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June 25, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:09:58
COMMUNIST WINS NYC! Mamdani STUNS Cuomo In Mayoral Primary
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All right, folks, tons coming up on today's show.
The big news of the day.
A communist is likely to be the next mayor of New York City.
And guys, if you're in New York, you break it.
You bought it.
You effed around.
And now you're about to find out.
Plus, all of the fallout from the end of the Israel-Iran war, the media trying to undermine President Trump's triumphant victory there first.
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You did it!
You finally did it, you maniacs!
You blew it up!
So we are now living at the very end of Planet of the Apes, when stunned Americans wander the beaches of, as it turns out, New York City and find the Statue of Liberty half buried in the sand.
Because Zoran Mamdani, a communist, pro-jihadi, insane person who seems to have been bred in a laboratory at Columbia University just to be a leftist pastiche, is now the mayoral frontrunner in New York City because he won the Democratic primary last night in stunning fashion over the disgraced former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo.
According to the New York Times, Zoran Mamdani, a little-known state lawmaker whose progressive platform and campaign trail charisma electrified younger voters, stunned former governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York on Tuesday night, building leads so commanding that Cuomo actually conceded.
In fact, here is film of Andrew Cuomo conceding.
This is, by the way, an indicator of where the Democratic Party is going, as we'll get to shortly.
Here is former governor Andrew Cuomo conceding the Democratic primary on the first night.
This is a ranked choice primary.
Very often it takes a week, two weeks to find out who won.
He conceded it immediately.
And I'm very proud of the campaign that we ran.
And I'm proud of the effort that we put forth.
And I'm proud of the issues that we discussed.
But tonight was not our night.
Tonight was Assemblyman Monday's night.
And he put together a great campaign.
And he touched young people and inspired them and moved them and got them to come out and vote.
And he really ran a highly impactful campaign.
I called him.
I congratulated him.
I applaud him sincerely for his effort.
And let's give him a round of applause.
So that Sad Sack now wants to run as an independent.
We will find out whether that is real or whether that is not real.
Because after he registers as an independent, and now the mayoral race becomes Eric Adams, who's running as an independent, and Cuomo running as independent against Momdani, who will be the Democratic nominee, Momdani is pretty clearly the frontrunner.
There's a reason that Polymarket, which is essentially a politics betting website now, that Polymarket has Mamdani as the heavy favorite at this point.
According to the New York Times, Momdani, a 33-year-old Democratic socialist from Queens, tapped into a current of anxiety around New York City's growing affordability crisis.
His joyful campaign, it's always joyful for the New York Times.
When you are a socialist nut job, that means that you are filled with joy.
So much joy.
And anybody who accurately characterizes the state of New York City as not particularly good, that person is filled with rage.
They did the same routine about Kamala Harris.
Remember, she was so filled with joy and Donald Trump was so filled with rage.
Well, it turns out that Trump's perspective on reality was significantly more linked to reality than his opponents, than Kamala Harris's.
Well, apparently Cuomo was filled with rage and despair, but Mamtani was filled with joy.
There'll be so much joy at the state-run supermarkets.
I'm not even kidding when I say that that was one of Mamdani's proposals.
He wants the city to run supermarkets because he believes that the profit motive is creating bad grocery choices in New York City, which is psychotic.
Socialists have never been good at distribution of food.
That's why they have breadlines in socialist countries.
And Mamdani is not just a left-leaning Norwegian type.
Mamdani is somebody who believes in the full-scale nationalization, the government running of the means of production.
When we say he's a communist, he's an actual honest-to-God communist.
But according to the New York Times, his joyful campaign brought new voters into the fold who rejected the scandal-scarred, Cuomo's ominous characterizations of the city and embraced an economic platform that included everything from free bus service and childcare to publicly owned grocery stores.
And I think the most important thing here to remember is that young Democrats are basically sixth grade voters in your middle school election.
If you ever ran for student body president in middle school, you will remember that if you ran a normal campaign, pledging, for example, that you were going to clean up the gym better.
And then some kid came in and said, I pledge free ice cream and no homework for everyone.
And all the kids voted for that idiot.
Yeah, that's New York City when it comes to all of the Gen X, millennial, and Gen Z voters.
That is who they decided to vote for, particularly white people.
It is a white people election.
If you look at the map, here is a map of New York City as it went last night.
And you will notice something very funny.
The areas that clearly went for Mamdani are the whitest areas of New York City.
The white people voted for Mamdani.
Everybody who actually has to live in the parts of the city that are not the richest parts of the city voted against Mamdani.
Mamdani is just an essential boiling down of every luxury belief that upper-class, college-educated white people hold, which is insane.
You wonder why I'm very much in favor of President Trump effectively wrecking the universities?
Because they have become indoctrination centers for Zoran Mamdani and his voters.
That is why.
I mean, it really is amazing.
The polling leading up to this election, which again, did have in some of the polls Montani winning, suggested that white voters were going to vote for Mamtani by over a 60-40 margin.
It probably was even more than that.
Black voters were favoring Cuomo 60-40.
So as always, blame this on the upper-class, college-educated white people.
That's who did this.
That's what the polls showed, by the way, also: is that if you went to college, you were voting Montani 60 to 40, no college, Cuomo 60-40, in that Emerson poll leading up to the election.
Just showing that college makes you stupid, unbelievably stupid, apparently.
According to the New York Times, the decisiveness of New Yorkers' swing toward Mr. Montani reverberated across the party and the country at a time when Democrats nationally are searching for an answer to President Trump and are disillusioned with their own leaders.
And as I say, we'll talk about the national implications of this in a second.
National figures are signing into chat.
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who is sort of the early version of Zoron Mamdani.
She's now the grand old lady of the Democratic Party, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
Since Mamdani is 33, she tweeted out, congratulations, Zoron.
Your dedication to an affordable, welcoming, and safe New York City, where working families can have a shot has inspired people across the city.
Billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system, and you won.
I mean, congrats to New York City.
And let me just say this, as a resident of Florida since 2020, a citizen of Florida with real estate investment, with real estate.
Let me say this to all the high net worth individuals in New York City, all the people who pay taxes in New York City, all the productive people in New York City with investment firms and financial investments.
We're here for you down here in Florida.
We're here.
Leave your values at the border because your stupid values bought you this.
So don't come down to my state and wreck my state.
We will be checking ID as you come down into my state.
We'll be deporting all New York illegal immigrants into the state of Florida.
If you come down here and you bring your Democratic crap politics to my state, but if you're coming down here as an act of contrition and repentance, noticing that your city has completely destroyed itself, noticing that your city is now trending toward full-scale socialism, wrecking all of the things that made New York City great, all of the investment, all of the creativity, all of the innovation in favor of redistributionist nonsense.
