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Dec. 2, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show
52:54
Hegseth Bombing Leaks REVEALED
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ben shapiro
40:55
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karoline leavitt
03:28
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mark kelly
01:21
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matt van epps
03:02
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aftyn behn
00:52
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hakeem jeffries
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00:43
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ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Democrats claiming that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth committed a war crime.
What's their strategy?
What are they doing?
And is Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona going to be the Democratic nominee for president?
He sure seems to be trying it.
Plus, a gigantic special election in Tennessee's congressional district 7.
Why is that one even close?
We'll get to all of it first.
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Well, folks, Democrats have hit upon a two-pronged strategy for 2028.
One of them is to make members of the military very uncomfortable about following their orders.
Apparently, they believe that this will somehow create unrest, chaos.
I don't know how else to explain why Democrats are now suddenly coming out of the woodwork to suggest that a bunch of illegal orders are being issued from the Trump administration that members of the military must now consider.
Remember, when Democrats, people like Senator Mark Kelly or Senator Alyssa Slotkin from Michigan, when they come out and they say to soldiers, to airmen, to members of the Navy, when they say to these people, if you guys follow an illegal order, you will be punished.
But then they don't define illegal order.
What they are doing is creating a catch-22, because if people follow their orders, well, then they're protected in the moment.
But down the road, some Democrat may be elected and declare that actually retroactively, those orders were illegal and members of the military should not have obeyed them.
And if right now they decide, you know what, I think that order is illegal, I'm not following it, they could end up court-martialed.
So it's a catch-22 for members of the military.
That is why it is so negative what Democrats are doing without specifying the actual orders they believe are illegal and that ought to be disobeyed.
So that is prong one in the Democratic strategy is a sort of chaos strategy with regards to military orders.
Prong number two is setting up an entire slate of possible Democratic nominees who appear to be moderate.
And this is really interesting.
So one of the big questions in the aftermath of President Trump winning his second term was, will Democrats shift over to the Zorhan Mamdani left or are they going to move toward a more moderate middle?
Are they going to jettison much of their culture war baggage?
Are they going to start talking about trans or are they going to stop talking about trans?
Are they going to up the ante on DEI or are they going to move away from DEI?
And by all indicators, it appears the Democrats are not being morons.
It appears that while people like Zorhan Mamdani may be winning in places like New York, deep blue areas, it appears that what they are actually attempting to do is play moderate, which of course is smart.
It seems that more and more often they're playing dead on the trans issue.
This is what happened with California Governor Gavin Newsom, who seems to want it every single way on the trans issue.
Sure, it's unfair for boys to compete against girls, but also maybe transing is fine.
When it comes to issues like DEI, it's kind of disappeared from the Democratic lexicon.
You don't hear Democrats talking about equity in the same way that they were even a year and a half ago when this was the be-all end-all of American politics.
Apparently, they no longer want to talk about that.
Even on immigration, Democrats have taken a more moderate middle line.
They're no longer arguing along with AOC that ICE ought to be disbanded.
They're not arguing anymore that the police ought to be defunded.
Instead, what they seem to be doing is arguing that President Trump is largely right on the southern border.
They just don't like that he's being overzealous in the prosecution of illegal immigrants who they say have not committed crimes.
So Democrats seem to actually be at least in image turning toward the middle.
And I think that's part of what is going on with regard to this big controversy now swirling around the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
So to recap, last week there was a report from the Washington Post.
It argued that the White House had, via Pete Hegseth, given a direct order to basically blow away members of narco-trafficking cartels in the water after they were already put out of commission.
So basically, there was a strike on a narco-trafficking boat from Venezuela.
And supposedly, Pete Hegseth ordered everyone to be killed, up to and including survivors who were in the water clinging to bits of wreckage, to the wreckage of the burning boat.
And this raised some fairly significant legal issues.
Because as it turns out, under the laws of war, under the Geneva Conventions, for example, and under American law, you are really not supposed to kill people who are no longer in the fight.
As Andrew McCarthy at National Review pointed out, the 1949 Geneva Conventions were ratified by the United States.
Common Article 3 of the Convention binds our government and prohibits, quote, violence to life and person, in particular, murder of all kinds of persons taking no active part in hostilities.
And that includes people placed what's called or to combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause.
In other words, you can't take somebody as a POW and just shoot them.
Or if you wound somebody on the battlefield, under the Geneva Conventions, there is no policy of we take no prisoners.
Everyone gets killed on the battlefield.
Jack Goldsmith, who headed the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush 43 administration, notes that the Department of Defense Law of War manual defines or to combat to include persons, quote, otherwise incapacitated by shipwreck.
And apparently Congress has incorporated grave breaches of CA3 in the Penal Code's War Crimes Statute that Section 2441, when committed in the context of and in association with an armed conflict, not of an international character, which is how the administration currently describes its operations blowing up these narco-trafficking boats in the Caribbean.
And those grave breaches include murder defined, quote, the act of a person who intentionally kills or conspires or attempts to kill or kills, whether intentionally or unintentionally, in the course of committing any other offense under this subsection, one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause.
