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Feb. 7, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:12:49

Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

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	Well, folks, there's one kind of young person that Democrats like, and there's one kind of young person that Democrats really don't.
	The kind of young person Democrats like, as it turns out, the theater kid.
	That is the type, the theater kid.
	And when I say the theater kid, I mean very specifically performative young people who cast aspersions at everyone who is older than they are, cast blame.
	Those people are tools of the Democratic Party.
	They are tools of the left.
	The left does not wish to generate young people who are self-sufficient.
	Who?
	Those young people who might be, you know, engineers, who might be building companies, who might be innovating.
	Those young people...
	They're too weird.
	We can't allow them anywhere near the levers of power.
	This has come to a head today because the left has decided that the worst young people in existence work for Elon Musk's doge.
	And this has specifically become a central feature of the democratic angst because there is one young person in particular, a young technologist, who is being targeted by Wired Magazine and now the entire unified left.
	Why?
	Because this young technologist is known online.
	As big balls.
	Yes, that's a meme.
	It turns out that many of the people who are in sort of online meme world, which is Elon Musk's domain.
	Elon is the king of meme world.
	That if you are in that world, you tend to throw out silly memes, foolish names for yourself, silly nicknames.
	And meanwhile, you're using AI technology to decode thousands of years old.
	Encrypted Greek texts, basically.
	So you're doing genius things, but also you're doing super stupid things by calling yourself Big Balls on LinkedIn.
	Apparently, Wired is very angry about this.
	They had a report that says that a young technologist known online as Big Balls, who works for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, has access to sensitive U.S. government systems.
	But his professional and online history call into question whether he would pass the background check typically required to obtain security clearances.
	Yeah, sure.
	Sure, that is the thing that I think people are deeply worried about is whether they would pass a security clearance, the kind of security clearance that for example, allowed Biden administration appointees to full on leak Israeli war plans to the press.
	Those security clearances have been doing a hell of a lot of work.
	They've been doing an amazing job over there.
	The engineers that Elon Musk has working for him, typically, are young and incredibly smart, which is why they work for Elon Musk.
	So, the six young men Who are sort of leading the charge are apparently all between the ages of 19 and 24. And this has been determined to be a very, very bad thing, again, by so many of the people on the left.
	Just terrible.
	So, CNN covered this in, I think, the most hysterical possible way yesterday.
	They were very, very upset.
	First of all, the chyron is just wonderful.
	Quote, wired, doge teen, known online as big balls, now a government expert.
	First of all, government expertise, according to the left, is you went to...
	George Washington University, after majoring in African-American history, and now we call you a State Department expert.
	That is the way that you get appointed an expert, according to CNN. But because this young technologist, who apparently is kind of a genius, jokingly called himself Big Balls Online, the Democrats are very upset.
	Like, very upset.
	Understand, Democrats only like Big Balls when they are on a purported woman.
	In any case, here are the CNN anchors just beside themselves over this revelation.
	So, Kara, you know, you hear this, and you have known Elon Musk for years.
	So now you look at these young men who are now in data and in the private information about maybe hundreds of millions of American citizens as young as 19, the big balls here that Katie's talking about.
	Most of them are in their early 20s.
	There's an exception I'm going to get to in a minute.
	I'm curious, though, Kara, how well does even Musk know these young men, do you think?
	I have no idea.
	I think there's no vetting whatsoever, as you can see, that's taking place.
	It took Katie and the really great team.
	Wired has done an astonishing job here.
	You know, I could make a joke that's probably why he was hired, for all this ridiculous nonsense and other nefarious things.
	But, you know, there's an expression in technology that's a feature, not a bug.
	Well, this is your local HOA. Telling you that you're not allowed to put an American flag on your lawn on July 4th because it might be offensive to others.
	The media just losing it over big balls.
	It's just so terrible.
	How could they?
	Just the worst.
	And Joy Reid, too, was deeply upset about big balls.
	Here was Joy Reid.
	And again, another very censorious hit.
	Remember, the things that are very offensive and upsetting to the left do not include, for example, men who get boob jobs and jiggle their bare breasts at the White House on the lawn.
	That is not offensive to the left.
	Or, you know, gay guys having sex in the actual Senate chambers.
	Not offensive to the left.
	That's freedom of expression.
	But a young technologist who called himself big balls on LinkedIn, that is just so far beyond the pale.
	We cannot have any of that.
	This is a well-respected government.
	A well-respected government that funds the transing of the children in Guatemala via the U.S. Agency for International Development.
	Take us seriously.
	Honestly, the entire democratic approach to politics seems to be the meme from Arrested Development of Joe Bluth with his magician friends holding up a sign that says we demand to be taken seriously.
	But they need to be taken seriously, folks.
	These folks at MSNBC, Joy Reid is a serious person and she will not brook the idea of a young man who called himself online big balls cutting governmental waste programs.
	Here we go.
	He's 19 years old.
	He's a high school graduate.
	He works at Doge.
	He has access to U.S. government systems.
	His professional and online history call into question whether he would even pass a background check typically required to obtain security clearances.
	Security experts tell Wired he runs something called Tesla.Sexy.
	Which operates a Russian website.
	He worked at a startup that hired convicted hackers.
	Someone using his Telegram handle solicited a cyber attack.
	And on his LinkedIn, and I apologize to the saints out there, and we know a lot of the saints listen to the show, he called himself Big B-A-L-L-S. I won't say the whole word, so I won't be vulgar.
	That's what he calls himself.
	So Big B-A-L-L-S. Okay, as a person who's relatively famous for not reading full obscene lyrics on the air, I promise that Joy Reid has said words way worse than balls on her show before.
	Just amazing, amazing stuff.
	They're offended, guys.
	They're so offended.
	But here's the thing.
	What are they really offended by?
	Are they offended that some teenager who is apparently a brilliant, Technologists used an obscene meme online.
	Are they really upset about?
	No.
	What they're really upset about is because the only kids that they want to succeed are the theater kids.
	The ones who actually build things, who are good at things, who have a skill set.
	Those ones are the bad ones.
	So David Hogg is like the perfect example of this.
	David Hogg, or Stickman Hogg, as I will call him from now on, since he is both a stick figure of a person when it comes to his physical stature, as well as his intellectual representation of left-wing ideas.
	So David Hogg tweeted out, he's now the vice chair of the DNC, by the way, at the age of 24, based on his varied accomplishments, which include getting into Harvard with a low SAT score because he went to a school where a school shooting took place, not running a failed pillow company, and tweeting inane nonsense for years, while claiming that he was sort of immune from any criticism because, again, a school shooting took place at a school that he went to when he was in high school.
	He tweeted out, quote, Yeah, let's let a 19-year-old who goes by big balls handle the situation.
	Very confidence-inspiring.
	He's 24 and he's never done anything in his entire life.
	Anything of value in his entire life.
	And he's somehow the vice chair of the DNC. I will point out at this point, by the way, that the relative youth of technologists is in fact a hallmark of successful technologists.
	Charlie Cook, who is one of the editors over at National Review, he points out that...
	Page and Brin created Google at 24. Zuckerberg launched Facebook at 19. Steve Jobs started Apple at 21. It's kind of a hallmark of genius that it starts to be productive very, very early in life.
	It is a hallmark of Democratic children, their child heroes, that they are not productive.
	They don't do anything useful except yell at the adults.
	All they are are cuter versions of older Democrats at your HOA, which is why David Hogg became famous in the first place.
	Remember, he became famous.
	For yelling at the adults to do something, to do something about gun violence.
	He didn't have any solutions.
	He didn't have anything of value to say.