If you're coming down here and you are simply bringing your productivity and your innovation and yes, your wealth down to Florida from New York, come, come, come.
We're here for you.
We'll be here for you in your time of need.
And yes, the real estate prices may be a little bit higher since that's your penalty for not having seen what was coming in the city that you helped to wreck over a period of time.
It's not just AOC who is celebrating.
Kathy Hochl, the erstwhile governor of New York, a woman who has failed up at every job she's ever held, said in a statement, quote, today voters made their voices heard, demanding a more affordable, more livable New York City.
I hear them loud and clear.
Zoran Mamtani built a formidable grassroots coalition.
I look forward to speaking with him in the days ahead about his ideas on how to ensure a safe, affordable, and livable New York City.
That is so nice.
Wow.
That is so exciting.
And it's really exciting because the reality is that if you had told me after September 11th, that fast forward a quarter century and the person who would be the New York City mayoral frontrunner and Democratic nominee for the party would be a terrorist supporting communist, I would have been a little bit surprised to be honest with you.
But it just goes to show you that no lesson is learned permanently in life.
No political victory is ever complete.
There is no one track toward the future.
Sometimes there are inflection points and there are many, many stupid people.
And so New York City deserves precisely what's coming to it.
You guys broke it and now you bought it.
And so I hope that you enjoy what you have created.
You decided to allow this to fester in your city, this ideology to fester in your city.
You decided that it was very important to indoctrinate all the liberal white people in your city with the dumbest ideas in the history of planet Earth.
Mandani is the kind of person who has said he wishes to actually propose something like $65 million for transing the children in New York City.
That's who Zoran Mandani is.
So, you know, good luck to you.
Good luck to you.
And if you wonder why black and Hispanic voters are turning toward the Republican Party, this would be the reason.
It was not black and Hispanic voters who drove this.
It was the liberal white people.
It was Stephen Colbert.
It was Stephen Colbert and his ilk who drove all this, except all of Stephen Colbert's younger viewers who drove all of this.
So again, it's all fantastical.
His policy proposals are idiotic.
They'll empty out the city and they all have it coming.
Is that sad for America?
Sure, it's sad.
I mean, you're talking about perhaps the greatest American city, New York City.
But if this is the way that New York City decides to destroy itself, well, there wasn't much we could do about it, was there?
And I welcome the splitting of America politically with more Republicans and independent leaning people leaving blue governed junk areas and leaving them to their own devices.
Hell, I did it in California.
I despaired of California and I left and I took my family and I took my business and my life got better and the people at my company's lives got better and our company got better and California got worse.
We'll get to more on Zoran Montani.
What does that mean for the National Democratic Party?
What does it mean for 2028?
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And so if you insist, if the voters insist on making these sorts of decisions, there will be some predictable consequences and you brought it on yourself.
I'm very much in favor of real life consequences for real life stupid decisions.
And New York is about to, they have to round and now they're about to find out.
Mamdani, for his part, he was out there bragging.
made history.
Tonight, we made history.
In the words of Nelson Mandela, it always seems impossible until it is dark.
you Among the people who were out celebrating Mom Dani was, wait for it, Letitia James.
You remember Letitia James.
She, of course, is the now disgraced former Attorney General of the state of New York.
Letitia James is the person who went into office pledging to abuse her office by targeting President Trump.
Mom Danny was not actually her first choice for mayor, but she's on the bandwagon now.
All the best people, all the best people.
She showed up to stir up the crowd and talk about how he was running a rebellious campaign.
They know his name now.
Every struggle that I've been involved in, it's been individuals with a vision and a passion for change.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, they didn't know his name then, but you can bet your ass that they know his name now.
It's not just Letitia James, who is now under FBI investigation for her own form of alleged real estate fraud on a mortgage application.
It is also Nydia Velazquez.
She, of course, is a member of Congress.
Nydia Velazquez, she showed up to talk about how the billionaires are going to try to stop him.
Well, actually, the billionaires are just going to leave.
One of the most amusing things about the left is that the left hates billionaires, but they need them to exist so they can suck their blood out.
That's what they need.
They're blood-sucking socialists.
And when their proposals get passed into law, for example, a wealth tax in France, you know what the rich people do?
They go away, they take their money and they leave.
And they come down to Florida.
So, fine.
You want to go after the billionaires?
Enjoy yourself, gang.
You know who is the typical voter for Zaran Mamdani?
Let me show you a picture of the typical voter for Zaran Mamdani.
Wait for it.
Wait for it.
Yes, that's Ella M. Hoff.
You recognize her.
She looks delightful.
What a wonderful person.
Zaran Mamdani's key voter.
Ella M. Hoff, a pseudo-Jew who has no relationship to Judaism, who is the stepdaughter of Kamala Harris, who seems deeply unhappy and slightly unhinged.
That is the typical Zaran Mamdani voter.
Ella M. Hoff put out a graphic of herself frowning into camera.
She is a celebrated beauty, obviously, and you can see just why.
She's wearing a shirt that says blue skies, and then it says, feeling so many emotions voting again.
It was a little traumatic walking to the same voting place as I did in November, but I feel so much hope for New York and what Zoran Mamdani will bring.
Also, he's not my district, but if you are District 36 and are not voting for close, we are not friends.
Thank you to everyone who is out there on this horribly hot day helping.
And she's wearing a headscarf that says Zoron for New York.
It says, y'all better be voting today.
This is who the Democratic Party is.
So congrats to all of you.
Now, we should take a moment to explore what young people in New York City are voting for.
And the answer is they're voting for the Bernie Sandersization of American society.
That is what they are voting for.
And so in that fight, one of the things they care deeply about is virtue signaling about how much they hate anyone who is connected to the system.
So in a city that is quite heavily Jewish, I mean, New York City is one of the most Jewish cities in the country demographically, they are poised to elect somebody who is full-scale anti-Semitic.
That, again, is not a gigantic shock because this is the way that the Democratic Party has been trending for quite a long time.
The squad has been trending that way.
The squad is that way.
And so this is just the squadization of the Democratic Party.
But it is telling.
It does mean something.
And so what you have is a bunch of young white people who are disillusioned with their own society.
I've talked about my new book, Lions and Scavengers, which is coming out in early September.
You can pre-order right now at Daily Wire's shop.
But these are the scavengers.
This is the coalition of scavengers that is coming together on behalf of Zoran Mamdani, people who hate the system, who live off of the kill made by the lions.
New York City is reliant on the wealth generation of Wall Street.
New York City is reliant on the wealth generation of the small shop bodega owner who simply wants to generate enough money for his family, but now has to fight off street crime because of people like Zoran Mamdani and his policies.
Those are the people who actually generate.
Those are the lions in New York City.
