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March 28, 2024 - The Ben Shapiro Show

47:19

ISIS Attacks Moscow

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	Joe Biden is being played by the Mexican government.
	Last night on 60 Minutes, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is the president of Mexico, did a long-form interview on 60 Minutes in which he basically explained that Mexico was going to continue to give the United States the runaround on everything from mass migration, mass illegal immigration being facilitated by the drug cartels across America's southern border, to the importation of literally tons of fentanyl, which is killing over 100,000 Americans every single year.
	Now, it's very clear that Mexico has been giving the United States the runaround.
	Even the Brookings Institute, which is a left-wing think tank, they put out a piece a couple of years ago saying
	Mexico eviscerated cooperation with the United States to a bare minimum because Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's
	administration has been unwilling and uninterested in mounting any serious
	law enforcement policy toward Mexican criminal groups.
	Understand that effectively Mexico is run by the drug cartels.
	The Mexican drug cartels bring in all the revenue.
	They kill anyone who gets in their way.
	They control the entirety of the length of the southern border of the United States.
	I have visited that border, and I can just tell you, they are literally flying Mexican drug cartel drones above American territory because they control the border.
	According to the Brookings Institute, Mexico continues to calculate it can get away with only sporadic, minimal, and inadequate counter-narcotics collaboration as long as it leverages its ability to hamper or permit the flow of undocumented migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border, and as long as the United States depends on it for migration control.
	If the United States conducted a comprehensive immigration reform that provided legal... and then it gets into its liberal policy prescriptions, but even the Brookings Institute is suggesting that the fentanyl epidemic is being driven by the Mexican government and the drug cartels.
	The same thing is true of the mass illegal migration that we have seen across America's southern border.
	So, last night, 60 Minutes did an interview with AMLO, as he is called.
	Again, that is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is the president of Mexico.
	And here is what he had to say.
	The head of the DEA says cartels are mass-producing fentanyl, and the U.S.
	State Department has said that most of it is coming out of Mexico.
	Are they wrong?
	Yes.
	Or rather, they don't have all the information, because fentanyl is also produced in the United States.
	The State Department says most of it's coming from Mexico.
	Fentanyl is produced in the United States, in Canada, and in Mexico, and the chemical precursors come from Asia.
	Okay, he's lying.
	The vast majority of fentanyl is being trafficked across America's southern border.
	And yes, it is in league with China.
	China is sending the precursor chemicals for fentanyl creation to Mexico, because what they did is they used to actually just send fentanyl, pure uncut fentanyl, into Mexico, and then it would be trafficked across the southern American border, the Mexican-American border.
	Well, now, because the United States put a little bit of pressure on China under the Trump administration, the Chinese government decided they were instead going to send precursors.
	They're going to use a legal fiction.
	They would send basically all the ingredients and they would then process all of this in Mexico.
	They would press it into pill form.
	That pill form, by the way, doesn't always look like fentanyl pills.
	Sometimes it looks, using Chinese presses, like say Adderall, which is why you're seeing people who are being poisoned by fentanyl.
	Here's more of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador denying that Mexico has anything to do with the vast amounts of death on the American side of the border.
	Lopez Obrador says threats by U.S.
	lawmakers to shut down the border to curb drug trafficking is little more than saber-rattling.
	That's because last year, Mexico became America's top trading partner.
	They could say, we are going to close the border, but we mutually need each other.
	What would happen to the U.S.
	if they closed the border?
	You would not be able to buy inexpensive cars if the border is closed.
	That is, you would have to pay $10,000, $15,000 more for a car.
	There are factories in Mexico and there are factories in the United States that are fundamental for all the consumers in the United States and all the consumers in Mexico.
	Okay, let's be realistic about the Mexican government.
	Again, it is run by the drug cartels.
	And when we say, when he says we can't shut the border, he's talking about the flow of cars across the border.
	That is not the same thing as we don't have the ability to stop the illegal migration across the border because it's between ports of entry that huge amounts of fentanyl are coming into the country.
	Effectively speaking, what the drug cartels are doing right now, as we saw in the first episode of our series, Divided States of Biden, is that the Mexican drug cartels will drop off hundreds of illegal immigrants at way stations in the desert.
	They will wait for Border Patrol to congregate at those way stations, and then they will send people with backpacks filled with fentanyl over the border into the United States.
	All of this we investigate in the second episode of our series, Divided States of Biden.
	You need to check it out.
	It's really, I think, a groundbreaking piece of investigative work.
	We go into everything from the Chinese-Mexican-American trafficking relationship,
	how exactly all of that is happening, to the actual on the ground,
	what's happening in Kensington, which is, again, an area of Philadelphia.
	Here is some of the, Joe Biden is doing nothing about this, by the way.
	This is on Joe Biden.
	Our wide open southern border is on Joe Biden.
	He's not using leverage against the Mexican government.
	He's not doing anything.
	How do you know this?
	Because AMLO literally said, he literally said that in order for him to stop the trafficking across the border, to stop the illegal immigration wave that we are seeing across the southern border, he wants the United States to commit $20 billion a year to poor countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to lift all sanctions on Venezuela because AMLO is a far leftist.
	Venezuela is a communist regime.
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	So he's now holding up, at point of fentanyl gun, the United States, and Joe Biden is doing nothing about it.
	Here's the trailer for episode two of Divided States of Biden, which is available only at Daily Wire+.
