The Ben Shapiro Show - BREAKING: Former FBI Director James Comey INDICTED!

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Sept. 26, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:09:37

BREAKING: Former FBI Director James Comey INDICTED!

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	Former FBI director James Comey is indicted.
	Democrats continue to celebrate the return of Jimmy Kimmel, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel speaks at the UN General Assembly plus a lot, a lot more.
	Tons of news today.
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	Well, it was a long time incoming, and yesterday afternoon it was announced that a grand jury had indicted a longtime target of President Trump's former FBI director, James Comey.
	Of course, James Comey has been on President Trump's so-called target list for a very long time, going all the way back to when President Trump fired him during his first term.
	He, of course, fired him because James Comey almost certainly bootstrapped into the press the so-called steel dossier.
	He promoted the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
	He was deeply involved in every aspect of that, up to and including the use of the steel dossier in documents that were presented directly to President Trump, which was then used as an excuse by the media to push the Steele dossier, a compendium of lies about President Trump into public view.
	And there have been open questions about whether James Comey, over the intervening years, where he testified repeatedly in front of Congress, among others, had actually committed perjury.
	Well, yesterday, the indictment came down, according to the New York Times, the indictment filed in Alexandria, Virginia came over the objection of career prosecutors in the Eastern Districts of Virginia who found insufficient evidence to support charges, but were then overruled by Lindsay Halligan, a Trump loyalist handpicked by the president to run the office a few days ago.
	Halligan herself does not have any experience prosecuting criminal cases.
	She's an insurance lawyer.
	So this is definitely something new.
	It represents the most significant legal step yet by the Trump administration to go after a former official, obviously.
	There's been talk about going after John Bolton.
	We'll get to that in just a little while.
	He's obviously under federal investigation right now.
	The indictment itself is as bare bones as it is possible for an indictment to be.
	And so we have to analyze this on a few different scores.
	One, what is the accuracy of the indictment?
	Will in fact the conviction of James Comey happen?
	That is sort of access number one.
	Number two is the political.
	Is what President Trump is doing here super duper duper bad, or is it just turned about as fair play?
	And then access number three is sort of what comes next.
	So let's go one by one here.
	Let's start with the actual material in the indictment.
	It is a very, very, very short indictment, as in like a page and a half maximum indictment.
	Quote, false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the U.S. government, that is count one.
	On or about September 30th, 2020 in the Eastern District of Virginia, the defendant James B. Comey Jr. did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the government of the United States by falsely stating to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he had not authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning person one.
	Person one would be the president of the United States.
	That statement was false because as James Comey then and there new, he in fact had authorized person three to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning person one.
	Person three is a person who is working at the FBI.
	As we'll explain in just a moment.
	Basically, the allegation here is that there was a lower down at the FBI who leaked to the press details involving the investigation into President Trump, and that is now being suggested that that person was authorized by Comey illegally to do that, and that Comey then fibbed about it.
	Or if he had the authority to authorize the leak, he fibbed about it, and that fib is count one, which is the perjury charge.
	Count two is obstruction of a congressional proceeding, saying that on that same date, based on that same testimony, Comey did corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct, and impede the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which an investigation was being had before the Senate Judiciary Committee by making false and misleading statements before that committee.
	That is the entirety of the indictment.
	That's the whole thing.
	It is an idea and compendium of accusations.
	It is very specific.
	It is about presumably one or two lines in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
	The reason it's being brought so quickly here is because there is a five-year statute of limitations on perjury charges.
	And as you may have noticed, that testimony was September 30th, 2020.
	It is now September 26th of 2025.
	So we are about to expire on that statute of limitations.
	Andrew McCarthy, who breaks this sort of stuff down for National Review, had predicted that this sort of thing was going to happen.
	And he sort of lays out exactly what the story here is.
	He says on Halloween 2016, about a week before the 2016 election, the left-wing journalist Franklin Fowler published a report in Slate, strongly suggesting that candidate Trump had established a communications back channel with the Kremlin involving servers at Trump Tower in Manhattan and Alpha Bank, one of Russia's largest financial institutions.
	Within hours on the same day, the New York Times published its report investigating Donald Trump, FBI sees no clear link to Russia.
	The Times report related the FBI's conclusion there was nothing to the back channel claim, which, of course, was later confirmed by special counsel John Durham's Russia Gate probe.
	More broadly speaking, according to Andy McCarthy, the Times report also detailed that the Bureau's counterintelligence investigation of Russia's malevolent activities in connection with the 2016 campaign were not linked to Trump or his campaign.
	The consensus conclusion was that Russia was trying to harm the United States by sowing doubt about the integrity of our elections.
	During the first Trump administration, Durham led a Justice Department probe of those leaks to the Times in connection with the October 31st, 2016 story.
	It was investigated as what the FBI referred to as a UPD, an unauthorized public disclosure of classified information.
	Catherine Herid, who is then reporting for Fox News, I believe, has posted the closing memorandum for the probe dated February 25th, 2020.
	There were two major government sources for that story that came out in the New York Times.
	Remember, it was a story that was meant to exonerate Trump of charges pushed by Franklin Fowler that there was a back channel between Trump and Alpha Bank or Russian sources, and that the FBI had no information suggesting that Trump was actually a Russian's cat paw.
	So believe it or not, the league that is the subject of this particular investigation and indictment, that leak was actually a pro-Trump leak.
	It was a leak that helped President Trump because it actually dispelled myths about Trump's involvement with Russia.
	As the report, the Durham report asserts, one of the sources of the leak was James Baker, who at the time of the leak was the FBI's general counsel and a close advisor to Comey.
	Baker explained to investigators he had been under the belief that he was ultimately instructed and authorized to provide information to the Times by FBI director James Comey.
	Baker does not claim that Comey gave him a direct order.
	Rather, he indicated that the FBI chief of staff, James at Rabicke, instructed him to disclose the information to the New York Times, and Baker understood that Rabicki was conveying that instruction and authorization from Comey.
	Beyond that, most of the remaining pertinent information about the investigation was classified.
	Apparently Durham closed the probe with a recommendation of no prosecution of Baker or anyone else for this for this league.
	Number one, the FBI hierarchy actually did have the authority to declassify, so they could leak legally.
	Two, Baker's belief he was acting with authority was reasonable.
	C, it would have been impossible to prove criminal intent because if he thought he was acting with authority and this this was being declassified by the upper levels of the FBI, he didn't commit a crime.
	And D, there was no harm done to national security.
	Well, how does this bring up Comey himself?
	On September 30th, 2020, appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey reaffirmed prior testimony from 2017, saying he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak information to the press pertaining to the investigations of either possible collusion between Trump and Russia or Hillary Clinton's use of an unauthorized email system.
	So basically, the case here is that he says he did not authorize a lower down at the FBI to leak the information.
	Even if he had authorized that leak, it would not have been illegal.
	So the cover-up here would be criminal, but there would have been no underlying crime, is sort of the issue here.
