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May 15, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:16:10

What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?

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	Well, folks, tons to get to on today's show.
	President Trump over in Qatar.
	What's happening over there?
	Plus, the big, beautiful bill being negotiated.
	What's in that on the House end?
	Does it pass RFK in front of Congress?
	We'll get to all of it.
	But the news is moving faster than ever.
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	Alrighty, folks.
	So President Trump's economic success rests on the passage of his one big, beautiful bill.
	We've been talking about this for months.
	And the timeline on the big, beautiful bill is still...
	Somewhat in doubt, because obviously it has to pass through the House and then a version has to pass through the Senate.
	And then there's going to be reconciliation between the House bill and the Senate bill.
	And so whatever you see in the House bill might not end up in the final bill.
	However, massive controversy already breaking out in the House over where the cuts are going to come from.
	Many House Republicans are calling for cuts that are going to make up for the loss in revenue to the federal government that occurs when taxes are not increased.
	As you know from sort of conservative discussions for the last 50 years, there's something called the Laffer curve.
	The Laffer curve is a suggestion by the economist Art Laffer that if you're looking for sort of the proper rate of taxation, it can't be zero because then the government has no money to spend.
	And it also can't be 100 because then the government has no money to spend.
	No one will actually go out and do business if they are going to have all of their money removed by the federal government.
	So the Laffer curve is a suggestion that there is, in fact, a point at which if you tax people more...
	Then you will actually end up with declining government revenues as a result because people will simply work less in order to avoid the top tax bracket, for example.
	And there's certainly truth to that.
	It's unclear where exactly the inflection point is with regard to the Laffer curve.
	However, it has been longstanding conservative economic dogma that if you increase taxes, you will end up quashing economic growth because you're taking money away from the more efficient private sector and sticking it in the public sector where it gets doled out by a bunch of politicians to their favorite pet projects.
	Also, how you look at government revenue differs between conservatives and people on the left.
	People on the left believe that the government basically owns your money and then allows you to keep some of it.
	Conservatives believe you own your money, and then you have to give some of it to the government in order to do public services, for example.
	So, when it comes to even the discussions of what government revenue looks like, the real discussion that should be had, and it's the discussion no one will ever have, is what is the proper role of government in our lives?
	Why is it that our government is spending $6, $7 trillion a year On the federal level.
	This was not the case when the original country was founded.
	When the United States was founded, the original expenditures by the federal government were absolutely minimal.
	And it stayed that way, except for times of war, like the Civil War, all the way up through, essentially, the end of World War I. And then government spending began to grow slowly.
	And then with FDR, it just exploded all out of proportion.
	And so now we have $7 trillion being spent every single year.
	That's what's racking up the national debt.
	And so there are a couple of sort of...
	Different takes on what should be done.
	A traditional, classical conservative might say, we need to cut massive reams of government spending.
	I push it all back down to the states.
	If the states wish to do things like Medicare and Medicaid, then the states can do that.
	But it shouldn't be up to a taxpayer from Montana to pay for the health care of a guy from California because he's 70 years old, for example.
	And then you have the sort of Republican Party position, which is, let's cut around the edges.
	And then you have the Democratic Party position, which is, let's never cut anything ever for the rest of time.
	The latter two positions are the ones the American people have opted for.
	The latter two positions are, let's spend all the money in the world and let's spend just slightly less than all the money in the world.
	And that's what a lot of the debate is with regard to this current GOP tax bill inside the Republican caucus.
	There are a bunch of Republicans who believe that cutting spending in any way, shape, or form is detrimental to Republican electoral chances.
	The American people don't want it.
	And by polling, basically, there's truth to that.
	By polling, the American people say they don't want the government to be so big and provide so many services.
	And then when you ask them which services they would like cut, they scratch their head and really have no idea of the answer to that question.
	Then you have sort of traditional Republicans who say, listen, if we're ever going to get to anything more like big restructuring of government, you have to start somewhere or we are going to plunge off the deck cliff.
	So all of this is manifesting in the debate over the current big, beautiful bill in the Republican House.
	There's no question spending is going to continue to increase.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, the Republican tax bill looks very different depending on your income and your political lens.
	For the top sliver of taxpayers, it gives a permanent extension and expansion of expiring tax cuts from 2017, coupled with some new limits.
	Middle income households would get permanent tax cut extensions as well.
	They would also gain temporary tax cuts, including a larger standard deduction and child tax credit and targeted benefits for senior citizens and people receiving tips and overtime pay.
	There's not much in the tax cut bill for people who are low income, mainly because people who are low income are not paying taxes in the United States.
	That's why whenever people say, this tax bill disproportionately benefits the rich.
	Well, I mean, I would assume because the rich absolutely overpay proportionally based on their income.
	Like, wildly disproportionately.
	The top quintile of income earners in this country pay all net taxes in the country.
	All of them.
	Net taxes meaning...
	The amount you pay to the government versus the services you get back from the government.
	A lot of middle-income people are paying taxes, but they're also receiving tremendous benefits back from the government in the form of various forms of welfare, social support, and all of the rest.
	Representative Blakemore of Utah said this is not a bill for billionaire relief, but Democrats are casting the bill as an unacceptable giveaway to well-off people at the expense of most Americans.
	So, there are a bunch of different provisions that are controversial here.
	One is the tax data.
	And then one is the question of where some cuts are coming from.
	So if you look at the actual material in the bill, the Tax Foundation has a good rundown on the bill, taxfoundation.org.
	And what they find through their preliminary analysis is that the tax provisions would increase long-run GDP by 0.6%, which is a solid increase in GDP and national growth.
	It would reduce federal tax revenue by $4.1 trillion over the course of the next decade.
	Again, what does that mean?
	It means the federal government will take in less money than it would have if it left the top tax rates at a higher rate.
	So you're increasing growth, but you're decreasing the revenue to the government, the amount of money that the government steals from the taxpayers.
	On a dynamic basis, the revenue reduction would fall by 19% to $3.3 trillion over 10 years before the added interest costs.
	So they're saying that basically that $4.1 trillion that you're missing, that's assuming a static level of economic growth.
	If you include the economic growth, Then you end up with more revenue back to the government, but you're still going to end up with, in addition to the deficit, of some $3.3 trillion.
	Overall, the bill would prevent tax increases on 62% of taxpayers that would occur if the Trump tax cuts were to expire.
	But there are other provisions that are being eliminated, like, for example, bonus depreciation and research and development expensing.
	So in some ways, this is a significantly more populist tax cut bill than the Trump tax cut bill the first time around.
	This is why, for example, there's no tax on tips included, but they're getting rid of bonus depreciation.
	The House passed budget resolution would allow a $4.5 trillion increase in the deficit from tax cuts over the next decade, so long as spending is also cut by $1.7 trillion.
	But if they don't cut the spending, if that spending never materializes, then the cap on the tax cuts gets reduced dollar for dollar.
	So the question is where those cuts come from.
	This is where most of the controversy is occurring, not with regard to the tax rates per se, but with regard to the cuts.
	Where are the cuts occurring to offset some of the loss in revenue to the federal government?
	And the answer is in restructuring of Medicaid particularly.
	We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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	So Medicaid has been a massive income suck.
	for the United States for an extraordinarily long time.
	It has basically become a massive welfare program, including for many people who don't want to work.
	So Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz, Brooke Rollins, and Scott Turner, that'd be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Administrator for CMMS, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
	They have an editorial in the New York Times talking about what exactly is going to happen to Medicaid.
	And the point they make is that there are a lot of people who are on Medicaid.
	Again, Medicare is for the elderly, and Medicaid is for people who are too poor, basically.
	They're very poor, and so they require government assistance on the federal level.
	That's what Medicaid is for.
	Again, the United States, the idea of the United States is somehow mean to the poor is ridiculous.
