Dec. 11, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show
51:26
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| The United States seizes a Venezuelan oil tanker. | ||
| Is war near or is something else happening? | ||
| Plus, what is our strategy on Russia on China? | ||
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| So the big news of the day is that the United States has now seized a very large oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast. | ||
| President Trump announced this yesterday. | ||
| He announced that the United States had pursued the seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker. | ||
| It was headed to Cuba. | ||
| Attorney General Pam Bondi said the U.S. Coast Guard, the FBI, and Homeland Security investigations executed that seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport oil from Venezuela and Iran in defiance of sanctions. | ||
| This is according to the Washington Post. | ||
| Here was the president yesterday. | ||
| As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela. | ||
|
unidentified
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Large tanker, very large. | |
| Largest one ever seized actually. | ||
| And other things are happening. | ||
| So you'll be seeing that later, and you'll be talking about that later with some other people. | ||
| The president did not, in fact, make clear what all those other things might be, although, of course, he has said before that there may be some operations that are authorized not just in the water, but also on the land. | ||
| And there's been talk about a no-fly zone established above Venezuela. | ||
| All of this is external pressure, presumably to force the possibility of a regime change in Venezuela without serious threat to American troops going in en masse on the ground. | ||
| That oil tanker, according to the Washington Post, had been sanctioned by the United States, according to Attorney General Bondi, due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations. | ||
| And then she also shared a video that shows U.S. forces jumping out of helicopters and searching the large vessel on foot. | ||
| Here's what that looks like. | ||
| So here you can see this gigantic oil tanker, huge oil tanker, and an American helicopter. | ||
| And you can see soldiers repelling down onto this oil tanker, presumably to go look for the oil, to confiscate it, to stop the ship from moving toward its target. | ||
| Yeah, again, the United States military is unparalleled at what it does. | ||
| You can see these soldiers with their guns drawn toward the control booth. | ||
| That's an impressive thing. | ||
| Again, when the United States military comes, it doesn't play around. | ||
| President Trump described the vessel as both very large and the largest one ever seized, actually. | ||
| He also said when asked what would happen to the oil, well, maybe we'll keep it. | ||
| What happens to the oil on this ship? | ||
| Well, we keep it, I guess. | ||
|
unidentified
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Where does it go? | |
| What forces it goes to? | ||
| Well, you have to follow the tanker. | ||
| You don't hear good news, man. | ||
| Just follow the tanker. | ||
|
unidentified
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Follow it. | |
| But we're going to, like you assume, we're going to keep the oil. | ||
| Well, the president of the United States has always made no bones about the fact that he believes that if the United States is engaged in armed conflict somewhere, that we should keep the spoils that we reap. | ||
| You remember he said that about the Iraq war. | ||
| He suggested, hey, if you're going to actually do that war, then you may as well take the oil as some form of compensation. | ||
| When it comes to the Venezuelan government shipping oil over to Iran in violation of sanctions or allowing the Iranians to combine their oil with Venezuelan oil and ship that elsewhere and ship the money back to Iran, obviously keeping the spoils would be worthwhile. | ||
| One person familiar with the seizure in the administration told the Washington Post, quote, depending on what legal justification they use to seize the vessel, it could create a lot of problems for the regime. | ||
| This, of course, comes amidst the Trump administration blowing Venezuelan drug boats out of the water. | ||
| Venezuelan oil is one of the biggest sponsors of Cuba. | ||
| Cuba, of course, has heavy sanctions on it. | ||
| It doesn't have a very strong independent economy at all. | ||
| The communist island nation has had extensive blackouts this year. | ||
| Very little of that Venezuelan oil is going to Cuba. | ||
| But if it turns out that the United States is now prepared to interdict all oil that may or may not be headed for Iran or from Iran, then this could absolutely cripple the Venezuelan economy even more than it already has. | ||
| Again, according to Francisco Minaldi, a director of Latin America Energy Program at Rice University, if the Trump administration continues to seize oil tankers in a systematic way, targeting those particularly destined for China, that could significantly limit the willingness of black market fleets to go to Venezuela, dealing a major economic blow to Nicolas Maduro. | ||
| And again, the economic crisis could easily precipitate some sort of palace coup or the military deciding to overthrow Maduro if you could find somebody to actually do it. | ||
| A huge percentage of Venezuela's economy is dependent on oil exports. | ||
| We asked our friends and sponsors over at Comet, a project of perplexity, what percentage of Venezuela's economy is dependent on oil exports. | ||
| And according to Comet, Venezuela's economy is highly dependent on oil, mainly through its impact on exports and government revenue. | ||
| Apparently, oil accounts for over 80 to 90% of all total export earnings in recent years. | ||
| So, if that were to shut down, you'd basically collapse whatever is left of the Venezuelan economy. | ||
| And that seems to be something that the United States is pursuing at this point. | ||
| The president also has been making clear that he is going to put pressure on Gustavo Petro over in Colombia. | ||
| Colombia, of course, is historically a relatively conservative state. | ||
| Gustavo Petro, the Colombian president, is more oriented toward China, toward Iran. | ||
| He is a far-left socialist. | ||
| President Trump was asked about Petro's criticism of U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. | ||
| Petro referred to those efforts as barbarian. | ||
| Here's President Trump warning Petro that he better wise up. | ||
|
unidentified
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Have you considered talking to the president of Colombia who you called a drug dealer? | |
| No, I haven't really thought too much about him. | ||
| He's been fairly hostile to the United States. | ||
| I haven't given him a lot of thought. | ||