	All right, coming up more on James Comey, Jimmy Kimmel being celebrated as the great unifier now, mostly by Jimmy Kimmel.
	So that's very exciting.
	Plus, Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN.
	And of course, Ukraine is just a ton coming up.
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	Now McCarthy says that an indictment on this would be absurd, which is why Trump's own former nominee to U.S. Attorney for Eastern Dict Eastern District of Virginia declined to bring the case.
	And the president fired him over that.
	So apparently Lindsay Halligan has decided to do the thing that Trump wanted her to do.
	And so what it appears from all sort of the public information is that this isn't a particularly well predicated indictment, that the indictment itself is quite weak, and that it's unlikely to survive in court.
	Now, again, many of the things that Comey has been talked about for possibility of indictment are sort of in moral and ethics, much worse than this.
	But that's not what he's being indicted for.
	So Jim Trusty, former Trump attorney, he says that Comey had a special employee whose sole purpose it was to leak things to the New York Times.
	Do you believe this decision to charge James Comey was reached independently of what the president has so clearly conveyed he wanted to happen here?
	Well, probably.
	I mean, you do have a grand jury that indicted, they carefully considered the case.
	They actually shaved it down to an area that makes a lot of sense.
	You know, nobody's actually talking about the specifics of his false statement, but this was a director of the FBI who had a special employee designed for one purpose to leak things to the New York Times.
	Now, when he was pressed in Congress on whether or not he had leaked something, he'd authorized the leak of a memo he retained wrongfully at his house.
	He said, No, that's not my recollection.
	They challenged him about McCabe, another guy who had referrals to the inspector general for lying.
	And Comey said, That's not my recollection.
	So, in a weird way, through all this chaos, through all this kind of political interest of what's going on behind closed doors, who knew what?
	At the end of the day, the indictment that's left is actually pretty simple.
	He either lied about leaking to the New York Times in a tantrum because he is getting fired, or he didn't.
	And I don't think it's going to lend itself to the easy dismissals that some of you other folks have been saying they're going to get.
	I mean, it's an open question at this point how strong the indictment is.
	Now, you've got people, again, like the former Trump lawyer Jim Trusty saying it's fairly strong, and people like Annie McCarthy saying it's fairly weak.
	According to the New York Times, Pam Bondi was a little reticent about bringing this case.
	And you'll recall that just last week, President Trump accidentally put out on Truth Social what was pretty clearly an email intended from Pam Bondi saying we need to indict.
	Well, President Trump put out his own response, quote, Justice in America, one of the worst human beings.
	This country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former corrupt head of the FBI, today who's indicted by a grand jury on Two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts.
	He's been so bad for our country for so long and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our nation, make America great again.
	Now, again, we'll get to the turnabout as fair play point in a moment, and what this means for the justice system and all the rest.
	Pambandi put out a social media post saying no one is above the law.
	FBI director Cash Patel put out a statement saying, quote, everyone, especially those in positions of power will be held to account no matter their purge.
	James Comey then decided to do the thing that no one should ever do when hit with an indictment, which is go directly on camera and talk.
	First rule of lawyering.
	Tell your client to shut the hell up.
	Anyway, here is James Comey doing not that.
	My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump.
	But we couldn't imagine ourselves living any other way.
	We will not live on our knees.
	And you shouldn't either.
	Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant.
	And she's right.
	But I'm not afraid.
	And I hope you're not either.
	I hope instead you are engaged.
	You are paying attention, and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does.
	My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I'm innocent.
	So let's have a trial and keep the faith.
	God, he's just the worst.
	He's just the worst.
	I mean, this self-aggrandizing ridiculous figure.
	I mean, this person has brought our country to the brink in terms of the Justice Department and the FBI for basically a decade.
	And it turns out he was one of the most ridiculous figures in the history of American public service.
	Truly.
	A ridiculous figure, not only blowing the Hillary Clinton investigation, but blowing the Donald Trump investigation, manipulating the release effectively of the Steel dossier, and then using his perch as the guy who got fired by Donald Trump in order to launch salvos at Donald Trump over and over and over again.
	While walking through the forest and taking selfies of himself or walking on the beach and taking pictures of shells on the beach saying 86 Donald Trump and like he's just a ridiculous person.
	So again, don't mistake my questions about the indictment for a belief that James Comey is somehow deserving of tremendous sympathy.
	I do not think that James Comey is worthy of tremendous sympathy.
	Awful director of the FBI, a joke of a public figure.
	And his like, I'm standing up to authority.
	I it's I am the hero standing in the breach.
	He's just silly.
	He's just a silly, silly person.
	That doesn't speak to whether the criminal indictment that is being brought here is weak or strong.
	And again, we'll see what the underlying evidence looks like.
	On the face of it, typically, if you've got a page and a half indictment, unless it's like closed book, black letter law, easy indictment, kind of unusual.
	The fact that again, the president had to replace the prosecutor who didn't want to prosecute with a prosecutor who would, who then a couple days later brought the prosecution, but has never actually prosecuted a criminal case, doesn't speak to the strength of the indictment itself.
	Now, here's the question.
	Everybody on the left, of course, is going insane.
	Everybody on the left is going nuts.
	So Joe Scarborough, for example, he says, we've never seen such an abuse of power.
	Oh my dude.
	Here's Joe Scarborough going crazy.
	And again, this is a standalone uh case, John Hyleman.
	Zanny said, uh, never have we had facts, certainly not in our uh uh political lifetime, certainly not since Watergate have we had such an abuse of power uh uh coming uh not only from the White House, but also the Justice Department in a charge.
	And again, let's just sum this up uh the way the New York Times did this morning, Maggie Haberman, Alan Fior, and Jonah Bromwich, um an inexperienced prosecutor loyal to President Trump, in the job for less than a week, filed criminal charges against one of her boss's most reviled opponents.
	She did not only do so at Mr. Trump's direct command, but also against the urging of both her own subordinates and her predecessor, who had just been fired for raising concerns that there was insufficient evidence to indict.
	So um, it's one of the worst abuses.
	Such such terrible abuse.
	And Chuck Todd saying Trump is playing an eye for an eye games.
	Here he is.
	He is doing what he believes was done against him.
	There's no evidence that it was.
	But he doesn't care, and he just sees, hey, eye for an eye, right?
	This is sort of old testament justice in his head.
	Eye for an eye.
	You indicted my guy, me, I'm gonna figure out how to get back at you.
	Okay, so here is the problem for the left.
	It is, in fact, tit for tat.
	Let's be very clear about this.
	Donald Trump was maliciously prosecuted repeatedly from the New York State level by Letitia James to the federal level by Jack Smith, repeatedly, over and over on the basis of manipulated charges, stretched charges, charges that were literally read in unique ways for the first time in order to go after him.
	And so should you be surprised that Donald Trump is now doing this to the people he believes targeted him in the first place.