	The United States has the most progressive tax system on planet Earth, meaning that the differential between what the top tax brackets pay and what the people at the bottom pay is the widest of virtually any OECD country.
	The United States also has massively generous welfare benefits.
	Whenever you see the so-called income gap in the United States, that is always ignoring the welfare benefits that go to people in the bottom half of income earners.
	Because when you include that, a lot of the income gap actually erodes pretty quickly.
	In any case, these administrators and secretaries over at the Trump administration point out, welfare programs have now deviated from their original mission, both by drift and by design.
	Millions of able-bodied adults have been added to the roles in the past decade, primarily as a result of Medicaid expansion.
	Many of these recipients are working-age individuals without children who might remain on welfare for years.
	Some of them do not work at all, or they work inconsistently throughout the year.
	The increased share of welfare spending dedicated to able-bodied, working-age adults distracts from what This should not be the American way of welfare.
	As leaders of the agencies, they say that oversee the largest welfare programs in the nation.
	We see the data, hear the stories, and understand that these programs are failing to deliver results.
	For able-bodied adults, welfare should be a short-term hand-up, not a lifetime hand-out.
	But too many able-bodied adults on welfare are not working at all, and too often we don't even ask them to.
	A recent analysis from an economist at the American Enterprise Institute examined survey data from December 2022, that's the most recent month available, and found that only 44% Of able-bodied, working-age Medicaid beneficiaries without dependents worked at least 80 hours in that month.
	That's an insane statistic.
	So only 4 in 10 Medicaid recipients, who are in fact able-bodied and working-age, were working at least 80 hours in the month.
	80 hours, by the way, if you just do the math right there, 80 hours would be 20 hours a week, i.e.
	5 hours a day.
	And only 4 out of 10 Medicaid recipients were working 5 hours a day.
	That is not because of lack of job opportunity, by the way, folks.
	We still have more job openings in the United States than people applying for those jobs.
	Establishing universal work requirements for able-bodied adults across the welfare programs we manage, they say, will prioritize the vulnerable, empower able-bodied individuals, help rebuild thriving communities, and protect the taxpayers.
	And they point to the Clinton welfare reform as a model for this sort of stuff.
	They say it's true a work requirement protects taxpayer dollars as it provides income to the worker and lessens dependence on government funding.
	But it's not just about money.
	Work provides purpose and dignity.
	In other words, get off your butt and work.
	Now, the counter perspective is being provided by Josh Hawley.
	As I say, there is a debate inside the Republican Party between people who sort of side with Democrats, like we'll never cut any welfare spending ever, ever, forever because the American people don't like it, and people who say, we need to restructure some of this or we're going to hit the fiscal cliff sooner than humanly possible.
	And then there are sort of true believers in the Republican caucus, the people who believe that the federal government has no role in virtually any of this.
	And that would be people, Like, for example, presumably Chip Roy in Texas or Rand Paul in the Senate in Kentucky.
	Josh Hawley is on the populist side.
	And in a piece indistinguishable from that of any Democrat, he wrote in the New York Times just a couple of days ago, don't cut Medicaid.
	And he says, polls show Democrats down in the dumps at their lowest approval level in decades, but we Republicans are having an identity crisis of our own.
	You can see it in the tug of war over President Trump's one big, beautiful bill.
	Will Republicans be a majority party of working people or a permanent minority speaking only for the C-suite?
	So the question I have for Josh Hawley is, if to be the party of the working people means that you are supposed to basically allow tax increases and broader welfare spending, how does that distinguish you from the Democratic Party across the aisle?
	And if you're going to get into a battle of who spends more on blue-collar people in terms of other people's money, Democrats are always going to win that race because they have no principles at all that hold them off from just continuing to expand benefits.
	Howley says Mr. Trump has promised working class tax cuts and protection for working class social insurance like Medicaid.
	But now a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans, call it the party's Wall Street wing, is urging Congress to ignore all that and get back to the old-time religion, corporate giveaways, preferences for capital, and deep cuts to social insurance.
	Again, this sounds exactly like what Elizabeth Warren might write.
	So, again, he suggests that we should give more child tax credits, which, again, A child tax credit should be for people who pay taxes.
	Right now, child tax credits go to people who do not pay taxes, which means it is just a handout, basically.
	If you want to do a handout, by the way, a handout that actually works, there is a proposal in this bill that's quite great called Invest America.
	That proposal basically says the federal government for every child who is born, that child gets a savings account with the federal government that is essentially invested in the S&P 500, and then it's just left there.
	That, by the way, was actually the Social Security privatization plan.
	That George W. Bush proposed back in 2006, except this time it's $1,000 for every kid in the United States.
	That would actually be a smart investment play if you want the government investing in this sort of thing.
	Because then you actually have people who are invested in, say, the stock market, and you get the natural growth along with the economy of those funds, as opposed to most other social welfare programs or pyramid schemes like Social Security, where the government just tells you that they're taking your money and putting it in a lockbox and they spend it on some other dude.
	And then when you get real old, we tax somebody new to pay for you.
	So that is the debate inside the Republican Party right now.
	Again, the right side of that debate does include all of these secretaries in the Trump administration.
	The attempt to get people back to work is really important.
	Brad Wilcox, who does excellent work over at the Institute of Family Studies, he has statistics showing that before 1980, only about 5% Of able-bodied men age 25 to 40 were not looking for work.
	Today, that number is 11%.
	So it is more than doubled over the course of time.
	And how can they not work?
	And the answer is because the federal government is paying for them.
	Nonetheless, this is creating an enormous amount of dyspepsia inside the Republican Party.
	Some Republicans, particularly in purple districts or purple states, are upset about this.
	They're afraid that maybe they're going to lose their seats if there are any sort of restructurings of Medicaid.
	Meanwhile, those same Republicans very often are arguing about state and local tax deductions.
	So the original Trump tax bill did not allow state and local tax deductions.
	So the so-called SALT deductions basically allowed you to take off the taxes for your state government before you paid your federal income tax.
	So if I was in California and I paid a 13% state rate on, say, a million dollars of income, just to make the statistics easy.
	So I'd take $130,000 off my income before I submitted my federal tax return.
	I paid the state tax first, and then I paid the federal income tax on the remaining income of $870,000.
	Trump got rid of that because what he said is, why is it that a person who's in a zero-tax state like Florida should essentially be subsidizing a person who lives in California?
	Why should the federal government be giving benefits to people who live in blue states that tax their citizens highly?
	Well, now a bunch of Republicans who are in those blue states have been pushing.
	For SALT deductions.
	The current plan, approved by the House Ways and Means Committee, includes a $30,000 cap for individuals and married couples that starts phasing down when the income reaches $400,000.
	That is a boost from today's $10,000, but it's still not high enough for some of the Republican lawmakers in places like New York, like Mike Lawler and Nick LaLoda.
	They're trying to push for more, an increase in the so-called SALT cap.
	But there are a bunch of Republicans in red states with zero tax rates who are looking at this and saying, why are we giving a bunch of tax breaks?
	to people who live in New York and California.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, it's a tables have turned moment inside the House GOP where the typical pattern is that hardliners draw red lines while moderates get in line.
	Salt is one of several concerns conservatives have with the latest version of the Big Beautiful Bill.
	They want faster repeal of clean energy tax breaks, a quicker start to Medicaid work requirements, and smaller federal support for the expanded Medicaid program created by Obamacare.
	Meanwhile, there's all sorts of Hubbub inside the Republican caucus over what to do with the Doge cuts.
	So Elon Musk and Doge have gone through.
	They found a bunch of cuts that they have identified as potential cuts.
	In order for those to become permanent, you need Congress, through a process called rescission, to actually vote on making those cuts in waste, fraud, and abuse permanent.
	Russ Vaught of the Office of Management and Budget, he says that that's one of the goals here, is to make those Doge cuts permanent.