And then you have the scavengers, and the scavengers are a bunch of college-educated leeches with sociology degrees from Wellesley.
Those are those people, the Ella M. Hoffs of the world, all uniting and virtue signaling about how much they hate anyone who is productive and decent.
They're Bernie Sanders fans.
And I've called Bernie Sanders a leech on the ass of society.
And I think, frankly, that that is being kind to Bernie Sanders, a man so useless he was once thrown out of a commune for failing to do work.
Well, folks, in a little while, all of the fallout from President Trump ending the Iran-Israel war, what does it mean?
Where do things go next?
And why are the media lying as per the usual arrangement about everything?
Who's leaking to the media?
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But Bernie Sanders was on with Joe Rogan, of course.
And here he was suggesting, along with Rogan, that basically the New York City primary has turned into a referendum on Israel.
I got involved and I'm supporting Mr. Mendani.
A lot of people are.
Especially after that debate.
Right.
It seems like everybody else was essentially saying, I've been to Israel more than you've been to Israel.
I'm going to go to Israel before you do.
Right.
They think they're campaigning to be foreign minister for Israel or something.
Okay.
I'm just going to point out right now that if you watch that debate and your takeaway from that debate was that Zarmamzani is the reasonable one on the stage on the issue of Israel, that everyone else on the stage who just said Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state is wrong and crazy.
And Zarmamzani is reasonable for believing that Israel does not have a right to exist.
That is a luxury belief, my friends.
That is a belief that is held by a small sliver of very, very well-educated white people and psychotics and ambulatory psychotics in the Democratic Party, but that describes a large share of the Democratic voting base today.
So what does this mean nationally?
What does this mean nationally for the Democratic Party?
Well, once again, it means that the Democratic Party is quite likely to swing to the left.
Now, I've predicted this for a while, that what you are seeing in the United States is a Democratic Party that does not know where to go next.
It's a Democratic Party that's lost in the wilderness.
And so they are looking at what to do.
And what they believe they ought to do now, it appears, is move hard to the left.
There's been this battle inside the Democratic Party between the more practical people and pragmatic people, like, say, Congressman Richie Torres or John Fetterman, or hell, even Nancy Pelosi at this point, and people like AOC.
And the ambulatory psychotics are going to win.
And they're going to win because Democrats are constantly, people on the left are constantly looking to the youth of America as a sort of bellwether for where they should go next.
They're constantly looking at the radicals in their own party and saying, well, you know, are they that radical or are they just idealistic?
Are they just the future?
And a party that goes along with this trash for decades ends up with Zoran Mamdani as its leadership and AOC as its leadership.
And that is the movement of the Democratic Party.
I've been warning you.
I've been warning you and warning you.
AOC is very likely to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2028.
She is.
I'm just saying.
And by the polling data, that is true, by the way.
The only thing that could possibly stop AOC are black voters in South Carolina again.
That's the only thing that prevented Bernie Sanders, that old useless wobbly, from becoming the Democratic nominee in 2020.
That is the only thing that stopped that.
So are black voters going to stand up to the next Zoran Mamdani on a national level or AOC on a national level?
I don't know.
You don't know.
What I am seeing is a Democratic Party that is coming to grips with the fact that it is now basically just red.
And I don't mean red like red Republican.
I mean red like commie.
You're seeing a Democratic Party that is beginning to concede to its younger generation.
And good luck to you if that's what you, but we're playing a very dangerous game because the other thing that we ought to mention here is that if you become a major party nominee in the United States, one of the two major parties in the United States on a presidential level, there's at least a 40% shot you're president of the United States.
So everybody is playing with fire.
People were poo-pooing Mom Dani because he is a psychotic, because his politics are insane.
People were poo-pooing that.
And then it turns out that he is likely to be the next mayor of New York City.
And so people who are poo-pooing AOC right now, you're likely to be very disappointed when it turns out that she is the Democratic nominee come 2028.
And then when she has a serious shot of becoming president, because again, any member of one of the two major parties who's running for president in 2028 has at least a 40% shot of being president.
And God forbid the economy collapses.
God forbid something goes seriously wrong on the foreign policy front.
If that happens, then you could very easily end up with somebody as far left as an AOC as president of the United States.
This is why I truly believe that the Democratic Party needs to moderate.
I do care actually what happens inside the Democratic Party.
I believe the Democratic Party is cleaning itself out, that the Democratic Party has made itself hostage to the demands of a radical minority who do not represent the vast base of the Democratic Party, but who do show up in primaries.
And by the way, this does speak to the problems in the primary process in all the parties.
Everybody likes to rag on the smoke-filled backrooms that used to pick party nominees because parties are vehicles for victory.
But getting rid of those smoke-filled backrooms turns out very often to embolden the most radical members of your party constituency.
And that's how you end up with Azora Mamdani as the Democratic Party nominee.
And that's not good for New York City because now New York City is going to be left with a choice between Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, who just lost the Democratic primary, and Eric Adams.
And there's a very good shot that Adams and Cuomo split that remaining independent vote, and Mamdani ends up running right up the left side and taking the mayoralty.
So if you're a Democrat today, you should be a little scared.
If you're a Democrat who's in the realm of the sane, who doesn't believe that the solution to housing costs is complete rent control and destruction of all possible new development, if you're somebody who in New York City believes that perhaps the radical overpricing of everything has to do with the insane tax and regulatory structure of New York City, if you are what they are now calling an abundance Democrat, right?
If you are an Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson Democrat, right, Ezra on the show to talk about this, if you're a Democrat who lives in the world of reality such that you actually understand that capitalism is a wealth generator and you just want more redistribution, right?
You're more of a European left-winger than you are a full-scale communist.
Understand that you have built this.
You have decided to give credence to these people.
You have decided that it was very important to pat them on the head as they said insanely radical things about every particular topic.
And how radical is this group of people?
This group of people is so insanely radical that the campaign director for Zoran Mamdani recently posted about Luigi Mangion, you know, the alleged murderer of United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson.
Quote, Mangion is one of the few entities not rejected online, which is ironic considering how harmful he deemed social media.
And while his remarkable good looks hardly hurt, anyone who thinks his acclaim is rooted primarily in aesthetics is missing the point probably on purpose.
He is adored, not only because he dared to target a leader of one of the most vile, self-enriching industries darkening our society today, but because he dared to defy the stasis of nihilistic rejection.
The question is not whether he was right or wrong.
It's how many others he has shaken loose.
That is the campaign director for the future mayor of New York City in all likelihood.
That is what you Democrats created.
Maybe you ought to think about where things went wrong.
That might be worthwhile at this point in time.
And again, this speaks to Democrats on a national level.
It is you who have decided to elevate the absolutely excrable Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a position of leadership in your party.
That was you.
You decided to take Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and make them leaders in your party.
