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March 4, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show
43:29
Trump’s STATE OF THE UNION Pledge
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Well, folks, tonight, Daily Wire backstage returns live for President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress.
We are covering it all like never before with Matt Walsh and me.
Live from D.C., do not miss the exclusive pre-show at 8.30 p.m.
Eastern, followed by the full address completely uninterrupted.
And when he's done, we're back with a breakdown of what it all means.
Watch with us tonight, 8.30 p.m.
Eastern time on Daily Wire+.
Speaking of which, the President of the United States tonight.
We'll be speaking to a joint session of Congress.
It's not technically a State of the Union address, but it is, in fact, a State of the Union address.
It's just that in your first year, you don't really do that.
In any case, President Trump is going to be saying a lot of things according to his Truth Social quote, all caps.
Tomorrow night will be big.
I will tell it like it is.
Well, I mean, I think we're pretty used to that, so it'll be interesting to see what exactly that encompasses.
But there is a lot happening.
Most of it good.
Some of it dicey.
A lot of it risky.
I think we are all invested in the success of the Trump administration.
We should be.
As Americans, we should be invested in President Trump being a wild success in the economy going up and to the right, in immigration going down, illegal immigration going down, in world security getting stronger.
We should be invested in all of these things because, after all, we are all invested in a better America for everyone.
And again, on many of these things, President Trump's mere presence in the White House has changed things radically.
Most obviously...
With regard to illegal immigration.
So, this was Trump's raison d'etre.
This is the reason he entered politics in the first place in 2015-2016.
It is now a decade later, and President Trump is doing the thing that Democrats said was impossible.
They said, without a giant piece of legislation from Congress, there was, in fact, no way to bring down the rates of illegal immigration.
And then, it turns out, all it took was a president who says he's going to deport illegal immigrants, and the rates of illegal immigration drop effectively to zero.
According to Breitbart.com, a social media post by the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, Michael Banks, shows February apprehensions to be a record low for the agency.
Banks' post reveals the startling impact of the Trump presidency on illegal migration to the United States in the 42 days since assuming office.
Banks posted, quote, February proves our combined efforts in securing the border work.
U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 8,326 illegal aliens at the U.S.-Mexico border, making it the lowest month in recorded history.
That's an insanely low number.
Insanely low.
Remember that there were months during the Biden administration where in excess of 200,000 illegal immigrants were crossing the border every single month.
There were days that were like 8,000, 10,000 illegal immigrants arriving at the border.
That is a drop of 94%.
94% from the 140,000 encountered just one year ago.
Even since December, that is a drop of 82%.
And there's only one reason for that, and that is the presence of President Trump in the White House, Tom Homan, as his borders are.
Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem.
This is an administration that takes illegal immigration very seriously.
And you know what?
Illegal immigrants are not coming.
It turns out all it took was a new president to fix this particular problem.
Meanwhile, there are other percolating problems that President Trump is taking on.
So, there was a big announcement yesterday.
President Trump announced that TSMC... We're good to go.
That Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company will be investing at least $100 billion more in chip manufacturing plants in the United States over the next several years.
TSMC, according to the Wall Street Journal, plans to use the funds to add to its chip manufacturing that's already building in Arizona.
It will construct three new chip plants, two chip packaging plants, and a research and development center, according to Chief Executive C.C. Wei.
Here's President Trump at the White House announcing this yesterday.
Today, Taiwan Semiconductor is announcing that they will be investing at least $100 billion in new capital in the United States over the next short period of time to build state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing facilities.
I think mostly it's going to be in Arizona, which is what I understand, which is a great state.
I like it because I won it.
But I won most of them, actually.
But I did.
We won it, and we won it big.
The most powerful AI chips in the world will be made right here in America.
Again, this is a big win for President Trump.
It follows on a commitment by TSMC to build a chip factory in Arizona for $12 billion back in 2020. President Trump said if they did the chips in Taiwan to send them here, they would have a 25% or 30% or 50% tariff.
It'll only go up.
By doing it here, there are no tariffs.
So the company is now planning to spend a total of $165 billion.
Now, that is good for a couple of reasons.
That is good, number one, obviously, because it creates jobs in the United States.
It is also good because it diversifies the sources of semiconductors.
