The Ben Shapiro Show - Obama CONSPIRACY To Undermine Trump’s Presidency?

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July 21, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:02:47

Obama CONSPIRACY To Undermine Trump’s Presidency?

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	Alrighty, folks, a ton coming up on today's show.
	Tulsi Gabbard, the DNI, says that Barack Obama basically treasonously conspired to undermine the Trump administration.
	And we'll talk about that.
	We will also get to the latest on the Epstein saga and who's really pushing it at this point.
	Plus, a WNBA imbroglio.
	But first, my book, Lions and Scavengers, is now available for pre-order right now on Amazon.com.
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	Again, you can pre-order Lions and Scavengers right now at Amazon.com.
	All righty, folks.
	So Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has now put out a memo, a very lengthy memo, spelling out what she says is essentially a conspiracy by the Obama administration to undermine the incoming Trump presidency.
	This would have begun, according to Tulsi Gabbard, in December of 2016.
	Now, as we know, there was absolutely an ongoing attempt by the Hillary Clinton campaign in cahoots with members of the intelligence community to essentially mainline into that intelligence community, into the FBI, into the various institutions of the national government, the Russia Gate investigation, right?
	We know about this.
	We know Fusion GPS was initiated in cahoots with the Hillary Clinton campaign, that the material for that was then pushed into the intelligence community where it rose to the level of the FBI director, James Comey, and turned into a four-year-long investigation of Donald Trump and Russia.
	That, of course, we already know.
	But Tulsi Gabbard is saying something else.
	She's essentially saying that Barack Obama was directly implicated in a scheme to overlook the actual intelligence when it came to Russia's interference in the 2016 election, that Obama himself and people very close to him essentially said that they were going to redo the intelligence analysis to come up with the answer that Russia had effectuated Trump's victory.
	So here is the memo that she put out.
	She put out this memo, of course, just a couple of days ago.
	The timeline of events, as evidenced by the attached documents, is as follows, says the memo.
	Key intelligence manipulated and withheld from the American people by the intelligence community, the IC, before the election.
	August 31st, 2016, a Department of Homeland Security official tells former DNI James Clapper there was, quote, no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count.
	September 2nd, 2016, the FBI requests for the whistleblower's pre-election assessment on alleged Russian election activity in the upcoming pre-election ICA to be softened, given the FBI was uncomfortable implying there was definitive information that Russia does intend to disrupt our election.
	September 9th, just a week later, an ODNI and PDB official says that an upcoming PDB, that's a presidential daily briefing, should make clear that Russia, quote, probably is not trying to influence the election by using cyber means to target election infrastructure.
	Several IC officials agree.
	Okay, fast forward to September 12th, 2016, just a few days later, the IC publishes an intelligence community assessment, ICA, on cyber threats to the election.
	The report finds, quote, foreign adversaries do not have and probably will not obtain the capabilities to successfully execute widespread and undetected cyber attacks on election infrastructure.
	And a couple of days later, the IC actually published the aforementioned presidential daily briefing with near identical findings.
	October 7th, very similar story.
	The ODNI and DHS suppress that September intelligence finding in their press release that said with confidence the Russian government had directed the DNC and DCCC hacks.
	Their statement omitted the fact that the FBI and NSA had low confidence in attributing the data leaks from those entities to Russia.
	And then, of course, November 6th, 2016, Trump wins the election.
	Okay, so in the lead up to the election, the IC keeps saying over and over and over that there is no hard information and that the Russians are manipulating the actual election hardware, that they're not attacking the election infrastructure.
	Okay, after the election, what happens next?
	Okay, that's the question about Barack Obama and what happens next.
	December 7th, 2016, the IC, the intelligence community, is working on a new presidential daily briefing, examining the potential impacts of cyber hacks on the election results.
	DNI Clapper's office develops talking points based on the presidential daily briefing's findings.
	Quote, foreign adversaries did not use cyber attacks on election infrastructure to alter the U.S. presidential election outcome.
	We have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter the results.
	December 8th, 2016, IC officials discuss that draft presidential daily briefing, which finds that Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent U.S. election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.
	A few hours later, the FBI inexplicably withdrew from coordinating on the product and notified other IC officials the FBI would be drafting a dissent.
	Later in that afternoon, a senior PDB official kills the presidential daily briefing based on some new guidance.
	The post-election PDB, which once again assessed Russia did not hack the election, was never published.
	December 9th, the Obama White House gathers top cabinet officials for a National Security Council's Principals Committee meeting.
	This included James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Brian McLean, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe, and Avril Haynes.
	After the meeting, in an email titled POTUS Tasking on Russia Election Meddling, Director of National Intelligence Clapper's assistant sent an email to ODNI leaders tasking them with the creation of assessment per the president's request.
	OZNI leads the effort along with CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS.
	Specifically, the assessment was designed to address a bunch of questions, including, quote, how did Moscow seek to influence the U.S. presidential election in 2016?
	What tools did they use?
	Why did Moscow direct these activities?
	What was Russia attempting to accomplish?
	How has Moscow's approach to our elections changed over time?
	And what is our assessment regarding how Moscow will leverage its capabilities in future U.S. elections?
	That same day, deep state officials in the intelligence community began leaking blatantly false intelligence to the Washington Post, according to, again, DNI Gabbert, as proven by the unpublished PDB and previous IC products claiming that Russia used cyber means to influence, quote, the outcome of the election.
	Later that evening, there was another leak to the Washington Post, falsely alleging the CIA concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the election to help President Trump.
	At that point, there was no official IC assessment that contained that conclusion.
	So there was, again, a leak to the media that was not true.
	December 14th, 2016, IC officials again leaked to the media, this time claiming that IC officials believe with a high level of confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in the U.S. election hack.
	And the quote is from this particular report.
	U.S. intelligence officials Now believe with a high level of confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in a covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.
	President Obama admitted on December 16th there was no evidence of machines being tampered with, but said he was concerned that potential hacks could hamper vote counting and affect the actual election process.
	In late December of 2016, due to the ODNI whistleblowers questioning his leadership about why an IC assessment was being created that contradicted multiple other IC assessments, the whistleblower was immediately removed from emails regarding the drafting of the Obama-ordered IC assessment.
	The whistleblower was sidelined.
	And again, this continues to be the pattern.
	The Obama administration running out information suggesting Russian interference in the election, despite the fact that there had been multiple IC reports suggesting that, at the very least, there was no election hacking.
	In late December 2016, early January 2017, the national intelligence officer for cyber pressured the ODNI whistleblower to accept a number of findings in the Obama ICA, including that the Russian government had a preference for President Trump.
