The Ben Shapiro Show - Generation Z(ohran)?!

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Oct. 29, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show

59:57

Generation Z(ohran)?!

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	Today, I want to talk about Zarin Mamdani and why he's leading the answer is there is something deeply wrong with young people in this country.
	We'll get to all of that.
	Plus, Senator Bill Hagerty from Tennessee stops by to talk about the FBI targeting him.
	We get to President Trump in Asia and all the rest of the news.
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	Well, there's something bizarre going on in this New York City election, this mayoral election.
	The thing that's bizarre is that people don't actually love Zorin Mamdani's policies, but he's very likely to win anyway.
	According to the New York Post, Zorin Mamdani could become mayor without a majority of support, thanks to Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa splitting the vote.
	And despite New Yorkers opposing his socialist policies, a poll released on Tuesday found Momdani had a 15-point lead over runner-up independent candidates Cuomo in the New Manhattan Institute survey, a wider margin than other polls showing a bit of a tightening of the race.
	He was ahead 43 to 28.
	Sliwa was at 19% again.
	As all these polls are showing, if Sliwa dropped out, there'd be a decent shot for Andrew Cuomo to win the race.
	But what's most important about this particular poll shows that when it comes to the actual policies that Momdani is pushing, people don't actually like those policies very much.
	So, for example, 58% of respondents feared that making buses free could make them into rooming homeless shelters, while 33% believed all fares should be eliminated.
	So, in other words, by a 25% margin, people actually believed that this free buses idea is incredibly stupid.
	His proposal to get rid of the city's gifted and talented program is wildly unpopular.
	64% of the same voters who are giving a plurality of their vote to Mamdani believe that gifted and talented should be expanded.
	Only 21% believe that it should be scaled back in early grades.
	When it comes to repealing bail reform laws and returning to the bail system before 2019, 55% want to go back before no cash bail.
	Only 29% back the current program, which is what Momdani backs.
	So, in other words, his policies are not all that popular among voters, but Momdani himself is significantly more popular with voters.
	Now, there are a few explanations for this.
	One explanation is that he's running against some pretty bad competition.
	Andrew Cuomo is a particularly bad candidate.
	Mayor Eric Adams is deeply unpopular, but there is something else going on here.
	And the thing that's going on is Generation Z. Now, I know there are a lot of people on the right who have been talking up Generation Z. It's going to be the most conservative generation.
	It's a rising wave.
	Now, there is a segment of Gen Z, particularly young white men, who are moving to the right.
	There is some poll support for this.
	But in general, Generation Z is the most left generation by a country mile.
	It is not close.
	They are far to the left of the general population on every single issue.
	And this sort of bizarre idea that Generation Z is going to carry us forward into a conservative future.
	I'm not seeing the evidence for that as a general matter.
	Mom Dani being a perfect encapsulation of this.
	So, in the latest Suffolk poll on the New York City mayoral race, which has Momdani leading Cuomo 44 to 34, Momdani actually trails among all voters age 45 plus.
	Among voters age 35 to 44, he runs ahead by about 23 points against Cuomo.
	But among voters who are 18 to 34, so that would be like Gen Z voters and maybe like tail end millennials, Mom Dani runs ahead by 61 points, by 61 points.
	Okay, that's the gap.
	That doesn't mean he has 61% support.
	That means he has high 70s support among people 18 to 34 voting in New York City, according to that poll.
	And this is not a rarity.
	Polls of young people show that they are wildly to the left of their forebears on pretty much every single issue.
	Right now, according to YouGov, President Trump's current approval rating among those under the age of 30 is 29%.
	According to a recent poll from Cato Institute and YouGov, some 62% of Americans aged 18 to 29 say they are favorable towards socialism.
	So almost two-thirds say they are favorable towards socialism.
	There was a spring 2025 Yale youth poll and it found that younger voters were consistently far to the left of the general population on everything from trans agenda issues to abortion to immigration.
	So the real question is, what is going wrong?
	Why are young people like this?
	Now, again, there's always this sort of explanation that young people, when they're young, they're naive, they don't pay taxes, they're not ushered into an actual real life where they are participating in the normal institutions of daily activity.
	And so they can kind of live in airy fairy land where everything is handed to them on a silver platter.
	And there's truth to that.
	We have delayed adulthood for young people all the way into their 30s.
	But there's something else going on too.
	And that is that young people have been told that they never have to enter adulthood.
	That in fact, everything ought to be handed to them.
	And that when things are not handed to them, either it's because they themselves have some sort of deep abiding illness or society itself is victimizing them in some way.
	According to Harmony Healthcare IT, they did a poll of young people.
	46% of Gen Z has been diagnosed with a mental health condition.
	Almost half, almost half.
	So either we have hit a radical genetic bottleneck here or you have wild overdiagnosis of a population that is anxiety prone and believes there is a sort of virtue in it.
	37% suspect they have an undiagnosed mental condition.
	More than two in five, more than 40% of Generation Z feels that, quote, their generation isn't set up for success.
	Fewer than half of all Americans under the age of 35 believe they will ever have children.
	So all the things that would normally usher you into a more mature view of life, getting married, having kids, holding a job, paying taxes, these are things Generation Z is apparently not interested in doing and doesn't believe that they will ever do.
	Now, again, this is not because Gen Z is some sort of truly victimized generation.
	In all the history of all the humans on all the planet, the idea that American Generation Z is somehow the greatest victimhood class we have ever had is insane and bizarre.
	In fact, more Generation Z people hold degrees than millennials and Gen Xers did at their age.
	According to The Economist, the typical 25-year-old Gen Zer has an annual household income of over $40,000, more than 50% above baby boomers at the same age.
	According to Bank of America, Generation Z will be the largest and richest generation in American history within just 10 years.
	So what's going wrong?
	What's happening right here?
	I mean, we really do have to understand that there is a radical thing that is happening with young people.