	He had promised this was going to happen, so it's not exactly a shock.
	It is a reality that these methods were used against him.
	Now, the thing about Trump that I think frustrates so many people on the left is that he's not genteel about doing this sort of stuff.
	Joe Biden would lie.
	He would go out there and deny that there was anything political about the prosecutions of President Trump while his own DOJ was going after his chief political opponent, and indeed the person who both preceded him as president and then replaced him as president.
	So, you know, that that is a reality that that Joe Biden fibbed about is that his DOJ was being manipulated to go after Donald Trump.
	And so you'd go out there, no, no, Justice Rosa is just being forced Miller, and of course, we saw the same sort of stuff while Barack Obama was president when Loretta Lynch was on the tarmac meeting with the Clintons and all the rest.
	The idea that there was no manipulation of the justice system as the justice system under Barack Obama launched a completely specious and ridiculous investigation, which was then laundered into public view to try and help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election cycle.
	So the thing that the press and the Democrats are very upset about is not what Trump is doing.
	They're upset that Trump is doing it to the wrong people and that he's doing it out loud.
	And this, of course, is Trump's habit.
	President Trump is not somebody who hides the ball.
	If he believes that the DOJ is in fact a tool to go after political opponents, he will just use it that way and he will do so out loud.
	Now, do I think that that is significantly worse than what Democrats did?
	I I actually don't.
	I think the fact that he's doing it out loud at least makes the game pretty clear.
	I'm not sure that it is better to do this sort of stuff quietly, to pretend that the DOJ is actually an objective arbiter and enforcer of the law rather than just saying the quiet part out loud, which is what President Trump is doing right here.
	And President Trump, let's be let's be clear.
	President Trump is not hiding the ball here.
	Remember, he hates James Comey.
	And not for bad reason.
	And here in 2021 is James Comey calling for Trump to be thrown in prison.
	Convict him, bar him from future service, have the prosecutors, the local prosecutors in New York pursue him for the fraudster that he was before he ever became president, lock him up for the garden variety frauds he did there, but don't give him that center stage, that dominant role in our national life just down the street where Joe Biden is trying to heal this nation.
	Okay, I mean, he's just he was a ridiculous figure.
	And and President Trump, again, was not hiding the ball.
	Here he was yesterday before the indictment came down.
	I can only say that Comey's a bad person.
	He's a sick person.
	I think he's a sick guy, actually.
	He did terrible things at the FBI.
	And uh, but I I don't know, I have no idea what's gonna happen.
	Already coming up, Jimmy Kimmel is apparently the great unifier of America, according to you know, Jimmy Kimmel.
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	Okay, so uh again, President Trump, he does the quiet part out loud.
	So what does this mean?
	Well, I mean, I think that as always, the question about President Trump, the left always asks the wrong question.
	They look at a body of a of an institution prone in the street, and they see President Trump standing over the body, and there's a knife in the back of the body.
	And they're like, well, Donald Trump killed this institution.
	Donald Trump killed the DOJ.
	And those of us who've been watching politics for a while saying no, no, no, Donald Trump is just the coroner.
	That knife was in that body.
	It was slid in there subtly by Biden and Obama, and Trump came along and he just pointed out that this body's been dead for quite a while, and in fact, the body is cold.
	And I think that is what's happening here.
	Now, is any of this good?
	I mean, the answer to me is no.
	Now, I understand mutually assured destruction.
	I understand President Trump's saying, listen, we're going to be openly political about the use of the DOJ if the other side was covertly political about the use of the DOJ.
	And maybe in the future everybody will stop being political about the use of the DOJ.
	However, I don't think that's the argument that's being made.
	It seems to me that the argument that is being made is that it is actually a good, that actually it is a good thing to do this, to use the DOJ as a sort of an enforcement mechanism.
	And again, I don't think that President Trump is unique in this view.
	I think that Barack Obama thought this.
	I think that's why he had Eric Holder playing his wingman going all the way back.
	I think Joe Biden thought this as well.
	But for America, it is not in fact a good thing.
	For America, it is not in fact a very good thing for the DOJ to be widely perceived and indeed used as a political tool.
	And even if the indictment is good, this is my problem that I've seen with, for example, the FCC chair Brendan Carr making public comment on Jimmy Kimmel.
	Jimmy Kimmel should be off the air because he's a terrible host and because people don't watch his show.
	He should not be off the air because of pressure from the FCC.
	If there's an indictment to come of James Comey, it should come based on the analysis of the law, not because President Trump is out there pretty openly pushing for the indictment of James Comey.
	It's a mistake.
	All of this needs to be, if you want to recatalyze the institutions and make them useful, if you actually would like for a for an America in which we don't have this spiral, this ever-escalating spiral of the use of institutions to target political opponents.
	At a certain point, somebody is going to have to restore honor to the institutions.
	That is a thing that's going to happen.
	And not only that, it actually sullies the capacity to get a conviction.
	Let's say that this is a good indictment.
	Let's say the indictment against Comey is stronger than I believe it is based on the available evidence.
	Well, let's say that actually this is a convictable offense.
	Fine.
	You don't think the defense is going to have a very, very strong case for bias in the jury pool?
	You don't think that they're going to have a case when the president of the United States is openly calling for conviction.
	Now, this is a case that I've made with regard to criminal defendants before when Joe Biden was president of the United States.
	I've said this about Derek Chauvin, when Derek Chauvin was convicted.
	It certainly didn't help that the president of the United States and the governor of Minnesota and many others were pretty much openly calling for his conviction.
	Well, when the president of the United States is openly calling for your conviction, it's going to be pretty hard to get a fair trial.
	This is a bit of a problem.
	So it actually throws an obstacle in the way of getting to the proper legal result.
	We'll have to see how all of this plays out.
	The same thing holds true, by the way, on the prosecution of John Bolton.
	It may be that a potential prosecution of John Bolton is amply justified.
	It may be.
	We don't know yet.
	I've been withholding judgment until I see the indictment or see the evidence.
	As is my habit.
	I like to wait until all the evidence is in to judge the veracity of the evidence and whether, in fact, the person deserves conviction or acquittal.
	But let's say, for the sake of argument, the case against John Bolton is really strong.
	The fact you have the president of the United States out there over and over and over again going after John Bolton is not a good thing.
	And if the shoe were on the other foot, it also would not be a good thing.
	So we can recognize all these things at the same time.
	We can recognize one, that this indictment, I don't know whether it's good or bad at this point, how strong it is, their varying opinions, until I see the underlying evidence or even details of the underlying charges, it is very difficult to tell.
	Two, it is very difficult not to perceive a sort of tit for tat turnabout as fair play aspect of what the DOJ is doing.
	And that means all the things, right?
	It means that this did not start with Donald Trump, but it is being done by Donald Trump now, right?
	It means all those things.
	And three, it means that if we're ever going to have a DOJ that we can trust again, at a certain point, we're going to have to have a DOJ that we can trust again.