	In January 6, 2017, the Obama administration shared that unclassified ICA with the public and falsely alleged, based on further information, that Putin directed an effort to help President Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
	And that information turned out to be the steel dossier.
	So that is the sort of background to what Gabbard is claiming.
	She is claiming, in the end, that there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 by top Obama administration officials to harm President Trump.
	She's going further than that.
	So she says there's a treasonous conspiracy against Trump.
	Here's what she had to say.
	The implications of this are, frankly, nothing short of historic.
	Over 100 documents that we released on Friday really detail and provide evidence of how this treasonous conspiracy was directed by President Obama just weeks before he was due to leave office, after President Trump had already gotten elected.
	This is not a Democrat or Republican issue.
	This is an issue that is so serious it should concern every single American because it has to do with the integrity of our Democratic Republic.
	So, okay, that's all fine and well and good.
	She then continued, and she said that there needs to be an investigation from Cash Patel at FBI and Pam Bondi, the AG, to prosecute Obama officials.
	At the end of the day, we need to look at Pam Bondi.
	Is that the person who, at the end of the day, is going to bring us accountability?
	Pam Bondi?
	Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Cash Patel, it is their responsibility to gather all of the evidence, both that we have released, the facts that have already been known previously, the information that will continue to come out, and move forward with this prosecution and these indictments.
	Okay, so there is no doubt whatsoever that the Obama administration actively attempted to undermine the incoming Trump administration with rumors and innuendos surrounding things like the steel dossier.
	I mean, that is absolutely substantively clear.
	And it didn't require Telsi Gabbard to come out with this additional information.
	That adds more color to the allegations.
	Now, to be fair, many of the documents that she's quoting are dealing with the allegation that the Russians intervened directly in election infrastructure.
	And I'm not aware that the Obama administration ever formally made the claim the Russians interfered with election infrastructure per se.
	But clearly, the intent of the Obama administration was to claim that Russian interference with the election is what decided the election.
	And that, of course, was the predicate for the entire Russia Gate scandal.
	So Gabbard is right about that.
	One of my problems here is that the administration needs to get on the same page.
	What I mean by this is when Tulsi Gabbard goes on national TV and then calls on the AG and the FBI director to do a thing, she should not be doing that.
	That's the sort of stuff that needs to happen behind closed doors.
	Why?
	Because otherwise what you end up with is a constant oversell to the American public.
	Don't oversell the American public.
	Put out the information that you have.
	Let Pambondi and Cash Patel do their job.
	We saw this, by the way, from Pam Bondi directed at Cash Patel just a few months ago with regards to the Epstein files.
	You recall that she had a bunch of influencers at the White House and she gave them binders.
	Those binders contained a bunch of old information.
	And then when she sort of got caught on it, she then sent a letter to Cash Patel saying, come up with new documents.
	Are you blocking documents?
	What's the deal?
	Okay, that sort of stuff should not be happening cohesively inside an administration.
	That is not useful.
	The reality, again, should be that the focus, of course, should be on the Obama administration's deep and abiding hatred for Donald Trump, their attempt to undermine him before he even took office.
	I mean, that's clear.
	The motive is obvious here.
	And Michelle Obama was talking about how when Trump was elected, she cried for 30 straight minutes.
	And then we went to Andrews Air Force Base, said goodbye to the military, got on Air Force One.
	And when those doors shut, I cried for 30 minutes straight, uncontrollable sobbing, because that's how much we were holding it together for eight years.
	Okay, so again, that is what Democrats believed about Donald Trump.
	They believed that a Hillarian figure had been elected.
	And so they had to undermine him from day one.
	That much is absolutely true.
	With that said, please do not oversell the desire for, for example, a prosecution unless there's actually going to be a there.
	We've done this before.
	It is not useful to oversell the information that you're presenting to the American public and put pressure on people to do a thing that you have not presented the evidence yet that makes the case for an actual criminal prosecution.
	Maybe the case is there, but that's a thing that needs to be developed by the FBI.
	That's a thing that needs to be developed by the DOJ.
	Why am I warning about that?
	Because again, I think one of the reasons why so many people are upset about the Epstein case is because of the oversell.
	They're upset because the thing they were led to believe about the Epstein case by many of the same people who are currently in power, it turns out that that thing may not have been justified based on the evidence.
	And so now they're upset.
	And I get them being upset.
	I totally understand them being upset.
	And so all I'm saying is don't do that again.
	Don't set up a series of expectations that are not going to be justified by whatever the FBI and DOJ do next.
	But yes, Barack Obama, there is no question.
	There's no question in my mind whatsoever that the Obama administration was in fact colluding together with fellow Democrats in order To essentially cut the hamstrings of the incoming Trump administration in November, December, and January of 2016, January 2017.
	Already coming up, all your Trump Epstein updates: why the left-wing media are doing what they are doing and why PseudoMAGA is doing what it is doing first.
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	Okay, meanwhile, President Trump, as you can tell, is very frustrated with the continuation of the Epstein story.
	And frankly, I think that he should be.
	I think that President Trump's general take on this is everything that is now being quote unquote revealed about President Trump is old news, like truly old news.
	And the left-wing media are trying to dredge this up opportunistically based on the fact that the Trump administration, which again was staffed by many people who believed in the most extreme version of the Epstein theory, that their conclusion did not match up with what they thought it was going to be and what many Americans thought it was going to be.
	So now the Democrats and the media are attempting to suggest that President Trump is complicit in some sort of child rape sex trafficking cover-up in order to protect his own reputation.
	We'll get into those accusations in a second, but this is why President Trump is pointing out correctly that the first six months of his administration are, by pretty much all available evidence, a wild success, like incredibly successful.
	President Trump put out a statement, quote, well, time flies.
	Today is that six month anniversary of my second term.
	Importantly, it's being hailed as one of the most consequential periods of any president.
	In other words, we got a lot of good and great things done, including ending numerous wars of countries not related to us other than through trade and or, in certain cases, friendship.
	Six months is not a long time to have totally revived a major country.
	One year ago, our country was dead with almost no hope of revival.
	Today, the USA is the hottest and most respected country anywhere in the world.
	Happy anniversary.
	Okay, so you can see then why he is very irritated that many people, including his erstwhile allies, are suggesting that he's complicit in some sort of cover-up about Epstein.
	And so over the weekend, President Trump put out a statement on Truth Social, quote, I have asked the Justice Department to release all grand jury testimony with respect to Jeffrey Epstein subject only to court approval.
	With that being said, and even if the court gave its full and unwavering approval, nothing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request.
	It will always be more, more, more MAGA.
	And by the way, he is totally right about this.