So, obviously, if the post report were accurate, this would at least be a serious legal question.
Now, we discussed yesterday on the program the possibility that actually these people would not be considered or to combat depending on the condition of the boat.
That maybe the boat is still floating.
It's kind of dead in the water, but at the same time, they can call their narco-trafficking friends.
They can be picked up.
They can be back in the narco-trafficking fight momentarily.
Now, that is one possible defense.
But it's also unclear what exactly happened here.
Now, the White House is defending Pete Hegseth.
The White House said on Monday that the U.S. military conducted two alleged strikes on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, deepening questions about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's role in an operation that led to the killing of two survivors.
Admiral Frank Mitch Bradley, the head of Special Operations Command, was acting legally under authority to use lethal force granted by Hegseth in conducting the attacks on the boat.
Already coming up, was there actually a second strike that was authorized by Hegseth at people in the water?
We'll get to all of that first.
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President Trump, for his part, actually did say on Sunday that he did not want a second strike.
In other words, he was fine with the original strike on the boat, but if there was somebody who's floating around in the water on the wreckage, no, you're not supposed to fire a hellfire missile at that person and blow them apart.
Here's President Trump on Sunday.
unidentified
On the Venezuela boat strike, if there were a second strike that killed wounded people wounded in the first strike, are you thinking that would be legal?
I don't know that that happened.
And Pete said he did not want them.
He didn't even know what people were talking about.
So we'll look into it.
But no, I wouldn't have wanted that, not a second strike.
The first strike was very lethal.
It was fine.
And if there were two people around, but Pete said that didn't happen.
Does that make you feel better?
I have great confidence.
You're saying there's no second strike.
I don't know.
I'm going to find out about it, but Pete said he did not order the death of those two men.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, so President Trump says that Pete Hegseth did not order the death of the people in the water.
And this is the real question here: whether the second strike was authorized by Pete Hegseth, knowing that people were actually in the water and drowning or that they were clinging to life and basically they were killed while wounded.
Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, came out yesterday and read a statement at the White House.
karoline leavitt ▲ ● ▼
President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war.
With respect to the strikes in question, on September 2nd, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes.
Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, so again, the contention here is actually that there was a general order given to take out the boat and that maybe Admiral Bradley is the person who actually gave the order to conduct a second strike if in fact a second strike was conducted.
Caroline Levitt did say that Pete Hegseth did not order that everyone be killed because again, that would possibly violate war crime statutes.
unidentified
Thank you, Caroline.
So just to be clear, to clarify on Jackie and Gabe, did Admiral Bradley order that second strike because there were still survivors after the initial strike?
karoline leavitt ▲ ● ▼
Again, as I read for you, Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law.
He directed the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat of narco-terrorists to the United States was completely eliminated.
unidentified
Was the initial order from Secretary Hagseth everyone be killed?
And did that come from President Trump?
karoline leavitt ▲ ● ▼
I saw that quoted in a Washington Post story.
I would reject that the Secretary of War ever said that.
However, the president has made it quite clear that if narco-terrorists, again, are trafficking illegal drugs towards the United States, he has the authority to kill them.
And that's what this administration is doing.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, so there actually doesn't seem to be a legal dispute nearly as much as a factual dispute about what actually happened.
Secretary Hegseth for his part put out a statement, quote, let's make one thing crystal clear.
Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support.
I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made on the September 2nd mission and all other sins.
America is fortunate to have such men protecting us.
When this Department of War says we have the back of our warriors, we mean it.
Now, the New York Times did have a follow-up piece that came out late yesterday in which they seemed to admit that Hegseth did not give a general kill order, especially for people who are already ordered to combat.
According to the New York Times, the Trump administration on Monday defended the legality of that September 2nd attack on a boat in the Caribbean Sea as calls grew in Congress to examine whether a follow-up missile strike that killed survivors amounted to a crime.
According to five U.S. officials who spoke separately and on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter under investigation, Mr. Hegseth, ahead of the September 2nd attack, ordered a strike that would kill the people on the boat and destroy the vessel and its purported cargo of drugs.
But each official said Mr. Hegseth's directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things.
And the official said his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast.
So according to every single source, it doesn't sound like Hegseth did anything wrong.
It sounds like Hegseth said, kill the people on the boat.
So they tried to.
They fired some sort of hellfire missile at the people on the boat.
They blew up the boat.
And then there were survivors.
And if there was a second strike, he did not come back in and say, kill those people.
It was not in response to surveillance footage showing survivors.
And he didn't actually say in the original order, oh, yeah, by the way, if they're wounded and ordered to combat, you should kill them anyway.
Apparently, Bradley ordered the initial missile strike and then several follow-up strikes that killed the initial survivors and sank the disabled boat.
As the operation unfolded, according to these sources, Hegseth did not give any further orders to him.
They were clarifying these officials the sequence of events.
Again, that is different from the original report in the Washington Post, which said that Bradley ordered the second strike to fulfill a directive by Hegseth to kill everyone.
So that does sound as though it was bad reporting from the Washington Post.
