The Ben Shapiro Show - What Did Ilhan Omar Know, and When Did She Know It?!

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Dec. 5, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show

51:55

What Did Ilhan Omar Know, and When Did She Know It?!

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ben shapiro

41:49

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jaylani hussein

01:06

mark warner

01:20

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boris sanchez

00:12

chuck schumer

00:53

ilhan omar

00:43

pam bondi

00:30

tim walz

00:30

tom cotton

00:35

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ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		As a gigantic welfare fraud is uncovered in the Somali-American community in Minneapolis, we discuss mass migration and what did Ilhan Omar know and when did she know it?
		Plus, we'll get to the arrest of the January 6th pipe bomber as well as economy talk first.
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		Well, it seems that the Somali welfare fraud scandal is now breaking into full view and it's hitting a lot of people who are elected officials.
		That includes, of course, the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, but apparently now it also includes possibly Ilhan Omar.
		So to understand why this matters so much, we have to understand this is all tied into a couple of major national issues.
		One, of course, is mass migration from third world countries.
		Is that something America should be pursuing?
		The second is a gigantic, unaccountable welfare state in which billions of dollars can simply go missing.
		And it takes years in order to uncover all of that.
		And those two stories are intertwined.
		Obviously, when it comes to the question of mass migration, the Trump administration has taken an incredibly strong position that mass migration, particularly from countries that do not cohere to American values, that that mass migration should be significantly limited or curtailed.
		The Wall Street Journal reports today, quote, work permits issued to immigrants who have applied for asylum or a range of other humanitarian programs will now be valid for 18 months rather than five years under a new policy announced Thursday by the Trump administration.
		Of course, the goal there is if people stay here for five years, they then tend to receive full asylum.
		They tend to become American citizens.
		If they only stay for 18 months, then it is easier to review their cases and say, okay, well, now you can go back where you came from or to a third-party country.
		By forcing immigrants to renew their work permits more often, the government will have more opportunities to revet them, said Joe Edlow, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
		Edlo framed the change, which reverses a Biden-era policy, as the latest action by the administration to crack down on legal immigration in response to the shooting last week in Washington, D.C. of two National Guard members.
		That shooting, of course, was allegedly carried out by an Afghan national who had been radicalized in the United States after being imported in the aftermath of the Afghanistan withdrawal by Joe Biden.
		It's clear that USCIS must enforce more frequent vetting of aliens, Edlo said in a statement.
		All aliens must remember working in the United States is a privilege, not a right.
		So when it comes to the question of mass migration, now this is a very open question that has been implicated by not only that Afghan national shooting two members of the National Guard and killing one, but also by this gigantic Somali welfare fraud case in Minnesota.
		As the Wall Street Journal points out, what happens when welfare becomes not a temporary hand up, but an ingrained expectation of American life?
		For an ugly glimpse, look at the astonishing fraud unfolding in Minnesota.
		Turns out those GOP reformers were right to call out fraud in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
		The White House this week published a memo titled, Yes, There's Something Wrong with Walls, and it costs taxpayers a billion dollars, highlighting various swindles in the land of 10,000 lakes.
		There may be as many fraud schemes as lakes in the state, given the ease in which scammers tapped government funds.
		Some 86 individuals have been charged with defrauding Medicaid and the federal child nutrition program in Minnesota.
		Yes, literally stealing lunch money from kids.
		No one was doing anything about the red flags, one defendant's attorney told the New York Times.
		It was like someone was stealing money from the cookie jar and they kept refilling it.
		In one of those alleged schemes, the outfit Feeding Our Future recruited individuals to set up a network of sham companies and sites that claimed to feed children in the pandemic.
		They then submitted false invoices and fake attendance rosters to the state.
		In fact, one of those rosters actually grabbed names from another website called listofrandomnames.com.
		And somehow this worked for years.
		In another scheme, a 28-year-old woman allegedly launched a company called Smart Therapy, claiming to provide one-on-one behavioral therapy to autistic children.
		She employed her relatives with no formal education.
		She recruited parents to enroll their non-autistic kids in her therapy sessions by paying them kickbacks of up to $1,500 a month per child.
		And in a darkly comic twist, some parents allegedly then extorted the woman by threatening to enroll their children in other autism centers if they weren't paid bigger kickbacks.
		In another indictment, eight individuals were charged with fraudulently billing Medicaid to help recovering addicts find stable housing.
		Yes, housing.
		Minnesota pioneered the use of Medicaid money to help beneficiaries secure housing on the questionable rationale.
		This improves health and reduces healthcare spending.
		So, again, they tried to cram housing spending, welfare housing spending into Medicaid.
		So, again, Democrats built this entire massive infrastructure.
		And now it turns out lots of people took advantage of that.
		And those people were, in this particular case, Somali.
		Now, it's hilarious to watch members of the media try to create a rationale for why Somali immigrants to the United States overall have been a massive boon.
