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July 17, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show

51:59

HILARIOUS: Shane Gillis Destroys The ESPYS…And Wokeness

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	Alrighty, folks, tons coming up on today's show.
	Shane Gillis burns up the SB Awards.
	I know it actually is really, really funny.
	Plus, brand new breaking news on the Joe Biden being not all there scandal.
	Somebody else pleading the fifth on that one.
	First, my brand new book, Lions and Scavengers, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com.
	It is a rallying cry against the lies poisoning our culture.
	Trust me, the scavengers, you know, people wish to tear down our civilization.
	They're not going to like it.
	Again, you can pre-order Lions and Scavengers at Amazon.com right now.
	Also, we're celebrating a decade of the Daily Wire.
	That is 10 years of saying the quiet part out loud and building something that actually matters, something left can't cancel or burn down.
	And we're not slowing down.
	We are scaling up with new talent like Isabel Brown and her new show premiering this fall, with new docs like Journey to the UFC, the Joe Pfeiffer story premiering Friday, July 25th.
	And here's the thing, members get all of that first.
	The drops, the trailers, the truth uncensored.
	Plus, you get to connect with the community that doesn't think biology is optional.
	Celebrate 10 years with us.
	Join now at dailywearplus.com.
	Alrighty, folks.
	So there's a lot of interesting and serious news to talk about, but I just want to say not all comedic heroes wear capes.
	Shane Gillis, you recall him from originally being on SNL, and then he was actually canceled on SNL before he ever did an episode of SNL.
	And then because we now live in the post-cancel culture era, he was rehabbed and has now been on SNL, has become one of the most famous comedians in the country.
	Well, somehow, someway, Shane Gillis, who is incredibly politically incorrect, who is willing to go all the way to the edge on his jokes and who, yes, probably has some rather conservative leanings, Shane Gillis somehow was hired to be the host over at the SPs.
	And because I just enjoyed the living hell out of this, I wanted to share it with you because it is really great and indicative, by the way, of the fact that if you are a comedian who is not of the radical left, people on the left get very angry at you.
	They won't laugh at you.
	They'll kind of leave you hanging.
	But Shane Gillis just doesn't care.
	And that's what makes him unbelievably charming, I have to say.
	So Shane Gillis was at the Espys.
	For those who don't know, the Espys are a kind of silly award show that ESPN put together to give trophies to rich and famous athletes.
	And typically, they are an exercise in pandering.
	And because ESPN is a left-wing network, that means they go out of their way to sort of play into left-wing social tropes.
	Well, suffice it to say, Shane Gillis really didn't do that.
	Instead, Shane Gillis just started taking shots, and there are a bunch of people who took strays.
	So here's Shane Gillis doing a joke about Caitlin Clark, the WNBA star, that is definitely too edgy for 2025, but perfect for a Richard Pryor set in 1977, and it's quite fantastic.
	Here we go.
	When Caitlin Clark retires from the WNBA, she's going to work at a waffle house so she can continue doing what she loves most, fistfighting black women.
	Even the crowd couldn't help but love that one.
	Wow.
	Wow, Shane Gillis just going there.
	That, of course, is a riff on the fact that the WNBA has basically turned into a hockey game with Caitlin Clark being bullied about by various members of the WNBA contingent, mostly black, supposedly because she's being famored because she's white or something.
	That wasn't his only WNBA joke of the night.
	In fact, his best WNBA joke of the night, I have to say, this is like an all-timer of a joke.
	Here we go.
	Four-time WNBA all-star Britney Hicks is here.
	Give it up for Brittany, everybody.
	I'm joking around.
	That's my friend's wife.
	I knew none of you knew WNBA players.
	Oh, ESPN, of course, has a pretty large stake in the WNBA doing well.
	And so him just taking an enormous dump across the entire league is pretty spectacular stuff.
	Really good stuff there from Shane Gillis.
	He also got in a really good immigration joke as well.
	Here we go.
	Joe Rogan actually wanted me to be here to host this award show so that I could capture Adam Silver because Joe thinks he's an alien.
	And Donald Trump wanted me to be here to capture Juan Soto for the same reason.
	It's an alien joke.
	What are you boot up there, dude?
	Shut up.
	No, what's funny about this is that people seems a little bit upset about that particular joke.
	That's not even a right-wing joke.
	It's not clear where his sympathies lie in that joke, but people are just so used to left-wing humor that the fact this is not a left-wing joke leaves them absolutely puzzled.
	Well, Shane Gillis also did a January 6th joke and an Epstein joke.
	So, and I got to say, this is one of the great all-time sets.
	This is almost up to, it's not quite there.
	It's almost up to the Ricky Gervais set that he did years back where he just launched into a bunch of rich and famous actors.
	This is really solid stuff here from Shane Gillis.
	Donald Trump wants to stage a UFC fight on the White House lawn.
	The last time he staged a fight in D.C., Mike Pence almost died.
	You don't have to do that.
	It was fine.
	I didn't write it.
	Actually, there was supposed to be an Epstein joke here, but I just got deleted.
	Must have probably deleted itself, right?
	Probably never existed, actually.
	Let's move on as a country and ignore that.