	We intend to take the Doge agenda and the cuts and the momentum and the initiative and turn those into permanent savings.
	That's what we believe is our responsibility.
	There are a lot of Republicans in the House and the Senate who don't actually like many of those cuts.
	Now, we should again point out, a lot of the cuts that we are talking about, yes, they are sizable in sort of the absolute.
	In terms of comparison to the spending of the federal government, they are not, in fact, sizable.
	At all.
	If you really wanted to prevent fiscal crisis in the United States over the course of the next 10 years, it requires moves much bigger than simple work requirements for Medicaid.
	Our Republicans, unless they have a broader majority, aren't going to be able to do any of that.
	That's why you are seeing incrementalism, even from the conservatives inside the Republican caucus.
	It's going to take, again, an act of political leisure domain, some political magic for Mike Johnson to pull this thing off.
	And even if he does in the House with this extremely narrow majority, in some ways, the narrow majority helps Johnson, right?
	Because it means...
	That every Republican is going to be pressured in order to vote for the bill.
	If you had a broad majority, then you could see a bunch of people who weren't going to be identified as the problem who'd vote against it.
	But if you need everyone, then in the end, President Trump is going to put his boot down and force a bunch of reluctant Republicans to support whatever the big, beautiful bill is.
	But then you go to the Senate.
	And again, the Republican majority in the Senate is not particularly large.
	The Republicans currently have 53 seats in the Senate.
	You could easily see.
	Some of the quote-unquote moderate Republican senators, like, for example, Lisa Murkowski in Alaska or Susan Collins in Maine, drop off.
	If the bill is not conservative enough, you can see people from the opposite side drop off.
	This is a very complicated process.
	Now, the markets right now have a tax cut already priced in.
	They believe it's going to happen.
	If this tax cut does not happen, if somehow this whole thing falls apart, disaster area for the Trump administration, quite obviously.
	Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin on Wednesday, one of the more conservative members of the Republican caucus, He said that he's worried the House Republicans' reconciliation bill is going to go down.
	I think that other ship with the big, beautiful bill, I think that's the Titanic.
	I think that's going down because I think I have enough colleagues in the Senate that this has resonated with that are saying, yeah, we've got to return to a reasonable pre-pandemic level spending.
	But I always add this, plus a process to achieve it and maintain it.
	Okay, so again.
	If somehow Trump pulls this off, major act of political magicing by the Trump administration and by Senator John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, and by Mike Johnson in the House.
	It is pretty amazing that the United States is so addicted to spending that even talk about work requirements for welfare, this is incredibly controversial.
	It's an amazing thing.
	That, by the way, is the mark of a country that has been high on its own supply for far too long.
	It is an unserious country.
	That refuses to come to a reckoning with the reality that is, for example, our $37 trillion national debt that is not going to get smaller anytime soon.
	We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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	So obviously a lot going on in Congress.
	Congress is also considering measures to enshrine the Trump administration's moves against transgender propaganda and ideology.
	Joining us online to discuss is Mary Margaret O 'Han, the Daily Wire White House correspondent.
	Mary Margaret has been at the White House.
	President Trump, of course, is overseas, but a lot is going on domestically as well.
	Mary Margaret, thanks for joining us.
	Good morning, Ben.
	It's great to be here.
	So the big news of the week in D.C., outside of the Middle East, obviously, is the Trump Justice Department moving against transgender grants.
	Maybe you can tell us about what's going on on that score.
	Absolutely.
	So, of course, we know that since January, late January, February, the Trump administration has been taking steps to cut funding for things that they call like woke or ideological purposes, grants to things like transgenderism or DEI.
	And we've seen this in the Department of Transportation, Department of Education, and now in the Department of Justice, where we reported this week exclusively that the Trump administration is hacking away, slashing away grants to...
	We learned about this because Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking for clarification on these grants.
	There had been a big hubbub in the media about how the Department of Justice was slashing, I think, around $800 million in grants and retaking a look at those funds and if they weren't being And
	some of those included some very woke causes.
	For example, there was a massive amount of money going to the Washington State Department of Corrections to support that State Department of Corrections efforts to promote transgenderism in prisons where a young woman named Mozzie Clark had sued the state for allowing a man to sexually assault her in her woman's prison.
	So a variety of different issues like this, Ben, the Department of Justice is cutting the funding towards those issues and saying we're no longer going to be funding these types of things and instead we're redirecting those funds.
	And I think a lot of Americans, you know, we are very decidedly against these types of ideological purposes.
	I'm very excited about some of the things we're hearing about protecting the border and supporting our law enforcement.
	Mary Margaret, you've also been covering some of the stuff that's been happening in Congress.
	Obviously Republicans are trying to follow on this in Congress.
	They're trying to actually endorse what President Trump is doing via the executive branch in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
	How are those negotiations going?
	Yes, Ben, so we've been reporting this week.
	My colleague Leif at the Daily Wire broke a big story yesterday on how Congressman Dan Crenshaw is taking steps to prevent any transgender surgeries, hormones, or puberty blockers to be funded by this reconciliation bill.
	He knows, like I was just saying, that this is a very...
	This is an unpopular issue for Democrats.
	It's something they've been pushing repeatedly.
	And he also pointed out that there has been no amendment introduced trying to block his measure here, which is really interesting and I think backs more than ever this understanding that this is an unpopular issue.
	We even saw multiple Democrats kind of flip-flop on this issue and on men and women's sports during the 2024 election cycle right before the elections and say we no longer support this type of thing because they recognize how unpopular it is.
	So Dan Crenshaw is taking steps in Congress to protect kids in this way.
	And we're seeing all over the country legislation introduced as well.
	So lots of steps being taken here.
	And of course, this supports President Donald Trump's agenda to protect children and to keep men out of women's sports.
	So a lot of cooperation between Congress and the president.
	And I think President Trump is very excited about that.
	That's Mary Margaret Olihan from the White House.
	Mary Margaret, thanks so much for your time.
	Really appreciate it.
	Thank you, Ben.
	And meanwhile, the markets continue to roil.
	I know there's a widespread perception, particularly on the right, that the markets have now recovered.
	Everything is hunky-dory.
	President Trump backed off the most damaging aspects of his trade war, and now everything will be fine.
	That is not what the markets are saying right now.
	The markets are saying, we don't know where the hell this is going.
	And it turns out that the tariff rates that President Trump left in place are still wildly higher than they were before Liberation Day.
	As I said yesterday on the show, the removal of many of the provisions that Trump put in place Did not remove all of the provisions that Trump put in place, and the provisions he put in place leave the United States with an average tariff rate that is higher than any time since the 1930s.
	What's the impact of that?
	Well, Walmart apparently is now going to raise its prices.
	This is what people have been predicting.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, the retailer said on Thursday it plans to raise prices this month and early this summer, passing along some of the costs as tariff-affected merchandise hits store shelves.
	Walmart CFO John David Rainey said the magnitude and speed at which these prices are coming to us is somewhat unprecedented in history.
	He said sales rose steadily in the latest quarter as shoppers flock to deals and fast shipping.
	But the full impact of the trade war has yet to come.
	He said it's a dynamic and fluid environment.
	Already, for example, tariffs have driven up the price of bananas.
	The U.S., again, has agreed to temporarily lower the tariffs.
	But if we think that we are past the woods here, I do not think that that is, in fact, the case.
	And again, President Trump continues to make comments that are likely to lead to uncertainty in the markets.
	And uncertainty in the markets is its own form of damage.
	For example, yesterday, President Trump said that he has a disagreement with Apple's Tim Cook about the construction of the iPhone.
	So Tim Cook has been attempting to reshore manufacture of the iPhone away from China and toward India.
	That's a giant win for the Trump administration.
	Take the win, Mr. President.
	That is a good thing.
	India has been increasingly oriented toward the United States basically since the late 1990s.
	China is a geopolitical enemy of the United States, moving...