		We went from, again, 2,500 Somali Americans in 1990 to almost 200,000 today.
		And that is purely through mass migration and the natural increase.
		And that mass migration was driven by humanitarian concerns, but it turns out that it's come with some pretty significant costs.
		So today, there's an article from KSTP in Minnesota.
		It's the ABC's ABC outlet in Minnesota.
		And here's the headline: Somali Minnesotans drive economic growth, pay $67 million in tax annually.
		I mean, I may not be like unbelievable at math, but if you drive $67 million in state and local taxes and you scam $1 billion, there are some zeros missing there if what you're hoping to show is that the mass migration has been a net benefit to the economic health of the United States.
		Apparently, Somali Minnesotans generate $500 million in income annually.
		So, in other words, this one big welfare scheme doubled the amount, doubled the amount of income earned by Somali Minnesotans.
		They took out from just that welfare scheme, okay, not even like legitimate welfare, like fake welfare fraud.
		They took out twice the amount that they actually earn in income, which is crazy.
unidentified		That's crazy.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		So, again, the levels of poverty in the Somali American community are incredibly high.
		The levels of education, dramatically lower than surrounding Minnesotans.
		And so, that raises the problem, of course, of mass migration, as well as the welfare system.
		Now, in order for all this to happen, you have to have complicit politicians because when the fraud is this big, when this many people seem to know about it, it seems almost impossible that you don't have elected officials who knew about it.
		Fascinating piece in today's New York Post by Chadwick Moore: quote: U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar's close ties to the $1 billion welfare scam in her Minnesota congressional district are being uncovered.
		Omar held parties at one of the key restaurants named in the fraud, knew one of its now-convicted owners, and one of her own staffers has also been convicted for both for stealing millions.
		Omar even introduced the bill that led to the $250 million in fraud, yet she claims to have been completely unaware of it.
		Bill Glenn, a policy fellow with the Minnesota-based Center for the American Experiment, said, Representative Omar knew who these people were.
		Personally, she knew they were making tens of millions of dollars in this program.
		She had been inside the Safari facility on numerous occasions and couldn't put two and two together.
		Either she's terminally naive or she knew and she did not care.
		That $250 million referenced here by Chadwick Moore was handed out by the Minnesota government for those meals for school kids that never actually materialized.
		Instead, the money just got pocketed by corrupt business owners, including one Salim Ahmed Saeed, who's the co-owner of the Safari restaurant where Omar held her 2018 congressional victory party.
		He was found guilty in August of stealing $12 million for serving almost 4 million phantom meals during COVID-19.
		Apparently, he had a pretty significant shopping habit.
		He blew $2 million on a Minneapolis mansion, and he had a $9,000 a month shopping habit at Nordstrom.
		That is a lot of money on clothes, my dude.
		Like, I hope at least you were well-dressed because that is a lot of money on clothes.
		Omar, again, this happened inside her district.
		Her defense is.
		Everybody who mentions this sort of stuff is racist.
		That is always and forever the defense.
		So President Trump, of course, has been highly critical of the Somali-American mass migration issue.
		Ilhan Omar says that Trump is an abusive, deranged old man.
		This woman who once suggested that 9-11 was something some people did and who herself has written, again, she wrote a letter to a judge asking that a recruit to ISIS be granted mercy because of the evils of having to integrate in America.
		That is a real thing she did.
		And here is a sitting Congresswoman in the United States of America calling the president an abusive, deranged old man because he's been critical of Somali mass migration.
ilhan omar ▲ ● ▼		And I think the press in many ways that covers the White House, I think, have gotten used to his bigotry.
		They all have, I think, that delayed reaction and they've all gotten used to all of his lies.
		That's why there's rarely a follow-up.
		But they also have gotten used to his abuse.
		You know, you've seen him say to one female reporter, quiet biggie.
		You see him calling another one stupid and dumb.
		You know, this is a very abusive, deranged old man.
		And I think for a lot of people, it's still shocking.
unidentified		It's still jarring.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I think actually what is more shocking and jarring is that a person like Ilhan Omar is in the United States Congress, given her levels of corruption, given the open and very real questions about her own immigration story with regard to her brother, given the fact that she is wildly anti-American in the way that she approaches politics and the Constitution of the United States, given her warm embrace of terrorism-adjacent people.
		Alrighty, coming up, we'll get into the Democratic response to the problems with Somali welfare fraud.
		That includes Tim Walz apparently being very, very offended at something.
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		Well, she has a piece in the New York Times calling herself a victim, of course, because this is the way that the left gets out of this.
		If you are engaged in something like this, if you know a bunch of people who engage in tremendous welfare fraud, and in fact, they are big donors to you and they are in your district, and you've made your career on pandering to that particular category of people.
		Well, the best way out of this is to call everybody who notes it racist.
		So she went to the pages of the New York Times to write a piece called Trump Knows He's Failing, Cue the Bigotry.
		Quote, Somali Americans remain resilient against the onslaught of attacks from the White House, but I am deeply worried about the ramifications of these tirades.
		When Mr. Trump maligns me, it increases the number of death threats that my family, staff members, and I receive.
		As a member of Congress, I am privileged to have access to security when these threats arise.