	It's happening on both the left and the right.
	The radical thing that is happening on the left is in fact a grievance culture that is resulting in revolutionary thinking.
	And on the right, something very similar, a grievance culture that is resulting in a different sort of revolutionary thinking.
	But there's some horseshoe theory going on and these two revolutionary movements can sometimes hold hands.
	You see it really in sort of crystallized fashion with the Mom Donnie campaign.
	The Democratic Socialists of America, they are taking over the Democratic Party.
	We'll get into precisely how and why that's happening.
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	So Canary Mission, which is a nonprofit that examines political issues from a wide variety of sort of more right-leaning perspectives.
	They have a whole video they did looking at the impact of the Democratic Socialists of America.
	And there is no question the DSA has had an outsized impact on the Democratic Party.
	AOC was a charter member of the DSA.
	Mondani is a DSA guy.
	The DSA is the jet fuel.
	for the modern Democratic Party.
	And this is not a left-leaning, mildly progressive movement.
	This is a revolutionary movement, a truly revolutionary movement.
	Here's a bit of the Canary Mission investigation.
	DSA are revolutionaries, and the Democrats are their first victims.
	And in city after city, DSA victories prove their plan works.
	I think that the model that we used in New York is 100% replicatable.
	And just like the cuckoo, once the DSA grows strong, it pushes the true Democrats out, hollowing the party from within.
	Building towards political independence and tearing apart the Democratic Party.
	The DSA is not here to strengthen the Democratic Party.
	It is here to consume it.
	We're not here to make the Democrats a little bit better.
	We're here to actually enact socialism.
	And socialism is not just better capitalism.
	It's overthrowing the entire capitalist state.
	It's our duty, DSA, to cultivate this power.
	The cuckoo is in the nest, and New York City is poised to elect not a Democrat, but Zoron Mamdani, an extremist within the DSA.
	We understand that winning an election is not an end.
	It is a means to an end.
	The most important thing that we can do is take that empire down from within, ultimately to overthrow our own empire.
	We need a movement that can drive a snake to the heart of the empire.
	We need to orient ourselves towards insurrection.
	So, how exactly does that kind of movement take over the Democratic Party?
	Where does it come from?
	The answer is that it's been inculcated by the boomers for generations.
	The boomers and the millennials are responsible for their children.
	If your child ends up being a radical, it's difficult to say that you had nothing to do with it.
	In some cases, you didn't.
	In some cases, that's a rarity.
	Usually, it is because the boomers and the millennials decided to inculcate a brand of vague anti-Americanism that then metastasized into a very virulent, cancerous form of anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism.
	This is why whenever I hear parents talk about their kids and they say, you know, I'm just giving them the tools to think.
	I'm not telling them what to think, what values to hold.
	That's bad parenting.
	You should be telling your kids what values to hold.
	That is actually the number one thing you should be doing as a parent.
	The most important thing you can do as a parent is to become part of that chain that Edmund Burke talks about between the past and the future, maintaining the wisdom of generations and passing that on to your kids.
	If you're not doing that, you're not doing your job as a parent.
	Instead, what we do is we've been farming out our kids to universities filled with radicals who then teach the kids all the same sort of radical politics.
	Fascinating piece from the New York Times about Momdani called how a small elite college in Maine influenced Momdani's worldview.
	Now, remember, Zor Mamdani is a member of the most privileged class of humans ever to walk the earth.
	In fact, he's uniquely privileged because he and his family escaped a third world hellhole called Uganda and they came to the United States and his mom became a famous film producer and his dad became a professor at Columbia University.
	Both of them hate America.
	And then they sent him to a bunch of very pricey private schools as well as to a very pricey college.
	And then he never held a job.
	And then he went to the assembly and he missed half of his votes while giving himself a raise.
	And then he ran for mayor.
	This is a person who has lived high on the hog, shall we say, and yet his entire worldview is revolution against that very system.
	The system must be destroyed from within.
	This is one of the great lies about revolutions historically, is that revolutions are led by the proletariat.
	And it's a bunch of very impoverished people who kind of rise up and take power.
	That is not true.
	It has never been true.
	It is typically a member of what would be called by the Marxists the bourgeois classes who act as a sort of revolutionary vanguard in order to remake the system.
	They tend to be frustrated intellectuals, people who didn't get what they deserve, or angry at their parents or angry at the world because they were on the cusp of success, but then success ran away from them.
	I talk about this at length in Lions and Scavengers, my book.
	Mamdani is like the apex predator of the scavengers.
	He really is.
	So the New York Times writes about this Jeremy Peters report and quote, it wasn't so much what Zor Mamdani said, it was how he said it.
	We're going to stand up for Haiti because you taught the world about freedom, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York exclaimed to an elated crowd at a Haitian music festival in June.
	Mamdani pronounced the island's name Ahiti, near perfect Creole elocution.
	When I heard him say that, I smiled, recalled Brian Purnell, one of Mr. Mamdani's former professors at Bodouin College.
	He also noted that Mr. Mamdani's reference to freedom was a nod to Haiti's status as the first republic founded by former slaves.
	That's straight out of the lessons from the Haitian revolution that we teach in Afrikana studies, said Dr. Purnell, who is now the chair of the Afrikana Studies Department at Mamdani's Lama Matter.
	I will claim that.
	So, what exactly is the background for Mamdani?
	Quote, he would become one of the most visible representations of a new generation of progressives whose formative years as young adults were shaped by elite colleges where over the last decade, theories of social and racial justice became even more deeply ingrained in liberal arts education.
	He graduated in 2014 from Bodouin College in Brunswick, Maine, with a bachelor's in Africana Studies.
	Now, again, this is the kind of study regimen that creates career useless people.
	You can't get a job as an Africana studies major outside of politics or social work or being an Africana studies professor.
	It doesn't actually create a usable degree in any way.
