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Sept. 4, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show
52:29
Unspoken Truths on Trans Can Now Be Said
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A major liberal journalist acknowledges that actually the reason he didn't say the truth about trans was in fact social pressure.
Also, Democrats are now claiming that there's no free speech crisis in the UK, but there is in the United States, and the president of the United States doing something really, really smart about crime in New Orleans.
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Alrighty, folks, so we've known for a very long time in this country, for years and years and years that if you said the wrong thing about the trans issue, you could be canceled.
But now, finally, there's some people who are heretofore on the left who are acknowledging that that is in fact the case.
And this is just one of the beautiful flowering fruit of the Trump administration is that people are free to say things they didn't feel free to say before.
And you can easily read this kind of newfound enthusiasm for free speech as cynical.
The winds have changed, people are now deciding that they want to say what is more popular, or you can read it as repentance.
The reason this comes up today is because Malcolm Gladwell, who of course is very famous best-selling author, who's been a guest on the program before, I've been a guest on his program as well.
He came out yesterday, and he explained his amended point of view on transgender athletes, meaning men playing against women in sport.
And he was talking specifically about a 2022 appearance at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, where he moderated a panel discussion in which they talked about the path forward for the inclusion of trans athletes in sports, meaning men playing with the women.
And here's what Malcolm Gladwell had to say yesterday.
The reason I'm ashamed of my performance of that panel is because I share your position a hundred percent.
And I was count.
The idea of saying anything on this issue, I was in a...
I believe in retrospect, in a dishonest way, I was I was objective in a dishonest.
And of course, that is right.
That is honest.
There are many people who were cowed.
There were many people who were so scared of saying what was obviously true that they didn't say it.
And this happens all the time in our politics.
It happened in Great Britain during the Rotherham Group scandal, when members of the media specifically decided not to cover the fact that there were Muslim gangs, Muslim men, taxi drivers largely, who are underage white girls for then passing them around.
And people in the media knew about this, and they decided not to say anything because to say something would have resulted in censure, in public opprium, in people in power suggesting that you were somehow in league with the right, and in league with the right for a very long time in this country, in the UK as well, has become sort of the code for must be thrown out of public life.
Now, listen, I I don't believe that every view is equivalent.
I'm not a moral relativist.
I don't believe that we should take every view with equal seriousness.
I do think that there is an overton window, meaning the arena of valuable discussion.
The problem is that the left shut the overton window so much that if you just disagreed with the left on very fundamentally true principles like men are not women, they would throw you out.
And so the question becomes for many members of the right you know, what do you do when Malcolm Gladwell says something like this?
What do you do?
And the answer is that you probably should offer forgiveness.
You probably should offer some form of generosity.
Michael Schellenberger wrote on X, like him or not, Malcolm Gladwell is one of the most influential and financially successful journalists of the last 30 years.
For him to say he was too scared to say men don't belong in girls' sports shows both how totalitarian the mainstream media is and how chicken bleep MSM journalists are.
Now, again, I think that it isn't really about being cowardly, although you can make the argument.
I think what it really is more about is the insane echo chamber that has been created in so many of our elite spaces.
Because the reality is if you said what Malcolm Gladwell now says he would say, in 85% of the country, you'd be totally fine.
In fact, it is the mainstream view.
But if you are in the elite circles in which Malcolm Gladwell traveled, you would, in fact, lose your social standing.
You may have lost your job.
Places would stop reviewing your books.
There was real risk attached.
And President Trump has opened that up wide.
And that is a credit, of course, to President Trump.
It's also a credit to the American people.
It's a credit to the American people because the American people made the decision they didn't want to do this anymore, that they were done with all of this.
Well, you know where they're not done with all of this, as I mentioned, is in Britain.
So yesterday there was a free speech hearing on the Hill.
Nigel Farage appeared.
He, of course, is the head of the reform party in the UK.
And this hearing, which was designed to expose the predations of the UK and much of Europe with regard to free speech, held before the House Judiciary Committee steered into what's going on in the UK.
And here is Nigel Farage testifying.
I'm delighted to reacquaint with the charming Mr. Raskin.
That was delightful testimony you gave me earlier on with your speech.
But hey, that's fine.
You can say what you like.
I don't care.
Because that's what free speech is.
And in a sense, this has all been going wrong now for a couple of decades.
We've kind of forgotten the Voltaireian principles that we'll fight and defend to the death your right to say something that we fundamentally disagree with.
Okay, and that, of course, used to be the way that the West did things.
But as we've been finding, that's not the case in the UK.
Where there's actually enshrined in government policy, and I think Americans really do need to understand that, yes, there's been cancel culture and cancel culture when inappropriately applied, when applied to a range of mainstream views, is ridiculous and bad.
But that is a difference in kind from what is happening in the UK, where the government is literally arresting people for bad tweets.
That happens also in Canada, obviously.
And the thing that prevents that from happening in the United States is not our magical adherence to First Amendment principles as a people.