		What keeps me up at night is that people who share the identities I hold, black Somali, hijabi immigrant, will suffer the consequences of his words, which so often go unchecked by members of the Republican Party and other elected officials.
		All Americans have a duty to call out this hateful rhetoric when we hear it.
		Listening to Ilhan Omar lecture people about calling out hateful rhetoric is truly an astonishing thing.
		I mean, truly an amazing and astonishing thing.
		The president's dehumanizing and dangerous attacks on minority immigrant communities are nothing new.
		And then she notes that the president tried to pause Muslim migration to the country, which of course is not an act of bigotry.
		That is a debatable proposition, but it is certainly well within the purview of the president.
		He has since falsely accused Haitian migrants of eating pets and referred to Haiti and African nations as bleepole countries.
		Again, I'm still confused as to why labeling Haiti a bleephole is remotely controversial.
		It is a horrible place to live.
		That is not a slur against the people who have to live in Haiti.
		It's not a slur against the landscape.
		That is a terrible place to live.
		If ever the descriptor bleep poll applied, I mean, Haiti seems like that would be kind of like the place to, I mean, does she disagree?
		Is it a great place to live?
		Did I miss it?
		He has accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug peddlers across our border.
		Again, like just the litany of he's racist, therefore don't look over here where, you know, I've been pandering to all the people who are committing welfare fraud.
		Pretty incredible.
	Pretty incredible stuff from Ilhen Omar.
	And again, the attempts by some of the most radical people in our society to spin themselves as victims is pretty incredible.
	It's an amazing thing.
	So, for example, the Council on American Islamic Relations, Minnesota director, a person named Jaylani Hussein, went on national TV on CNN to claim that actually the real victims in the welfare fraud were not the taxpayers.
	The real victims were Somali Americans.
	I mean, sure, the crime was perpetrated by Somali Americans to the tune of a billion dollars, but the real victims, the people who are really victimized in all of this, are, you know, Somali Americans.
	It's a hot take.
	It's a weird take, but I guess not that weird from a representative of one of the most dishonest Muslim Brotherhood Associate organizations on planet Earth, the Council on American Islamic Relations.
boris sanchez ▲ ● ▼		Of the 70 or so people charged in that case, most are members of the Somali community.
boris sanchez ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that scandal is giving the White House ammunition for these attacks?
jaylani hussein ▲ ● ▼		I think this actually, first of all, fraud is wrong.
		In fact, this particular fraud impacts specifically low-income families, which many are Somali Americans.
		And in fact, they were victims in this particular moment.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		Really?
		Like that, okay.
		It's a take.
		It's a bit of a hot take.
		Jaylani Hussain then went on to explain that President Trump is actually targeting Somali Americans, not because he is concerned about the impacts of mass migration on American life.
		No, it's because they're a success story.
		If I were going to name mass migration success stories, I'm not sure this would come at the top of the list.
jaylani hussein ▲ ● ▼		Attacking the Somali American community is very unfortunate.
		The Somali American community have been here for now 30 plus years.
		And we came here predominantly, actually, by George Bush Sr., who provided refugees to come to the United States in the early 90s, like myself.
		And Somali Americans today pretty much complete the state of Minnesota.
		We are your educators, your teachers, your nurses, your doctors, and also doing some of the toughest jobs in factories across the state of Minnesota and across this country.
		Somali Americans are predominantly younger generation today.
		In fact, majority of us are now born in the United States.
		We are part and parcel of the success of the state of Minnesota.
		And not only are we in Congress and other parts of the country, other parts of industries, but the Somali American is actually a success story.
		And we believe that is at the heart of why President Trump is targeting us.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I'm if it were really that much of a success story, I feel like no one would be targeting it because there wouldn't be a lot to hang your hat on.
		But I guess this is the line that people are going with.
		State Senator Zaynab Muhammad, and from the same area, says Minnesota could not succeed or thrive without the Somali community, which is weird because Minnesota was succeeding and thriving without the Somali community prior to 1990, actually.
unidentified		State Senator Zayda Muhammad says these attacks won't stop with Somalis and their contributions can't easily be erased.
unidentified		We are in every industry and Minnesota would not be able to survive nor thrive without the Somali community here.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		That's, again, a take.
		Meanwhile, the Minnesota governor who oversaw all of this and note to our friends in the legacy media, this dude was the nominee for vice president under Kamala Harris.
		And we were told that he was really good at his job.
		It's weird that no one uncovered any of this, which happened back in 2020, 2021, until after that race was over.
		Strange.
		It took until now for this to become a major issue.
		Just weird how that works.
		Very strange.
		Anyway, he's very upset.
		He too is a victim.
		Tim Wall's a victim.
		He's a victim, he says, of the fact that the president of the United States called him retarded.
		Okay, my dude.
		I don't even know how to take this seriously.
		There's no way.
		It's not possible to take this seriously.
		Hey, the president calling you retarded.
		This is really?
		This is the big issue.
		Somehow, a billion dollars goes missing.
		You're presiding over the social breakdown and disorder in Minneapolis attendant to mass migration from third world countries.