	The manufacture of the iPhone from China to India is a win.
	But President Trump said in Doha Qatar yesterday that he is interested in reshoring the manufacture of iPhones completely to the United States, which would only increase the price of the iPhone by, what, double?
	I mean, really, this sort of talk, just let Scott Besson talk about the economy.
	Please, Mr. President, just let the Treasury Secretary do his thing.
	Here's President Trump on Apple.
	And I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday.
	I said to him, Tim, you're my friend.
	I treated you very good.
	You're coming in with 500 billion dollars.
	But now I hear you're building all over India.
	I don't want you building in India.
	You can build in India if you want to take care of India because India is the highest, one of the highest tariff nations in the world.
	It's very hard to sell into India.
	And they've offered us a deal where basically they're willing to literally charge us no tariff.
	So we go from the highest tariff, you couldn't do business in India, we're not even a top 30 in India because the tariff is so high, to a point where they have actually told us, I assume you too, Scott, you were working on that also, that there will be no tariff, right?
	Would you say that's the difference?
	They're the highest and now they're saying no tariff.
	But I said to Tim, I said, Tim, look, we've treated you really good.
	We put up with all the plants that you built in China for years.
	Now you've got to build us.
	We're not interested in you building in India.
	India can take care of themselves.
	They're doing very well.
	We want you to build here, and they're going to be upping their production in the United States.
	Apple.
	So Apple's already in for $500 billion, but they're going to be upping their production.
	Okay, so what do markets do?
	Markets are effectively prediction mechanisms.
	And markets are trying to figure out what Trump means, what he's going to do.
	And this sort of uncertainty, this is not tactical uncertainty.
	This is not strategic ambiguity here.
	This is actual confusion.
	Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says a thing, and then it's immediately contradicted by Peter Navarro or Howard Lutnick or the president in this particular case.
	That is not going to make the markets any more sanguine.
	So what do we actually need if we want a successful economy?
	We need the tax cuts to be made permanent, obviously.
	If that doesn't happen, disaster area.
	We need the trade barriers to continue to come down.
	10% cannot be the minimum trade barrier.
	It's not going to be good.
	That will have some dire impact on, for example, pricing in the United States and small businesses in the United States that rely on imported goods.
	Screwing around with the free market system, it's a lot easier to screw up that system than people believe it is.
	It turns out that the basic theory of free markets, which is that diffuse knowledge is better and more efficient than centralized knowledge.
	If you ignore that rule, you are going to do damage.
	to the economic efficiency that the American people have come to rely upon.
	And that is a problem.
	Meanwhile, President Trump was in Qatar yesterday.
	And President Trump did some good things.
	Like, for example, he cut a deal with Qatar, apparently to generate $1.2 trillion in economic exchange, according to the White House in a fact sheet.
	That agreement includes a $96 billion deal with Qatar Airways to buy up to 210 Boeing, 787 Dreamliners, and 777X airplanes with GE Aerospace engines, according to the fact sheet.
	Also, a statement of intent that would lead to $38 billion in investments at Qatar's Al-Udeid Air Base and other air defense and maritime security capabilities.
	Qatar, of course, wooed the hell out of President Trump.
	They put on a big show.
	They had a bunch of cyber trucks painted red.
	They understand how to woo President Trump.
	The way to woo President Trump is that you do big shows.
	President Trump, obviously, loves that sort of thing.
	And so they did.
	They brought out all the camels.
	Not even kidding.
	It was basically the scene.
	From Aladdin, where Prince Ali arrives in Agrabah.
	They brought out the golden peacocks and everything.
	Here's what it looked like.
	music you you Thank you.
	He's got 75 golden camels.
	Purple peacocks, he's got 53. Yeah, that's what it was in Qatar.
	President Trump loves that kind of stuff.
	And then President Trump announced this sort of investment package, and Qatar itself announced that they would be purchasing a bunch of Boeing aircraft.
	Here's what that sounded like.
	Boeing purchase agreement signed on behalf of the state of Qatar by His Excellency, Bedram Hamad Almeer, CEO of Qatar Airways Company, and behalf of the United States, Kelly Ortberg, President and CEO of the Boeing Company.
	Okay.
	How exciting.
	Okay, so people signing these defense contracts and all the rest.
	Alrighty.
	There's only one problem.
	Qatar doesn't do this stuff without strings attached.
	They just don't.
	And pretending they do is silly.
	And President Trump, when he does business deals, presumably there are strings attached.
	That's true of every business deal.
	Why would Qatar?
	They have a population that is about one-eighth the size of the state of Florida.
	And they are expending $100 billion to impact American policy.
	And so just so we know, how big is Qatar?
	The answer is it is tiny, tiny, tiny.
	So I asked our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity.
	What is the population of Qatar?
	And then to compare that to the size of the United States state, so we know what we're talking about.
	According to perplexity, Qatar's population in 2025 is estimated to be approximately between 2.75 million and 3.6 million people.
	A bunch of different stats coming in, but that's roughly comparable to the population of Connecticut.
	Okay, maybe 3.6 million people.
	As far as the size of the state, Qatar covers about 4,500 square miles.
	That is smaller than any American state except for Rhode Island.
	So it is tiny.
	It is a tiny country and it is expending tens of billions of dollars to impact American policy.
	You think they're doing that without any strings attached?
	Any?
	I would love to hear the theory of what even Qatar is doing.
	They spend more money.
	They spend, I believe, two-thirds of the amount of money that China does lobbying.
	China has one billion citizens plus.
	Qatar has 2.6 million.
	What are they doing?
	And the answer is they are punching above their weight and basically buying people.
	This is what they do.
	The Wall Street Journal has an entire piece titled, How Qatar Spent Billions to Gain Influence in the United States.
	And of course, they do.
	That is exactly what they do.
	Whether it's buying politicians like Robert Menendez, or whether it is subsidizing an American airbase in Qatar so as to gain control over American foreign policy in the region.
	Whether it is subsidizing American universities to the tune of billions of dollars and subsidizing radicalism at those universities, or whether it is signing people on as foreign agents, which is literally what they do.
	That have included in the past a former Qatar lobbyist, Pam Bondi, the current attorney general who just signed off on this 747 arrangement.
	I mean, this is what Qatar does.
	And then they throw their weight around.
	And that has some impact.
	So Qatar, for example, the prime minister of Qatar, he came out yesterday and he was talking about the situation in Gaza.
	And he said the Palestinians want to end the war.
	No, they clearly do not.
	If by the Palestinians you mean the people, I'm sure many of the people do.
	If by the Palestinians you mean the leadership, like Hamas, clearly they don't.
	Hamas clearly does not actually want a deal.
	If they did, all they would have to do is go into exile, give up their aspirations to rule the Gaza Strip, and release the hostages, and the war would be over today.
	That was true October 8th, by the way.
	But here is Qatar trying to promote its agenda.
	And again, when you have your hands stuffing money into the pockets of Americans, it makes it a lot easier to make this sort of nonsensical play.
	It's good that you have mentioned the case of Edan Alexander, whom we are happily seeing him free finally.
	This took us like a long, you know, a lot of time and a lot of efforts and a lot of pressure without any exchange, which is basically something has never happened.
	Now, we wanted this to be also as a first step toward having a complete hostage deal, unfortunately.
	The next day being followed by a massacre on a hospital in Gaza.
	The Israelis obviously said they were going after senior Hamas.
	Yeah, but going after senior Hamas leader doesn't mean killing 70 people just as a collateral damage, which has just been the justification for the last year and a half.
	We cannot reach a deal.
	I'm sorry, what a joke these people are.
	Seriously, what a joke these people are.
	Pretending these people are on the side of Western civilization is a lie.
	He literally calls it a massacre when Israel, in one of the most targeted strikes ever...
	Killed, it appears, the entire leadership case of Hamas that is remaining in the Gaza Strip.