It was Nancy Pelosi who decided that she was going to give those people a bear hug and put them on the cover of Rolling Stone.
That was you.
It was you elderly Democrats who thought that the new wave was just jet fuel that you could use for your own ambition.
And it turns out the revolution always eats its own first.
Robespierre is first to the guillotine.
So I hope you enjoy, Democrats, because this is what you have created.
Speaking of Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez said on Tuesday that President Trump's decision to strike Iran without seeking congressional approval is, quote, absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment.
And this is the Democratic Party that you guys are pushing.
A single strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities is grounds for impeachment, according to AOC, who had nothing to say.
Well, Joe Biden bombed a wide variety of countries, as it turns out, ranging from Yemen to Syria while he was president of the United States.
President Trump immediately responded in a lengthy post on his truth social network saying, quote, stupid AOC, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, one of the dumbest people in Congress, is now calling for my impeachment, despite the fact that crooked and corrupt Democrats have already done that twice before.
He also labeled her the mouse, which the man has a gift for nicknames.
I will say that.
Meanwhile, Al Green, who has made a living off of calling for President Trump's impeachment, announced yesterday yet another impeachment attempt against President Trump when he's not waving his cane.
He's calling for impeachment.
He's all run out of canes.
I rise because we are at the intersection of democracy and autocracy.
I rise to announce that at this moment in time, I have filed HRES 537.
HRES 537 is a privileged resolution.
HRES 537 has been filed because I believe that the President of the United States has committed an impeachable act.
Oh, well, you do?
I mean, is it a day ending in Wyow?
I was at the State of the Union address where he was waving his cane and screaming at the President of the United States.
So again, nothing new there.
The House voted to table Green's resolution, by the way.
Over half of Democrats joined with Republicans to kill the effort.
Now, President Trump didn't just go after Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez for her recent stupidity calling for his impeachment.
He also went after Jasmine Crockett.
He did say that she is unqualified for office, AOC, but, quote, far more qualified than Crockett, who is a seriously low IQ individual.
He also compared Ocasio-Cortez to Ilhen Omar, who he said, quote, does nothing but complain about our country.
Yet the failed country that she comes from doesn't have a government, is drenched in crime and poverty, and is rated one of the worst in the world if it's even rated at all.
Again, point to President Trump right there.
Speaking of Jasmine Crockett, she was also on the impeachment bandwagon.
Here was Jasmine Crockett complaining that she had not received her briefing about Iran yet.
Yes, America waits with bated breath to hear the opinions of Jasmine Crockett about Iran's foreign policy.
But I wanted to jump on because obviously it's been bombs, missiles, all kinds of stuff.
And to be clear, I've still not gotten any type of briefing.
So just so y'all know, nobody's tried to call us in for a top secret briefing at all as whole sitting members of Congress, but you know, whatever.
This unbelievably stupid person, Unbelievably stupid individual.
It is difficult to watch this person and believe this person's in Congress.
But then again, the collective IQ of Congress could, you know, maybe power a toaster for like a minute and a half.
I don't know.
Maybe toast a piece of bread slightly, the intellectual electricity generated by all of Congress.
Jasmine Crockett provides zero of that intellectual energy.
She says that she's the one supposed to be making the decisions on bombing Iran.
Thank God she's not.
My goodness.
And to understand enough about the Constitution to the extent that I'm the one that's supposed to make the decision or at least get a vote.
Oh, goodness gracious.
AOC fired back at the president, quote, Mr. President, don't take out your anger on me.
I'm just a silly girl.
I mean, first of all, you are.
Quote, take it out on whoever convinced you to betray the American people and our Constitution by illegally bombing Iran and dragging us into war.
It only took you five months to break almost every promise you made.
By the way, did AOC have any comment whatsoever when Joe Biden was striking random families in Afghanistan with hellfire missiles as he pulled out an ignominious disgrace from Afghanistan?
Of course not.
Of course not.
This is your future Democratic Party.
Zahr Mamdani, AOC, Jasmine Crockett.
This is your young rising wave of Democrats.
And I hope you enjoy it, y'all, because you created it.
It was you.
You went so nuts that President Trump became president in 2016 that you decided to abandon any principles you ever had and simply throw your hat in with the nuttiest among you.
And so once again, all I'm saying is that you're effing around and now you're finding out.
And you do not have my sympathy.
You do not.
The people who have my sympathy in New York City are the people who are actually just good taxpaying citizens who want to go about their daily business and raise their families and the lines of our society.
Those are the people who have my sympathy.
And I do feel bad for those people.
Many of them can't afford to leave.
I really do feel bad for those people, truly.
But if you were complicit in this, if you kept voting Democrat year after year after year after year because you didn't like that George W. Bush was pro-traditional marriage, or you didn't like that Donald Trump had appointed justices to the Supreme Court who didn't love Roe versus Wade.
If you decided that you had to vote Democrat because you needed to virtue signal about how much you had sympathy for Comosnicks, or if you decided that you were going to vote Democrat because it was imperative that you send a message to those terrible red state Republicans about COVID, then this is your fault.
This is you.
And you do not have my sympathies.
And so as I say, if you are one of the lions, you are welcome down to Florida.
Come, bring your family, have a great time.
Florida's wonderful.
If not, then stay wherever the hell you are and enjoy the crevasse you have made for yourself in New York City.
Well, folks, the media lie about everything and the leaks to the media with regards to the Iranian nuclear program, those do not seem quite honest.
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All righty.
Meanwhile, speaking of Iran and the end of the Israel-Iran war brokered by President Trump, the ceasefire that he brokered is indeed holding.
Of course, as I said yesterday on the program, that's what he was mostly concerned with.
Once the president has set his credibility behind a ceasefire, he wants that ceasefire to hold.
Now, Iran's going to test that ceasefire.
Apparently, they've already started firing drones at Israel.
Those are being shot down outside of Israeli territory.
And there will come a point here where Israel is going to have to act kinetically in order to stop Iran again.
It is not as though Iran is going to simply quit.
Constant ceasefires are broken in the Middle East by enemies of Israel.
This happens all the time.
The ceasefire in Lebanon has been violated a million times at this point by Hezbollah.
Israel has had to act.
Ceasefires have been broken repeatedly between the Gaza Strip, when it was completely run by Hamas, and Israel, typically by Hamas, preparing or actually participating in a terror attack.
However, the ceasefire is, for the moment, holding.
I wish to point out at this point that again, for the millionth time, all of the people in the media who are telling you there's a massive split over President Trump's kinetic action against the Iranian nuclear facilities, anyone in the media who tells you there's a giant split in the Republican Party over this is lying to you, lying.
There is no data to support that.
I know X tells you different, but that's because the X algorithm is f ⁇ .
Okay, the X algorithm is a mess.