	Well, you know, gotta say, gotta say, Shane Gillis did not hold back.
	There are many, many jokes here.
	I'm not gonna play all of them.
	It is worth checking out his full set.
	He did end with a fitting tribute to Norm McDonald, who told a joke at the Espies long ago that basically got him canceled from ESPN.
	It was indeed an OJ joke.
	Here we go.
	There's one thing I want to say before I get out of here, and this is a dumb joke.
	You guys aren't going to like it, but it's just a Norm McDonald joke that I loved when he hosted the Espys, and I'm going to do it now.
	Travis Hunter won the Heisman Trophy this year.
	He's the first defensive player since Charles Woodson to win the Heisman.
	Congratulations, Travis Hunter.
	Winning the Heisman.
	That's something they can never take away from you unless you kill your wife and a waiter.
	In which case, they can take that away from you.
	Oh, Shane Gillis.
	So full props to Shane Gillis for doing the thing that nobody at ESPN wanted him to do.
	And whichever GM decided that Shane Gillis was going to be the host of the SPs doesn't have a job today.
	But you know what?
	Sir or madam, hats off to you.
	Excellent pick.
	Well done, Shane Gillis.
	Alrighty, coming up.
	Zoran Mamdani is now telling Democrats how to run campaigns.
	So things are going well.
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	Also, summer is here.
	Nothing beats firing up that grill with family and friends.
	But here's something that's kind of shocking.
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	Okay, in significantly more serious news, it is amazing to me that the greatest scandal of the last half century, you know, the fact that the president of the United States was dead for several years and no one knows who the president was, that one continues to fly under the radar.
	I understand that people are very obsessed with the Epstein scandal because, again, there are so many unanswered questions and because all we really have is a statement by the DOJ and the FBI to this point and because so much speculation had taken place about this case for literally years on end, the gestalt of the case sort of entered into the common parlance.
	Everybody sort of believed they knew something about the case without looking into the details of what was actually out there and then came to conclusions.
	And then the DOJ and the FBI sort of just released a conclusory report.
	And we don't know what went into the baking of that case.
	I get all that.
	I get why everybody is very upset about that.
	I will say that if we are talking about serious scandals, it seems to me that the scandal that is right in front of our eyes, not one that is rooted in conspiracy theorizing, not one that is rooted in speculation, one that is just rooted in absolute overt reality is, again, the fact that Joe Biden was not mentally functional for several years at the end of his presidency.
	And somehow this wasn't the biggest scandal in America, even at the time.
	It's unbelievable to me.
	Truly incredible.
	Well, yesterday, a man named Anthony Bernal, who it turns out was Joe Biden's top aide, was called to testify in front of Congress about Joe Biden's health situation.
	And he proceeded to take the fifth seven straight times.
	Here we go.
	Mr. Bernal, did you ever advise President Joe Biden to pardon his son, Hunter Biden?
	On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution.
	Mr. Bernal, was President Joe Biden fit to exercise the duties of the president?
	On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question.
	Mr. Bernal, please be very clear.
	Are you declining to answer the question put to you solely on the ground that you believe the answer will incriminate you?
	On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution.
	Did any unelected official or family member of President Joe Biden execute the duties of the presidency?
	On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question.
	Mr. Bernal, did President Joe Biden ever instruct you to lie regarding his health at any time, including but not limited in your testimony to Congress today?
	On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question.
	Mr. Bernal, is it your intention to decline to answer all questions put to you today by the committee on the basis of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination?
	I can represent that that is his intention.
	That is unbelievable.
	Again, that's the top aide to Joe Biden, who certainly knew that Joe was in ailing health, that his mental fitness was in serious question.
	According to Original Scent, that again is the book from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, all about this.
	Quote, Anthony Bernal, Jill's top aide, had the title of deputy campaign manager, unusual for a staffer to espouse.
	He had started out as an advanced man for the Clinton-Gore campaign, but since joining Jill's team in 2008, he had become her closest confidant and strategist.
	As Jill's power rose, so did Bernal's.
	Biden's aides would say that she was one of the most powerful first ladies in history.
	And as a result, he became one of the most influential people in the White House.
	Bernal was the Biden's eyes and ears, the keeper of the flame, the protector of the myth.
	As we researched this book, it was difficult to find many Bernal defenders.
	He freely trash-talked senior, mid-level, and junior aides.
	Some described him as the worst person they had ever met.
	He would not be welcome at my funeral, one longtime Biden aide said.
	You don't run for four years, you run for eight, Bernal would tell others.
	Whenever the idea of Kamala Harris running came up, Bernal and other senior staffers reacted dismissively.
	Please, she can't win.
	Well, that part was true, but this does speak to the fact that Jill Biden was basically keeping her president in office, her husband in office, because he wasn't the president.
	She was the president.
	And her aides were helping her be the president, including Anthony Bernal.
	That would be the reason, presumably, why he is taking the fifth about the former president's health.
	And that is truly astonishing.
	That is outrageous.
	The American people vote for a president.
	If that president is non-complos mentis, the members of the cabinet for that president have a constitutional responsibility to remove him from office.
	And they didn't.
	So this scandal should not just implicate Joe Biden, shouldn't just implicate Jill Biden, shouldn't just implicate the White House doctor or Anthony Burnell.