And if there's a question, the question now falls on Admiral Bradley as to why he ordered follow-up strikes if people were in fact ordered to combat, or maybe they weren't ordered to combat in the first place.
All of this seems like a convenient way of simply providing support to the Democrats doing what was quite a bad thing a couple of weeks ago when they released that video telling members of the military not to obey orders.
It feels ginned up.
It feels as though the Washington Post went ahead and reported a story on extraordinarily thin sourcing to create the possibility of an illegal order that it turns out may not have been illegal at all in order to provide support for the Democratic narrative that this administration is lawless and that only a moderate military veteran who might be running in 2028 can step into the breach.
And again, it'll be interesting to see what happens here, but this does feel like the predicate for a move by the Democratic Party to elevate somebody like a Senator Mark Kelly, for example.
So if you check the Calci market right now, Calci is one of our sponsors, what you will see is that Gavin Newsom is far and away the leader right now in terms of who is most likely to be the Democratic presidential nominee.
He's about 37% on the Calci markets.
Alexander Ocasio-Cortez at 10%, and then you've got Josh Shapiro at six, Pete Budice at six, Kamala Harris at five.
Mark Kelly is all the way down at 2%.
But again, it is extremely early right now, like really, really early.
And so it is quite possible that you could see somebody like Amark Kelly make some sort of fairly strong move.
Mark Kelly did win a narrow election originally in the Senate in 2020 over Martha McSally.
He won 51 to 48.
And then he won again over Blake Masters, 51 to 46.
A couple of years later, when the special election was over, it's still a two-year term.
And then he has a full term that goes until 2028.
Kelly, of course, is a military veteran.
He is an astronaut.
He tends to portray himself as a moderate, even though he voted with Joe Biden in the Senate something like 95% of the time.
He tries to portray himself as a middle-of-the-road moderate.
Kirsten Sinema, who was, of course, the other Democrat senator who then turned independent and now is no longer in the Senate, Ruben Gallego, has filled that seat.
She was an actual moderate.
Like she stood up against Democratic predations with regard to the filibuster.
Kelly is a down the line Democrat, but he wants to present as a moderate.
And this is why I say it seems to me the Democrats are trying to elevate some of their more moderate voices, at least the ones who are not talking openly about DEI, trans, and the rest of their sort of radical issue set.
All righty, coming up, Senator Mark Kelly, does that guy have presidential aspirations?
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So Kelly is obviously taking advantage of this situation to promote his own profile.
Here he was yesterday sounding the alarm on Pete Hagsev.
mark kelly ▲ ● ▼
I was talking about this from the beginning of this operation, that the thing that I am most concerned about is the very difficult situations that this Secretary of Defense is going to put service members into.
And it's because this guy is so unqualified for the job.
I mean, think about this.
He runs around on a stage talking about lethality and warrior ethos and killing people.
We have the most competent, capable military this planet has ever seen by far.
That's not the message that needs to come from the Secretary of Defense.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, so again, Kelly is, by the way, promoting himself.
In the middle of this little address about Pete Hegseth, he talked about his own record and all of the fighting that he'd done and the fact that he was a braver man than President Trump and all of the rest of it.
And Kelly then went on CNN to double down on this.
unidentified
I mean, the Washington Post says they were clinging to the wreckage, but whatever.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
There are survivors.
We know there were survivors.
Are you allowed to then attack the survivors?
mark kelly ▲ ● ▼
Absolutely not.
I sunk a OSA II missile patrol boat.
It was in the middle of the night, like 3 a.m. with two cluster munitions in Kuwait Harbor.
And then we left.
We were, you know, out a Pelnaki troop carry on the Persian Gulf during the day, getting shot at by, there were two ships.
One of them was shooting at us.
No, you don't do that.
Everybody knows that.
You know, that is against the Geneva Conventions.
That's against the laws of war, which we should always be abiding by.
We're the United States of America.
We are not Russia.
We're not Iraq.
We're not Iran.
We have to hold our people to a higher standard.
This is really serious.
unidentified
So the White House.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay.
Again, I think this is all part of an attempt by Democrats to sort of push themselves toward a moderate middle by suggesting that war crimes have been committed here.
Hakeem Jeffries over in the House, the House, minority leader, who, if Trent hold, could soon be the Speaker of the House.
He was raging about this yesterday.
hakeem jeffries ▲ ● ▼
Everybody on Capitol Hill knows he should have never been confirmed.
It's a shame.
It's because these Senate Republicans, just like House Republicans, are nothing more than puppets for Donald Trump's extreme policies.
That's why they put Pete Heckseth into that position when they knew he was woefully unqualified.
And now we have real evidence that extrajudicial killings are taking place.
That's the stain on America's leadership in the free world, which is why our international standing is plummeting.
And of course, the standing of the Republican Party is a complete and total disaster here in the United States of America.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Again, I will give credit to the Democrats for being clever right here.
And it appears that this may be bearing some fruit.
So today there's a special election in Tennessee's 7th congressional district.
That district should be a cakewalk for Republicans.
It should be.
That is a district.
