All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 19, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:02:57
Could Trump’s MASTERSTROKE End The Russia-Ukraine War?
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Alright folks, a ton coming up on today's show.
President Trump making some pretty astonishing moves with regard to Russia and Ukraine.
The media totally don't understand what he's doing or they do understand and they're lying about it.
Plus, we'll be joined by Harvey Dillon over at the DOJ first, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders.
None of those people have Daily Wire plus memberships and we don't want them to have Daily Wire memberships because they suck, but we want you to get 40% off new Daily Wire plus annual memberships now with code summer at dailywireplus.com.
Also, we announced she joined the Daily Wire.
You've seen her on our shows.
Now Isabel Brown has important news to share.
Take a look.
Isabel Brown.
Isabel Brown.
The wait is almost over.
She's joining Daily Wire Plus with the Isabel Brown Show.
I cannot wait for you guys to see how hard we've been working.
I could not be more excited for this new adventure.
You can expect larger than life guests, deeper questions.
I'm encouraged by it.
I see what you're seeing.
The gift that you have as a woman to create life is the most badass, punk rock, incredible thing that you could possibly do.
This is an active culture war that we are still fighting.
And it's vitally important that we fight now harder than ever.
To the nerds.
meeting the president of the the United States and the vice president and now meeting our new American poet this is crazy freaking out.
I am so picked to be bringing you guys along on this journey.
Let's jump in!
Let's jump in!
The Isabelle Brown Show premiere september 8 on Daily Wire Plus.
Be here for the debut for every new series and documentary and for every piece of breaking news.
And right now, say 40% on new annual memberships of the code summer at dailywireplus.com.
Don't miss what's next.
Well, folks, as the media and Democrats fuminate over President Trump's supposed capitulation to Vladimir Putin, precisely the opposite thing seems to actually be happening.
So leave it to the media and to the left to actually deliberately misinterpret what is going on.
So yesterday, President Trump met with Vladimir Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine.
He also met with a bunch of European leaders, and we'll get to all of it.
And the outcome of the meetings, again, you're not going to have an outcome until there's a real full negotiated outcome.
But what it seems to be moving towards is some Ukrainian territorial concessions in return for Ukraine getting serious security guarantees, serious security guarantees.
And it's unclear what those security guarantees would look like.
It would presumably be some form of European trigger force in Ukraine that would imply a mutual defense pact.
It wouldn't exactly be NATO, but it would kind of be NATO light that had been talked about by Steve Whitcoff, the special negotiator and special envoy on this issue.
According to the New York Times, at the meeting among President Trump, President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine and other European leaders on Monday in Washington, there's frequent discussion of security guarantees to make sure Russia does not invade again.
Prime Minister Kirstammer of Britain has talked about assembling a force drawn from a coalition of the willing that would be stationed in Ukraine after a ceasefire or peace agreement.
No one has detailed publicly what that force would look like.
And it's unclear, you know, again, the details of that thing.
That's what's going to have to be hashed out here.
One concept is a sort of peacekeeping force presumably armed that would supplement the Ukrainian military put in place for defensive purposes.
Russia will probably push back against that.
The problem is to be a credible deterrent, you need tens of thousands of troops.
The second possibility is a tripwire force that again would sort of trigger the possibility of the mutual defense coming into effect if Russia were to walk across the border.
And a third possibility would be a sort of observer force that could be a few hundred troops or so to report on incoming military action that could be accomplished with satellites and ground cameras.
The question here is what exactly Ukraine will accept and what is sufficient to guarantee that Russia does not try this again because of course they did this in 2014 and then they did it again in 2022.
They have a long history of repeated aggressions against the same states grabbing territory incrementally.
And so the security guarantees would have to presumably be something relatively severe.
I mean, there has to be something there that is serious.
Otherwise, the Ukrainians are going to say, well, you know what, we're going to keep fighting this thing because why exactly are we going to push off three years into the future the possibility that you abandon us if Russia walks across that border again?
Now for the Russians' part, they're pushing back against this because their goal is to leave Ukraine utterly defenseless and prostrate before them.
That, of course, is the goal.
The New York Times points out that Russian officials had rejected that idea of the sort of NATO Article 5 like arrangement.
Even before Monday's meeting, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Jakarova said that Russia, quote, categorically rejects any scenario that envisages the appearance in Ukraine of a military contingent with the participation of NATO countries.
And so there is a big gap apparently between the Russians and the Europeans and Americans about what these security guarantees should look like, but we are moving towards something now, maybe we don't get there.
Maybe we don't get there.
Maybe it's possible that Russia walks away from the table, but the fact that President Trump is willing to hold Russia's feet to the fire by even talking about these kinds of significant security guarantees is a major move from the president and pretending that that's a pro-Russia move is silly.
If there were a significant security guarantee, a sort of NATO light, an Article 5 light approach to Ukraine in exchange for territorial concessions in Donbass, that would be a master stroke from the President of the United States, because otherwise this thing keeps going.
Otherwise this thing keeps going.
It's that simple.
Now, again, the details of what that looks like unclear at this point.
According to the Germans, they don't want to send troops to Ukraine.
Shocker.
Apparently, the German foreign minister, a person named Johann Wadefull said, quote, we are the only European troop contributor to station a combat ready brigade in Lithuania.
Doing that and also stationing troops in Ukraine would probably be too much for us, which by the way is really pathetic.
You can't put like two combat ready segments of your of your military in Ukraine and also Lithuania.
What are you busy doing Germany, the great industrial powerhouse on the European continent?
European leaders see durable security guarantees for Ukraine according to Politico as key to any potential peace deal that may emerge between Kiev and Moscow.
The issue that will be a top item on the agenda for the rest of the week.
Waterfall said we're hearing signals from Washington.
They're prepared to provide security guarantees.
This must then be worked out together with the Europeans with Germany naturally having to play an important role.
And again, as we said, Steve Whitcoff had suggested that much more robust security guarantees and EU admission might be on the table as well as an Article 5 like protection.
So again, this is the direction these talks are moving.
And this is to the great consternation of both the media and the Democrats who claimed that Donald Trump was a Putin cat's paw.
They thought that Trump was going to welcome Zelensky to the White House yesterday by berating him and telling him he needed to basically surrender in the war.
No security guarantees, no economic health, no, nothing.
And none of that happened.
In fact, it was pretty warm.
Here was Zelensky arrivy.
This time he wore a suit.
You can see, you know, the president and Zelenskyy getting along here.
This is not an antagonistic meeting.
Zelenskyy was confronted by a reporter who had gotten on his case about not wearing a suit at the last meeting, knowing that was a buggaboo of President Trump's.
Brian Glenn, who is dating Marjorie Taylor Greene, which says something about his personal judgment.
In any case, he complimented Zelenskyy for wearing a suit and Zelenskyy, you look fabulous in that suit.
I said the same thing.
I said the same thing.
I said someone that attacked you last time.