	They were hiding beneath a hospital, the European hospital, in a tunnel beneath the European hospital.
	They hit the area right outside the hospital and hit that tunnel.
	And he calls that a massacre because he's on the side of Hamas.
	How do we know?
	Because they funded Hamas to the tune of $2 billion.
	$2 billion.
	And these are the people who we're praising and calling honest brokers.
	It's a joke.
	Of course they're paying lots of money into the United States to impact American policy.
	That is the explicit goal.
	What, are we pretending that these are charitable, wonderful people now?
	Are you even kidding?
	By the way, the only reason that any of these regimes continue to exist in the Middle East is because the United States props them up militarily.
	That is true for UAE.
	It is true for Qatar.
	It is true for Bahrain.
	It is true for Saudi Arabia.
	It's true for Jordan.
	It's true for Egypt.
	It's true for all of them.
	Otherwise, the Muslim Brotherhood would be in charge in most of these places.
	So it's good that these regimes are in charge.
	It also happens to be the case that all of these places would be dirt poor if it were not for the technological innovations.
	Of the West that built their entire oil industry, all of it, is deeply irritating to be lectured on foreign policy by people who support terrorism everywhere they can find it, particularly Qatar.
	Particularly Qatar.
	Meanwhile, again, if you think there are no strings attached, there clearly are strings attached.
	The reason Qatar is doing all of this is to influence policy everywhere, from the Houthis in Yemen to the Iran deal itself to Syria.
	So yesterday, President Trump praised the new leader of Syria.
	Okay, here is the thing.
	If you want to make the case that we need to relieve sanctions on the Syrians temporarily to allow them to find some sort of more stable fiscal footing with actual strings attached, like, for example, all the things President Trump wants, normalization with Israel, expelling terrorists, allowing some level of religious diversity in Syria.
	If you want those things to happen, then what you gradually do is release the sanctions as you have proof of concept.
	What you don't do is relieve them all at once, and then meet al-Jelani, the new head of Syria, who is a terrorist.
	He was a member of Al-Qaeda.
	He's a member of ISIS.
	And then he broke away from them and created his own terrorist group called HDS, which is sponsored by the terror-backing Turkish government.
	But here is President Trump speaking in warm tones about a man who, just a few weeks ago, people were noting, was killing the Druze at an extraordinary rate and also possibly targeting Christians.
	And yet here we are with praise for al-Jawani.
	How did you find the Syrian president?
	Great.
	Right.
	I think very good.
	Young, attractive guy.
	Tough guy.
	Strong pass.
	Very strong pass fighter.
	Does that worry you at all?
	He's got a real shot at pulling it together.
	I spoke with President Erdogan.
	I'm very friendly with him.
	He feels he's got a shot.
	Yeah, no wonder President Erdogan thinks he has a shot.
	President Erdogan is in charge of Syria.
	Erdogan is a dictator.
	Who is a terrorist supporter of Hamas and HTS and a bunch of other Sunni terror groups.
	Erdogan himself has Ottoman aspirations for the Middle East.
	The reason HTS took over Syria is because they were sponsored by Turkey.
	Yeah, no wonder Erdogan likes al-Jolani.
	He is a client.
	He is a proxy.
	Pretending this is not happening is not a way to do policy.
	And when you say has a strong past, do you mean like murdered a bunch of people?
	Because that's what al-Jolani did.
	And apparently continues to do with the Druze.
	So much so that the Druze in southern Syria.
	Remember, the Druze are not Jewish.
	The Druze are openly appealing to Israel to go in and try and protect them in southern Syria from HTS and from other terrorist groups in Syria.
	And you think there are no strings attached?
	Of course there are strings attached.
	I think President Trump is too smart to be played in this way.
	I think he is too intelligent to be played in this way.
	But certainly that's not what the Qataris think.
	And certainly not what the Iranians think either.
	Okay, speaking of people who think they can play the president of the United States, Iran clearly believes that they can outplay the president of the United States.
	Yesterday, a top Iranian official said to Richard Engel of NBC News that they are ready to sign a nuclear deal with certain conditions with President Trump.
	Ali Shamchani, a top political military and nuclear advisor to the Ayatollah, Ali Khamenei, is one of the most senior Iranian officials to speak publicly about the ongoing discussions.
	He said that Iran would commit to never making nuclear weapons.
	Oh, maybe.
	They're pledging to be goody-goody gumdrops.
	Well, they're pledging to be just the best.
	Probably they'll keep their word.
	The Iranians have never lied to anybody.
	The Iranian regime, the ITIL has never lied to anybody.
	They are perfectly honest all the way across the board.
	And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that is for sale.
	He said Iran would commit to never making nuclear weapons, getting rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, which can be weaponized.
	Agree to enrich uranium only to the lower levels needed for civilian use.
	Okay, what does that mean?
	If you keep your nuclear facilities and you can enrich to 3.67%, then you can also ramp up the centrifuges and enrich to 70 or 80 or 90%.
	That is the whole point of keeping them.
	Iran does not need nuclear energy.
	It is one of the most oil-rich states on Earth.
	Why are they looking for nuclear energy in Iran?
	Because they're so green in Iran?
	They're environmentalists, are they?
	That's the suggestion?
	All in exchange for immediate lifting of all economic sanctions on Iran.
	Shamchani said they'd sign an agreement today if those conditions were met.
	You bet your ass they would because those conditions mean that they get a nuclear weapon in short order and their economy is open.
	And notice some of the conditions that are not placed there.
	Using that economic foundation to build back its terror bases.
	Using that economic foundation to build ballistic missiles.
	Of course they'd sign on to that because it's just the Obama deal that Donald Trump called the worst deal in human history.
	You can't just take the Obama deal, stamp a big T on it, and call it a good deal.
	It ain't how this works.
	President Trump, however, was expressing optimism about the Iranian deal yesterday.
	Here he was.
	Probably read today the story about Iran has sort of agreed to the terms.
	They're not going to make out, I call it in a friendly way, nuclear dust.
	We're not going to be making any nuclear dust.
	In Iran.
	And we've been strong.
	I want them to succeed.
	I want them to end up being a great country, frankly, but they can't have a nuclear weapon.
	That's the only thing.
	It's very simple.
	It's not like I have to give you 30 pages worth of details.
	There's only one sentence.
	They can't have a nuclear weapon.
	And I think we're getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to.
	There's two steps.
	There's a very, very nice step and there's a violent step.
	The violence like people haven't seen before.
	And I hope we're not going to have to do this.
	I don't want to do the second step.
	Some people do.
	Many people do.
	I don't want to do that step.
	So we'll see what happens.
	But we're in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace.
	And if we do that, it'll be fantastic.
	Okay, so I'm just going to make one thing clear.
	When he says, the only thing is they can't have a nuclear weapon, you don't need 30 pages of detail.
	You absolutely need 30 pages of detail.
	Abso-frickin-lutely, you need the detail.
	They can't have a nuclear weapon, just means they can't have the actual nuclear weapon.
	How about the centrifuges that can spin it up in two weeks?
	Can they have those?
	That's the question.
	Do they have the capability to develop a nuclear weapon?
	How about if we open sanctions on them?
	Can they use that to rebuild Hezbollah or Hamas?
	Or Islamic Jihad?
	Or fund the Houthis?
	What can they use the money for?
	That 30 pages makes a big difference.
	It turns out, putting on my lawyer hat for a moment, that when people structure the outline of deals, all the devil always is in the details.
	Because the deal he's talking about right there is the Obama-Iran deal.
	It is just the JCPOA.
	Congress has already said that's not going to fly, by the way.
	Congressional Republicans are saying, no, it's complete denuclearization.
	And President Trump himself has said consistently, Complete denuclearization.
	If somehow, his special envoy, Steve Whitcoff, or anybody else in the Trump orbit, tries to steer him in the direction of the JCPOA, it will be one of the most giant fails of Trump administration too.