If, God forbid, the Chinese were to blockade Taiwan, and it's three years from now, presumably TSMC would have set up chip manufacturing facilities in the United States sufficient to prevent the Chinese from essentially shutting down the world economy.
That is a major issue.
Semiconductors are the new oil.
Lack of semiconductors can shut down entire massive industries in the United States.
Everything from your phone to your car to your refrigerator runs on semiconductors.
And so, were China to grab control of TSMC in Taiwan, it would be a world catastrophe.
Diversifying that resource inside the United States is, of course, a good move for the United States.
It also happens to be a good move for TSMC for a couple of reasons.
One, it means that the United States is now invested in making sure that TSMC is not victimized by the Chinese in Taiwan.
President Trump would love to see all this investment.
Move from TSMC in Taiwan to the United States.
But if TSMC in Taiwan stops existing, it's very hard for that money to make the move.
And two, again, when it comes to U.S. domestic production of resources that are actually crucial national security industries, it makes sense to subsidize that production in the United States to reshore it in the United States.
Since the Biden administration, the United States has expressed concerns about TSMC's near monopoly on advanced chip manufacturing and has been urging the company to relocate.
The U.S. supported TSMC's growth through the 2022 Chips Act.
That was a giant subsidy act by the Biden administration.
Now, one of the problems is that it's going to take a while for these factories to come online.
It is not as though the money comes in and magically TSMC is up and running in the United States and Arizona the same way it is up and running in Taiwan.
But looking down the road, the production of these semiconductors is going to be incredibly important.
And again, domestic chip manufacturing capacity is a national security imperative.
So that makes a lot of sense.
Trump said on the campaign trail, quote, Taiwan pretty much has a monopoly on that market.
We must be able to build the chips and semiconductors we need right here in American factories with American skill and American labor, and that's exactly what we are doing.
This, of course, follows very hard on the building of other gigantic AI-based facilities by, for example, OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank.
You remember, just last month, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Oracle, and SoftBank pledged to invest as much as $500 billion into building AI infrastructure in the United States.
Last week, Apple said it planned to spend more than $500 billion and add 20,000 jobs over the next four years domestically to expand its own manufacturing footprint in the United States.
Now, the reality is Apple was already doing some of this.
Apple was already building its domestic manufacturing base, but it gives a win to President Trump, which is a smart piece of politicking by Apple.
That's the good news.
The bad news yesterday is that the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped massively on news that President Trump was interested in reinstating all of these 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped about 1.5%.
At one point, it was down 750 points.
It closed down about 650 points.
And there's a lot of angst, a lot of heartburn over President Trump's announcements about tariffs.
According to the Associated Press, And this is where President Trump does have to walk very carefully.
Inflation killed Joe Biden's presidency.
If you wish to see President Trump be successful, he needs a booming economy.
He cannot have a recessionary economy.
If tariffs continue to drive up prices, and if wages do not increase sufficient to meet those prices, you're going to be in exactly the same predicament.
In which Joe Biden found himself.
Now again, I'm perfectly fine with using tariffs as leverage.
If the goal of a tariff is to get other countries to lower their own tariffs, if the idea is, you have a 25% tariff on our lumber, and now we have to put a 25% tariff on your oil products, and then we trade one for the other, and all the tariffs go away.
I'm perfectly fine with that.
If the idea of a tariff is to threaten, say, the country of Colombia with a 50% tariff in order to get them to take deportees, great.
That is a piece of leverage.
I still am unclear as to what the actual demand is against Mexico or Canada that would get rid of the tariffs.
If the idea of the tariffs is that they are inherently a good for the United States, that is not true.
Tariffs are in fact a tax on American consumers.
They drive up the prices.
President Trump is playing a bit of a risky game when it comes to tariffs.
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Now, again, there may be industries, like, for example, semiconductors, where you need them produced domestically for national security reasons.
They simply can't be produced in China or in any place that is subject to Chinese predation.
I get that, and I'm all for it.
And it's another thing to say that Canada is some sort of deep and abiding national security threat requiring widespread 25% tariffs on Canadian products.
Canada, by the way, is the number one trade partner with the United States.
Here was...
President Trump yesterday saying there's no room left for negotiations.
I wasn't even aware there were negotiations going on.
On the tariffs, is there any room left for Canada and Mexico to make a deal before midnight?
And should we expect those Chinese tariffs, the extra 10% to take?