		You have sitting Congress people who spend their days writing letters on behalf of people who tried to join ISIS in your state, and you're upset because people called you retarded?
		I mean, is I listen, let's be clear about the word retarded.
		It has re-entered the normal lexicon.
		It has.
		There's nothing anybody can do about it.
		No one is being broken by it.
		It's not the end of the world.
		The attempt to treat the word retarded the same way that we treated it 10, 15 years ago.
		It's silly.
		It's not real.
		You can pretend to be as offended now as you were 15 years ago about this, but no one is.
		And I mean, he's not super great at his job.
		He doesn't appear to be incredibly smart.
		I mean, here he was complaining that people were driving past his house, calling him retarded.
		Now, people, don't drive past people's house calling them retarded.
		Just as a general rule, don't do it.
unidentified		Also, I mean, this creates danger.
tim walz ▲ ● ▼		And I'll tell you what, in my time on this, I'd never seen this before.
		People driving my house by my house and using the R-word in front of people.
		This is shameful.
		And I have yet to see an elected official, a Republican elected official, say, you're right, that's shameful.
		He should not say it.
		So, look, I'm worried.
		We know how these things go.
		They start with taunts, they turn to violence.
		So, deeply concerned.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		I'm not really certain that the president calling him retarded is going to lead to violence against Tim Walz.
		By the way, of the things the president has called Tim Walz, this is like eighth on the list of offensiveness.
		Truly, man, good luck with this argument.
		Really, really.
		Good luck for the Democrats with the argument that actually Somali American migration is the thing that has made America historically wonderful and awesome.
		That welfare fraud is not about the size of the welfare state, that it's about racism, that mass migration itself is a wonderful thing inherently without any attempt to measure assimilation or economic mobility or education levels or anything.
		And also, that the biggest problem of all is, of course, that someone called Tim Walz the R-word.
		Okay, then.
		All righty, coming up, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth under fire from Democrats for something or other.
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		Okay, meanwhile, Democrats are trying to glom on to another narrative.
		That narrative remains the Pete Hegseth narrative.
		I said the other day that no one cares about the Pete Hegseth second strike narrative.
		And I will amend that.
		A few Democrats care.
		No one else cares.
		And the reason no one else cares is because the story does not appear to be true.
		It does not appear to be true.
		Remember, it was one Washington Post story that said that apparently Pete Hegseth said kill them all about the nuking, hitting with a hellfire missile, a cocaine boat coming from Venezuela that may or may not have had fentanyl on it.
		And then he apparently walked out of the room.
		The Washington Post didn't report the walking out of the room.
		The Washington Post said he ordered a second strike.
		It appears that part isn't true.
		There are zero witnesses, zero, who say that he ordered the second strike on the people who were in the water.
		Nonetheless, Democrats are very upset.
		According to the Wall Street Journal, Navy Admiral Frank Mitch Bradley in a closed-door briefing for lawmakers defended a controversial September 2nd attack on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.
		But Democrats found new grounds to question the legality of the strike after viewing a video of the attack.
		Bradley told lawmakers the two men who survived an initial strike on the boat attempted to continue their drug run, making them viable legal targets, according to two defense officials.
		The Admiral played footage of the hours-long incident, including his decision to order that follow-up strike, killing the two survivors.
		So Representative Adam Smith of Washington and Representative Jim Himes issued a joint statement condemning the strike.
		They said, quote, the video we saw today showed two shipwrecked individuals who had no means to move, much less pose an immediate threat, and yet they were killed by the United States military.
		Defense officials said the survivors were aboard the heavily damaged vessel.
		They were still attempting to salvage packages of drugs, and apparently they were still communicating with fellow narco-traffickers via radio, right?
		So that's the claim being made by the Defense Department.
		But apparently, according to Adam Smith, there's no way you could have looked at that video and found a lick of evidence there were any drugs anywhere around the tiny little piece of the boat that was still sticking above the surface of the water.
		There was nothing to see.
		So now we have an argument over the tape.
		And frankly, it seems to me that since we're all talking about it, we may as well just see the tape and then we can have the arguments ourselves.
		Tom Cotton saw the same exact tape.
		Here's the senator from Arkansas explaining that actually they were still active.
		They were not what is called ords of combat.
		They were not out of combat.
		They were not disabled.
		They could still get back in the fight, in other words.
tom cotton ▲ ● ▼		If you think these strikes are justified and righteous, as I do, and I want them to continue, then of course the second strike when you have two survivors who are trying to flip their boat back over and continue on their mission remain in the battle.
		Unlike a subsequent strike in which there was no such indication and they were what's called distressed or shipwrecked under the laws of the sea and the law of armed conflict.
		And our military went out and picked them up.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		Now, by the way, Representative Jim Hines, who's one of the people who's still condemning the Defense Department, and in particular this particular Admiral, he says that Hegseth has nothing to do with it.
		That actually the Admiral cleared Hegseth.
		He said Hegseth was not in the room.
		Hegseth did not oversee the second strike.
		When even the Democrats who are accusing the Defense Department of the problem are admitting that Hegsteth really had nothing to do with it, I'm not sure where the scandal lies.
