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Feb. 15, 2024 - The Ben Shapiro Show

47:45

Russian Nukes In Space?!

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	So yesterday there was a big announcement from the House Intelligence Committee.
	The House Intelligence Committee chair went on X and tweeted out a statement suggesting that there was a serious national security threat the American public had to be made aware of.
	And this freaked everybody out because when you make vague national security related threats, And you suggest that they are serious enough that they need to be declassified.
	Everybody starts to have a little bit of palpitations.
	Well, as it turns out, what exactly was happening here?
	It appears that there is intelligence suggesting that Russia is going to attempt to put nukes in space.
	Nukes in space!
	So, according to CNN.com, the U.S.
	has new intelligence on Russian military capabilities related to its efforts to deploy a nuclear anti-satellite system in space.
	According to multiple sources familiar with the intelligence, the intelligence was briefed to Congress and key U.S.
	allies.
	Some lawmakers say it is serious enough it should be declassified and made public.
	Apparently, it's not an immediate threat.
	The Russians haven't actually done it yet.
	The system is under development.
	It is not yet in orbit, and it's not even clear how far the technology has progressed, according to one of those officials.
	So, there are a few issues that we need to cover here.
	One is, what would it mean if Russia actually were to do this?
	Second is, why are we finding out about this now, not when, you know, it's actually about to happen or when it has happened?
	There's something a little bit funny about that, politically speaking.
	So let's talk about what exactly this would mean.
	First, it means that presumably there would be a serious threat to America's satellite communications technology, all of our satellite technology, period.
	So if you were to detonate a nuke in space, it does not exactly have the same ramifications as if you Detonate a nuclear weapon at high altitude.
	For example, if you detonate a nuclear weapon at high altitude, that comes with the possible threat of EMP, electromagnetic pulses, which could take out, fry all of your electronics.
	You've seen some of the kind of horror movies about that possibility.
	If you detonate a nuclear weapon close to the ground, obviously you devastate the immediate area around the blast.
	And then there are also radiation clouds that travel and kill lots of people.
	If you detonate in space, one of the things about a nuclear weapon is that a nuclear weapon
	feeds on the air around it, obviously.
	The explosion requires oxygen in order for it to continue expanding.
	So if you do it in a vacuum, if you do it in space, it doesn't have quite the same impact.
	Effectively, what you do is you blast out radiation, and that radiation is going to
	significantly damage or degrade pretty much all of the satellites within the immediate
	orbit, and it's going to create a sort of perennial hot spot in that place where satellites
	that pass through it are going to be significantly damaged.
	There's a good piece by Lieutenant Colonel Tony Vinson who's an active duty scientist in the US Air Force as well as the director of advanced physics courses at the Air Force Academy and he wrote this piece back in September of 2022 talking about what exactly would happen if you detonated a nuclear weapon in space.
	And what he says is that the threat of nuclear explosions in space is marginalized because the potency of their effects is not widely known, and the likelihood of nuclear attack in space is assumed to be negligible, but that assumption is wrong.
	What he says is that, effectively speaking, what would happen is nuking the economy.
	It would really be more of an economic attack than, say, a physical attack killing millions of people, for example.
	So what he writes is he says a nuclear explosion in space disproportionately hurts the United States as the largest single investor in space capabilities.
	The United States nets almost $200 billion per year of real gross output from its space assets.
	Even though military satellites are designed to withstand a harsher charged particle environment, radiation hardening is not a magic cloak of invincibility.
	Military space assets will be degraded over time from the artificially amped radiation belt created from the nuclear detonation.
	Meanwhile, commercial satellites in low Earth orbit will be the first to fail from continually passing through these particle hotspots.
	Most satellites with a line of sight to the nuclear detonation would be destroyed from the resulting x-rays.
	Military space capabilities for command and control along with reconnaissance assets may still function for a period following the detonation, but the economic impact of degraded informational space products will be immediate.
	So in other words, the things that are not shielded up there are going to get fried almost immediately, they'll degrade really fast, and that will have a pretty significant economic impact.
	Now, does that mean that the United States would then be in World War III nuclear war?
	Because what we're not talking about here is the Russians putting, presumably, nuclear weapons up there in order to fire a nuke from space at the United States, for example.
	talking about them putting a nuclear weapon up there in order to do economic damage.
	That you're a state under significant pressure like Russia is economically speaking or in
	terms of security and so your best indirect approach to really escalate things without
	killing a lot of people because if they kill a lot of people then the United States really will have
	to unleash its war machine against the Russians which we have not done so far despite all
	foolishness to the contrary.
	The United States has yet to unleash its actual war machine against Russia.
	If it had, we would not be talking about war in Ukraine anymore.
	We'd be talking about something far larger.
	And let's be real about this.
	The United States military capacity, put aside nuclear weapons, is why mutually assured destruction exists, the US military capacity is much larger than that of the Russians.
	We're not talking about any of that right now.
	What we are talking about If the Russians were to actually fire a nuke at the United States, that is not the same thing as nuking a bunch of satellites in space, which would do economic damage and would presumably come along with an escalation of American efforts against Russia short of nuclear weapons.
	So the real question here is when you look at this capability, yeah, is that a risk?
	Of course that's a risk.
	Is that something that the U.S.
	military should game out?