	It should implicate any member of the Biden cabinet who knew better and did nothing and fundamentally betrayed the duty to ensure that the American people had a mentally functional president of the United States.
	That scandal is not going to go away anytime soon.
	It's one that Democrats are still going to have to live down.
	I will say President Trump got off a pretty good joke on this basis.
	He signed into law an act that was meant to crack down on the trafficking of a fentanyl.
	And as he was signing it, he says, this is not an auto pen, you may notice.
	And this is not an auto pen, right?
	That's for sure.
	That's great.
	Thank you.
	By the way, I will note here that the president is doing everybody a big favor.
	It's not a major thing, but it is a good thing.
	So I'd like to welcome all of you who are not Jews who keep Passover to the magic of sugar in Coca-Cola.
	So there's this thing.
	So in Judaism, you're not supposed to have corn on Passover.
	You're not supposed to have grain on Passover.
	And so because you're not supposed to have grains on Passover, you end up not having Coca-Cola with corn syrup in it.
	And so what we very often do is you actually ship Coke in from Mexico that has natural sugar because sugar is okay on Passover.
	And let me tell you, sugar-based Coke, way better than high fructose corn syrup-based Coke.
	Well, the president of the United States is making Coke great again.
	He put out a statement yesterday, quote, I've been speaking to Coca-Cola about using real cane sugar and Coke in the United States, and they've agreed to do so.
	I'd like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola.
	This will be a very good move by them.
	You'll see.
	It's just better.
	It is indeed better, by the way.
	It is significantly better.
	So I hope that you all enjoy a Coke and a smile on behalf of President Trump.
	By the way, the actual way to get Coke to use sugar again would be to end all the various tariffs that we have on sugar, but that gets to economic policy.
	Speaking of which, the Senate is now set to debate cuts to NPR, PBS, and Foreign Aid under a process called rescission.
	The Senate voted by a razor-thin margin late on Tuesday to advance debate on a package of funding cuts requested by President Trump, according to NPR.
	They are aimed at clawing back $1.1 billion previously allocated to the corporation for public broadcasting, along with $7.9 billion earmarked for international efforts to combat famine and disease.
	That would be USAID.
	Vice President Vance had to be called on the floor to cast that tie-breaking vote because it was voted against by Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins, which led to a 50-50 tie.
	That vote follows approval in the House last month for the president's request.
	Again, there's a process by which if the executive branch requests that certain spending not be done, then the House and the Senate can vote for what's called rescission.
	The Senate Appropriations Committee did remove PEPFAR, the U.S. AIDS relief program begun by President George W. Bush from the package of cuts.
	So the cuts are less significant than the cuts that were happening in the House.
	The cuts to the corporation for public broadcasting remain.
	And this is setting off the Democrats every so often.
	Whenever Republicans talk about the fact that the most lucrative parts of, for example, PBS, like Sesame Street, would be totally self-sustaining in a free market system.
	You don't actually need government subsidies in order to make Sesame Street profitable.
	Whenever you say this, people accuse you of killing Big Bird.
	If you go all the way back to 2012, Mitt Romney proposed the possibility of defunding the corporation for public broadcasting with taxpayer dollars.
	And then he was accused of wanting to kill Big Bird.
	That's how far back this goes.
	Well, now, Catherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, she says, we shouldn't be defunded.
	I know people are saying we're biased.
	We're not biased, says Catherine Maher, the CEO of NPR.
	As far as the accusations that we're biased, I would stand up and say, please show me a story that concerns you because we want to know and we want to bring that conversation back to our newsroom.
	That is a lie.
	That is a lie.
	NPR is one of the most biased news sources in America and it's sponsored with your dollars, going all the way back to Uri Berliner, who was, in fact, a veteran at NPR, writing for the free press just last year, saying that NPR had become a left-wing agitprop outlet.
	Quote, it's true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed.
	In recent years, however, that has changed.
	Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different, the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
	If you're a conservative, you'll read this and say, duh, it's always been this way, but it hasn't.
	And then he points out that by 2023, only 11% of the NPR audience described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21% as middle of the road.
	67% of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal.
	And there's a reason for that.
	NPR covered RussiaGate ad infinitum.
	NPR completely failed to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story with NPR's managing editor saying, quote, we don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.
	And we don't want to waste the listeners and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions.
	NPR has been biased in favor of the left on every single issue for nearly my entire lifetime.
	Of course, we should not be subsidizing it.
	Of course.
	You can get your news from a wide variety of sources.
	We here at the Daily Wire are private funded source.
	That's what we are.
	Your subscriber dollars, advertiser dollars.
	That's what makes us happen over here.
	We don't rely on the taxpayer in order to prop up our worldview.
	And yet, here was Chuck Schumer suggesting that cuts to public broadcasting are now a matter of life and death.
	We are back to everything Trump does, everything Republicans do is going to get people killed.
	It is so tiresome And so boring.
	And these cuts to local stations couldn't happen at a worse time with floods and natural disasters front of mind.
	When a flood happens, when a tornado touches down, when a hurricane makes landfall, people need immediate, up-to-date alerts to stay safe.
