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Jan. 16, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show
51:37
Trump Gets HOSTAGE DEAL In Gaza
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Inauguration Day, January 20th.
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Well, tons of news today.
Marco Rubio, the prospective Secretary of State, the nominee, had an amazing hearing yesterday.
So too did Pam Bondi, President Trump's Attorney General nominee.
Again, this slate of nominees is excellent overall.
We'll get to all of that.
Joe Biden made one of the worst farewell addresses in American history.
Truly awful, not just in terms of the aesthetics.
But in terms of what he said, we'll begin today with the prospective hostage deal between Israel and Hamas.
Folks, we'll get into the details of the deal as it currently stands.
Now again, Hamas could change things.
Hamas apparently is attempting last-minute changes.
They do this all the time in an attempt to pry additional concessions out of deals.
They are dishonest players, obviously.
Right now in Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu has delayed an internal cabinet vote on the deal because of all these sort of late-breaking manipulations from Hamas.
But here we're going to talk about...
The deal as it currently stands.
And let's just begin with this.
Any deal is going to be a bad deal.
Any deal is going to be a bad deal.
Israel made clear from the very beginning that it wanted the hostages back, and that was one of the dual goals.
One of the goals was winning the war against Hamas, making sure Hamas could no longer rule the Gaza Strip and present a threat to the state of Israel.
The other was getting back the hundreds of hostages that Hamas had taken in the first place.
And as soon as it became a goal of Israel to get back the hostages, And they started making deals.
The only question was going to be, what sort of concessions did Israel have to make in order to secure the release of some of those hostages?
Well, the Biden administration had been pressuring Israel very strongly to take a deal with Hamas that would have basically achieved Hamas's goals in the war.
So to understand whether this is a better than awful deal or whether it's just an awful deal, you first have to understand what the goals of the various sides were in this particular deal.
Then we'll go through the content of the deal.
And then we will explain why Trump made the big difference in making this deal happen in the first place.
So, what were the goals?
So, Hamas had always said, since taking 250 Israelis hostage, and some of those are killed, we know they're dead, some of their bodies have been found, some of them were released in the first tranche of hostage negotiations way back in October and November of 2023. Right now, there are approximately 100 hostages.
Many dead, some alive, still being held by Hamas.
It is unclear who is dead.
It is unclear who is alive.
Hamas is evil, full stop.
They literally kidnapped women and toddlers.
Those toddlers are likely dead.
Hamas is right now attempting to trade away the bodies of toddlers for murderers currently sitting in Israeli prisons.
That's what's actually happening here.
This is not an even-handed deal.
This is not two good-faith sides negotiating.
This is a hostage taking evil entity that has kept its own people in a state of complete failure for literally decades and then initiated the destruction of its own territory against an Israeli government that is attempting to secure the freedom of people who have been kept for over a year in captivity in the worst possible conditions or the bodies of innocent people who are taken by not only members of Hamas, but Gazan civilians and slain.
And that is what this negotiation is, just to get the moral clarity right up front.
So, what were Hamas' goals in these negotiations?
Hamas knew that Israel has a long record of making awful deals with regard to securing hostages.
The most famous awful deal, of course, being the release of the soldier Gilad Shalit, who'd been taken captive by Hamas in return for over a thousand Palestinian terrorists, including Yahya Senwar, who had been held by Israel in prison for being a terrorist and cured of his brain cancer by Israel before he was released back into the wild where he would then...
Become the leader of Hamas and initiate October 7th.
So Hamas knows that Israel is willing to do an enormous amount to get its hostages back, even the bodies of people.
Israel is willing to do an enormous amount to get those people back.
So Hamas, what it wanted out of these negotiations originally, and for months, this has been its stated point of view, it wanted a total and final ceasefire, meaning no more war in the Gaza Strip.
Why?
Because that would achieve goal number two.
Which would be leaving Hamas in power in the Gaza Strip.
If there was a total and final ceasefire, Hamas could declare victory and then suggest that its own survival in the Gaza Strip was a mode of victory.
That led to goal number three, which was complete withdrawal of the Israeli defense forces from the Strip.
This is what Hamas would have wanted out of any deal.
They insisted on it all the way.
That means Israel would have had to withdraw from the Nintarim Corridor, which is sort of a lane that bisects the Gaza Strip east-west into a northern and southern component.
And it's very important because It prevents terrorists from traveling all up and down the Strip, gathering weapons and firing into Israel and organizing future terror attacks.
Also, Hamas wanted Israel to withdraw completely from the Philadelphia corridor, which is the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, which had been used as a massive smuggling thoroughfare by Egypt and by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
So they wanted, again, Hamas to remain in control.
They wanted a total and final ceasefire that would have maintained that.
They wanted a complete withdrawal of the IDF from the Strip.
They wanted a return of all of the displaced to their homes, meaning they wanted free traffic in the Gaza Strip.
They don't care whether civilians go to their homes.
Those civilians largely don't have homes anymore, thanks to Hamas hiding weapons in homes and tunnels under homes.
So they don't care one good damn about the Palestinian people who have been victims in all of this.