Unfortunately, there are many, many people in the United States who, if they had the opportunity, would in fact vote to curb free speech.
If you look at the polls of young people, young people overwhelmingly believe that hate speech should trump free speech, so to speak.
By all the polls, young people believe that there should in fact be legal limits on the kinds of speech that you should be allowed to say out loud.
The thing that protects us is the structures of the Constitution.
It is the fact that the Constitution bars Congress from doing this thing, and that the Supreme Court has made very clear it stands for decades that free speech must be protected at the highest possible level.
This is why it's kind of ridiculous when you hear people like Jamie Raskin arguing that actually there is no free speech crisis in the UK.
The real free speech crisis is happening thanks to Donald Trump, according to Jamie Raskin, the congressman from Maryland.
There is a free speech crisis in America today, but there's no free speech crisis in Britain.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has not shut down GB News where Mr. Farage has his own show just because Mr. Farage has used his airtime to call for banning peaceful protests that he disagrees with.
No one has stopped him from going on Russian TV 17 times and saying also and repeating that the one world political leader he most admired was Vladimir Putin, even though Vladimir Putin is a war criminal.
Okay, well, what what exactly is the contradiction between what Raskin is saying and the reality, which is that people are in fact being arrested for tweets in the UK?
And when Raskin says that the free speech crisis is happening in America because he doesn't like President Trump or the stuff President Trump says, or the lawsuits that President Trump files, which are then adjudicated in court and settled sometimes.
Again, a difference in kind.
A difference in kind.
But the left in the United States has sort of reversed reality.
Somehow, the UK is a free speech bastion, and somehow the real authoritarianism is happening right here in the United States.
So Jimmy Raskin also made the argument that Donald Trump firing bureaucrats makes him like Stalin.
Honorable civil servants are being fired because they won't be the political hacks Trump demands that they be.
When private comments made by federal employees are scrutinized for anti-Trump bias, and they can lose their jobs because of it, then we've entered the realm not just of Vladimir Putin, but of Joseph Stalin.
Okay, Joseph Stalin.
I mean, is anyone getting executed precisely?
I mean, there is the idea That members of the executive branch should work for, you know, the head of the executive branch.
But this is the game that the left in the United States is playing.
Crackdowns on free speech abroad are not happening.
The real crackdowns on free speech are not, in fact, crackdowns on free speech at all inside the United States.
Hardy coming up, China, Russia getting very aggressive, plus very weird hot mic moment between some of the world's worst dictators.
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Now, there is a sort of bizarre gray area that exists in American law.
That bizarre gray area exists in the realm of anti-discrimination law.
And we should actually discuss this because it's kind of important.
So yesterday, there's a ruling that came out from a federal court striking down the ability of the Trump administration to reject 2.2 billion dollars in research funding from Harvard University.
The ruling was by a U.S. district judge named Allison Burroughs of Massachusetts.
And it came, according to the Wall Street Journal, as Harvard and the Trump administration have been in talks to resolve months of the government's pressure tactics over what it calls anti-Semitism and diversity-related concerns.
President Trump said last month he wants no less than $500 million from Harvard.
The White House said, quote, to any fair-minded observer, it is clear that Harvard University failed to protect their students from harassment and allowed discrimination to plague their campus for years.
We are confident we will ultimately prevail in our efforts to hold Harvard accountable.
In her ruling, the judge concluded that Harvard was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did.
But argued that the federal government, quote, used anti-Semitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country's premier universities, and then argued that the government's actions violated the First Amendment.
Okay, so let's talk about what's happening here.
There is a principled case to be made, a principled libertarian case to be made, that anti-discrimination law, when applied to private universities, for example, is violative of free speech principles.
That things that you are allowed to say without being prosecuted are also things that should be allowed to be said at businesses without that business being prosecuted under, say, the Civil Rights Act.
There's a principled First Amendment libertarian take that says that this part of the civil rights revolution went too far and impinged on freedom of speech principles.
That is not the argument this judge is making.
The argument this judge is making is that certain types of discrimination are basically okay.
That anti-Jewish discrimination at these various universities, that's okay.
If it were anti-black discrimination, then the Trump administration could remove funding.
But if it's anti-Jewish administrat uh discrimination, then the Trump administration has no right to do that.
That is ridiculous, and it speaks again to the left's double standard when it comes to pretty much every aspect of American law, from free speech and cancel culture to anti-discrimination law, which is only supposed to apply to some, but not apply to others.
In her order, the judge stressed the importance of fighting anti-Semitism, but then caution quote, if speech can be curtailed in the name of the Jewish people today, then just as easily the speech of the Jews and anyone else can be curtailed when the political winds change direction.
Again, that is a principled libertarian argument she would not make if we were talking about anti-black discrimination on college campuses.
If you want to make the sort of reason magazine argument that anti-discrimination law runs afoul of First Amendment principles, I'm actually quite open to that argument.
If you are making a different argument, which is that only certain groups get protected by anti-discrimination law, that is a very, very different thing.