	But he was a young person who was yelling all the things Democrats wanted to hear.
	Here was David Hogg back in the day, and this is the reason why he is currently the vice chair, Stickman Hogg.
	He's currently the vice chair of the DNC. First off, I'm going to start off by putting this price tag right here as a reminder for you guys to know how much Marco Rubio took for every student's life in Florida.
	One dollar and five cents.
	When people try to suppress your vote, and there are people who stand against you because you are too young, we say no more!
	When politicians say that your voice doesn't matter because the NRA owns them, we say no more!
	When politicians send their thoughts and prayers with no action, we say no more!
	And to those politicians supported by the NRA that allow the continued slaughter of our children and our future, I say get your resumes ready.
	We can and we will change the world.
	He did not in fact change the world.
	Isn't that a fascist salute right there?
	Why is he making a fascist salute at the March for Our Lives in 2019?
	A fascist is now apparently the vice chair of the DNC. Remember, he was celebrated.
	He was made into a national hero.
	He's put on the cover of Time magazine with his friends.
	From Parkland.
	Many of whom, by the way, do not.
	I know some of the former Parkland kids who are now adults.
	Many of them not real fans of David Hogg.
	In any case, that guy is now the vice chair of the DNC. He was championed by the left specifically because he was young and he never did anything.
	He just yelled the things they wanted to hear.
	This is why Greta Thunberg was nominated for the Nobel Prize.
	That moronic Swedish now woman who I can make fun of because she's over the age of 18. The rule is that you can't make fun of anybody under 18. She's well over 18 even if she dresses like she's under 18. And still wears around the pigtails and the braid and pretends that she is, you know, a child still.
	She's the oldest child.
	She's going to be 80 years old walking around pretending she's a 16-year-old while shouting at the evil adults for ruining the world.
	Greta wasn't a big one for freedom, but this country was founded on freedom.
	Freedom from a country that forced us to buy overpriced tea then tried blockading us when we dumped their stupid tea into the ocean.
	How'd that work out for you, England?
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	Meanwhile, this...
	I mean, ranging from shutdown capitalism, destroy it utterly, to root for Hamas.
	They nominated her for a Nobel Prize and told us she was a moral clarion voice because she yelled at the adults.
	These are the kinds of young people the Democrats want.
	Young people who yell at the adults without ever attempting to actually do anything productive.
	The productive kids who are out in the back room, you know, actually coding and figuring out how things work, and then using those powers in order to go through government waste and fraud if they call themselves big balls online.
	Whoa.
	Whoa.
	Stop it all.
	Shut it down.
	But if you are a 16-year-old Swedish child who drops out of high school to travel around yelling at adults about why capitalism is bad, then we give you the Nobel Prize, according to the left.
	Here's a flashback to Greta.
	How dare you?
	Thunberg.
	This is all wrong.
	I shouldn't be up here.
	I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean.
	Yet, you all come to us young people for hope.
	How dare you?
	You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.
	Yet, I'm one of the lucky ones.
	People are suffering.
	People are dying.
	Entire ecosystems are collapsing.
	We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.
	How dare you?
	I just want to point out, you worshipped this person.
	This bluster bag.
	Filled with nonsense and emotive stupidity.
	You worshipped this.
	You said this person is worthy of listening to with no skill set other than lecturing adults.
	So, yeah, I'm going to take it with a grain of salt.
	And when I say a grain, I mean like an ocean filled, like a dead sea filled with salt.
	I'm going to take with your recommendation that because a dude called himself big balls in a meme online, that that somehow makes him unable to go through government waste and fraud.
	Now, in the end, the truth is what Democrats really want is not just young people who are theater kids.
	They want that lifestyle extended over the entire course of adult life.
	They want permanent Greta Thunberg.
	They want permanent David Hoggs.
	That's what they want.
	They want people who never build anything, who never do anything useful.
	What they want is people who are perennially 16 and complaining about the world, and by the way, ruining their own lives in the process.
	A perfect example of this sort of person is a representative from Michigan named Lori Pohutsky.
	Lori Pohutsky is not a young person.
	Lori Pohutsky is 36, which in the old days would have put you squarely in sort of the lower middle-aged category.
	Lori Pohutsky announced yesterday that she had undergone surgery to ensure that you'd never have to navigate a pregnancy in Donald Trump's America and thus had sterilized herself.
	Perennial childhood, perennial lack of responsibility, and then blaming the system for it.
	Now, you might say to yourself, wait, hold up.
	You know, there are many things that human beings can do, it turns out, to avoid getting pregnant.
	I mean, that is just a fact.
	You might say to yourself that Michigan abortion law is actually quite permissive.
	That actually the Michigan Constitution guarantees a right to an abortion.
	Yeah, but that's not the point.
	The point is, yelling at the system and then harming yourself in the process is heroism on the left.
	It is Greta Thunberg forever.
	It is 80-year-old Greta Thunbergs filling the Democratic Party.
	So yeah, I'm not going to take you seriously that you're very, very upset over big balls going through the budget at the Transportation Department for waste and fraud.
	The answer is no.
	Listen, I hope Democrats fight this one all the way.
	I really hope they fight this one all the way because their fight against Doge is one of the dumbest political fights I've ever seen anyone pick.
	They will be able to ding Elon Musk as a human just in terms of his individual polling numbers.
	But what they are fighting right now is against government bureaucracies being cut.
	That is what they are fighting against.
	And Doge is doing a really good job, so is the Trump administration generally, of calling out the waste and fraud that have been happening inside the system.
	Now, look, the real reality when it comes to America's national debt and bending the cost curve is that trimming around the edges, getting rid...
	Of even many of the billions of dollars that are put out by USAID, that is a worthy cause.
	That is not going to truly bend the cost curve for the United States.
	The entire budget of the USAID is $40 billion.
	The United States is running trillion-dollar deficits every single year.
	We currently have a $36 trillion national debt.
	Unless you change the actual entitlement systems, which nobody is willing to do, you're not going to cure the problem.
	With that said, is it very good that it's happening?
	Sure.
	And is it hilarious the Democrats are trying to find a way?
	To defend the massive bureaucracy they have created, this giant cash cow that they created and controlled for 100 years.
	They're trying to defend it against the predations of big balls?
	Isn't that kind of hilarious?
	Absolutely it is.
	And their arguments, of course, make zero sense at all.
	Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, she's very upset because there is a rumor that Doge had basically plugged into the FAA in order to help correct the aviation systems.
	And again, cut out the waste, fraud, and abuse.
	Here's Maria Cantwell getting very upset about it.
	I'm sending a letter to Secretary Duffy.
	It's a clear conflict of interest, and Secretary Duffy should make sure that Mr. Moss is not part of the FAA. What we don't welcome is a man who's regulated by this sector and who has had fines for violation of safety, which is launch issues related to protecting the flying public at a time when you need the FAA to call the shots and say, don't launch now because there could be a conflict in the airspace.
	The last thing I want is that guy trying to control the airspace.
	Well, you certainly cannot have a man controlling the airspace and working on aviation who, you know, owns the most successful space company of our time and creates machines capable of firing 20-story rockets into the air and bringing them back down and catching them.
	Can't have that guy involved with aviation.
	The person we need at the head of the transportation department is a man who couldn't fill potholes in South Bend, Indiana, but is gay and loves juju trains and takes two-month paternity leaves without telling anybody.
	That's who I trust with our federal aviation security.
	And this is a losing battle for Democrats.
	And if they continue to fight it, it is not going to end well for them.
	I think most hilariously is the argument that's now being put forward by the media, that what Musk is doing is somehow wild, crazy, out of the unprecedented.