They don't care about that at all.
In fact, they want to maximize the civilian casualties, and they always have.
What they really want is the free traffic of their terrorists up and down.
And finally, they say they want reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.
What do they mean by that?
They mean that they want an enormous amount of aid to pour into the Gaza Strip so they can steal it again and then reconstitute their terror network.
So those are the five goals of Hamas going into the hostage negotiations.
Declaring total and final ceasefire, Hamas remaining in control, complete withdrawal of the IDF from the Strip, return of all the displaced to their homes, and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.
Those were the five things that Hamas wanted out of the negotiation.
On the other side, what Israel wanted was pretty simple.
Return of as many hostages as humanly possible.
No Hamas running Gaza.
And the ability to eliminate future threats.
So no final ceasefire.
No Hamas running Gaza.
And the hostages back.
So you can see why these two sides were in a negotiating standoff.
Because Israel is saying Hamas doesn't get to maintain control.
Hamas does not get to call the shots as far as when IDF goes in.
And we want our hostages back.
And Hamas was saying, we do remain in control.
We do call the shots as to when you come out and go in.
We can bring aid in that we will then hijack and use to recruit new fighters.
So total and complete conflict here.
Okay, now we get to the deal.
Okay, so what is actually in the deal?
What's actually in the deal, according to the first phase of the deal, is not amazing.
The first phase of the Gaza deal has Israel releasing, over the course of phase one, some 1,000 terrorists, including something like 200 convicted murderers.
It also has a six-week phased-in session.
So it's not as though all the hostages are going to be released at once.
33 hostages are apparently going to be released.
Unclear how many of them are alive.
It may be as few as 23 who are actually alive.
The earliest the ceasefire would go into effect would be Friday.
Again, this is just phase one.
It's not a total and complete ceasefire, as we'll get to in just one moment.
So Hamas is expected to gradually release a total of only 33 of the 96 hostages.
Again, unclear how many of the rest.
Are still alive.
It will be women, children, the wounded, the elderly, and probably American citizens first.
Hamas will keep as a bargaining chip, presumably, members of the Israeli Defense Forces who are held hostage since October 7th.
The initial phase of the deal will also allow in something like 600 trucks worth of aid per day, much of which Hamas will immediately hijack, of course.
There will be gradually a return of people from the south to the north.
Supposedly the Netarim Corridor, which again is that corridor that bisects the Gaza Strip, is going to be policed by Qatar and Egypt, which means effectively there won't be a lot of policing.
But does this mean a permanent end of the war?
The answer there is no.
The answer there is no.
So any quote-unquote permanent end of the war would come in phase two.
Any withdrawal of Israel from the Philadelphia Corridor would be in phase two.
So what does that mean?
That means that Hamas does not achieve all of its goals or even remotely close to all of its goals with this quote-unquote ceasefire hostage deal.
And this is the Trump difference.
This is where Trump made a big difference.
Joe Biden wanted to just give Hamas all of it.
Joe Biden wanted a total and complete ceasefire.
Joe Biden was fine with leaving Hamas in control.
Joe Biden wanted a complete withdrawal of the IDF from the Gaza Strip, including the Philadelphia corridor.
He wanted free traffic up and down the Gaza Strip.
And he wanted...
Endless aid pouring into a Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
Joe Biden was fine with literally every aspect of that.
Donald Trump was not.
Donald Trump was not.
So Donald Trump's deal does not give Hamas any of those things.
Donald Trump's deal does not declare a total and final ceasefire.
The ceasefire is temporary.
It is in phase one alone.
The National Security Advisor, Mike Walls, Made that clear on Fox News when he said literally yesterday that if Israel has to go in yesterday, we're 100% behind them.
If Israel has to go in and knock out Hamas again, we'll 100% support that.
And so, there is no total and complete ceasefire.
So Hamas doesn't get that goal.
The United States has made clear it does not want Hamas in control under President Trump.
This has been said by Pete Hegseth, the Department of Defense nominee.
It's been said by Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State nominee.
It's been said by Mike Walls.
It's been said by President Trump.
There is no idea that Hamas is going to remain in control of the Gaza Strip.
There is nothing in this deal, particularly in Phase 1, that suggests a complete withdrawal of the IDF from the Strip, particularly the Philadelphia Corridor.
The IDF will not be leaving the Philadelphia Corridor, which is, again, the biggest, most important border, because that's the one that all the smuggling was happening via.
That's how all the weapons and money were getting into Hamas.
As far as the return of the displaced to their homes, That is going to happen slowly over the course of a few weeks.
That is a concession to Hamas, but that was going to be in the Biden deal.
And as far as reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, the question was always going to be, who administers that reconstruction?
And that has yet to be decided.
The answer is going to be not Hamas.
So that is the Trump difference.
Because in order to get the deal done, from the Israeli side, the Israelis had to trust the Trump administration enough to know that they were not going to call on Israel to leave Hamas in place in the Gaza Strip.
That is the difference between Trump's approach to this conflict.
And the Biden approach.
And then there's the second difference, which is Hamas came to the table.
Why did Hamas come to the table with this deal?