And it is that double standard, that very double standard the left is applying that makes people believe, I think correctly, that they don't actually care about any sort of consistent free speech principles, that they are not making any sort of argument that coheres.
And this is why the great fear is that if the left ever gained power for a significant period of time in this country and was able to take over the Supreme Court, that you would have serious restrictions on speech that look a lot more like what the UK is doing, not just the sort of informal social cancel culture stuff that we've been seeing in the United States.
Okay, meanwhile, on the foreign front, yesterday China held a massive military parade.
Obviously, this was designed as an intimidation tactic against President Trump.
I do not think it is going to work.
According to the Wall Street Journal, China flexed its growing military power and its deepening ties to Washington's adversaries with an extravagant parade that cast leader Xi Jinping as the standard bearer of a new global order.
The armed forces spectacle in Beijing on Wednesday, marking the 80th anniversary of China's victory in World War II, projected the vision of a great power that Xi wants to present to the world and a warning to the U.S. and Europe not to challenge it.
First of all, I should just note historically speaking, it was not the Communist Party of China that won the war against Japan.
It was Shanghai Shek who won the war against Japan.
Mao basically did nothing.
He sat up in the mountains, waited for Shanghai Shek to do the dirty work, and then came down from the mountains and took over the country and turned it into a communist bastion.
In any case, others who attended this kind of glorified spectacle included North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as well as Russia's Vladimir Putin.
Now, the weapons that were included in this particular march included what are called the weapons of the nuclear triad.
The nuclear triad, those are weapons that are land-based, submarine-based, and air-based.
And all those weapons were made available here.
So the goal obviously was to intimidate the United States to say that while the U.S. has certain defensive mechanisms, if China were to go to war with the United States, hell, they might nuke San Francisco or something.
According to the Wall Street Journal, she was flanked by leaders from 26 countries, including Iran, of course, of course.
He said in a speech, quote, the Chinese people have made major contributions in saving human civilization and safeguarding world peace with huge national sacrifices.
Uh I'm going to ask when.
I'm just going to ask when.
Again, the Chinese people may have done so during World War II against the Japanese, but not the Chinese government that is represented by the communists.
The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is unstoppable, said Xi.
And then again, they showed hypersonic, nuclear capable missiles and unmanned combat platforms that strengthen China's abilities to deter the United States and project power far beyond its borders.
Formations on parade included ground naval and aerial drones, strategic missiles, and a cyberspace combat force.
So part of this was domestically oriented.
It was intended to demonstrate to the Chinese people that despite the sort of wavering economic growth in China, serious demographic problems in China, massive debt bomb in China, that they still have the military capacity to challenge the United States.
It is also a signal to the United States in an attempt to get President Trump to back down from his tariff threats against China.
Well, Beijing is taking advantage of the tariff wars in order to achieve a broader appeal to neutral and third party countries.
This is what's been going on with China and India.
China's trying to make overtures to India, counting on alienation by the United States of India on the terror front in order to make overtures to India.
They're doing the same thing with South Korea.
They're doing the same thing with other countries in the region, Vietnam.
According to the Wall Street Journal, unlike past military parades held when China's economy was humming, the event comes as Beijing confronts serious challenges, including high youth unemployment, mounting debt levels, and a years long property bust.
Also, she has been purging his senior military commanders because he is afraid of the possibility that somebody tries to make a change over there.
Now, I think what this really says to the United States, and it should be a reminder, China is not nearly as strong as it seems to believe that it is or seems to be trying to show the world that it is.
Again, China has serious internal problems.
It doesn't mean that China isn't a serious geopolitical threat.
It does mean that if the power of the American free market and innovation is unlocked, if China is instead of engaged, boxed in, if we decide to build a ring of commerce around China, if we decide to protect allies like Taiwan and Japan and South Korea, and yes, India, from the predations of the Chinese, then China could find itself on the wrong side here.
And Russia is not going to bail them out because Russia does not have the capacity to do that.
Russia has nuclear weapons and gas, and that is it.
But I think the goal for Putin and G is to show a strong face in an attempt to get President Trump to broker some sort of friendly deal with Russia over Ukraine, and that drain on Russia's military might in time to save Vladimir Putin's regime, You know, back off the harsh economic measures that we've aimed at the Chinese.
please.
That seems to be the goal.
Well, Vladimir Putin, for his part, he says that Zelensky should now come to Moscow.
He is doing that simultaneously with launching 500 drones and missiles at Kyiv overnight, wrecking energy and civilian infrastructure.
Putin apparently claimed he never refused a meeting with Zelensky, which of course is not true.
Putin basically just let that proposal by President Trump die.
Putin told his state-owned outlet TASS, quote, if Zelensky is ready for a meeting, let him come to Moscow.
Of course, Zelensky isn't going to do that because he's afraid that Putin will, of course, kill him.
Ukrainian foreign minister Andri Sievha slammed Putin's proposal for Zelensky to willingly enter enemy territory as the war rages as unacceptable.
He says there are lots of places they could do this.
They're not doing it in Moscow.