	And sometimes, all too often, public broadcasting is the only way for people to hear what's going on.
	It's a matter of life and death.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	That's absurd.
	That's absurd.
	Are you really telling me there's no way to get information outside of public broadcasting?
	In what world is Chuck Schumer living?
	Truly, that is ridiculous.
	Ridiculous.
	But that is what Democrats are now relegated to saying about basic cuts that most Americans support.
	Alrighty, coming up, the horseshoe theory, radical left and radical right.
	There's a lot going on between them.
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	Also, we've all heard the common myths like you only use 10% of your brain.
	But here's one that might surprise you.
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	Exclusions apply.
	Speaking of things that most Americans support, most Americans are not in favor of the president of the United States firing the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
	Most investors certainly are not in favor of that.
	President Trump, the reports from the New York Times, he was pondering that possibility.
	He then came out and said at the White House, it was highly unlikely he would fire Powell, adding later, unless he has to leave for fraud.
	There's an effort by some White House advisors to suggest that renovations at Fed properties are costing more than planned and therefore somehow Jerome Powell has violated his duties as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
	That is really weak.
	I will say that that is a very weak excuse for getting rid of Jerome Powell.
	More importantly, the markets upon the news of those rumors started to, it really started to roil.
	It started to move in really negative directions.
	Then it quickly sort of petered out because people realized that there's a good shot that President Trump was not going to actually fire Jerome Powell.
	I don't think President Trump is going to go in that direction.
	The last thing he wants is to put the economy behind the eight ball at a moment of actual peril where the economy could theoretically move either way.
	Yesterday, we had the opportunity to sit with Senator John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, and talk about President Trump's economic program, particularly the one big beautiful bill, as well as upcoming Senate races for Republicans in 2026.
	And yes, a little bit of Jeffrey Epstein.
	Here's what it sounds like.
	Joining us online is Senator John Thune.
	He, of course, is the senator from South Dakota and the Senate Majority Leader of the 119th Congress.
	Senator, thanks so much for taking the time.
	Really appreciate it.
	Good to be with you.
	Thanks, Ben.
	So, first of all, congratulations on the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill.
	That is not an easy process by any stretch of the imagination.
	And I think that it is worth noting the sort of legislative leisure domain that has to be worked in order to get together a coalition of 50 senators to vote for it, Vice President breaking the tie.
	Why don't you talk about what are the big wins in the Big Beautiful Bill for people who are still sort of on the fence about it?
	Well, first and foremost, Ben, I would say that, you know, working Americans, middle-income families are the biggest winners.
	Those that make under $50,000 get the biggest proportionate tax break in all of this.
	But clearly with an increase in the child tax credit, standard deduction, both of those being made permanent, lower rates getting locked in, made permanent.
	And so if you take a family, for example, in my state of South Dakota, average family, if we hadn't acted at the end of the year, would have been facing a $2,500 tax increase.
	And as it is, they're going to be facing lower taxes and we're allowing them to keep more of what they earn so they can provide for themselves and their families instead of sending the money to Washington, D.C. So I think the tax pieces of this, and of course, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, those are huge wins for, again, for working Americans.
	And we created a big bonus deduction for seniors, so lower taxes for people who are on Social Security.
	I think to your point, though, I mean, it was a very sweeping piece of legislation, addressed border security, addressed modernizing our military, energy dominance, the tax pieces I mentioned.
	And then the other thing is it was historic in terms of the savings that we were able to achieve.
	And really frankly, for the first time since I've been in Washington, we did something serious and meaningful about starting to rein in the runaway cost of our entitlement programs and getting rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse in a lot of those programs.
	So a trillion and a half In savings there.
	And again, that's historic.
	So there's a lot there.
	There's a school choice that was concluded in there.
	Obviously, we were able to do something on taxpayer-funded funding of abortions in this legislation.
	I mean, this was a very comprehensive piece of legislation that included a lot of President Trump's agenda.
	And Senator Thun, I think one of the things that's kind of astonishing about so much of the debate around the Bay Beautiful bill is, number one, people on the left who are claiming that it spends too much money, which is always rich coming from people who spend more money than God has ever created.
	But it's also sort of fascinating because the reality, of course, is that if we were truly going to bend the cost curve in the United States, the American people are not up for the kinds of measures that would be necessary in order to bend the cost curve on our entitlement programs in the kind of way that many of the critics are suggesting.
	Like, for example, Senator Paul, who voted against the One Big Beautiful bill in the end.
	You know, the sort of assumption here that has to be made is that in a legislative process, you have to put together all the interests you can.
	And if you are capable of making the kinds of cuts to future spending in Medicaid, which is really what happened here, what really happened here is that there was a program that was being used by states to essentially bilk the federal government out of money.
	I mean, that program was such a boondoggle that even Barack Obama wanted to change the nature of how that program worked.
	And the Republicans were actually able to do that here.
	Or when you put work requirements on Medicaid, these are bending the cost curve in a way that that might be the only way that the American people were going to go along with any real cuts at this point in time.
	Right.
	And I think, Ben, to that point, these are common sense reforms.
	And reforms that I think when the American people hear about them, they say, well, that makes sense.