No room left for Mexico or for Canada.
No, the tariffs, you know, they're all set.
They go into effect tomorrow.
Now, again, I just want to know why.
Like, well, what are we getting out of this?
As American consumers, what do we receive from the tariffs?
I understand the theory.
Which is that there are going to be a lot of companies that reshore inside the United States.
And it's true.
There will be jobs in those industries.
But the thing about tariffs is that they have a discrete beneficiary and they have diffuse victims.
In other words, there's a group of people who benefit from the tariffs and everyone else pays.
It is essentially a subsidy from every other consumer in the United States to people in those industries that are now going to be making more money.
And that is what a tariff actually does.
Which is why, yesterday, Warren Buffett was criticizing tariffs as a general matter.
How do you think tariffs will affect the economy?
I mean, tariffs are actually, we've had a lot of experience with them.
They're an act of war, to some degree.
How do you think tariffs will impact inflation?
Over time, there are attacks on goods.
I mean, you know, the tooth fairy doesn't pay them.
Buffett knows of what he speaks.
The Canadian foreign minister already said, quote, if Trump is imposing tariffs, we're ready.
We're ready with $155 billion worth of tariffs, and we're ready with the first tranche of tariffs, which is $30 billion.
Again, that would be the Canadian foreign minister, Mélenchie Jolie.
She also said that Canada has a very strong border plan and explained that to Trump officials last week.
She said diplomatic efforts are continuing.
So again, if this is again just another gambit by President Trump to get a win out of Canada, that's fine with me.
If, however, This goes back to President Trump's sort of general warmth for tariffs.
That's not good policy.
It just isn't.
The idea, by the way, that tariffs are going to pay off the national debt, that's nonsense.
The amount that tariffs paid last year was something like $80 billion.
The national debt in the United States is $37 trillion.
So, yeah, that is not going to work.
There will be some good headlines that emerge.
So, for example, Honda is now going to produce the next Civic in Indiana, not Mexico, apparently due to U.S. tariffs.
This is according to Reuters.
The change underscores how manufacturers are scrambling to adapt to President Trump's proposed 25% tariffs on goods from both Mexico and Canada.
This is the first concrete measure by a major Japanese car company.
Now, again, that's going to be good for the people who are living in Indiana who get to work at the factories that are making the Honda Civic.
It's not necessarily going to be good for all the American consumers who are now going to be paying more money for the Honda Civic, which is presumably what is going to happen here.
The prices are going to go up.
Mexico has long been a lower-cost production hub for Japanese and other global automakers.
So, reshoring, it does have costs, and we should recognize those costs of which should be realistic about the prospects of the Trump economy.
And again, we need a strong economy from President Trump.
There are some blinking red lights here.
I've been saying for several weeks at this point, really since President Trump took office.
That the number one focus of the Trump administration has to be to get the economy back on track.
What does that mean?
It means productivity increases, yes, through things like AI, but it also means radical deregulation.
Doge has been focused up till now on getting rid of much of the personnel at a wide variety of government agencies.
That's all fine.
That's all great.
I'm glad to get rid of those personnel, although Democrats will just rehire them as soon as they regain power at some point.
What really needs to change is the regulatory and tax structure of the United States.
Which is why it's very important that Trump's tax cuts become permanent.
It's really important that the regulatory state get off the back of the American business person.
Right now, the models that are being utilized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta are showing economic contraction in the first quarter.
The Atlanta Fed's GDP Now model had up until the February 28th update been forecasting growth between 2% and 4% in line with other models.
However, A graph on the GPN Now page lists the blue-chip consensus average of the top 10 and bottom 10 forecast at a slight tick more than 2% U.S. GDP growth for Q1 2025. But the February 28th update of GDP Now saw a plummeting forecast from roughly that same 2% to negative 1.5%.
The model updated Monday with an even more pessimistic outlook, negative 2.8%.
Those are mathematical models.
Now, again, that could be totally wrong.
However, There are a lot of rumblings in the business community that things like tariffs, like the overvaluing of the stock market that has occurred due to the inflationary spiral brought since COVID, that's destined to come down.
I've pointed this out before, but the Magnificent Seven, the top seven companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, those top seven companies have a price to earnings ratio almost of 60. That means the total price of the company.
Compared to the earnings of the company on an annualized basis, 60. That's crazy.