	His experience there, readings of critical race theorists in the classroom and activism for left-wing causes on campus is emblematic of the highly charged debate over what is taught in American universities.
	What did he actually learn at Bodouin?
	Mamdani's campaign did not respond to requests for comments about his college years, but professors there challenged the idea his education was politically circumscribed, and they described a serious student who was interested in history and sociology.
	Yeah, I think not.
	He formed a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which is a radical anti-Semitic group.
	He tried to get Bodouin to join an academic boycott of Israel.
	He, again, joined a studies department that was deeply ensconced in the idea that America is racist, colonialist, and filled with state violence.
	That's where he first read Franz Fanon.
	Again, he's like directly from my book, Lions and Scavengers.
	Fanon is like, again, the kind of spokesperson for what I call the barbarian mindset, this idea that all ills all over the world are the fault of the West, and therefore the West must import these barbarians into our own countries in order to destroy us from within as a sort of spiritual penance for our victimization campaign.
	Apparently, Mamdani stood out to his professors.
	His professor said, quote, it's rare for someone to come to college and say, I want to major in Afrikana studies.
	Well, yes, I can imagine.
	I can imagine that that's the case.
	So, again, this is where it comes from.
	We inculcate this sort of stuff in our kids at the university level.
	We tell an entire generation of people that they are, in fact, victims of a system that has made them the most wealthy, prosperous, and free people in the history of planet Earth.
	And then we sell them the soap that if you grant power to one of these people, one of these revolutionaries, that they will fix all of your problems.
	There are a lot of politicians willing to sell that soap, whether it is Mamdani on the left or a wide variety of politicians on the populist right who also say the same thing to the right-wing version of this.
	The left-wing version of the grievance campaign is that America is an awful, terribly racist place that has aggrieved third world minorities and crackdown on gays and lesbians and therefore must be brought low by the revolutionaries.
	Capitalism has brought us all to this horrible fate.
	On the right, there is an equal and opposite movement.
	It is growing in power.
	It has not taken over the Republican Party yet, but it's attempting to.
	And that right-wing movement is saying the same thing, except it sort of reverses the victimhood class.
	The victimhood class here would be white Christian males, and the idea would be that white Christian males have been brought low by the system, and that therefore the only corrective to that is a complete revolution against capitalism, meritocracy, and all the rest.
	Now, at the seed of both of these movements, there is a grain of truth.
	There is truth to the idea that America, historically speaking, was not good to black people.
	That America, historically speaking, was not good to certain classes of immigrants.
	But the idea that that's because the American system is bad, that's not a flaw with the system, that that's the feature of the system, that's wrong.
	The same thing is true on the right.
	When people say white Christian males have been put under boot by the system, there's certainly truth to the idea that there is discriminatory policy, both socially and in governmental policy, that has discriminated against white Christian males over the course of the last 30, 40, 50 years.
	There's truth to that.
	But the idea that that is emblematic of the constitutional system or meritocracy or capitalism, and the only solution is some sort of dictatorship of the white Christian male proletariat, overthrowing constitutional norms and boundaries, going after minorities, that this somehow is the solution.
	That is just as revolutionary from the opposite point of view.
	And in both cases, that sort of crap is being fostered and fomented by boomers who wink and nod at this sort of stuff as jet fuel for their own ambitions or who see these people as sort of the more passionate offspring of their own ideological predilections.
	All right, coming up, Jon Stewart performs unspeakable acts on Zoran Mamdani.
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	So Jon Stewart, who is now well into his 60s, he's no longer the cool kid in school who is making the funny smug faces at the very, very short clips taken out of context.
	Now he is passing the baton to Zoran Momdani.
	Jon Stewart.
	Jon Stewart has always been horrible for our body politic.
	I've been critical of Jon Stewart since the very first moment because Jon Stewart turned news into comedy, but then pretended that he was a news person.
	So you do the clown nose on, clown nose off routine, which has allowed him to hide behind his sanctified status as a pseudo-comedian in order to be incredibly scurrilous about how he pursues politics.
	Well, now Stewart has anointed Mom Dani, Jackie Robinson, because he has to fit Mom Dani somehow into his boomer framework, right?
	The boomer framework that basically says that as long as you are brown and you are going to be elected to a position, that means that you're being elected to the position in a historic way, fighting back against white supremacy.
	This is how, again, Zoran Mamdani would remain a fringe figure in the DSA, except for the fact that he does have older generations fostering him, funding him, paying for him.
	And Momdani is emblematic of his generation, just as Stewart is emblematic of his generation on the left.
	Here you go.
	I wish you all the best.
	Honestly, you know, I think any New Yorker who looks at someone getting an opportunity who's representing communities that have not been as representative, a Muslim, a young person, a progressive, a Democratic socialist, you know, there are so many different communities that are looking to you.
	And this, I hate to put it on you, as a bit of a Jackie Robinson moment.
	And I know that that probably will be a lot of fun.
	He also waits for me to put that on him.
	But man, oh man, what an exciting opportunity.
	Wow.
	I mean, with tough questions like that, I mean, he's going to need to light a cigarette after that, Mom Dani.
	My goodness.
	Jon Stewart calling him Jackie Robinson.
	Again, without the help of this pathetic generation, this older generation fostering the rise of the radicals, it couldn't happen.
	Would not be possible.
	But Jon Stewart didn't just gush over Mom Dani there by calling him Jackie Robinson, which is utterly inapt.
	It's ridiculous.
	The idea that Zoran Momdani has faced any serious level of discrimination in the United States is nuts.
	It is crazy.
	Jackie Robinson was a black man who faced death threats and slurs every day of his playing career.
	And long after for the great crime of being a black man playing baseball, Zoran Momdani has been rewarded and feted and handed everything this country has to offer specifically because of his ethnic diversity and immigrant background.
	And somehow he's akin to Jackie Robinson.
	But that was just the beginning.