	You know, I've seen polling that suggests 72% of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, support work requirements.
	And so I think that was a very important starting point.
	As you point out, there have been states and, you know, have really abused the issue of provider taxes, state-directed payments.
	And great examples of that, of course, are New York and California, where they've used those types of things to cover illegals, people who shouldn't be on Medicaid in the first place.
	And so what we've tried to do is say, you know what, we aren't, and frankly, the Democrats, and they're going to lie about this because that's what they do, particularly on the issue of healthcare, you know, talk about steep cuts to Medicaid.
	We're actually increasing.
	You know, we're going to continue to, Medicaid is going to continue to grow in terms of just its rate of inflation over time.
	It's just not going to grow at the 50 or 60 percent that it's grown at in the last five years.
	So we're slowing the rate of growth, not cutting it, but doing it in a way that gets rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse in the program and restores the program to the people for whom it was intended.
	And those are low-income seniors.
	Those are pregnant moms.
	Those are disabled people instead of able-bodied adults that states have been adding to the program so they can get more federal money, 90% federal match.
	And so these are common sense reforms that I think when people hear about them, and that's going to be our challenge, is getting out and telling the story, they're going to agree with.
	Senator Thun, there's also been moves in the Senate toward more funding of, or at least movement toward sending of more weaponry to Ukraine.
	That obviously is following hard on the president of the United States, who has now shifted his opinion on this.
	I think that he has taken the correct position here.
	He has recognized reality, which is Vladimir Putin has provided no signs that he is interested in an end to the war at this time.
	He continues to increase his aggression.
	President Trump has said that NATO is essentially going to pay the United States, those weapons are going to then be shipped to Ukraine, sufficient so that Ukraine can fight off Russia.
	What do you make of the president's approach to Russia, Ukraine?
	And what do you think that says more broadly about the president's foreign policy?
	There were some who tried to label him early on an isolationist in sort of classic fashion.
	I've been saying for a very long time that is obviously not who President Trump is.
	He is a peace-through-strength guy.
	His entire first administration was peace-through-strength.
	His entire second administration thus far is peace-through-strength.
	It seems like this is just a reflection of that ideology.
	I think you're right, Ben.
	I think honestly, the president, to his credit, sees the world in a very clear-eyed way and realizes that America's got to be a leader in that world.
	And I think what he did with NATO was really important because it's not American tax dollars, you know, taxpayers are going to be paying for this.
	It's going to be NATO countries, but it's American weaponry.
	And we have the most sophisticated high-tech and lethal weaponry in the world.
	And so that helps Ukraine in its fight against Russia.
	And I think it was an important step forward and one that I think where he recognizes, notwithstanding some of the voices he has in his ear from there's an isolationist crowd, obviously, out there.
	But I think he realizes that the relationship, the partnership that we have with NATO is really important, not only to the United States, but to the entire West.
	And I think that the leadership and courage he's shown with respect to what he did with Iran, too, was truly remarkable.
	And again, another example that deterrence is back, peace through strength is back.
	And, you know, people around the world noticed that when what he did with how flawlessly that campaign was executed with, you know, in Iran, I think that was a message to all of our adversaries out there that America is, you know, we're here to play.
	And I think that message was sent loudly and clearly.
	Now, Speaker Johnson has spoken about the possibility of a couple more uses of reconciliation.
	He hasn't really talked about what the topic of those reconciliation bills will be at this point.
	Do you have any sort of broad ideas of what sorts of matters might be approached in further reconciliation?
	I think there's always an opportunity when you have unified control of the government.
	Obviously, the Democrats took full advantage of it when they had that.
	And when they do that, they spend.
	So they grow government.
	That's what they do.
	When Democrats have power, they grow government.
	And I always tell people that I've never really been around any spending fight in my time here where Democrats didn't want to spend more and Republicans wanted to spend less with one exception, and that's defense.
	Democrats are always happy to cut defense and national security, but they want to grow everything else.
	And so they create a, you know, that's their game.
	That's what they're about.
	And so as we think about these things in this last reconciliation bill, it wasn't about growing government.
	It was about reducing the size of government and allowing the American people to keep more of their hard-earned money.
	And so as we think about another reconciliation bill, I think we have to look at are there other tax policies that we can, and frankly, one of the things I'd like to see in the next reconciliation bill Is a simplification of the tax code.
	I think our tax code is incredibly complicated.
	And I'm a big believer in lower rates, broader base, and just get tax rates down.
	And I think that's an incredible incentive for people to invest.
	It creates better paying jobs.
	And when it applies to small businesses and individuals, so I think if we see other potential tax policies that can deliver more assistance to American families and put them more in charge of their own futures and their families' futures, that's a good thing.
	And if there are other things that we can do to reduce the overall size, cost of government, get us on a more sustainable fiscal path, that too would be something I'd like to see in another reconciliation bill.
	Now, Senator Thun, there's been a proposal by Senator Cruz and backed by Senator Cotton to label the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group.
	What do you see as the future of that piece of legislation in the Senate?
	Well, I think I'd love to see us pass that.
	They are a terrorist group, and they need to be labeled as such.
	And so I don't think there's any two ways about that.
	That's legislation that potentially could ride on a defense bill.