That's completely out of whack.
The entire Dow Jones industrial average at this point has a P-E ratio of about 26. It really needs to be down at about 16. It's too high.
Meanwhile, real estate is also getting stuck.
Because the interest rates remain relatively high by historical standards.
And that means that grandma doesn't want to sell her house because if she sells her house, she's going to have to buy a new house with a worse interest rate.
That means inventory is not actually matching demand.
There are all sorts of problems with the economy.
The administration needs to focus laser-like on that because nothing kills an administration faster than a weak economy.
Joe Biden learned this the hard way.
Speaking of which, there's a lot of consternation rising over looming government shutdown.
According to the Washington Post, Congress has less than two weeks to extend federal spending laws and keep the government open.
Republican negotiators walked away from talks over the weekend to reach a deal on a top-line number on how much the federal government should spend for the rest of 2025. Democrats had said the number is irrelevant if Trump refuses to spend the money in accordance with the law, or if he allows Doge to basically go through with a red pen.
Meanwhile, Trump and his advisors, including Budget Chief Russell Vaught, have argued the president has the power to withhold money Congress orders spent.
Democrats say they want assurances from congressional Republicans in the White House the administration will actually spend any money included in any new law preventing a shutdown.
Now, Republicans theoretically could continue to pass a continuing resolution.
They could avert a government shutdown on their own.
But that's going to require Republicans to get together again.
So once again, heavy burden falls on Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on all of this stuff because of the narrowness of his majority.
Now, Democrats are already preparing the bad headlines.
Democrats are eager for a bad headline.
According to CNBC, Democrats are now claiming that because the Social Security Administration is opening its doors to Doge, this means that presumably Social Security payments will be missed.
That, of course, would be a killer for the Trump administration, were it to be true.
Former Commissioner and former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley told CNBC, quote, ultimately you're going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits.
I believe you'll see that within the next 30 to 90 days.
Now, it is worth noting here that Martin O'Malley is a wild Democrat who at one point actually, I believe, ran for the head of the Democratic National Committee.
So there's that.
However, all it takes is one bad headline, truly one bad headline, to switch public opinion on a lot of the things that are going on right now.
So it's wonderful the Trump administration is moving fast and breaking things and tearing down bad systems.
What they're doing on immigration is fantastic.
What Doge is doing, I think, is wonderful.
However, the economy must continue to sail.
It must.
And the perception of American strength must continue, which brings us to the situation in Ukraine.
So I don't know what in the hell Vladimir Zelensky thinks he's doing at this point.
I, honest to God, don't understand it.
The president of Ukraine seems to believe that if he continues to chide President Trump and then say...
Rather untethered things about the war that somehow this is going to earn him the support of America in some way.
So President Trump has made very clear he wants a ceasefire.
He wants this war ended as soon as possible.
And meanwhile, Zelensky is out there preaching that the war is never going to end.
That the end of the war is still very, very far away.
What does he think Trump is going to do?
Of course, President Trump is going to see that as a rebuke to him.
Here was Zelensky yesterday.
He says an agreement to end the war is still very, very far away, and no one has started all these steps yet.
The peace that we foresee in the future must be just, honest, and most importantly, sustainable.
Now that, of course, was almost designed to earn President Trump's umbrage.
President Trump immediately responded by saying he better not be right about the end of the war being far away.
Here he was in a press conference yesterday.
President Zelensky supposedly made a statement today in AP. I'm not a big fan of AP, so maybe it was an incorrect statement, but he said he thinks the war's gonna go on for a long time.
And he better not be right about that.
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Okay, Trump then put out a statement on Truth Social.
Quote, this is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelensky and America will not put up with it for much longer.
It is what I was saying.
This guy does not want there to be peace as long as he has America's backing and Europe in the meeting they had with Zelensky stated flatly they cannot do the job without the United States.
Probably not a great statement to have been made in terms of a show of strength against Russia.
What are they thinking?
And he ain't wrong about that.
What are they thinking is, in fact, the question of the day.
Trump went on to bang on Zelensky by suggesting that Zelensky really needs to switch his approach or he will be gone in short order.
I think everybody has to get into a room, so to speak, and we have to make a deal.
And the deal can be made very fast.
It should not be that hard a deal to make.
It could be made very fast.
Now, maybe somebody doesn't want to make a deal.