Sabihas said, quote, there are serious proposals, and President Zelensky is ready for such a meeting at any point in time, but Putin continues to mess around.
And then he added only pressure can force Russia to finally get serious about the peace process.
And this is right.
Okay, this is where we should be taking a note from the Reagan playbook, truly.
Ronald Reagan understood, box in the Soviets, and then outcompete them.
That is the same exact same method we should be using with regard to China.
We can outcompete the Chinese.
We need to unleash the American economy, radical deregulation, lower taxes, ease of investment, lower tariffs, better trade relationships with our partners.
If you want to defeat China, these are the ways that you defeat China.
Meanwhile, I gotta say, the coalition of enemies that is allying against the United States is totally bizarrely Orwellian.
It's like something out of a Bond film.
Putin, Xi, and Kim were caught on a hot mic, actually, talking about living forever, which is just the most Orwellian crap I ever heard.
Xia is speaking Mandarin, he's a 70 years old.
And the translator says earlier, people rarely live to 70.
These days at 70, you're still a child, is what Putin said.
Okay.
It's inaudible what he's saying.
The translator is translating back to Xi says, with the development of biotechnology, organs can be transplanted, people can live younger and younger and even achieve immortality.
And then Xi said predictions are the century, there's a chance of also living to 150.
So here you have all of these relatively elderly dictators.
And Ken Jong Lou is relatively young, but Putin is in his 70s.
Xi Jinping is currently 72.
So these are aging dictators who are literally talking about how to basically get organ transplants they can live forever.
These are scary and spiritually devoid people, for sure.
And the attempt to somehow turn them into something else is bizarre.
The attempt by some to stand for Vladimir Putin is though Vladimir Putin is, you know, a soulful Christian who is deeply invested in biblical values.
By what evidence at all?
Like truly at all.
Vladimir Putin has gotten more Christians killed than any person on Earth in the modern era.
At least 200,000 Russians and probably 100,000 Ukrainians minimum.
And somehow he's the he's the great hero.
Okay, if that's what you believe, go for it, sure.
President Trump, for his part responded by saying that the X summit was beautiful, but you know, he he should have thanked the United States since it was really the U.S. ending the war against Japan that freed China.
I thought it was a beautiful ceremony.
I thought it was very, very impressive.
But I understood the reason they were doing it, and they were hoping I was watching and I was watching.
Uh my relationship with all of them is very good.
We're going to find out how good it is over the next week or two.
Uh I think that uh we helped China very much, as you know, when they talk about freedom.
And I don't believe that, and maybe I'm wrong, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't believe that uh America, that the United States was acknowledged for helping China to get to gain its freedom.
Uh but perhaps I was just a uh that was a sleight of hand.
I mean, I was very I was very surprised.
I watched the speech last night.
President Shi is a friend of mine, but I thought that the United States should have been mentioned last night during that speech because we helped China very, very much.
And so, again, he is not wrong about all this.
The question becomes what is the best strategy to confront China?
And that is going to require uh a fair bit of thought.
And meanwhile, the president has taken aggressive action against Venezuela's drug traffickers.
So, according to Marco Rubio, U.S. forces could have stopped the boat that officials say was carrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the United States on Tuesday, but President Trump instead chose to destroy it, killing the 11 people on board to send a deterrent message to traffickers.
So we do have video of what it looked like when the United States basically nuked from orbit what looks like a speedboat with a bunch of cocaine on it.
You can see here's the boat.
That thing barely looks like you can take it fishing.
And um, soon it will no longer exist.
Yes, that is an expensive weapon that is blowing up the boat completely.
For some reason, there are people upset about this.
I'm not sure precisely why, I gotta be honest with you.
You know, killing Trendaraguas drug traffickers.
Uh, that seems like the world is net better off for that.
The president of the United States put out a statement.
He said, earlier this morning on my orders, U.S. military forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Trendaragu narco terrorists in the Southcom area of responsibility.
TDA is a designated foreign terrorist organization operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere.
The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in international waters transporting illegal narcotics heading to the United States.
The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action.
No U.S. forces were harmed in the strike.
Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America.
Beware.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Apparently, according to Rubio, U.S. forces launched a precision strike on the vessel as it traveled through the Caribbean Sea.
When asked if they warned the crew, Rubio said that the vessel, like others carrying drugs, posed an immediate threat to the United States, and that we had the right to destroy it.
Rubio said the president has a right to eliminate immediate threats to the U.S. that this president is not a talker, he's a doer, and he's going to do it.
The White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement, according to the Washington Post, that the strike was, quote, conducted against the operations of a designated terrorist organization and was taken in defense of vital U.S. national interests and in the collective self-defense of other nations.
So, again, I see zero problem with this.
Nicholas Maduro is very afraid the United States is going to topple his regime.
He has mobilized his entire military.
Basically, again, boxing him in and ensuring that the supply of drugs from which the Maduro regime profits cannot happen via the water.
Now that we have shut our southern border, it can't happen that way either.