		Here's Representative Jim Hines of Connecticut.
unidentified		So the last thing I'm going to say, the last thing I'm going to say is that the Admiral confirmed that there had not been a kill them all order and that there was not an order to grant no quarter.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so, I mean, wasn't that the original story?
		Wasn't that the locus of the original story?
		So I guess now they should move off of Hegseth, but apparently not.
		Apparently not.
		Mark Warner, the senator from Virginia, he says he remains troubled.
		Well, good for him, I suppose.
mark warner ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to say what the video was very troubling, and I think more people need to see it.
		But I want to better understand process justification and some of the items.
		I had a checklist of items that that I want to see that I think some of my many of my colleagues have asked for as well.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so is this dog going to hunt?
		Probably, probably not.
		Mark Thiessen has a good piece over at the Washington POST talking about the so-called double tap strike.
		He says president Barack Obama did it all the time.
		Indeed, in targeting cartels it has designated as foreign terrorist organizations, The Trump administration appears to be closely following the playbook pioneered by Obama.
		On taking office, Obama dramatically escalated the use of drone strikes against terrorism targets after ending the CIA's terrorist interrogation program, finding it was simpler to vaporize enemy combatants rather than capture them alive for questioning.
		So Obama forged what the New York Times called at the time a take-no-prisoners policy, ordering more than 540 drone strikes on terrorists in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, including one that killed an American citizen, Anwar al-Aliki, who was a terrorist.
		The strikes that Obama ordered were similar to those Trump has carried out in the waters off Venezuela.
		Obama used what were called signature strikes, in which the U.S. targeted patterns of behavior denoting terrorist activity, even when the precise identity of the individuals being targeted was unknown.
		And he routinely carried out so-called double-tap strikes, hitting a target once and then striking again to take out any survivors or other terrorists who rushed to the scene after the initial hit.
		David Shedd, former deputy director and acting director of the DIA in the Obama administration, said, quote, we used double taps all the time.
		You would get the initial signature off of a target that's been hit.
		And if you saw that they squirted and were injured, you hit them again.
		In fact, he said there was often a second predator ready to go that was fully expected to be used if you didn't have 100% coming out of the first hit and maybe a third hit.
		He said it was done routinely.
		There was bipartisan support on the Hill for doing it.
		Obama personally approved the kill lists.
		By the way, those kill lists, according to one estimate, killed up to 3,800 people.
		So, again, I just don't think this is going anywhere for the Democrats.
		The Democrats do, apparently, in all of this, have one more ripe line of attack.
		And that line of attack is the fact that people still think things are too expensive.
		Now, as I've explained many times, President Trump and any president handed an inflationary economy over the course of the last four or five years is going to have a problem.
		The reason is, even if you stabilize the prices, that's not actually what people want.
		What people say they want and what they want, two different things.
		When people say they want the inflation to stop, they don't mean they want the inflation to stop.
		They mean they want deflation.
		They want lower prices than currently exist.
		Not that if a box of cereal cost five bucks a year ago, it should also cost five bucks today.
		What they mean is that if a box of cereal cost five bucks last year, it should cost four bucks today.
		That's what they want.
		They want actual deflation.
		And what Trump is saying, quite correctly, is, well, you said you wanted me to stop the inflation.
		The inflation is running a little hotter than normal, but not much.
		I mean, we're at like 2.5%, 3%, as opposed to 9% to 11% under Joe Biden.
		And in that sense, Trump's been handed an unenviable job because really the only way to radically decrease prices, as we have discussed many times on the show, is to either radically increase supply or to lower demand.
		Lowering demand typically comes along with a recession.
		Increase in supply comes with productivity increases.
		The problem when it comes to food, for example, is that productivity increases, we're pretty productive.
		We have a lot of food, like a lot of food.
		And so the price of food is unlikely to come down unless demand drops off in some significant way.
		With that said, the polling shows that when people feel stretched, they blame whoever's in office.
		Politico has a poll out showing that almost half of Americans say the cost of living in the U.S. is the worst they can remember it being, a view held by 37% of 2024 Trump voters.
		Now, by the way, that can certainly be true.
		Because again, if it's 3% higher this year than it was last year, and last year, it was 11% higher than the year before.
		Well, it is, in fact, the worst that it has ever been in terms of affordability, in terms of pricing.
		I mean, that's reality, but it doesn't mean that things are escalating as poorly under Donald Trump as they were under Joe Biden.
		They're not, not even remotely.
		Americans also say the affordability crisis is now Trump's responsibility, with 46% saying it is his economy now and that his administration is responsible for the costs they struggle with.
		Now, again, that shouldn't be a shock.
		He's the current president of the United States.
		What are they going to say?
		That it was Biden stealing.
		What difference would that make?
		GOP strategist Ford O'Connell said after that last Tennessee election, that Tennessee congressional seven election, in which the Republican beat the Democrat by nine points, it's a small warning.
		It's one that Republicans need to understand.
		So, again, there need to be radical productivity increases.
		People do need to feel the economy moving in their direction.