	So, CNN's Pamela Brown, she was very upset yesterday.
	She said, would you be okay with George Soros doing what Elon Musk is doing?
	Would you be okay if Democrats were doing this?
	If, for example, George Soros came in under a Democratic administration and had his staffers gain access to sensitive programs about Americans and their personal information and dismantling agencies, would you be okay with that?
	It's amazing that Democrats are acting as if this is something that's novel.
	I've been talking to my constituents for months and months and months about Elon Musk coming in, having a serious business person coming in, and using his team to go through the federal budget with a fine-tooth comb.
	Would you be okay if Democrats did this, if a George Soros came in with his staffers and did the same thing that Elon Musk is doing?
	Would you accept that?
	Well, what's unprecedented is spending our taxpayer dollars on left-wing partisan political projects all over the globe.
	Okay, first of all, I love the ire from Pamela Brown.
	What would happen if George Soros' people were just put in charge?
	They were in charge.
	Alex Soros posts pictures of himself with every single Democratic leader at his palatial apartment above Central Park.
	Every single one of them.
	Kamala Harris, Tim Walz.
	Soros has been in control of the bureaucracy in ways both large and small for years.
	And if not Soros, people like Soros.
	Who do you think is staffing these bureaucratic institutions?
	Who do you think is receiving checks in the non-governmental sphere from institutions like USAID? Organizations run by people like George Soros.
	So no, this isn't unprecedented.
	It's just the American people are ready for the cuts.
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	Code DAILYWIRE. Meanwhile, Scott Pesson, the new Treasury Secretary, was asked about what is the impact of Doge over at the Treasury Department.
	He said, we're not violating the law.
	What the hell are you talking about?
	When you say the Doge team.
	These are Treasury employees.
	Two Treasury employees, one of whom I personally interviewed in his final round.
	There is no tinkering with the system.
	They are on read-only.
	They are looking.
	They can make no changes.
	It is an operational program to suggest improvements.
	So we make 1.3 billion payments a year.
	And this is two employees who are working with a group of longstanding employees.
	So, again, the kind of lies that are being told are absurd, but the panic is being driven by the fact, in the end, that the entire gravy train for the Democrats has been a permanent bureaucracy designed to funnel cash to their friends.
	Well, all of that is coming to a crashing halt.
	President Trump and his administration are laying off nearly all USAID staff.
	According to the New York Times, the Trump administration plans to reduce the number of workers at USAID from more than 10,000 to 290. These are the kinds of cuts, by the way, that Musk does.
	When Elon comes into act, he just kills all the jobs.
	He just destroys all the jobs and he keeps a small group of people to run the thing and then fixes the problems.
	Because he says there is no reason why we need 1,000 employees, 2,000 employees to run a company that is not running at a solid profit.
	Those sorts of cuts, are they worthwhile?
	The answer is absolutely.
	Some of the programs that are supported by the Democrats here are utterly insane.
	Crazy.
	Here, for example, is Representative Cynthia Loomis explaining some of the programs that were in USAID. She's from Wyoming.
	Five million to EcoHealth Alliance, one of the key NGOs, non-government organizations.
	Funding bat virus research at the Wuhan lab.
	$20 million for a group related, by the way, to a key player in the Russiagate impeachment hoax.
	$1.5 million to rebuild the Cuban media ecosystem.
	$1.5 million on DEI programs in Serbia.
	And do those seem like good expenditures to you?
	By the way, BBC's Media Action, which is the BBC International Charity, received millions of dollars in American government grants from USAID. Perhaps the worst expenditure from USAID. USAID in 2016 gave $310 million of your taxpayer money to a Palestinian cement factory project.
	It was a private venture by a company called Sanad to create cement mills and factories.
	What do you think they needed all that cement for?
	What do you think they used all that cement for?
	I'll give you three guesses.
	What did the Palestinians in Gaza use all that cement for, paid for by your taxpayer dollars?
	Hmm?
	Any ideas?
	Oh yeah, that would be the 300 miles of terror tunnels that Hamas built underneath the Gaza Strip, leading to the complete destruction of the Gaza Strip after October 7th.
	So, just slow clap for the geniuses in the permanent bureaucratic state.
	That meme where it shows...
	Iron Dome going up and it says funded by American taxpayer dollars.
	And then it shows the rockets coming from Gaza and it says somehow also funded by American taxpayer dollars.
	And then it's the tunnels underneath.
	It says somehow also my taxpayer dollars.
	Yup.
	That is what the government is filled with.
	That sort of crap that needs to be wiped out.
	And people don't like it.
	And if Democrats wish to go out on a limb and suggest that Americans are somehow going to object to cuts to this, good luck with that.
	Samantha Power, one of the worst foreign policy officials of my lifetime, She's supposedly the anti-genocide activist who fully stood aside while Joe Biden turned over Afghanistan to the Taliban.
	She's just awful, Samantha Power, in every possible way.
	She was on CNN to decry the cuts to USAID. This is devastating and it is ceding the field as well to the People's Republic of China.
	To the Russian Federation and other malign actors who would like nothing more than to see the U.S. ground game in American foreign policy, the face of American values, disappear like this.
	You think this is a victory for dictators, autocratic regimes around the world who are competing with the U.S. in Africa, in South America, all around the world for influence?
	What's not even an opinion, they are out relishing this moment and celebrating it.
	So, she's ridiculous.
	The Biden administration was ridiculous.
	The Obama administration was ridiculous.
	You guys built it.
	I'm sorry that you wasted all of our money on actual terrorist projects in many ways.
	Now it's all going away.
	Joe Rogan, I think, speaks for Americans when he says, yeah, no, what we're really cutting here, what Trump and Musk are doing here is just cutting stupid nonsense.
	I think this is pretty commonsensical from Joe.
	You're seeing a politician, a president, who's coming in who can't get reelected, so he's just going ham.
	And he's just cleaning out everything.
	And people are freaking out.
	The same people that say, we need radical change.
	We need radical change.
	We've got corruption.
	We need radical change.
	Okay, well, here's your radical change.
	We don't need this.
	But you do.
	The government does.
	They need oversight.
	And they haven't had that.
	And because of that, you're seeing this.
	Not just waste.
	You could call it waste, but it's deeper.
	It's deeper than waste.
	It's corruption.
	And you're seeing that corruption get weeded out.
	I am hoping that this is successful and that it yields a benefit to the American people, to the working class people, to everybody, where they recognize, like, hey, we can't just be spending all our f***ing tax money on nonsense.
	That is right.
	That, of course, is exactly right.
	Well, speaking of the Department of Government Efficiency, joining us on the line is Luke Rosiak.
	He's an investigative reporter for The Daily Wire and our brand new Doge reporter over at the White House.
	Luke, thanks so much for joining the program.
	Thanks for having me, Ben.
	So, Luke, let's talk about your recent article about...
	How sort of the groundwork was set for Doge.
	Democrats are trying to claim over and over that something unprecedented is being done with the Department of Government Efficiency, that you have a bunch of unelected people who are worming their way into government and making cuts.
	What's the actual origin of the powers that preexisted Doge?
	It's a pretty funny story.
	Democrats basically spent 10 years building the biggest rake you've ever seen and then stomped on it.
	So it kind of starts in 2014. Obama creates something called the U.S. Digital Service that is designed to hire people from Silicon Valley and exempt them from many of the federal rules.
	And then through the first Trump administration, they convince Trump that these are civil servants that should be left alone to be independent.
	And they use that status to basically completely undermine him, doing completely ridiculous things, leftist activism from within the Trump executive office of the president.