	And that's going to mean the actual use of the DOJ by the people running the DOJ to enforce the law rather than the political priors of the person who's in office, whether quietly as under Obama and Biden or overtly as under President Trump right now.
	You know, when we talk about the DOJ, we talk about who caused the decline in trust over at the DOJ.
	It is absolutely worthwhile to note when the American decline in trust actually began.
	And so I asked our sponsors at Comet, a new web browser by Perplexity.
	What do polls show about American trust in the DOJ?
	When did it begin to decline?
	According to Comet, American trust in the DOJ is at a historically low level, with recent polls showing only 39% of Americans view the DOJ favorably, while 46% have an unfavorable opinion as of August 2025.
	The decline began gaining national attention around 2020, and public confidence fell sharply as the nation entered the 2020s, marked by political controversies, high-profile investigations, and shifting partisan views.
	So it actually started to dump while Joe Biden's era was happening.
	The steepest drop in trust began around 2020, and that was largely because of perceived politicization of the DOJ.
	That's because of all of the news that was arising about Trump Russia gate.
	All that stuff you remember came to a head in 2020.
	Earlier declines were gradual throughout the 2010s.
	But again, that controversy over the DOJ, the FBI, Trump Russia gate, that killed it.
	So it had already started to decline even under Barack Obama.
	So at this point, trust is really low.
	But again, attributing that to Donald Trump personally, as opposed to the attempt by the DOJ to target President Trump and his allies, that would be a mistake in the timeline.
	If you want John Bolton convicted of an actual crime, if he committed an actual crime, it's actually not a great idea to go around talking about as president how much you want John Bolton indicted and convicted of an actual crime.
	So we'll see how all this plays out again.
	Mistake none of this for sympathy for James Comey, other than perhaps some aspect of legal understanding that maybe the case is weak.
	But as far as personal sympathy for James Comey, the guys are schmuck.
	James Comey's been awful for years.
	James Comey is going to go unindicted for many, many things that he did that probably are not criminally prosecutable, but definitely helped wreck the country.
	And meanwhile, speaking of using law enforcement in positive ways, the president of the United States put out an executive order yesterday designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.
	Now it's unclear what the authority is or even what this is going to mean in terms of implementation.
	What it probably really means is use of the DOJ to investigate the financial ties and actual bonds between members of Antifa, Antifa groups, according to the White House, because of the aforementioned pattern of political violence designed to suppress lawful political activity and obstruct the rule of law, I hereby designate Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.
	All relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations, especially those involving terrorist actions conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa, any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support, including necessary investigatory and prosecutorial actions against those who fund such operations.
	So what does that mean in practice?
	It really just means, I assume, redeployment of particular resources to investigate Antifa.
	So Ken Cucinelli, who serves as Trump's deputy secretary of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration, he says there's not really a formal designation in law, but as the executive, he can do that.
	He can direct a skewing of DOJ resources to attack the problem, and that's how I perceive what he's doing.
	I wish we'd done it in 2020, when these people were rather clearly going from city to city.
	I asked for it and I didn't get it.
	This is a useful, this is a useful thing.
	It is also a useful thing that the Department of Justice is now investigating George Soros' donations, his foundation.
	Because it turns out that a lot of money has passed hands to violent groups.
	And actually deploying law enforcement resources to go after monetary support for violence activity is not a partisan issue.
	It is not, in fact, an aspect of this tit for tat revenge cycle.
	It is a thing that needs to be done.
	If there are foundations providing material support to terrorist groups who are committing shootings, who are committing vandalism, who are out there doing acts of intimidation and violence in violation of law, of course, those funding mechanisms should be investigated.
	It is good that the DOJ is doing this.
	According to the New York Times, a senior DOJ official has instructed more than a half dozen U.S. attorney's offices to draft plans to investigate a group funded by George Soros, the billionaire democratic donor whom President Trump has demanded be thrown in jail.
	The officials' directive, a copy of which was viewed by the New York Times, goes as far as to list possible charges prosecutors could file, ranging from arson to material support of terrorism.
	The memo suggests department leaders are following orders from the president that specific people or groups be subject to criminal investigation, a major break from decades of past practice meant to insulate the DOJ from political interference.
	The step came in an accelerated push by the DOJ against Mr. Trump's perceived enemies in recent days and weeks.
	And again, that is the New York Times' editorial take.
	They stack it right into their news article there.
	The idea being that Trump is targeting political opponents as opposed to, you know, violent groups who are receiving material support from groups like George Soros funded groups.
	Open Society Foundations has been funding groups all around the world who engage in civil and possibly uncivil unrest.
	On Monday, a lawyer in the Office of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch issued that directive to U.S. attorneys in California, New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Detroit, and Maryland.
	And the lawyer, Akach Singh, suggested a wide range of charges for prosecutors to consider against open society foundations, including racketeering arson wire fraud and material support for terrorism.
	Justifying this, he pointed to a report from Capital Research Center, we talked about this earlier this week, which monitors liberal money in politics, and he asked the prosecutors to determine if the allegations were enough to justify opening criminal cases.
	That report states that the group, quote, has poured over $80 million into groups tied to terrorism or extremist violence.
	It's cited as one example, Al Haq, a Palestinian human rights group, quote unquote, critical of Israel, but of course, AHAC has been a front for terrorist activity.
	So this is a good use of law enforcement.
	This I like.
	This is good.
	President Trump himself says listen, we are not going to tolerate the radical left's continued violence, particularly after the shooting at an ICE facility over the course of the last 72 hours.
	It's going to get worse, and ultimately it's going to go back on them.
	I mean, bad things happen when they play these games.
	And uh I'll give you a little clue.
	The right is a lot tougher than the left.
	But the right's not doing this.
	They're not doing it.
	And they better not get them energized because it won't be good for the left.
	And I don't want to see that happen either.
	I'm the president of all the people.
	But the radical left is causing this.
	Radical left Democrats are causing this problem.
	And it's uh it gets worse.
	It gets worse.
	And it'll be a point where other people won't take it anymore, and that will not be good for the radical left.
	So we don't want that.
	I mean, again, President Trump, it's funny.
	The left immediately starts saying this is a threat.
	It's not a threat.
	He's saying if you guys keep pushing, there will be people on the other side who push back.
	And we don't want any of that.
	We don't want any violence.
	But he is correct that the radical left has created permission structures for precisely this kind of violence.
	The left, for its part, continues to deny that there is any problem with left-wing violence, which is truly amazing.
	Julia Kayam Over on CNN, she says that as far as this latest ICE facility shooting in Texas, there's no evidence of political alignment, which is not true.
	It's a very nuanced distinction.
	Someone can perform something that is politically motivated, in this case, unjustifiably, you know, targeting an ICE facility, uh, but not be aligned with the political movement.
	If the White House and and uh JD Vance, they they seem to suggest that there's evidence that he's part of a network of left groups that are promoting violence as compared to uh progressives, right wing uh conservatives, and left wing groups opposing some of ISIS actions.