I remember that.
No, my first question for you, President Zelensky, in the same suit.
You see, I changed.
Zelensky right back at this reporter and said, well, I changed my suit and you obviously didn't.
You're wearing the same suit.
Which is pretty funny, actually.
Well, Zelensky was asked during this Oval Office tet-a-tet about whether he was going to make territorial concessions.
And Zelenskyy smartly says, you know, I'm going to leave this in the hands of President Trump.
He's a good negotiator.
Are you prepared to keep sending Ukrainian troops to their deaths for another couple of years or are you going to agree to redraw the maps?
Thank you for your question.
So, first of all, you know, we live under everyday attacks.
You know that today there have been a lot of attacks and a lot of wounded people and the child was dead.
It's a small town, one, one year and a half.
So we need to stop this war to stop Russia and we need support.
We will do our best for this.
So, and I think we showed that we are strong people and we supported the idea of the United States, of personally of President Trump to stop this war, to make a diplomatic way of finishing this war.
And we are ready for trilateral, as President said.
This is a good signal about trilateral.
I think this is very good.
Thank you.
By the way, one of the things that Zelenskyy also said is that as part of any of the security guarantees put forward by Europe and the United States, Ukraine would buy $90 billion in American weapons via Europe.
NATO would essentially pay for it, not America, the rest of the NATO nations, and the United States military would benefit from it, the military-industrial complex, so to speak.
The defense industries in the United States would end up benefiting from that, presumably.
He said a formal agreement still had to be arranged.
President Trump was asked about the possibility of a trilateral meeting between the United States, Russia, and Zelensky directly.
I just spoke to President Putin indirectly, and we're going to have a phone call right after these meetings today.
And we may or may not have a trilat.
If we don't have a trilat, then the fighting continues.
And if we do, we have a good chance.
I think if we have a trilat, there's a good chance it may being it but he's he's expecting my call when we're finished with this meeting.
Okay so as soon as that particular Oval Office head of tet ended all the Europeans showed up and you can see a picture here of the full lineup of leaders at the White House and it basically looks like a G7 convention.
I mean this is a major lineup here.
You got everybody from Ursula von der Leyen to Kier Starmer to Emmanuel Macron to George Maloney of Italy and a bunch of others showing up at the White House and it apparently the meetings were very warm they went very very well Mark Rudy was one of the people there is the head of NATO.
He says that President Trump is a pragmatic peacemaker.
This was a very successful day.
And I agree with you that President Trump is a pragmatic peacemaker, as you, I think, said.
And what he did this year, breaking the deadlock, starting the conversation with Putin, but also putting pressure.
We have had the NATO summit, the 5%, which was a big foreign policy success of President Trump.
And then he decided to again have lethal weapons go into Ukraine paid for by the Europeans.
And he put secondary sanctions, tariffs on India.
So he's putting pressure, but he's also looking for ways to solve this, to bring this war to an end.
More on President Trump, Ukraine, the Europeans plus, redistricting, and a couple of special guests coming up.
First, how many times have you told someone, if it ain't broke, don't fix it?
Well, that's a great piece of advice for most things.
It is not great advice for your cell phone.
Over time, the battery life fades.
The processor can't keep up.
It's fallen in the toilet, perhaps.
Well, fortunately, thanks to PureTalk, your cell phone is something you can replace without feeling guilty.
When you switch to PureTalk this month, they're going to give you a Samsung Galaxy 836 for free with a $35 qualifying plan.
Just $35 a month for talk, text, data, and a free.
Samsung phone with scratch resistant gorilla glass and a battery that lasts all day, all on America's most dependable 5G network.
Obviously, we use PureTalk all the time here at the office.
I use it for all my business phone calls, which is important to me, and your phone calls are important to you.
So honestly, this is a really easy call.
Supporting companies like PureTalk is a good thing.
You win by cutting your cell phone bill in half.
They win by hiring more Americans and helping more veterans make the switch in as little as 10 minutes.
Go to puretalk dot com slash shapiro to get your free phone today.
Again, that's puretalk dot com slash shapiro to switch to my wireless company, America's wireless company, PureTalk.
Also, let's say that you are, you know, going fishing one day and suddenly behind.
the boat, a gigantic shark appeared.
And as it approached, you thought to yourself, well, you know, probably I should have listened to Shapiro and gotten Policygenius.
That's because Policygenius makes finding life insurance simple, helping you secure real coverage.
So your loved ones have the financial safety net they need when it matters most.
With Policygenius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just 276 bucks a year for a million dollars in coverage.
It's an easy way to protect the people you love and feel good about the future.
It's really important to have a policy because right when that shark is chomping through Robert Shaw's legs and making its way up to his torso to the screams and horror of Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider.
At that point, you're thinking to yourself life Insurance, super important.
Policygenius is the country's leading online insurance marketplace and helps you compare quotes from America's top insurers in just a few clicks to find your lowest price.
Their team of licensed agents guides you through the whole process step by step, handling the paperwork, advocating for you while clearly laying out all your options, coverage amounts, prices, terms without guesswork.
With thousands of five-star views on Google and Trustpilot, Policygenius has earned customers' trust by helping them find the best policy fit for their needs.
Don't wait for that crisis to realize you are unprotected.
Go over to policygenius dot com slash Shapiro to compare those top-rated life insurance policies.
Get your lowest quote.
Make a smart move in less than ten minutes.
That's policygenius dot com slash Shapiro and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Rudy also continued by saying that Ukraine is indeed prepared to discuss territorial concessions.
Again, the outlines of the deal are taking form if there is to be a deal.
Here is Rudy explaining.
Everybody is clear, including the president, that when it comes to territory, it is the Ukrainian president who has discussed this in the trilateral and then probably more conversations after that with the Russian leadership, with Vladimir Vladimir Putin of Russia.
But today it was clear that for the Ukrainians to be willing to discuss territory and as part of an overall solution to this terrible war and to stop the killing, first we need to have full clarity collectively, US, the Europeans and the others in this coalition of the willing on what security guarantees will mean.
And Rudy also continued by suggesting that security guarantees were basically the main issue that is still to be hashed out here.
The situation is this, that the US and some other countries have said that they are against NATO membership for Ukraine.
The official NATO position since the summit in 2024 is that there is an irreversible path for Ukraine into NATO.
But what we are discussing here is not NATO membership.
What we are discussing here is Article 5 type of security guarantees for Ukraine and what they exactly will entail will now be more specifically discussed.
Zelenskyy, for his part, he expressed gratitude to both President Trump as well as the EU leaders for their hard work on the possibility of a peace deal.
I think that we had a constructive, specific meeting, and I'm very thankful to all the leaders who are here and you help a lot, and so we are happy that we have such big unity today.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you very much, Mr. President.
Okay, so again, all of this was very positive.
Now, apparently in the middle of the meeting with the Europeans, President Trump stepped out to arrange a meeting or try to arrange a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Zelensky.