	This is absolutely true, no matter what Trump releases, unless it somehow justifies the suspicions that people had, the most outlandish suspicions that people had, based largely on speculation and unverified statements by people like Virginia Giufri, that no one's going to be satisfied.
	They're just not going to be.
	And that is a reality.
	Now, the left is taking advantage of this.
	Like in extreme ways, they're taking advantage of this.
	So, for example, the New York Times put out a very long piece called Inside the Long Friendship Between Trump and Epstein.
	Now, here's the thing.
	Everyone knows that Trump and Epstein were friends.
	This is nothing new.
	There is nothing new here.
	They're not uncovering some sort of sordid history that we didn't know about with regard to Donald Trump's rather colorful sex life in the 1990s and early 2000s.
	None of that is a gigantic secret.
	We've all known that for decades.
	And yet what they're attempting to do right now is, again, retail stuff that actually they were able to investigate and have been able to investigate for decades.
	They're doing it now to imply that there then must be something secret, deeper, darker in the Epstein files about Donald Trump.
	Now, I'm going to ask you again, do you truly believe that if Democrats, particularly the Biden administration, in a race, they were so desperate to win that they took old Yeller out back and shot him so they could have Kamala Harris attempt to win the race at the end?
	You think those people, these desperate people, the kind of people who cry for 30 minutes when Donald Trump is elected, you think those people were not going to leak deep, nefarious, evil information about Donald Trump and the Epstein files when they had control over those files?
	That's your theory?
	That's your going theory?
	No.
	All that's happening here is that Democrats see an opening to keep bringing up stuff that we already know in the hope that maybe this time, maybe this time they'll finally get that Trump.
	Maybe this time they'll finally get him.
	The problem that the left and the media typically have with President Trump is that it's like Lucy with the football.
	They always think that they're going to be able to kick the football.
	And at the last minute, the football just is removed from before them.
	So the New York Times has a very lengthy piece all about Epstein and Trump.
	Quote, in the swirl of money and suntanned women that was their palm beach in Manhattan set, Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein spent nearly 15 years mingling side by side as public friends.
	By the way, Senator Bill Clinton, there were lavish dinners with bold-faced names at Mr. Epstein's mansion on the Upper East Side, and raucous parties with cheerleaders and models at Mr. Trump's private club and residence at Mar-a-Lago in between their trips back and forth from Florida to New York on one of Mr. Epstein's private jets.
	But behind the tabloid glamour, questions have lingered about what Mr. Trump's long association with Mr. Epstein says about his judgment and character, especially as his allies have stoked sinister claims about Mr. Epstein's connections to Democrats.
	After their relationship ruptured, the disgraced financier ended up being behind bars not once, but two times after being accused of engaging in sex with teenage girls.
	Okay, so that would be the dead giveaway.
	After the relationship ended, he then ended up behind bars not once but twice.
	And as we know, Trump threw him out of Mar-a-Lago.
	So again, what is the new information that is being added here?
	What is the new information?
	There effectively is none.
	It's just a bunch of seamy allegations that, again, the New York Times could have uncovered any time in the last 30 years, certainly in the last 10 when Trump has been the most important political figure on planet Earth.
	According to the New York Times report, one of the young women who later said Mr. Epstein groomed and abused her was recruited into his world while working at a spa attendant in Mar-a-Lago.
	Okay, did she accuse Donald Trump of having trafficked her?
	If not, what are we talking about?
	Another accuser recalled being eyed by Mr. Trump during a brief encounter in Mr. Epstein's office and claimed that Epstein had told Trump at that time, quote, she's not for you.
	Wait, you mean that Trump used to leer at women?
	I find this impossible to believe.
	You mean the man who was caught literally on tape saying to Billy Bush at this time in his life that he grabbed women by their genitals and then won the presidential election anyway?
	You mean that guy that he ogled women?
	I find this impossible to believe.
	I was under the impression that Donald J. Trump was an absolutely saint of pure heart when it came to women, as evidenced by zero things.
	Like, what is the New York Times trying to do?
	You understand what they're trying to do here.
	This is a news hook so they can continue to resurface a bunch of stuff that's 20 years old, 30 years old about President Trump and Epstein that, again, they could have broken at any time.
	Quote, another woman has said that Mr. Trump groped her when Mr. Epstein brought her to Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet her.
	Mr. Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the Epstein case.
	Well, yes, that would be the relevant fact, that right there.
	So what exactly would he be hiding?
	Again, there are public pictures of Trump with Melania, with Epstein and Ghelane.
	Those pictures have been public forever.
	One of those pictures from 2000, very famous picture.
	But again, the idea from the New York Times is that the more of this they spill out there, the more suspicion they're going to stoke about the idea that there's really deep, dark stuff in the Epstein files.
	And that's the reason you're not seeing the truth.
	You can see why Trump is irritated by this.
	He's like, all this stuff has been out there for decades.
	And now this is the thing you want to focus on, like right now.
	In 1992, an NBC news camera captured the pair, Trump and Epstein, at Mar-a-Lago at a party featuring cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills who were in town that weekend for a game against the Miami Dolphins.
	At one point in the footage, Trump can be seen dancing amid a crowd of young women.
	No, no, you say we've all known about that tape for literally ever.
	Again, these are all resurfaced old allegations.
	And if you slam them all together, then you can try to make the case that maybe there's something deeper lurking under the hood.
	But there's a reason the New York Times is doing this.
	It's the same reason that the Wall Street Journal, not the editorial page, the newspage, did what they did with that dumb allegation about Trump writing a birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein in the early 2000s.
	Some women who are in Mr. Epstein's orbit, says the New York Times, have said they encountered Mr. Trump during this period.
	One woman, Maria Farmer, who has said she was victimized by Epstein and Maxwell, described an encounter with Trump in 1995 at an office that Mr. Epstein once kept in New York City.
	Ms. Farmer recalled in a 2019 interview that when she was introduced to Trump, he eyed her, prompting Epstein to warn him, she's not for you.
	Okay, so that story first started in 2019.
	What are we even talking about here?
	What are we talking about?
	And by the way, that is one of two stories from the New York Times surrounding Maria Farmer.
	Quote, it was the summer of 1996 when Maria Farmer went to law enforcement to complain about Jeffrey Epstein.
	At the time, she said she'd been sexually assaulted by Mr. Epstein and his longtime partner, Ghelaine Maxwell.
	Farmer, then in her mid-20s, had also learned about a troubling encounter that her younger sister, then a teenager, had endured at Epstein's ranch in New Mexico.
	Farmer said when she discussed her concerns with the New York Police Department, then with the FBI, she also urged them to take a broader look at the people in Epstein's orbit, including Trump, then still two decades from being elected president.