	And Biden comes in and he dispenses with the pretense of nonpartisanship.
	And he just blatantly makes it subject to the power of a political appointee.
	So he basically loads a gun and then they hand it to Elon Musk.
	So this is definitely one of the greatest cell phones of all time.
	And then on top of that, just the things that they were doing inside of the Trump U.S. digital service, kind of without his knowledge, but right underneath his nose, are truly shocking.
	They were hiring transgender activists.
	They were hiring multiple people from websites, if you can believe it.
	They had somebody called a kink-aware professional on staff.
	And this is all happening in Trump's payroll.
	They're going to DEI conferences and sending an entire panel of lesbians who work there.
	They hired somebody from a gender studies department who then sent an email to staff in the executive office of the president in Trump's presidency lecturing them about white cis.
	Privilege and toxic masculinity.
	So basically, Trump was very kind to these people.
	He wanted to give them space to operate as civil servants, and they kind of took his kindness as weakness.
	So there's a lot of lessons here, but I think the betrayal that USDS kind of committed in Trump's first term is definitely informing the way that he's going to come in and look at how Biden used and Trump and Obama used these agencies in a more partisan way, and naturally say...
	It only seems fair to do the same thing.
	And so he's bringing in people like, you know, it's, yeah, so I'll leave it there on that part, but there's so many examples I could go on and on about basically how they operated a left-wing activism outfit in Trump's White House and basically set up this whole thing.
	And now what Elon Musk is doing with it is not all that dissimilar from how Barack Obama set it up in 2014. Yeah, and this is one of the things that I find so hilarious about the entire Democratic take on Doge.
	What they're very upset about is the idea that a quote-unquote unelected bureaucrat who is unaccountable to, say, the legislative branch is now going through their giant unelected bureaucracy that they created as essentially a permanent taxpayer money-funded scam to send cash out the door to a variety of their own friends in sort of blue non-governmental organizations.
	Across the world, they set up essentially a permanent funding pipeline from places like USAID to all of their friends, run by all of their friends, and now they're upset that somebody is coming in and cutting all of that, and they're claiming that somehow this is opposition to the American people.
	Well, actually, no.
	You guys, as you say, set up the rake, and now you've stepped on it.
	Yeah, and I think one of the things that really threatens Elon, really makes Democrats scared of Elon, is that he's an outsider.
	And I think about even this role that, you know, where the Daily Wire is now naming me the government efficiency reporter.
	In some ways, I've been around Washington for a while.
	My original mentor back in the day was Tom Coburn, a senator who was called Dr. No because he basically called out spending and shut down so much wasteful spending.
	And he actually created the website usaspending.gov for exactly the kind of thing we're now seeing.
	But nobody really looked at it for about 15 years.
	It was all out there, but nobody was really using it.
	And now what we have is, I just feel like a kid waking up on Christmas morning because people are suddenly using this website for exactly what they wanted them to.
	I almost wish Tom Coburn was still alive to see it.
	He would be so excited.
	But, you know, some of the things they're finding as outsiders...
	We've kind of known about, those of us who have followed Washington for years, some of it we knew about, but we just felt like we couldn't change.
	We didn't like it, but we just were jaded and pessimistic, and we were told that nothing could ever change.
	And what you have is these outsiders like Elon, who are coming in with his merry band of 20-year-olds, and kind of waltzing into the parade and pointing at the emperor and saying, hey, why does that dude have no clothes?
	And those of us who have kind of been in the alphabet soup of D.C. jargon for a long time, You know, you're right.
	It doesn't have to be this way.
	So it's just incredible to see people using this USA spending, finding all the USAID stuff that you're mentioning, and there's so much more.
	Once in a while, these people who are just random people all over America who are exploring how taxpayers are spending their money, they're finding that bureaucrats spend your money in ways that they would never spend their own money.
	And once in a while, these new people that are poking around this data, they make mistakes because they don't know how government works.
	But most of the time, the fact that they don't know how government works is an incredible superpower.
	It lets them look at things with fresh eyes.
	And so where we may have had in the sort of old conservative movement a certain despondency and, you know, sort of resignation, what they have is righteous indignation, and they have optimism.
	And we've never had those two things at once.
	Well, that's Luke Rosiak, investigative reporter for The Daily Wire.
	He's following what Doge is doing on a daily basis.
	Look, really appreciate the time and the insight.
	Thank you, Ben.
	And meanwhile, President Trump is moving forward with another series of executive orders.
	I think one of the things that Democrats are finding so discombobulating about the Trump administration, they are moving so unbelievably fast.
	It's a headline at a minimum.
	The minute Democrats think that they've got their arms around, for example, the cuts to USAID, Trump announces a plan for investment in the Gaza Strip after Israel.
	Clears the place.
	And after Palestinians who want to leave are allowed to leave and not live in an awful hellhole.
	And then they start going, freaking out on that.
	And within 24 hours, Trump is releasing an executive order to ban men from women's sports.
	And so they freak out about that.
	And then within 24 hours, Trump is releasing executive orders to eradicate, for example, anti-Christian bias.
	That was an executive order put out yesterday.
	Quote, it is the policy of the United States and the purpose of this order to protect the religious freedoms of Americans and end the anti-Christian weaponization of government.
	The founders established a nation in which people were free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or retaliation by their government.
	The previous administration engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians while ignoring violent anti-Christian offenses.
	The Biden DOJ sought to squelch faith in the public square by bringing federal criminal charges and obtaining in numerous cases multi-year prison sentences against nearly two dozen peaceful pro-life Christians for praying and demonstrating outside abortion facilities.
	Those convicted included a Catholic priest and 75-year-old grandmother.
	At the same time, Catholic churches, charities and pro-life centers sought justice for violence, theft and arson perpetrated against them.
	The Biden DOJ largely ignored them.
	After more than 100 attacks, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning this violence and calling on the Biden administration to enforce the law.
	Then, in 2023, the FBI asserted that radical traditionalist Catholics were domestic terrorism threats and suggested infiltrating Catholic churches as a threat mitigation.
	The Biden administration sought to repeal religious liberty protections for faith-based organizations on college campuses.
	In this atmosphere of anti-Christian government, hostility and vandalism against Christian churches in places of worship surged.
	My administration will not tolerate anti-Christian weaponization of government or unlawful conduct targeting Christians.
	Hey, this is right.
	This is all exactly right, of course.
	And so the media are going to go nuts over that.
	And if they're not going to go nuts over that, maybe they'll go nuts over Trump signing an executive order to sanction the International Criminal Court.
	A wretched hive of scum and villainy in which the worst people on earth set up fake legal standards in order to prosecute people for not breaking the law.
	The order includes both financial sanctions and visa restrictions against unspecified ICC officials and their family members found to have assisted in investigations of U.S. citizens.
	Our allies, the United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court, nor should we be, because it would make all American soldiers subject to the predations of the International Criminal Court run by corrupt nations like South Africa, for example.
	So, the United States is now going to go after the ICC and threaten to sanction members of the ICC. Again, the movement here is coming fast and furious from the Trump administration.
	And Democrats do not know how to handle it.
	The world is reshaping itself around much of the action being taken.
	So, for example, yesterday, in the aftermath of President Trump issuing an executive order banning men in women's sports under Title IX, the NCAA announced that trans women will be barred from competing in NCAA women's college sports.
	So the NCAA has acted with alacrity, they've moved, and they are now reflecting the administration of the law that men don't get to play with the ladies in sports.
	They were so radically anti-woman that they were going to allow big balls to play with the women.
	They won't allow a dude named big balls online to cut government.
	They will allow a dude with big balls to swim with the ladies.