	And that's the link which we have to be super careful about in a democracy.
	Okay, so I mean, really?
	Like, really, this is not left-wing violence?
	Strange, because all the evidence actually suggests that it was, in fact, left-wing violence.
	Like, I noticed that.
	So, again, they're just gonna pretend that that's not really a thing.
	Meanwhile, Chris Murphy, who again, for some reason has pretensions of running for president.
	I I don't understand why he would think that he has the capacity to do this.
	He says that if you call ICE agents Nazis, that's somehow not incitement to violence, which is um it may not be technically legal incitement to violence, it's certainly a permission structure for violence.
	What they are trying to do is exploit um these murders and these shootings in order to silence only um dissent and political opposition on the left.
	Um, criticizing the way that ICE is rounding up people in this country in a deeply inhumane and immoral way is not an incitement to violence.
	Um, there is a moment where you cross the line.
	Um, but what they are trying to do is to destroy the ability for people who oppose their policies to legitimately um engage in political debate.
	And we are not gonna let them do that.
	Um, so yes, you're right that it is not legal incitement.
	Also, why do you keep making excuses for it?
	If it's bad for the country, why do you keep making excuses for it over and over and over again?
	Alrighty, coming up, news on Ukraine, Russia, Pete Hageth calling a big secret meeting.
	And of course, we pay tribute to our friend Vadi Bacum, who passed away yesterday.
	First, thinking about this time of year always reminds me to slow down, especially after a busy summer of work travel, family activities.
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	Also, facts do not care about your feelings.
	And here's one that should make everyone think twice.
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	Well, meanwhile, Democrats continue to claim that America had a very unifying moment, actually.
	You may think that America is quite polarized right now, that radical left-wing violence is on the uptick.
	And that actually the biggest story of the last three weeks is the murder of Charlie Kirk.
	Well, according to the left not so, the biggest story in America is the unity surrounding the return of Jimmy Kimmel to the airwaves, which I gotta say, the the man, grow yourselves more arms to pat yourselves on the back some more.
	Really, really ridiculous.
	Here is MSNBC celebrating the return of Jimmy Kimmel to the air, along with, you know, zero viewers.
	He he got a big he got a big viewership the other night because of the controversy surrounding his return.
	Soon he will recede to prior levels.
	There will be recession.
	There will be a regression to the mean in his viewership, shall we say?
	Here's Jimmy Kimmel and uh the MSNBC crew.
	Late night television has been with us for a long time.
	And you could see last night, it can really galvanize the country.
	It was a very old-fashioned moment.
	We all sat down and wanted to at the same time and wanted to hear what he had to say.
	And it's become uh there's been a national conversation about it for days.
	You don't want to lose that.
	Oh my gosh.
	Oh my gosh.
	That's the unifying moment.
	That's the unifying moment.
	Is opposition to what?
	The FCC chief saying dumb stuff?
	That's the that that's the that's the unifying moment.
	What if there are a unifying moment around not only you condemning political violence, but those permission structures and violence that you guys keep promoting?
	That would be a unifying moment.
	I've been talking about this since the day Charlie died.
	That the permission structures for violence have grown and they need to be stamped out, those permission structures for violence.
	They create at their edge actual violence.
	But apparently, we're just gonna what, talk about the FCC and how mean Brendan Carr is.
	All right, sure.
	And meanwhile, on the economic front, the possibility of a government shutdown continues to grow.
	Democrats, for some odd reason, think that they ought to shut down the government.
	I do not understand the logic of this.
	Now, listen, I get the fact that government shutdowns typically don't seem to have much impact on midterm elections, but the politics here just don't match up for Democrats.
	Republicans are trying to pass it, what's called a clean CR, a continuing resolution to fund the government for several more months.
	Congressional Democrats are trying to shut down the government for no actual reason.
	Apparently, one of their big things is that they want to restore hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare spending.
	A lot of that for illegal immigrants, as a condition for continuing to keep the government funded.
	If no bipartisan agreement is reached, according to the Wall Street Journal, the government would shut down 1201 a.m. on Wednesday, October 1st.
	There's a seven-week stopgap spending plan.
	They say that it's the only one on the table.
	It's just a basic continuing resolution.
	Democrats say they are unmoved.
	Well, this is kind of ridiculous, honestly.
	So Republicans are saying, listen, don't threaten us with a good time.
	Don't threaten us with a good time.
	If you try to shut down the government, then we'll just fire everybody.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House budget office directed federal agencies to draw up plans to permanently reduce their workforces if there's a government shutdown next week, raising the specter of mass firings on top of the customary furloughs during a lapse in funding.
	The new memo sent by the Office of Management and Budget Director Ross Vod sharply raises the stakes for funding talks and increases the pressure on Senate Democrats.
	Because basically the idea here is if you shut down the government, fine.
	It won't just be a temporary shutdown.
	We'll use that as the leverage to simply fire everybody.
	Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says the OMB plan was an intent at intimidation and questioned whether any firings would hold up in court.
	House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called vote a malignant political hack on X. So this fight is going to continue.
	I do not understand why Democrats think that this is a winning battle for them.
	By the way, there is a tacit admission there from Democrats that these government shutdowns, these kind of temporary government shutdowns, don't actually matter all that much.
	What's the tacit admission?
	Well, Russ Vogue is saying, like, listen, I'll fire people, and there will be a permanent shift in the workforce.
	And Democrats are saying, you can't even do that.
	Everybody will come back.
	Well, if everybody will come back, then what is your what is the gigantic threat to the American public from a shutdown?
	It's very likely the government will shut down next week.
	Democrats at least want to show faith with their voters that they hate Trump enough that they're willing to shut down the government over it.
	In the end, they'll cave, and we'll go back to status quo ante.
	That is the likely outcome of all of this.
	Meanwhile, very good news for the Trump administration in the form of a revised estimate on Q2 GDP.
	According to Axios, U.S. GDP growth this spring was stronger than previously thought, according to new revisions released on Thursday morning.
	In the April through June quarter, GDP rose at a 3.8% annualized rate, not the 3.3% most recently estimated.
	That's the highest since fall of 2023.
	Even better, that positive revision was not driven by volatile categories like inventories and trade flows.
	So there is an artificial inflation in GDP numbers that tends to occur when you have a dramatic decrease in imports.
	That doesn't appear to be the reason for the revision.
	Instead, it should people keep spending.
	Final sales to private domestic purchasers, which economists view as a good indicator of underlying trend growth in the economy, was revised up a full percentage point to a 2.9% annualized rate in Q2.
	Now, that may be an impetus for the Federal Reserve not to cut rates anymore.
	Because they may say, listen, consumer spending is already really, really, really strong.
	It's not that people don't have access to capital or access to credit.
	They clearly do.
	They're spending at really high rates.
	And so we may not want to toss more money at the supposed problem.
	Jobless claims also came in at 218,000.