	And what I love hearing about this is one of the things that's been so frustrating in our politics is so much of it has been defined over these last 10 years as the negative case against someone.
	And finally, and I think this is not blown smoke.
	I think you've made an affirmative case for people.
	I think the enthusiasm that they have for you is because you've made an affirmative case that's not about protecting something that's going to be lost or a bad man that's over there.
	It's about an idea that you have.
	And it surprised me that the Democratic establishment did not embrace that energy.
	Oh, but they have.
	Oh, but this is the part where Stuart is wrong.
	They have.
	Stewart is the Democratic establishment.
	I mean, it's hard to say that Kathy Hochl isn't the Democratic establishment.
	Kathy Hochul literally appeared on stage with Mom Donnie two nights ago, even while she says that she's not going to do any of the things that he wants her to do.
	Because again, for the boomers, it's all about that revolutionary energy.
	Now, here's the thing about revolutionary energy: everyone who hopes to harness the revolutionary energy and channel it toward more moderate goals fails.
	The revolutionary energy always eats everything around it.
	It is a universal acid.
	It eats right through the floor.
	You cannot contain this sort of nuclear energy with cement.
	It's not going to work.
	It'll burn right through the floor.
	It'll go right down to China, China syndrome here.
	Well, here's Kathy Hochle say, well, you know, I'm not going to do the kind of tax increases that Mom Donnie's.
	That doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter because time is passing Kathy Hochle by.
	She fed the alligator.
	Now the alligator is going to beat her.
	You've previously said that you wouldn't be raising taxes.
	Have you reconsidered that stance?
	No, I would say one energetic rally does not get me to change my positions, I assure you.
	But I do hear people's voices.
	I process what everybody says, but I also have to balance governing this state and making sure that those people who are actually the reason we have a generous, supportive budget that helps lift people up, it's their revenues that we tax.
	Yeah, but it doesn't matter.
	Again, go back to that poll.
	New Yorkers don't like Mom Donnie's ideas, but they want to be part of the revolution.
	They want to feel part of the thing because too many New Yorkers, particularly young New Yorkers, whose elders have massaged them and have treated them with kid gloves and have never told them no, have told them that all of their own failures, all of their own sicknesses, all of their own shortcomings are not their fault and are not correctable by them.
	They're only correctable by a shift in the system.
	Those people have made their bet and now they're going to have to lie in it.
	And once this energy is loosed, it cannot be contained.
	The Democrats have loosed the whirlwind and it is going to eat them now.
	There's some new polls, for example, up in Maine showing that Graham Plattner, the Nazi tattooed candidate who's supposedly an oyster farmer, but actually is the scion of apparently relative wealth.
	Well, after that news came out that he has a Nazi tattoo, which he then had covered up, there was a poll showing that the current Maine governor jumped in front of him in the race by a couple of points.
	That is not going to last.
	It is going to recede because the revolutionary energy has been unleashed now.
	Here is a video from Alex Seitzwald, the reporter of the cars outside of a Graham Plattner event in Maine.
	I mean, this is a lot of people showing up for Graham Plattner in Maine, like a lot, a lot of people showing up for the Nazi tattoo guy.
	Why?
	Well, because he's got that revolutionary energy, and that's all that matters.
	And people will make excuses for him.
	The revolutionaries will always have people who justify them, who softpeddle them, who allow them to lie about their own positions in order to achieve power.
	I mean, you saw in that Canary Mission video, the basic idea put forward by DSA members that they're going to say the things they need to do in order to obtain power.
	They're going to lie in order to obtain power, and then they're going to do the revolutionary stuff.
	That's always true.
	And the question is, who lets them get away with the lies?
	Who massages?
	Who helps them massage those beliefs into something palatable?
	Well, the answer is MSNBC does it for people like Graham Plattner.
	Here he was trying to make excuses to Jen Saki about the Nazi tattoo.
	We were contacted.
	We were asked if I had a tattoo that had Nazi overtones.
	I have had this thing for ages and it had never once come up.
	At that point, we looked at it, we saw what they sent.
	And it's a stylized skull and crossbones.
	Stylized skull and crossbones are very popular with military units for obvious reasons, but it looked quite similar.
	And at that point, I don't want something like that on my body that is going to make people think I have any kind of ideological similarity to something that I'm that is essentially so antithetical to my politics.
	So I was more than happy to get it covered up.
	As soon as so you learned in October and as soon as you learned, you got it covered up immediately within days, within a day.
	What was the process there?
	It was a busy weekend when we found out.
	I didn't get to it, I think, until that Tuesday.
	But yeah, it was within a few days.
	Well, you know, again, this attempt to cover for platforms, it's not because the left is somehow really upset about the Nazi tattoo and they're happy that he got rid of it.
	It's because the whole goal is to cover for the radicals, to allow the radicals free reign.
	That is the entire goal here.
	And this is how you end up with Zorin Mamdani as a radical leader in New York.
	And it's why the future of the Democratic Party is with radicalism, because there is no systemic immune system rejection of this radicalism.
	It doesn't exist anymore.
	Now, the same thing seems to be happening on the right, and it is a real problem because it turns out that the vast majority of Americans are normies.
	The vast majority of Americans like meritocracy.
	The vast majority of Americans believe in the traditional American dream, meaning economic progress for them and for their children, meaning capacity to build community and church and live in freedom.
	The vast majority of Americans like the Constitution and the Declaration.
	In other words, the vast majority of Americans like the country.
	They like America.
	But if you let the radical revolutionary vanguard take over your party out of some sort of benighted idea that you must unite with the radicals in order to achieve victory, you're not going to achieve victory, number one, because Democrats are in rough waters because of what they've done here.
	But number two, the victory that you achieve will be pyrrhic because you will have sacrificed the thing that you actually care about to the people who hate that thing, all in the name of garnering enthusiasm from the young.
	And by the way, if this were really working out great for the young, why are they so depressed?