	She repeated that message, she said, when the FBI interviewed her again about Epstein in 2006.
	Okay, and I mean, yes, we know Epstein is a sexual criminal.
	That is not a shock.
	It is also true that you are now talking about allegations from 1996.
	It is now 2025.
	And the New York Times is resurfacing all of this, bringing it up again to suggest that there is a bunch of stuff that is yet to be uncovered.
	But all this is public.
	We've known about all this stuff for years.
	There's nothing new here.
	So you resurfacing old stuff that everybody knew to claim that there's a bunch of stuff that nobody knows is definitely a rather large stretch.
	But understand what Democrats are attempting to do here.
	And one of the things Democrats are attempting to do here very clearly is to make hay while the sun shines, to try to use this not only to smear President Trump and bring up his sexual history and all that, but also to try and double down on what they see as a split in the right.
	Already coming up, big controversy over an accidental strike on a church in Gaza by the IDF.
	This is generating all sorts of serious consternation.
	I certainly understand why, and we'll get into all the details first.
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	Now, here's the thing.
	Democrats are total hypocrites about this.
	Nancy Pelosi, for example, was asked, you know, Democrats had all these files.
	They could have released them.
	Why didn't they do so?
	Madam Speaker, can I ask you real quick if you think the Jeffrey Epstein files should be released?
	Congress needs to release them?
	Why do you think Biden didn't do it for four years?
	You know why they didn't do it?
	They should have?
	She got busy suddenly.
	So you can see why Democrats are doing this.
	The answer is that they're unbelievably cynical.
	They didn't care about any of this until literally the minute they thought that they could drive a wedge into the heart of the Trump movement.
	Now, it is worth noting that there are a bunch of people on the right who are also trying to drive a wedge in the middle of the Trump movement.
	That is a very real thing.
	They're exacerbated by various bot networks on places like X. Again, the disconnect between the world of X and the world of TikTok and like the actual real world where people interact with other humans is extremely wide.
	This is why this has been the biggest story on the internet for a significant period of time.
	And in the polling, it doesn't rank in the top 10 issues Americans care about.
	That is not to mean that people shouldn't be concerned, that people don't have open questions.
	All of that's true.
	It's salacious, which means people are interested.
	And yes, there are a lot of people who care and should care, and we should all care, obviously, about the sexual abuse of minors.
	That doesn't answer the question as to what people on the right think they are doing by attacking Trump as a cover-up artist for child sex trafficking.
	And let's, again, let's not make a mistake here.
	There are people on the right who are doing this.
	They won't say that they're accusing Trump directly because as I said last week, they don't actually have the stones or intestinal fortitude to do that.
	But that's exactly what they are doing.
	And the question is, why are they doing that?
	And the answer is obvious.
	What they are really attempting to do, many of those people, again, there are many, many people on the right who have open questions about this.
	I don't doubt their motivations for one single solitary second.
	I also have open questions about this case.
	Like, why was Les Wexner sending $150 million to Jeffrey Epstein?
	Or why was Leon Black sending exorbitant amounts of cash to Jeffrey Epstein?
	Like those are real, honest to God, open questions.
	But one of those open questions is not, for example, was he working for the CIA or was he working for Mossad or was he sex trafficking to President Trump, which is the reason for the cover-up?
	If you're asking those types of questions and suggesting that Trump is then covering all of that up, that the evidence is there, he's just covering it up, you're doing something else.
	And many of the big commentators who are doing that have another agenda.
	And it is not a coincidence that many of the biggest commentators who are doing that are currently very much at odds with Trump's actual agenda.
	So in the same way that Democrats are using the Epstein case as a political fodder maneuver, they see an opportunity and they're jumping on it.
	There are a bunch of people who are on the right who hope to wrest control of MAGA away from Trump because they don't like what Trump is doing in the Middle East.
	They don't like his bombing of Iran, for example.
	They don't like that President Trump has realized now that Vladimir Putin was playing him and has decided to continue to support Ukraine.
	They don't like the fact that President Trump has rejected many of their most extreme overtures on a wide variety of issues, on the one big beautiful bill, for example.
	And so they're mad at him.
	And so what they are saying to him is, we can split your movement.
	We can do you damage.
	But here's the thing.
	It's not going to work.
	And the reason it's not going to work because in the end, there is nothing people do not know about Donald Trump.
	There are no big hidden secrets about Donald J. Trump.
	He has been in the public eye his entire adult life, all of it.
	He is the least secretive public figure of all time.
	Whenever I talk to people about President Trump and they ask, what is he thinking on various issues?
	I say, check his truth social for what he's thinking on various issues.
	President Trump is absolutely transparent, clear about what it is he is thinking at any given time, about what he is doing.
	He's not secretive about this sort of stuff.
	There are no secrets here about President Trump.
	So why are people on the right suggesting there are?
	Again, in order to sort of threaten Trump, that if he doesn't go with them on policy, then they're going to continue to harangue him and harass him.
	And President Trump doesn't have to play with that.
	He can simply step on it.
	And I think he has been doing that sort of thing more and more recently, which is good.
	One of the things he needs to step on is what appears to be a foreign policy deep state that is arising within his own administration.
	It's a very serious problem.
	This problem emerged most recently with regard to, for example, the arming of Ukraine.
	So as you'll recall, the Ukrainian government was supposed to get certain arms from the United States.
	Those arms did not arrive.
	Trump was asked in a public presser about why there had been a freeze on those armaments.
	And Trump said, I have no idea.
	I didn't put a freeze on those arms.
	And it turns out somebody in the Defense Department, without his permission, had put a freeze on the shipment of those arms.
	And there are people inside the administration who consistently leak from one side of the administration to the media.
	Trump himself is not leaky.
	But Barack Ravid is receiving a constant string of leaks.
	Now, we should note that Barack Ravid is a member of the left.
	Barack Ravid is a very left-wing reporter for Axios.
	The Biden administration used him as their chief mechanism for dissemination of information, particularly about Middle East policy.
	Anytime they wanted to get a message out, they leaked it to Barack Ravid.
	Well, the same people who leaked to Barack Ravid because they had a particularly noxious view of politics in the Middle East.
	There are some of those people on the right who are attempting to retail their own foreign policy via Barack Ravid at Axios.
	It's funny.
	There are a lot of people who are upset on the right that Mike Walls, the former NSA, supposedly had Jeffrey Goldberg's number in his phone.
	That's not actually what the story was, but they were upset.
	How could he be talking with Jeffrey Goldberg or whatever?
	Okay, let's be very clear.
	The people in the Trump administration who have Barack Ravid on speed dial over at Axios are retailing their own foreign policy, without a doubt.
	So what is their latest iteration?