It is cutting off a massive source of revenue to the Maduro regime.
So, yeah, again, it is strange to me that some People are seeming to seem upset with this.
But this is a pretty good way of deterring drug traffickers from attempting to smuggle via the water drugs that kill Americans into our country.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board points out that the attack is a break from the usual Coast Guard protocol of stopping suspected drug traffickers on the high seas, going aboard for search and seizure and making the rest for trial at a later date.
Venezuelan copos don't follow the Marcus of Queensbury rules.
The U.S. doesn't have to refrain from sending them a more convincing kinetic message.
In Venezuela, Trendaraguas and drug trafficking are tools of the dictatorship.
Elsewhere in the region, gangs overwhelm weak institutions, even in countries that do want to fight back.
And so this is a good way of boxing in Maduro, who Pete Hexeth called the kingpin of a drug narco state, not actually elected.
When asked if regime changes the goal, the Secretary of Defense deferred to Mr. Trump, but added, quote, We're prepared with every asset the American military has.
Now again, I do not believe the United States is about to engage in a full-scale war with Venezuela, but certainly boxing them in militarily is a solid way of allowing for people inside Venezuela to launch some sort of uprising should in fact they choose to do so.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of State pledged to foster security cooperation and respect Mexico's sovereignty and territory.
Rubio kicked off his visit to Mexico and Ecuador to allies in the Trump administration's war on drugs.
He met with the Mexican president Claudia Scheinbaum at the National Palace in Mexico City.
Rubio said we've reached a historical level of cooperation.
So, again, apparently, Mexican officials are hoping that better cooperation will forestall actual kinetic U.S. action on the Mexican side of the border.
Again, that is another excellent side effect of nuking that speedboat of drugs from orbit is the Mexican government says, well, we we don't want SEAL Team 6 deployed on Mexican soil, so maybe we should cooperate in fighting our own drug cartels.
So, you know, again, there are certain people, the usual suspects, like Kenneth Roth, formerly of the United Nations, who's just a trash human being, suggesting that Trump ordered a quote unquote summary execution.
But it was a wartime activity undertaken against a terrorist group.
Period.
This is, I think, why so many people voted for President Trump.
He is not doing the talking.
He is he is actually doing the doing.
And that is a very, very good thing.
Already coming up, some of the world's worst dictators talk about immortality, like living forever.
Plus, President Trump does something pretty brilliant on crime and an Epstein presser.
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Okay, meanwhile, Trump's enemies on both the Republican and the Democratic side of the aisle have decided that they are going to again revivify the Epstein case.
Now, we've talked about the Epstein case a lot on the show.
Like a lot, especially since the FBI DOJ announcement that there were no further prosecutions coming, that there was no foreign intelligence or domestic intelligence operation involved with Jeffrey Epstein, and that essentially there was no there when it came to a broader case to be made.
Well, the media and certain political actors have decided to keep this alive despite lack of evidence.
Yesterday, that resulted in a press conference held by Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky and Democratic Representative Rokana of California.
They've been attempting to collect signatures from House lawmakers to force a vote compelling the DOJ to turn over its Epstein documents, saying that the document releases so far have been insufficient.
And the problem that the DOJ has, of course, is that they do not have a history of turning over, for example, grand jury documents to Congress unredacted.
Because there may be names that are mentioned because Jeffrey Epstein called people on the phone once, and they don't believe that it is in the interest of the DOJ or the American people to simply indict without trial a bunch of people who are never even alleged to have engaged in the kinds of activities people think there is in the quote unquote Epstein list that doesn't actually exist.
Well, this was paired, the this sort of Massey and Rokana publicity stunt.
This was paired with a with a presser that was held outside the Capitol building.
The presser outside the Capitol building was coordinated with civil rights attorney Gloria Allred.
So Gloria Allred is an ambulance chaser of all ambulance chasers.
She's almost immediately discrediting to her own clients in the same way that, say, Benjamin Crump is discrediting to his clientele.
Well, she is now coming forward, Gloria Alred is, with a bunch of alleged Epstein victims, to apparently tell us nothing.
So here's the thing.
If you have something to say, you probably should say it.
You probably should say it.
Seriously.
So some of the women were granted settlements and have gotten large-scale settlements from banks that were connected to Epstein, like JP Morgan, for example.
Some of the women who are alleging victim status were not minors when they were engaging with Epstein.
Some of them absolutely are minors.
And none of this, of course, is to downplay the tremendous evil of Jeffrey Epstein.
If ever anyone deserved not to be breathing the air that we all get to breathe, it is Jeffrey Epstein.
The world is a better place for his absence.
With that said, the question now is whether there's anything new that is coming out or whether this is just another grandstanding publicity stunt designed to put some sort of unspecified pressure on President Trump.
So, according to the Wall Street Journal, Epstein's victims told their story outside the Capitol on Wednesday morning in a press conference organized by Rokana and Thomas Massey, seeking to remind Congress of the nature of the disgrace financiers' crimes.
Again, the question I have is what exactly is the allegation?