	We've got a defense authorization bill coming up here that we'll be dealing with hopefully in the next few weeks.
	And so I think that anytime we're having a conversation about national security, that to me is a place where a legislative vehicle where that proposal could perhaps hitch a ride.
	Senator Thun, looking forward to 2026, and this, of course, is the big worry for a lot of Republicans, is what happens if Republicans lose the Congress that essentially turns the president into a lame duck.
	Obviously, that's a big worry in the House, but it is a worry in the Senate as well.
	There are a couple of Democrat seats that are currently Democrat-held that are toss-up seats, John Ossoff in Georgia.
	The Michigan seat is now open.
	Republicans should have a pretty good shot in both of those.
	North Carolina's seat is now open because of Tom Tillis' upcoming retirement.
	And then, of course, Senator Collins is up for re-elect as well.
	She is always fighting every single round in some sort of a very, very narrow election up in Maine.
	What do you make of the outlook for 2026, the possibility of an expansion of the majority?
	Or is this going to, you know, how close is this going to be?
	Where should we put our focus?
	I think that the goal, obviously, Ben, is to preserve and protect our majority and then to look for opportunities to expand it.
	And I think it would be great.
	I think the Democrats are so off their game, and I think they have moved so far left where the American people are that they really don't have an identity right now.
	And that's why they're scrambling.
	You see this mayoral contest in New York and all the issues that are being talked about there.
	That's representative, I think, of where the Democrat Party in this country is right now.
	So, you know, notwithstanding it's a midterm election, which obviously in a president, particularly a second midterm, generally doesn't go well for the party in power.
	But I think we can defy that by going out and putting up a record of accomplishment, talking to the American people in a relatable way about the things that they care about.
	And if we do that well, I think we can win these seats.
	You know, North Carolina obviously will be very expensive, and it's an open seat now.
	As you mentioned, Maine is obviously a seat that we have to defend, but we also have opportunities in Georgia and Michigan and perhaps even New Hampshire, places like that, where we have some pickup opportunities.
	So a lot of it is about, one, having a message, having a record of accomplishment you can talk about, obviously raising the resources to deliver it, and then putting the ground game together to get your voters out.
	And in a midterm election, that's going to be really critical and really important.
	So, but I honestly think as you look at the map, and one of the things in the Senate for sure, keeping a majority in the Senate to work with the White House is the reason that's so important, and they're all important, unified government, as you can see from the big, beautiful bill, what we're able to get done there.
	But the Senate is where the judges are confirmed.
	It's where the executive branch nominees come.
	We're in the personnel business constitutionally, meaning that every open vacancy on the court comes through the United States Senate.
	And if Republicans are control here, we're going to be able to put President Trump's nominees into these positions.
	And that has enormous long-term consequences for the country.
	So we're going to fight really hard to protect the majority here in the Senate and work with our colleagues in the House to protect that majority as well.
	But these elections have consequences.
	There are just no two ways about it.
	And that's why it's really critical that we do everything we can to maximize our opportunity to extend these majorities for another couple of years.
	Senator Thun, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about the sort of controversy of the day.
	Obviously, the Epstein case continues to roil a lot of the base.
	The President of the United States has already said that there is effectively what the DOJ and the FBI found is the result of the investigation.
	He has authorized the Attorney General and said publicly, the Attorney General should release all credible evidence at this point.
	Speaker Johnson has said the same thing.
	What's your take?
	Do you trust the administration to handle this case properly and then to release in more expeditious fashion, be more transparent about how they came to these conclusions?
	Yeah, I do.
	I mean, I think the president, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, FBI Director Cash Patel, I mean, I think these are the people ultimately are going to be tasked with making decisions about what can or should be made available to the public.
	And I certainly have confidence that they'll make the right decisions concerning that.
	Clearly, there's a high level of interest.
	And, you know, this was an example of somebody who exploited a lot of people.
	There are a lot of victims out there.
	And I realize that people want justice, and so do I. And I think all American people do.
	And I think as this plays out over time, I think you'll see the president and his team handle it in a way that creates that disclosure and holds people to account for the things that they did.
	Senate Majority Leader John Thune is doing an amazing job on behalf of the American people.
	Senator Thune, really appreciate your time, your hard work.
	Always good to be with you, Ben.
	Thank you.
	We'll talk to you soon.
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	Meanwhile, yesterday, Zaran Mamdani actually briefed House Democrats on what an amazing guy he was.
	I'm not even kidding you.
	According to Politico, Mamdani, the polarizing Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, huddled privately with Democratic lawmakers at a Washington restaurant on Wednesday.
	The conversation attendee said focused on campaign strategy and lessons learned from his surprise win.
	Those included, quote, the effective communication strategy that they employed, very dynamic and natural, said Representative Chuy Garcia of Illinois.
	And it allowed him to project who he is and his vision for New York.
	Representative Alexander Ocasio-Cortez organized the event, which was billed as a communication and organizing skill share breakfast.
	Now, of course, AOC has turned into a big stand for Momdani because AOC and Momdani align on all of these matters.
	The Radical Democratic Party is on the march.
	In fact, says Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, before you make a judgment about Zorn Mamdani, you really need to get to know him.
	You know, really know him.