	I have never been particularly poor at calculating how to get things done.
	In the heart of America's towns and cities, a silent crisis leaves a trail of devastation in its way.
	Fentanyl is responsible for 91% of opioid deaths.
	Fentanyl deaths have spiked 46%.
	Triple overdose fentanyl is to blame.
	Fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death for Americans 18 to 45.
	My only child was dead.
	She died from fentanyl poisoning.
	My son died at 25.
	It was fentanyl that killed my child.
	It's out of control.
	Kids are being poisoned.
	Joe Biden and his administration have not done anything to protect American citizens.
	How do you think things are going at the border, sir?
	Much better than you all expected.
	Joe Biden has created a crisis.
	Biden clearly not only has a border crisis on his hands, but also a deadly drug problem.
	Biden got rid of the effective border policies, and from day one, we saw a spike in fentanyl on our streets.
	The United States of America is dealing with deadly consequences because of Joe Biden's policies on the border.
	This invasion is insane!
	What changed for Joe Biden?
	What changed in my mind is the financial commercial ties that the Bidens have with China.
	The Bidens in 2017 got a $5 million interest-free loan from a Chinese businessman.
	That businessman was business partners with the leader of a Chinese criminal gang.
	That set up the Sinaloa cartel and made them the kings of fentanyl.
	So you have really one degree of separation between the Biden family and the kings of fentanyl.
	Every single day we're talking about the number of people that are dying from fentanyl overdose.
	Will Joe Biden continue to ignore the Mexico border?
	It's a constant flow and the numbers keep getting bigger.
	The number one site for fentanyl trafficking.
	Joe Biden and the Washington Democrats are defying federal law.
	The sitting president is supposed to put Americans first.
	It's time for Joe Biden to get out of the way.
	If he gets out of the way, we can solve this crisis.
	Joe Biden is unserious about fentanyl, and people are dying in unprecedented numbers because of it.
	I'm Ben Shapiro, and this is The Divided States of Biden.
	Fentanyl.
	America's silent epidemic.
	Only on Daily Wire Plus.
	You should go check it out.
	I think it's a really important piece of work.
	You should make sure that all your friends and family check it out as well.
	Especially young people who may not know that if they try an Adderall or if they try marijuana, they're now lacing these drug dealers, fentanyl, into these products in order to get people addicted.
	And if it kills them, they don't care.
	If it kills the people they are trafficking to, that's just the cost of doing business.
	Joe Biden is doing nothing about this.
	He keeps talking about doing things, but he's not doing anything about it.
	According to Axios, President Biden is still considering harsh executive actions at the border before November's election.
	The bullet's in the chamber, said another source familiar with the planning.
	Well, here's the thing.
	Do I believe that he's going to do anything that is particularly effective at the border?
	I do not.
	I do not believe that he's going to do anything particularly effective at the border.
	He's had every opportunity to do that.
	The Remain in Mexico policy that Donald Trump had negotiated with the Mexican government, he eviscerated that on day one.
	The asylum interpretation laws that Donald Trump had put in place, Joe Biden eviscerated those on day one.
	Has he applied any leverage to AMLO?
	You watch that particular interview with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on 60 Minutes, Amlo is perfectly confident.
	He is sitting there perfectly confident that Joe Biden will do nothing to stop the vast wave of fentanyl trafficking across America's southern border.
	He's confident that Joe Biden will do absolutely nothing to stop the vast wave of illegal immigration.
	Why would he not be confident?
	Joe Biden is literally suing the government of Texas to stop them from deporting illegal immigrants who are coming across the border.
	He's attempting to remove tools from law enforcement to allow them to actually stop all of this coming across the border.
	And meanwhile, he's soft on China, which is shipping all of these precursor materials to Chinese labs in Mexico.
	I mean, when you talk about a war on the United States, the fentanyl issue is a war on the United States.
	There's no question.
	It is being facilitated by our enemies.
	It's being facilitated by the Chinese government, and it's being facilitated by the Mexican drug cartels.
	I think the most insulting thing in this entire AMLO interview on 60 Minutes Is that he is asked about the American demand for fentanyl.
	And he says, you know, we don't have any of that in Mexico.
	We don't have any demand for fentanyl in Mexico.
	We're not seeing drug overdoses in these sorts of numbers in Mexico because we have intact family structures as opposed to America where you have family breakdown and societal decay.
	Well, I mean, I did notice there's one other difference, which is that the Mexican drug cartels run Mexico and there's no money in Mexico.
	They're shipping all the fentanyl up north because that's where the money is.
	They're actively attempting to hook young people into the most addictive drug that has ever been distributed in mass quantities on American streets.
	Fentanyl is legitimately 50 times as addictive as heroin.
	The number of people who get hooked on fentanyl who are able to get off is less than 2%.
	The only way to stop the fentanyl overdose epidemic that is destroying the country right now, the only way to do that is to interdict the drugs at the border.
	It's the only way to do it.
	And take harsh action against China, which Joe Biden won't do.
	And to take harsh action against Mexico, which Joe Biden will not do.
	And this crisis is going to continue to get worse.
	President Trump, I hope that he makes it a feature of his campaign.
	When I briefly spoke to him about this, actually, last week, he said, obviously, that he was going to.
	He sees the border and the fentanyl issue as one and the same, which, in fact, it largely is.
	But the fact that Joe Biden has done nothing about this is just another piece of evidence that he is the worst president in modern American history, without a doubt.