	Why are they so upset?
	Why are they so anxious?
	Why aren't they getting married or reproducing?
	It turns out that inculcating a victimhood grievance mentality in an entire generation of people doesn't just make the country work.
	It makes those people miserable to boot.
	Folks, fast facts is coming up in just a moment.
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	Well, now it's time for some fast facts.
	Speaking of radicalism and the impacts on policy that radicalism can have, Breitbart has a good report out today based on a New York Times report about the kiddie stroll sex market on LA's Figueroa Street.
	According to the New York Times, for the 77th Street Division, which covers the northern half of the Figueroa Corridor, prostitution had always been a problem.
	But in recent years, the officers had seen the magnitude of child sex trafficking explode.
	Now, you should know that Figueroa is just in the middle of downtown.
	Gangs that had long sold drugs began to take advantage of Figueroa's lucrative opportunity.
	With a dozen girls, one trafficker could easily make $12,000 a night.
	Drugs are sold once and gone forever, but girls can be resold indefinitely, said Police Sergeant Alvaro Navarro, who had been in the division for two decades.
	Motel owners who noticed the parades of customers but feared the gang's retribution kept quiet.
	There is one problem.
	According to the New York Times, California repealed the law allowing the police to arrest women who loitered with the intent to engage in prostitution.
	That repeal was known as SB 357, and it was intended to prevent profiling of black, brown, and trans women based on how they, of course, of course it was, of course, because radicalism always comes, guys, with a smile.
	How dare you arrest women who are loitering or men dressed as women who are loitering, clearly with intent to prostitute themselves?
	How dare?
	Because it might result in a disproportionate number of non-white people being arrested.
	That was the logic behind SB 357.
	When it was implemented in January 2023, according to the New York Times, the effect was that uniformed officers could no longer apprehend groups of girls in lingerie on Figueroa, hoping to recover minors among them.
	Now officers needed to be willing to swear they had reason to suspect each girl was underage.
	But sometimes with the fake eyelashes and the wigs, it was impossible to tell.
	One girl told voice officers her trafficker had explained things succinctly.
	We run Figueroa now.
	Apparently, by the end of 2023, the city attorney was calling Figueroa the kiddie stroll because many of the girls weren't even 13 years old.
	Now, again, that bill was pushed by a state rep named state senator named Scott Weiner, who is currently running for Congress.
	Weiner, you'll recall, is the person who's also been pretty famously featured in photos dressed in SNM gear in the middle of gay parades and all the rest.
	The ACLU had backed this pro-prostitution bill.
	The New York Times basically ignored the fact that Weiner is running for Congress and was also one of the driving forces behind all this, as well as Newsom's involvement.
	Now, radicalism has consequences.
	Those consequences can actually be counted in lives lost, in lives wrecked, and all the rest.
	Meanwhile, again, radicalism has a permission structure.
	Our Quasi friend Michael Moles was on the Hill speaking with the Senate Judiciary Committee about this yesterday, where he promptly pointed out that all the talk about right-wing violence, even if that's true, there is right-wing violence, left-wing extremist violence is rewarded by the structure in a way that right-wing violence is not.
	This is certainly true.
	You know, there is appropriate concern, the kind of concern that one would never have on the left because they don't face any threats on college campuses.
	College campuses are key, though, here, Senator, because when some fringe right-winger does something awful, he's castigated, thrown into prison, as he should be.
	When a fringe left-winger commits terrorist attacks, sometimes he's given university positions, as happened with the Weather Underground, an organization which blew up part of this very building, and they were rewarded with sine cures at universities.
	Again, not wrong.
	And here was Michael pointing out that, you know, when you try to claim that it's disproportionately on the right, well, I mean, that's true if you just ignore left-wing violence totally.
	The Covenant School massacre in Nashville, in which a trans-identifying shooter murdered Christian school children after outlining her ideological motivations.
	According to authorities, there was no ideological motive there.
	Go figure.
	The Black Lives Matter riots, overtly leftist demonstrations that left dozens of people dead and over a billion dollars worth of property damage.
	Likewise, those failed to show up on registers of left-wing political violence.
	Even an attack by Antifa that targeted me personally, as well as conservative college students for our political views, appeared in official records and data sets as nothing more than obstructing law enforcement.
	It turns out the left commits relatively little political violence when you don't count the political violence that the left commits.
	Again, totally right about this.
	The permission structures created by the radical left mean that violence is significantly more likely to take place.
	And people who refuse to acknowledge that these permission structures exist, well, they're actually fomenting the permission structures in doing so.
	Meanwhile, one of the most astonishing stories of the day, Bill Gates has now decided to reverse himself on his climate doomerism.
	So you'll remember that Bill Gates has spent decades talking about how the global warming catastrophe is going to swamp us all.
	We'll all be aboard Noah's Ark attempting to escape the tides.
	Well, now he actually says that climate change will not lead to humanity's demise.
	Why?
	It's almost as though all of these sort of expert class, world-changing pseudo-experts, they didn't know what they were talking about in the first place.
	And we're not being honest because the truth is they always knew that the kinds of measures they were proposing to quote unquote stop global warming were not going to be sufficient to what they were suggesting.
	They always knew this.
	Here is Bill Glates, who has a Bill Gates, who has a new climate message, has now shifted and moved.
	The goal here to improve human lives.
	And shouldn't we, in our awareness of how little generosity there is to help measure, you know, should we get them a measles vaccine or should we do some climate-related activity?
	And if we could take, if we stopped funding all vaccines and that, you know, saved you 0.1 degree, would that be a smart trade-off?
	That's the kind of question we have to ask.
	So I'm a climate activist, but I'm also a child survival activist.
	So what he's saying there is that actually, when it comes to the kind of causes you pursue, there are trade-offs as to human energy.
	But the most important thing he said is, quote, although climate change will have serious consequences.