	The Iranians are counting on their ability to play these people.
	That's what they are counting on.
	Qatar is counting on its ability to play these people.
	The Trump administration.
	That's what they are counting on.
	And right now, right now, President Trump...
	Should make clear that he is not going to be played on all of this.
	This means conditions attached, for example, to the de-sanctioning of Syria.
	It means actual pressure on Turkey, which needs our F-35s to stop its support for terrorism.
	It means, for example, that Qatar should be cut off at the knees in its support for terrorism.
	And frankly, if Qatar wanted tomorrow, what they just showed by the release of Yidan Alexander, is that if Qatar decides to tell Hamas what to do, Hamas actually listens.
	If the United States actually wanted to end the conflict in Gaza, they could do it literally today.
	The Trump administration could just say to Qatar, here's the deal, the airbase goes away.
	It moves over to UAE.
	Unless all the hostages come out and Hamas goes into exile.
	That'd be the end of the war.
	Today.
	Literally today.
	But that would require seeing Qatar clearly for what it is.
	Which is a deceitful state that plays both sides and stuffs cash wherever it can find it.
	Oil cash that they're digging out of the ground.
	And meanwhile, In other non-saluatory news, Tulsi Gabbard, who is the Director of National Intelligence, she is consolidating control of the President's Daily Brief.
	Why does that matter?
	Well, because the information that President Trump receives when it comes to intelligence matters an awful lot to his decision-making.
	So Tulsi Gabbard is now attempting to sort of centralize the power over the Daily Brief.
	And she's doing so in ways that seem to sort of be geared toward confirming the President's priors on a wide variety of issues.
	Gabbard's decision, according to the New York Times, comes as President Trump has openly mused to aides over time about whether the office she leads should actually continue to exist.
	Gabbard's office announced the decision internally on Tuesday.
	The memo said there was much to be worked out about the transition timelines and our own processes.
	Again, the goal here with regard to the daily brief is to take control away from, for example, the CIA, whose current director is John Ratcliffe.
	One of the reasons that she is doing that, presumably, is because there was a controversy that arose over Venezuela.
	So, for example, Gabbard removed the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, Michael Collins, and his deputy.
	Why?
	Well, because he had actually written, along with the rest of the council, that Venezuela is not, in fact, actively deploying members of Trenda Aragua, MS-13, into the United States.
	And President Trump has used that idea as a lever for using the Alien Enemies Act for deportations.
	Well, it's either true or it's not.
	If it's not true, then sure, fire them.
	But if, in fact, it is true, then simply censoring the intelligence that reaches the president because it doesn't match with his priors, that is not a good way to make policy.
	Reality continues to exist whether you like it or not.
	In February, the intelligence community circulated an assessment that reached the opposite conclusion.
	The administration asked the National Intelligence Council to take a second look at the available evidence.
	And the National Intelligence Council reaffirmed what the intelligence community was saying.
	And so Laura Loomer then attacked the National Intelligence Council as career anti-Trump bureaucrats who needed to be replaced if they wanted to promote open borders.
	Again, the job of the DNI, the job of the intelligence community is to provide best available intelligence.
	It is not supposed to be politically driven.
	It is not a good thing.
	If you are firing people not based on your belief that they are doing a bad job, but based on the idea that the facts that they are presenting to the president don't match with the things you want the president told, that is not a good thing.
	It turns out intelligence bubbles have had some pretty dire ramifications over the years, the most obvious being the invasion of Iraq, which was based on an intelligence bubble suggesting universal support for the idea that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
	What you want is the best available intelligence available to the president full-time, all the time, without some sort of political bias or censorship.
	The president, when given full information, makes good decisions.
	If you deprive him of full information, that is a problem.
	Meanwhile, on the foreign front, there were talks that were supposed to be happening in Turkey with regard to Ukraine.
	Vladimir Putin originally said that he was going to show up in Ukraine.
	Vladimir Zelensky said, I'd like a 30-day ceasefire, and then I'll show up.
	President Trump pressured Zelensky.
	Zelensky said, okay, and then he showed up in Turkey.
	And Putin then didn't show.
	Instead, he sent a second-tier team of negotiators to hold peace talks with Ukraine.
	Spurning keeps challenged to go there in person to meet with Zelensky.
	Of course, the reason that Putin won't meet with Zelensky is he claims that Zelensky is an illegitimate leader, which is an amazing statement from a man who has consolidated his power over the course of the last two and a half decades by murdering nearly all of his political opponents or jailing them.
	In any case, President Trump Kind of changed his tune on this.
	Originally yesterday, he was saying that maybe he would fly to Turkey if Putin showed up to help broker this thing.
	Here's what he had to say yesterday.
	Well, I don't know if he's showing up.
	I know he would like me to be there.
	And I said, Musk, Bill, if we could end the war, I'd be thinking about that.
	Tomorrow, we're all booked out.
	You understand that?
	We're all sent.
	But you'd go.
	He goes.
	I'm going to go to UAE tomorrow.
	And so we have a very full situation.
	Now, that doesn't mean I wouldn't do it to save a lot of lives and come back.
	But yeah, I think they're thinking about something.
	Okay, and then President Trump reversed himself after Putin said that he wasn't going to go, and he said, ah, he was never going to go.
	So originally President Trump was like, maybe he'll go, and then I'll show up and we'll actually make a deal.
	And then Putin said he wasn't going to go, and Trump said, no, no, no, it was never going to happen.
	Mr. President, are you disappointed in the level of the delegation that the Russians send to Turkey?
	I don't know anything about it.
	I'm not disappointed in anything.
	Who are you from?
	BBC News.
	I'm not disappointed.
	What would I be disappointed?
	We just took in $4 trillion, and he says, are you disappointed about a delegation?
	I know nothing about a delegation.
	I haven't even checked.
	Look, nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together, okay?
	And obviously he wasn't going to go.
	He was going to go, but he thought I was going to go.
	He wasn't going if I wasn't there.
	And I don't believe anything's going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together.
	But we're going to have to get it solved because too many people are dying.
	Okay, so, you know, again, this sort of idea that too many people are dying, we need to get...
	So if Putin never shows up, what's the plan then?
	Russia continues to make outsized demands, by the way.
	Russia is demanding territory it hasn't even occupied yet in Ukraine, according to its newest round of proposals.
	According to the New York Times, Andrei Kartopelov, the head of the Defense Committee in the lower chamber of Russian parliament, reiterated his message on Tuesday, saying Ukraine needed to recognize that the Russian military was advancing in 116 directions.
	If Ukrainians did not want to talk, they must listen, quote, to the language of the Russian bayonet.
	And so Putin continues to sort of run around and...
	Not go to the negotiations while constantly maintaining a vigilant and increased military presence in eastern Ukraine.
	What is the alternative going to be?
	I mean, presumably it's going to be President Trump saying that we continue to support the Ukrainians to prevent them from collapsing.
	And to President Trump's absolute credit, he is recognizing what Putin is doing right now in some ways.
	So President Trump, in recent weeks, Asked advisors if they think that Putin has changed since his last time in office and expressed surprise at some of Putin's military moves, including bombing areas with children.
	That is according to the Wall Street Journal.
	So at least he's waking up to the reality.
	That is a good thing.
	It also happens to be that he is, I think, becoming increasingly concerned with the simple fact that the Russians have kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children back into Russia for some sort of radical indoctrination.
	Now, all of that, again, reality just exists.
	And as I've said before, President Trump is very much attuned to reality.
	And so the more he is attuned to the reality, the better his policies will be.
	Here are some realities on the foreign front.
	Vladimir Putin is not going to come to the negotiating table unless he believes he has no other real alternative.
	Two, Qatar is attempting to manipulate the president of the United States and American foreign policy.
	Three, Iran is not going to denuclearize.
	They are not.
	They've openly said this.