The reason Hamas came to this table is because of Donald Trump's threat that all hell would break loose if not.
Meaning the deal only gets worse from here.
The deal only gets worse from here.
This is the best deal you're going to get.
You better take it right now or it's going to get worse from here.
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Okay, so those were the two things that Team Trump brought to the table.
One, Assurances, presumably to the Israelis, that if they have to go back in and do the thing, that America is not going to stand in their way.
They're not going to arms embargo them.
They're going to understand exactly what Hamas is.
And two, the Trump administration making clear to Hamas, this is the best deal you're going to get.
It's on the table right now.
There are no better deals.
Biden couldn't guarantee either of those.
Biden was willing to make a better deal with Hamas every single day, which is why Hamas was holding out in the first place.
Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, basically acknowledged as much publicly.
The Biden administration was never going to be able to sell the Israelis on the idea that if they signed on to a phase one ceasefire, that the Biden administration was going to back Israel if it had to go back in.
So that is the difference.
That is the major difference.
And by the way, you can see that in the varying statements between President Trump and Joe Biden about the deal.
So President Trump put out the following statement about the deal.
Quote, this epic ceasefire agreement could only have happened as a result of our historic victory in November.
As it signaled to the entire world that my administration would seek peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans and our allies, I am thrilled American and Israeli hostages will be returning home to be reunited with their families and loved ones.
With this deal in place, my national security team, through the efforts of Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Whitcoff, will continue to work closely with Israelis and our allies to make sure Gaza never again becomes a terrorist safe haven.
Yeah, you see that?
What he's saying there is Hamas will not be in control, which was Hamas's original demand of the Biden team.
That's how Trump is reading.
The ceasefire agreement.
That makes a huge difference.
That is a guarantee to Israel that if Hamas is a threat to take control again, Israel can go back in.
And the thing that I think is very clear from this agreement, there's phase one and there's phase two.
And basically, if Hamas continues to give the hostages out and allow the hostages out, and if they don't violate the agreement in any way, and if further negotiations allow for a phase two, here's the thing about international agreements.
There has never been, as far as I'm aware, a phased international agreement that has ever hit phase two.
Phase 1 is the actual part that will be implemented.
There will be no Phase 2, in my opinion, because I have yet to see an international agreement that actually reaches Phase 2. It always breaks down in Phase 1. So that's how Donald
Trump reads the deal.
And it's important to see how Joe Biden reads the deal because you can see why Israel got sold on the deal.
And why Hamas got sold on the deal by Trump and not Biden.
Here was Biden's statement, quote, Today, after many months of intensive diplomacy by the United States, along with Egypt and Qatar, Israel and Hamas have reached a ceasefire and hostage deal.
This deal will halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much-needed humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, and reunite the hostages with their families after more than 15 months in captivity.
First of all, note the ordering of that sentence.
His top priority was not freeing the hostages.
It was to, quote-unquote, halt the fighting in Gaza, right?
This is why Israel didn't trust.
That if they made some sort of temporary ceasefire deal to get hostages out, that Biden wouldn't shortchange them and cut them off at the knees by depriving them of the weaponry necessary to knock out Hamas again.
I laid out the precise contours of this plan on May 31st, 2024, after which was endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council.
It is the result not only of extreme pressure that Hamas has been under and the changed regional equation after a ceasefire in Lebanon and weakening of Iran, but also of dogged and painstaking American diplomacy.
My diplomacy never ceased in their efforts to get this done.
Even as we welcome this news, we remember all the families whose loved ones were killed in Hamas' October 7th attack and the many innocent people killed in the war that followed.
It is long past time for the fighting to end and the work of building peace and security to begin.
I'm also thinking of the American families, three of whom have living hostages in Gaza, and four, awaiting return of remains after what has been the most horrible ordeal imaginable.
Under this deal, we are determined to bring all of them home.
I will speak more about this soon.
For now, I'm thrilled those who have been held hostage are being reunited with their families.
Notice the things that aren't said in the Biden statement that are said in the Trump statement.
Trump says, there will never again be a terrorist state in Gaza.
Biden does not say anything remotely like that in his statement.
Instead, what Biden says is, it's time for the fighting to end.
Biden was going to give Hamas everything.
All of it.
That's why Israel wouldn't sign on to the deal.
Israel said no to that.
And then Hamas wouldn't do it.
But you know what Hamas just said yes to?
A deal where Israel can go back in, where Hamas will not remain in control, presumably, where Israel will not withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
Okay, that is what they actually said yes to in phase one.
Everybody's talking about there won't be a phase two.
I'm just telling you, it's not going to hit phase two.
The reason it's not going to hit phase two is because Israel cannot leave Hamas in charge of a new Gaza stand.
They cannot.
This is why Trump got the deal done.
There's been a lot of reporting about Steve Whitcoff putting a lot of pressure on the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Undoubtedly, some of that is true.
That's what happens when you're trying to force a deal, which is what President Trump was trying to do here, presumably before the inauguration.
However, the real reason the deal got done is because, at this time, it might have been the best bad alternative.