What is Trump supposedly covering up here?
What is the thing?
So, first, the Epstein victims announced that they would be compiling a list.
And here's my question.
Why not just do it?
Seriously.
In any case, they decided they would hold the press conference to announce nothing, which is always suspicious to me.
When people hold a press conference to announce nothing, it doesn't suggest that there's a lot waiting behind the vault door.
Here are some of the Epstein victims talking about this.
And let me announce now.
Several of us Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list of names.
Thank you.
We know the names.
Many of us were abused by them.
Now together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names.
We all know we're regularly in the Epstein world.
And it will be done by survivors and for survivors.
No one else is involved.
Stay tuned for more details on that.
Because history is washing.
And so are the women who will come after us.
That's right.
Thank you.
Another Epstein victim recalled going on a trip with Bill Clinton and says that Epstein bragged about President Trump, but didn't make an allegation that Clinton said her and also didn't make an allegation that Trump was involved in the first time.
My first trip to the Palm Beach residence.
Um I drove there from the airport with Tielan Maxwell, and they Jeffrey and Elen were always very boastful about their friends, their famous or powerful friends.
And his biggest brag forever was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump.
He had an eight by Tim framed picture of him on his desk with the two of them.
Like they were very close.
Now, okay, I mean that that that yes, we we knew that already.
I mean, there's literally a picture of Bill Clinton in a dress in Jeffrey Epstein's house.
So yeah, we we we knew all again.
What is the breaking news?
What is the thing that requires massive m explication and attention?
If there's something new, like let's do this thing.
Seriously.
The survivors also appeared on NBC News, where they admitted that they didn't actually see Trump ever do anything bad, which again, I think was the entire implication, particularly from Democrats, is the reason that that Trump isn't doing more Epstein talk is because there's something deep and dark and terrible inside the Epstein files about Trump personally, but no one has yet made that actual allegation.
I do have to ask, and I know uh and it's just something that I think we're compelled to at this moment with the attention on President Trump with these questions around a pardon.
Did anybody see or hear of the president himself doing anything inappropriate as it related to Jeffrey Epstein?
No.
Okay, so I mean, so what what's the allegation?
Well, one Epstein survivor says, you know, so what where's the cover-up?
Well, why why is there a cover-up?
So I ask you, President Trump and members of Congress.
Why do we continue to cover up?
Who are we covering for?
Okay, so I mean, if the allegation is that there is a cover-up and you are the victims, shouldn't you unmask it?
Truly, you have 27 victims stacked up right there.
Shouldn't they unmask it?
Well, the these were questions that Michael Tracy was asking.
He showed up to report on the situation, and he asked some pretty basic questions, particularly with regard to Virginia Geoffrey and Alan Zerschwitz, and he was immediately basically ejected by the people who are standing there for asking these basic questions.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So uh you represent Virginia Roberts from eventually had to rechant the allegations that she made against Alan Dershowitz.
Gilet Alan's question.
Next question.
Thank you.
What why is it that she should be able to do that?
Yeah, no, we're not answering the question.
Anyone else?
How did the victims feel about the interview that was given to Glenn Matters or trying to say something?
That's better.
Okay, ma'am.
I think that you had a question.
Okay, so just completely ignore a very, very basic question.
So you're literally standing in front of a of a sign that says Epstein Files Transparency Act, and you won't answer an incredibly basic question.
It doesn't speak to a desire for a ton of transparency, to be honest.
Michael Tracy also was outside this event and he confronted conspiracy theorist extraordinary Ian Carroll.
Uh and and said, Well, you know, you keep claiming a conspiracy.
Can you like detail what your what what exactly it's supposed to be?
Like where's your evidence on any of this?
I personally despise R. F. Jr.
I'm the last one to run away from anything that could possibly be critiqued by R. F. K. Jr.
He's one of my least favorite people probably on earth.
However, you know what I wouldn't do?
Well, you know what I wouldn't do?
I wouldn't make up fake blackmail stories about him.
Don't get out on social media, and then just ghost everyone when the story that I claim was imminent doesn't come out.
But you think then that's that's fine.
I mean, that's your whole journalistic report.
I mean, you consider yourself journalists well when you constru it in your way that this represents.
They can go back and watch it.
I have no problem.
I was reporting.
I unfortunately quite proud of what it was reported, and I got to do it.
Nothing was reported.
Where's the f ⁇ blackmail story?
Where is it?
Again, the the the hallmark of a of a true conspiracy to be uncovered is evidence.
These are the exact people who theoretically should be providing the evidence.
That's the part that's strange about this entire presentation.
You're literally bringing forth the victims who said that they were acted by prominent people, and you named zero people in this particular presser.
And it doesn't seem like their plans to reveal who these particular people are in any legally actionable way.
Well, Thomas Massey, of course, trying to make political hay while the sun shines.
He is claiming that Trump is covering up for his friends.
Who went from Trump is covering for himself to Trump is covering for his friends.
We don't know who this friends are, these unspecified friends.
How about this?