And Mark Green, who was the incumbent in the last 2024 congressional election cycle, he won that seat by 70,000 votes.
He won by a 20-point margin, the Tennessee Sevenths.
This is a heavy red district.
And yet, right now, if you look at the polling, this district is incredibly, incredibly close.
According to the Daily Wire, the reputation of our state is on the line, said Tennessee Republican Senator Bill Hagerty, as he addressed several hundred Republican voters gathered Monday morning to rally support for congressional candidate Matt Van Epps one day before the special election that is taking place today.
The temperatures outside were chilly.
The mood of Republican officials inside the rally was confident but urgent.
Most said they believe Van Epps will win the race for Tennessee's 7th congressional district.
The margins could be closer than what would typically be expected in the Republican favorable district.
He is facing off Van Eps against a state Democratic representative named Afton Bain, who's a far-left candidate who supports trans procedures on kids and wants to roll back Tennessee's pro-life protections.
Democrats have been pouring millions and millions of dollars into the race.
Hagerty said it's going to come down to numbers.
The Democrats have seen an opportunity.
They're counting on us to slide into December 2nd, having enjoyed Thanksgiving and not thinking the seat is at risk.
The fact that this seat is even close speaks to a real problem for Republicans.
Republican officials say they believe Van Eps will win by 7 to 10 percent.
But again, remember, in the last election cycle, this was a 20-point margin, like a 20-point margin.
And the Democrat in this race, again, she is trying to elide some of the more controversial issues, but she herself is pretty radical.
So, here, for example, is these Tennessee Democrat Afton Bain being asked about whether there ought to be more policing or defunding of the police.
kasie hunt ▲ ● ▼
Crime is, of course, also was a major issue in the presidential election.
And I know there are some old posts.
You've been asked about those old posts a number of times.
My question for you today is whether more money for cops on the streets in the district you hope to represent would help fight crime.
Would you like more money for more cops on the streets in your district?
aftyn behn ▲ ● ▼
So, those past comments were at a time when I was a private citizen as an activist and organizer.
And now, as a Tennessee lawmaker, I represent 40,000 individual opinions and political thoughts.
kasie hunt ▲ ● ▼
What do you think now?
Would more money for cops be good or bad?
aftyn behn ▲ ● ▼
I think it depends on what the community wants.
And so, I've worked with communities, at least my constituents, want to ensure that there is investment in their community for community safety, community protection, mental health services.
And that's what I'm hearing from at least my constituents.
kasie hunt ▲ ● ▼
All right, fair enough.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, so it's not fair enough because, again, she's not actually giving an answer there.
She's a radical who is posing as a quasi-moderate, like a little bit.
She's been called the AOC of Tennessee for a reason.
Here is CNN's Casey Hunt asking her about it.
kasie hunt ▲ ● ▼
Where would you place yourself when you think about all of the other Democrats on the national stage?
And you are taking a turn on the national stage because of the way this race has been going.
The president's labeled you the AOC of Tennessee.
unidentified
Are you the AOC of Tennessee?
aftyn behn ▲ ● ▼
I resonate with Democrats who have been trying to lower costs for working families and those that don't take corporate PAC money.
Tennessee is a state that has been bought and sold to the highest bidder.
And the reason this race is so close is because voters in the 7th district want someone who is not going to sell out to special interests, but will represent the people.
And that's why I hope we will be able to pull out this win tomorrow.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Now, again, that is a great way of avoiding the answer, which is that she very much is of the AOC wing of the Democratic Party.
She is expected to lose.
The margin of her loss is going to matter an awful lot looking forward to the midterms.
According to our sponsors over at Comet, a project of perplexity, I asked, how many seats should Republicans be expected to lose in 2026 if they lose the Tennessee 7th congressional district in a special election?
And according to Comet, if Republicans lose that district, it would be a major upset.
The district is historically very conservative.
It previously gave Trump and Republicans 60% of the vote.
If there were a loss in Tennessee 7 to a Democrat, that would suggest that Republicans could lose above average numbers, possibly anywhere from 20 to 40 seats, depending on national mood and turnout.
Coming up, we'll be joined by the Republican congressional candidate in that Tennessee 7th district.
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unidentified
Goodbye.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Well, joining us on the line is the man standing in the breach, Matt Van Epps.
Matt, of course, is a West Point grad.
He has a long and outstanding career, and now he's running in what is a shockingly tight race in the Tennessee 7th.
Matt, thanks so much for taking the time.
matt van epps ▲ ● ▼
Ben, thank you so much.
Honored to be on with you.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
So, why don't we talk about the state of the race?
Tell us about your opponent and tell us about yourself.
matt van epps ▲ ● ▼
Absolutely.
Well, first and foremost, the distinction here between the two of us could not be more clear.
I'm a Christian, a husband, a father, an America First Conservative, and a combat veteran.
I'm a West Point graduate.
I served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a helicopter pilot to include service with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers, with real-world boots on the ground leadership experience.
And you contrast that with my opponent, who is a socialist, has been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, who wants new and higher taxes to fund her socialist agenda that will skyrocket our cost of living.