	That was your fault, guys.
	You decided that you were going to take the 20 side of an 80-20 issue and now you got the sharp end of the stick.
	Sorry that happened to you.
	Sorry that reality hit you that way.
	Meanwhile, President Trump is attempting to broker a tax deal to re-enshrine permanently.
	The Trump tax cuts from his first term.
	According to Axios, the priorities include renewal of the 2017 tax cut bill, adjustments to the SALT cap.
	Now, the SALT cap is essentially deductions that you can take if you live in a high-tax state against your federal income tax.
	It lowers receipts to the federal government.
	It's something I'm against.
	I don't think that we should actually adjust the SALT cap.
	I understand that President Trump is making a move here to effectively cut taxes for people in blue states.
	Presumably, he is hoping to make those states more competitive politically.
	The reality is that you should pay the same federal tax whether you live in California or in Florida.
	The reason being that you should not get me to subsidize you.
	If I live in a low-tax state and you live in a high-tax state, why should I have to subsidize you because you live in a state that has bad tax law?
	I know.
	I lived in a state with bad tax law for years.
	The Trump tax cuts actually hurt me personally.
	Because I was living in California and the SALT deduction went away.
	He wants to restore that.
	He also wants to eliminate special tax breaks for sports team owners, which makes perfect sense.
	He wants to close the so-called carried interest tax deduction, which allows partners of investment firms to pay a lower tax rate on a portion of their profits.
	So he's doing some populist things with the tax bill.
	No tax on tips, ending taxes on social security benefits.
	All of that wrapped into a bigger tax package.
	Republicans seem to be drawing closer on the tax deal.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, House Republicans wrapped up a more than four-hour meeting at the White House on Thursday saying they had closed gaps in their own internal disagreements over extending expiring tax cuts and cutting spending and indicated details of the deal could be announced as soon as Friday.
	House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said, we had a very productive meeting.
	We are narrowing down the areas of difference.
	They're having to bring a bunch of different factions together.
	Those include the House Freedom Caucus, which is worried about budget deficits.
	And wants to cut costs in Medicaid.
	New Yorkers who want to increase the cap on SALT deductions.
	House Republicans had been discussing a five-year extension of expiring tax cuts instead of permanence as a way to limit the total cost of the bill.
	On Thursday, Scalise said it would be possible some portions of the tax cut would be permanent, while others would not be.
	It is also unclear what exactly is going to end up in the final bill.
	Is this going to end up as one big bill that includes border security, that includes defense, or is this going to end up as two separate bills, one for taxes and one...
	The sort of high-risk strategy is to go for two separate bills under reconciliation.
	The reason that's high-risk is because basically no Congress has ever used reconciliation two times in one year to get a big bill through.
	The upside of doing it as two separate bills is you're guaranteed pretty well that one half gets through and that that half is better than it would be if it were included in a broader bill.
	The downside is you don't get the whole thing.
	So basically your choice is between two better sandwiches, one of which you may not get, And one giant sandwich that has more bad stuff in it, but more good stuff in it as well.
	That's essentially the metaphor or analogy to use when you're thinking of how House Republicans are putting this thing together.
	Unclear how it all comes together, but it does seem to be coming together pretty quickly here.
	And we are only, again, 19 days in to the Trump administration, part two.
	All right, coming up on the show, we have a lot to get to.
	I've been taking a look at this new Mr. B show on Amazon.
	The left seems to be suggesting that it's a critique of capitalism.
	I will explain why that is not true.
	The big game is coming up.
	There's some commentary on it.
	Emily Austin joins us to talk about it.
	Plus, Kanye, man, he's back at it.
	You know, like, the Twitter is hot.
	We'll talk about that as well.
	First, at The Daily Wire, we don't just watch culture, we build it.
	And now, we're building the future with AI. So yesterday, Jeremy Boring dropped the first ever fully AI-produced Jeremy's Razors commercial.
	If you haven't seen it yet, good news.
	We're going to show it to you right now.
	Take a look.
	A tale is told of a star that fell in the days when men were hair-covered brutes roaming the earth.
	This shard of celestial steel was unlike anything early man had ever encountered.
	And from those five fortuitous stainless steel blades came the world's first smooth, silky shave.
	And it was in that moment, manliness burst into existence.
	This blade charged forward through the ages of steel and dragonfire.
	Great conquerors slew tyrants.
	Founding fathers revolted.
	And as men's manes were tamed, so they tamed the wild frontier.
	Also, Steve used it to get a good shave.
	And he's a pretty solid guy.
	But as power often breeds enemies, so a wild-bearded philosopher despised the blade for its glorious manly freedom.
	This enemy of clean shaves bore the razor to a fiery peak and cast it in.
	The blade was gone.
	A dark age of unmanliness ensued.
	An age of men wearing buns, drinking vegan milkshakes, and wearing really tight pants and acting like a bunch of crybaby commies.
	Until one day, the great archaeologist and CEO Jeremy Boring went on a dangerous quest on which many before had perished.
	Through seas, mountains, and deepest catacombs, he found the blade still sharp as starlight.
	His mission was to restore the blade to mankind and thereby restore manliness.
	Will my razor make you as manly as the actual greatest man in all of human history?
	I guarantee it will.
	In the most emphatic way that isn't legally binding.
	Hey.
	At least you'll be as manly as Steve.
	Jeremy's Razors, carve out your legacy.
	Okay, I showed this to my 11-year-old daughter, and she laughed really, really hard at it.
	She particularly liked the kicking of the bear at the end.
	So here's the thing.
	AI is awesome.
	We didn't fire anybody in order to create this commercial.
	AI is here to create awesome things that you couldn't actually...
	You know, create in real life.
	Like, for example, people carrying razors while fighting dragons and or people kicking bears safely.
	But you still have to shave the old-fashioned way.
	So do it with Jeremy's Razors.
	Head on over to jeremysrazors.com right now.
	Get that second-gen razor and embrace the future.
	Joining us on the line is Emily Austin, a rising star in the sports broadcasting world to talk.
	Big game.
	So, Emily, let's start with this.
	Who's your pick for the big game?
	What's the over-under?
	It's Eagles versus Chiefs.
	And again, the NFL clearly wants the Chiefs to win.
	I mean, that's pretty obvious.
	But what's your take?
	Obviously, the script wants the Chiefs to win.
	No, I'm joking.
	I genuinely do believe the Chiefs will win, but I wouldn't sleep on the Eagles either because I think nothing motivates somebody more than revenge.
	And they're trying for that comeback from 2023 and trying to prove, look, we're still in this game.
	I mean, obviously, you're in the Super Bowl.
	You are.
	But for the plot, I want the Chiefs to win.
	I don't think it'll be by a lot.
	I think it'll be by the spread, which is about like one and a half, so two points.
	Okay, so let's talk about all the ancillary issues that always surround the big game every year.
	So apparently one of the things that the NFL is doing, they had end racism in the end zone for the last Super Bowl.
	They've removed that.
	They're now putting choose love in the end zone or maybe the coexist bumper sticker or something.
	Assume this means that racism has been ended since now it's no longer going to appear in the end zones.
	What was the motivating force behind the NFL removing end racism and instead substituting choose love?
	I think the motivating force was Trump is bringing a return to normalcy in the world.
	I wish the NBA could possibly take notes on what the NFL is doing.
	The problem is that, Ben, racism is a really good marketing technique to put people in that victimhood mentality.
	And what better place to do it than what's predominantly a black sport?
	So it's a good marketing tool, but it's not the reality.
	In fact, there are bigger problems in the country than racism.
	I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it's not the biggest deal.