Again, it's possible, theoretically, that there could have been a bigger push from the Trump administration where they'd gone to Qatar and said, listen, Your airbase goes away unless all the hostages come out.
But how much control does Qatar actually have over Hamas?
That's questionable.
There might have been.
But in terms of kind of short-term, get as many hostages out as possible.
The reason the deal got done was Trump.
And the reason that the deal was palatable to the Israelis is because of Trump.
That is why.
This deal could not have gotten done under Joe Biden.
Make no mistake.
Make no mistake.
The weaknesses in the deal are Biden's because he has been awful for the last year and a half.
Really, since about December of 2023, the upsides of the deal that made it even palatable for Israel to consider the deal are brought about by the presence of Donald Trump in the White House.
That's what's happening here.
So, Joe Biden promptly went out and took credit, of course, for a deal that, again, it took the team of Trump to close.
Antony Blinken's been trying to force this on Israel for a year, and Israel just kept saying no because the deal that Blinken and Biden and Kamala Harris wanted basically allowed Hamas to retain control of the Gaza Strip.
Good afternoon.
It's a very good afternoon.
Because at long last, I can announce a ceasefire and a hostage deal has been reached between Israel and Hamas.
And then he was asked, who gets credit for it?
And Biden's like, are you joking?
I get credit for it.
I, I. Everything is always about Joe Biden.
Always and forever.
Thank you.
Is that a joke?
Oh.
Thank you.
Is that a joke?
Now, Anthony Blinken's standing right there.
His own State Department said that Team Trump basically gets credit for this.
Now, let's be clear.
This is not like...
It's a win for Trump because hostages are coming out.
That is a win for Trump.
But there is no win for anyone in Hamas retaining control of the Gaza Strip.
Yesterday, footage started emerging from the Gaza Strip of children chanting in support of Hamas.
The Gaza Strip is still populated by enormous numbers of people.
Who love terrorism, who hate Jews, who are willing to commit new genocides every day.
By the way, I will note that all the people, all the exact same people who said that Israel committed a genocide in Gaza are now declaring that Hamas won.
I'm not sure how you win a genocide, supposedly, but it demonstrates what liars these folks are.
In any case, here were children in Gaza celebrating, shouting, by the way, about liberating Jerusalem and about Mohammed Daif, who was the military leader of Hamas, who was killed by Israel.
Those are small children chanting about Mohammed Daif.
Thank you.
If you don't speak Arabic, that is exactly what they're chanting.
They're chanting in support of a terror leader.
Quote, we are the men of Mohammed Daif and salute to the Al-Qasam brigades.
That is what they're shouting.
That would be the military wing of Hamas.
So that is who Israel continues to face down.
The battle is not over there, not by a long shot.
The goal is to get hostages out.
Some hostages will come out.
That is a good thing.
The tragedy continues.
Dozens of hostages will not.
Just to be clear-eyed about what this deal is and what this deal isn't and where it could have been better and where it certainly could have been worse.
It's important to be clear-eyed on this, among many other issues.
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Alrighty.
Now, President Biden last night gave his farewell address.
And frankly, for all of us, too little, too late, my man.
You should have gone, I don't know, like 2020. You should have been gone four years ago.
He obviously is ailing.
But on his way out, he decided that he was going to give an Eisenhower-like warning.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his farewell address, famously invade against the military-industrial complex.
I happen to be a believer that this is one of the dumber things that Dwight D. Eisenhower ever said, that the military-industrial complex theory, which was pushed by a sociologist named C. Wright Mills with Marxist leanings, that that basic theory, which was that effectively the defense industry drove America toward war, is a fool's way of explaining how foreign policy actually works.
But somehow Joe Biden found...
An even bigger fool's way to explain American policy.
On his way out, he warned about a tech oligarchy.
Now, let's be clear.
The only reason that Joe Biden became president in 2020, at least one of the only reasons, was because of the tech oligarchy working with his people, shutting down, for example, the Hunter Biden laptop story so he could win.
It turns out that billionaires disproportionately support, wait for it, wait for it, Joe Biden and his party.
But according to Joe Biden, he's going to...
Weigh in about these supposed tech, this new oligarchy of people who run.
Let's be clear.
What Joe Biden means here is that people he wants to run the country are career bureaucrats and politicians who have never run a popsicle stand.
Those are the two alternatives.
Either the people who are going to be left to their own devices to actually hire people, build businesses, and do things are going to be able to run their own lives or Joe Biden will run their lives.
There is no real third choice here.
It's not that Elon Musk wants to run every aspect of government.
It's that Elon Musk would like the government not to run every aspect of his life.
But here is Joe Biden warning everybody about the oligarchy.
Again, Joe Biden is the oligarchy.
This dude has never worked a real job in his entire life.
He's been politicking since the age of 29. He wasn't even old enough to be in the Senate when he was elected to the Senate.
And now he's 173 years old.
And he's invading against the oligarchy that he has been a...
He cog in for literally his entire adult life.
Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.
We see the consequences all across America, and we've seen it before, more than a century ago.
But the American people stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts.
They didn't punish the wealthy.