	This is what he wrote in a blog post, particularly for people in the poorest countries.
	It will not lead to humanity's demise.
	People will be able to live and thrive in most places on earth for the foreseeable future.
	Well, that is, well, I am shocked.
	I am shocked.
	I mean, my goodness, you mean the things that we have been saying on this program for legitimately a decade are true?
	That actually global warming, while it could be a problem in certain areas, is something that human beings can adapt to.
	What's amazing is that after spending decades promoting an agenda that basically amounted to the end of capitalism, something that was pushed by the World Economic Forum and its fellow travelers, that after spending decades claiming that we needed a wild revision of how human beings live in order to marginally lower the curve on the climate increase, now Bill Gates is reversing himself because it turns out that's stupid.
	I mean, here's Bill Gates saying that the Paris climate goals were unrealistic to begin, which of course is true.
	But those of us who said this were castigated and pilloried by people like Bill Gates.
	That was a key milestone because the countries of the world said, hey, this is a mutual problem.
	The temperature rise, the entire world will experience a temperature rise from the emissions from all these countries.
	So getting countries to commit was very, very important.
	The one thing about that accord that turned out not to be realistic was the ambitious goal of staying to 1.5 degrees.
	We won't be able to do that.
	Even if you took all the money away from health, you wouldn't be able to do that.
	Okay, so then why was it important?
	It was not important.
	It was only not only not important.
	It was quite bad.
	If you set unrealistic goals and suggest that they are in fact realistic and then you fall short, all you end up doing is number one, discrediting your own cause, and number two, expending vast amounts of resources in pursuit of a dumbass goal to begin.
	I mean, Gates is now saying all the things that those of us who are climate realists were saying for a very, very long time.
	Quote, a few years ago, the government of one low-income country set out to cut emissions by banning synthetic fertilizers.
	Farmers' yields plummeted.
	There was much less food available.
	Prices skyrocketed.
	The country was hit by a crisis because the government valued reducing emissions above other important things.
	And the thing that I object to here is not Bill Gates coming around to reality.
	The thing I object to is that if you mentioned reality 10 years ago, you were considered a quote-unquote climate denier.
	Even if you were somebody who said, sure, there could be some components of anthropogenic climate change.
	Sure, human beings could be causing an increase in the climate.
	That doesn't mean you can end capitalism or stop farming procedures or prevent people from eating meat.
	That's stupid.
	If you said that, you were called the climate denier.
	Now Bill Gates is saying the same exact things.
	Well, you know what?
	I'm glad he came around.
	But let's just be clear on who was being honest and who was lying all along.
	Meanwhile, the government shutdown continues.
	Democrats continue to somehow claim that this is all going well for them.
	I don't see any evidence whatsoever this is going well with them.
	Apparently, Republican poll numbers have actually increased because of the shutdown because Democrats look totally out of their mind.
	Nobody even knows why they're doing this.
	Here is Schumer trying to deny the reality.
	Just now here on the floor, the Republican leader seemed perplexed about what precisely it is that Democrats are pushing for.
	He knows damn well what Democrats want.
	It's the very same thing that a vast majority of Americans want, including nearly 60% of MAGA voters.
	We want lower health care costs now.
	We want to solve the ACA premium crisis now.
	Okay, well, I mean, you could also try to negotiate that after the end of the government shutdown when you fund the continuing function of the government.
	I don't, I honestly don't understand what Democrats' strategy here is.
	They've really put themselves in a position where they have no leverage.
	And not only do they have no leverage, the SNAP benefits are about to cut off in a couple of days here.
	And when that happens, Democrats will be blamed.
	They can try to pretend they won't be by going on MSNBC and saying that.
	I mean, here's Representative Angie Craig trying to blame Speaker Johnson for all of this.
	I say if his mouth is moving these days, he's lying.
	There has never been a lapse in appropriations for SNAP in any other government shutdown.
	This isn't new territory for this administration.
	They know.
	Secretary Brooke Rollins, her own website up until Friday night spelled this out clearly, that that contingency fund can be used to fund SNAP benefits in November.
	Again, like this is good luck with this.
	Truly good luck.
	John Fetterman, the only sane Democrat apparently left, he says, you know, Democrats probably should not be doing this.
	This is a very stupid move.
	That's just not whatever you say.
	I'm not going to describe the lives of millions of Americans as like a euphemism as leverage.
	I mean, this isn't a political game.
	I'm not checking about how it's polling or who's going to blink or whatever.
	Yeah, again, he is right, and Democrats want to oust him for it.
	Okay, meanwhile, House Republicans are going after Joe Biden.
	They're pointing out that Joe Biden actually, a lot of the stuff that he signed was signed by the AutoPen.
	Now, again, the controversy here is not about whether Biden is allowed to use the AutoPen.
	He's allowed to use the AutoPen.
	The question is whether his cognitive decline was so severe that he didn't even know what he had delegated power to sign.
	That's the actual complaint here.
	According to CNN, former President Joe Biden experienced such cognitive decline while in office that it remains a serious question as to whether he was aware of the substance of the various pardons and commutations signed in his name via AutoPen, according to the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee.
	They sent that to Pambondi.
	The committee deems void President Biden's executive actions that were signed using the AutoPen, and the committee determines that action by the Department of Justice is warranted to address the legal consequences of that determination.
	Now, that was made public alongside a 93-page report outlining their conclusions.
	They said they had a cover-up of the president's cognitive decline evidenced, and quote, no record demonstrating President Biden himself made all the executive decisions that were attributed to him.
	Now, the Democrats, of course, are very upset about all of this.
	Speaker Johnson is backing this.
	He says every executive action with the AutoPen should be voided, considering that Joe Biden was no longer with us.
	Oversight Chairman James Comer released a blockbuster report now on the Biden Autopen presidency.
	And this report includes 47 hours worth of transcripts and testimony revealing that every executive action signed by the Autopen without written authorization from President Biden should be voided.