	This is not conjecture.
	They are not going to denuclearize in any way, shape, or form.
	That provides any sort of security for the Saudis, for the UAE, for the Israelis, or anyone else the Iranians are targeting.
	Four, Al Jelani in Syria needs to be held to account before you start shoveling money into his pockets.
	Five, Erdogan in Turkey is a disaster area, and trusting Erdogan in Turkey with American foreign policy is about as bad an idea as I can think of.
	Those are all realities.
	And so whether or not those realities are acknowledged, they will continue to exist.
	Reality is undefeated.
	And again, the reason President Trump historically has done well is because he recognizes reality.
	I think he will again.
	I hope sooner rather than later.
	Meanwhile, RFK Jr. headed over to the Hill for a grilling from lawmakers on a wide variety of topics.
	Actually, one of the people who was kicked out at the very beginning of his grilling on Capitol Hill was Ben& Jerry's co-founder, Ben Cohen, who was recently on Tucker Carlson spewing about his views of foreign policy, which obviously are trash, but you know, his ice cream is tasty.
	We'll say that.
	In any case, RFK showed up and made some really good points, and then he was grilled on some not-so-wonderful points.
	On the good points, RFK Jr. had been ripped by Rose DeLauro.
	She had the purple hair from Connecticut because she was upset with how grants were being held up or spent under HHS, and here is RFK slamming her back.
	Allow me to answer that by pointing out the absolute cataclysmic Disorganization of this agency under your oversight for 40 years.
	We had nine separate offices of women's health.
	When we consolidate, then the Democrats say we're eliminating them.
	We're not.
	We're still appropriating the $3.7 billion, but we're not keeping all nine.
	We had eight separate offices for...
	Minority health.
	We eliminated one.
	We had 27 HIV officers.
	We had 59 behavioral health programs.
	Okay, so again, good for RFK Jr.
	Also, Democrats went after RFK Jr. for supposedly cutting into Medicaid, and he made the point that we were talking about earlier, which is that what they're actually attempting to do is get people who are on Medicaid to do the work that they are supposed to do to be eligible so that they're not engaging in Medicaid fraud.
	He obviously is right about that.
	He also talked about some of the changes that he's been making that even some Democrats are happy with, especially concerning things like food dyes.
	Anybody thinks that we did gold standard medicine in this country from these institutions, look at our children.
	They're the sickest children in the world.
	Laura, you say that you've worked for 20 years on getting food dye out.
	Give me credit.
	I got it out in 100 days.
	I'll give you that credit.
	All right, so let's work together and do something that we all believe in, which is have healthy kids in our country, for God's sake.
	We can all put that together.
	There's no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children.
	There's just kids.
	Again, this is the stuff that makes RFK Jr. popular across the aisle, is the fact that he does talk in these sort of universalist terms.
	Now, where he did get himself in some hot water is he was talking about vaccines.
	And his comments on the COVID vaccine and whether it should be on the child vac schedule, of course the COVID vaccine should not be on the child vac schedule.
	That's ridiculous.
	As I've said before, I took the COVID vaccine originally because we were told by the Pfizer's and the White House, actually, that it was going to prevent transmission, which it turns out there was no data to support and was not true.
	But when it came to my kids, none of my kids were vaccinated because the statistics on vaccination for children were sketchy at best and damaging at worst.
	A lot of counterproductive data suggesting that.
	In fact, one of the people who we had on routinely during the pandemic, Dr. Marty McCary, is now one of the heads of President Trump's health division.
	Well, Senator Kennedy went beyond that.
	He was asked specifically about the measles vaccine, and he started talking about the problems with the measles vaccine.
	And here you get into hot water because some of the stuff he's saying here is not factually accurate.
	You also promised Chairman Cassidy that the FDA would not change vaccine standards from, quote, historical norms.
	But what happened as soon as you were sworn in?
	You announced new standards for vaccine approvals that you proudly referred to in your own press release as a radical departure from current practice.
	And experts say that that departure will delay approvals.
	You also said specific to the measles vaccine that you support the measles vaccine.
	But you have consistently...
	And undermining the measles vaccine.
	You told the public that the vaccine wanes very quickly.
	You went on the Dr. Phil show and said that the measles vaccine was never fully tested for safety.
	You said there's fetal debris in the measles vaccine.
	And this morning...
	All true.
	All true.
	This morning in front of...
	Do you want me to lie to the public?
	That's not...
	None of that is true.
	None of that is true.
	Of course it's true, Senator.
	Senator, you do not know what you're talking about.
	Okay, so, you know, the idea that the measles vaccine has not been extensively tested, I mean, it's been deployed for literally decades.
	So actually, we do have really good evidence on the measles vaccine.
	The notion that there's fetal tissue that's in the measles vaccine.
	No, in the development of the measles vaccine, fetal stem cells from lines that were developed in the 1960s have been used.
	But that's not the same as like fetal tissue.
	You don't have like fetal tissue roaming around in the measles vaccine.
	Or whatever.
	And it's that sort of stuff that actually undermines a lot of the good stuff that I think RFK Jr. is attempting to do.
	Overall, Democrats really did not lay a significant glove on RFK Jr. in the end.
	Meanwhile, how much is President Trump winning on issues like immigration?
	He's winning so much that Gavin Newsom is now backwalking an enormous part of his own agenda.
	So he has now proposed scaling back health care for illegal immigrants, according to the New York Times.
	Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday called for California to scale back health care coverage for undocumented immigrants to help balance the state budget, retrenching on his desire to deliver universal health care for all.
	That move came two days after the Trump administration targeted a different state-funded program for immigrants in California and signaled it would continue to scrutinize benefits for undocumented individuals.
	Again, it's always the New York Times saying undocumented individuals.
	They're called illegal immigrants.
	In a budget presentation on Wednesday...
	Mr. Newsom proposed freezing the enrollment of undocumented adults in the state's version of Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal, as soon as January.
	So he's backwalking a lot of this stuff, which, of course, is perfectly predictable for a man who wants to run in the sort of moderate lane for the Democratic Party for president.
	Fascinating to watch him revise all that.
	Speaking of his home state of California, the Daily Wire is now reporting on continued discrimination at UCLA Geffen School of Medicine.
	That's actually where my wife...
	went to medical school.
	Apparently, according to the Daily Wire, on May 8th, 2025, Do No Harm sued the Geffen School of Medicine for racial discrimination in admissions.
	The Geffen Dean of Admissions has both publicly and privately said she uses race as a factor in making admissions decision.
	A white Do No Harm member was unfairly rejected by Geffen despite stellar academic achievements and whistleblowers describe how the Geffen Admissions Committee routinely gives Black and Latino applicants a pass for subpar metrics.
	Saying that whites and Asians need near-perfect scores to even be considered.
	They continue, by the way, not to produce MCAT scores in response to public records requests.
	So MCAT scores would be a great way of telling whether there are people getting in who should not be getting in.
	If there are a bunch of people who aren't getting in with high 30s MCAT scores, and a bunch of people getting in with 20s MCAT scores, so long as they have the right race, that's obviously racial discrimination.
	So I would presume this isn't going to stay a civil lawsuit.
	Obviously, if this sort of thing is happening at UCLA School of Medicine, That's a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
	The DOJ could step in.
	So we will stay on top of that case, obviously.
	And meanwhile, in sort of the biggest nice news of the day, Klaus Schwab, who was the bizarre James Bond villain, mastermind of the World Economic Forum.
	It turns out that he may have been a scam artist.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, Schwab was seemingly headed for a graceful exit from the organization he founded more than a half century ago after a 2024 investigation by the Wall Street Journal exposed evidence of a toxic culture at the Forum for Women and Black Employees, which again, it's delicious to watch all of these people who push wokeness and DEI and all this nonsense now be eaten by the machine they created.