	A hundred percent.
	Should we try to figure out ways of hardening our satellites or replacing them with new satellites that are significantly more hardened to this risk?
	Sure.
	But is this the kind of serious national security threat that requires everybody to go on panic mode for a full day yesterday where everybody is thinking, oh my God, I need my bunker.
	Where's my bunker?
	Do I need to do my drop and tuck exercises from the 1950s?
	Get under my desk and wait for the nuclear explosion?
	Well, no, that's not what this threat means kind of at all, which raises the other question, which is exactly why was this made into a giant threat?
	And there are a lot of people who are quite suspicious of why this was made into a giant threat.
	I'm among them.
	We'll get to more on this in just one second first.
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	So, as folks know, I have a sympathy for the idea of giving more aid to Ukraine.
	I don't think that amount of aid has to be $60 billion.
	I don't think that that bill that has been put forward by the Senate is a particularly wonderful bill.
	It includes $10 billion of aid to the Gaza Strip, which is filled with people who presumably would be in positions of administration who are terrorists.
	There's a lot that's wrong with that bill.
	As a general proposition, I don't believe that the United States has an interest in allowing Russia to simply walk into Kiev and take over the entirety of Ukraine.
	I think that has significant negative geopolitical ramifications for the United States and American citizens.
	With that said, scaring the American people into greenlighting an aid package by releasing information about a serious national security threat that lives in Canada, but no, you can't meet her, that doesn't seem like a great tactic to get people in your corner.
	In fact, it's probably going to alienate more people than it draws.
	According to CNN, when members of Congress downplayed the immediacy of the threat, an anti-satellite weapon placed in orbit around the Earth would pose significant danger to U.S.
	nuclear command and control satellites, according to Hans Christensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.
	Earlier on Wednesday, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Mike Turner of Ohio, ignited a firestorm on Capitol Hill when he issued that cryptic statement, announcing that the panel had, quote, information concerning a serious national security threat.
	And when this notice went out, by the way, I was watching, and my immediate Mentality went to, okay, is there like an immediate terror threat in the United States that we need to know about?
	Is there about to be a major secondary attack by the Russians on, say, a Baltic state?
	Like, what are we talking about here?
	And then it turns out that what they're talking about is the possibility of a new Russian military capability that would do economic damage to the United States, but would not actually launch us into World War III.
	And I thought, well, that seems a little bit overblown in terms of just leaking that out there to scare everybody.
	Within hours, the Republican House Speaker, Mike Johnson, attempted to tamp down the situation, telling reporters, quote, there is no cause for alarm.
	He said that he'd known about the intelligence since at least January.
	He said, we want to assure everyone that steady hands are at the wheel working on it and there is no need for alarm.
	Jim Hines, the committee's top Democrat, said in a statement, the classified intelligence product the House Intelligence Committee called to the attention members last night is a significant one, but it is not in fact a cause for panic.
	The National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, he said, you know, I can't say that Americans have nothing to worry about, but I'm not sure why everybody is sort of in panic mode.
	Just a quick follow-up, just to put this to rest.
	Obviously the House Intelligence Chair speaking out about a imminent, or he doesn't say imminent, serious national security threat.
	The lack of your ability to say anything has the potential to raise distress for some Americans.
	In the simplest of terms, can you tell Americans that there's nothing they have to worry about right now in terms of what he describes as a national security threat?
	Look, I think in a way that question is impossible to answer with a straight yes, right?
	Because Americans understand that there are a range of threats and challenges in the world that we're dealing with every single day.
	And those threats and challenges range from terrorism to state actors.
	And we have to contend with them.
	We have to contend with them in a way where we ensure the ultimate security of the American people.
	So, again, when I see This sort of alarmism emerging, that makes me less likely to support a foreign aid bill.
	Again, were I in Congress, I'm not sure how I would vote on this foreign aid bill.
	I'd probably vote no based on the size and scope of it, and I'd want to see the underlying information.
	But even were I inclined to vote for the foreign aid bill, I'd now be less inclined to vote for the foreign aid bill because I don't like pressure tactics like this.
	Apparently, according to Politico, it's possible that Turner was attempting to raise alarms about Russia's advancements in space as a way of underscoring the need for lawmakers to approve additional aid to Ukraine.
	The Senate passed the supplemental bill, including $60 billion in aid for Kiev, and it's currently under review by the House.
	Now, meanwhile, the White House is trying to play a bit of a different game with regard to this foreign aid bill.
	Speaker Johnson has suggested that he needs a one-on-one meeting with President Biden.
	said yesterday that he has no plans to meet with the Speaker of the House, which is weird
	because if you want to get something done on foreign aid, presumably you'd want to meet
	with the person with whom you are going to have to negotiate to get that done.
	Kareem Jean-Pierre said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	Joe Biden isn't meeting with him.
	Speaker Johnson has suggested that he needs a one on one meeting with President Biden.
	Given that Johnson has said he doesn't feel rushed on foreign aid, would that one on one
	meeting help?
	Bye.
	I mean, look, and I appreciate the question, Josh, but the president met with, obviously, congressional leadership less than a month ago.
	Just less than a month ago.
	And he made really clear how important it was to get that bipartisan negotiated legislation coming out of the Senate, how important it was to move that forward.