	Their latest iteration is a piece in Axios.
	Quote, he's a madman.
	Trump's team frets about Netanyahu after Syria strikes.
	So there has been a bunch of chaos in Syria.
	We've talked about it briefly on the program.
	Essentially, the story in Syria is this.
	In Syria, as you'll recall, Hezbollah was a major force that was holding up the Assad government.
	Because Israel essentially destroyed Hezbollah's military capacity in Lebanon, Hezbollah was unavailable to help the Bashar Assad regime when a terrorist group called HTS decided to basically run down the road to Damascus, and they ended up being unopposed.
	HTS is a Turkish-backed terror group that is now taking control of the country.
	Now, there are open questions about whether HTS can be moderated.
	Zal Jalani, who's the head of HTS, whether the governing coalition, which really is just HTS in Syria, can take control of the country in any serious way.
	And there have been some green shoots there, right?
	There's a lot of talk about the possibility of America removing sanctions and Syria normalizing with Israel and Lebanon doing the same and all the rest.
	And all that was very optimistic.
	And I was always more than a little skeptical of this because, frankly, I don't think that people who used to be ISIS tend to moderate quite that much.
	In any case, a lot of this sort of conflict broke out into the open because, as we noted, when Assad fell, while it might be overall good that Assad fell because Assad was essentially being used as an Iranian cutout, there were some really bad side effects.
	Like, for example, the Assad regime was, in fact, more protective of, for example, Christians in Syria than HTS was likely to be.
	So it's not just that HTS, people were worried about them targeting Christians.
	There's serious worry about HTS targeting the Druze.
	So the Druze are a different religion, very ancient religion.
	They're a very tribal group.
	There are many of them in Israel.
	There are many of them in Syria.
	And they've been under assault in southern Syria by Islamists in Syria, by Islamic terror groups in Syria.
	And Israel has been defending them in southern Syria.
	So there is a place called Sueda.
	Suwaita is largely comprised of Druze.
	And over the course of the last week or so, there have been massive Islamic attacks, Bedouin attacks in Sueda against the Druze.
	And this is where the conflict begins in terms of interpretation.
	So according to, say, Turkey, which of course is allied with HTS, or according to HTS, the government of Syria, they were sending soldiers there to quell the rioting.
	They're sending soldiers to stop Bedouins and Druze from attacking or defending against attack or attacking each other to stop the chaos.
	Contemporaneous footage seems to suggest that many members of HTS, of like the actual government forces, were not actually stopping Bedouins from attacking Druze.
	They're actually joining in and attacking the Druze themselves.
	And this prompted Israel to warn the Syrian government that if they did not stop all of that, Israel would bomb Damascus.
	And so Israel ended up dropping a couple of bombs on Damascus.
	The Trump administration got involved.
	They said everybody needs to like cool off and stop.
	And essentially, a ceasefire was negotiated over the weekend.
	So why is that important?
	Because according to this Axios piece, quote, Peabe acted like a madman.
	He bombs everything all the time.
	One White House official told Axios.
	This could undermine what Trump is trying to do.
	A second senior U.S. official also pointed to the shelling of a church in Gaza this week, which led President Trump to call Netanyahu and demand an explanation.
	Quote, the feeling is that every day there is something new.
	What the F?
	A third U.S. official said there's growing skepticism inside the Trump administration about Netanyahu, a sense that his trigger finger is too itchy and he's too disruptive.
	Quote, Netanyahu is sometimes like a child who just won't behave.
	Okay, so there's only one problem with this piece.
	There's only one problem.
	Okay, it is clear from this piece that President Trump does not necessarily agree with these people.
	President Trump was not particularly happy with Israel bombing Damascus because he's been attempting to broker a peace in Syria and make the government more durable, which is understandable.
	Totally get it.
	However, there's only one problem with that.
	The piece itself in Axios says, quote, Trump has so far refrained from public criticism, and it's unclear if he shares his advisors' frustrations.
	It is not totally clear whether he shares his advisors' recent concerns about Israel's actions in Syria.
	So what does that mean?
	It means that there are some people out there who are freelancing this thing.
	Very clearly, a bunch of people who are freelancing this thing.
	And I guarantee you, many of those same people are in the media space trafficking in the Epstein stuff, specifically accusing President Trump of a cover up, of some sort of dark, terrible cover-up, because they don't like his policy.
	In the same way that there are cynical Democrats using the Epstein story in order to attack President Trump and his policies, there are, in fact, people who consider themselves the masters of MAGA, but they are not, who are attempting to undermine Trump's policy.
	And those same people are pushing the same exact angles on the Epstein story.
	And that is not a coincidence.
	Okay, meanwhile, we mentioned briefly there this horrible situation with the church in Gaza, the Catholic church in Gaza that was accidentally bombed by Israel.
	So as we know, on Thursday morning, the Holy Family Church was struck by accident.
	And I say, yes, by accident, clearly by accident.
	Why do I say that?
	Why in the world would Israel purposefully hit a church in Gaza?
	Why?
	It's the only church in Gaza.
	There's literally no reason you could come up with on any logical level why they would do that.
	It makes no sense.
	And this, of course, has driven an enormous number of people to suggest an end to the war, that a ceasefire is the proper solution to the war.
	Pope Leo put out a statement expressing his concern for the dramatic humanitarian situation of the population in Gaza.
	Leaders from the Catholic and Greek Orthodox Church visited the church on Thursday.
	And a bunch of prominent people, including Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzabala, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, visited the enclave to show support for Gaza as Catholics.
	Now, again, I totally understand this.
	I am incredibly sympathetic to the victims of this accidental attack.
	The call for a ceasefire is misguided.
	And the reason the call for a ceasefire here is misguided is because if you leave Hamas in control of the Gaza Strip, which is what a ceasefire would accomplish, you're not just harming Jews, you are harming Christians.
	I mean, you're harming Muslims too, because Palestinians have not exactly fared well under the kind, tender hearts of Hamas.
	Christians have fared horribly under Hamas.
	When Hamas took over, there are about 3,000 Christians who are still living in the Gaza Strip.
	That was a very small number, obviously, because the only place that Christians can live safely in security and with freedom of religion anywhere in the Middle East, literally anywhere, is in Israel.
	By far, not close, which is the reason why there are nearly 200,000 Christians who live in Israel.
	And the number of Christians who are living in the Gaza Strip has now been reduced to below 1,000.
	And those Christians who are living in the Gaza Strip, whether through choice or because they're being forced to do so by Hamas, cannot stand up to Hamas.
	They can't.
	I mean, if they did, they would presumably be killed.
	There are approximately 37,000 Christians who are living in the Palestinian Authority-governed areas.