	So again, go check out our documentary piece on this.
	Episode 2 of Divided States of Biden.
	We're really proud of it.
	We think it's an important piece of work.
	You should really go check it out right now.
	It's over at Daily Wire Plus.
	Go check it out at Daily Wire Plus.
	I rarely push my work behind the paywall this way, but I think it's a really important piece of work.
	Go check it out.
	Episode 2 of Divided States of Biden.
	We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
	First, April 7th marks six months since Hamas brutally attacked Israel, launching a vicious war for Israel's very survival.
	We're living in times we never thought we'd see.
	As Israel fights for their existence, so many people around the world have turned their backs on the Israeli people right when they need them most.
	The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is on the ground right now.
	Delivering critically needed emergency supplies to those who are suffering.
	There's an immediate need for essentials like food, medicine, and emergency supplies for hundreds of thousands of suffering Jews.
	Many cannot return to their homes because of the rocket fire in the north from Hezbollah.
	Israel is in desperate need, that's why I'm partnering, with the Fellowship today.
	Every donation is urgently needed.
	It's a matter of life and death for men, women, and children who have been displaced because their homes were destroyed.
	Many families are still torn apart.
	Many have loved ones being held hostage.
	The fight is not over.
	The Israeli people are still suffering.
	Your gift today to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews We'll show them they aren't forgotten.
	To give to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, visit BenForTheFellowship.org.
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	God bless and thank you.
	Okay, meanwhile, the big news of the weekend was, of course, this massive terror attack in Moscow.
	So, there was a huge terror attack in Moscow over the weekend.
	It was actually on Friday.
	Killed over 140 people.
	The people responsible for it are ISIS.
	ISIS has now claimed responsibility.
	Not just that, they actually released a video recorded from the Moscow attack on all of their distribution systems.
	The reason that this is important is, of course, because the Russians tried to blame the Ukrainians.
	The Russians tried to suggest that this particular terror attack, which, by the way, the United States had warned them about.
	They said, watch out for your theaters.
	There had been a standing Warning to American citizens not to go to Moscow theaters specifically because of the specific evidence that they had that ISIS was targeting Moscow theaters.
	So ISIS members, four of them, walked into this theater.
	They basically ended up setting it on fire, killing 140 people.
	Huge mass casualty attack by ISIS.
	They were captured alive.
	The Russian forces then proceeded to capture them and torture them.
	So there's footage that was released pretty quickly of Russian special forces cutting one of the terrorist's ears off and attempting to feed it to him.
	And another of the terrorists having electric shocks to his genitals.
	So I'd just like to point out to the entire Western world that seems fairly okay with that sort of treatment of terrorists.
	You're whining a lot about how Israel is treating Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip right now.
	I just noticed that double standard on the Twitterverse.
	But, put that aside.
	Vladimir Putin is using this as an opportunity, presumably, to go after Ukraine.
	He is now declaring that it's Ukraine's fault.
	So, according to The Sun, Putin appeared to hint that Russia is seeking to blame Ukraine for the Moscow massacre that left over 140 dead and vowed vengeance.
	With Russia reeling in the wake of this attack, he addressed the nation and promised his people he would punish those responsible for the massacre.
	ISIS-K, which is a splinter cell of the death cult, has claimed responsibility for the savage attack.
	Now, remember, ISIS-K is also one of the groups that was involved in the terror attack at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan.
	So it turns out that when you retreat in the face of terrorists, they get more and more bold and they carry out more and more attacks.
	Although again, just to parallel modern circumstances, my understanding is that when a mass terror attack occurs, in a European or Western center, that that means that the terror group actually is given a state and the first priority is to protect anyone who's civilian who might be associated with the terror group.
	This is what I have been told by the by the mass media.
	According to The Sun, at least four gunmen stormed the Crocus City Hall venue on the outskirts of Moscow during a rock show by the band Picnic.
	They fired a salvo of machine gun shots into crowds of people as they ran for their lives, killing men, women, and children.
	The building was left with a collapsed roof after the terrorists started an inferno, which then ripped through the structure, trapping many civilians inside.
	The Kremlin is churning out a bunch of information suggesting that it is in fact Ukraine responsible for this.
	Putin did not mention ISIS in his speech, sparking accusations from Ukraine that he was attempting to link Ukraine with the massacre.
	And of course, this ties into the fact that Putin has been upping the ante with regard to Western Ukraine and Kiev.
	The same weekend that he was blaming Ukraine for an attack that not only was carried out by ISIS-K, was bragged about by ISIS-K?
	That same weekend, Poland says it will now demand an explanation from Moscow after a Russian missile briefly breached Polish airspace during a massive missile attack on Ukraine, prompting the NATO member to put its forces on heightened readiness.
	Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks with Sunday's early morning strikes coming a day after the Russian military said that it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivsk, which is west of Bakhmut.
	A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 140 people has also become a new flashpoint between the two countries, with Putin seeking to tie Kiev to the attack.
	And you're seeing propagandists online who are also attempting to do the exact same thing.
	Vladimir Zelensky, who is the president of Ukraine, He said that lowlife Putin, instead of dealing with his Russian citizens, addressing them was silent for a full 24 hours, thinking about how to tie this to Ukraine.
	It's all absolutely predictable.
	And you are seeing Russian tools online suggesting, of course, that it was the Ukrainians who were responsible for a terror attack, which, again, would make no sense.