Putin directly, according to a report from Axios.
He stepped out of the room and did a little bit of He then put out a statement on Truth Social, quote, I had a very good meeting with distinguished guests, President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine, President Emmanuel Macron of France, President Alexander Stubb of Finland, President, Prime Minister George Maloney of Italy, Prime Minister Kirstarmer of the UK, Chancellor of the the Federal Republic of Germany Friedrich Mears, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and Secretary General of NATO Mark Rudy in the White House, which ended in a further meeting in the Oval Office.
During the meeting, we discussed security guarantees for Ukraine, which guarantees would be provided by the various European countries with a coordination with the United States of America.
Everyone is very happy about the possibility of peace for Russia-Ukraine.
At the conclusion of the meetings, I called President Putin and began the arrangements for a meeting at a location to be determined between President Putin and President Zelensky.
After that meeting takes place, we'll have a trilat, which would be the two presidents plus myself.
Again, this is a very good early step for war that has been going on for almost four years.
Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Whitcoff are coordinating with Russia and Ukraine.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
So again, we'll have to see how all this plays out.
President Trump then called in to Fox and Friends this morning to explain why he stepped out of the room in order to do a call with Vladimir Putin.
And one of the things at the table was one of the gentlemen who's a great guy, but he said, I hope I didn't insult him.
He said, well, let's meet in another month or two and let's see if we can start making some money.
He said, a month or two, you can have another forty thousand people dead in a month or two.
You have to do it tonight.
And I did actually.
I called President Putin and we're trying to work out a meeting with President Zelensky.
We'll see what happens there.
And then if that works out, if it works out, then I'll go to the trilateral and close it up.
Okay, so we still there's a lot of steps between here and there.
We still have to see whether Vladimir Putin actually is interested in ending the war in any serious way.
Again, you have to understand that for the Russians, and we've discussed this at length, the Russian goal in Ukraine was originally to just eat the whole thing, was to eat all of Ukraine.
And then it turned out that they were unable to actually achieve that.
And so their simultaneous goal has been to prevent Ukraine from entering NATO, from entering the EU, from becoming quote unquote Europeanized.
They want Ukraine to essentially become a satellite state in the way that Belarus is a sort of satellite state of the Russians.
And they believe that Ukraine is sort of a moat in their eye, that because Ukraine has become increasingly pro European, increasingly pro western, and increasingly swiveled away from Russia, that because of that, Ukraine represents a serious impediment to the reestablishment of anything like a Russian empire.
And the goal of Vladimir Putin is to reestablish Russia not just as a regional power, but as a global superpower on par with the United States, on par with China.
That is his goal.
And Ukraine represents an insult to that because Ukraine obviously was a part of the Soviet Union because there's a long history between Ukraine and Russia, including times when Russia has dominated parts of Ukraine or the whole of Ukraine.
And so the idea that a giant chunk of what Putin considers to be Russia actually is turned away from Russia is an insult to him and to the new Russian empire that he's attempting to create.
So the idea that he's going to accept security guarantees from the West in exchange for a little bit more territory, the only way that he believes that that will be useful to him is if he believes that the West is going to reneg, that he believes the West is basically going to pull out the same way that the West did with regard to, say, Hong Kong and China.
And President Trump, for his part, he believes that he can still make a deal.
And again, this is one of the things that's kind of amazing about President Trump.
He's a consummate deal maker, for sure.
He's very optimistic about deals all the time.
He thinks he can make a deal in any situation.
Now, the good thing about President Trump is that he's heterodox in his views, which means he sometimes does very creative things.
But also, if things don't happen, he then will respond.
He is responsive.
He doesn't just stick with the idea.
The idea that that endless diplomacy is something that President Trump is going to pursue here is not true.
If Russia will not come to the table, if he feels that Putin is jacking him around again, then he'll walk away.
He will.
He is not going to be bullied by Vladimir Putin here.
With that said, he is optimistic.
He was caught in a hot mic talking about the idea that he thinks that Putin wants to make a deal.
Thank you.
So that was President Trump explaining that he thinks that Putin wants to make a deal with him for him.
And we'll find out whether that's true or not.
I mean, bottom line is the proof is in the pudding and none of the details have been worked out, but we are moving toward a thing.
And to pretend that somehow Trump is doing Putin's work here is to ignore everything that's actually going on in favor of a pre-established narrative.
That's that's the actual thing that's amazing here.
There are some members of the heretofore left who at least are being honest about this.
Michael McFaul, who is President Obama's Russian ambassador, he says, listen, President Trump is actually doing a pretty good job here.
I think there was a very positive meeting and whoever had the idea to bring all these European leaders together in addition to President Zelensky, that was a brilliant, brilliant idea.
And having it come so quickly after Alaska was also very important because now they've changed the talking points here.
Just in this meeting alone, they've walked back.
some of the positions that the president was echoing when he met with President Putin.
So this is very positive progress.
So, you know, again, if you're honest, even if you're a Democrat, you should be acknowledging that President Trump not only is not doing anything wrong here, he's actually moving the ball forward.
Now, whether we get to the end zone or not is an entirely separate question.
And there's a lot of ground to cover between here and there.
But to pretend that this was somehow a gigantic Trump capitulation to Putin is to ignore the actual reality of the situation.
And it demonstrates the wild disconnect between reality and what Democrats think of President Trump.
Susan W Rice, who is of course a high ranking foreign policy adviser under Barack Obama and then a domestic policy adviser under Joe Biden, former US ambassador to the United Nations.
She was suggesting that Trump was somehow caving to Putin.
Where is the evidence for this?
Where?
Trump always likes to put a positive spin on his own work and even a dishonest spin in some instances frequently.
And so I think that, you know, he had said for weeks, if not months, that a ceasefire immediately was necessary and that that was what he saw in Alaska.
And if he didn't get it, he was going to be very angry and there were going to be severe consequences.
And he melted in like a puddle of ice in the Alaska sunshine.
It's just ridiculous.
I'm sorry, ridiculous.
And coming from Susan Rice, who again was a top foreign policy adviser under Barack Obama, who literally pledged flexibility to the Russians in exchange for them going quiet before the 2012 election, and then proceeded to hand over control of Syria to them, which by the way resulted in catastrophe in that entire region, and handing control of Crimea and the Donbass to them, which happened in 2014.
I mean, it's an amazing thing to watch these Democrats now pretend that they are hardcore on Russia.
Meanwhile, Tom Friedman, who is the dumbest human alive, I mean, Tom Friedman, columnist for the New York Times, who apparently receives all of his foreign policy knowledge from random cab drivers in random countries around the world.
He appeared on CNN to explain that President Trump is acting like he's neutral between a rapist and his victim.
I have a question.
How does he think negotiation presumably works?
What's he supposed to do?
Putin walks in, he just smacks him, he just backhands him.
What the hell is Thomas Friedman talking about?