	This is an unprecedented situation in American politics and government.
	The actions of President Biden simply were not all his own actions.
	And there are major implications to that.
	I mean, again, this is not wrong.
	Democrats are still trying to misdirect away from this.
	Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, he is angry at the Representative James Comer, who is pushing this forward through the House Judiciary Committee.
	He says this is clown activity.
	Well, no, actually, the clown activity was you guys for like several years maintaining that your president was totally fine only to take him and dump him overboard the minute that it became clear that he was actually holding down your chances of a 2024 victory.
	The so-called chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comar, continues to behave like a malignant clown.
	He can't point to a single thing that he's actually done to make life better for the American people.
	Well, I mean, that's, I mean, I have a question.
	You are currently holding up the government.
	You're the one who's promoting the shutdown.
	It's you and your team.
	There's a reason why the Democrats are not in particularly good odor with the American public at this point.
	Joining me on the line is Senator Bill Hegerty of Tennessee.
	He is the former ambassador to Japan under President Trump as well.
	Senator Hegerty, thanks so much for taking the time.
	Really appreciate it.
	Good morning, Ben.
	It's good to be with you.
	Thanks.
	So why don't we begin with this kind of insane story about the FBI attempting to access your phone records during the Jack Smith probe?
	What's the story there for those who haven't been following?
	Well, Ben, I think it's beyond attempting to access.
	I think they actually did, which is an outright disgrace.
	This is the extraordinarily partisan Jack Smith case in 2023, just after he committed the Mar-a-Lago break-in, if you recall that, the photo op that they leaked out across the media with President Trump's in President Trump's home, where they had all these documents with confidential covers on them that they immediately leaked into the media.
	He decided it's a good idea to come after eight sitting senators and a congressman.
	What he did was he requested our phone records, evidently requested more phone records than what was revealed.
	But what we found out initially was that myself and seven of my Senate colleagues, plus a congressman, all had our phone records handed over to Jack Smith and his extraordinary witch hunt.
	And I think at any point during that period, Ben, any sentient being who read the news media would know that there was a witch hunt underway, that Jack Smith's effort was wholly partisan.
	And for my carrier, Verizon in this case, to just turn around and hand over my phone records that not only told, you know, whom I'd called, the duration of the call, but where I was when I made the phone calls, Verizon, more than happy to hand it over.
	AT ⁇ T would not hand over Ted Cruz's records.
	They actually inquired.
	AT ⁇ T inquired what was the legal foundation, never heard anything back.
	But you look at Verizon, and I've taken a deeper look into Verizon.
	What was going on there?
	Well, I came to find out that the general counsel of Verizon used to be a staffer for one Democrat congressman named Henry Waxman, one of the most partisan players in the House of Representatives.
	So what you have now is a general counsel who's a Democrat operative, more than happy to conspire and to collaborate with Jack Smith on this witch hunt.
	There is a speech and debate clause in the United States Constitution, absence of treason or felony.
	Any of my conversations like this are privileged.
	And the pretext here is just beyond comprehension that they believe that they could come in and begin to snoop and spy on United States senators.
	However, they did it.
	And my phone company, again, I'm just shocked that they would have handed my records over, not let me know.
	I talked with people that are very familiar with how this works here in Washington in the legal community.
	They said, had I been a drug dealer, Ben, I would have probably been notified by Verizon.
	But as a sitting U.S. Senator, no notification.
	Again, an operative working in the general counsel's office, you know, we'll let the air clear here and find out what really went on.
	But you've got this former Democrat staffer's team that is more than happy to collaborate with Jack Smith against sitting United States senators handing over this sort of sensitive information.
	The legislative privilege does apply here.
	That is, again, a constitutional red line that they've crossed, and there's a lot to be answered for right now.
	So, Senator, what do you think the corrective ought to be?
	Assuming that everything that you're saying bears out, that the Verizon made a political decision to turn over the records, that Jack Smith's investigation was indeed predicated on political attempts to target members of the Republican Party, high-ranking members, including yourself.
	What should the corrective activity be here?
	Well, I think this should never be allowed to happen again.
	So I think the punishment needs to be swift and it needs to be severe.
	We only just found out about this a couple of weeks ago.
	Verizon has been wholly uncooperative to this point.
	I've inquired about the information that they received.
	What sort of documentation did they get from Jack Smith that they relied upon to hand over my records?
	Again, no answer.
	Talk to the hand has pretty much been the response.
	I'm not stopping.
	I'm going to continue to press.
	And as this unfolds, Ben, I tend to pursue every legal avenue possible against the carrier Verizon.
	I regret that I've been a customer for decades of Verizon.
	The fact is, I didn't even get a call from customer service.
	You know, I've written to the president.
	I've written to the general counsel.
	No response, no reply.
	You'd think I'd at least get an apology.
	But again, it's talk to the hand at this point, and that is not going to work well.
	So making an example out of this situation, I think, is absolutely important, Ben.
	We cannot have this to happen in the United States of America.
	If I put it into your realm, you're a great journalist.
	Could you imagine if the Department of Justice could have an FBI person down the hall every time you talk to a source?
	Think about what the chilling effect would be.
	Every time I talk to one of my colleagues about the legislative process, do I need to worry about the FBI investigating me to seek those records?
	You think about what would happen to you.
	The Department of Justice has actually put in place explicit rules prohibiting the snooping on news gathering type of activities that I just described for you.
	I would think that a United States senator in the legislative process would at least be accorded that level of deference.
	Instead, Jack Smith and his wholly partisan team comes after United States senators and our carriers are more than happy to hand over the information.
	So obviously the Trump administration is now in charge of the FBI and the DOJ.
	What's been the response from the FBI under Cash Patel and the DOJ under Pam Bondi on this topic?
	Well, thankfully, we do have Cash Patel and Dan Bongino there as soon as they found out, and they only found out by accident, Ben, that this had happened, that these records had been revealed.