		Wall Street continues to churn.
		I mean, there is no question right now that the stock market has been doing quite well.
		It will continue to do, I believe, quite well for the next few months minimum because there's just so much money churning through the system right now, particularly in the direction of AI, that I say we're in a bubble.
		I do believe we're in a bubble, but the bubble can continue to expand before a contraction comes.
		Democrats, meanwhile, are putting their foot on the gas with regard to the affordability argument.
		The beauty of being a Democrat is that you can propose a horribly inflationary and regulation-ridden system like Obamacare, ram it through in the name of lowering costs.
		You don't lower costs, and then you blame the Republicans for not lowering the costs.
	It's beautiful.
	One of the beautiful things about big government politics is that you get to claim that when it fails, you need more big government.
	So, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, made that case yesterday.
	He says, Obamacare isn't broken.
	Obamacare is awesome.
	Also, we're going to need another $350 billion to fund it.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		Shows you how out of touch they are.
		55% of people who voted for Trump in November of 2024 support extending the credits.
		55% of Trump voters.
		The Republicans are so much in a bubble.
		They're so out of touch.
		They don't understand the anguish and concern of the American people.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, no, Republicans are saying that that's your fault.
		You designed a system to fail and then it failed, and then you turned around and blamed everybody else.
		By the way, you can't claim that the system you designed is working when you keep requiring gigantic infusions of taxpayer cash in order to keep it functional.
		But that's exactly what Chuck Schumer is saying.
		He says that it is necessary for Trump to extend the ACA tax credits.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		What Trump ought to do is talk to the Republican senators and say, vote for this proposal.
		That's the way to solve the problem.
		That's just about the only way to solve the problem before the January 1st deadline.
		I mean, look at it.
		They don't even have a plan.
		They don't even have two plans they're divided about.
		They're all over the lot saying many different things, fighting with each other.
		It's crazy.
		It's just crazy on such an important issue that they would have that.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, again, the reason that they are pushing back is because you keep designing systems that fail and then you ask them to provide you more money.
		Now, there's some talk on the Republican side about the possibility of at least temporarily extending the ACA subsidies in order to avoid the political blowback from the increase in health care costs while some sort of transitional plan is made.
		I could see that as a compromise solution if there is an actual alternative plan that takes form over the course of the next year.
		And so you package ACA tax subsidies, which are basically just giveaways.
		You package those with actual changes put in place over the course of the next year or two before President Trump has to leave office in order to actually horse correct the system.
		That would be the only fair trade here.
		Democrats, however, are saying that they want essentially a clean ACA tax subsidy expansion.
		They don't want to change anything, which of course is a road to more and more and more government interventionism.
		That is why Republicans are resisting.
		Alrighty, coming up, the pipe bomber from January 6th has now been arrested.
		We'll bring you the details first.
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		All righty, folks, get ready for some fast facts.
		The DOJ has now announced that the pipe bomber from January 6th was arrested, which is pretty amazing because, again, January 6th, last I checked your calendar, was over four years ago.
		So well done by the FBI and the DOJ for actually figuring out who planted a pipe bomb, multiple actually, outside the RNC and the DNC ahead of the January 6th riot.
		According to the New York Post, accused D.C. pipe bomber Brian Cole Jr.'s face was revealed for the first time since he was busted for allegedly planting those explosive devices.
		He is a young black man.
		His politics are unclear.
		Apparently, according to Pam Bondi, this happened because the Trump administration made the case a priority where the Biden administration had not.
		Here was the Attorney General.
pam bondi ▲ ● ▼		The FBI, along with U.S. Attorney Pierrow and all of our prosecutors, have worked tirelessly for months sifting through evidence that had been sitting at the FBI with the Biden administration for four long years.
		Let me be clear.
		There was no new tip.
		There was no new witness, just good, diligent police work and prosecutorial work.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		The bomber was charged with the use of an explosive device and the attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials.
		There'd be more charges to come.
		Now, again, totally unclear what the politics of this person were, why he did it, but there is something to the idea that if they were using the same exact evidence the Biden administration had, and the Biden administration basically memory-holed this entire case because it, what, misdirected resources away from January 6th prosecutions for trespass inside the Capitol or whatever.
		Politicization of justice is always a bad thing.
		Democrats, by the way, are trying to play the reverse.
		So meanwhile, Mark Warner, Senator from Virginia, he's saying that the DOJ is picking and choosing by actually taking time to find the pipe bomber.
mark warner ▲ ● ▼		It kind of makes me looking at this crowd doing a victory lap when all the senior FBI officials across all key divisions have been fired for political purposes.
		When in some field offices, up to 45% of the FBI officers who were doing things like counter espionage and cyber have been assigned to do immigration cases.
		It's a little rich that they're saying they're America safer.
		How much earlier could we have caught this guy if resources hadn't been diverted?
		And I hope it would also remind folks that on January 6th, I was here at the Capitol on January 6th.