	Okay, so why won't he meet with Johnson then?
	If he thinks that it's really important, why not try to convince Johnson?
	I mean, first of all, it'd be good politics.
	It'd be good optics.
	He could come out and he could say, listen, I spoke with Speaker Johnson and he doesn't have a coherent defense of his position.
	It's very weird that Biden won't speak to him.
	The reason that Biden won't speak to him is because he thinks for some odd reason that he's winning this thing in the court of public opinion and or He knows that the headline coming out of any meeting between Biden and Johnson is likely to be about his senility, not about Johnson's positions on this particular issue.
	Meanwhile, the Biden administration is just trying to ramp up the pressure from the outside, suggesting that if you wanted to pare back the bill, or if you had amendments to the bill, or if you wanted to pass a slightly different version of the bill that strips out certain things and adds other things, that this would somehow be a giant failure.
	John Kirby?
	Who is the national security spokesperson for the White House.
	He says it's time for Mike Johnson to show some leadership and simply put up the bill for a vote.
	But that's not actually Johnson's job.
	He doesn't have to do that.
	Obviously, he's Speaker of the House.
	I don't think it's any secret.
	Some Republicans on the House have acknowledged it.
	If this bill got to the floor, there's more than 218 votes.
	It just needs to be put on the floor.
	Have you guys worked through, you know, plan B's or other ways to try and get around a speaker who said unequivocally this isn't happening?
	It's not about getting around the Speaker, Phil.
	It's about working with him and through him.
	And he's going to have to show some leadership here.
	Obviously, we're going to keep our consultations and our conversations with Congress going.
	We're obviously going to keep engaging them.
	But the Speaker's got a choice to make here.
	This is a moment for leadership.
	This is, as the President said, an inflection point.
	And we've got to wait and see if the Speaker's going to be up to that moment.
	So, you know, again, I think this is a bad tactic if they actually want to get the aid passed.
	What they should do is sit down with Johnson.
	He's the person they have to negotiate with.
	But again, I think a lot of this is grandstanding.
	Right now, our political system is entirely broken because there is more incentive in both sides grandstanding than in actually getting things done.
	And that's true across the aisle, pretty much everywhere.
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	So the Democrats are simply gonna demagogue this thing without sitting down and trying to see
	what they can get out of the Republicans.
	Corine Jean-Pierre, she is saying that Republicans are siding with Putin and Iran.
	Which again, listen, I wish that Republicans would articulate better their reasons for opposing the bill.
	Because you're seeing, as I've discussed on the show the past few days, a wide variety of rationales.
	You have Tom Cotton, who's extremely hawkish.
	Extremely anti-Iran, extremely anti-Putin, Tom Cotton, the senator from Arkansas.
	And he has said that he's opposing the bill because of all the pork in it and because it provides aid to some places we don't want the aid going.
	And I agree with his rationales.
	And then you see some people who are making the argument that basically Ukraine doesn't deserve defense at all.
	And Democrats are jumping onto that argument and then they are using that as a stand-in for the entire Republican argument.
	So the lack of unity in a message from Republicans about why they oppose the bill is actually giving an opening to Democrats to claim that Republicans oppose the bill because they actually like Vladimir Putin.
	House Republicans are still at it right now, siding with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Tehran against our defense industrial base, against NATO, against Ukraine, against our interests in the Indo-Pacific.
	Lack of clarity and messaging is not Republicans' friend here.
	They have now offered a bunch of different rationales for why they oppose the bill.
	And they really need to come around like one rationale.
	So originally the rationale is we oppose the bill because we want border control provisions in the bill.
	And then when the border control provisions that came out of the Senate were insufficient,
	they said, we don't want any border control provisions in the bill because Joe Biden has the authority
	to do what he wants right now.
	Okay, well, if that was the argument in the first place, then why link it to border provisions in the bill?
	And why not pass a version in the House that already has border provisions in the bill
	so that people aren't kind of shooting in the dark.
	It feels like the Republicans in the House are moving around the goalposts a lot.
	Just to be honest with you, from the outside, if you're just somebody who's watching this casually, what it looks like is, Republicans said, OK, we want some Ukraine.
	We're okay with some Ukraine aid, we're good with Israel aid, we're good with Taiwan aid,
	but we're not going to give all this money away until we secure our southern border.
	And so the Senate said, OK, fine, we're going to put together this entire crap package, including border stuff.
	And then the Republicans announced, well, that's insufficient.
	And the Senate was like, well, then we'll just strip out the border stuff and we'll do just the aid package alone.
	And then the Republicans like, well, there's not border stuff in there.
	OK, well, if you're going to do that, then what you actually ought to do in the House is do what the House was designed to do.
	Initiate the legislation.
	Initiate the legislation and say if the Senate will not pass our version of the legislation, we're not signing anything else.
	Our version is better.
	Their version is worse.
	Do that.
	But it seems like Republicans can't really even get on board for that because of internal divisions over things like aid for Ukraine.
	It turns out that Republicans don't have a unified position.
	Democrats do.
	Democrats have a unified position on pretty much all of these issues.
	Their unified position is, as open borders as you can make them, lots of aid to Ukraine.
	They actually are in favor of aid to Israel, but they also want aid to Hamas.