	That is roughly 14,000 than the previous week.
	A continued reversal of the upward surge seen in recent weeks.
	The markets didn't really do much on the basis of this news.
	The market seems to kind of just be holding steady at this point.
	Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to say that there will no be there will be no real tariff inflation.
	That seems to be the case, by the way.
	It seems as though whether it is weakening consumer spending or basically manufacturers and retail outlets eating the cost of the tariffs.
	So far, there has not been any jump in inflation, whatever the rationale.
	First of all, I think a lot of folks are more concerned about tariffs driving inflation than I am.
	And while I've always allowed that that was a possibility, I have not yet seen evidence that there are uh tariff-driven increases in inflation.
	And given the experience we had in 2018-2019, I think the burden of proof is on the data, and the burden of proof is on is on the folks expecting that rather than assuming that there's going to be these material increases ex ante.
	Okay, so you know that's right.
	We'll see how long that lasts.
	Again, the big question when it comes to tariffs and the economic impact thereof is one, has conventional economics just been wrong?
	Two, is it possible that the trade imbalances and the skewing of the markets were so great that this sort of hardcore correction is necessary and that there are other countervailing factors that's sort of wiping out the impact of tariffs?
	Or three, wait for more time.
	Three is, you know, maybe it'll hit, maybe it won't hit, we will find out.
	Meanwhile, I will say again, the uncertainty in the markets continues because it's not as though the market is, you know, spiking.
	It's not as though the market is exploding right now under President Trump.
	It's kind of holding steady, steady growth would kind of be the way to look at the Trump administration at this point.
	Again, if you look at the the kind of dip that happened right after Liberation Day and you go from there to here, obviously there's been a significant increase.
	If you go from the president's inauguration to now, it's been a moderate increase at best.
	You're looking at approximately 6100 on the SP 500 when when President Trump was inaugurated.
	And today, it's like 6600.
	So it's an increase.
	But it's not like a gigantic spike that's happened under President Trump, which is what you would expect as we move on from Joe Biden's policies.
	Meanwhile, questions have emerged with regards to the H1B visa changes that President Trump has implemented, a hundred thousand dollar charge for H1B visa applications, which essentially makes a lot of them unaffordable.
	Some jobs are going to shift overseas.
	The White House argues cutting back on H1B visas according to Axios is a way of protecting American jobs.
	The problem, of course, is according to Axios' Neil Irwin, there aren't tons of workers who are sitting around on the sidelines to hire at this point.
	So we're going to find out in short order whether that is true or not.
	Also, there is a waiver provision with regard to the H1B visas that allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to just sort of make willy-nilly exceptions, which is not something I particularly like.
	If you're going to have a rule, apply the rule evenly.
	Don't make exceptions for your friends.
	That is corporatism.
	It is pick and choose capitalism, whatever you want to call it.
	It is not pure capitalism, it is not free markets.
	It is picking winners and losers.
	Speaking of which, President Trump yesterday said that when it comes to the tariffs, he will be bailing out farmers who will be hurt.
	Well, I mean, with whose money?
	This is the problem with tariffs.
	Tariffs benefit a very specific group at the expense of other groups.
	Same thing as subsidies.
	We're going to take some of that tariff money that we made, we're going to give it to our farmers.
	who are for a little while going to be hurt until it kicks in.
	The tariffs kick into their benefit.
	So we're going to make sure that our farmers are in great shape because we're taking in a lot of money.
	So, you know, again, picking winners and losers is the typical result of tariffs because you have to somehow compensate the people who lose the most, especially if they are a key voting demographic for you.
	I prefer free markets.
	Let's just leave it that way.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, when it comes to Russia-Ukraine, it appears that the United States' strategy has shifted with regard to Russia and Ukraine.
	The president has now issued an enormous amount of public approval for Ukraine to fight back against Russia full scale.
	He said that NATO should simply shoot down Russian aircraft that are flying above NATO areas.
	He posted on Tuesday on Truth Social that Ukraine could, quote, fight and win back all of its territory.
	President Trump said, with time, patience, and the financial support of Europe, and in particular NATO, the original borders from where this war started is very much an option.
	He called Russia a paper tiger in big economic trouble.
	Vladimir Zelensky says that Russian officials should seek to end the war or they should find some bomb shelters.
	Would you tell him to make sure he knows where the nearest bomb shelter is?
	First of all, they have to know where the bomb shelter is up.
	If they will not stop the war, they will need it in any case.
	Okay, so, you know, again, it's about time that our strategy shifted because obviously nothing is changing and Putin does not feel the heat as of yet.
	Meanwhile, there is a mysterious meeting that has been called by Pete Hexat, the Secretary of War.
	He's apparently summoned hundreds of military generals and admirals to Virginia for an urgent meeting next week.
	He has not told anybody what the meeting is about.
	It applies to all senior officers with the rank of brigadier general or above or their Navy equivalent serving in command positions and their enlisted advisors.
	Even people stationed in conflict zones are expected to attend.
	It affects 800 generals and admirals spread across the United States and dozens of other countries and time zones as well.
	So again, totally unclear what this is about.
	It could have something to do with increased Russian aggression.
	Russia has been sending nuclear bombers off the Alaskan coast.
	They have been taking their aircraft and sending them into places ranging from Poland to Denmark.
	So things are getting pretty spicy out there.
	NORAD has been delivering a show of force along America's borders in Alaska, basically saying you cross that line, we'll shoot you down.
	So, and things are pretty tense with the Russians right now.
	And that's because Vladimir Putin is pushing where he feels there is weakness.
	It's time, obviously, for the United States to push back, and that is a thing that's happening.
	That will at some point require Europe to actually stand up at its hind legs and stop being a gigantic continent filled with pansies.
	That would that would actually be a thing that has to happen here.
	That may be a while on coming, by the way.
	Ursula Vanderlein is still out there praising green energy.
	Like, guys, if you say that you want to stop Russia, at a certain point you're gonna have to dump over your dumb ideas about windmills and start realizing that if you wish to be a strong enough economy, generating a strong enough military capacity to defend yourselves against the Russian bear, that you're gonna need to put aside your ridiculous predisposition toward useless forms of energy generation.
	We will have stayed the course with the renewables because as we think it is good for the climate.
	It is cheaper than the fossil fuels for us in Europe because we do not have to import them.
	And it gives us independence and energy security.
	Oh, good luck.
	Good Lord.
	I mean, again, how does Russia expect to defend itself?
	It won't even defend itself economically from its own stupidity.
	Well, folks, in the aftermath of the horrifying assassination of our friend Charlie Kirk, a number of people have been picking up Charlie's microphone going on campus.
	We see Megan Kelly doing that.
	I believe Glenn Beck is going to be doing that among others.
	One of the people who's going to be doing a full TP USA sponsored college speaking tour is Brylin Hollihan.
	He's a 19-year-old political commentator.
	He's best selling author of One Generation Away.
	Why now is the time to restore American freedom?