	And it's not so prominent the way the NBA and the NFL made it seem over the last few years.
	So meanwhile, President Trump...
	is going to do the Super Bowl interview.
	Famously, Joe Biden did not last year, mainly because he was not alive at the time, unfortunately, and so he was not capable of doing the Super Bowl interview.
	Now, President Trump has been everywhere.
	He's extraordinarily high energy.
	I mean, the man's nearly 80, and he is just, I mean, he's doing a presser basically every single day.
	He put out a truth, saying, quote, two great quarterbacks in this game, also an unbelievable running back, and the absolute best tight end in football ever.
	Incredible coaching.
	They would only get rid of that really weird...
	Looking, a new kickoff deal, which actually makes football more dangerous.
	They'll be doing everybody, especially the fans, a big favor.
	Anyway, it will be a great game.
	I'll be doing the interview before the game at 3 p.m.
	There hasn't been one in four years.
	Gee, I wonder why.
	So what are you expecting from the president of the United States?
	I know the president was utilizing Grok to get all the spark notes on who's in this game and what.
	But I think there's nothing more patriotic than a president attending the Super Bowl.
	The fact that Biden hasn't done it over the last four years just speaks to what his presidency was.
	You never felt more of a lack of pride in your country than under the Biden administration.
	If you're an American president and you have the annual biggest sporting event of the year with the highest ratings, there is no excuse for you not to be there.
	In fact, this is going to really stir the pot this morning on X. But Travis Kelsey even said that he's honored or flattered that the president will be in attendance because he's the commander-in-chief of the United States.
	It makes perfect sense.
	You know, the fact that the entire sort of pop culture world has decided that it's acceptable to now say that you like President Trump or you're at least lukewarm toward President Trump is an amazing, amazing shift.
	Well, you mentioned Kelsey, which means, of course, the over-under on how many times Taylor Swift will be shown live is currently at six and a half.
	You're my betting advisor.
	Do we take the over or the under on six and a half for live shots of Taylor Swift reacting to the game?
	This is a very serious bet, so I'm going to break it down for you.
	There's about four quarters.
	We know that there's the halftime show.
	Taylor, of course, is not performing.
	That would have been iconic.
	She rejected that.
	So I say in between each quarter, they show her in blimps, assuming how she'll react to Kelsey's performance, especially if he does outstanding or bad.
	I'm assuming he'll be great.
	So that's...
	Four times.
	Let's just say they stick her in there after they win or lose.
	That's five times.
	And arguably even once during halftime, that's six times.
	That's still under six and a half.
	I don't think they'll go over because, truth be told, the NFL fans are not happy with Taylor Swift hijacking the entire season's narrative.
	It's actually downplaying Kelsey as a player, and it's bringing a lot of that...
	Drama, including a lot of Democrat drama with her endorsement with Kamala to the sport that they didn't need.
	So I'm going under six and a half.
	Alrighty, and final Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey related question.
	Are we going to see some sort of live proposal on the field after the game if the Chiefs win?
	That was the speculation.
	Last year, it didn't end up happening.
	They're still dating, which is a shock, frankly.
	But listen, it either ends in a marriage or it ends in an album.
	So either way.
	I suppose the American people win since they seem to like Taylor Swift.
	So which side of that bet do you take?
	Does Kelsey propose to Taylor Swift on the field?
	I don't think so.
	Honestly, I'm second-guessing my whole life this morning when it comes to pop culture.
	If Taylor really endorsed Kamala and Kelsey's saying he's honored to have Trump at the game, I could never marry a Democrat.
	Can they work through those political issues within their marriage?
	I don't know.
	But maybe the Democrats just gave her $500 billion to endorse Kamala.
	Who knows?
	But now I'm starting to question if they're even going to last at all.
	So I don't think there will be a proposal then.
	Wow.
	That is a sad end to our time together.
	That's Emily Austin.
	You can go check out all of her work over on X and also at YouTube.
	Emily, really appreciate the insight into the big game.
	Hope you have a great Sunday.
	Thank you.
	Well, meanwhile, Kanye West is back at it, and he is over on Twitter doing things again.
	Now, a wise man once said about Kanye West, live by the Kanye, die by the Kanye.
	That wise man was me, and that was in 2018. There are some who decided that, in fact, Kanye was a deeply wise and trustworthy individual and, in fact, should be a hero to people on the right.
	Now, there are two things that are possible to say about Kanye West.
	One is that he's mentally ill, and he clearly is mentally ill.
	He clearly is bipolar.
	He's manic-depressive.
	He now says that he's not manic-depressive, that he's actually autistic.
	Okay, sure.
	Autism is now being used as a catch-all term for pretty much any strange behavior out there, like all of it.
	I'd love to see a medical diagnosis, but if there's a mental problem, then he is not totally responsible for his actions, which might explain why he does evil things.
	But it's not responsible for those.
	The other possibility is that actually, he's not mentally ill.
	And that he ought to be taken seriously, which is an argument made by many people on the right.
	Okay, if he's not mentally ill, and we ought to take him seriously, then he's evil.
	And he's an evil person.
	Because I don't know what else to make of a person who trots his wife out stark naked in front of the cameras, has suggested starting a company, shows pictures to people who work with him, and proclaims himself a Nazi.
	Those seem like not amazing behaviors.
	Well, he took two.
	X again today and was manically tweeting over and over and over.
	Everything from tweets about Bianca Sensori, his nude wife, to Adolf Hitler.
	Quote, Hitler was so fresh, according to Ye, who undoubtedly would have been murdered by Hitler.
	Quote, call me Yadolf Yitler and your bitch still wants to F. It's this sort of genius that made him world famous, obviously.
	I'm going to normalize talking about Hitler the way they're talking about killing N-words has been normalized.
	When was...
	I'm just confused when it was normalized to talk about killing N-words.
	By whom and why?
	Quote, I'm cold when I feel an ounce of feelings.
	O-N-C-E. A ounce of feelings.
	I assume it means ounce.
	I stand still and hold my eyes open like a psychopath till that feeling of feeling anything goes away.
	I have no heartstrings.
	People pull at your heartstrings to control.
	People use your feelings against you.
	I can say Jew as much as I want.
	I can say Hitler as much as I want.
	Matter of fact, I do say it when I want.
	Well, I mean, I think we all have the capacity to say both Hitler and Jew as many times as we want.
	But, yeah, I think it's kind of what you say.
	By the way, he's now come out in favor of P. Diddy.
	So just in case, if you're wondering if there are any evil people he's not siding with, The alleged...
	He's apparently in on that one.
	Quote, Puff, get one call a morning.
	All right.
	Free Puff.
	Okay.
	Very strong stuff from Kanye West this morning.
	At least he's saying the obvious part.
	Quote, I channeled Andrew Tate on a few of these tweets.
	Yeah, we know, my bro.
	We know.
	We know.
	So, good times.
	And he did have some commentary about his naked wife defending her being naked.
	Quote, anyone who's called my wife's Grammy look a stunt is dumb and lame.
	Well, I mean, what else would you call it?
	The best characterization of it is a stunt.
	If she did it sincerely, then she has a screw loose.
	People don't walk around naked in public if they don't have a screw loose.
	Anyone who called my wife's Grammy look a stunts is dumb and lame, says Kanye West.
	Yes, you.
	She's been dressing naked for two years.
	Okay, first of all, I want to logic out what it means to dress naked.
	I feel like that's oxymoronic.
	She's been dressing naked for two years.
	That's strange.
	Those are the options.
	Anyway, now all of a sudden it's a stunt.
	Every single...
	On the planet, wish they had her bravery, body, platform, and access to money, and a husband that supported their personal expression.