	What exactly would Ukraine seek to gain from a mass casualty terror attack that everyone condemns and thinks is evil?
	It makes zero sense whatsoever.
	It's not a military attack on a military site.
	It is an attack on a group of civilians, including men, women, and children.
	So that makes no sense at all.
	But again, it does tie into exactly what Putin is seeking to do, which is create the impetus for further violence in Ukraine.
	This is the thing that you see from the Russian government very often, is that they are willing to project their own intentions onto everyone else.
	They're constantly projecting intentions onto everybody else.
	So once again, the last major terror attack happened on October 7th.
	This is the latest major terror attack.
	In the wake of the last major terror attack on October 7th, the Russian government suggested that Israel was going to use its attempts to extirpate Hamas as a pretext to do all sorts of horrible things in the Gaza Strip to people it had always wanted to do horrible things to.
	That's exactly what Russia is trying to do right now.
	It's all projection.
	Russia is actually now not going after ISIS, apparently.
	They're now going to use this as an excuse to wheel and hit Ukraine, who apparently had nothing to do with this attack in the first place.
	And I know there's all the conspiratorial speculation online.
	I've seen, ooh, it's the CIA.
	By the way, if the CIA had the magical powers attributed it to so many people, the United States would be in a much better situation worldwide if the CIA were really good at things, but it turns out the CIA is not very good at things, actually.
	In any case, Putin is using this as an excuse.
	Listen, he should go kill all the ISIS-K terrorists.
	I'm rooting him on.
	That'd be great.
	ISIS-K is one of the most evil groups on the planet.
	But the fact that he is saying a lot less about ISIS-K than he is about Ukraine suggests that he is willing to use this as a propaganda point in going after a sovereign state that he did, in fact, invade.
	According to the Associated Press, Putin did not mention ISIS in his speech to the nation.
	Kiev accused him and other Russian politicians of falsely linking Ukraine to the assault.
	U.S.
	intelligence officials confirmed the claim by the ICE affiliate.
	ISIS bears sole responsibility for the attack.
	There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever, according to National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson.
	They must be in on the conspiracy, apparently.
	By the way, the U.S.
	had shared information with Russia in early March about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow and issued a public warning to all Americans in Russia.
	Putin, for his part, said authorities had detained a total of 11 people in the attack.
	He called it a bloody barbaric terrorist attack and said that the Russian authorities captured the four suspects as they were trying to escape to Ukraine through a window prepared for them on the Ukrainian side of the border.
	Now, again, there's no evidence that that's the actual case.
	Russian news reports identified the gunmen as citizens of Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia that is predominantly Muslim and borders Afghanistan, the place that we left to the tender mercies of the Taliban and ISIS-K.
	Tajikistan's foreign ministry, which denied initial Russian media reports, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the arrests.
	Putin, for his part, is not cracking down on Tajik migrants, saying, quote, which is kind of an amazing statement.
	So you have terrorists who come from Tajikistan.
	He's like, nope, we're going to continue to leave that border particularly open.
	This must be Ukraine.
	We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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	Putin's claim that the attackers tried to flee to Ukraine followed comments by Russian lawmakers who also pointed the finger at Ukraine immediately after the attack.
	That is some pretty cynical politicking.
	One of the survivors, a guy named Dave Primoff, told the AP the gunmen were, quote,
	shooting directly into the crowd in the front rows.
	He described the chaos in the hall as concertgoers raced to escape, quote,
	people began to panic, started to run, collided with each other.
	Some fell down, others trampled on them.
	Again, there are rooms that were filled with women and children
	in which people were obviously mass murdered.
	So well done, West, once again.
	I mean, like, all these things tie together.
	As always, foreign policy is all intertwined.
	All these things tie together.
	ISIS-K was reinvigorated by the United States pulling out of Afghanistan under Joe Biden.
	That is what happened.
	Vladimir Putin...
	Has turned his attention to Ukraine.
	He's also allied himself with, for example, the Syrian government, which is an enemy of ISIS, but also an enemy of the Syrian people, so both of those things can be true.
	And so ISIS doesn't particularly like Vladimir Putin.
	Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has allied himself with Hamas, which is an Iranian-sponsored terror group, in its attacks on Israel.
	Now, all these things are weirdly intertwined.
	Bottom line is that if Vladimir Putin goes after ISIS-K, good on him.
	If Vladimir Putin goes after Ukraine on the basis of more of these lies...
	Well then that would be predictably within boundaries for Vladimir Putin.
	And meanwhile, speaking of more foreign policy, the Biden administration continues to put pressure on Israel because that's the way that it works.
	The Biden administration perfectly happy to pressure our allies and do nothing about our enemies.
	So the Biden administration doing nothing about AMLO, doing nothing about China, doing nothing about Iran actually, just spending tens of billions of dollars on Iran, but perfectly happy to put pressure on Israel to make concessions to Hamas.
	There's been serious pressure by the Americans for Israel to cut a deal with Hamas that would end with the release of about 40 hostages that Hamas has been holding since October 7th, in return for 7 to 800 actual convict life sentence terrorists who have murdered Jews.
	Now, people should remember the history of this particular October 7th attack.
	It was led, organized, by Yahya Sinwar.
	Yahya Sinwar was a terrorist who was turned over back to the Gaza Strip in return for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier.