The X algorithm promotes anything that is likely to generate high levels of emotion and or bot traffic.
That's just the reality.
I wish it weren't the reality, but it happens to be the reality.
CBS News polling: okay, do you approve or disapprove of U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities?
Republicans approve 85%.
85% of Republicans are in favor of what President Trump just did to the Iranian nuclear facilities.
How about MAGA Republicans, people who identify themselves as MAGA Republicans, people who love President Trump, voted for President Trump, and aren't quote unquote traditional Republicans?
94% approval rating.
94%.
So when the media tell you there's a massive split between the neo-isolationists, horseshoe right, and the rest of the Republican Party, if by a giant split, you mean there is a sliver that is extremely vocal on X and on social media, and you get a lot of play from random podcasters, large and small.
If that is your take from the media, it's because they are lying to you.
That is not representative of the Republican base, the Republican electorate.
It is not representative in the slightest.
And by the way, many of the people who you see who are very critical on the so-called right of President Trump over the Iran strikes, many, not all those people, many of those people were leftists before and will revert to being on the left again as soon as it is politically convenient to do so.
And meanwhile, again, the media coverage here is just egregious.
The media, there's a Michael Crichton thought model that he put out at one point, the author of Jurassic Park.
He suggested that the problem with the legacy media is that if you look at an area you really, really know in the newspapers, let's say that you're a businessman, you look in the newspapers and you work in, say, the printing industry and you look in the newspapers, there's an article about the printing industry.
What you will find from the journalist who's covering the story is a million errors.
You'll say, this is not true, and this is not true, and this is not true.
This, by the way, is absolutely accurate.
If you ever watch newspaper coverage of an industry you know really well, you will find tons of errors in the media coverage of that industry.
And then you turn three pages later to an industry you don't know all that well, and you just assume the journalists are correct.
Okay, well, as it turns out, everything they do is filled with non-objectivity, filled with error.
And that is particularly true of the media coverage of the Iran-Israel war.
The suggestion that number one, this was a tit for tat is wrong.
Israel destroyed Iran's nuclear capacity along with the United States.
Obviously, President Trump making that final call was huge, but Israel had already devastated Natanz and Isfahan.
The United States put the final marker on that and then destroyed Fordo.
Okay, so when we talk about the media coverage today, understand the media are dishonest.
They're either lying or they're wrong on so much of their coverage.
The idea that this was sort of fought to a standstill, nope.
Israel completely knocked off the entire upper echelon of the IRGC.
Israel knocked off the entire upper level of the IRGC.
Israel knocked off pretty much every nuclear scientist in Iran.
And by the way, going to be very hard to recruit for nuclear scientists in Iran from now on.
You're an MIT grad, you're going back to Iran where Mossad probably knows where you live, or are you going to get a job somewhere else?
Israel devastated the ballistic missile capacity of Iran, their ballistic missile launcher capacity.
And somehow the media declared this thing kind of a draw, sort of.
Okay, well, let's be clear about what's going on.
Israel, immediately upon the ceasefire, reopened all restrictions on its citizens.
The airport reopened.
Economic activity reopened.
All the people that I know in Israel are back at work today.
Home Front Command said that all regions of the country can resume full activity without restriction.
But even during the war, Netanyahu was walking around in broad public daylight while Ayto-Khameni was hiding in a bunker like Hitler at the end.
Okay, so again, the ceasefire is holding.
That's not particularly shocking.
And so you have to ask yourself, why was Israel okay with the ceasefire?
Forget about Iran.
You understand why Iran wanted the ceasefire?
Because they were getting absolutely hammered.
Iran was being destroyed like Bonnie blew in a terrible video.
Iran was just getting wrecked.
Okay, Israel was doing the wrecking.
And so the question is, why did Israel actually agree to the ceasefire?
And the answer is because they'd already hit all their targets.
They'd already done this.
And Bibi Netanyahu is already essentially saying this publicly.
They were coming to the end of the mission, that they had already done all that they thought they needed to do.
So the IDF and the IAF didn't stop because they thought they had not finished what they were doing.
And by the way, there will continue to be Mossad operations inside Iran, as there have been for the past couple of decades.
President Trump put out a statement.
Both Israel and Iran wanted to stop the war equally.
It was my great honor to destroy all nuclear facilities and capability and then stop the war.
And again, presumably he is responding to all of the DOLTs we talked about yesterday on the show who were suggesting that he wanted to lead America into World War III, which was, of course, always complete and utter idiocy that was never going to happen.
And a lot of those people were very mistaken for ideological reasons.
Meanwhile, what about the idea that Russia BRICS was going to come to the defense of Iran?
Where were they?
The answer is that Russia didn't care what happened to Iran.
The Wall Street Journal has an entire piece titled, Why Russia is Giving Iran the Cold Shoulder After the Israel Attack.
The Kremlin leader made no mention in his meeting with Iran's top diplomat, Abbas Araki, on Monday, of military support in his public remarks ahead of the talks.
Instead, he suggested they discuss an exit ramp out of the conflict.
This gives us a chance to think together about how it would be possible to get out of this situation, said Putin.
Apparently, after Moscow fumbled the initial stages of its invasion of Ukraine, Iran boosted Russia's war effort with ammo, artillery, shells, and thousands of drones, but Moscow is unlikely to return the favor.
With Iran facing its most existential challenge in decades and even calls from President Trump for regime change, Russian military aid is unlikely to come through, analysts said.
While the strategic partnership reached between the two countries did not include a mutual defense pact, it strengthened intelligence sharing, prohibited the countries from aiding each other's enemies in conflict.
The move underscores the transactional nature of even Putin's strongest partnerships, and that's the key.
Iran was getting wrecked by Israel and then by the United States, and Russia ain't going to do nothing about that.
They didn't for Assad either.
Assad fell, and Russia did nothing.
Meanwhile, what did China do?
They sat aside as well.
It turns out that peace through strength is a real thing.
And when you show strength, your enemies tend to back off, Particularly when you happen to be the United States or an ally of the United States, backed by the United States.
According to the Washington Post, sitting on the sidelines amid this dramatic geopolitical upheaval, with much to lose over the spiraling conflict and ambitions to influence policy in the Middle East, was China.
William Figueroa, a China-Iran expert at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, quote, China has little ability to affect the situation directly.
China does not benefit from any kind of wider conflict.
And he said they have no ability to militarily influence that conflict.
China is heavily dependent on oil and gas from the Middle East.
Iran, which is subject to a harsh international sanctions regime, also relies on China to buy its oil.
Even when Washington asked for China's help, Beijing seems unable or unwilling to insert itself into the tensions, analysts say.
On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on Beijing to encourage Iran not to shut the strait in an interview with Fox, citing China's dependency on the passageway, saying such a move would be economic suicide for Iran.