This is the flight logs.
They're withholding who was on these planes.
Like this is a document that's publicly available.
Go find it on their website.
They are redacting things to prevent embarrassment.
They're not redacting things to protect victims.
And in the process of preventing embarrassment, they're hiding some criminals.
Embarrassment to the president.
No.
Embarrassment to rich and powerful individuals who are connected to the president.
I don't think the president is redacted here.
I don't think uh he's implicated in these files, but I think his donors are.
I think his friends are.
And um I think our own DOJ and government are implicated in this too.
So in other words, he believes that there are a bunch of sex criminals that the president is covering up for because they gave him money.
That's the accusation from Thomas Massey.
I'd love to see the evidence to to uh to actually substantiate that that allegation.
Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Green, again, former recipient of the Billy Madison, you've just said the stupidest thing anyone's ever heard award here on the Ben Shapiro show.
Here she was encouraging President Trump to host Epstein and survivors in the Oval Office.
Again, this is all just attention grabbing behavior.
That's all it is from people like Marjorie Taylor Green.
I look forward to talking with President Trump uh about about these women that I've met.
Um I also encouraged him already this morning that he should have these women in the Oval Office.
They deserve to be there.
You spoke to him.
Yes, I did.
And um I I told him I'd be happy to set that up, um, arranging with their attorney uh by sharing his phone number.
What was his reaction about it?
I haven't gotten an answer back on that.
Okay, so I have a question.
Why is Marjorie Taylor Green specifically focusing in on this?
Well, what is the injustice that she is seeking apparently to write?
It's an allegation about a conspiracy that has yet to be substantiated.
When the evidence is offered, then we can all hear it.
And and what I keep coming back to is you are literally standing next to the alleged victims.
They should be able to tell you the names of the people who them.
If the even if those names are redacted, they should be able to tell you the names of the people who abused them.
This is, of course, a great irritation to President Trump, who says that that basically this is being kept alive at this point by a left-wing media that seeks to do him damage.
I think a lot of that is true.
Right now, uh there have been survivors of Jeffrey Epstein speaking at a press conference on Capitol Hill, they're calling for uh these case files, these documents to be released.
And Thomas Massey, who is who is sponsoring a discharge position to get the House to go and release those documents, uh, says he doesn't think you're implicated in these files, but many of your friends and donors maybe, and says that's why the Justice Department is redacting them and slow walking the release are the Justice Department protecting any friends or donors, sir.
So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends.
You know, it reminds me a little of the uh Kennedy situation.
We gave him everything over and over again, more and more and more, and nobody's ever satisfied.
From what I understand, I could check, but from what I understand, thousands of pages of documents have been given.
But it's really a Democrat hoax because they're trying to get uh people to talk about something that's totally irrelevant to the success that we've had as a nation since I've been president.
Again, he is not wrong about this.
He's not.
I know that's unpopular in certain in certain quarters.
But if the idea is that the president is involved in a cover-up, you know, at least points to Massey for saying it.
A lot of people implying it, at least Massey will say it.
Although, again, I think this is uh a fair bit of grandstanding.
Meanwhile, the the President of the United States may be actually shifting his focus when it comes to crime away from Chicago and actually toward New Orleans.
Apparently, according to NBC News, President Trump is now suggesting that he might send troops to New Orleans in another crime crackdown.
Now, I I would assume that the reason that he's gonna do that is because not only does New Orleans have very high rates of crime, but also that is in fact a red state.
So he could theoretically just call on the red state governor to allow him to utilize the National Guard.
He could do that.
So far he's been working in areas where the governor does not want to work in coordination with him in the National Guard, like California.
In Washington, D.C., he didn't have to ask for permission because Washington, D.C. is a federal territory.
When it comes to Louisiana, Louisiana's governor is in fact a Republican.
So it could be a fascinating exercise.
And certainly a lot more legally based than sort of having national law enforcement without the state government involvement enforcing local or state law, which is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
President Trump said that they may be going to Louisiana or New Orleans.
He said we'll straighten that out in about two weeks.
It'll take us two weeks easier than Washington, D.C. Frankly, I think this is smart.
I think this is smart for a variety of reasons.
One, it gets past the narrative.
The Democrats are trying to retail that Trump is only targeting blue states.
Well, Louisiana is a very red state, actually.
So if he targets a blue city in a red state, which is where the crime typically is in red states, then that seems like that.
In fact, that's exactly what Trump said.
Trump said about Governor Jeff Landry, Republican, that he, quote, wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of the country that's become quite, you know, quite tough, quite bad.
Landry shared a clip of Trump's comments and welcomed the move.
He said we'll take President Trump's help from New Orleans to Shreveport.
In a joint statement, New Orleans at Mayor Latoya Cantrell, and the New Orleans PD touted the city's ongoing collaboration with the federal government.
They said we have consistently worked with our federal partners, including collaborations with the Louisiana state police.
This is this is quite brilliant politically.
It really is, because what it's doing is it's wrong footing Democrats again.