And if somebody doesn't want to make a deal, I think that person won't be around very long.
That person will not be listened to very long.
I gave Russia nothing except grief.
I gave them nothing.
I gave them sanctions and javelins.
That's what I gave them.
Obama gave him sheets, and you heard that statement before.
It's a very famous, Trump gave him javelins and Obama gave him sheets, and then they say how close I am to Russia.
Again, President Trump does not want to be perceived as a sort of stand-in for Vladimir Putin in all of this.
Trump was ready to do the thing earlier last week.
He was ready to do the thing.
He wanted to sign, as I've said over and over and over, that rare earths mineral deal.
Why?
Because the goal was to do with Zelensky what he's currently doing with Taiwan.
Again, TSMC is the company in Taiwan that makes the semiconductors.
Those semiconductors are now going to be made partially in the United States.
Taiwan is going to invest via TSMC. TSMC, the company, is going to be investing $100 billion in American domestic manufacturing of semiconductors.
That serves a dual purpose.
One, it reassures some key items that America wants and needs.
And two, it also means that the United States is now invested in the continued success, health, and prosperity of TSMC. Which means more invested in Taiwan.
Trump was trying to do that exact same thing with Ukraine.
He didn't want to issue an open security guarantee because the situation is too volatile.
He just wanted the Rare Earths Minerals deal as a way, a wedge, to get in.
He openly said this during the press conference.
He said it.
He kept this close to just saying he was going to give a security guarantee that was effectively a caveat to the Rare Earths Minerals deal.
And top Republicans are still hoping.
That Zelensky comes back to the table on that thing.
I don't know what the hell Zelensky is doing.
Seriously, as someone who would like to see Ukraine capable of standing up to Russian predations, I do not know what Zelensky is thinking here.
According to Politico, Congressional Republicans are signaling they want President Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to patch things up after a testy Oval Office meeting casts significant doubt about the future of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.
GOP lawmakers on Monday sought to lower the temperature just days after the clash between the leaders since shockwaves.
Through Washington and Europe, with members of Trump's party expressing optimism, the nations could still clinch a minerals deal to bolster U.S. backing for Ukraine.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, quote, I just hope they can get things back on track and that everybody will redouble their efforts.
He said this is a historic opportunity, a potentially historic agreement.
Obviously, last week was a missed opportunity, but I think if people are operating in good faith, I think we could get things back on the rails.
Meanwhile, we'll see what President Trump has to say about all of this in his speech to a joint session of Congress.
On Tuesday, Lindsey Graham, who had blasted Zelensky on Friday, said, quote, I've told President Zelensky, do the minerals deal.
See if we can get an arms package.
We'll talk about a good ending to the war.
That's the sequence.
The more he talks about security guarantees and the war is going to be a long time away from ending, the harder his case will be.
Speaker Johnson also defended Trump on Monday, but added, quote, I encourage, as I did over the weekend, President Zelensky to come back to the table and accept the deal that was proposed because that is the solution.
To get us out of this mess.
And again, that's totally correct.
That's totally correct.
As I said yesterday on the show, there is a wide-ranging belief that President Trump is attempting to rewrite America's power in the world by granting spheres of influence to China or to Russia.
That's not, I think, what he is doing.
It's not what he was doing.
President Trump has had a long-standing belief that when America intervenes in places around the world, America gets repaid.
He believed this about Kuwait and Iraq.
And by the way, this is not a rare belief in American foreign policy history.
When America supported Great Britain during World War II, the initial move towards supporting Great Britain was a program called Lend-Lease, in which the United States ended up with control of a huge number of very important British military bases.
So the idea that America always gets nothing out of its foreign relations is just not true.
What President Trump is attempting to do here makes perfect sense, which, by the way, is why His perspective remains popular.
So Harry Enten at CNN actually did some polling on this.
And he said, you know, shockingly, to Democrats at least, Joe Biden was wildly unpopular on Ukraine and Trump is pretty popular on Ukraine.
You look at Joe Biden back in 2024. He was 22 points underwater.
Holy cow.
You look at Donald Trump, it's just a different planet entirely.
I mean, the gulf between these two is wider than the Gulf of America or Mexico, depending on which side of the aisle you stand on.
He's at plus two.
So look, at this particular point, Americans are giving Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt.