The Chinese foreign ministry, a spokesperson named Wao Jiacun, said the Chinese government, quote, maintained communication with its Iranian counterparts and is willing to work with Iran to enhance communication, but it's unclear if they actually took any steps.
So China stood aside as well.
Again, gigantic win for President Trump, gigantic fail for all of his ideological opponents who believed either on the horseshoe left or the horseshoe right that President Trump was an isolationist who was willing to allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.
Now, again, President Trump is being extremely clear about what the end goal here was.
And as I said, throughout this conflict, it was not the goal of the Israelis or the Iranians to effectuate themselves regime change.
The conditions are right for people in Iran to rise up if they wish to do so.
And that's what President Trump had said and Prime Minister Netanyahu.
But the idea that we were ever going to engage in a full-scale nation-building effort in Iran was insane, ridiculous, silly, foolish.
Hey, Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel.
How is he going to do that precisely?
How is he going to effectuate regime change?
Again, Israel is a country of 9.7 million people.
Iran is a country of 91 million people.
Perhaps the only fact that Tucker Carlson got right during this entire debate.
You think Israel is going, what, deploy hundreds of thousands of its troops to Iran, 1,500 miles away across the airspace of multiple countries in order to effectuate regime change in Iran?
Is that a thing that people thought was going to happen?
Or that the United States, led by Donald J. Trump, was going to embark on a nation-building adventure in Iran?
Donald J. Trump?
What utter foolishness.
And for some of these folks, dishonesty in claiming that.
Here's President Trump yesterday saying, no, of course we're not interested in regime change.
What he means here is forced regime change.
If the Iranians decided to overthrow their government, their issue.
And hey, maybe that'd be great.
But that is not the United States' goal.
In Iran?
Well, if there was, there was.
But no, I don't want to.
I'd like to see everything calm down as quickly as possible.
Regime change takes chaos.
And ideally, we don't want to see so much chaos.
Okay, so Speaker Johnson of the House, he said, listen, Iran has been decimated at this point.
That was the goal.
We're under no illusion that you can just kill all their nuclear ambition overnight, but I think reality has set in over there.
We have decimated the upper echelon of their military command as well as their nuclear scientists.
I mean, there's not much left for them to rebuild upon.
And he is right about that.
Now, the propaganda effort by the Iranians and their allies, including John Kerry and the legacy media, who just hate Trump so much that they would rather side with Iran, they're trying to claim everything's hunky-dory.
It's all fine.
So again, the same folks who claim that Iran was negotiating peacefully, not racing to a nuclear bomb.
Now, now they're going to race to a nuclear bomb.
Now, again, this sort of blowback theory that Iran only acts because the United States or Israel acts is it's really, really foolish, truly foolish.
Iran has independent interests.
They've been pursuing those independent interests since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and they will continue to pursue those interests, which is why Israel bombed them.
And then the United States bombed them as well.
Here, for example, is an Iranian TV host now claiming they'll enrich as much uranium as they want.
Well, they were already saying this.
This is memory TV, which does a great job translating this sort of stuff.
So, Mr. Trump, Mr. Grossi, all those who sought to harm the Iranians, we have adopted a policy of nuclear ambiguity.
Oh, have you?
We will enrich uranium to whatever level we choose.
First of all, that's not particularly vague.
We will retain as much enriched material as we want.
We will import to an export from any country we wish.
Will you now?
We will build nuclear facilities wherever we decide.
We will reconsider our position on the NPT.
And we will answer to no one.
I should point out that this particular Iranian TV host is literally backdropped by a graphic of a burning White House.
So these are clearly people you can negotiate with, nice people.
Meanwhile, John Kerry.
No one has been wronger for longer than John Kerry, a man whose face is now collapsing like a mudslide in the Hollywood Hills.
John Kerry, truly one of the most despicable people in American public life for decades, ran for president, thank God lost in 2004 to George W. Bush, and then was Secretary of State under Barack Obama, horrifyingly bad Secretary of State, a man who suggested there could never be an Abraham Accord because, of course, he needed to solve the Palestinian issue before getting to any sort of agreement between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
Now he says, you can't bomb away the memory of how to make a bomb.
It's very hard to say what exactly is going to bring them back to the table, but I know this.
You cannot bomb away the memory of how to make a bomb.
You can't bomb away the knowledge that they have developed.
You can't bomb away the broad array of technicians who've been working on this for years who will go back to work if that's the mission they're given by the leadership of the country.
Okay, well, wrong.
I'm just going to point out wrong.
Israel's been delaying the Iranian nuclear development by killing its top nuclear scientists for legitimately decades, and they killed pretty much every top nuclear scientist in Iran, like all of them.
Beyond that, Israel also apparently destroyed the Iranian nuclear archive.
So Israel got access to those archives back in April.
And then, apparently, during this wave of attacks, Israel also destroyed Iran's nuclear archive.
So it's going to be a little difficult, Actually, now the big report of the day, again, this is the legacy media trying to cover ass for the fact that President Trump did a courageous, heroic thing and that Iran's nuclear facilities have, in fact, been set back by, at the very least, significant years and maybe forever.
Now they are trying to report a low-confidence DIA assessment leaked to the New York Times.
Here is CNN suggesting that the early U.S. intelligence assessment is that it's only set back the Iranian nuclear program by months.
As of right now, the DIA has produced this intelligence assessment that we are told was based on the battle damage assessment that U.S. Central Command has done following those massive bombings and strikes that the U.S. carried out inside Iran last weekend.
And what we are told is that based on the assessments of the damage that these bombs implemented on these nuclear sites, that as of right now, it does not appear that they ended or obliterated Iran's nuclear program.
Instead, they only set it back by months.
According to White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt, she said, quote, this alleged assessment is flat out wrong.
She said it was classified as top secret, but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous low-level loser in the intelligence community.
Okay, she is right about that.
By the way, notice how every leak tends toward one direction in the Trump administration.
Every single leak from the Trump administration tends toward the neo-isolationist direction.
All of them.
And so there is a narrative that is now being retailed by many of the neo-isolationists inside the Trump administration.
It's sort of a dual narrative.
Narrative number one is that actually everything here was unsuccessful.
Sure, the 12-day war, which completely decimated Iran's top military levels, killed their ballistic missile program, destroyed their missile launchers, killed their top nuclear scientists, and hit their nuclear facilities.
Sure, all of that happened, but it didn't really work.
It didn't really work.
So the neo-isolationist, it turns out, were right.
This is the claim that's now being made by some of them based on nothing, as I'll explain in a moment.
And then there is the other claim that is being made by the neo-isolationists and now leaked out to prominent media outlets.
That claim is that if it had not been for the intervention of the neo-isolationists, World War III would have happened.