	There are a lot of things that had to converge for this moment to happen.
	Actually, it turns out that to be naked requires no things to converge.
	People do it all the time.
	It's crazy.
	From showering to babies having their diapers changed, it happens literally all the time without anything converging.
	In fact, the fewest things in all of human history have to converge in order for people to be naked.
	The Bible opens with people being naked in a garden.
	Like, it turns out, you don't need any preconditions whatsoever to be naked.
	It takes a civilization in order to get dressed.
	Okay, why is this important?
	The reason this is important is because a bunch of people took this guy seriously for years.
	For years.
	And when you sign up for the ride, you take the whole ride with the whole ticket.
	So perhaps people ought to be a little bit more discriminating about whom they choose to emulate as heroes.
	Transgressivism.
	Violation of the norms.
	Sometimes that can be useful if the norm is bad.
	But that does not mean that all transgressive behavior is normal or decent, because it really, really is not.
	So, solid stuff there from Ye.
	And we look forward to his new collab with Diddy, I suppose.
	Or at least some people will.
	Alrighty.
	Meanwhile, I've been informed that we need to do an analysis of the biggest hit on Amazon, Mr. Beast's show, over on Amazon.
	So, this is kind of fascinating.
	It's called Beast Games.
	And full disclosure, I know some of the people associated with making the show.
	Beast Games is, I will say, it's got like a 13% critics rating.
	It is highly watchable, like really watchable.
	It's kind of real-life Squid Games.
	And there are a bunch of various sort of cultural analyses that have been done of Beast Games.
	The most common one that I've seen is that it's a critique of capitalism.
	First of all, let me explain.
	It is absolutely not a critique of capitalism.
	In fact, the setup for the show is the opposite of capitalism.
	The setup is that 1,000 contestants compete in physical, mental, and social challenges for a chance to win a $5 million cash prize, a $1.8 million private island, and more.
	And so, that's not capitalism.
	Because it's a, definitionally, a zero-sum game.
	Capitalism is not a zero-sum game.
	Capitalism is the opposite of a zero-sum game.
	It's also not like capitalism in that it is not an iterative game.
	Meaning, you're in or you're out.
	The thing about capitalism is if you cheat somebody in a capitalist system, You can cheat one guy, but you really can't cheat like five, because if you keep cheating people over and over, they stop doing business with you.
	It's one of the great disincentives to cheat people under capitalism.
	This is a point that's been made by Adam Smith, is that capitalism, as practiced, actually makes you more ethical in business, because you need to give somebody a product that they want, and it can't malfunction, because if it malfunctions, they're not going to buy from you again.
	So there are a bunch of distinctions between what you're watching here and capitalism.
	The left likes to think that capitalism is a zero-sum game, that it's a bunch of people competing for a bag of cash.
	That's not what capitalism is.
	In fact, capitalism makes everybody richer.
	This is much more like communism, where you have a bag of cash, and then the question is just how that cash gets divided up.
	And predictably, when it comes to a bag of cash and how it gets divided up, it turns out that the people who are the most scurrilous and underhanded are the people who are going to be the most likely to have the Dasha on the water, and everybody else is going to get victimized by those people.
	It turns out that human nature is to maximize the return to you at the cost of somebody else unless all boats are rising.
	That is just human nature.
	You're going to defend yourself and your family before you defend other people.
	That is just the way of human nature.
	Greed is a universal human phenomenon.
	Pretending it away doesn't make it go away.
	The great lie of communism is that if you have a grab bag of cash, magically greed will just disappear if you force everybody to take the same amount.
	And it's a lie and it never works because human nature is still human nature.
	The only thing that can get past human greed is mutual dependence, which is what capitalism creates.
	Free trade, mutual dependence, free exchange.
	That's the sort of stuff that creates better behavior and creates an incentive structure that leads you to channel your particular greed toward actually helping somebody else because you're not going to get what you want unless you give somebody else what they want.
	I've described capitalism as effectively forced altruism and that's correct.
	So, I'm putting that out there because there have been a bunch of articles that are basically suggesting that the Beast games are a sort of critique of capitalism.
	That's only if you really, really don't understand capitalism.
	If you understand that this isn't capitalism, it's a grab bag of cash, then basically, all of Beast games can be reduced to a repeated iteration of the Prisoner's Dilemma.
	Let's talk about what this game looks like.
	It's the Prisoner's Dilemma.
	So, for those of you who don't know some game theory, basic game theory, game theory is basically an attempt to quantify How decisions get made based on available possible outcomes.
	So the perfect example of a sort of game theory is Prisoner's Dilemma.
	So Prisoner's Dilemma is a situation where you have two guys who commit a crime together.
	One of them is brought into one room by the cops.
	The other is brought into another room by the cops.
	And they are given a series of options.
	They're each told.
	You can confess or you can stay quiet.
	Now, if you stay quiet and your partner confesses, That is the worst case outcome for you.
	You refuse to talk to the cops and your partner confesses, then you are going to get 10 years in prison and your partner gets zero because he gets the benefit.
	He flipped on you, but you didn't flip on anybody.
	So you get the maximum sentence.
	You get a 10-year sentence.
	If you both stay quiet, then you both go to jail for a year.
	If you both confess, then you're both going to jail for six years.
	So the question is, where are you going to end up?
	And the answer is, it depends on how much you trust your partner.
	Here is that drawn out, right?
	You have player one over here.
	He has two options.
	To confess or to stay quiet.
	Player two also has two options.
	To confess or to stay quiet.
	If they both confess, they both get six years.
	If they both stay quiet, they both get one year in prison.
	If you confess and the other guy stays quiet, then you get zero years and he gets ten years.
	And the precise opposite is true if your partner does that to you.
	So, the most obvious...
	Outcome, typically, is that everybody sort of loses because you don't want the tenure sentence.
	If you don't trust your partner a lot that he's going to shut up, if he ain't your brother or something, you are immediately going to confess, and so will he, and then you're going to end up in this box, right?
	That is the equilibrium.
	That's where everybody's going to end up, typically speaking.
	Okay, the reason that I bring this up is because when you look at sort of the outcome of these various games, they match that sort of human behavior.
	So much of this show is kind of fascinating just because it is a...
	It is a way of assessing in real life sort of Bayesian risk calculations.
	I want to go through some of them because, again, I think people are reading the show wrong.
	They're reading it as sort of critique of culture and there is some of that in here.
	They have a bunch of Gen Z morons who somehow are of the opinion that they're best friends with everybody and so they keep getting screwed like over and over and over.
	They keep doing the thing where they stay quiet and then the Gen Xer is like, I don't even know you, bro.
	I don't even know you, bro.
	And so the player, Who ends up staying quiet, the Gen Zer, ends up here in sort of the quiet box and ends up getting 10 years in prison.
	And meanwhile, the Gen Xer is like, I don't know you, bro.
	I'm going to confess.
	And he ends up getting the benefit of that particular bargain.
	So the answer there is Gen Zers are naive about the world and they've been misinformed as to how humanity actually works.
	But there are some other sort of interesting Bayesian situations that arise here, risk calculation situations that arise here.
	So let's go through some of them.
	The first episode involves the sacrifice of a team member.
	Okay, so this is the first challenge.
	The contestants are teamed up by row.
	One player from each row has to eliminate or sacrifice themselves so the rest of their row can move on.
	The last three rows standing that have not eliminated someone are all eliminated.
	Okay, so if everyone refuses to sacrifice themselves, then the entire row is eliminated.
	One person has to throw themselves on the grenade, for example.
	As you'll see, many of the rows end up being eliminated.