		It was an ugly, awful day.
		And this administration and this president basically pardoned all the perpetrators.
		You know, it's that kind of picking and choosing of facts from this crowd that makes me a little bit crazy.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so I'm just wondering why you had to look for an angle on how the arrest of the pipe bomber was bad.
		Why do Democrats do that?
		Why do they always feel necessary?
		It's like the magic of Trump.
		Trump does an obviously good thing.
		Members of his administration doing an obviously good thing, and Democrats have to somehow come up with a rationale for why it's actually a bad thing.
		Can't we just say, like, it's good that the pipe bomber was arrested?
		Meanwhile, there was, in fact, a large-scale screw-up with regard to the pipe bomber.
		There was a report from the media outlet, The Blaze, that misidentified the alleged pipe bomber.
		We are now finding out new details about how that happened.
		Apparently, according to CBS News, multiple sources said a unit overseen by director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabber drafted a memo identifying the woman and describing allegations she had placed the explosive devices outside the RNC and DNC.
		The memo was written after ODNI was made aware of allegations from an outside source, according to the ODNI.
		Apparently, the agency received a tip from a person affiliated with the media organization about potential criminal wrongdoing by an individual believing to be working at an intelligence agency and documenting it in a memo.
		And then a copy of the unfinished memo was given to senior staff at the security officer's workplace.
		And then a short time after that unfinished memo began to circulate, Blaze News published details similar to those in the draft, including the woman's full name.
		So that doesn't seem particularly great.
		That seems like a bad way to do law enforcement, shall we say, and gathering of evidence.
		All right, meanwhile, in gigantic media news, Netflix is going to buy Warner Brothers, apparently.
		Of course, that's a big win for Netflix.
		They were up against Paramount, Skydance, as well as Comcast.
		Warner Brothers has some pretty significant assets that includes HBO Max.
		It includes all the Batman properties, for example.
		The transaction is comprised of cash and stock.
		It's valued at about $27.75 per Warner Brothers share.
		So the equity value of the deal is $72 billion, total enterprise value, $82.7 billion.
		That is a hefty chunk of change right there.
		That will help Netflix.
		Netflix has been, I think, struggling to bring aboard excellent content recently.
		And so bringing on the Wizard of Oz and the Harry Potter franchise and the DC Comics universe, as well as the Sopranos, Game of Thrones, is like big wins for Netflix, for sure, for sure.
		Netflix co-CEO, Ted Sarando, said, I know some of you are surprised we're making this acquisition.
		I understand why.
		We have already made incredible shows and movies and a great business model.
		It's working for talent, but this is a rare opportunity.
		Now, again, the reality is that Netflix was having to expend billions of dollars, like billions upon billions of dollars every year to build its own entertainment catalog.
		It's very, very expensive.
		And so them buying up all these legacy properties is pretty helpful.
		It allows the creators they hire to now use that IP as the basis for further IP.
		Netflix has already agreed to pay an almost $6 billion reverse breakup fee if the deal is not approved.
		So should this be stopped by regulators?
		The answer here is no.
		It'll make consumption better, frankly.
		So there are two theories of antitrust.
		Theory one of antitrust is that anybody who gets too big in a particular market is violative of monopoly principles.
		That is not true here.
		You don't have to be on Netflix.
		You can go to Apple TV.
		You can head on over to Paramount Plus.
		There are plenty of places you can get your entertainment.
		This is not a monopoly concern.
		The other is, does it make it worse for consumers?
		And the answer here is almost certainly the opposite.
		It probably makes it better.
		You'll see consolidation.
		Instead of you having to get both a subscription to HBO Max and to Netflix, now maybe you only have to get to Netflix.
		Earlier this week, Paramount raised questions about the fairness and adequacy of the sales process, arguing that Warner Brothers discovery favored Netflix.
		But, you know, we'd have to see exactly what the offer was from Paramount.
		Did it outstrip it in terms of money?
		If not, then this seems like an empty complaint.
		And meanwhile, speaking of the state of media, Barry Weiss over at CBS News has been making some pretty major moves.
		She is, of course, slated, I believe, the week after next to interview Erica Kirk, which should be fascinating.
		Meanwhile, older members of the legacy media, former members, are lamenting the supposed decline of CBS News, which is kind of incredible considering that CBS News was in the toilet before the Ellison family took it over and Barry was put in charge.
		Here is a Connie Chung lamenting the state of CBS News.
unidentified		What's it like to watch CBS right now?
		We don't.
		I mean, I can't.
		The paradigm has completely changed in news, and we have so much opinion that the truth doesn't hold value anymore.
		And what we end up doing is trying to, we as consumers, trying to find the truth.
		We can't find good old-fashioned facts.
		And it distresses me so terribly.
		CBS is a whole different organization that I had worked for.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so again, the idea that CBS has been doing a wonderful job up until now, and that Barry is somehow going to challenge their journalistic integrity, reverse, reverse.
		60 Minutes has been a bleep show.
		And if Barry can somehow fix it, good for her.
		Meanwhile, the most salacious media story of the day comes courtesy of the former couple, Olivia Nuzzy and Ryan Lizza.
		So this one is just people who deserve each other.
		According to the Wall Street Journal, Olivia Nuzzy seemed like she was floating above it all.
		You'll remember her from, you know, having had a sex dating scandal with RFK Jr.