He's doing considerably better than Joe Biden was doing on the handling of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
And so on this simple question, I think Americans are saying, OK, Donald Trump's doing all right on this.
Why do Americans feel that way?
Because what Americans want is the rational thing.
They know the war isn't going anywhere.
They want an off-ramp.
Now, Americans want an off-ramp.
Americans like foreign policy off-ramps.
There's one thing Americans really like a lot worse than foreign policy off-ramps.
And it's not even endless war.
Americans don't like endless war.
In order of things Americans hate.
They hate endless war.
And then, even more than endless war, they hate ignominious surrender.
They really don't like ignominious surrender.
Americans were humiliated.
By Joe Biden's pullout from Afghanistan.
They hated Joe Biden for it.
Look at his approval ratings.
They sank into the mire.
What does that mean?
It means that while Americans do not want to continue to fund the Ukrainian war indefinitely, they also do not want to see pictures of Russian soldiers strolling through Kiev.
That is not something they want.
They do not want Vladimir Putin standing on Vladimir Zelensky's body in the middle of the street.
That's not something they want.
Which is why the Trump administration move, I think it's a pressure tactic to get Zelensky to come back to the table and sign the Rare Earths Minerals deal.
So I think Zelensky really should do it.
But the administration announced yesterday that they would pause all military aid to Kiev until President Trump determines that the Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is making a good-faith effort toward peace negotiations with Russia.
Now, this, I do think, is not a particularly good move.
And the reason I'm not sure that this is a particularly good move is because if you're Vladimir Putin, what would drive you to the table?
It takes two to tango here.
What moves has Putin affirmatively made toward a deal?
Now, again, I can say all day long that I think I know what a deal looks like.
It looks like the Europeans give a security guarantee to the Ukrainians.
The Ukrainians feel some level of security.
They're not going to be invaded by Russia again.
And Donbass and Crimea go to Russia, right?
That's been the deal since 2022. But is Russia willing to accept that deal?
Or do they believe that the United States is going to pull out and that the Europeans will pull out and that Vladimir Putin will eventually stroll through Kiev?
So, if this is a short-term tactic, a pause, which it seems to be, Fine.
If it's a pause that's designed to get Zelensky back to the table, sign the rare earth mineral deal, we all move forward hand in hand, great.
But how Russia reads it is going to make quite a large difference here.
If Russia reads a pause in military aid to Ukraine as new impetus to relaunch a mass offensive, that will lengthen the war.
It will not shorten the war.
It will lengthen the war.
Again, usually when you're making this sort of negotiation, yeah, you're pressuring Zelensky to come to the table by telling him, we're not going to be here forever.
But at the same time, you're saying to Putin, You also need to come to the table with some concessions in hand, or we're going to increase the amount of military aid that we are giving to Ukraine.
Putin's whole game here is he thinks he can outlast the West, and so far, he hasn't been wrong.
A White House official said in a statement, quote, The President has been clear he is focused on peace.
We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well.
We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution.
Well, again, I get it as a temporary pause to push Zelensky.
I will also say that one thing that does not necessarily contribute to a solution is if Russia perceives massive weakness and then goes for it.
The White House did not say under what conditions the United States would resume it or whether it would be at the same pace.
While there isn't a clear understanding of what Washington wants from Kiev, the decision was the most demonstrative U.S. shift from Ukraine's top ally.
And again, this seems all quite easy to fix by Zelensky.
See you next week.
if Zelensky simply wants to fix this, all he has to do is sign the deal he said he was going to sign back on Friday.
What a historic, catastrophic boo-boo by Vladimir Zelensky.
Seriously.
Mark Kansian, a retired Marine Corps colonel, former U.S. official at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, quote, Ukraine wouldn't surrender tomorrow or next week, but they would lose military capability gradually At some point, they would face defeat.
So, again, do I think that this is like a massive deal that the Trump administration is doing this?
No, because I think, once again, this is a negotiation tactic by Trump to get Zelensky back to the table to sign the things Zelensky needs to sign.
The Europeans, for their part, are freaking out.
They believe that this is somehow a repudiation of NATO. President Trump, in that press conference, said he was not repudiating NATO. I understand that Elon said that we should get out of NATO. That's stupid.
I'm sorry.
It's dumb.
The United States should not, in fact, get out of NATO. There's no purpose to getting out of NATO unless you actually wish the Russians to walk into the Baltics.