	That's the actual Democrat unified position.
	Democrats are way better at this game than Republicans.
	Republicans are, by and large, a fragmentary group.
	It's a coalitional group.
	Democrats are pretty much down the line.
	You'll have an occasional person who's crazy, like Rashida Tlaib, who no one can get on board, including Democrats.
	I mean, they'll still praise her and pretend that she's a diverse part of their coalition.
	While she literally voted yesterday, she voted present on a resolution to condemn Hamas for raping women.
	That is what Rashida Tlaib was doing yesterday.
	Here she was yesterday.
	All acts of sexual violence are horrific.
	We should all be fighting to end it here at home and all around the world.
	So while the resolution on the floor today rightfully denounces any sexual violence by Hamas, I am disturbed that it completely ignores and erases any sexual violence and abuse committed by the Israeli forces against Palestinians, especially children.
	Sexual violence and abuse committed against children?
	What?
	And she's a terror supporter, but she's a ridiculous, terror-supporting, horrific human being.
	Even Democrats look at Rashida Tlaib for the most part and think that she's a crazy person.
	But they're much more unified just in terms of their governing strategy than Republicans are.
	And what that means is that because Republicans are unable to come up with a governing strategy, Because they can't actually unify over virtually any issues other than simply opposing what the left wants.
	There's a real problem.
	I oppose what the left wants also.
	But I want a unified Republican agenda on the table on each of these things.
	And I think there is an 80% consensus among Republicans, not the online Republicans, among Republicans generally, for the following things.
	Enough aid to Ukraine to prevent Russia from taking Kiev.
	Allowing enough time for a negotiated solution that freezes the lines in place to actually be reached and enough pressure on the Russians so that they don't feel that tomorrow they're going to be able to run into Kiev if they just hold out long enough the way the Taliban held out long enough in Afghanistan then took the whole country.
	I think most Republicans are in favor of that.
	I think the vast majority of Republicans are in favor of aid to Israel.
	I think the vast majority of Republicans are in favor of securing the border.
	So start with that and then put forward a bill like that and then force as much of that through as you can in the Senate.
	That would be the way to do it.
	But instead, Republicans seem to be saying things like, okay, here's what we want.
	These things.
	Now go try and do that.
	And then somebody else tries to do it and they do it badly.
	And then Republicans are like, nope, we're not going to look at it.
	And then they say, we want something different.
	Okay, well, what is the thing you want that is different?
	What is it?
	So it cuts away at the actual seriousness of the real Republican agenda items.
	The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, for example, yesterday, He said, we're not gonna get jammed into passing this foreign aid bill that doesn't secure the border.
	But it was many Republicans who were claiming that Joe Biden doesn't need any more legislation in order to secure the border.
	Me among them, by the way.
	He doesn't.
	He can secure the border right now, given the laws that are on the books.
	You actually do not need further border legislation in order to ensure that the border is closed.
	Everyone knows this, including Republicans.
	So that's why it's always been a little bit weird to suggest that they're not going to pass
	a foreign aid package unless they get, like again, there are a bunch of arguments
	against the foreign aid package.
	Some are actual fiscal arguments that are made by people like Thomas Massey or Rand Paul,
	who suggest basically we should not do foreign aid to anyone.
	I take them a little more seriously than people who I think are fronting on that, who are perfectly fine with giant entitlement programs that completely bankrupt the U.S.
	economy, but they're very keen not to give foreign aid to Israel, for example.
	But there's certain people like Rand Paul, who's just a small government guy, wants to restructure entitlements and all the rest.
	And his general perspective on this, presumably, is that we should not spend money in places we shouldn't spend money.
	Okay, that's fine and that's dandy, but that's not the actual position of the Republican caucus at this point, which has itself refused to restructure entitlements in any way, shape, or form.
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	Again, the confused messages coming out of the Republican Party, it's one reason why despite the unpopularity of the Democratic Party, Republicans are cruising for a bruising in November.
	I think people are whistling past the graveyard.
	I don't mean that Donald Trump is cruising for a bruising.
	Right now, he is set to win election over Joe Biden if the election were held today.
	I'm talking about in the House.
	There is a better than average shot that Republicans lose the House in November because of their own incoherence and incompetence.
	Here's Speaker Mike Johnson talking about the bill and talking about the border.
	But again, if you don't put forward your affirmative position, people start to think that it's just chaos, which it kind of is.
	Last night, the House voted to approve articles of impeachment against Secretary Mayorkas.
	Desperate times call for desperate measures.
	We had to do that.
	He has abdicated his responsibility, he's breached the public trust, and he's disregarded the laws Congress has passed.
	But much more has to be done, of course, to secure the border, and what the Senate produced this week is silent on that issue.
	Senator McConnell and I have spoken about this in frank sessions, and let me be clear here again this morning.
	The Republican-led House will not be jammed or forced into passing a foreign aid bill that was opposed by most Republican senators and does nothing to secure our own border.
	It's time for Washington to start showing some love to Americans.
	On Valentine's Day, this is a good day to point this out.
	We need to listen to the American people and their needs and take action.
	And that's why House leadership will continue to govern with Americans' interests at heart.
	Okay, so pass some stuff.
	Really, like, pass some stuff.
	So, for example, the House did pass a clean foreign aid bill to Israel, but only through committee.