It definitely was going to happen, except that they intervene and they stopped that madman Trump.
Now, first of all, if you're a neo-isolationist in the administration, and I know that there are many of you there at the top levels of the administration, I'm fully aware many of us are.
If you are undermining the foreign policy of the president of the United States in this way, you ought to quit.
If you believe that the president of the United States was going to get us into World War III, except for the amazing advice of the neo-isolationists, that's not true.
You know it's not true.
And now you're trying to cover your own ass for the fact that you oppose the president's policy.
And this narrative that you're retelling is a lie.
It is not even remotely true.
The notion that Donald J. Trump was going to get us into World War III in this conflict was always empty.
That was always an empty notion.
And you now trying to backfill and suggest that if it had not been for your personal intervention, if it had not been for your steady, clear-headed, gimlet-eyed advice to the President of the United States, then the world would have gone up in nuclear flame.
Okay, it's weak.
It's weak and it's wrong and it's stupid.
And by the way, it is highly disloyal.
And anybody who's a close watcher of politics can tell whom has been leaking a lot from the White House and from agencies associated with the federal government.
Okay, now, as to the actual content of this supposed report reported by CNN and the New York Times.
Quote, a preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran set back the country's nuclear program by only a few months, according to officials familiar with the findings.
The strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities, but did not collapse their underground buildings.
The officials said the early findings concluded.
Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take three months.
After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the IAF, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated the program had been delayed, but by less than six months.
Some Israeli officials said they also believed Iran government had maintained small covert enrichment facilities so it would continue its nuclear program in the event of an attack on the larger facilities.
Other officials noted the report found three nuclear sites, Ford, Natans, and Isfahan, had suffered moderate to severe damage, with the facility at Natans damaged the most.
Okay, so let us point out now that as Jennifer Griffin of Fox News reports, this particular DIA assessment is a preliminary intelligence assessment and is deemed low confidence in intelligence parlance.
It is based on satellite images and SIGINT obtained since the strikes.
It is a preliminary DIA intelligence assessment.
They're trying to claim that an unknown amount of highly enriched uranium was moved out of the Fordo facility.
That is not likely.
It is not likely.
The real likelihood is that it is inside Ford.
I mean, if you think that the Israelis and the Americans were not watching the entire time at Fordo, you're out of your mind.
Israel is hitting specific apartment bedrooms in Tehran.
You think they weren't watching Fordo, the most highly publicized nuclear facility in Iran for months leading up to this?
You think that Iran was what, just bringing in like gigantic trucks and carrying this stuff out?
That's your idea, and that the Israelis had no idea that it was done secretively?
The Iranians are great at keeping secrets from the Israelis, as we know, which is why Ayatollah Khomeini was literally hiding in a bunker for most of this conflict.
No.
The high likelihood is that that enriched material is still inside Fordo and that the reason that Israel has not actually blown it up more is because they were afraid of an environmental catastrophe if they were to actually blow up the enriched uranium.
Seth Mandel over a commentary magazine points out, quote, here's one assertion in the Times report.
The strikes badly damaged the electrical system at Fordo, which is housed deep inside a mountain to shield it from attacks, officials said.
It's not clear how long it will take Iran to gain access to the underground buildings and then repair the electrical systems and reinstall equipment that was moved.
As Mandel points out, if the Times is reporting that detail accurately, Fordo is done for.
The power sources are down.
No one can get inside.
So sure, it's accurate to say the site was not completely destroyed physically.
That doesn't mean it is functional or operational.
The facility is hundreds of meters deep, among other things, there is no air in there.
And some of the other reporting from the legacy media, desperately hoping for an L for President Trump.
There's a passage from CNN, quote, instead, the impact to all three sites, Fordo, Natan, and Isfahan, was largely restricted to above-ground structures, which were severely damaged, according to sources.
That includes the site's power infrastructure and some of the above-ground facilities used to turn uranium into metal for bomb making.
Well, above-ground facilities, as Mandel points out, are not coat rooms or lounges.
They are in-use facilities.
David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Studies says, quote, in particular, major setbacks include the elimination of or severe damage to the majority of centrifuges at Natan's, significant damage to the Ford Ale underground site, destruction, damage to several facilities at the Isfahan nuclear complex, including one used in the conversion of enriched uranium to uranium metal, another that converts natural uranium into uranium hexafluoride.
Relatedly, the attack on the IR-40, a rock-heavy water reactor, has likely destroyed the reactor, eliminating a potential future source of plutonium that could be used in nuclear weapons.
Albright is basing his judgment off of satellite imagery, which again is the exact same imagery that the DIA is now using.
So, if you do not mean, if what the media is trying to say is they weren't obliterated, like they still exist in some form or fashion, maybe.
Does that mean that they are functional or usable or that the nuclear facilities are recoverable?
Well, I mean, General Dan Kane said, Raisin Kane said, on Sunday the bombing was, quote, designed to severely degrade Iran's nuclear weapons infrastructure.
And by the way, the leaked report is already outdated.
It underestimated the amount of uranium buried in the strikes and therefore based its conclusions on Iran having more uranium to work with than it actually does.
Also, again, the idea that Iran is able to rebuild that quickly is kind of crazy.
And the idea that Israel is going to stop doing operations is kind of crazy.
But I think that we should take into account the fact that the legacy media that are eager to report this low-level assessment, this low confidence intelligence assessment from DIA, let me just point out, Israel has the best intelligence on the ground in Iran, not the United States, Israel, because they have human intelligence on the ground in Iran.
The joke going around is that there are more Mossad agents in Iran than there are Iranians in Iran at this point.
You think the Israelis would have been fully satisfied with a ceasefire if they believed that Iran was capable of going nuclear again in six months?
Is that a thing that you believe?
Because if you do, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that is for sale, and I'd like to sell it before Zorn Mamtani becomes mayor.
But let's just point out where the legacy media are.
These are the same people who are going around saying that actually when Iranians chant death to America, they don't mean it.
They're actually quite friendly.
I remember, Dan, at one point, being in Tehran years ago, and they're chanting death to America all around me, even as I say, oh, I'm an American reporting for CNN, and they were happy to speak to me.
So those two sort of jarring realities of the chant and yet the friendliness have existed together.
They're actually friendly when they chant death to America because they're willing to talk to a credulous CNN reporter, Aaron Burnett, we should take totally seriously.
And all the things the media say and are leaked to, we should take totally seriously.
Again, the leaks that are happening to the New York Times are happening for a reason.
They're happening for a reason.
People leak to the media in order to obtain a political result.
If the goal is to undermine President Trump's credibility, if the goal is to undermine the more hawkish side of the Trump administration and to undermine President Trump's foreign policy, that's the goal.
And you should all see the goal because leaks don't happen in a vacuum.