If you wish them to enlarge their sphere of influence, get out of NATO. But President Trump doesn't want to get out of NATO. He said he doesn't.
He wants them paying their fair share.
He wants them paying their 3%.
He said he wants to defend Poland.
He wants Poland to be able to defend itself.
The sort of rush to Trump is an isolationist seems unjustifiable, even in the face of the argument he's currently having with Vladimir Zelensky.
I say once more.
He was trying to get to an agreement on Friday.
It's so irritating.
He was trying to get there.
Nonetheless, the worry is out there.
Retired Navy Admiral James Stavridis, who served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, said, quote, I worry we may be in the last days of NATO. He said the transatlantic alliance may not be about to collapse, but I can sure hear it creaking louder than at any time in my long career in the military.
Now, President Trump did write on Sunday on his Truth Social platform, quote, We should spend less time worrying about Putin, more time worrying about migrants.
Gangs, drug lords, murderers, and people from mental institutions entering our country so we don't end up like Europe.
Now, sure.
Sounds great.
Also, the United States can, in fact, walk and chew gum.
Trump has done a magnificent job of shutting down the border thus far.
And actually, the United States does not have to pull out of NATO in order to actually do this.
This is one of my sort of bugaboos.
You hear this very often from actual real isolationists.
They'll say, well, you know, we simply can't afford.
We can't afford to support, say, NATO. We can't afford.
For example, to continue funding war in Ukraine.
We can't afford it.
Well, that's not true.
We can afford it.
It's just that we would actually have to look more seriously at, you know, the gigantic spending problem that is actually driving America's national debt, namely the vast entitlement and means-tested welfare programs that are destroying our fiscal standing in the world.
You make the case we shouldn't spend the money there, that's fine, but make that case overtly.
Don't fib about the case.
Don't make the case that you're doing this because you're a fiscal conservative while at the same time you're arguing that America should never touch Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, or any means-tested welfare program.
Just make the argument openly and then we can actually have an open discussion about this sort of stuff.
In the end, I think Zelensky will come to the table.
In the end, I think the Europeans will come to the table.
And I think this will resolve itself.
Again, I also think that President Trump is not interested in a less powerful America on the world stage.
He just really has promised to get to the end of this war, and he would like to do so.
Meanwhile, Pam Bondi has now suggested that they're still going to release an Epstein list.
I'm not aware that there is an Epstein list that hasn't been released at this point.
I'm a little bit confused as to what exactly the goal is here.
So Pam Bondi was on with Mark Levin over the weekend, and here she was suggesting that the sort of Epstein screw-up last week, in which the Justice Department released a binder filled with nothing.
That actually is going to be solved.
In the near future, here she was.
A source told me, New York, SDNY, they're sitting on thousands of pages of documents regarding Epstein.
Thousands, thousands.
And of course, you've seen the very strong letter.
We will get everything.
We will have it in our possession.
We will redact it, of course, to protect grand jury information and confidential witnesses.
But the American people have a right to know.
And Donald Trump is the most transparent president in our nation's history.
So not only will America get the full Epstein files, they will get JFK.
They will get Martin Luther King.
OK, listen, I would love to see all of that.
Also, I don't think there's going to be a lot there.
And I think the screw-up last week, I know there was an attempt to sort of backfill that screw-up.
We'll find out, in very short order, whether or not there is anything more happening here.
Now, there are some accusations that the head of the FBI's New York field office was forced out of the bureau on Monday.
That is according to NBC New York.
Two of the sources who spoke with NBC News said Assistant Director in Charge James Dennehy was given a choice to either resign or be fired, and he was eligible for retirement and has officially retired.
He said he was forced out, quote, I've been told many times in my life, when you find yourself in a hole, sometimes it's best to quit digging.
Screw that.
I will never stop defending this joint.
He said he was not given a reason.
For the decision, immediately rumors started circulating that the real reason that Dennehy was fired had to do with some sort of cover-up with regard to Epstein.
I've seen no evidence to this point that suggests that that is, in fact, the case.
It may be a sort of convenient way of finding somebody to blame for the screw-up that the DOJ ushered out last week.
They, of course, said there was a low-level person at SDNY who's basically covering up Files, deleting files.
But why would he be allowed to retire with his pay if that were the case?
He should be legally prosecuted if, in fact, that was the case.