	So these kind of prisoner exchanges, they don't tend to work particularly well.
	Releasing terrorists in return for innocent hostages tends to be a bad deal for the West.
	I understand why Israel's doing it.
	I also understand that the United States putting pressure on Israel is one of the factors here.
	Kamala Harris, who is just, she is, is she the stupidest person in American politics?
	I mean, it's a hard competition.
	There are a lot of incredibly low IQ people in American politics, but Kamala Harris, my goodness, the level of self-assurance combined with complete ignorance, the smugness of Kamala Harris talking about things of which she knows absolutely nothing is truly astonishing.
	So the Biden administration has been pushing Israel not to go into Rafa.
	There are at least four battalions of Hamas terrorists who are still in Rafa.
	Everybody, including the Israeli government, knows that Israel will have to go into Rafa.
	Because of course that's where the terrorists are.
	They are currently trying to figure out how to get more civilians out of Rafah so they can go after the terrorists.
	But the Biden administration has now put itself in a bit of a political pickle.
	In order to win over voters in Dearborn, Michigan, who really like Hamas apparently, the Biden administration has decided that it is going to pressure Israel not to go into Rafah unless it is presented with some sort of plan to protect civilians.
	Which puts them between a rock and a hard place, because if Israel presents them any plan and they approve it, now they are complicit in the plan.
	And if they don't approve it, Israel's gonna have to go in anyway, which means that presumably there will have to be some sort of consequences that would probably cause Israel not to completely win the war in the Gaza Strip, which is really bad for the United States.
	It turns out, as we see with ISIS-K, that when you let terrorist groups go, when you let them flourish, when you surrender to terrorist group, the world becomes a way worse place.
	So Kamala Harris, is now the lead spokesperson for the idea that Israel should not go into the final major city in the Gaza Strip, Rafah.
	She says that she knows better military plans, says Kamala Harris, which is incredible because her military experience is wide and varied, such as, for example, and also, so apparently she reads maps.
	I'm not kidding.
	That's her excuse.
	She looks at maps all day long.
	She's just in her office looking at maps, and now she knows what Israel should and should not do in Rafah.
	We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake.
	Let me tell you something.
	I have studied the maps.
	There's nowhere for those folks to go.
	And we're looking at about a million and a half people in Rafah who are there because they were told to go there, most of them.
	And so we've been very clear that it would be a mistake to move into Rafah with any type of military operation.
	Any type of military operation, even like a small incursion into into Rafah will be bad, according to comments.
	She's looked at maps, guys.
	Well, if she had looked at a map, one of the things she might have noticed is that Rafah is right on the border of Egypt.
	Egypt is another country that the United States sends billions of dollars to every year.
	You know what the United States could do if it were deeply concerned about the civilians in Rafah?
	It could tell Egypt to open temporary housing camps on the Egyptian side of the border so civilians could go over there and then Israel could go into Rafah and try to clean out the terrorists.
	But no, what they're trying to create is a catch-22 for Israel, where if Israel does not go into Rafah, Israel loses.
	And if Israel does go into Rafah, the United States gets very angry and wags our finger at the Israelis for going in and attempting to extirpate Hamas.
	We'll get to more on this in just a moment.
	First, my day's pretty full.
	Between being a dad and the show and the business, that's a lot of stuff going on.
	That means when I get...
	On my mattress at the end of the day, I need to go to sleep.
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	We're big Helix fans at the Shapiro house.
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	Also, we spend too much time on our phones.
	We all know this.
	The scary part is your phone carrier collects data on whatever it is that you are doing.
	Companies admit to doing it.
	They say so as they can better understand your interests.
	But really, what they want to do is sell your activity to advertisers.
	You know, stuff like the sites you visited and what you've been up to online.
	And also, they have backdoors with the government.
	The more they can get on you, the larger their paycheck becomes.
	This is why I use ExpressVPN.
	ExpressVPN is an app that prevents your phone carrier from being able to see the site you visit and sell it off to third parties.
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	My whole family is using ExpressVPN too.
	When your phone carrier tracks you, that's a gross invasion of privacy.
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	By the way, how stupid is Kamala Harris?
	Kamala Harris is... she's almost charmingly stupid.
	Over the weekend, tape emerged of her.
	She was in Puerto Rico.
	And somebody in a crowd that was near where she was started playing some music.
	And she started dancing to the music.
	Until it turns out that one of her aides informed her that the song that she was dancing to was about American imperialism and how America needs to leave Puerto Rico, at which point she abruptly stops.
	Here is our idiotic vice president.
	She's smiling, she's tapping her feet, bopping her head to it.
	Really enjoying herself.
	Clapping her hands.
	And then somebody's gonna come tell her in a second, uh, by the way, you know what you're clapping to?
	And then she's gonna be like, oh no.
	What a genius our vice president is.
	I mean, she is just, wow.
	She, I can see, she was totally picked for her abilities.
	Truly incredible stuff.
	Meanwhile, the Democratic Party increasingly ruled by its left flank by people like AOC and Raphael Warnock.
	So AOC is so far out on the pro-Hamas side that she is now disagreeing with the basic premise that if Hamas laid down its arms and released the hostages that the war would be over tomorrow.
	She now thinks, like, she's like just repeating Hamas' talking points at this point.
	They also, Israeli officials also argue this war could end tomorrow if Hamas freed the hostages and laid down the arms.
	Do you disagree?