They don't magically appear.
A leak to the media is not like a leak in your showerhead.
It is a deliberate attempt to undermine the foreign policy of the president of the United States.
That's what it is.
Or it is leaked by the president of the United States.
You can tell this ain't from the president.
You can tell.
So that means it's someone else, someone with an agenda.
And a group of people with an agenda.
You might call them a deep state inside the Trump administration, actually, who have attempted to undermine the president's foreign policy every step of the way through coordinated leaking and messaging with their allies outside.
Okay, meanwhile, Hollywood is very upset.
Again, I have a general rule of Hollywood's upset with the thing.
I'm pretty happy with it.
Rosie O'Donnell posted what looks like an AI-generated photo of a tiny President Trump sitting in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's lap.
Now, again, I'm old enough to remember when this was considered der Schirmer-type anti-Semitism, this idea that Benjamin Netanyahu is pulling the strings of the president of the United States.
By the way, I noticed the president of the United States yesterday call off an Israeli airstrike on Iran.
So I have a feeling that actually that's not the way this relationship really works.
Meanwhile, pop megastar and wicked actress Ariana Grande shared a post from Congresswoman Alexandro Ocasio-Cortez calling for President Trump's impeachment.
I definitely needed to hear the thoughts of an underfed pop star waif on Middle Eastern policy.
Ariana Grande would last precisely 2.7 seconds in Iran doing what she does publicly.
Mia Farrow, who of course is also not all there, she says, unprovoked, without imminent threat, Trump attacked a country without consulting Congress.
Impeach him.
Mark Hamill, who, again, it's always a little bit sad when people who you watched in movies that you loved growing up turn out to be some of the world's biggest doofuses.
Mark Hamill is one of those people.
Luke Skywalker.
He said, I hate when I go to bed early on a Saturday night and wake up Sunday morning only to discover we've gone to war in the Middle East without the consent of Congress.
I remember Mark Hamill being super upset about all of Joe Biden's kinetic military action in the Middle East and Barack Obama's.
There was so much.
Never happened.
John Cryer, of course, of two and a half men, he tweeted out, considering how often he lies, we may well have bombed France.
Lizzo, well, Lizzo has lost some of the weight, but none of the dumbness she put out on blue sky.
You can always tell where people are in terms of their intelligence level by whether they use blue sky or not.
Quote, just a reminder, they're not bombing for peace.
They're bombing to assert dominance.
War is never about what they say it is.
It is always about money and who has the nuclear power.
Well, cancer take.
Like by all sides, it's always about money.
Always.
So like when we were bombed by the Japanese during World War II and then we decided to destroy the Japanese empire, that was about money, according to, okay.
How about the civil war?
About money?
Okay?
The U.S. is a military state.
Ever since its creation in 1787, it's been designed for war.
We've never known peace, says Lizzo.
The hatred these people have for the country is truly an astonishing thing, truly.
The U.S. is a military state designed for war.
There was a massive debate at the Constitutional Convention over whether we should even have a standing army.
So I'm going to go no on that one.
Meanwhile, Stephen King, who can always be counted upon for both bad tweets as well as bad endings to his books.
As I say, Stephen King has a pattern when it comes to his books.
The beginning is always fascinating, and by the end, everything just goes on fire.
That's the end of every one of his books.
Quote, Trump apparently doesn't want commerce with other countries, just war.
So tiresome.
But if you find yourself on the horseshoe right agreeing with these people, let me suggest that you look around at your allies, the people who you're hanging out with these days.
Maybe it's because you agree with them.
Maybe it's because your ideology is the same and you're not nearly as right-wing as you've said you are.
You're not nearly as Republican.
Again, those polling splits, MAGA Republicans, 95% in favor of the president's action in Iran.
And meanwhile, President Trump has headed over to the NATO summit.
He has gone there in order to demand, again, that the NATO allies pay their fair share.
He shared a post from Mark Rudy of NATO, the head of NATO, praising him for actually calling on all of these members of NATO to pay their fair share.
Quote, Mr. President, dear Donald, congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran.
That was truly extraordinary, something no one else dared to do.
It makes us all safer.
You are flying into another big success in The Hague this evening.
It was not easy, but we've got them all signed on to 5%.
Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe and the world.
You will achieve something no American president in decades could get done.
Europe is going to pay in a big way, as they should, and it will be your win.
Safe travels and see you at His Majesty's dinner.
That was Mark Rudy, who is the Secretary General of NATO, which is good.
Again, it was always good that President Trump was calling on the Europeans to stop freeloading and taking advantage of America's largesse in order to bulk up their welfare states while we paid for their military.
So NATO countries, all except for Spain, which again, Spain is a socialist trash heap at this point, agreed in preliminary talks to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP.
The spending commitment is divided into two parts, 3.5% for traditional military spending, according to the Daily Wire.
That would be air defense, recruitment.
The remaining 1.5% can include infrastructure like roads and bridges.
So again, should they go up?
Should they really be building roads and bridges with the military?
Probably not.
However, the move by President Trump to get them to pay their fair share is the correct move.
Meanwhile, the Europeans are picking up the burden in Ukraine, as they should, as they should.
There just needs to be enough of a transition from American support to European support so there is no gap in Ukraine's defense.
Here's Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the EU, suggesting that there is a financial program amounting to $150 billion to support Ukraine's defense.
We have designed a funding program of 150 billion euros.
We call it SAFE, where member states, but also Ukraine and other partners, can take these loans to invest in the Ukraine defense industry, which has shown its ability to innovate, to produce fast and reliably at scale.
We can learn a lot from you, what that is concerned, but in this way we can support you also for the survival of Ukraine.
Okay, so the Europeans look like they're going to pick up the bill.
There needs to be a transition, again, because a lot of the weaponry being used by the Ukrainians is American in origin.
You can't just shift over immediately to American-made, from American-made weaponry and ammo to European-made weaponry and ammo.
That takes a bit of a transition period for certain.
President Trump has said that he plans to meet with Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, on Wednesday alongside the NATO summit, according to a White House official granted anonymity to discuss the meeting.
And that's a good thing.
Again, Vladimir Putin has shown no inclination whatsoever to come to the table in any serious way.
None.
Now would be an excellent time for him to come to the table because the source of much of his military materiel was Iran.
Iran is now basically decimated.
Russia can do the churning through the meat of its soldiers indefinitely, but are they going to win any additional territory?
Well, if the Europeans step up and if there's enough of a bridge from American support to European support, then Russia is not going to make any more significant gains in Ukraine.
That's what needs to be ironed out right now.
I think President Trump will do that.
I think he will, in fact, achieve that.
All righty, coming up, we'll get to the economy, the big, beautiful bill, the latest with that.
President Trump getting ready for a big victory on that as well.
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