What a ridiculous person Thomas Friedman is.
Well, he easily could have written a tweet that said President Putin can end the war right now by getting out of Ukraine and stopping raping the country next door.
So what it tells me is that we have a president who is kind of neutral between the rapist and his victim.
And I find that very troubling going into this.
I'm sorry.
He is just he's the most ridiculous person.
The fact that he is taken seriously as a foreign policy analyst is beyond me.
Claire McCaskill, former senator from Missouri.
She's doing the same routine.
She says that these meetings were Trump and Putin versus the good guys, presumably Zelensky and the Europeans.
There's only one problem.
That's not what the evidence is.
I mean, I when you.
When you are facing someone who has been as inappropriate as Trump was with Zelenskyy a few months ago, you bring your friends, you bring the democracies of the world, you bring the nations that have always been standing by us, we have stood by each other.
And the West respects democracies, they respect the rights of their citizens and the idea that they're all there and it's Trump and Putin versus all the good guys.
Oh my goodness.
You know, this sort of disconnect is why people are willing to buy basically any dumb conspiracy theory.
Because if you listen to MSNBC, President Trump just handed over Ukraine to Vladimir Putin, and it's not true.
It's not true at all.
Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, is tweeting out something similar.
Yesterday she tweeted out, it's curious to see the similarities between the people close with President Trump.
On the one hand, we have Vladimir Putin has ordered the kidnapping of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and uses the rape of women as a weapon of war.
This conduct is eerily similar to the moral depravity of Trump's other friend Jeffrey Epstein.
With his close relationships to both men, it's no surprise Trump won't release the Epstein files and wants Ukraine to see land to Putin.
What a despicable person.
My goodness, Nancy Pelosi.
Just the number of lies in that very, very short tweet, astonishing from Nancy Pelosi.
But again, that half the country's just misinformed, truly misinformed.
Now understand my view on this.
I've been very clear.
I think the United States should be funding Ukraine sufficient to stop the Russian invasion.
In fact, I think that the United States has a strong interest in funding Ukraine and army Ukraine sufficient to push back Russian territorial gains in the Donbass, if possible.
I've been saying that for years.
I've never changed my mind on that subject.
I said that in August 2022 they should look for an off-ramp because that seemed to be the most auspicious time for an off-ramp.
along the lines what Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, was talking about.
But then after Putin basically walked away and so did Zelenskyy, then the idea that you were going to let Ukraine fall to the Russians became ridiculous.
So it is not as though I personally am sort of neutral on the question of what happens in Ukraine with regard to Vladimir Putin.
I think the Russians are a nefarious force in the world.
I think Vladimir Putin is one of the worst actors on planet Earth.
And also, President Trump was not handing him to the keys of the car.
I mean, that's like there's no evidence that's the case.
And so the consistent lying here remains a source of astonishment to me.
All right, coming up, we'll get to the latest on redistricting.
The Texas Democrats came back.
So Brave Sir Robin is back first.
You know what else is funny?
When I started the Daily Wire, I thought the hard part would be creating the great content.
Well, it turns out dealing with all the behind the scenes stuff, that's the stuff that eats up your time.
I know I'm not alone.
When you're a business owner, every second of your time is incredibly valuable.
So don't waste your energy and risk losing money dealing with time sucking payroll issues.
Focus on what matters most, running your business with help from Bambi.
Here's what makes Bambi different.
They give you access to your very own dedicated HR manager at a fraction of what it costs to employ somebody full time.
And get this, Bambi costs just 29 bucks a month, whether you have 10, 75 or even 100 employees.
If I had Bambi when I was first building my team, it would have saved us countless hours and headaches instead of getting bogged down with paperwork and compliance issues.
I could have focused on growing the show and connecting with my audience.
With Bambi's HR autopilot, you'll never have to waste your valuable time getting into the weeds of HR policies, onboarding or terminations.
Plus, Bambi is month to month, no hidden fees.
You can cancel any time right now.
Get one month of Bambi for just one dollar.
Go to bambe dot com.
Type in Ben Shapiro under podcast to schedule your first call with an HR manager right now.
That's one month of Bambi for just one dollar at bambe dot com Ben Shapiro podcast.
Also, have you ever wondered why elite athletes, business moguls, high performers are using ARMRA Colostrum?
Well, it's because ARMRA Colostrum packs over 400 natural nutrients that work at the cellular level to build muscle speed recovery and boost performance.
No artificial stuff, just pure fuel for whatever it is you're tackling.
Think of it as your body's natural defense upgrade.
It strengthens your immune barriers throughout your entire body while supporting your gut wall system for better digestion and less bloating.
Plus, it helps your body absorb nutrients more effectively and keeps your metabolism running smoothly.
You'll also notice the difference in your skin's radiance thanks to natural antioxidants and collagen boosting compounds.
Plus, there's a reason elite athletes have been using colostrum for years.
It enhances endurance and speeds up recovery so you can bounce back faster.
The bottom line, ARMRA colostrum gives your body comprehensive support to thrive naturally.
We've worked out a special offer for my audience.
Receive 30% off your first subscription order.
Go to ARMRA.com slash shapiro or enter shapiro to get 30% off your very first subscription order.
That's a r m ra dot com slash shapiro armra dot com slash shapiro or enter shapiro to get 30% off your very first subscription order.
Okay.
Meanwhile, remember that time that Texas Democrats, Texas Democrats, they were the resistance.
They ran away bravely like Sir Robin from Monty Python.
They ran, ran far away in order to prevent the Texas House from achieving a quorum, thus to prevent redistricting.
Well, it turns out they came back and then the redistricting happened.
According to the Wall Street Journal, roaring cheers from supporters greeted Texas House Democrats as they returned to the Capitol midday on Monday after a two-week walk out.
Their return all but ensures the passage of a Republican-backed redistricting plan sought by President Trump, but the Democrats' allies think the walkout did a good job of drawing national attention to the GOP redistricting effort and generating pushback to it.
So a bunch of Democrats showed up in the well of the state capital to chant about how they had really fought back.
They'd put Texans first and they'd fought back by running away and then eventually coming back.
Oh, no, no, no.
Just more ridiculous signaling.
Look at those heroes.
Look at those stalwart heroes getting the big cheers they deserve for going on a two week unpaid vacation to Chicago and Washington, DC, and then coming back just in time for Republicans to do what they wanted to do in the first place.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Texas House Democrats on Monday confirmed they were back in Austin and ready to end their 15-day quorum break after encouraging states like California to take measures to counter the proposed redistricting in Texas.
Republican governor Greg Abbott ordered the second 30-day special session after the Democrats' walk out stymied the first.
A procedural move disallowing members from leaving the chamber without permission remained in force on Monday.
House Speaker Dustin Burroughs said that Democrats who had been absent would be released only under the custody of state troopers until the body reconvenes later this week.
Basically, you are coming to work whether you like it.
or not.