	And again, Christians in those areas are also treated quite terribly.
	We talked last week about how the Church of the Nativity was literally occupied by Islamic terrorists during the Second Intifada and used as a terror base for attacks on Israeli troops.
	Okay, so why would it be bad?
	Why is a call for a ceasefire here the wrong idea?
	Because Hamas cannot continue to govern the area.
	After Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2006, in 2007, Rami Ayad, the manager of the only Christian bookstore in the Gaza Strip, was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered.
	Christians in Gaza have been under significant pressure to convert to Islam, which is why there are very, very few Christians left in the Gaza Strip.
	More condemnation of Hamas would have been great during that 15-year period in which Hamas was dominating the Gaza Strip and allowing for the killing of Christians like Rami Ayad.
	Now, that would be useful as well.
	So again, my sympathies go out and my respect goes out to the Catholic Church on this, obviously.
	I was with the Pope two weeks ago, paying tribute and homage to the importance of the Catholic Church as a moral beacon in the world.
	Well, I think that it would therefore be useful to, again, note that if you are hopeful for Christians living in the Middle East, the number one factor in ensuring Christians can live free in the Middle East is an end to Islamist tyranny.
	That is the story of the entire Middle East for the last thousand odd years.
	The Middle East used to be a largely Christian place.
	Istanbul was once Constantinople.
	Lebanon was a Christian Maronite state before it was turned into an absolute hellhole, largely through the predations of Iran, Hezbollah, and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
	And so if you are hoping for a better, freer Middle East in which Christians are free to practice, free to worship, free to live their lives as Christians, then the pressure should be on Hamas to surrender hostages and go into exile.
	It should not be on Israel to stop and allow Hamas to continue to run the Gaza Strip simply because a horrible thing happened in war in an accidental way that is absolutely terrible, obviously.
	Alrighty, coming up, the Democrats, they are deep in the process of mamdonification.
	We'll get to all of it.
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	Okay, meanwhile, the left continues to melt down all on its own.
	The Mamdonification of the Democratic Party continues apace.
	Zaran Mamdani, it is amazing how Zaran Mamdani, who has made it his mission in life to essentially argue that America is evil and that the third world needs to be emulated, how he plays the victim.
	He's constantly playing the victim.
	It is hard to think of a less victimized person in American public life than Zaran Mamdani, a complete career useless person.
	He's in his early 30s.
	He's never held a real job.
	He's a trust fund baby.
	His mom is a Hollywood director.
	His dad is a Columbia University professor.
	And somehow he's the victim, always.
	His first job, like, is it unbelievable?
	His first real job could be mayor of New York.
	But now he is, you know, he's very victimized.
	He's victimized by the online people.
	Now, listen, as a person who is quite frequently berated in the online space, I am no stranger to this.
	Suck it up, my dude.
	Like, truly, suck it up.
	But that's not, again, he is tempting to take advantage of this by claiming he's a victim.
	Here he was.
	Being a politician means listening, not just to your supporters, but your critics too.
	And some of these critics, especially on a certain website, have been giving me consistent advice.
	For example, at SamWhite087.
	Zoran, go back to Uganda, where you come from and belong.
	At Teflon Gone, loser, go back to Africa.
	There are thousands like this from across the country.
	I hear you.
	And I agree.
	I'm going back to Uganda.
	I'm headed there in a personal capacity to celebrate Rama and I's marriage with our family and friends.
	But I do want to apologize to the haters, because I will be coming back.
	And since you will undoubtedly read about this trip in the New York Post, inshallah on the front page.
	Here are a few of my humble suggestions for headlines.
	MIA, Mamdani in Africa.
	Uganda missed me.
	He's completely crazy.
	The Africa can't be serious.
	Carl Kampalanely investigates Mamdani.
	Zoe running away.
	Well, I mean, he's good at social media, even if he does really, really hate America like an awful lot, Zaran Mamdani.
	And the playing of the victim is a very effective tactic, obviously, in the modern Democratic Party.
	It works certainly at Politico, where they literally have a piece titled Mamdani's Social Media Savvy Comes at a Cost.
	What does that cost?
	Quote: Critics have been pouring over the Democratic Socialist's digital footprint as he heads into the general election for New York City mayor.
	You mean they're checking the things he publicly said and posted?
	That's crazy.
	Clearly, this is a Republicans' pounce story.
	Turning Momdani into a victim is necessary because if you treat him not as a victim, but as a sentient adult capable of saying intelligent things with moral duties in the world, then you have to ask why he hates capitalism and supports terrorists like the Holy Land Five and why he is fine with globalizing the intifada, even if he pretends that he is not from time to time.
	And again, treating himself as a victim is basically the only way to avoid the reality, which is that New York is about to elect a communist to the mayoralty.
	But this is the direction the Democratic Party is moving.
	They somehow came up with somebody even worse than Jacob Fry for mayor of Minneapolis.
	Jacob Fry is a disaster area.
	Jacob Fry is the guy who was kneeling and crying at George Floyd's coffin in order to, I suppose, apologize for white supremacy or some such nonsense.
	Well, now the Minneapolis Democratic Farmer Labor Party, the DFL, has endorsed state senator Omar Fateh, who is essentially a Mamdani clone.
	It's just that he's from Somalia, whereas Mamdani is of Indian ethnic extraction by way of Uganda.
	Apparently, many supporters of Jacob Fry were visibly absent from the floor at the time of the vote.
	There were quorum challenges.
	Fateh won at least 60% of the Minneapolis DFL delegate vote on Saturday.
	Fatal said, today we witnessed a rejection of politics as usual, a rejection of the inhumane way we have been treating our unhoused neighbors, a rejection of the way our mayor has turned his back on labor.
	Yes, we secured the DFL endorsement, but we know the status quo are going to do anything and everything to maintain power.
	They'll have all the money in the world and they'll have all the influence in the world, but they don't have you.
	So certainly entertaining to watch as the Democratic Party in Minneapolis decides that somehow Jacob Fry is too right-wing for them.
	Really strong stuff here from the Democratic Party, which continues to skew wildly to the left.
	And also, of course, to signal its hatred for President Trump, Jasmine Crockett, who's become the hot new thing in the Democratic Party, even fresher and even facer than AOC.
	She is just doing the Trump is Hitler thing.
	I guess this is, they're still playing the hits.
	I don't anticipate that we will get to any resolution on this.
	I think that they want to, again, straddle the fence.
	They want to show that they are loyal to this, you know, I don't even know what to call him.
	I've called him so many things, but this wannabe Hitler for sure.
	They want to pledge their loyalty to him, and they know that he does not want this released.
	Oh, my gosh.
	Okay.