	I do disagree because when we are talking about famine, the actions of Hamas should not be tied to whether a three-year-old can eat.
	The actions of Hamas do not justify forcing thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to eat grass as their bodies consume themselves.
	It is the actions of Hamas causing that.
	Hamas literally will not allow the aid to flow through to the civilians.
	Israel is sending in hundreds of trucks every single day.
	And you know why the food ain't hitting the civilians?
	Because Hamas is stealing all the food.
	But she hates Israel so much that Hamas apparently... It is incredible.
	There's this horseshoe weird...
	foreign policy thing that happens between the far right and the far left on American foreign policy,
	the sort of far right libertarian Ron Paul right and the far left AOC Bernie Sanders left.
	And it suggests that the only countries with agency in the world, the only people with agency
	in the entire world are the Western countries. Everybody else just doesn't count. So we just
	pretend that they're not part of the equation.
	So if there's something bad happening in Gaza, we just have to pretend that Hamas doesn't exist.
	Or if there is something bad happening in, say, Iraq or Iran, we just have to pretend that those governments don't exist.
	It's all the fault of the United States, always and forever.
	And it's stupid.
	It makes no sense.
	That's foreign policy for dummies.
	The reality is there are a lot of interlocking parts and a lot of varied interests when it comes to foreign policy.
	Foreign policy is more like a fifth grade playground than it is like anything else.
	And the reality is that Hamas has a lot to say about whether citizens are starving in the Gaza Strip.
	Just like Hamas had a lot to say about whether citizens were starving in the Gaza Strip, you know, before October 7th when they were stealing literally all of the aid coming in and using it to build terror tunnels and pad their Tony apartments in Qatar.
	But AOC is a moral idiot.
	So, of course, that's what she believes.
	Raphael Warnock, another moral moron, suggesting it's morally unjustifiable for Israel to go into Rafah.
	Again, what's amazing to me is all these people say, Israel can't go into Rafah.
	It'll be so terrible.
	But Israel can still.
	There might be things we would accept.
	What's the thing you would accept?
	Seriously, what's the thing that you would accept?
	I'd love to hear it.
	Because they never present any actual plan.
	And this is something you see from the left when it comes to foreign policy and domestic policy.
	They'll say, well, you know, there's every Bernie Sanders economic policy.
	It's wrong, though.
	So many people who are rich and so many people who are poor.
	Okay, well, what's your plan, dude?
	You ain't got no plan.
	All you like to do is rant at the wind.
	Now Democrats are out there pretending they got a military plan.
	Kamala Harris is sitting there with little tiny tanks and flags in the back room with a map, figuring out how to go into Rafa.
	Here's Raphael Warnock doing the same routine.
	We cannot forget about the awful attack of Hamas on October 7th against innocent people, including Americans.
	We can't turn away from that.
	And at the same time, we cannot turn away from the scenes of awful suffering and human catastrophe in Gaza.
	And so we will continue to fight for negotiated Ceasefire.
	I have said very clearly that I think for Mr. Netanyahu to go into Rafah, where some 1.4 million Palestinians are now sheltering, would be morally unjustifiable.
	It would be unconscionable.
	And I hope that at the end of the day, cooler heads will prevail, and that one day we can get to a two-state solution.
	A two-state solution with whom?
	It's all fancy land nonsense.
	It's all fancy land nonsense.
	Now, speaking of fancy land nonsense, in one second we'll get to the Republicans in Congress.
	Again, everyone... First rule of politics.
	Everyone's a moron.
	Okay, that's just the first rule of politics, and you should stick by that.
	That's why whenever you hear conspiracy theory in politics, it's almost always untrue.
	Because conspiracies require intelligent people coordinating in order to make them happen.
	And when it comes to politics, Everyone is a dullard.
	We're going to get to the Republicans in just one second.
	First, as I mentioned, I recently went to Kensington, Pennsylvania, which is a neighborhood of Philadelphia.
	What I witnessed was the most horrifying thing that I've ever seen in this country.
	Streets that are plagued by people shooting up in public, miles of them, a homeless population spiraling out of control.
	The most tragic aspect of all of this is the heartbreak of mothers losing their sons and daughters to fentanyl poisoning.
	The fentanyl crisis has engulfed the country.
	It's become the deadliest drug epidemic in American history.
	In 2023 alone, the toll of fentanyl-related deaths soared to 112,000 people dead.
	Behind those numbers are the heartbreaking tales of loss and despair and a growing sense of abandonment.
	Despite that devastation, Joe Biden is doing nothing.
	They're fundamentally unserious.
	Join me on the ground as we look into the consequences of Joe Biden's policy failures and how they've contributed to the gravest drug crisis the country has ever faced.
	Watch the brand new episode of Divided States Abide in Fentanyl, America's Silent Epidemic, now exclusively at Daily Wire+.
	Meanwhile, the Republicans continue to engage in just circular firing squads over and over and over again.
	So apparently, the Republicans are now going to try to oust Mike Johnson from the speakership.
	Because everyone's an idiot.
	So, Mike Johnson signed on to a bipartisan budget deal.
	I don't love that bipartisan budget deal.
	Nobody loves that bipartisan budget deal.
	Mike Johnson probably doesn't love that bipartisan budget deal.
	The question was whether there was going to be another government shutdown leading up to the election in order to claw back some marginal gains in spending.
	Now, you can make the case that a tougher negotiator would have held out further.