Because now the question becomes, why aren't you just to act if the National Guard is an additional resource that could be used by states in order to lower murder rates in places like New Orleans or Shrevefort?
And Republican governors are fine with it.
What are you complaining about?
Why don't you work with the president of the United States?
Why don't you just do that?
Like if it makes life better for your citizens and that resource is being offered, sure you could say no.
And sure you could force the president to come up with some sort of jerry-rigged federal excuse to go in.
Or you could, you know, just lower the crime rates by saying yes.
Naturally, there are, in fact, Democrats in New Orleans who are upset.
That includes New Orleans City Council president JP Morrell, who said it's ridiculous to consider sending the National Guard into another American city that hasn't asked for it.
Guardsmen are not trained law enforcement.
They can't solve crime, they can't interview witnesses, they aren't trained to constitutionally police.
Okay, but you know what they do do is they stand there.
And you know what people don't like to do is commit crimes in front of members of the National Guard.
They don't like to do that so much.
It turns out that boots on the ground are actually a really, really good way of cracking down on crime, as we've seen in Washington, D.C. So again, I think there's a very smart plan by by President Trump focusing in on Louisiana is smart.
It totally wrong foots Democrats.
And it gives President Trump the capacity to say what he said yesterday that Democrats are apparently against the prevention of crime.
This is the best issue of all.
They are against preventing crime.
They they are fighting us.
I want to go into Chicago and have this incompetent governor that doesn't want us.
Do you know that this weekend 72 people were shot in Chicago?
I'm embarrassed to say it in front of the president of Poland.
Eleven people were killed, 72 people were shot.
Last week, seven people were killed in Chicago.
A place which is probably your number one place.
I hate to say it.
Yeah, what the ball says and we gotta keep it safe.
But seven people were killed.
The week before that, five people were killed, and twenty-one people were shot.
This is in three weeks.
So in three weeks, I lost almost almost 35 people were killed.
It could have been stopped.
If you look at Washington, D.C. three weeks ago, it was the same or worse.
And now it's considered a totally safe zone.
So, you know, again, this is a smart move.
And Democrats keep wrong footing themselves.
Here, for example, is the Illinois Lieutenant Governor saying that Trump doesn't care about law and order, which is weird since he's now doing the thing you said he wouldn't.
He's going into a red state to do it.
Donald Trump will want to come in and say, well, uh, I need to get in there and get things in order.
Donald Trump doesn't care about public safety.
He doesn't care about law and order.
This is a president who wants to cause chaos.
And uh what we are telling people is you need to make sure that as you exercise your First Amendment rights, which you should, uh, that you do so in a way that you are safe and that we will do everything that we can as your leaders to protect our people.
So, I mean, good luck with this argument, seriously.
But this is what Democrats are going to try, I suppose.
Democrats are making a lot of dumb moves these days.
The president is trying to make things better in New York by basically clearing a path for Andrew Cuomo to be the sole candidate to run against Zoran Mamdani.
According to Politico, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been reluctant to abandon his bid for re-election, but President Trump might offer him an instrumental post.
And it might make it easier to stop Mam Dani from winning in New York if that were to happen.
Right now, the polls show Mamdani stuck in the low to mid-40s.
The rest of the field is consolidated.
Or has failed to consolidate and is thus split, leading to Mamdani's potential victory.
Apparently, Adams would be offered a position at HUD, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
A White House official would neither confirm nor deny that that is precisely what was happening.
There's also been some talk about Curtis Leewa being offered some sort of position to get them out of the race and leave Andrew Cuomo as the sole remaining candidate to run.
Again, Zoran Mamdani.
This led Mondani to then post quote, today's news confirms that Cuomo is Trump's choice for mayor.
The White House is considering jobs for Adams and Slewa to clear the field.
New Yorkers are sick of corrupt politics and backroom deals no matter who's running.
We'll deliver a better future on November 4th.
Here was Mamdani saying this.
Andrew Cuomo is Donald Trump's choice to be the next mayor of this city.
This is, however, about an affront to our democracy.
An affront to what makes so many of us proud to be Americans.
That we choose our own leaders.
Not that they get to pick themselves.
Not that they get to be picked by the president of the United States.
If I was worried about polling, I wouldn't be the Democratic nominee.
Okay, so um here, here's the thing.
It's not about Trump loving Andrew Cuomo.
He does not love Andrew Cuomo by any stretch of the imagination.
He just thinks that you're garbage because you are Zoran Mamdani, because you're terrible.
And offering a one-on-one alternative is not, in fact, anti-democratic.
I mean, I'd love to see Zoran Mamdani make this case to the Democratic Party, which consolidated around, say, Joe Biden to stop Bernie Sanders.
Maybe he would.
Maybe he would, but he'd be wrong.
So that race may be about to get very, very interesting indeed.
Alrighty, coming up for our members right now on the show, we'll get to the latest on the economy.
Is a stagnation in the works?
Why are we seeing better earnings?
And is that an indicator that the economy is doing well?
What's the story?
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