So it turns out that that was all a giant fail.
But the good news is, I guess, that JB Pritzker got to have his moment blotting out the sun.
JB Pritzker put out a tweet saying, thank you, Representative Wu.
This is Eugene Wu, who is a representative who fled to Illinois, one of the most gerrymandered states in America in order to prevent redistricting in Texas.
Pritzker said, thank you, Representative Wu, for trusting us to defend democracy alongside you.
We need more fighters like the Texas House Democrats.
Do you?
Because they lost.
I noticed that.
Now, it'll be interesting to see, by the way, how the Texas redistricting actually impacts the map because right now a bunch of districts are going to get redrawn.
And in 2024, President Trump won every Republican-held house district in Texas by double digits.
And there are some districts that were starting to turn red because of the large-scale movement of Hispanics away from the Democratic Party.
But it is possible that in future elections, those Hispanic voters may turn back toward the Democratic Party.
In fact, there's some decent poll data suggesting some disillusionment with the Republican Party on behalf of some of the Texas Hispanic population, particularly along the border with Mexico.
This is a point that's being made by Eli McCown Dawson over at Nate Silver's substack that the Texas House districting might not actually achieve what it seeks to achieve because there are five Texas districts that are supposed to flip from blue to red in nine thirty second, thirty fifth congressional districts.
Harris won all three of those districts in 2024 under the old congressional map.
Under the new map, parts of each district would be moved into more suburban areas that voted for Trump in 2024.
And that means that he would have won all three districts in 2024 and 2020.
But the other two districts, the 28th and 34th are a less straightforward win for Republicans.
The 28th and 34th are located in South Texas on the border with Mexico.
They are both majority Hispanic.
And so it is possible.
possible that, you know, again, those are districts that Biden won actually in 2020 and that in 2024, President Trump won.
But if there is a reversion to the mean in terms of Hispanic voting patterns, then you could see a world where actually Hispanics drive in Texas those districts back into the arm of the Democrats, which means you won't gain five seats, they'll essentially gain one.
I mean, that is possible as well.
So again, this is the thing about redistricting.
No matter how much you think you can redistrict a bunch of seats of the opposition out of existence, if the people don't like the way that the politics is going, they will vote the other way.
Meanwhile, California Democrats, according to the Washington.
Post, are going to take their first official steps this week in the national battle over redrawing congressional maps as they return to Sacramento to adopt a measure asking voters to approve new boundaries for 2026, 2028 and 2030 that could create as many as five new house seats for their party.
The aggressive legislative maneuvering by governor Gavin Newsom and Democrats who control the legislature is intended as a check on President Trump and his effort to tilt the midterm elections in Republican favor.
They are pushing forward.
Again, the goal for the Democrats is to make Gavin Newsom the 2028 nominee.
I mean, that's really what they are attempting to do at this point.
Gavin Newsom, for his part, continues to tweet like an idiot.
I don't understand exactly what he is doing at this point.
It is quite bizarre.
He's putting out these all caps tweets that are designed to, ow, imitate President Trump in some way.
He put out a tweet yesterday showing himself on Mount Rushmore.
And I know he thinks he's trolling, but he just looks like a doofus.
I mean, truly a doofus.
Now, that doesn't mean he might not be the nominee, he might be.
I mean, Democrats are very susceptible, as we say, to all of this sort of posturing and virtue signaling, which is why they will cheer when Cory Booker speaks for 24 hours or Hakeem Jeffries stands up there with a catheter for 7 hours and jabbers.
But, you know, is that actually going to effectuate a stop to President Trump's policies?
I think not.
Unlikely.
Now, meanwhile, the media, which have been doing all the dirty work for the Democrats for literally my entire lifetime, they're in a very serious situation.
So there was a report yesterday that MSNBC is now rebranding itself.
It will no longer be called MSNBC.
They are celebrating a change in their branding.
Here was Joe Scarborough announcing this morning a new name for the network by the end of the year.
We will become MS Now, which stands for my source for news, opinion and the world.
And look, Andrew, they even have a graphic up.
I like it.
There it is, actually.
It looks very sporty.
It sounds like a charity for fighting multiple sclerosis.
What is MS Now?
There are A lot of very good jokes online.
One person posted, I'm not looking for Miss Now.
I'm looking for Miss Wright.
I don't even know what that's about.
Why?
Why not just like what?
They could have come with something better than that.
Seriously, like something better.
Why MS now?
You just want to keep the same number of letters?
Are you that desperate to ensure the reusability of your five-letter captions or something?
You couldn't come with anything better than that.
Very, very weak sauce.
I believe that the original origin of MSNBC was that it was Microsoft and NBC and that's how it became MSNBC.
So now they're just trying to rebrand.
Okay, it's a it's a weird move.
It's a weird move.
But again, that is simply because they are having serious ratings problems and they've been having serious ratings problems for quite a while.
MSNBC, they're trying everything they can to actually rebrand in a serious way.
According to the New York Post, it was mercilessly raked over the coals by the internet.
People talking about maybe it was most surely no one watching or BS now.
Apparently it was they were forced to do this, I guess, because of the upcoming spin-off by by Comcast to a new publicly traded company called Versant.
So a short sell whatever owns MSNBC or MS now, as they say, they're getting rid of the peacock.
One former media executive told the post, I don't know what's worse, Versant or MySource News Opinion World, whoever came up with these names deserves to be shown the door.
It is very weird.
It is a very weird move by MSNBC.
Don't don't don't really get it.
But you know, don't get a lot about their coverage.
Meanwhile, joining us online is Harmony Dillon.
She, of course, is assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.
And of course, before she joined the administration, her law.
Her law practice focuses on a wide variety of issues, including she helped us out when we were suing the federal government over Joe Biden's vaccination mandate.
Harmony, thank you so much for the time.
Really appreciate it.
Yeah, thanks for having me, Ben.
So why don't we start with the situation in Washington, DC?
Obviously, the president has sent federal forces into Washington, DC, which he has the authority to do.
He has also said that he wants to take control of the police department, which he also has the authority to do.
What is the goal here?
How is the DOJ going to be involved in prosecution of crime in the District of Columbia?
Well, you're seeing it in real time.
The president has seen the news like everyone who lives here.
I'm a DC resident now working at the DOJ and everyone is aware of the pervasive crime.
It isn't just in one area or the other.
It's literally near the White House, near Capitol Hill, and you can't escape it.
And so this is what is happening is now we're seeing a completely ineffective local law enforcement.
So the federal government is taking over.
You're seeing our U.S. attorney, Judge Pirro prosecuting street crime.
There's arrests happening overnight, dozens and dozens.
And this is the type of law enforcement that the local authorities could have done for the last several decades and simply for political reasons chose not to do.
And so I personally feel much safer as a DC resident and I'm hearing that from people who aren't involved in politics as well.
I wish this could happen all over the country, but of course the president has the authority to do it here and not elsewhere.