	Well, if this is the direction Democrats want to go, Democrats are in trouble.
	If you look at their 2028 prospect, AOC, as I've said from the start, may be the frontrunner.
	She has a very clear lane, which is this wild left.
	She's ethnically diverse.
	She has the support of Bernie Sanders and all the rest.
	And the Democratic Party is starting to panic.
	And so they're now trotting out some retreads.
	Beto is making a comeback.
	Now, I don't know what Beto's been doing for the last several years since he lost his presidential race after losing his senatorial race against Ted Cruz.
	I don't know what he's been doing.
	Back in New Mexico, eating the dirt, going on spirit journeys and all the rest.
	But Beto's back, brah.
	He's back for a kick-flick bong rip.
	And he's going to explain to you why, brah, Trump's policies are like, whoa, unpopular.
	So unpopular.
	Whoa, go.
	Donald Trump's policies, whether it's the big beautiful bill that's going to take nearly 2 million Texans off of Medicaid or transfer nearly a trillion dollars of wealth to the richest 1% at the expense of working families, his policies are deeply unpopular.
	He doesn't want to face accountability from the voters, and he's worried about keeping his very slim majority in Congress.
	Okay, bro.
	Tell me more.
	Tell me more.
	He says we need to be ruthless.
	We need to be brutal about getting back into power, just like Beto was when he hasn't been in power for super long because he's not a good candidate.
	But they keep trotting him out there, man.
	They're going to make Fetch happen with Beto O'Rourke.
	We have to get serious.
	We have to be absolutely ruthless about getting back in power.
	So yes, in California, in Illinois, in New York, wherever we have the trifecta of power, we have to use that to its absolute extent.
	Now, again, Democrats look very weak right now.
	They really, really do.
	This does not mean that Republicans can't snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
	The number one danger to the Trump administration is not pseudo magna on the right undermining him.
	It is not the Democratic Party yelling about Epstein.
	The number one danger to a Trump administration is an economic downturn.
	That is the only thing that matters.
	And so I'm very hopeful that Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is going to cut a bunch of trade deals that are going to avoid a gigantic tariff war.
	Now, President Trump, I've said this a thousand times, he's heterodox in his ideas, incredibly responsive to realities.
	Here is the reality.
	If the markets were not uncertain about the future of tariffs, we're already doing well in the stock market.
	We would just be exploding in the stock market like a rocket, because we now have some certainty about tax rates and regulation, because President Trump is trying to treat business in a friendly manner through things like deregulation, through things like the Genius Act, trying to create some sort of stability around stable coins.
	These are all excellent things to do for business.
	The tariffs are a threat because they create uncertainty.
	Howard Luttnick, the commerce secretary, who is by nature extremely enthusiastic about tariffs, was on the TV.
	And I have a very simple metric for how markets do.
	When Howard Luttnick goes on the TV, the markets go down.
	When Treasury Secretary Scott Bessing goes on TV, the markets go up.
	That just is the way it worked, whether you like it or not.
	Here was Luttnick, however, on your TV, explaining that there are going to be so many deals it's going to make your head spin.
	Okay, well, his mouth to God's ears.
	Oh, they're going to love the deals that President Trump and I are doing.
	I mean, they're just going to love them.
	You know, the president figured out the right answer and sent letters to these countries that this is going to fix the trade deficit.
	This will go a long way to fixing the trade deficit.
	And that's gotten these countries to the table.
	And they're going to open their markets or they're going to pay the tariff.
	And if they open their markets, the opportunity for Americans to export, to grow the business, farmers, ranchers, fishermen, this is going to be, the next two Weeks are going to be weeks for the record books.
	Now, again, tariffs as leverage, fine.
	If the idea is to get to lower tariffs by other nations against our product, great.
	The truth is, many of the nations we're currently targeting already have free trade agreements with the United States.
	I've talked about that at length on the program already.
	Lutnick is now saying he wants to renegotiate the USMCA.
	That was a deal that President Trump negotiated during his first term.
	I think the president is absolutely going to renegotiate USMCA, but that's a year from today.
	Exactly.
	So today, of course, 75% comes in free.
	But of course, should you expect us to renegotiate it?
	It makes perfect sense for the president to renegotiate it.
	He wants to protect American jobs.
	He doesn't want cars built in Canada or Mexico when they could be built in Michigan and Ohio.
	Okay, well, if you want to make American cars more uncompetitive on the international market and, in fact, in the domestic market, Sans tariffs, that's a good way to do it.
	The reason I'm pointing this out is because Trump, he is all set to have a boom time.
	I mean, this could be a boom time in the American economy.
	We need certainty.
	We need stability.
	We need to get to the end of the road on these tariff fights.
	And by the way, we need to box in China because the reality is the arena where the Trump administration has actually moved, backtracked the most is on China.
	On China is where the Trump administration, particularly on trade, has backtracked the most.
	Remember, we were going to throw 145% tariff at China.
	And then it turned out they were in control of many of the rare earth minerals that we needed, many of the magnets that we needed.
	And so we backed off a lot of that.
	Meanwhile, the Trump administration has backed off its export controls on NVIDIA chips like the H20 being sent to China.
	And I spoke with some of my friends in the AI industry.
	Those H20 chips are incredibly sophisticated.
	They're very good.
	All the talk, and I mentioned it last week, and then I tried to get some clarification that the H20 chips are significantly worse than H100 chips, which are sort of the most sophisticated version.
	That's not true.
	You can do an awful lot with an H20 chip.
	Allowing China to use sophisticated microchips in order to run forward, raise forward toward AI, which is going to be the systems that redefines the entire economy generally, is bad policy.
	It is not good policy.
	So certainty, out-competing China, that is the thing that matters absolutely most right now.
	And again, when it comes to certainty, I think President Trump is coming around on all of this, which is why President Trump put out a statement denying a story that Scott Besant had essentially stopped him from firing the Fed Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell.
	So Trump himself said, listen, I know not to fire him.
	I know what markets want.
	I know markets don't want that, which is good because the reality, again, if President Trump wants the inflation to stabilize, and it's starting to, it's going the wrong direction a little bit this month, but it could stabilize if the tariffs stop.
	If he wants the interest rates to be cut, which is what he desperately wants, if he wants all of that certainty, certainty, certainty.
	And why is that so important?
	Because if the economy goes south, AOC and all the rest of the left-wing crew are going to make the case that President Trump and his buds got rich while everybody else got poor.
	She's going to run on her oligarchy nonsense.
	And then on the basis of that, she could in fact win.
	That is the real danger for the Trump administration.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, the culture wars continue.
	So Stephen Colbert was fired last week, kind of in delayed fashion, right?