	Not the him who's the scion of a couple of rich parents and really a trust fun kid, not the fake rapper.
	She means you have to know the absolutely inauthentic Instagram guy who talks about nationalizing grocery stores and also a little bit about the Jews.
	I think a lot of people just need to get to know folks before they issue an endorsement.
	And I hope that this conversation can be constructive to bringing the party together and rally behind our nominee.
	Oh, isn't that nice?
	You just have to get to know him because to know him is to love communism.
	That's great.
	And it's not just AOC, of course.
	He has the defense of Representative Andre Carson, fellow Democrat, who says, you know, when he says that globalize the intifada is not that big a deal, some people mean to globalize the intifada literally.
	Some mean it figuratively.
	I mean, who knows?
	Who could know?
	Who really could know what it means to globalize a violent resistance movement that kills Westerners?
	Who knows what that means?
	It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
	Well, I think he'll speak to it.
	I mean, some people mean it literally.
	Some people have repurposed the phrase.
	They mean it symbolically.
	And I think he can speak to it better than I can.
	Except he won't speak to it at all because that's how this works.
	And this is the new wave of the Democratic Party.
	The new wave of the Democratic Party is Bernie Sanders with some third worldism mixed in.
	That's really what it is.
	Take, for example, Omar Fateh, who's a poor man's Zoran Mamdani.
	He is running for mayor of Minneapolis now.
	And here he is explaining that the real threat to America are white people.
	We heard them being called terrorists.
	We heard them being called drug dealers.
	We heard a lot of insults.
	We heard that they're a threat to our national security.
	And that's a flat-out lie.
	You want to know who the real threat is, Madam President?
	I'll give you a hint.
	They don't look like our chief author.
	They don't look like the folks up in the gallery.
	They don't look like the folks on the rotunda.
	They look like many of the members that sit in the front.
	And you don't have to take my word for it.
	According to DHS, Madam President, the greatest domestic threat facing the United States comes from, quote, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.
	That's good to know.
	Really, really good stuff there from the future Minneapolis mayor, no doubt.
	So this is the future of the Democratic Party.
	The future of the Democratic Party is Bernie Sanders, radicalism, third worldism, pro-jihadism.
	It's going to be great.
	The Democrats are definitely operating in the realm of reality and where most Americans want them to be.
	They want to hear from Representative Ilhan Omar, who was taken in by this country as a refugee, as a child from a really crappy country, Somalia.
	And we want to hear from her when she says, quote, we don't suffer from scarcity.
	We suffer from greed.
	The money is there.
	It's just being hoarded by the wealthy while everyday people are struggling to afford groceries and rent, which is an unbelievably dumb economic take.
	The notion that rich people just sit there and hoard their money and that they get it from the poor people is so economically ignorant.
	If that's the case, if rich people just take money from poor people, where did poor people get the money?
	Why is it that some societies are richer than other societies?
	None of these questions are answerable by this particular ideology.
	But again, the Democratic Party is taking some really bad rabbit holes all the way down, and it's going to be a problem with them going forward.
	They're, of course, being egged on in this by a compliant media.
	Annabar really made a fool of herself the other night.
	She was on CNN, and she, too, was doing this sort of racial essentialism routine.
	Also, I want to respond to you saying that I was hyperbolic when I talked about a reign of terror.
	You said it was hyperbolic.
	No, it might be hyperbolic for you as a white man.
	Oh, okay.
	It's certainly not hyperbolic for me as a Latino.
	No, I'm not being racist.
	To dismiss my opinion for being a white man.
	No, I'm not dismissing your opinion.
	I am telling you that what Latino, the Latino community, the brown community in America.
	Okay, well, let me speak.
	As a white man, we're doing the as a white man thing now.
	Good job, Democrats.
	You're doing great.
	Now, listen, I wish that radicalism and stupidity were relegated to one party.
	That would really be nice.
	I think that would be really great.
	Unfortunately, I don't think that's the way that it works.
	I've been talking for a long time about a sort of horseshoe right that agrees with the left on so many things, but there's a great piece over at the free press by Rebecca Heinrichs that goes a little bit further, and it explains much of what we are seeing on X. As I've said before, X is not reflective of reality.
	It just isn't.
	The polls do not line up with the preferences of people on X. There's a major arbitrage opportunity for politicians in ignoring the stupidity of the conspiratorialists on X and instead operating in the world of reality.
	That doesn't mean that reality will never mirror what's happening on X. It just means that if you go outside and you touch grass, whether you're a politician, a company, or an individual, You are likely to do much better in life than if you follow the insanity that's happening over at X. There is something happening on the right that is a real problem, something that is quite ugly.
	The recasting of America as the bad guy in the world, particularly since World War II.
	The attempt to treat America as somehow a gigantic failed experiment, specifically since World War II.
	This is a point that Rebecca Heinrichs is making.
	She says, when President Trump ordered B-2 stealth bombers to fly 37 hours from Missouri to the Middle East and back to drop bunker-busting bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities last month, he wasn't merely backing up Israel's war or demonstrating superpower military competency.
	He was also rejecting the growing clamor from a visible faction of the MAGA coalition that sees the use of American power abroad as fundamentally illegitimate and a danger to the American people.