	In fact, Chip Roy made that case.
	Chip Roy recently, who is very much against this deal, he said, we better get our act together.
	And then he says, you know who would have done a better job negotiating this thing than Mike Johnson did?
	Speaker McCarthy.
	He would have done a better job.
	But remember, it was Republicans who ousted McCarthy for supposedly being too conciliatory with Democrats.
	That was Matt Gaetz and company.
	He was eventually replaced with Mike Johnson.
	Now there's a movement afoot to boot Mike Johnson for negotiating this deal.
	Let's be clear about this.
	Nothing is going to change.
	You could replace Mike Johnson tomorrow with Marjorie Taylor Greene or, for example, Chip Roy.
	And the reality is that the incentive structure underlying a Congress where Republicans currently hold now like a one to two seat majority, you don't have enough people on your side of the aisle to simply shut down.
	It's not going to happen.
	No one is realistic about politics.
	Here's Chip Roy saying, you know it was better when McCarthy was the actual Speaker of the House.
	I oppose the use of the motion to vacate against Kevin McCarthy.
	Very openly and very loudly against my right flank colleagues and everybody across the entire body.
	I disagreed with it.
	It was a mistake.
	Kevin was actually honoring most of the agreement that we came up with.
	We were actually having bills that we had 72 hours to read.
	You know what?
	That got violated this last week.
	Mike was wrong.
	We were actually putting bills on the floor with amendments.
	All last year, we had great conversation.
	Brian Fitzpatrick, some of the New York delegation, myself, Mike Garcia in California, moderates, conservatives, figuring out how to advance the ball and we passed the Limit Save Grow.
	Conservatives voted to increase the debt ceiling.
	We'd never done that before.
	We passed the strongest border security bill we've ever passed.
	We hadn't done that in years.
	Um, we passed appropriations bills.
	These are all things we can do if we'll just come together and work on it, but we better get our act together over Easter so we can deliver for the American people.
	Okay, so Johnson, over the weekend, he signed onto a deal with Democrat help that passed the 1.2 trillion dollar measure.
	And again, the reason that is happening is because the Republican Party is incredibly fractious, and Johnson understands.
	That if the government shuts down, Republicans will, in fact, be blamed for that.
	Because Kevin McCarthy was able to avoid a government shutdown and negotiate some concessions from Democrats.
	And remember, it was a better deal that got scuttled by people like Matt Gaetz, and then McCarthy got ousted, and then they got a worse deal.
	Because Republicans are currently engaged in this bizarre strategy of setting themselves on fire for the publicity of it or something.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, while the broad outlines of the House Republicans' predicament are well known, an analysis by the Wall Street Journal of six major government funding bills signed into law during this Congress revealed the key components of this de facto coalition, based on ideology, relative electoral dominance in their districts, and other factors.
	The group that currently runs Congress has remained largely stable over the half-dozen votes, including the one Friday, needed to keep the government open.
	So, who exactly voted in favor of this particular bill?
	Apparently, there are 168 Democrats and 72 Republicans who voted yes on all of these bills.
	There are 55 Republicans who voted against all six measures, and then some Republicans have a mixed record on these six bills.
	But the bottom line here is that, again, you don't have a big enough majority to do big things, and you don't control the Senate, and you don't control the presidency, and refusal to acknowledge the reality of how government works leaves Republicans to continue banging their heads against the wall and then shouting that they are being purer than their Republican colleagues.
	Meanwhile, what actually happens?
	Well, Johnson, who's now had a motion to vacate brought against him by Marjorie Taylor Greene after signing on to this latest budget deal.
	Johnson may have to go to the Democrats in order to save his own job.
	Because McCarthy, when he took the speakership, he negotiated, again, a deal that he had to do in order to get the speakership that allowed any single member to file a motion to vacate, which is insane.
	That's insane.
	That was a ridiculous deal.
	McCarthy thought he could hold it together because everybody would be reasonable.
	Always the downfall of Republicans, believing other Republicans are going to be reasonable.
	That is not a thing that's going to happen.
	And so now, you got AOC out there triumphantly stating that the only way to save Speaker Johnson is for Democrats to step in and save him, and they'll earn some concessions from Johnson in order to save him as the Speaker.
	I am not inclined to vote for a Speaker Johnson.
	I'm not inclined to vote for an individual who, for a Speaker, who doesn't believe in women's rights, doesn't believe in rights to bodily autonomy, who has supported overturning a presidential election.
	Most likely be for a Speaker Jeffries, which becomes an increasingly likely reality day after day as Republicans pursue further midterm resignations.
	But, you know, I think for those of us and for any Democrat inclined, I don't think we do that for free.
	And I don't think that we do that, you know, out of sympathy for Republicans.
	Okay, by the way, Matt Gaetz opposes the current motion to vacate against Johnson, despite the fact that Johnson just signed a worse budget bill than McCarthy.
	Because remember, Gaetz and McCarthy were in a giant fistfight with each other, and that's really why Gaetz ousted him, not for any principled reason.
	He said, when I vacated the last speaker, I made a promise to the country we would not end up with a Democrat speaker.
	I could not make that promise again today.
	Okay, first of all, let me just say, brilliant strategery there.
	Just genius-level strategery.
	So you ousted McCarthy.
	Because you said that we wouldn't end up with a Democrat, we'd end up with another Republican.