Our Attorney General here in the building, Pam Bondi, is also very invested in this.
She's meeting regularly with police.
And, you know, this is just a whole night and day situation here in DC.
Yeah, it's kind of amazing the difference between the chattering classes on TV, what they're saying about this, talking about tyranny, and what is actually happening in the District of Columbia, where the federal government does have plenary power to actually do things like prevent crime, because of course it is a federal district.
It is not an independent state.
What has been the reaction so far of residents inside D DC say all this?
I haven't heard a single negative reaction from anybody who's a non-multimillionaire TV host who lives here in the district.
I think people are happy about it.
I mean, you do see crime tape all over the place before this happened and the crime is pervasive.
And so I actually moved to New York in the 1990s when Rudy Giuliani was the mayor and it was a similar situation where overnight you start to use that broken window theory and prosecute all the street crime and the turnstile jumpers and all that.
And suddenly, the whole tone of the place chang picks up, value goes up, people move in.
I hope that happens to our city as well.
Well, meanwhile, the Civil Rights Division over at the Department of Justice has changed its orientation and is actually trying to enforce civil rights, including on issues like Title IX.
What's the latest on the DOJ's approach to Title IX?
Well, Title IX has been something that we jumped right into at the beginning, and this has been a big priority for the Trump administration, and it's at multiple levels.
So at the college level, we are engaging in conversations with universities that we're entering into settlement negotiations with, and many of those have Title IX components.
For example, University of Pennsylvania has agreed to not allow boys to compete, men to compete in young women's sports.
We're looking at situations where universities are requiring sororities, fraternities to admit people of the opposite sex than what their preferences is, and we're trying to get them to stop doing that.
We're emphasizing privacy, but I want to also let your viewers and listeners know that we're actually also focusing on K through 12.
That's a very important priority.
And right here in our backyard in DC in the suburban Maryland areas, you're seeing open defiance of federal law and Title IX in these suburbs you're seeing uh these schools punish uh two boys who complained about a woman a young woman identifying as a boy coming into their locker room we believe both boys and girls have privacy rights and they're being violated by virginia schools we're seeing this happen in other schools as well and i'm engaged in litigation on behalf of the doj
in california against california interscholastic federation which administers the school sports in california and allows boys to compete in girls sports take their trophies take their opportunities for scholarships and take away their self-confidence this is completely unacceptable contrary to the law and we're not going to stand for it at this Department of Justice.
Actually, one report that's coming out from the backyard over there is Loudoun County.
Their public schools are now going to maintain a policy apparently allowing so-called transgender students, boys who believe they are girls or the reverse, to use facilities that match their gender identity despite an order from the DOE.
How is the DOJ going to be dealing with situations like this?
Well, we also sent a letter to Loudoun County on this issue, and I saw this member of the school board, I believe, or administrator mouth off about this, how they're going to ignore the civil rights division of Department of Education and presumably DOJ.
We'll see about that.
I don't think that's going to happen.
Well, that is Harmit Dillon, assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the US Department of Justice doing a fantastic job there.
Harmit, really appreciate the time.
Thanks for what you're doing.
Thank you for having me, Ben.
Meanwhile, the lamentations, the wailing, lamentations, gnashing of teeth, rending of garments on behalf of Stephen Colbert continues a pace.
Yesterday, Conan O'Brien issued a statement talking about how sad he was about Stephen Colbert, who was speaking at the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
He said, It's just, it's just very, very sad what happened to Stephen Colbert.
Honestly, it's sadder what happened to Conan in Late Night.
I'm old enough to remember when Conan was in Late Night and he's better than all these gu guys were.
Here he is very, very sad about the demise of Stephen Colbert's wildly over expensive late night show.
Late night television as we have known it since around 1950 is going to disappear.
But those voices are not going anywhere.
People like Stephen Colbert are too talented and too essential to go away.
It's not going to happen.
Yeah, he's not going anywhere.
Stephen is going to evolve and shine brighter than ever in a new format that he controls completely.
He is going to go on and thrive at MS Now, where he will undoubtedly be the late night host at MS Now, whatever that means.
So good luck.
By the way, I love when people act as though things sort of passively happen in the universe.
The reason that late night is dead is because you guys killed it.
Greg Gottfeld is doing fine in late night.
It's just that you guys aren't funny and you guys hate the right.
And so every single one of your hosts was berated for the great sin of not treating the right as anathema.
That's a you problem, my dude.
That is a Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel problem.
Late night didn't kill itself.
Alright, coming up, Taylor Swift has actually released a new album cover and it's kind of, you know, like a little.
on the R to X rated side, which is a little shocking for her.
I know you may not care about that, but you know what you will care about?
Roughly 36% of Americans have below average credit scores, which can make borrowing more difficult and expensive.
That means home loans, cars, more just continually out of reach.
And that's where Kickoff can help.
Users with credit under 600 grew an average of 84 points in their first year with on time payments.
You can start building your credit right away for just a buck in your very first month.
The best part is that AutoPay takes care of everything automatically.
So you're building credit even while you sleep without ever having to worry about missing a payment.
The whole signup process only takes a few minutes directly from your phone.
No credit check required.
You can cancel whenever you want.
No wonder.
It's the number one credit builder on the App Store.
Start building credit with Kickoff today.
You can get your first cred first month for as little as one dollar.
That's 80% off the normal price when you go to get kickoff dot com slash shapiro today.
That's kickoff without the C get kik off dot com slash shapiro must sign up via get kickoff dot com slash shapiro to activate offer off applies to new kickoff customers.
First month only subject to approval offer subject to change average first year credit score impact of plus 84 points Vantage score 3.0 between January 2023 and January 2024 for kickoff credit account users who started with a score below 600 who paid on time and who had no delinquencies or collections added to their credit profile during the period.
Late payments may negatively impact your credit score.
Individual results may vary.
Meanwhile, in other cultural news.
I have to note that Taylor Swift has a new album cover.
I know we have to give these updates.
Apparently they're more newsworthy than actual news, but I I have been told by many sources, myriad and sundry, that it's very important that we talk about Taylor Swift's new album cover.
So here's what Taylor Swift's new album cover looks like.
Here is the here is the image.
And by the way, she is so overexposed.
My goodness.
If you search Taylor Swift on Google, which I just did because I'm trying to look up her album cover, there's like actual Google graphics that appear with animation of glitter falling because she has released the Life of a Showgirl album cover.
And apparently it is her in like a bathroom stall or something.
I'm very confused as to what is going on here.
She is bent over at the waist, putting her arms against a wall while wearing a showgirl outfit that's cut up thigh high, essentially.
And all right.
Okay.
So I'm looking through her old Taylor Swift album covers now.
Well, first of all, I have to say it looks like she's done some facial work because she looked very different in 2006.
In any case, Taylor Swift 2006 looks like it's like a normal country album cover.
And then I guess her 2008 album, same kind of thing, 2010 album, same kind of thing.