	He's chair of the RNC's Youth Advisory Council, and he's host of his own show, the Bryland Hollyhan show.
	Bryan, thanks so much for taking the time.
	Really appreciate it.
	Ben, thanks for having me.
	Happy Friday.
	I appreciate the opportunity.
	So, first of all, why don't we talk about what exactly the college speaking tour is going to constitute?
	How many colleges are you hitting?
	Which ones are they?
	And what are you going to be talking about?
	You know, Ben, what man meant for evil, the Lord is now using for good.
	What's become clear in the last week is that you can kill a man, but you can't kill a movement.
	And all across this country, we're seeing an uprising of the next generation, waking up to the fact with seeds of revival being planted across this country.
	You know, what this assassin, this coward in an attempt to shut our generation up, he actually woke us up.
	And we're going to be traveling to these campuses to speak to young people that are more energized than ever before.
	So I kicked off the tour last night at the University of Arkansas to a sold-out auditorium of over 500 students that packed out to come see us with one week notice.
	We're going to nine other campuses, so 10 campuses total all across this country, because so many young people are eager to get off the sidelines right here right now.
	Because they're waking up to the fact, Ben, that this is no longer bread versus blue.
	This is a fight of good versus evil.
	They want to be on the side of good.
	They want to pay attention to politics.
	This is no longer a fight of just their parents or grandparents' arena.
	They want to get in the arena now.
	And it's so cool to see.
	So why don't we talk about the kind of stuff that you're going to be talking about on this tour?
	Obviously, I'm sure free speech is going to come up.
	What safety precautions, number one, are you taking?
	And number two, what kind of topics are you tackling?
	You know, two weeks ago, I didn't have to travel with a security detail.
	That's like a brand new concept to me.
	It's kind of a crazy world to live in that, like a college freshman can't walk to classes himself or like go on a campus, the one place you're supposed to have like a free exchange of ideas without like armed men in suits and guns.
	Like that's an insane concept to me, Ben.
	But sadly, that's the reality that we live in Spain 2025 in America.
	I will say that what we're going to be doing is continuing Charlie's legacy of championing civil discourse.
	That's what he lived and died doing, and we want to continue that baton uh on these campuses.
	The one place that you're supposed to have free expression right now is the one place that's being censored.
	So we want to continue that.
	And what I want to be really clear is what we're seeing today is the result of higher education and liberal indoctrination starting during the hippies movement in the 60s and 70s, where these activists in teacher's clothing seeped into our education system and starting the indoctrination at higher ed, and then we've gotten all the way down to kindergarten teaching pronouns to our kindergartners.
	We've got to stop that.
	So we're going to the root cause of the problem.
	We're going to these college campuses.
	And what I'm trying to be really clear to our generation today is what we're seeing in America today as a result of our generation being raised to believe that politics and faith are taboo topics.
	We were told that we couldn't talk about politics and faith at the dinner table.
	We were told that we couldn't talk about politics and faith out in public.
	Therefore, when our generation gets frustrated about politics and faith, we don't know how to communicate with each other.
	We just know how to scream at each other.
	We know how to assassinate each other.
	We know how to, you know, paint our hair blue, get a nose to ring and a bullhorn and shut down a college campus in protest, but we don't know how to actually sit down at a table and have a free discourse of ideas, Ben.
	So that's when going to this campus.
	We had a really good conversation last night.
	Some people agreed, some people disagreed, but guess what?
	We all had it civilly.
	That's what we have to champion on these college campuses.
	Well, Bradley, it does feel like there is a gigantic movement that was already arising, obviously, before Charlie was killed.
	It is now multiplied in size and effect.
	So the a bit of controversy broke out over a social media video that you did introducing the tour.
	Uh, you were sitting on a private plane.
	Um, and so people were getting uptight with you for for being on a private plane while making this video.
	What's your take on that?
	Ben, I've been in politics for eight years.
	I've never phoned fly it before.
	I flew private last night because to make it to this tour, I had to leave English class in the afternoon and make it really in a tight turnaround to get to the speech in Arkansas.
	Not my plan of the future.
	I've been commercial for eight years.
	I'll fly in this afternoon commercial to speak at a Faith and Freedom Conference in North Carolina.
	I'll be flying commercial next week to my speeches.
	That's the life I live.
	I can't afford private.
	A very nice person offered this flight in Arkansas yesterday to make it to the speech, because I had to fly from being a freshman at Auburn University to make it to my English classes to get my grade and graduate with a diploma fingers crossed, and then make it also to try to championslible discourse on the speeches.
	So that's where we stand.
	Well, Bryan, thanks for doing what you're doing.
	We'll obviously be keeping tabs on your entire tour and Godspeed.
	Thank you, Ben.
	I greatly appreciate you.
	Well, folks, something tragic happened yesterday.
	Body Bachum, who's been a guest on our program before, he was an amazing, amazing person, pastor, theologian, best-selling author.
	He passed away after suffering an emergency medical incident, according to his family, the Christian Post reported yesterday.
	His ministry, founders and ministries, wrote, We are saddened to inform friends.
	Our dear brother Body Bacham Jr. has left the land of the dying and entered the land of the living.
	Earlier today, after suffering an emergency medical incident, he entered into his rest and the immediate presence of his savior, whom he loved, trusted, and served since he was converted as a college student.
	Please pray for Bridget, their children and grandchildren.
	He was born in 1969 in Los Angeles to a single mom, and then he became a very prominent pastor in Houston.
	Then he became Dean of Theology at African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia, and he was widely respected, particularly among evangelical Christians for preaching on biblical manhood.
	We did an episode with Vadi Bacham just a few years back.
	He's an amazing person.
	He was an amazing person.
	Apparently, he went he underwent treatment for heart failure back in February of 2021 and survived that.
	But unfortunately, he um he passed away due to this emergency medical incident.
	Just to give you a taste of who Body Vadi Bacham was, here he was from our Sunday special a few years back.
	What's your chief argument to people who are purporting to object to the Bible or object more broadly to the existence of God and his providence in the universe on an intellectual basis?
	Yeah, what I want to do is I want to show them that that's all based on presuppositions, right?
	The last thing that I want to do is get down on their level and say, um, okay, fine, let's just leave that aside.
	No, I want to say to them, all of that is based on presuppositions.
	You're taking leaps of faith back there in order to get here and make that argument.
	Your presuppositions have been tried before, and they've led to catastrophe.
	Mine is based on presuppositions as well, but my presuppositions has led to Western civilization.
	Body Bacham was an amazing person.
	May his memory be a blessing.
	In his final days, he did write a few posts about Charlie Kirk.
	After Charlie was murdered, he wrote, You might kill the messenger, but you can never kill the message.
	And then he said in a sermon, Paul, a servant of God and apostle of Jesus Christ, wrote for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness and hope of eternal life.
	In another post, he wrote, May the good Lord accept you both in heaven.
	Amen.