We are going to work to decrease cost of living, to drive America first forward.
My opponent wants to defund the police.
She wants to abolish prisons.
She is a crazy far-left radical, and we've got to stand against that.
And that's what we're going to do when we win decisively today.
And we're up right now and we're driving a whole lot of folks out to the polls today.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
So, Matt, obviously, Democrats have been pouring money into this race.
They've had a bunch of big names who have shown up in the district, including Kamala Harris, who made her first post-election surrogate speech for your opponent, as well as AOC, who showed up at a virtual rally alongside Al Gore.
There's been an attempt by Democrats to at least drive the margin down.
So even if she loses, she doesn't lose by that much because, of course, this is a historically very conservative district.
How much does margin of victory matter tonight as opposed to just victory?
matt van epps ▲ ● ▼
Well, we want to win.
We want to win by as much as possible.
But here, I think it's a win.
This is with special election dynamics.
It's a time of year where folks are not used to going to the polls right after Thanksgiving.
We've done a whole lot of work to show just who our opponent is.
They're not attack ads.
It's just showing her public statements and what she believes in, which is the polar opposite of us.
We stand with law enforcement.
We back the blue.
We're going to drive down taxes, cut red tape.
And as we've, we've also worked to get out the vote, and we're seeing that right now.
We've got reports coming back in from polling locations across the district that are very favorable to us.
We want early voting, and we want to keep pushing forward to get the biggest margin possible.
And, Ben, I'll tell you, we've built a coalition in this since the primary.
Honored to be endorsed by the president.
Speaker Johnson was with me campaigning all day yesterday.
We went to probably 10 events yesterday.
And I've got over 50 local endorsements from leaders across the 14 counties, business leaders, farmers, you name it.
And we've got the coalition, and I'm so proud of that.
And that's what's going to take us to victory today.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
So, Matt, I think the big question, obviously, on everybody's mind is: aside from the special election dynamics, the fact that it's held in an off year at a time of the year when people aren't used to voting, as you say, this isn't a district that should be heavily Republican.
So, what do you think are sort of the national dynamics that Republicans should worry about come 2026, the issues they should be focusing on come 2026, given the fact that this district is obviously looking more competitive than otherwise anyone would suspect?
matt van epps ▲ ● ▼
Well, we're talking a lot about affordability, about housing, health care, childcare, energy, keeping taxes low, cutting red tape, keeping our borders secure, keeping men out of women's sports, getting really good jobs.
And so, we've focused a lot on that.
We've heard about that.
We've got a significant rural population, too, a lot of farmers.
And so, I stand with our farmers.
I did not grow up on a farm, but I met with Farm Bureau a number of times, met with farmers across the district, been endorsed by farmers.
And we're going to fight hard for them.
Fort Campbell is in district where I serve with the 160th in Montgomery County and Clarksville.
So, military and veterans, very important.
And we'll be fighting hard for them from day one.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Well, that is Matt Van Epps.
He is running in the Tennessee 7th congressional district.
It is the biggest race of the year so far.
And we hope that he not only wins the race, but that he blows out his socialistic opponent.
Matt Van Epps, thanks so much for taking the time.
Good luck in the race today.
matt van epps ▲ ● ▼
And thank you, sir.
Really appreciate it.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Well, meanwhile, the president of the United States, while we are fighting an actual war on narco-terrorists in the Caribbean, and while we're putting pressure on Venezuela militarily not to ship fentanyl up to the United States, up to and including, by the way, pressure for possible regime change in Venezuela, the president made a very odd move over the course of the last few days.
He is apparently now considering the pardon of the ex-president of Honduras who flooded America with drugs.
And I honestly cannot explain this.
I have long been an advocate of getting rid of the pardon power.
I think the pardon power is generally a disaster area.
I think it's bad for governors.
I think it's bad for presidents.
It seems to me that having one person with the ability to simply pardon people is a bizarre holdover from monarchy.
If you actually want the criminal justice system to mean anything, it means that the consequences have to attend to the crimes.
And we've had too many situations dating all the way back to Bill Clinton of corruption being implicit in the pardon power.
You think of Denise Rich and Mark Rich and the sort of money that was changing hands during the Hillary Clinton, New York senatorial race back in 2000 while Bill Clinton was pardoning Mark Rich.
I mean, this has been a longtime problem in the United States.
I do not like that power.
The conservative solution, by the way, typically to abuse of power is to take away power from the government.
The left-wing solution, typically, is to maintain the power and then use it themselves.
Not always true, but largely true.
In this case, I just don't understand the president's logic here.
According to the New York Times, he once boasted he would, quote, stuff the drugs up the gringos' noses.
He accepted a $1 million bribe from El Chapo to allow cocaine shipments to pass through Honduras.
A man was killed in prison to protect him.
At the federal trial of Juan Orlando Hernandez in New York, testimony and evidence showed how the former president maintained Honduras as a bastion of the global drug trade.
He orchestrated a vast trafficking conspiracy that prosecutors said raped in millions for cartels while keeping Honduras one of Central America's poorest, most violent, and most corrupt countries.