So we'll have to see how that emerges, whether this is sort of a misdirect or whether it actually is real, whether somebody was actually committing the crime of destroying relevant documents rather than publicizing all of that.
Meanwhile, speaking of legal matters, President Trump announced a little bit earlier this week that he wants to posthumously pardon baseball legend Pete Rose.
He wrote in a Saturday Truth Social post, quote, Major League Baseball didn't have the courage or decency to put the late great Pete Rose, also known as Charlie Hustle, into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Now he's dead.
Will never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a far better player than most of those who made it and can only be named posthumously.
What a shame.
And he said that he will be signing a complete pardon of Pete Rose, who shouldn't have been gambling on baseball but only bet on his team winning.
He never bet against himself or the other team.
He had the most hits by far in baseball history and won more games than anyone in sports history, said Trump.
Now, it's not really clear what he'd be pardoned for, Pete Rose, because he was never convicted of betting as a sort of criminal matter.
He pled guilty to filing a faulty tax return in 1990 and did five months in prison.
So he's not sure what exactly the pardon would be.
Now, whether Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame, I think, is sort of an open question at this point, given the fact that there are so many terrible people in the Hall of Fame.
However, there was an ironclad rule in Major League Baseball that you should not bet on baseball.
He did, in fact, bet on baseball, and so the ban seems largely justified to me, despite the fact that I'm actually kind of a Pete Rose fan.
If we are issuing pardons, however, there is one person that President Trump should pardon from federal charges forthwith.
It would be incredibly controversial, but I think that it's absolutely necessary.
That person is Derek Chauvin.
President Trump should, in fact, pardon Derek Chauvin.
He should.
He should pardon him in his federal charges.
If we are talking about reversing the evils of the last several years in American life, obviously COVID and its handling was a massive evil.
Destroyed the economy, set us on a path to fiscal insanity, destroyed children, led to massive health-related cover-ups, just horrifying all the way around.
And President Trump has taken on a lot of those things.
But when it came to BLM, the inciting event for the BLM riots that caused $2 billion in property damage in the United States, The evidence demonstrates that Derek Chauvin did not, in fact, commit murder of George Floyd.
George Floyd was high on...
He had a significant pre-existing heart condition.
George Floyd was saying he could not breathe before he was even out of the car.
He was in the car saying he could not breathe.
Derek Chauvin, for a large segment of even the tape that was shown...
Had his knee on George Floyd's shoulder or back, not on his neck, the autopsy of George Floyd showed that he had no damage to his trachea, that probably George Floyd died of excited delirium.
There were no accusations, even at trial, that Derek Chauvin had committed a hate crime against George Floyd or that he targeted George Floyd because of his race.
Nonetheless, on the basis of extraordinarily scanty evidence, and despite the fact there was massive pressure on the jury, That the mayor of Minneapolis paid a settlement to the George Floyd family immediately.
That the president of the United States suggested that Derek Chauvin was guilty right off the bat.
That the jurors were being openly threatened and admitted as much.
Despite all of that, Derek Chauvin was convicted on federal charges and pled guilty to federal charges.
Derek Chauvin should, in fact, be pardoned on that.
We will be covering that a lot more in coming weeks because I think it is worthwhile to remember that there is a man.
Who was rotting in prison because the media decided in the middle of 2020 that they were going to turn a tragic law enforcement stop that ended with the death of a man who had a significant problem with drugs and pre-existing health problems into the raison d'etre of the entire 2020 election.
And it led to vast chaos.
It led to, again, the destruction of racial comedy in the United States.
$2 billion in property damage and a guy rotting in prison.
Who the evidence demonstrates certainly was not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in that case.
If we're going to talk about delivering pardons, President Trump, I think, should really seriously consider pardoning on federal charges.
He can't pardon on state charges.
Derek Chauvin, who is convicted of the murder of George Floyd.
As I say, we will be covering this pretty extensively in the coming weeks.
Right now, you should go to PardonDerek.com and sign our petition asking President Trump to grant justice to Officer Derek Chauvin.
That is pardon, P-A-R-D-O-N, Derek.com, P-A-R-D-O-N-D-E-R-E-K.com.
We're going to be digging into this topic on the show in the very, very near future.
All right, guys, coming up, we are going to delve into the Ben Shapiro Show mailbag.
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