	He still has 10 months until his show is out.
	And everyone's like, why is he getting fired?
	Stephen Colbert.
	I don't say everybody, really.
	In fact, very few people outside Stephen Colbert's immediate family were deeply worried about him being fired because it turns out that he has very low ratings and his show loses $40 million a year.
	$40 million a year.
	And by the way, it is also worth noting that David Ellison, who's taking over the network, may not want a propagandist for wild left-wing crap on his network.
	And he has every rationale and capacity to simply say, I don't like Stephen Colbert and I don't want him here.
	All of that is fine.
	The left is choosing to see this as an authoritarian moment.
	Oh my God, Donald Trump doesn't like Stephen Colbert, did you know?
	And that's why Stephen Colbert was fired.
	Or maybe the current management doesn't like Stephen Colbert.
	The audience doesn't like him all that much.
	Certainly the budget doesn't like him very much.
	And that's why he's gone.
	But members of the media are like, no, no.
	Our democracy is at risk unless Stephen Colbert can be paid $20 million a year to draw flies.
	Here is Charlemagne, the God, making the case that this is authoritarian.
	Let's call it what it is.
	Paramount is looking for FCC approval for its skydance merger.
	Trump can block that if he wants to.
	So canceling Colbert is an obvious move to appease Donald Trump.
	And I need to tell y'all something.
	If you don't think we are under a regime with an authoritarian strategy, then you are bugging.
	This is textbook authoritarian rule.
	Target your critic, centralize power in a few hands, intimidate through punishment or removal.
	And you know what that usually does?
	Shuts people the F up.
	Okay, tightens control over public discourse, sends a message to all media outlets that criticism of Trump could cost you access, approval, editorial control, all your job.
	This is what authoritarian regimes do.
	They weaponize legal systems to punish, dissent, and control messaging.
	That guy makes like $3 million a year to criticize President Trump as an authoritarian in what is a very free country.
	Are you safe unless Stephen Colbert can make $15 million a year for a failing night show?
	Are you really safe?
	How do you feel in America?
	Do you feel that Hitler is coming around the bend because Stephen Colbert will only make $5 million going to work for MSNBC or whatever comes next?
	Meanwhile, Rosie O'Donnell, safe from her perch in Ireland, is very mad.
	Again, I'm never going to let go of the fact.
	It's just a fact of life.
	The Michael Moore singularity is real.
	The older and more liberal you get, the more you look like Michael Moore, male or female.
	That's just the way that it works.
	Here's Rosie O'Donnell.
	I think Americans should stand up and say, no way.
	You're not going to silence us.
	You don't have the right to silence us.
	You never did and you never will.
	We the people have the right to speak up against atrocities which are happening on a daily basis.
	ICE, his own personal Gestapo.
	What will it take, America?
	What will it take?
	He's going to arrest every artist that disagrees with him, and pretty much every artist does.
	Whether or not they're brave enough to say it is another thing.
	Can she name an artist that Trump has arrested, like one.
	Again, I failed to see the great threats of the Republic in Stephen Colbert not being able to make $15 million for a show that loses $40 million a year.
	I don't know.
	Call me weird.
	Meanwhile, speaking of equal pay for equal work or some such, a WNBA All-Star game is a contradiction in terms.
	As Shane Gillis pointed out, there are no stars in the WNBA basically outside of Caitlin Clark.
	That's just the reality of the situation.
	Anyway, both sides of the WNBA All-Star game decided to walk out on court reading with shirts reading, pay us what you owe us.
	Now, my friend Matt Walsh made the claim that the number there is zero.
	So brave move to call for a zero pay, but you could make a credible case.
	Really, seriously, you could make a credible case that the ladies ought to be paid a little bit more.
	The credible case is basically that the collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and NBA players means NBA players pull down about half of the gross revenue of the league.
	And in the WNBA, the players pull down about 9% of the gross revenue of the league.
	Now, the other side of that argument is the WNBA makes zero money and loses money every single year, all the time.
	And legitimately, the only person in the WNBA who's driving ratings is Caitlin Clark.
	Now, this is the part that's really funny.
	Forget about the equal pay argument or pay us what we're worth.
	You're worth what the market will pay you.
	If you think that you are irreplaceable in the WNBA, you got another thing coming.
	They could bring in all the scrubs tomorrow for every player except for Caitlin Clark, and no one would notice.
	There's no such thing really in the WNBA, just on a marketing level, as a below replacement value.
	You could pick up any group of college basketball playing women, substitute them in, except for Clark, who's famous, and no one would notice the difference is the point.
	But put that whole thing aside.
	The utter caddiness with which all the WNBA players treat Caitlin Clark, who's legitimately their meal ticket, the only reason anyone cares about the WNBA is because Caitlin Clark is in it.
	And the just disdain they all have for Caitlin Clark is astonishing.
	So there is apparently a human named Kelsey Plum.
	I was unaware of Kelsey Plum.
	I would not know her from Professor Plum with the wrench in the conservatory.
	I have no idea who she is because, you know, I watch actual sports, not the WNBA.
	In any case, she sounded off about these t-shirts and then she got mad at Caitlin Clark for wearing the t-shirt.
	Caitlin Clark wore the t-shirt she wanted her to wear, but she's mad and a little bit snippy about it.
	If you want to blow up stereotypes about women snipping at each other, this is actually not the way to do it right here.
	That was a very powerful moment.
	We didn't, at least as players, we didn't know that that was going to happen.
	So I think it was kind of like a genuine surprise.
	But the t-shirt, just United Front, was determined this morning that we had a meeting for.
	And, you know, not to tattletale, but zero members of Team Clark were very present for that.
	But, no, we were just, we had a very...
	So you can see, even I believe that the person next to her, and I have to look it up because, again, I don't know who any of these people are, but apparently that person is named Sabrina Ionescu.
	She plays for the New York Liberty.
	I had to look up the name of that team as well.
	It says it in mensjournal.com.
	New York Liberty star, Sabrina Ionescu.
	Okay.
	Again, star is an extraordinary term.
	She's like, why are you even mentioning this?
	And the answer is because everybody is pissed in the WNBA at the fact that Caitlin Clark is famous and is making them all richer.
	And you want to talk about a zero-sum mentality?
	That right there is a massive zero-sum mentality.
	Truly insane.
	She's making you your money.
	That is what Caitlin Clark is doing.
	So continue along these lines, ladies.
	Continue trying to basically body check Caitlin Clark every time she comes onto the court to a hockey game and see how that works out for you.
	All righty, coming up on the Ben Shapiro show, a surprise appearance on Apple TV's The Buccaneers from a familiar face.
	Oh my gosh.
	I'll get to it in a moment.
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