They just made the wealthy pay by the rules everybody else had to.
Workers want rights to earn their fair share.
You know, they were dealt into the deal and helped put us on a path to building the largest middle class and most prosperous century any nation in the world has ever seen.
We've got to do that again.
God, he's so senile.
He's so gone.
But beyond that, his idiotic notion that we have to break the modern robber barons, that it's Elon Musk who's really the problem, and it's the tech bros who are really the problem.
Who do you think is creating the productivity, the innovation, and the jobs that Americans have?
It isn't Joe Biden.
It isn't government.
This is the key conflict of vision between people like Joe Biden and those of us who actually like free markets and free enterprise and freedom generally.
Joe Biden believes that by freedom, we mean the government should allocate to you a particular role in life.
Those of us on the other side believe that by freedom, we mean that we should all be able to rise and fall on our own merits and that that generates positive externalities for everyone.
Listening to Joe Biden whine about the oligarchy, well, he has never produced a positive thing in his entire life.
In his life, he has never produced a positive thing.
And then he invades against people who actually do the producing.
Who actually do the innovation.
Who make life better for literally hundreds of millions of people.
But he's sitting there being a complete leech on the ass of society for five decades talking about the oligarchs.
You know who's truly an oligarch?
Somebody who uses unearned power.
Somebody who is given power by the American people to crack down on the freedom of others for redistributive purposes.
That is much more of an oligarchy than whatever.
Supposed oligarchy he's talking about.
What a terrible old man, and I cannot wait for him to be out of the White House.
Neither could the American people, apparently, which is why Donald Trump is going back in on Monday.
Thank God.
Thank God.
Meanwhile, Marco Rubio is President Trump's Secretary of State nominee.
He gave a just tremendous performance yesterday in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
His opening statement was excellent.
It was, I think, really meaningful.
He talked about...
The sort of evolution of American foreign policy over the course of the last several decades.
And when he says, listen, American interests used to come first and they need to come first.
Again, this should not be controversial.
This should be the baseline.
So while America too often prioritized the global order above our core national interest, other nations continued to act the way nations have always acted and always will in what they perceive to be their best interest.
And instead of folding into the post-Cold War global order, They have manipulated it to serve their interests at the expense of ours.
We welcome the Chinese Communist Party into the global order, and they took advantage of all of its benefits, and they ignored all of its obligations and responsibilities.
Instead, they have repressed and lied and cheated and hacked and stolen their way into global superpower status, and they have done so at our expense and at the expense of the people of their own country.
He is totally correct about all of this.
And then he makes some statements about the post-Soviet Union consensus of a liberal world war.
He says, listen, this stuff has been used as a weapon against the United States.
That is 100% true.
This notion that the UN ought to rule the roost and the United States ought to be the functioning military arm of the UN is ridiculous and stupid and wrong.
The idea that it's in the interest of the United States to allow others to dictate our foreign policy is wrong and stupid.
Here is Marco Rubio, Secretary of State nominee.
Out of the triumphalism of the end of the long Cold War emerged a bipartisan consensus.
And this consensus was that we had reached the end of history, that all of the nations of the world would now become members of the democratic Western-led community, that a foreign policy that served the national interest could now be replaced by one that served the liberal world order, and that all mankind was now destined to abandon national sovereignty and national identity.
And would instead become one human family and citizens of the world.
This wasn't just a fantasy.
We now know it was a dangerous delusion.
Here in America and in many of the advanced economies across the world, an almost religious commitment to free and unfettered trade at the expense of our national economy shrunk the middle class, left the working class in crisis, collapsed our industrial capacity, and has pushed critical supply chains collapsed our industrial capacity, and has pushed critical supply chains into the hands of adversaries and of rivals.
Again, the point that he's making here is not even really an economic one, it's a security Meaning, when you decide to usher China into the world community of nations and pretend that they're a good actor, you're going to screw yourself security-wise and in terms of foreign policy.
He made this point again later on while being questioned.
He said we need to stop being reliant on China.
China has basically made us reliant on so much of our supply chain.
If we stay on the road we're on right now, in less than 10 years, virtually everything that matters to us in life will depend on whether China will allow us to have it or not.
Everything from the blood pressure medicine we take to what movies we get to watch, and everything in between, we will depend on China for it.
They have come to dominate the critical mineral supplies throughout the world.
Everywhere in the world they've now established critical mineral rights.
Even those who want to see more electric cars, no matter where you make them, those batteries are almost entirely dependent on the ability of the Chinese and the willingness of the Chinese Communist Party to produce it and export it to you.
So if we don't change course, we are going to live in a world where much of what matters to us on a daily basis, from our security to our health, will be dependent on whether the Chinese allow us to have it or not.
That's an unacceptable outcome.
He is totally right about that.
He also spoke at length about the situation in the Middle East.
And he said, listen, if you're talking about Iran, we need to make a distinction.
There's the regime and there's the people and they're not the same thing.
This is very important because, again, the United States and its position vis-a-vis Iran must recognize that the Iranian regime is actually quite tenuous right now.
The Iranian regime is not a strong regime.