Last year, Hernandez was convicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison.
It was one of the most sweeping drug trafficking cases to come before a U.S. court since the trial of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega three decades before.
But on Friday, President Trump announced he would pardon Hernandez, who he said was a victim of political persecution.
It is not clear why he believes that is the case.
Apparently, Hernandez's two-week trial in Manhattan offered a glimpse into a world of corruption and drug running spanning several countries.
Bags of cash, a machine gun with his name emblazoned on it, bribed from El Chapo, featured heavily.
Prosecutors said that Hernandez was key to a scheme that lasted more than 20 years and brought more than 500 tons of cocaine into the United States.
Honduras, of course, has long had ties with the United States, and drug trafficking has been a major problem.
So, if we are fighting a war on narco-terrorism, it seems to me that pardoning people who were engaged in what was apparently narco-terrorism, I do not understand that in the slightest.
Certain traffickers testified that they had bribed Hernandez.
He was convicted of drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy.
Apparently, a letter behind the pardon has now been released.
Axios says that this letter was apparently penned from Hernandez, and it was part of a longtime lobbying campaign by Roger Stone, one of the scummiest people in American politics historically.
Apparently, Roger Stone cast Hernandez as a victim of leftist lawfare in Honduras and President Biden's administration.
He told Axios he reached out to Trump Roger Stone and reiterated those points.
Stone claimed a pardon announcement would energize the National Party in Honduras and called Trump's attention to Hernandez's four-page letter begging for clemency.
In his letter to Trump, Hernandez praised President Trump, quote, I found strength from you, sir, your resilience to get back to that great office, notwithstanding the persecution and prosecution you faced.
And he talks about working closely with President Trump during his first term.
And then he blamed Biden-Harris and their DOJ.
Okay, now, again, a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking up to and including taking bribes from El Chapo.
That is not a false prosecution based on mortgage statements or inflation of real estate assets.
That's not what this is.
So it's bizarre.
Caroline Levitt over at the White House claimed that Hernandez was set up, which again, no evidence has been provided to that idea.
karoline leavitt ▲ ● ▼
Cherry-picking the president's statement a little bit yesterday, as he also said yesterday, the people of Honduras have highlighted to him how the former president Hernandez was set up.
This was a clear Biden over prosecution.
He was the president of this country.
He was in the opposition party.
He was opposed to the values of the previous administration, and they charged him because he was president of Honduras.
There were some other egregious facts that came out during this trial, and I would encourage you to report on them.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Now, the president himself put out a statement saying that Hernandez was treated, quote, very harshly and unfairly in his conviction, while also praising Nasri Asfura, who's a candidate for the Honduran presidency and leader of the National Party.
Maybe this is played as a way to sort of boost that party.
But again, I see just because Joe Biden presided over a thing, and believe me, I mean, you don't have to look very far to find my critiques of Joe Biden, who I think is perhaps the worst president in modern American history.
I don't see the evidence that this person was, quote unquote, set up.
Many things can be true at once.
A person can be a political opponent of an administration and also guilty of crimes with which he was charged.
So this is a strange move at the very least.
And again, you know, there are people like Roger Stone that exist in both parties.
Using them as sources for your information, I think, is a dicey move at best.
Now, speaking of criminality, like actual criminality, according to the New York Post, a powerful U.S. House committee and the Treasury Department have now both launched investigations into Minnesota Governor Tim Walz's role in that massive fraud scheme in the Somali community that we talked about just yesterday on the program.
James Comer, the House Oversight Committee Chairman, told the New York Post his panel will, quote, conduct a thorough investigation into Governor Walls' failure to safeguard taxpayer dollars as a result.
He said that Walls was warned about massive fraud in that pandemic food aid program, but he failed to act, even though whistleblowers were whistleblowing and they raised concerns.
He says, Comer, that they face retaliation.
So it'll be interesting to see if a criminal indictment is in fact brought against Walls for some sort of corruption.
Presumably, it can't just be bad politicking.
It can't just be he was bad at his job.
You'd actually have to show money changed cans or he was doing it for corrupt political purposes or something like that.
Last year, Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee issued a subpoena to Walls for records.
It's unclear what information his office provided at this point.
And again, some of the money that was being defrauded from the federal government ended up being sent to terrorists at al-Shabaab in Somalia, like remitted over to Somalia.
Full disaster area for Tim Walz.
Remember, that person was almost vice president of the United States, which is really quite shocking.
Meanwhile, hubbub continues over the National Guard shooting, the murder of one National Guard member, and the critical wounding of another by an Afghan refugee.
Caroline Levitt at the White House, she says that the National Guard shooting shows that the mass deportations that President Trump has talked about must proceed.
karoline leavitt ▲ ● ▼
According to a new bombshell report from the New York Times, Somalian migrants in Minnesota have defrauded nearly $1 billion in taxpayer-funded benefits under Democrat Governor Waltz's leadership.
President Trump is putting an end to this dangerous America-last approach.
His position is rooted in common sense.