	They didn't put it up for a full vote yet.
	Do that.
	Force Democrats' hand.
	Like, make Democrats say what they are for.
	Right now, Democrats are saying what Republicans are for.
	Why don't Republicans make Democrats say what Democrats are for at this point?
	Because the truth is, what Democrats are for at this point is basically opening up the borders.
	If you take a look at what they are now considering, apparently ICE has drafted plans to release thousands of immigrants and slash its capacity to hold detainees after the failure of the Senate border bill.
	So Democrats were not claiming that there was a shortage of resources at the border.
	Republicans were.
	Then, when Republicans killed the bill, Democrats are now claiming that they take Republicans' claims seriously and now they're just going to release, en masse, people into the United States.
	So they're actually threatening American security because the Republicans wouldn't pass their border bill.
	Which, by the way, should be a pretty good Republican talking point.
	So in other words, you won't secure the border and your threat not to secure the border is that if we don't join you, you're going to further unsecure the border.
	That seems like a pretty good place for Republicans to come around.
	But again, it's all convoluted and discombobulated in terms of coordination at the top levels.
	There is a lack of congressional leadership.
	And the congressional leadership that there is, is incapable of getting its own party into line.
	And Democrats are way better at this than Republicans.
	Period.
	End of story.
	According to the Washington Post, The bipartisan border bill Republican lawmakers opposed last week would have provided $6 billion in supplemental funding for ICE enforcement operations.
	The bill's demise has led ICE officials to begin circulating an internal proposal to save money by releasing thousands of detainees and cutting detention levels from 38,000 beds to 22,000 beds, the opposite of the enforcement increases Republicans say that they want.
	Now, again, if you're telling me that they can't find any money anywhere in that $7 trillion budget to maintain beds, by the way, those beds are not even full.
	They're releasing people right now into the interior after a very short period of time.
	That is an amazing blackmail attempt by the Democrats.
	They're trying to basically blackmail Republicans into going along with an open border and threatening them with an even more open border if they don't do it.
	I mean, that's truly an amazing thing, and Republicans would be able to run on that if these issues were disaggregated.
	Which they kind of should be.
	I'm not in favor of omnibus packages.
	I've never been in favor of omnibus packages.
	I want each one of these measures passed on its own merits.
	Then we can decide whether the amount of aid to Ukraine is appropriate, or whether it's not.
	Whether the amount of aid to Israel is appropriate, or whether it's not.
	Whether the amount of aid to Taiwan is appropriate, and what should be done on the border.
	But instead, we just aggregate this stuff, and then we argue randomly over it, and then nothing gets done.
	And meanwhile, the world goes on.
	The open border goes on.
	The war in Ukraine goes on.
	The war in Gaza goes on.
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	And meanwhile...
	Closer to home, the Super Bowl was celebrated on Sunday.
	I say celebrated because it's essentially the only national holiday we have left since the left has declared that Thanksgiving is actually a day of reminiscence about the evils of European colonization of the continent and that July 4th is actually about the evils of American white supremacy and all the rest of it.
	So Super Bowl Sunday is really the only national holiday we have left.
	Which says not very much about our common culture, frankly.
	124 million people watched the Super Bowl the other day.
	And then there was the Super Bowl victory parade.
	So the Super Bowl victory parade happened in Kansas City, of course, because the Chiefs beat the 49ers.
	But a mass shooting broke out at the Super Bowl parade.
	According to The Sun, the victory parade for the Kansas City Chiefs' second straight Super Bowl championship has now ended in tragedy.
	Police reported that shots had been fired near Union Station and asked fans to leave.
	There was CNN covering it yesterday.
	Josh, again, we're looking at live images.
	Earlier it appeared that law enforcement was moving folks around in a certain area, but it's really hard to discern exactly what's happening just based on the images that we're seeing.
	What are you hearing from law enforcement sources about what happened there?
	Yeah, Boris.
	So there was this clearing process obviously that took place after these shots rang out.
	Officers trying to get this large group of people who had been gathered for the celebration out of the area.
	We're just hearing from authorities coming in just now that it appears as though at least two people have been taken into custody.
	It's worth pointing out right now though, No indication of any any victims.
	Police said that they were working to gather information.
	So again, we just want to caution.
	It's still too early to determine whether reports of shots fired here actually were related to this celebration or whether this was just happening nearby.
	Okay, so, police are still trying to figure out exactly what the motives are.
	The fact that we don't know the identity of the shooter, and the police clearly do, I mean, we have pictures floating around online of the identities of the shooter, and the police will not release that.
	Whenever the police are very reticent to release the identity of a person implicated in a murder, You can fairly guarantee that politics are coming into play.
	According to CNN, police are working to figure out who opened fire and why after one person was killed and 20 more wounded at the end of the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl victory rally.
	Children were, in fact, among those shot.
	About a million people were gathered Wednesday, just steps from Union Station in downtown Kansas City.
	Three people were detained.
	An unspecified number of guns were recovered as the officers converged.
	Now, it is fair to point out at this point that Kansas City is one of the more unsafe major cities in the United States.
	They have serious crime rates.
	Last year, they actually had the most homicides ever in the city of Kansas City.
	It is a deeply unsafe city at this point.