They are a weak horse, as the saying goes in the Middle East.
Two points I want to make about Iran, and it's really important.
When we talk about Iran, I'm talking about the radical Shia clerics and not the people.
The people of Iran are people of an ancient civilization, an ancient culture with tremendous pride and advances.
And I don't know who take great pride in their Persian heritage and identity.
And I don't know of any nation on earth in which there is a bigger difference between the people and those who govern them than what exists in Iran.
And that's a fact that needs to be made repeatedly.
In no way is the clerics who run that country representative of the people of that country and of its history and of contributions it's made to humanity.
And it's a point I wish we would continue to make.
He's right about that.
He also spoke about Israel and Hamas.
And again, this goes to what's going on in this hostage deal.
He said, listen.
Middle East security begins with Israel security because Israel is, in fact, our best ally in the region and the most powerful military force in the region.
The only possible competitor is Turkey, which is going to become a rising problem for the United States and our allies in the Middle East in very short order.
But here is Rubio talking about Israel in the Middle East.
We should not underestimate the potential opportunities that now exist, and it'll take some time to fully understand what those are, that perhaps open the door to things that were not open in the future.
But from the Israeli perspective, which I fully understand, it begins with their existence.
Because you cannot coexist with armed elements at your border who seek your destruction and evisceration as a state.
You just can't.
No nation on it.
We wouldn't tolerate it, and they can't either.
And it begins with having that level of security, and if they do, then I think there are opportunities that come about as a result of it.
And again, underscoring what's going to happen with this hostage deal, he said, listen, Hamas cannot be allowed to run Gaza.
That is one of the big differences between the Trump team's approach and the Biden team's approach.
Joe Biden is perfectly happy to allow Hamas to retain control effectively of the Gaza Strip.
That is not true of Team Trump, which is one of the reasons the hostage deal got done.
The real open question for the Palestinians is, who will govern?
Who will govern in Gaza in the short term and who will ultimately govern?
Will it be the Palestinian Authority or some other entity?
Because it has to be someone.
That was the initial goal for Gaza when the Israelis withdrew from there and they turned it over and they turned it over with greenhouses and they turned it over with all kinds of economic development.
Hamas won an election.
They took over and they destroyed the place and built tunnels for terrorists to operate from.
So the key is not simply governance.
It's who will govern.
You can't turn it over to people who seek your destruction.
And so I do think this is a very complex issue, and I think that's understating it.
He then suggested, hey, listen, if you support Hamas, if you're here on a visa and you support Hamas, you shouldn't be in the country.
And he's going to make an excellent Secretary of State.
The Trump team is going to be very different from Team Biden.
As Secretary of State, of course, you'll be responsible for overseeing the issuance of visas.
How will you enforce our laws to ensure that we remove supporters of terrorist groups from our country?
Listen, my view on this is one of common sense.
If you apply for a visa to come into the United States, and in the process of being looked at, it comes to light that you're a supporter of Hamas.
We wouldn't let you in.
If we knew you were a supporter of Hamas, we would not give you a visa.
So now that you got the visa and you're inside the U.S. and now we realize you're a supporter of Hamas, we should remove your visa.
If you cannot come in because you're a supporter of Hamas, you should not be able to stay on a visa if you're a supporter of Hamas.
That's how I view it.
And I think that's just an issue of common sense.
And we intend to be very forceful about that.
Rubio is going to be confirmed likely with north of 60 votes in the United States Senate.
In just a moment, we'll get to Pam Bondi, who is President Trump's attorney general nominee, who also did a fabulous job yesterday.
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Meanwhile, Pam Bondi, the Florida Attorney General, who's now being appointed as United States Attorney General.
She had her hearing yesterday as well, and she blew the Democrats out of the water.
Again, I don't think Democrats are quite prepared for Team Trump.
They really are not.
I mean, Pete Hexat did a fabulous job.
Senator Rubio did a fabulous job, and Pam Bondi yesterday did a fabulous job.
Here is Senator Ted Cruz with Pam Bondi, the Attorney General nominee.
The Biden-Harris White House came along, and in the last four years, we've seen Donald Trump indicted and prosecuted not once, not twice, not three times, but four separate times.
And to assassination attempts, Senator.
I have to say Javert from Les Mis would be chagrined at the efforts of Democrats to do anything possible to take him down.
And I believe the real target in this was not President Trump, but it was the American people, that these prosecutions were brought because partisan prosecutors were terrified.
That the American people would do exactly what they did in November of 2024 and vote to re-elect Donald J. Trump.
By 77.3 percent.
Million Americans.
77.3 million Americans.
Again, Bondi was great yesterday.
I'm not sure if Senator Cruz...
I love Ted.
Ted's great.
I went and campaigned with him in the last cycle.
He gets more theater references into a typical Senate Judiciary Committee hearing than any other senator.
He definitely holds the record for that, I believe.
There were some fireworks that went off during this particular hearing.
Alex Padilla, the senator from California, he went after Bondi, and Bondi basically body slammed him.
May I speak?
I'm going to ask you the next question.
You can speak, and I hope you answer, Ms. Bonney.
