip supply.
It sits next to Pacific shipping lanes that channel trillions of dollars worth of trade flowing in and out of East Asia.
A Chinese blockade of Taiwan would result in chip shortages for cars and electronics to drive up inflationary pressures as well.
Pretty much every major industry would be radically changed by such a blockade.
And that's becoming more likely every day because Joe Biden is a weakling.
Because he is a weakling.
And he's busy with the priorities of these elites.
whose value system is unlike yours, and who are much more concerned about, say, global warming than they are about, say, global trade.
Okay, meanwhile, I know what you're waiting for, and that is my analysis of the Oscar nominations.
I know you weren't waiting for that because, after all, who watches the Oscars anymore?
But still, I feel like it's worthwhile to go through some of these Oscar nominations because it's fun to see where, you know, people who disagree with you culturally are sitting today.
So, in easily the funniest story of the day, Barbie, which as you know I loved.
I thought it was an amazing film.
By which I think it was absolute overrated trash.
I think it was unwatchable.
I think that people who say they like it are lying.
I think, Michael Moulse, I think that this movie makes no sense.
It has plot holes.
It's badly written.
All of those things.
Also, this is hilarious.
So, it was nominated for Best Picture, which is like, okay, I know what you guys are doing.
Yes, it made a ton of money, and all the critics pretended they loved it because they had to, because they had a gun to their head.
But, it was nominated for Best Picture.
Okay, fine, that's stupid.
But, the funniest thing, by far the funniest thing, is that the only, is that the acting nominees for Barbie are Ryan Gosling, who plays Ken, America Ferreira is nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category for her garbage speech about how women have it so tough, and oh my god, it's so hard to be a woman.
So she was nominated.
But you know who wasn't nominated?
So Ken was nominated.
You know who was not nominated?
Barbie.
Margot Robbie, not nominated.
You know who else not nominated?
The greatest director of all time, Greta Gerwig, who's the greatest.
We all love all of her work because she's the greatest director who ever directed, and because everything she says is wise and brilliant, and she's so wise.
So, she was not nominated either.
So, Ken was the only major part nominated from the Barbie film.
Oh, the patriarchy!
The power of the patriarchy even overcoming Barbie itself.
And the patriarchy will rule supreme because I'm going to predict right here, right now that Oppenheimer wins Best Picture.
So in the Barbenheimer fight, Oppenheimer, which is like an all-time great movie, is going to defeat Barbie, which is trash.
And it should.
So the Best Picture nominees are American Fiction, which is apparently a kind of like weirdly anti-woke piece, is what I've heard, but I have not seen it yet.
Anatomy of a Fall, which is about a relationship, because there's always a relationship movie at the Oscars.
The Holdovers, which is, I guess, sideways in high school.
Killers of the Flower Moon, which is really overlong, but it's directed by Martin Scorsese.
And so we have to pretend that we all love Killers of the Flower Moon.
And again, I'm not like super anti-Scorsese.
I like some of his films, but Killers of the Flower Moon is a drag.
Maestro, which is about Leonard Bernstein being gay.
Oppenheimer, a movie called Past Lives, a movie called Poor Things, and a movie called The Zone of Interest.
Now, I will admit that I'm interested to see The Zone of Interest.
Mainly, it has amazing reviews, and also it covers ground that I literally just walked.
I mean, it is about Auschwitz.
So I'm kind of fascinated to see that movie, but...
Those are your Best Picture nominees.
In the Best Actor category, this is where somebody actually got robbed.
And it is not Margot Robbie, and it is not Greta Gerwig.
It's Glenn Howerton from Blackberry.
So if you haven't seen Blackberry yet, it's actually a lot of fun.
It's a terrific little film.
And Glenn Howerton is excellent in it.
He's like Best Performance of the Year.
Excellent.
Who got nominated?
Cillian Murphy from Oppenheimer.
And he's admittedly great.
Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction.
I haven't seen American Fiction yet.
I want to see it.
But he is, he's a really good actor.
Paul Giamatti, who's not going to win for The Holdovers.
And, you know, I just gotta, I gotta put it out there.
Not a huge Paul Giamatti fan.
I feel like he's the same in every single part.
Coleman Domingo in a movie called Rustin, which I have not seen.
And Bradley Cooper playing Leonard Bernstein in Maestro and overplaying the part.
Chewing some scenery.
For Best Actress, you have Annette Bening in a movie called Neod, which nobody has ever seen and no one knows what it's about or what it is.
Or that Annette Bening was still alive.
Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon.
She's fine.
Sandra Huller in Anatomy of a Fall.
Carey Mulligan in Maestro and Emma Stone in Poor Things.
I'm gonna bet that it's Emma Stone in Poor Things because Poor Things is apparently like a feminist tract about how repressed Victorian women... Then there's Best Supporting Actor.
Robert De Niro got a nod for Killers of the Flower Moon, which is a late career nod to Robert De Niro playing a part that he is 40 years old to play.
Robert Downey Jr.
in Oppenheimer.
He is excellent in Oppenheimer.
Ryan Gosling.
I do think, by the way, Ryan Gosling is going to win here.
I think Ryan Gosling, I think he's going to be the honorary Barbie award because everybody loved him in Barbie.
Even I thought that he was the most amusing thing in Barbie.
And again, I think that that That movie is living death.
And I thought that Ryan Gosling was still funny in that film.
And Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things Who I Hope Loses because he is not a pro-Semitic person.
He's too busy standing for Hamas.
Best Supporting Actress.
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer, Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple, America Ferreira in Barbie for that garbage speech.
Jodie Foster in Niad.
Again, don't know what it is.
And Divine Joy Randolph in The Holdovers.
Best Director.
Greta Gerwig got shut out.
I think this is Nolan's year.
I think Nolan is going to take home Best Picture and Best Director this year.
Those are the big awards.
So what is the takeaway?
The takeaway is that it wasn't like an amazing year for film, is the takeaway, which seems to be our usual takeaway.
Like, I don't see any films that I saw this year and I thought, man, that thing should have been nominated for Best Picture that wasn't.
Right?
Oppenheimer, I think, it has the most nominations.
It has 13 nominations.
It should have the most nominations.
It's a truly great film.
Barbie, again, is going to be the story because it's the only movie that, aside from Oppenheimer, anyone saw this year.
Yeah, bottom line, low ratings, but I'm rooting very, very hard for Ryan Gosling to win for Barbie because it's the funniest possible outcome.
The funniest possible outcome for the movie of Barbie is for Ken to win the only award.
I just, I'm there for it.
I love that the Academy accidentally did this, and more, I want Ken to win, and I want, I'm just Ken from the Barbie movie to win.
Those are my demands.
And I will hold someone hostage to make those demands happen.
I want us to lose costume design.
I want us to lose every other category, but only the men win.
Not even because I care, but because it's hilarious.
It'd be super hilarious if the patriarchy ends up winning in a movie made about how terrible the patriarchy supposedly is.
So, there's that.
All right, coming up, we'll jump into Yvonne's mailbag.
If you're not a member, become a member.
Use code Shapiro.
Check out for two months free on all annual plans.
▲
Export Selection