	While sharing a pose of Charlie Kirk asking John MacArthur, who of course was a repeat guest on our show also to share the gospel with his audience.
	It's been a brutal time for Christians in the United States who have lost a number of incredible spokespeople, and obviously our hearts go out to all of them, as well as Body's family, his children, his grandchildren, and all of his congregants.
	Meanwhile, Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu came to the United Nations this morning, and he spoke before the anti-Semitic, most highestly, that is the UN General Assembly.
	Again, it is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
	It is a place where terrorist leaders are welcomed with open arms.
	It has been so basically since shortly after inception.
	So no surprise when Netanyahu showed up at the UN General Assembly, a bunch of the so-called diplomats walked out because they'll sit there for the interminable ravings of Iranian leaders or terrorist friends.
	But uh when the Prime Minister of Israel shows up, they walk out, of course.
	A mixture of cheers and boosted many of these diplomats stationed themselves in the room just to get up and walk out.
	Please order in the hall.
	Not a particular surprise.
	Apparently, there are reports that some of the junior ministers for other countries were actually given special seating by certain other countries so that they could maximize the look of the number of people walking out.
	That would, of course, not be a gigantic shock.
	And the fact that the UN General Assembly is filled with countries that are trash is not exactly a surprise to anybody who's been watching the UN for a very long time.
	The UN is, again, filled with countries that hate America, hate the West, hate generally civilized countries.
	Not a surprise at all.
	Netanyahu had a bunch of loudspeakers stationed at the outskirts of the Gaza Strip and around Gaza City, aimed at the citizens of Gaza as well as the hostages who are still being held.
	Remember them?
	Yeah, there's still 20 living hostages being held in the Gaza Strip, many of them being held in tunnels, starved to death.
	There's a hostage named Elie Shirabi, who recently released a book with Harper Collins, who's a bestseller in Israel.
	It's now been released in English.
	It's called hostage, it's well worth the read, so he can hear about what Hamas does to the people that it Kidnaps and then stuffs in tunnels for well over a year.
	Again, if Hamas released the hostages and their leadership went into exile, this war would be over literally today.
	So Netanyahu wanted the residents of Gaza to hear his speech, and he wanted hostages over ground to be able to hear his speech, as well as here was Netanyahu speaking to the hostages directly.
	Our brave heroes.
	This is Prime Minister Netanyahu speaking to you live from the United Nations.
	We have not forgotten you, not even for a second.
	The people of Israel are with you.
	We will not falter and we will not rest until we bring all of you home.
	Thank you.
	Netanyahu was wearing a QR code on his lapel.
	He does this a lot when he speaks at the UN as he uses visuals.
	Uh that QR code links to information about the Gaza war and precisely what the hostages are going through as well.
	Netanyahu also spoke directly to Hamas and to the people of Gaza, because let's be real about this.
	Every single hostage of which we are aware was held at one point by Gazan, so-called civilians in the Gaza Strip.
	Here's Netanyahu saying, let the hostages go.
	Let the hostage again, I understand that the rest of the world seems to have forgotten about the hostages or doesn't care about the hostages or never cared about the hostages.
	But there are, in fact, people who are being held in terror tunnels today who are alive.
	Here we go.
	Ladies and gentlemen, thanks to special efforts by Israeli intelligence, my words are now also being carried.
	They're streamed live to the cell phones of Gaza's.
	So to the remaining Hamas leaders and to the jailers of our hostages, I now say, lay down your arms.
	Let my people go.
	Free the hostages.
	All of them.
	The whole 48.
	Free the hostages now.
	Thank you.
	If you do, you will live.
	If you don't, Israel will hunt you down.
	Again, that would be the responsibility of literally any Western leader, whether it be the President of the United States, the President of France, or the Prime Minister of Israel.
	Netanyahu then made the absolutely clear and obvious point, which is that all of the various European nations calling for a Palestinian state wish to set up a terrorist state on Israel's borders.
	Israel will not do that, nor would any nation in its right mind.
	You don't see France setting up a Palestinian state in the 19th arrondissement for a reason, because it would be a terrorist state.
	And you're not going to see Israel do the same thing.
	No self-respecting country would.
	So here's the uncomfortable truth: The persistent Palestinian rejection of a Jewish state in any boundary is what has driven this conflict for over a century.
	It is still driving it.
	It's not the absence of a Palestinian state.
	It's the presence and existence of a Jewish state.
	And I find it amazing.
	Amazing that the foreign chancellor and the ministries and all those who pontificate about this, and the leaders.
	How can they not see this basic truth when it is repeated again and again and again ad nauseum?
	And the answer is they don't want to see that truth.
	They would prefer surrender.
	And this is a point that Netanyahu makes is that world leaders who are currently calling for a Palestinian state, they are surrendering to jihadis, which of course is true.
	Every single negotiation between Israel and Hamas, conducted via Qatar or via Egypt or via the United States, has been scotched by European leaders, then handing concessions to Hamas, who then redoubles their efforts to keep hostages and continue the conflict.
	If the reward for October 7th and keeping hostages and hiding behind civilians and firing rockets from hospitals and hiding your headquarters beneath those same hospitals and mosques, if the reward for that is a state, why exactly would they stop?
	Israel will not allow you to shove a terrorist state down our throats.
	We will not commit national suicide because you don't have the guts to face down a hostile media and anti-Semitic mobs demanding Israel's blood.
	And I want you to grasp something else, which is also distorted in the medium.
	I say this not only in my name or the name of my government, but on behalf of all the people of Israel.
	Last year there was a vote in the Knesset, our parliament.
	Whether or not to oppose the imposition of a Palestinian state.
	You want to guess what the results were?
	Out of 120 members of our parliament, 99 voted against, and only nine supported.
	That's over 90%.
	It's not a fringe group.
	It's not uh the prime minister who himself is extreme or he's held hostage by extreme uh parties to his right.
	It's over 90% of Israelis.
	My opposition to a Palestinian state is not simply my policies or my government's policy, it's the policy of the state and people of the state of Israel.
	Well, none of this is likely to change the minds of the people at the UN General Assembly.
	However, it is all worth saying, and obviously the presidents of the United States, Donald Trump has made very clear that he agrees with all of this.
	With that said, the President has also said that he is not going to stand for Netanyahu annexing portions of Judea and Samaria, the entirety of Judea and Samaria, the so-called West Bank.
	There was talk inside Israel that might have been done as a response to European leaders trying to create a Palestinian state, whole cloth with no borders, no territory, and no government and no responsibility for its own citizenry.
	The Prime Minister of Israel is supposed to meet with the President of the United States today.
	Not only that, but the President of the United States apparently has now said that a deal will likely be reached in the near future.
	Obviously, we hope and pray that the president is correct about all of that.
	Alrighty, folks, coming up, we are going to jump into the mailbag.
	Plus, is it possible that a Republican could actually become the next governor of New Jersey?
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	If you're not a member, become member, use code Shapiro.
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