Well, I'd like to answer the previous one, Senator.
When we met yesterday, you pointed your finger at me and said you were speaking.
Let me answer my question.
I'm not going to be bullied by you, Senator Padilla.
The 14th Amendment of the United States of America, which was deeply disappointing.
I guess you didn't want to hear my answer about Pennsylvania.
After I gave an opportunity to study overnight.
So can you tell me in this committee what the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment says?
Senator.
I'm here to answer your questions.
I'm not here to do your homework and study for you.
You're the one asking for a confirmation vote, ma'am.
Hey, you cut me off.
Can I please finish?
What does the 14th Amendment say?
Senator?
Senator, the 14th Amendment we all know addresses birthright citizenship.
I've been a state prosecutor.
I've been a state AG. I look forward to even giving your remarks today, working with you and the people of California if I am confirmed as the 87th Attorney General of the United States of America.
I didn't take your homework assignment.
I'm sorry.
I was preparing for today.
Man, she's spicy.
That's great.
I love that.
And you've seen a lot of that.
These senators who won't get off their high horse.
And, by the way, Donald Trump, there's a lot of accusation.
Donald Trump, he's picking his people from Fox News.
Can I just explain something?
Many of the people he's picking are excellent on TV because they were on Fox News.
There is a reason Fox News has particular people on the TVs.
It's actually not a horrifying way to pick staffers if they also have the credentials to do the job.
It's to get somebody who also happens to be really good.
Pam Bondi is amazing on TV. Like, great on TV. Here was Pam Bondi.
Body slamming Adam Schiff.
I mean, this was basically just a WWE event in which she went around like The Undertaker, just off the top rope all day long on Democratic Senators.
No one has asked me to investigate Liz.
We're also worried about Liz Cheney, Senator.
You know what we should be worried about?
The crime rate in California right now is the way of the roof.
Your robberies are 87% higher than the national average.
That's what I want to be focused on, Senator, if I'm confirmed as Attorney General.
Okay, again, just going after Schiff about the criminality in his own state and asking.
Why are you so focused on bizarre questions about Trump circa 2021 as opposed to the problems in the United States circa 2025?
Here she was slamming Dick Durbin.
Again, it was just senator after senator coming up and getting knocked down by Pam Bondi yesterday.
He said to the Georgia Secretary of State, find 11,780 votes.
Do you have the entire context of that call?
I feel like it was much longer than that and may have been taken out of context.
It was an hour long.
Right.
And you can certainly listen to it.
I hope you will.
Then came Senator Whitehouse.
He's in sort of a running gun battle with Maisie Girono for dumbest senator and the United States senator, Senator Whitehouse.
And it didn't go well for him either.
You have said that Department of Justice prosecutors will be prosecuted in the Trump administration.
What Department of Justice prosecutors will be prosecuted and why?
I said that on TV. I said prosecutors will be prosecuted to finish the quote, if bad.
Investigators will be investigated.
You know, we all take an oath, Senator, to uphold the law.
None of us are above the law.
Let me give you a really good example of a bad lawyer within the Justice Department, a guy named Klein Smith, who altered a FISA warrant, one of the most important things we can do in this country.
So will everyone be held to an equal, fair system of justice?
If I am the next attorney general, absolutely.
And no one is above the law.
Again.
She did a great job yesterday.
She, too, will be confirmed with probably north of 60 votes in the Senate.
Again, there were many nominees who had their hearings yesterday.
John Ratcliffe is the nominee to lead the CIA. He, too, did a great job against the angry Democrat senators.
So, first of all, he says, I'm not going to politicize the spy agency.
It is actually my job to ensure America's national security.
It's absolutely essential that the CIA's leader be apolitical.
As you know that when you walk in the building at the CIA inscribed on the wall is the quote, and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.
That's a reminder to CIA officers when they walk in about the truth, collecting the truth, intelligence, critical information, so that American people can be free.
Their freedom and liberty are dependent on the CIA doing that job and doing it in an apolitical way.
And so I am very much committed to that and look forward to that if confirmed.
Good for him.
Adam Schiff was called out in the middle of all of this for all of his Russiagate nonsense.
Here is John Ratcliffe going after Adam Schiff, the senator from California.
In 2020, when a chairman of an intelligence committee misrepresented that a laptop owned by then candidate Biden's son was somehow a Russian intelligence operation.
And 51 former intelligence officials used the imprimatur of IC authority to go along with that.
I stood in the breach.
I stood alone and told the American people the truth about that.
So I think my record in terms of speaking truth to power And defending the intelligence community and its good work is very clear.
Good for John Ratcliffe.
He too is going to be confirmed overwhelmingly.
Chris Wright is the nominee for Secretary of Energy.
Again, there were a lot of hearings yesterday.
And he did a great job.
He made clear that he actually is going to expand America's investment in our energy resources, which is precisely what the Secretary of Energy is supposed to do.
Here he was yesterday.
Talking about investment in, for example, nuclear energy that environmentalists have been holding up for decades.
Nuclear could provide energy, could provide high temperature heat to really impact manufacturing as well.