	These voices had spent months issuing hysterical warnings about World War III if America became involved in the war.
	All of this talk was aimed directly at convincing the president.
	Here she names Check Tucker Carlson, Dave Smith, Candace Owens, and some others.
	Carlson and his ilk failed, she says, and spectacularly so.
	Not only did President Trump initiate U.S. strikes against Iran, he also took aim at Carlson directly, saying to reporters, quote, I don't know what Tucker Carlson is saying.
	Let him go get a television network and say it so people listen.
	And then he labeled Tucker Carlson kooky, of course.
	For a moment, it felt like this wing of MAGA, self-styled as anti-war, had suffered a true political defeat and that perhaps they would do what they longed for the U.S. to do in the world, retreat.
	That's not what happened.
	That these MAGA influencers and pundits were out of step with the American president, the creator and standard-bearer of MAGA, and that their doomsday scenarios never materialized, did little to humble them.
	And then, again, she cites the fact that a wide variety of these same influencers claimed that the president had betrayed MAGA in some way.
	And she quotes Carlson saying, earlier this week, unnamed American sources expressed concern over Israel's ability to fend off Iran's retaliation, which would inevitably lead to Benjamin Netanyahu ordering the American military to step in and fight on his country's behalf.
	Let's be clear, the United States is not ordered by a small state in the Middle East what to do or what not to do.
	But, says Heinrichs, Carlson's views might seem outlandish, but he isn't dumb.
	He is among the savviest operators out there, and he is well aware that anti-Israel invective and conspiracy thinking attracts attention in a culture that has lost trust in expertise and institutions and is hunting for a scapegoat for America's very real challenges.
	In this, he is far from alone.
	He represents an influential segment of an emerging online movement that never encounters a conspiracy about American military power, Jewish power, or Israel that it doesn't embrace.
	And it is on a collision course with the president himself.
	So what exactly is happening here?
	Well, as Heinrich points out, many have tried to make sense of this emerging coalition of conspiracy theorists, cranks, and the craven.
	Some have called it the woke right.
	Still others have rightly described it as a meeting of the horseshoe, the strange reality wherein Marjorie Taylor Greene praises Zoran Mamzani.
	I've talked about that.
	She has a different analogy.
	I think it's interesting.
	She says, I believe this emerging movement can best be understood as the 1939 project, a decentralized right-wing online analog to the left's 1619 project.
	While differing in content and cultural context, both initiatives aim to radically revise Americans' understanding of their national story, their cultural mores, and conversational guardrails in order to seize power.
	The 1619 project argued America's 1776 founding was subordinate to the arrival of African slaves in 1619.
	America, in other words, should not be celebrated for its exceptionalism in ending slavery, but condemned for being like most other countries that allowed it at all.
	The 1939 project, she says, is similar in its ambitions and revisionism.
	It seeks to discredit America's role in World War II and the post-war international order it shaped, replacing it with a dark vision of America sitting atop a globalist empire run by shadowy warmongers, including Winston Churchill himself.
	The year 1939 is meant to replace the national identity marked by 1945, the year the United States with its allies liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny, dropped the atomic bombs to end Japanese imperialism, ended the war, stopped the genocide of the Jewish people, and saved the free world.
	The Allies' victory in that war led to the creation of NATO, a political military alliance of democratic sovereign nations held together by a commitment to stave off another massive world war initiated by another imperialist authoritarian nation.
	The United States extended a nuclear umbrella to allies to encourage non-proliferation.
	And, says Heinrichs correctly, the results of this post-World War II international order are astonishingly positive.
	There has been a dramatic drop in wartime fatalities as a percentage of world population.
	Economic prosperity for Americans has steadily improved.
	Life expectancy has grown longer and of a higher physical quality.
	But if the 1939 project people are right, and Churchill was in fact the warmonger, which is something that, for example, Daryl Cooper, who is set to be a guest on Tucker again this week, I believe, has said, and if Hitler really wanted peace and perhaps had a point about the outsized and nefarious impact of Jewish people, and if the United States was wrong to drop the atomic bombs, then NATO was a mistake, the ties to the nation of Israel is a mistake, and none of the post-World War II international order is worth maintaining today, let alone restoring or defending.
	The 1939 project has turned its focus toward undermining the righteousness of the United States and America's participation in World War II itself.
	They need to retcon the past in order to loosen the affection and support Americans feel for and have for our allies in Europe and Israel.
	This is necessary to weaken the American people's support for U.S. statecraft in the world, whether in the form of sanctions, military deployments, or military action in defense of its allies and state and official interests.
	It's a fascinating take, and it does somewhat explain what the goals here are, like what exactly is happening, why this battle is happening over things like, for example, Iran or Ukraine, when, again, the Republican base is very supportive of the president on all of these matters.
	Now, radicalism, again, is not relegated to one side, and it does meet on the other side of the horseshoe with radicals in the Republican Party as well.
	And that's something I think that President Trump is attempting to fight.
	President Trump is significantly more practical than his critics inside the Republican Party.
	That is just the reality of the situation as it currently stands.
	All righty, folks, the show is continuing for our members.
	Right now, we're going to jump into the Vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag.
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