	High rates of poverty, high rates of crime, high rates of single motherhood, which are related to both of those things.
	Meanwhile, this immediately sent Democrats into their gun control call.
	This is always what happens.
	If there is a shooting, it's never about gangs.
	It's never about single motherhood.
	It's never about high rates of crime.
	It's never about understaffing of the police department.
	It's always about guns, as though you can just get rid of guns across the United States with a magic wand or something.
	So here is Democratic Representative Jason Crow of Colorado calling for more gun control because it's always more cowbell for the Democrats whenever somebody gets shot.
	It's the fault of the instrument, not the fault of the person.
	The gun violence in this country is not being resolved, even despite the steps that have been taken by lawmakers.
	I mean, the few steps, the very small steps.
	What needs to be done?
	Well, my heart is breaking for Kansas City and for the victims and their families.
	This is a terrible, devastating incident.
	No doubt about it.
	We have a crisis in our nation.
	There's no reason why almost 40,000 Americans a year should be dying at the hands of guns.
	This is a uniquely American problem.
	Nobody else in the world has the problem that we have right now.
	And my heart breaks, my thoughts and my prayers go out to the families and the victims here.
	But listen, I'm a member of Congress.
	I'm a legislator.
	I'm not a member of the clergy.
	And my job is not to just send thoughts and prayers.
	My job is to legislate and to try to solve problems.
	And that's why I've been pushing very hard to try to solve it.
	And that's why people should be pushing their members of Congress and others to join with us to do the same.
	Okay, so it is worthwhile at this point pointing out the Democrats have introduced zero legislation that would have stopped what happened yesterday in Kansas City.
	Zero.
	The weapons used were semi-automatic handguns.
	Democrats have proposed no laws that would get to the confiscation, which is what you would require, of semi-automatic handguns because it would violate the Second Amendment, as they well know.
	So they're basically just railing against the wind.
	Well, we can talk about that, or we can talk about some of the heroes who actually tried to stop this thing.
	So, there is video of the shooters trying to flee, and members of the crowd tackling them, which is amazing stuff.
	I mean, again, there are real everyday heroes out there.
	Here's some of that footage.
	You can see these shooters trying to get away, and people on the sidelines are just tackling them, and subduing them.
	I mean, that's heroism.
	When you see a mass shooter and your first move is, we gotta tackle this person and subdue that person.
	Good for the civilians who decided to get involved and help.
	And then the police came late and arrested.
	Again, the police are very understaffed in Kansas City.
	Here's an interview with one of the men who tackled the alleged shooter.
	His name is Paul Contreras.
	One guy was hollering, saying, you know, stop him.
	Or catch him, you know, tackle him, whatever.
	And he's just, just bailing running.
	And out of nowhere, I hear that guy hollering.
	So I'm just like, okay, well, I'm right here.
	And I just, I didn't think about it.
	It was just a reaction.
	I didn't hesitate.
	It was just, just do it.
	So I went to go tackle him and another gentleman did the same thing.
	And as I'm tackling him, I see his weapon either fall out of his hand or out of his sleeve.
	Cause he was wearing a long jacket or like a Carhartt.
	So when I seen that hit the ground, I'm like, Oh, You know, we got to take this guy down.
	And so, like I said, I did, and another good Samaritan did, and we held him down.
	And it seemed like forever, but it probably wasn't.
	It was like 30 seconds holding him down, and me and the other gentlemen and hiring that ongoers, you know, where's the cops?
	You know, get the cops over here.
	Get the cops over here.
	You know, we got him.
	I mean, so good for this person.
	Again, there are people out there who jump into action when something goes wrong.
	But if you are going to speak about broader systemic crime problems in America's major cities, you do have to point out that one of the big problems in America's major cities is that the governing bodies in these cities are incredibly soft on crime, incredibly soft on crime.
	In fact, yesterday, Brandon Johnson, who is the mayor of Chicago, he announced that they were going to change how they actually identify crime occurring in Chicago.
	They're going to cancel a deal With a software called ShotSpotter.
	What exactly is ShotSpotter?
	ShotSpotter operates a network of acoustic sensors across the city where if a shot is fired, the police are immediately notified of that so they can get to the scene.
	He's canceling that because he says it's racist.
	The city put out a statement saying, quote, moving forward, the city of Chicago will deploy its resources on the most effective strategies and tactics proven to accelerate the current downward trend in violent crime.
	Yes, everyone can feel it in Chicago, that current trend downward in violent crime.
	Things are getting so much better in Chicago, which is why nobody is traveling to Chicago these days, except for illegal immigrants, by the way.
	Here is what Brandon Johnson announcing at this idiocy.
	Campaign promise fulfilled.
	Mayor Brandon Johnson is ending the city's use of the controversial gunfire surveillance system
	known as ShotSpotter.
	The city's contract with the company behind ShotSpotter expires on Friday,
	and the police will stop using the technology September 22nd,
	about a month after the Democratic National Convention.
	A city statement said, moving forward, Chicago will deploy its resources
	on the most effective strategies and tactics proven to accelerate the current downward trend
	in violent crime.
	And by the way, it is worth noting at this point that ShotSpotter also, the company behind it,
	they said they were offered a six month extension And they're like, nope, you know what?
	Enjoy.