In the wake of last week's atrocity, it is more important than ever to finish carrying out the president's mass deportation operation.
America cannot allow millions upon millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be rewarded with amnesty after they broke our nation's laws to come here.
They must go back to their home countries.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, so again, this is a very strong case being made by the Trump administration.
And of course, it is not wrong.
And one of the complicating factors, as we discussed yesterday about this particular terrorist who, again, shot two members of the National Guard, is that this person was, in fact, part of a CIA program and should have been vetted when he came into the country and then was granted full asylum by the Trump administration in 2025.
The story isn't quite as clear-cut as I think the White House is trying to make it out to be.
Here, here's Caroline Levitt talking about the background of the shooter.
karoline leavitt ▲ ● ▼
A foreign terrorist that the Biden administration failed to properly vet ambushed two members of the West Virginia National Guard who were honorably serving here to keep their residents and visitors of Washington, D.C. safe.
U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolf was severely wounded in the attack and remains hospitalized while he continues to fight for his life.
Tragically, U.S. Army specialist Sarah Beckstrom died of her wounds.
She was just 20 years old.
President Trump and the entire White House are praying for Andrew's full recovery at the request of his parents and their personal phone call with the president over the weekend.
And we are keeping Sarah's family and friends in our prayers during this unimaginably difficult time.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
As I said on Friendly Fire yesterday, you can watch our brand new episode.
It's me, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles talking about these issues.
There are really two issues here that need to be contemplated.
One is, of course, the mass migration issue.
And the Trump administration is right.
Importing tens of thousands of people from places like Somalia or Afghanistan into the United States is a crazy idea.
It's crazy.
You can't vet all those people.
Even if you do vet them for terror ties, for example, that doesn't mean that they are going to be ripe candidates for assimilation into American values.
And so the Trump administration is totally right about that.
The other question, of course, is that this particular person was, in fact, apparently radicalized while in the United States.
Supposedly, he showed up being relatively pro-America and then was radicalized into radical Islam.
And this has been a long-standing problem, as we mentioned yesterday on the show.
That is going to require actual significant resources deployed by the FBI and DOJ to investigate domestic constituencies here in the United States and organizations that actually spread Islamic radicalism.
That is a very real thing happening in the United States.
I will say that on immigration, there's no question the Republicans have an advantage.
They particularly have an advantage when the left continues to maintain that mass migration itself is some sort of inherent good.
So yesterday, for example, Caroline Lovitt was asked by a reporter if refugees add to our national identity, which is kind of a bizarre framing of the question.
unidentified
Can you explain what you mean by our nation's national identity and integrity and character?
And how would refugees, people coming from fortune places who are seeking a safe haven in America, like many of our forebears in this room, not add to our nation's integrity and character, our national identity?
karoline leavitt ▲ ● ▼
I'll tell you what does not add to our nation's character and integrity is refugees who come here under the alleged plight of asylum and fleeing persecution and then come to the United States to abuse our system and rip off American taxpayers.
And as I pointed out, the New York Times, to their credit, it was about six months too late, but they did write about how Somali immigrants in Minnesota have been ripping off American taxpayers.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Now, the reality is the immigration perspective of the Trump administration is not only popular broad scale with Americans, the idea that, no, we should not be importing tens of thousands of people from third world countries.
It may be the most popular element among fellow Republicans.
It may be the glue that binds together the Republican coalition.
One of the big questions that's happening inside sort of Republican dumb right now is what is the future of the Republican coalition beyond President Trump?
Because obviously he's turned out in 2028.
Fascinating study by Manhattan Institute looking at what Republicans believe about a wide variety of issues.
It's a new national survey.
It's 3,000 voters, including large oversamples of black and Hispanic Republicans and 2024 Trump voters who were asked about a wide range of policy issues.
And sort of fascinating.
So they broke down the Republican Party into a couple of categories.
Core Republicans, these would be long-standing GOP voters who consistently back Republican presidential nominees since 2016 or earlier.
And new entrant Republicans.
These would be people who are recent first-time GOP presidential voters, including people who supported Democrats in 2016 or 2020.
And it's sort of fascinating to look at where people are on the issues in the Republican Party.
So for example, on taxes and spending, by a two-to-one margin, every broad spectrum GOP, meaning everyone who voted for Trump basically in 2024, believe that nobody should pay higher taxes.
We should cut spending because government is ineffective at spending money.
It's 63% of current GOP voters.
Core Republicans, backspending cuts 71 to 26.
But new entrant Republicans, these are people who voted Trump for the first time in 2024, for example, actually favor higher taxes.
This is a major gap in the Republican Party, is the gap between sort of core Republican beliefs and the people who are now joining the Republican Party and disagree on, for example, taxes.
When it comes to social issues, there is very little disagreement, actually, on some of these social issues.
The current GOP coalition is a little split, according to the Manhattan Institute.
A plurality, 42%, say the party should fight for traditional values across the board.
One in four believes the party should push back on super woke stuff, but accepted some debates like total abortion bans or reversing same-sex marriage are no longer on the table.
So at the very least, this would be moderate to very conservative GOP people on conservative issues.