	And you've done such an amazing, wonderful job that a bunch of good conservative Congress people, like Mike Gallagher in Wisconsin, are retiring and leaving their seats in order not to be part of this bleep show.
	And then you're like, well, I mean, we can't vacate now because a Democrat might take control.
	Who did that?
	How did that happen?
	Weird.
	Kevin McCarthy was on the TVs over the weekend.
	He said, I don't think they'll do it again.
	I don't know.
	They might do it again.
	Republicans have a great record of running directly into brick walls headfirst.
	The difficulty here is when you allow eight Republicans to join with all the Democrats to determine who can run the House when 96% decide one way, it creates some chaos.
	They've got to move through this, put the country first, and be able to move on.
	I think they're able to do that.
	Speaker Johnson is doing the very best job he can.
	It's a difficult situation, but look, the one advice I would give to the conference and to the speaker is do not be fearful of a motion to vacate.
	I do not think they could do it again.
	That was surely based on Matt Gaetz trying to stop an ethics complaint.
	I don't think the Democrats will go along with it, too.
	Focus on the country, focus on the job you're supposed to do, and actually do it fearlessly.
	Just move forward.
	Okay, well, I mean, we'll find out.
	We'll find out, won't we?
	But I have very little faith in Republicans that they're going to be able to hold the fort together because, again, it's all posturing.
	Congress has become a place of posturing rather than a place that actual policy gets made.
	Chip Roy, again, Chip Roy is as conservative as any member of the House.
	He opposes this deal, but also he's not in favor of vacating on Johnson because he understands that politics is a game where you have to keep coming back to the table.
	So much of politics now is just people who want to podcast.
	It really is quite pathetic.
	Meanwhile, the big media story of the weekend is that Ronna Romney McDaniel has now been signed up over at NBC News.
	Now, why is that a big deal?
	It shouldn't really be a big deal.
	I mean, Jen Psaki literally has a show on MSNBC and she was the spokesperson
	for the current president of the United States.
	She went directly through that revolving door from the White House to having a full scale show on MSNBC.
	And half of MSNBC's contributors are people who literally work for the current
	administration.
	You had Simone Sanders over there, she worked for the current administration.
	A bunch of people over there who worked for the current administration.
	But Rana Rami McDaniel walked from RNC to NBC News and now the people at NBC News,
	the objective journalism over at NBC News are very very angry at Ronna Romney McDaniel.
	Now listen, I don't have to be a fan of Ronna Romney McDaniel's tenure in order to recognize that this is just pathetic kind of garbage from NBC.
	Because, let's be real, Ronna Romney McDaniel did a bad job.
	She won one election, 2016.
	Those are all the elections that she won?
	There were no more elections.
	2018 sucked.
	2020 sucked.
	2021 sucked.
	2022 sucked.
	2024?
	She's not gonna be in charge of.
	2021 sucked, 2022 sucked, 2024, she's not gonna be in charge of.
	But so far the RNC is really trailing in the numbers.
	Okay, but she's now entering this revolving door between the media and Republican sort of political echelons.
	And NBC News is very upset because it is besmirching their journalistic credibility.
	So, NBC's Kristen Welker, she says, I wasn't involved in her hiring.
	She says, oh my god, I can't believe.
	This is very reminiscent of that time where I wrote a newsletter for Politico, and the entire Politico staff was like, oh no, we can't do that, that's terrible.
	It's like, well, you're all political hacks, so I'm confused as to why you're upset that I, who I'm very open about my politics, but this is how it works over there.
	In order to maintain their journalistic fake credibility, they have to pretend that it's some sort of great sin against their objective journalisming for Ronna Romney McDaniel to walk through the door.
	I'll be joined by former RNC Chair Rhonda McDaniel in her first interview since stepping down as party chair.
	In full disclosure to our viewers, this interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel would become a paid NBC News contributor.
	This will be a news interview.
	And I was not involved in her hiring.
	Okay, so that is her trying to dissociate, but that's not as bad as Chuck Todd.
	So Chuck Todd is very upset.
	Chuck Todd is the most upset.
	Here is Chuck Todd going on a diatribe, a jeremiad, about the evils of hiring Romney McDaniel at the same network that currently employs Jen Psaki.
	What were your takeaways?
	Look, let me deal with the elephant in the room.
	I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation.
	Because I don't know what to believe.
	She is now a paid contributor by NBC News.
	I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract.
	She wants us to believe that she was speaking for the RNC when the RNC was paying for her.
	So she has credibility issues that she still has to deal with.
	Is she speaking for herself or is she speaking on behalf of who's paying her?
	Once at the RNC, she did say that.
	Hey, I'm speaking for the party.
	I get that.
	That's part of the job.
	So what about here?
	I mean, she is speaking, I would assume, for herself, but she's also a Republican who was the head of the RNC.
	I don't understand why this is confusing to Chuck Todd.
	But he's very, very confused, because again, how dare we allow through the door somebody who, if that person were a Democrat, we would not only allow through the door, we'd probably make them like a nightly news anchor.
	It is totally insane that the media are going to pretend they're very upset.
	George Stephanopoulos is an actual quote-unquote objective news anchor.
	He was like chief of staff to Hillary Clinton.
	It's all just ridiculous.
	It's all just ridiculous.
	All righty, coming up, we'll talk about radicalism in the state of Minnesota because Minnesota is sort of a fascinating place where apparently the law no longer applies.
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