	Enjoy your giant, violent, crime-ridden city.
	We're out.
	So, good job, Brandon Johnson.
	Same thing, by the way, happening in Washington, D.C.
	Washington, D.C., of course, is a crime-ridden hellhole.
	Washington, D.C.
	has become a center for violent crime, including violent carjackings, shootings.
	MSNBC just yesterday was reporting on three Washington, D.C.
	officers being shot and injured while serving a warrant.
	Ana, this began in the 8 a.m.
	hour here in Southeast D.C.
	when Metropolitan Police officers were serving an arrest warrant to an individual inside a home here in Southeast D.C.
	He began shooting from inside the home towards the outside.
	We're told three officers were injured in this shooting.
	We're also told a fourth has minor injuries as well.
	This is still a very active, ongoing situation.
	We're expecting a briefing here from police in any moment now.
	Okay, and then, absurdly, the White House came out and blamed Republicans for the D.C.
	crime spike, which is kind of amazing since the Democrats run Washington, D.C.
	The mayor of Washington, D.C.
	painted an entire street with Black Lives Matter and declared it like George Floyd Plaza during BLM.
	Here is Corrine Jean-Pierre talking about this.
	Does the president believe the nation's capital is safe for Americans from across the country to come visit?
	I mean, look, we hear the reports and see the data as well.
	Uh, and all violent crime anywhere is completely unacceptable.
	Not just here in DC.
	We're going to call them all out in communities across the country.
	Everyone in every community in this country wants the same thing.
	They want their families to be safe and, uh, and not get into, uh, not get into, um, you know, politics on this.
	The president is wanting to make sure that communities feel safe.
	And we're not seeing that from congressional Republicans.
	We're just not.
	They continue to get in the way.
	The President has taken action.
	He puts that in his budget every day, making sure that we make communities safer.
	And we're just not seeing that from Republicans.
	Republicans are anti-cop now.
	Yeah, good luck with this particular argument.
	In just one second, we'll get to the continuing threat of Joe Biden's senility to his re-elect chances.
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	Meanwhile, we have some news from Joe Biden's senility challenge, which is what's happening for his 2024 reelect.
	So apparently, you remember, during his terrible press conference last week, Joe Biden got very angry, got very angry because of the special counsel's suggestion that he couldn't remember when his son died.
	And so he did a whole shtick.
	How terrible it was that he was even asked the question, remember?
	How dare he even ask the question?
	How dare he?
	How the hell dare he raise that?
	You remember that?
	Remember he said that last week?
	That was last Friday.
	It was last Thursday, actually.
	Remember that?
	It was great.
	Well, now it emerges that actually he was never asked that question.
	You know why Beau Biden came up?
	Because Joe Biden will bring him up in any context as his get-out-of-jail-free card for literally everything.
	According to NBC News, quote, Her never asked that question, according to two people familiar with Her's five-hour interview with the President over two days last October.
	It was the President, not Her or his team, who first introduced Beau Biden's death, they said.
	Biden raised his son's death after being asked about his workflow at a Virginia rental home from 2016 to 2018, when a ghostwriter was helping him write a memoir about losing Beau to brain cancer in 2015.
	Investigators had a 2017 recording showing that Biden had told the ghostwriter he found classified stuff in that home.
	Biden began trying to recall that period by discussing what else was happening in his life.
	It was at that point in the interview he appeared confused about when Beau died.
	Biden got the date correct, but not the year.
	So, presumably he was trying to use that as an excuse for why he was confused and upset, but it was 2017, and actually Beau had died already a couple of years prior.
	And it was Biden who raised it, and then blamed her for asking the question.
	Yeah, things are not going well for Joe Biden.
	He happens to be, by the way, just an awful, I mean, I say it all the time, he really is a garbage president.
	In fact, Joe Biden today announced that the Department of Homeland Security is going to shield Palestinians in the United States illegally from deportation and loosen work requirements to funnel them into American jobs.
	He provided most Palestinians in the United States with, quote, deferred enforcement departure for at least 18 months.
	Memorandum ensures that most Palestinians cannot be deported from the United States over the next year and a half.
	Also, DHS is advised to offer employment for non-citizens whose removal has been deferred for the duration of such deferral.
	And loosen regulations so Palestinians in the United States on F1 student visas can hold American jobs.
	If you overstayed your visa by your Palestinian, now Joe Biden wants to keep you here indefinitely.
	Now all of this again is a pander to Dearborn, Michigan.
	That is what he is doing.
	He thinks he's going to lose Michigan.
	And the only way that he's going to maintain Michigan is by pandering super duper hard on the Israel-Palestinian issue.
	Which presumably is also why he is now attempting to push forward a quote-unquote peace plan that would effectively amount to endless war in the region by unilaterally proposing a Palestinian state.
	So in other words, you get to kill 1,200 Jews and you get a state.
	Is the new logic from the Biden administration.
	There was no Palestinian state prior to that because there is no actual governing body in the West Bank or in the Gaza Strip that is not a giant terror group.
	There are no actual borders.
	There's no actual economy.
	There's no actual rule over those areas in any serious sense by any of those governing bodies.
	Which is why, but kill 1,200 Jews and Joe Biden will give you a state is the logic.