	As soon as they found out, they convened the eight senators, brought us together and explained what they knew.
	And they still don't know everything.
	But this is something that they are digging into to get to the bottom of.
	This is misbehavior beyond comprehension when you think about the executive branch spying on the legislative branch and the constitutional implications of that.
	So they have immediately stepped up and said they're going to get to the bottom of it.
	Pam Bondi could not be more cooperative as well.
	And a number of my colleagues have reached out to Pam demanding an investigation here to get to the bottom of what Jack Smith did, what his team did.
	Again, I want to understand from the perspective of the carrier who should have been protecting my interest as a customer, who should have at least had sufficient diligence, undertaken sufficient diligence to check the United States Constitution before handing my records over.
	ATT at least was willing to ask what the legal predicate was.
	Verizon evidently more than happy to collaborate with Jack Smith.
	So we've got some real problems here.
	Again, we're still in the phase of trying to get information.
	Verizon has been uncooperative.
	The DOJ and FBI, I'm sure, are digging into this as quickly as they can.
	But with this type of investigation, they won't be able to disclose perhaps the details that we'd like to know right now.
	I'm going to keep digging at it from the other side.
	Well, Senator Haggerty, down another topic.
	You were the former ambassador to Japan under President Trump during his last term.
	You've been watching President Trump in Japan meeting the new prime minister of Japan, forming a strategy that looks like it's about forming alliances to help counter the rise of China.
	What do you make of the president's trip?
	What do you make of his strategy right now vis-a-vis Japan?
	His trip is going extremely well, Ben.
	I talked with our U.S. ambassador to Japan, George Glass, yesterday.
	I talked with Kevin Kim, who was on the way to the airport to pick the president up in South Korea as well.
	He's our chargé d'affaires, the acting ambassador in South Korea.
	They are working their hearts out to make certain that this is the most productive trip the president could possibly have.
	His time in Japan was absolutely outstanding.
	If you think about the business deals that were announced, the capital investment that's coming into America, this is something we started under his first term with great success.
	Japan became, when I was ambassador, the number one investor in America.
	They're right back in the swing of it again.
	And again, our ambassador Glass is doing a terrific job of making all of this work.
	The Japanese want to be our strongest possible ally.
	The new prime minister, Takeichi, she is very focused on strengthening U.S.-Japan alliances.
	I spoke with her just last week about this.
	She's determined to make the strongest possible relationship.
	You may recall that President Trump had a very strong relationship with Prime Minister Abe when I was serving as ambassador.
	Prime Minister Abe was a good friend of President Trump, a very good friend of mine.
	And Prime Minister Takeichi is a protégé of Prime Minister Abe.
	In fact, she gave President Trump, Prime Minister Abe's favorite putter, a great remembrance for someone that President Trump deeply misses.
	Prime Minister Abe, as you know, was sadly assassinated in Japan.
	But she's going to carry the mantle forward.
	What I see happening in Japan is much deeper cooperation on the economic front.
	And that forms a foundation, Ben, from an economic standpoint, from an energy cooperation and collaboration standpoint, and from a technology collaboration standpoint.
	That solid foundation supports then our military cooperation.
	And we have more United States military stationed in Japan than any other nation in the world.
	People ask, why do we have such a large presence there?
	Well, it's pretty simple when you think about it.
	Japan is situated in a very tough neighborhood, meaning you have North Korea, Russia, and China right at your doorstep.
	If you think about what's happening in the region, whether it's in the Philippines, it's in the Taiwan Strait, China's aggression has been extraordinary.
	After we fell, after the fall of Afghanistan under Joe Biden, what we saw was this sort of behavior manifest itself all over the world, but particularly in the Taiwan Strait.
	We saw China's aggression step up dramatically after they realized the United States under Joe Biden would not step up and protect its allies.
	What we've seen happening in the Philippines, even more aggressive.
	Now we've had both South Korea and Japan working with the Philippines, working with us, creating a calmer environment there and better military-to-military cooperation.
	My goal is to see more of that take place.
	We just had a trilateral dialogue between South Korean, Japanese, and United States business people in Tokyo.
	That happened about 10 days ago with about 40 CEOs, over 100 attendees, again, looking to deepen our economic cooperation, our technological cooperation.
	And I think everyone understood at that meeting that our economic security runs parallel to our national security.
	And the stronger our economic ties, the deeper those ties happen to be, then the stronger we will be as allies together.
	And I see nothing but a bright future ahead, both for U.S.-Japan relations, but also for U.S. relations with the Republic of Korea.
	And more and more cooperation, Ben, will begin to take place between the Republic of Korea and Japan.
	And as you may know, there's a long history dating back to 1910 when Japan occupied the Korean Peninsula.
	That took place until 1945 when we liberated the Korean Peninsula.
	Now you've got North Korea and that tension there.
	We've got to deal with it.
	Kim Jong-un actually started launching again ahead of the president's trip to Asia.
	President Trump is focused on that relationship as well.
	But I'm very optimistic that we're going to see new cooperation from an economic standpoint, a military standpoint, and again, an opportunity to see things settle down.
	President Trump's going to meet with President Xi here in South Korea.
	That's a new breakthrough opportunity.
	I'm optimistic there as well.
	A lot of good things are happening.
	Senator Bill Hagerty from Tennessee.
	Senator, thanks so much for your time.
	We'll keep an eye on that unfolding case regarding the FBI and Verizon surveilling you.
	Really appreciate the time.
	Certainly, Ben.
	Thank you for having me today.
	All righty, folks.
	Coming up, we are going to jump into the question of President Trump trying to get a settlement out of the DOJ for all of their malfeasance during the last several years going after him.
	We'll talk about that, the Republican response to it.
	Plus, the Senate actually bucking President Trump on trade.
	Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
	If you're not a member, become a member.
	Use Code Shapiro.

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