There's just so much room to run and to grow for nuclear energy.
And I think we're going to see a broad investment across our country in the research and the enabling technologies.
And this is all good stuff.
Again, Trump's going to get his team.
He's going to get it overwhelmingly.
All of this is very good because we need a change.
You saw Joe Biden.
You saw Joe Biden has to sell.
What he has to sell is total government control of as much of your life as possible in the name of overthrowing, quote-unquote, the oligarchy, by which he means just anyone who starts a business in the country and hires people, and those people are not under his tutelage.
That's all he means.
It's time for all of that to end.
This administration means peace through strength.
Trump has said it to me personally.
Senator Rubio said it in his hearing.
This administration means standing up to terrorists, standing up to America's enemies.
Putting America's interests first.
It's America's enemies that matter.
All of this will be a breath of fresh air.
Meanwhile, the California fires continue to rage.
The California government doing a terrible job of dealing with all of that.
Spencer Lindquist, the Daily Wire investigative reporter, has been out there in California covering the fires for Daily Wire.
Spencer, thanks so much for joining the program.
Thank you very much for having me.
So first of all, what's the situation like on the ground in and around Los Angeles?
You know, it's really difficult to explain the devastation of this area until you're there on the ground.
A lot of the pictures and the videos, they help capture it, but it's completely another thing to see it in person.
I went up and down the Pacific Coast Highway and up into some of the areas in the Palisades, and this is an area that is near and dear to me.
It's an area that I know rather well.
I went to school right in that area, and you see certain landmarks.
Certain homes, certain buildings that you typically recognize and use to mark your path as you drive north or south on the Pacific Coast Highway.
And you'll see homes that are still there completely intact and others that frankly look like they're part of a war zone.
And these are in areas that you wouldn't necessarily think would be the most prone to fires.
You could toss a baseball and land it in the Pacific Ocean.
And there's homes there where there's nothing that remains other than the cement studs in the sand there on the beach.
So, Spencer, when you're driving around, what kind of stories were you hearing on the road from some of the people whose houses have been burned?
You know, so on the road itself, really right now the National Guard and other authorities at the state level aren't allowing residents back into their homes.
And this, of course, is because of potentially downed power lines or open gas lines, other chemical issues.
So there aren't people there at their homes right now.
And that, of course, is a frustration and a concern for many of the homeowners.
I did speak with a man by the name of Russell who'd lost his business in the Eaton Fire in the Altadena area.
And he's trying to navigate this complex web of insurance policies and various other different procedural and managerial aspects that come along with this type of tragedy.
But right now, he's just reeling from the loss.
And we actually met him at a volunteer center where he was helping provide relief to people who had lost their homes.
So that's kind of how he was getting over the issue and how he was handling it there in the moment.
He was trying to be there for his community.
So, Spencer, when you're driving around talking to people, Who exactly are people blaming?
I know that Gavin Newsom is trying to blame President Trump.
People are trying to blame climate change.
Where is all of the anger being directed?
I think it's dizzying for a lot of people because there's this complex web of factors.
You've got the ecological factors like these high-powered winds that are coming through the Santa Ana winds.
You've got this DEI mismanagement at the fire department.
And now we're finding that there's actually an illegal alien who's been named a person of interest in the Kenneth Fire.
That's a fire in the Calabasas area that thankfully was put out relatively quickly, but it did cover about 1,000 acres.
And we're finding out now that because of California's sanctuary state policies, This illegal alien might not be able to be taken into ICE custody and might not be able to be deported, despite being a person of interest in a massive wildfire.
So there's a number of different factors, and I think people right now on the ground are really at a loss trying to figure out how exactly this happened and how it was able to go so far out of control.
So, Spencer, obviously the fallout is going to be devastating for years to come.
Was there anything that surprised you in covering all of this?
You know, I would say absolutely.
You know, one of the things that we're hearing from the residents there is that they're really just struggling to find out what to do next.
They're trying to figure out what the next steps are.
Something that I found that was rather concerning, really, is at this relief center where I spoke to this individual who had lost his home.
He was a volunteer there.
And I was rather shocked to find out that as we went around and talked to people, asked them about if they had lost their homes, their businesses in the fire, that people at this relief center, by and large, hadn't actually lost anything.
They just found that this was an opportunity to find free goods that were being given away.
And we were utterly shocked to find that a lot of the people there hadn't actually lost their homes, hadn't lost their businesses.
And unfortunately, there was a significant number of people who saw that this was just an opportunity to take advantage of the generosity of people.
And I find it rather ironic that the person that we spoke to who had lost something was a volunteer at this relief center.
So, of course, there's so many people who are trying to rebuild, so many people who are operating in good faith.
And of course, we wish them the best.
Spencer Lindquist reporting from On the Ground in California, covering these wildfires for Daily Wire.
Spencer, really appreciate the time and thanks for what you're doing.
Thank you.
All right, in just a moment, I'm going to get to the other side of the aisle.
Bill Burr is just off the rails, man.
He is off the rails.
I've been saying this for a while, but he made that absolutely clear once again last night on Late Night TV.
Use code Shapiro.
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