	According to the Times of Israel, the United States and several Arab partners are preparing a detailed plan for a comprehensive peace deal between Israel and Palestinians that includes a firm timeline for a Palestinian state.
	Now, I'm not sure exactly how you would have a firm timeline for a Palestinian state, given the fact that you would have to hit markers for that timeline.
	Such as, you know, not teaching all your kids to murder as many Jews as humanly possible, which is exactly what is taught in Palestinian schools, unfortunately.
	Officials told the Post that they hope to make the plan public once Israel and Hamas agree to a temporary truce aimed at allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza and freeing the hostages still held by the terror group in the Strip.
	During that report, during the pause, steps would be taken toward implementation of the proposal, including forming an interim Palestinian government that could also rule over Gaza.
	Good luck on all of this.
	This is all pie-in-the-sky nonsense.
	But that's Joe Biden's shtick, pie-in-the-sky nonsense.
	He's incredibly, incredibly bad at this particular job.
	So, meanwhile, in the funniest story of the day, remember Rachel Dolezal?
	So, Rachel Dolezal was the lady who pretended that she was black for years and years.
	She had changed her name to Nkechi Diallo.
	After being publicly smeared, and actually exposed, not smeared, as Rachel Dolezal.
	She's a white lady from, like, Kansas, and she had pretended to be a black lady, and then she'd actually become the head of the Specan Washington NAACP or something.
	And then she was exposed for all of that and became a national punchline, obviously.
	Well then, she became a teacher at an elementary school in Arizona, because that's who you would invite as a crazy person to teach your small children in elementary school, apparently.
	Well, it turns out now she's been fired again.
	Why?
	Well, because she had an OnlyFans account.
	So it turns out that not only is she a crazy person masquerading as a person of another race, also she is prostituting herself on OnlyFans.
	So that's great.
	According to the school district, we only learned of Ms.
	Nkechi Diallo's OnlyFans social media post yesterday afternoon.
	She is no longer employed by the Catalina Foothills School District.
	So apparently, I mean, talk about a life story here, Diallo, I do love that we just, you know, randomly go with people's new names, genders, all the rest of it.
	Diallo lost her role teaching African studies at Eastern Washington University and launched an account on OnlyFans in 2021 after struggling to find work.
	She made 600 posts in the year since and shared hundreds of paywalled adult videos and photos.
	So that is a life story that is going very poorly, that particular life story.
	So best of luck to Rachel Dolezal in all of her newest efforts.
	Meanwhile, Donald Trump, his legal drama continues.
	So the Trump state prosecutions are apparently reaching a kind of turning point in two separate cities.
	You've got the court going in New York and you also have the court going in Atlanta, Georgia.
	According to CNN, Trump is expected to show up in court in New York for procedural hearing ahead of that trial over the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.
	Remember that this is Alvin Bragg's idiotic prosecution of Donald Trump for a state charge on the basis of violation of federal campaign finance law all about how he should have declared as a campaign finance expenditure his payment to Stormy Daniels or some such nonsense.
	It's absolute garbage.
	So he's gonna be in New York at that evidentiary hearing.
	And then, meanwhile, a judge is holding an evidentiary hearing in Fulton County, Georgia, because District Attorney Fannie Willis was shtooping the prosecutor who she hired who had no actual prosecutorial experience.
	According to the Associated Press, should District Attorney Fannie Willis be removed from the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump because of her personal relationship with a special prosecutor?
	Lawyers were set to battle over the question during a hearing in Atlanta on Thursday.
	The DA for Georgia's Folsom County had hired an outside lawyer named Nathan Wade to help investigate whether Trump and his allies committed crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.
	Wade has led the team prosecuting the case since an indictment was returned in August.
	If she were removed, it would seriously diminish the chances of Trump's conviction in that particular case.
	Not only... I mean, it would look like a political prosecution.
	Not only that, it would certainly delay the trial to beyond the election.
	So, well done, Fannie Willis, for effectively getting Trump off in that particular case.
	I mean, listen, that case is also a botchery.
	The legality behind the case makes no sense, as we've explained many times on the show, but Fannie Willis, it's not that that's letting Trump off the hook there, it's that Fannie Willis was shtipping the guy that she hired with the taxpayer money, so that is a bigger problem.
	And I think the Democrats' hopes that Donald Trump is going to somehow be defeated by his legal cases, I find that very hard to believe.
	And right now, if the election were held today, Donald Trump would win.
	That is the reality of the situation.
	Right now, when you look at the general election, Donald Trump is up by a point and a half in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
	It's a lot closer than it should be, considering he's running against a dead person.
	But the last several polls have Trump up 4, 5, 2, Biden up 1, Trump up 1 tie.
	Very, very close election.
	Obviously.
	But if Donald Trump is within one point of Joe Biden, the likelihood is that he will win the election.
	Either way.
	Remember, he lost to Hillary Clinton in the popular vote by a significant percentage, and he still won the election.
	At this point in time, it should be worth noting, in the last two election cycles, Joe Biden was up almost six points in the RealClearPolitics polling average, and Hillary Clinton in 2016 was up almost five points in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
	Meanwhile, Donald Trump today is up a point and a half.
	So, bad news for Democrats.
	Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
	We will be jumping into the Vaunted Ben Shapiro Show Mailbag.
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