		So a year after that, she had a new contract at Vanity Affair, a book coming out where she would finally address the mistakes that cost her a prominent place in DC's media elite.
		There was a splashy rollout, a glowing New York Times profile, an excerpt to appear in the magazine, accompanied by an audacious abstract nude portrait of the author, which, again, it sounds like from Ryan Liz's descriptions, I'm not sure that half of DC needs a portrait.
		Then, apparently, Liza started talking.
		So he's her former fiancé, and he is miffed.
		He is miffed because they were together.
		And apparently, she was of questionable moral character, but they were perfectly happy to write books together.
		They were writing a million-dollar book together for Simon and Schuster.
		Apparently, after she has now written this new book, he said that the book forced his hand.
		He launched a series about Nuzzie in his Substack letter Tilos in November ahead of the new book's planned release, offering part one for free and raising the paywall after the first installment.
		He's like, I should make some money off my ex.
		Nuzzie said, I knew the second I poked my head up from my exile, I was probably going to be met by some madman charging me with an axe.
		I didn't know which man it was going to be.
		Well, I mean, you were engaged to that one.
		So I mean, there's that.
		Nuzzie is now promoting her new book, American Kanto, which was published on Tuesday.
		Lizza continues to unspool a salacious, serialized version of his side of the story on Substack.
		So he's aiming, I assume, for some sort of magical book deal of his own.
		Apparently, in the first Substack post, Lizzo took aim at Nuzzie's journalistic integrity, airing alleged text message exchanges, love poetry, and recorded conversations meant to incriminate his ex.
		So he sounds like a delightful person.
		But, you know, they deserve each other, as I say.
		He wrote that her affair with Kennedy was many, was just one of many ethical mistakes she made as a journalist.
		Apparently, she had another affair with another politician she'd profiled for New York magazine.
		She had an artist secretly record a session with President Trump in Florida.
		Nuzzie said, quote, I suggest people refer to what I have said about my own life rather than the distortions or conspiracies promoted by someone I was at least fortunate enough not to marry.
		Lizza then responded by saying, telling the truth is not harassment.
		Accountability is not an axe.
		Again, I feel like this is the world's worst journalistic rom-com.
		Eventually, they'll end up back together after they both burn themselves to the ground.
		Honestly, I think that both of these people probably should not earn your trust.
		Her book, by the way, has been called a tell-nothing memoir by the Atlantic.
		A New York Times reviewer called it a self-serious and disappointing book.
		I do love that we live in a country where a journalist is sexting a politician she is covering and then gets a great book deal out of it.
		Man, oh man, America's a great place.
		Anyone can succeed here, truly.
		And meanwhile, the Supreme Court has now allowed Texas to use its new congressional map.
		So you'll recall that there were some questions about whether Texas's redistricting was ever going to go forward via the court system.
		That would have been a big defeat for Republicans if they had tried to redistrict in Texas and only in exchange received a redistricting in California, adding Democrat seats.
		Instead, the Supreme Court said that it will allow Texas to use a congressional map, adding as many as five Republican seats for next year's midterm elections.
		The justices on Thursday set aside a lower court decision from last month that blocked the new electoral lines in order to Texas to use existing ones.
		The unsigned order from the Supreme Court said the district court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal state balance in elections.
		The court's three liberal justices dissented.
		And Elena Kagan accused the majority of substituting its own judgment for the lower court's factual findings.
		So this is good news for Republicans, obviously.
		How does that reshape the map?
		What you see right now over at Calci, one of our sponsors, is that the Democrats are now heavily favored to take Congress.
		That has only been growing over the course of the past month.
		If you go back to October, they were slightly favored, about 60-40.
		Today, they are favored about 80-20.
		Obviously, Republicans need every seat they can get, but they are running an uphill race.
		So had they lost this case and also been facing this uphill battle, it could have been a wipeout.
		Alrighty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.
		I'm going to be jumping into that vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag and answering some of your questions.
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unidentified		Oh, this is an illusion.
		An echo of a voice that has died.
		And soon that echo will cease.
		They say that Merlin is mad.
		They say he was a king and doved.
		The son of a princess of lost Atlantis.
		They say the future and the past are known to him.
		Let the fire and the wind tell him their secrets.
		Let the magic of the hill folk and druids come forth at his easy command.
		They say he slew hundreds.
		Hundreds, do you hear?
		That the world burned and trembled at his wrath.
		The Merlin died long before you and I were born.
		Merlin Emeris has returned to the land of the living.
		Vortigan is gone.
		Rum is gone.
		The Saxon is here.
		Saxon Hengist has assembled the greatest war host ever seen in the island of the mighty.
		And before the summer is through, he means to take the throne.
		And he will have it.
		If we are too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to take up arms against him, here is your hope.
		A king will arise to hold all Britain in his hand.
		A high king who will be the wonder of the world.
		You to a future of peace.
		There'll be no peace in these lands till we are all dust.
		Men of the island of the mighty!
tim walz ▲ ● ▼		You stand together!
tim walz ▲ ● ▼		You stand as Britons!
unidentified		You stand as one.
		Great darkness is falling upon this land.
		These brothers are our only hope to stand against it.
		Not our only hope.
		Esay Merthin slew 70 men with his own hands.
		At Gathay, he slew 500.
tim walz ▲ ● ▼		No man is capable of such a thing.

▲