That represents a vast majority of the party.
But only 25% of the current GOP under the age of 50 believe the party should fight for traditional values across the board, which is, again, quite fascinating.
It's illegal immigration that really puts everything together.
On illegal migration, the current GOP coalition is totally unified.
Only 3% say illegal immigrants should not be deported at all.
37% say as many as possible.
One in three support deportations, but say they should be doing it carefully.
And 22% say deportations focus mainly on criminals.
When it comes to legal immigration, there is pretty significant debate.
Only one in 10 current GOP believes high-skilled legal immigration should be decreased.
Nearly half say it should be kept at its current level.
35% say it should be increased, actually.
But 47% of new entrant Republicans support increasing high-skilled immigration versus just 31% of core Republicans.
So this is one of, again, several areas where these kind of new entrant Republicans are more progressive than the old guard Republicans.
These are very real gaps, and it's pretty fascinating to watch them play out in real time.
But immigration is the thing that is sort of binding everybody together.
Now, the problem for the Trump administration and probably for the Republican Party going forward is that Trump successfully shut the border.
And because he successfully shut the border, that issue has sort of disappeared as a glue binding together Republicans.
You can see why the Trump administration, politically speaking, and forget about the morality where I agree with them.
Politically speaking, they're focusing on immigration because it may be the sort of one area of broad agreement all the way across the Republican spectrum.
One of the big issues that's going to have to be dealt with with the Republican Party is whether it is the new entrant Republicans, the new entrant GOPs who occasionally vote for Republicans, who are going to be the ones who dictate the terms going forward for the Republican coalition, or whether it is the people who traditionally are the people who tend to vote Republican.
Because in the end, President Trump is able to sail over all of this.
He sort of signals and in affect is very much a new entrant GOP.
He used to be a Democrat, for example, but in his policy, he is a very traditional GOP.
President Trump is one of one.
I'm not sure there's a candidate out there on the Republican side.
And again, this is not a critique of any one candidate who's capable of holding all of that together without sounding as though they're promising everything to everyone all the time.
And a certain point, leadership is going to be required to define what the coalition looks like going forward.
And it can't just be, hey, coalition.
It's got to be actual values that define the coalition.
And again, the reason that I became a conservative when I was very, very young and I voted Republican in every single election in which I have ever voted.
The only election that I set out was 2016.
And I did so because I didn't know Trump was going to be a conservative.
And then, of course, he ended up being quite conservative.
And I was wearing a MAGA hat by January of 2017 when he appointed Neil Gorsuch to the bench.
Okay, so as a long time Republican, like my entire life, I can say that if the Republican Party shifts away from traditional values and starts catering to sort of the new entrant values, they're going to lose a lot of people who actually are not on that same side.
Now, again, when it comes to elections, coalitions have to be broad.
That obviously is true.
The problem that I see for Republicans going forward is that many of the issues that President Trump ran on are being solved.
The most unifying aspects of the coalition are immigration and trans.
Both of those issues have been largely dealt with by the Trump administration.
And Democrats are running headlong away from those issues.
So Republicans are going to have to define what it is they stand for going forward if they hope to win in 2028 or even in 2026.
Okay, meanwhile, the red flags are beginning to signal on the economy internationally, not just in the United States.
According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. markets are facing a threat from across the Pacific.
Yields on government debt, which rises when the prices of those bonds fall, climbed across the world on Monday after the Bank of Japan governor hinted at a potential interest rate increase later this month, surprising investors who thought he might hold off under possible pressure from the country's new prime minister.
So the yield is dropping on the current government bonds in Japan.
So people are worried that those new bond yields are going to draw money from U.S. investments and then spark a climb in treasury yields.
So basically, the interest rates on the new bonds are going to be increased.
That means people are not buying the old bonds in Japan.
They're going to start buying, presumably, the new bonds in Japan.
They're going to move their money from American bonds over to Japanese higher interest bonds.
The world's third largest economy is the U.S. government's largest foreign creditor, according to the Treasury Department data, holding treasuries valued at about $1.2 trillion as of September.
Private Japanese investors poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. and other foreign bonds in recent years, seeking better returns than they could find at home.
For most of this year, that dynamic has not actually played out.
Japanese bond yields have climbed as investors there prepare for higher rates.
Yields on treasuries, meanwhile, have fallen as the Federal Reserve moves in the opposite direction.
So things are getting a little dicey.
U.S. stocks fell on Monday.
The SP 500 dropped 0.5%.
Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 427 points.
Again, I'm not sure that anyone has an excellent read on where the economy is going next.
For the last year, essentially, it feels as though the economy is sort of on a razor's edge and we're not sure exactly which direction it is moving.
What is very clear is that investors also don't know which direction the economy is moving.
They don't know whether to put money in Japan or in the United States, certainly not in Europe, which has a dying economy.
Europe destroyed its own economy on the shoals of green energy nonsense.
So, you know, where do you put your money?
That remains a very open question at this point.
All righty, folks, the show is continuing for our members right now.
We'll get into the latest in Ukraine talks.
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