2012 album, just a close-up of her face.
Then there's the 1989 album where she is, it's basically a Polaroid of her wearing an outfit from 1989.
There's her Reputation album where it looks as though she's kind of doing a quasi Madonna thing with her hair slicked back.
Her Lover album, she is clad.
Her Folklore album, she's just out in the forest.
Her Evermore album, she's still out in the forest.
Midnight, she is carrying a lighter.
The Tortured Poets Department we start to get into.
It was really the last two years we start to get into the sort of like, let me lie on a bed in kind of softcore pornographic fashion.
So a tortured post department, she's lying on a bed, reclining on a bed.
And now Life of a Showgirl, she has multiple album covers, I guess.
One of them is her half underwater wearing a showgirl outfit, kind of, which I don't know why she would wear that in the bath.
That seems like not a great way to be.
And then there's her bending up against the wall, almost like, what's her face?
You know, Sabrina Carpenter.
I don't know who these people are, but I will say that it is slightly regressive, no?
I mean, like it's kind of weird that all of your feminist.
heroes are now engaged in semi-pornographic album covers.
That's kind of strange, isn't it?
I understand that it was transgressive back in the 1980s when Madonna was doing it, but it's not transgressive anymore.
It's actually sort of bizarrely regressive.
And again, from a conservative point of view, I'm not generally in favor of people selling their works by becoming scantily clad.
It's not my thing.
But just from a feminist perspective, I'm confused why feminists think this is some sort of advancement.
Very strange.
And meanwhile, other controversy in the cultural sphere.
So apparently there have been these male cheerleaders that everybody's been steadfastastly ignoring since like 2018, but now they've broken back into the open.
And some video has emerged of one Minnesota Vikings cheerleader who is a flamingly gay man who is kind of doing a Dylan Mulvaney impression without the sex change.
And I'm just wondering why, like why, why is this why?
Here we go.
Like why is he doing the female moves?
Why is this like he looks like he looks like an idiot.
I'm sorry.
looks like a complete ridiculous moron.
He's dancing around and swiveling his hips and...
Now again, as a conservative, I'm not a big fan of the female cheerleaders on the sideline either because I just think that it's become sort of a glorified stripper whole thing.
But having a dude do it is ridiculous, like laughably ridiculous.
It's like Bugs Bunny putting on a dress and lipstick and dancing around out there.
And we're supposed to believe that this is sort of liberating.
Who's the audience for this?
Legitimately, who is the audience for this?
It's just ridiculous.
He looks like an idiot.
Okay.
I will say that, as I've pointed out before, my understanding is that male cheerleading did not involve effeminate gyrations by men typically.
It typically involved either like raw-raying or actually physically picking up ladies and throwing them in the air.
As I suspected, this is not how cheerleading originally went.
So I asked our sponsors over at Comet, what is the history of male cheerleading and when did it start to involve men dancing like women?
Quote, male cheerleading has its origins in the late 19th century, specifically in the 1860s and 1870s at Ivy League College sporting events in the United States.
Initially, cheerleading was exclusively a male activity, with men known as yell leaders, leading crowds with chants and basic movements focused on audience engagement and school spirit.
The activity remained predominantly male until World War I and especially World War II, when men went off to fight and women began to take over roles on cheerleading.
during the early male dominated years, cheerleading was not associated with dance or the more stylized movements often linked with femininity.
The routines were simple.
The main role of male cheerleaders was to lead crowd chants and encourage spirit rather than performing dances.
It was female cheerleaders who introduced more synchronized routines, tumbling acrobatics and the use of paper pompoms, gradually transforming cheerleading into chant focused crowd leadership to a performance-based activity involving dance elements.
The transition to men participating in dance style routines similarly similar to those traditionally associated with women occurred much later.
For decades, the style of male cheerleading continued to emphasize strength, athletic stunts, and cheerleading leadership rather than dance.
It was only as cheerleading developed into competitive and more performance-oriented sport in the late 20th century, especially from the 1980s onward with televised competitions and camps that both male and female cheerleaders began participating in routines involving dance, tumbling and stunts.
Even then, men typically performed partner stunts, tumbling and lifts while women led in dance style movements and choreography.
So in other words, this is relatively new.
And we mean like the last few years, this ridiculous, ridiculous, silly, stupid, idiotic, maronic looking routine in which the men are just doing female movements.
And yes, women move differently than men.
I love that we live in a society where what's supposed to jab an ice pick into our eye socket in order to get rid of our prefrontal cortex and we're supposed to pretend that men and women move similarly.
They do not.
That is stupid.
And a man doing the same moves as a woman looks like a moron, period.
That's all.
And I mean, we all know what this is, right?
I mean, what this is supposed to be is, hey, look, a gay man who's dancing like a woman, stop pretending in all the coverage of this.
It is irritating.
The sort of gaslighting is irritating.
I don't care about this very much, honestly, because like I, as I've said, I don't like any of the sort of modern cheerleading routines.
I think that they're oversexualized and they look like they're something straight out of a, out of a strip club.
But what, what does get my goat is, is the gaslighting.
Well, you know, males have been.
cheerleaders for centuries for going back almost 200 years.
Males have been cheerleading.
It's like, no, it's not the same thing.
Once again, you're taking turns and you're robbing them of their meaning and then you're supplanting them with an alternative, stupid meaning.
And then you are pretending that, well, you think men were dancing like this smuck back in 1870 or 1940 or hell, 1990?
Not a thing, not a thing.
And pretending it is a thing leads to the normalization of something that looks incredibly dumb.
Meanwhile, there is something happening in the culture.
And I think one of those things that's happening is the normalization of being just kind of a normy conservative.
Chris Pratt, the actor who is in Guardians of the Galaxy among many other successful movies.
Chris Pratt for a long time has been ripped up by the internet for not being sufficiently to the left.
And now he's basically saying, you know, there's a lot of people out there who have Trump derangements in Rome.
They're totally insane.
Here he was with Bill Maher.
And in politics, you inherit enemies.
And when you jump on, you know, the bandwagon with who is, you know, the most divisive president ever, it makes sense that you're going to be made to look.
terrible.
And so I don't know what to believe because I'm sitting with Bobby and I go, so hey, let's talk about this.
Let's talk about it.
It's like we're just playing cards or playing mafia or having fun or having.
fun or having dinner.
I'm not going to pick his brain to find out exactly which of those things are true.
I just kind of assume that none of them are.
And for the most part, I wish him well, man.
I hope there's certain things that he oversees that seem to be supported in a bipartisan way, like getting terrible toxic stuff out of our kids' food.
I think that's a great thing.
And so like, just if you just do that, that's amazing.
I'd hate to be so mired in hatred for the president that any success from his administration is something I'd be, have an allergic reaction to be like, oh, well, if they do it, I don't want it to happen.
I'll feed my, I'll put Clorox in my children's cereal myself.