	Three of the rows end up being eliminated because nobody sacrifices themselves because why would you?
	Your expected outcome then is zero.
	And so here's what it looked like.
	One more thing.
	This game has already started.
	And it will not end until the last three rows to eliminate someone will all be eliminated together.
	Only nine of the 12 rows will be moving on.
	Come on!
	Click it, click it, click it!
	Come on!
	Oh!
	Whoa!
	That was good!
	Come on, come on!
	Let's go!
	Save!
	Congrats!
	Come on, come on!
	Please!
	Please!
	Let's go!
	Come on, guys!
	And we're all gonna go!
	Press it!
	Press it!
	We're all two!
	Okay, so, um, some people are hitting it and taking the hit for the team.
	Everybody's yelling at other people.
	But why would you sacrifice yourself for the team?
	The reason, again, that people aren't doing it is because of the prisoner's dilemma.
	You don't want to be the guy.
	This is a clear case where you take the hit and you go to jail and everybody else gets to stay.
	Why would you possibly do that?
	There's no upside for you other than maybe a couple of seconds on camera as the supposed hero.
	So again, is that an expose of capitalism?
	This has nothing to do with capitalism.
	This has to do with basic human motivation.
	Meanwhile, next episode, episode two, there is a challenge in which team leaders are given an opportunity.
	They get to receive a million dollars and if they take the million dollars, their team goes home.
	Or, Do not take the million dollars and their team remains.
	Now remember, the big prize is five million bucks.
	I'm just going to put it out here.
	If you were a team leader here and you didn't take the million dollars, you're a moron.
	This is a competitive game.
	There will be one person who wins and many people who lose.
	You're a stupid person if you don't take the million dollars.
	You don't know these people.
	It is a competitive game.
	It doesn't make you self-sacrificial.
	It doesn't make you a saint.
	It doesn't make you a martyr.
	It is the nature of the constructed game as it is.
	Your expected value, if you do not take the million dollars, Is you divided by the entire corpus of people who are left in the game?
	They're like 500 people left in the game.
	So your expected value of the $5 million for 500 people is 1 500th of $5 million.
	Okay, so that is 5 million divided by 500. In other words, 10 grand.
	Okay, so you are giving up a million dollars for a 10 grand expected value.
	So you're an adult if you don't take the million dollars.
	Here's the clip.
	Okay, so people are not taking a million dollars to eliminate their team.
	Why don't they just take the money?
	Just take the money, dude.
	Just take the money.
	They're just so self-sacrificial, or they're being stupid about the nature of gaming.
	If you go to this game in the first place, you should be taking the million dollars.
	You're the winner.
	People don't understand expected value calculations.
	Or they think the social sanction is so strong that they can't take the million dollars.
	Take the million dollars and run, my man.
	That is quite foolish.
	Quite foolish.
	Okay, so another sort of social experiment that was played was episode 8. In this particular episode, There was a bag of cash and contestants were asked sequentially to take money from the bag of cash.
	How much money are you going to take?
	It's like a million dollars in the bag and there are 10 people on each team or there's 10 contestants left at this point in the whole game.
	And how much money do you take?
	Now again, the amount of money that you take is going to determine whether you get eliminated or not.
	If you just go and grab all the cash, presumably everybody then votes to eliminate you because you took all of the cash.
	This is a basic expected value calculation here.
	There are 10 players left, correct?
	Okay, so there are 10 players left.
	There's a million dollars in the bag.
	So you currently have a 1 in 10 shot at winning $5 million.
	Your expected value becomes $500,000.
	This is fun.
	I get to teach basic statistics to folks.
	Fun.
	Okay, so your expected value is now $500,000.
	Or, if you walk in and you take anything more than $500,000, it's guaranteed.
	This means you're a fool not to take more than $500,000 from the bag.
	Because your expected value is now higher than $500,000.
	Only one person was smart enough to do this, and then he was crying about it.
	Why are you crying about it, dude?
	It's a competitive game.
	That's the nature of the game.
	It'd make you a bad person.
	I would have taken the money.
	I would have taken the money.
	Because these people are not on your team.
	They will all be eliminated.
	Again, this is not like capitalism, and it's not like your church.
	It's not like your family.
	You don't know these people.
	The bizarre attempt by the producers to sort of create this, oh, you're part of a community now.
	You have a stake in these people.
	You love them, and they love you.
	Ah!
	So only one dude played this game correctly.
	Oh, wow.
	If you had to pick one person out of the ten people remaining, you're like, I feel like they would take more than ten percent.
	I genuinely don't think anyone would.
	Because we've all come so far for a reason, so we're all deserving of this, and anyone who is ill-intent coming in or has sabotaged anyone else is already out.
	$677,000 remains.
	Oh, you naive child.
	I didn't expect that at all.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	This is guaranteed money.
	This is your money?
	I would pay off my mortgage and my debt.
	How much is that?
	A lot.
	Do you feel comfortable sharing?
	With mortgage, credit cards, loans, I probably owe about 530. Whoa!
	You can take exactly what you need to pay off all your debt.
	JC, I trust more than anyone here because he was in my red cute box challenge with me.
	In such a short amount of time, I've grown to love you guys like if you were my daughters.
	I told you that I didn't want to take care of you.
	But I don't know what to do right now.
	And he said he'd take me to the top, and now I'm number four.
	See, that's the schmucky part.
	Don't pretend that they're like your daughters.
	They're not.
	You don't know these people.
	I trust every one of them.
	I know I'm going to have a target on my back, but I'm not guaranteed the five million either.
	It's a competition show.
	See, people are going to watch me and my take on this, and they're going to be like, how dare you be so cruel?
	It's a competition show.
	This is like saying that Patrick Mahomes should deliberately throw interceptions to achieve fairness in the Super Bowl.
	It is a competition show.
	There are winners and there are losers.
	If you don't buy into the premise of the show, don't go on the show.
	If you went on the show to make friends, you need to have a better life.
	That's all.
	The latest episode of Beast Game, episode number nine.
	Player 566 was sent home in this episode.
	So, there are six players left.
	And Mr. Beast gave the final six contestants a chance to flip a coin to double the money available, making it $10 million available to the pool, as opposed to $5 million.
	If you flip wrong, you're eliminated.
	And the episode ends with somebody flipping the coin, but you don't see what happens.
	Okay, now, again, it is perfectly rational to both flip the coin and not flip the coin.
	Either decision is perfectly rational.
	Basic expected return calculation here.
	You have a 1 in 6 chance of winning $5 million, or you have a 1 in 12 chance of winning $10 million.
	Okay, that's the same expected value.
	So whether you flip the coin or whether you don't flip the coin, just in terms of risk assessment, it's irrelevant.
	Your expected value at the end, It's exactly the same.
	So there's no moral component to that.
	There's nothing that makes you better or worse for flipping the coin or not flipping the coin or even makes you smarter or not as smart for not flipping the coin.
	A Hollywood reporter reports that professional TV reviewers have called this a sad reflection of our modern times.
	One of the most undignified spectacles ever shown on TV. A deafening, joyless cash dash.
	I don't know.
	If you see it as a sort of social experiment that just reveals preferences, then it's kind of interesting that way.
	The only thing that would make it joyless is if you expect that all these people are not in a competition show and really it's like you battling members of your family.
	But it ain't.
	It isn't.
	It'd be a joyless competition show if this was like you doing this to your own kids, not some random people who you're in a stated competition show with.
	Alrighty.
	That's the analysis of Beast Games.
	Alrighty, guys.
	Coming up, we're going to go through a couple of big trailers released this week.
	After all, it's a Friday.
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