	By Friday, April 18th, the Trustees Audit Committee recommended opening a probe Instead, that letter,
	that threatening letter, backfired on Schwab.
	So again, he had handpicked executives at the forum and then fired employees who crossed him.
	And his wife was granted wide leeway as the head of a forum link foundation.
	But it turns out that probably there was intermingling of funds, or at least those are the allegations.
	There are allegations that he was using private flights, for example, that he was having enormous fees paid to people associated with him and all the rest.
	It is perfectly on brand that all of this is now backfiring on Klaus Schwab, that one of the great elitists of all time, who believe that basically the world should be remade from the top of Davos, is now falling apart.
	Behind the scenes, tensions ran high, and in August 2024 email to trustees, Schwab defended his legacies, quote, I could have created the forum as a commercial company.
	Since I carried the full entrepreneurial and financial risk when creating the forum, I would now probably be celebrated as a self-made Billionaire.
	However, again, the controversy continued to roil.
	There are 11 areas of complaints, ranging from allegations of misuse of forum resources to Klaus Schwab's behavior with female employees, including personal remarks and other communications that made the women uncomfortable, and his son Olivier Schwab's handling of the sexual harassment issue.
	It expounded on other alleged governance failures, including lavish spending on a luxury property called Villa Mundi, a project overseen by Hilda Schwab.
	The Forum spent $30 million on the mansion next to its headquarters overlooking Lake Geneva and launched into a roughly $20 million renovation, and Hilde steered the project.
	And she maintained control over how the World Economic Forum could use that property, limited an entire floor just for the Schwab's exclusive use.
	So, yeah, unsurprising, but delicious nonetheless.
	All right, meanwhile, a brand new poll shows...
	That the Democratic frontrunner, I've been saying this, the Democratic frontrunner for 2028 for the Democrats, AOC, according to a new poll taken by Coefficient from May 7th to May 9th, 26% of those surveyed say they think no one is the face of the Democratic Party, but 26% say that it's Alexander Ocasio-Cortez.
	Bernie Sanders receives 12%.
	So you combine those two, and you're talking about 38% of the Democratic vote believes.
	That either Bernie or AOC is the face of the Democratic Party.
	Bernie's not running.
	He's going to shift that support over to AOC.
	So you could theoretically be talking of upward of 30% support for AOC going into the Democratic primaries in 2028.
	That is a disaster area for all of these other candidates.
	And it shows how wildly to the left the Democratic Party is swinging.
	Meanwhile, AOC continues to posture for the cameras.
	So she had a bit of a run-in in Congress the other day after Representative Randy Weber Accused AOC of grandstanding for the cameras, which is, of course, her M.O. Here she was responding.
	There are 13.7 million Americans on the other side of that screen right there.
	Hello?
	Hello?
	I'm talking to you because I work for you.
	And they deserve to see what is happening here.
	Because there are plenty of districts, including Republican ones, where 25% of your constituents are on Medicaid.
	40% of your constituents are on Medicaid.
	And yes, I am talking to them.
	Will the gentlelady yield?
	I am talking to them.
	And I will not yield because it was a terribly disrespectful comment.
	And I will not yield to disrespectful men.
	Thank you very much.
	Oh my gosh.
	You will not yield to disrespectful men.
	This is the kind of stuff that earns you street cred inside the Democratic Party.
	And still she persisted.
	We saw this routine with Kamala Harris.
	We saw this routine with Elizabeth Warren.
	And now AOC is trying to play this card as well.
	Stephen A. Smith, for his part, he's saying, here's the problem.
	AOC, even if she were to get to a general election, is going to have a problem in that general election.
	AOC, who is 35 years of age, has emerged as a leading voice for Democrats.
	But some within the party are concerned she'll turn off centrist voters who are needed in the swing states.
	That Trump swept in November.
	For the record, they are absolutely right.
	She will turn off centrist.
	If you believe that higher taxes is the way to go, that a focus shouldn't be on securing the borders, if you believe those kind of things and that's where you stand ideologically, AOC is your candidate.
	And not to be literal, not to be taken literally, but she gives the impression that when you talk about universal health care and you talk about other things, if it equated to taxing Americans 70% of their income, she wouldn't be against it.
	That ain't gonna win you elections.
	So, again, I think he's right, but will Democrats be able to escape that?
	It's going to be difficult to see how Democrats escape the AOC juggernaut that is coming.
	Meanwhile, amidst all of this economic uncertainty, one consistent winner has been gold.
	I've talked about this before.
	Obviously, Birch Gold is one of our big sponsors here at the Ben Shapiro Show.
	I, full disclosure, personally invest with Birch Gold.
	Philip Patrick is a precious metal specialist and spokesman for Birch Gold Group.
	He joins us right now to discuss the status of the American dollar and where we are.
	Philip, thanks for taking the time.
	Thanks for having me, Ben.
	So let's talk about the status of the dollar right now.
	There's been a significant amount of de-dollarization over the course of the last couple of months, but it's been going on for years at a time.
	First of all, why don't we talk about what that means?
	Why is the global reserve status for American currency important?
	Yeah, look, it's very important.
	It gives the US what's called exorbitant privilege, right?
	It's allowed cheap borrowing, thanks to huge global demand for our dollars, massive control over global financial flows.
	In essence, the US has the veto power over any nation's ability to engage in international trade.
	It's allowed the federal government, of course, to run massive deficits without facing immediate collapse.
	So ultimately, I think it's made...
	American capital markets dominate the globe and ultimately made us the wealthiest nation in history.
	So I think it's hard to overstate how important global reserve currency status is.
	It underpins our economic, diplomatic, and I think military power worldwide.
	Okay, so let's talk about the status of the dollar, given the fact that there's a lot of economic uncertainty.
	We've been hearing rumors about an upcoming meeting of the so-called BRICS nations, that'd be Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.
	We're meeting in Rio de Janeiro this summer.
	What is the goal?
	Look, I think officially it's another working session between bureaucrats talking about economic cooperation.
	Unofficially, though, the BRICS leadership are expected to announce major advancements, essentially in a shadow financial system, a 21st century alternative to the existing dollar-denominated system.
	Inside sources are hinting now at a coordinated push to link the various systems that they've created over the last decade, things like Enbridge and Bricks Pay and commodity settled trade, with the goal of making dollar free international transactions.
	possible at scale.
	Ultimately, I think it's a culmination of their ongoing project to reduce the dollar's monopoly as global reserve currency.
	So given the fact that There are all these nations aligning against the American dollar.
	That obviously means that you would expect that gold will be more in demand.
	I mean, there's an attempt by all these nations to find some sort of new global reserve.
	The Russian currency is not strong enough to withstand that.
	Neither is the Chinese currency.
	All these are subject to manipulation.
	And so you're seeing people rush for various safe havens.
	Gold, obviously, historically has been one of the big safe havens, maybe the key safe haven.
	It's exactly correct, and we're seeing it.
	So US dollar holdings by central banks are at 30-year lows.
	Gold buying by central banks have hit records year on year on year for the last three years.
	And actually, last year, officially, gold overtook the euro as the number two global reserve asset.
	And it's for the exact reason that you mentioned, right?
	Russia, China, countries like this, they want to de-dollarize.
	They want to take that non-kinetic weapon away from us, but they don't have a viable alternative.
	So they're using gold as a means to de-dollarize.
	The longer that happens, the more that gathers steam, ultimately, the weaker the dollar becomes.
	So it's becoming problematic for sure.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Well, that is Philip Patrick, precious metals specialist and spokesman for Birch Gold Groups.
	You say they're a sponsor on the show.
	If you wish to check them out and get involved, then you should actually check out Birch Gold Group.
	You can text my name, Ben, to 989898 to get started today.
	Philip, thanks so much for the time.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Coming up.
	We're going to be reviewing the brand new Superman trailer.
	Plus, Dove is in trouble because they're now Dylan Mulvaney-ing themselves.
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