You know what I'm saying?, come on, be reasonable here.
There's certain things that would be good to have.
I want them all to be successful.
Wow, things that you weren't allowed to say until five minutes ago in Hollywood.
So the times are changing.
Similarly, Anthony Mackie has been actually out there saying some relatively conservative things.
Again, as long as we're in the Marvel Universe, here he was a few months ago on the Pivot podcast talking about the death of the American Mail.
In the past twenty years, we've been living through the death of the American Mail.
They have literally killed masculinity in our homes and our communities, for one reason or another.
But I raised my boys to be young men.
And however you feel about that, you feel about that.
But my boys will always be respectful.
They will always say yes, sir, yes, ma'am.
No, sir, no, ma'am.
They will always say thank you.
They will always open the door for a lady.
They will always make sure that their mother is taken care of and provided for.
They will always be men.
And that's always since they were two years old.
Every time I left for a job, I tell my fifteen year old, you the man out of the house.
You make sure these doors are locked every night.
This alarm is on.
You text me or you call me every night before you go to bed and you wake up.
I love that.
Because we're men.
Okay, again, this coming back in a style is a good thing.
It is a good thing.
Males need something to do.
Males are quite important to society.
And when you rob them of their purpose, when you rob them of their initiative, when you rob them of their roles, what you end up with is a crisis, a real crisis.
Really interesting piece by Robert Putnam and Richard Reeves over at the New York Times called The Boy Crisis of 2025 meet the Boy Problem of the 1900s.
In the early years of the 20th century, America had a boy problem.
Boys on the street making trouble, boys becoming truants, boys getting caught up in crime.
The problem spread across the United States alongside the disruptions of technological change, immigration and growing socioeconomic inequality.
Policy makers stepped in with universal public schooling, for example, but it was the civic response that was truly extraordinaryary.
In less than a decade, most of today's major child-serving organizations were founded.
Big Brothers, the Federated Boys' Clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and 4H.
Many boys and men are struggling today too.
In an America once again disrupted by technological change, immigration, and growing inequality.
Since 2010, suicide rates among young men have risen by a third.
They are now higher than they are among middle-aged men.
The share of college degrees going to men has fallen to 41%, lower than the women's share in 1970.
One in ten men aged 20 to 24 is effectively doing nothing, neither enrolled in school nor working.
That's twice the rate in 1990.
This crisis demands a response equivalent to what the progressive era delivered, not just in public policy, but equally important from our civic institutions.
And he talks about, you know, what government is attempting to do and men and boys being left behind.
And he quotes, you know, a bunch of different political figures talking about this problem, pushes from Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan and Spencer Cox in Utah and Wes Moore in Maryland.
And Moore, for example, in his 2025 State of the State address in Maryland, he said, our mission is to uplift men and boys.
It's not in conflict with our values to leave no one behind.
It's in concert with them.
As the father of a son and a daughter, I want both my children growing up with all of their God-honoring and God-given opportunities.
But the reality is that the major fall off for boys and men is in the civil sphere.
It is not in the governmental sphere.
It is not about the government spending more money on boys and men.
It really isn't.
What it is about is the death of many of those same social institutions.
They write, It takes a village to raise a child, but some of the villagers must be men.
This is where civic institutions should come in, providing places and spaces where boys and young men learn what it means to be a grown man.
But in 2025, they're struggling to fulfill that role for two main reasons.
First, there are simply fewer organizations with an explicit mission to serve boys and men.
Most of the ones formed during the last boy crisis have gone coed, sometimes as a result of a merger.
Most now serve more girls than boys.
An exception is boys and girls clubs, which renamed itself in 1990 and still serves slightly higher shares of boys, 55% than girls.
In other cases, previously male serving institutions have gone coed while their sister organizations have remained single sex.
So boy scouting no longer exists.
They're now scouting America, but there's still girl scouts, for example.
The YMCA banned gender discrimination in 1978.
Second, there's a dearth of male volunteers making it harder to provide services for boys and young men.
Only 20% of young 4H volunteers are men.
Organizations are beginning to respond.
There's an attempt to reach out, but one hindrance is to male volunteering is the fear of being seen as a potential predator.
This has also reduced the enthusiasm among some parents for single sex environments.
The abuse scandals that rocked the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts understandably led many parents to worry about their children in male-oriented organizations.
Settlement for claims against the Boy Scouts has reached seven billion dollars more than the annual expenditure of many U.S. states, but the attention to child safety in those organizations is now paramount.
Okay, but here's the reality.
You know what used to solve this problem was church groups.
You know what used to solve this problem was social groups that were led by men for men.
The thing that is not mentioned anywhere in this article is the rise of feminism, which said that it was uniquely bas bad for men to hang out together, for men to train boys to be boys.
The reason that Boy Scouts of America changed to Scouting America is because of feminism.
It is because of the movement to destroy maleness as a concept.
The idea was that girls can also be Boy Scouts because boy has no meaning.
The complete androgyny that was pushed by the left for decades on end had a predictable result, which was sure it meant that women could engage in more male-centric occupations, but it also meant that men were basically told that there was nothing special about them, nothing that they were uniquely supposed to do.
You know, for most people, when you say that you should act like a man, most people know what that means.
They know what that means, but we forcibly told ourselves that we weren't allowed to say things like that.
There was something bad about gender stereotypes.
Teaching a boy to be a man was somehow a terrible thing.
You had to teach him to become an androgynist widget who might choose to become transgender or feminine later in life.
Well, that's a terrible thing for a boy.
It is a terrible thing for a boy.
Boys need to learn to be men.
They need to learn to defend and protect and be dutiful.
And you know what?
There are there are actual esthetic measures that are that are important to that.
So yes, young boys wearing dresses is a bad thing.
It is not a good thing.
It's not a matter of apathy, of moral apathy, nor should it be.
Boys should be trained to dress like their dad.
They should be trained to act like their dad and their granddad and their great granddad.
That is an important.
And when you lose that, what you end up with is indeed androgynous widgets, atoms in a machine that are not in coordination with no molecules ever get formed.
And then the society comes apart and males fail.
And that's what we are watching right now.
We're watching it more and more.
And then out of a desperate need for both attention and camaraderie, people find these groups online that essentially tell them that they are wanted and they are needed and they are necessary but only as a resistance to quote unquote the system.
And the more wild and outrageous the group, the more solid the core, the more solidarity is required, the more skin in the game.
And that's how you end up with the sort of polarization of men.
That's how you end up with the extremism of young men.
It is because it is a direct reaction to the dissolution of all the social fabric that supported young men, built them up, trained them and made them useful to the societies in which they live.
Alrighty folks, the show continues for our members right now.
We'll get to Fed Chair Jerome Powell has a speech today that is really.
going to shape the next few months of economics in the United States.
Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
If you're not a member, become a member.
Hughes Co.
Shapiro checked out for two months free on all annual plans.
▲
Export Selection