| He's going to have himself some big problems if he doesn't wise up. | ||
|
unidentified
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Did you say that? | |
| Colombia is producing a lot of drugs. | ||
| They have cocaine factories that make cocaine, as you know, and they sell it right into the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
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So he better wise up or he'll be next. | |
| He'll be next. | ||
| I hope he's listening. | ||
| He's going to be next. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mr. President, we don't like people where they kill people. | |
| They sell drugs, they kill them in the United States, and Colombia is a major manufacturer of drugs, meaning cocaine in particular. | ||
| Okay, so the United States could obviously put pressure on the Petro regime in Colombia. | ||
| The next scheduled election for president in Colombia happens next May. | ||
| So there's every possibility that Petro could be in trouble as well. | ||
| All of this seems to be part of a broader national security strategy pursued by the White House. | ||
| That national security strategy, which we talked about at length just the other day, focuses a lot on South America, on Latin America. | ||
| It focuses specifically on the idea that the United States ought to be the dominant power in our own hemisphere. | ||
| So, according to that national security document, the foreign influence of China or of Iran or Russia in the Western hemisphere ought to stop. | ||
| Quote, the United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity, a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region. | ||
| The terms of our alliances and the terms upon which we may provide any kind of aid must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets, broadly defined. | ||
| The United States has achieved success as the national security strategy in rolling back outside influence in the Western Hemisphere by demonstrating with specificity how many hidden costs are embedded in allegedly low-cost foreign assistance. | ||
| In other words, we've told other countries that if they take Chinese help, well, they may be also taking Chinese surveillance and debt traps. | ||
| In the Western Hemisphere, according to the National Security Strategy, the United States should make clear that American goods, services, and technologies are a far better buy in the long run because they are higher quality and do not come with the same kind of strings as other countries' assistance. | ||
| So, the national security strategy of the United States is very much a sort of muscular Monroe doctrine suggesting that the Western Hemisphere be made clear of outside influence. | ||
| Alrighty, coming up, we'll get to other threats to the United States. | ||
| Which ones are we facing down first? | ||
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| Let's get back to the table. | ||
| Now, realistically speaking, the threats to the United States, other than immigration, which of course has been a threat, but is a threat that has been largely mitigated by closing our southern border. | ||
| The threats to the United States are predominantly not from South America and Latin America. | ||
| Yes, what happens in the Western hemisphere has an impact on us. | ||
| What happens with regards to China and Russia has an even larger impact on us because the world is much, much smaller than it was when James Monroe was president. | ||
| And thus, I find it sort of bizarre that the Trump administration is at the same time attempting to overthrow the Maduro regime via economic pressure. | ||
| That appears to be what they're doing. | ||
| But also at the same time, to somehow allow for the possibility of an increased Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. | ||
| This makes zero sense to me. | ||
| Russia, Venezuela, these are allies. | ||
| China is an ally. | ||
| Iran is an ally. | ||
| North Korea is an ally. | ||
| It is a network of allied far-left states and or Islamist states. | ||
| And fighting one but making nice with the others is unlikely to result in anything to America's benefit. | ||
| A broadening of the Russian sphere of influence is not going to make America stronger. | ||
| And the reality is, as much as President Trump likes to dunk on the Europeans, and hell, I enjoy a good windmill jam on the Europeans from time to time, the notion that we somehow hold more in common with Vladimir Putin than we do with the Europeans, broadly speaking, is nonsense. | ||
| It is not true. | ||
| We hold virtually nothing in common with Vladimir Putin. | ||
| Contrary to popular expectation and opinion, Russia is not, in fact, a state that is wildly pro-religion. | ||
| Russia is not, in fact, a state that agrees with us on foreign policy perspectives. | ||
| It is not a country that seeks its own sphere of influence without any reference to the United States. | ||
| It actually believes it ought to be not just a regional power, but a global power in opposition to the United States. | ||
| Which is why a brand new plan apparently unveiled by the Wall Street Journal with regards to Ukraine is somewhat disturbing. | ||
| According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration in recent weeks has handed its European counterparts a series of documents, each a single page, laying out its vision for the reconstruction of Ukraine and the return of Russia to the global economy. | ||
| The proposals have sparked an intense battle at the negotiating table between America and its traditional allies in Europe. | ||
| The outcome stands to profoundly alter the economic map of the continent. | ||
| The U.S. blueprint has been spelled out apparently in appendices to current peace proposals. | ||
| They're not public, but they've been described to the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Those documents detail plans for U.S. financial firms and other businesses to tap roughly $200 billion of frozen Russian assets for projects in Ukraine, including a massive new data center to be powered by a nuclear plant currently occupied by Russian troops. | ||
| Another appendix, however, offers America's broad strokes vision for bringing Russia's economy in from the cold, with the U.S. investing in strategic sectors from rare earth extraction to drilling for oil in the Arctic and helping to restore Russian energy flows to Western Europe and the rest of the world. | ||
| Which, again, is pretty astonishing. | ||
| And basically, it is saying, okay, we'll take a little bit of your money to pay for some projects and rebuilding in Ukraine, and maybe that sweetens the deal for Ukraine. | ||
| But we'll then reopen the world economy to Russia. | ||
| Well, if that happens and Russia has a vast influx of cash, you think they're going to sit still on Ukraine for very long? | ||
| The minute that they sense vulnerability, they will move. | ||
| Apparently, in a call Wednesday, President Trump discussed the peace process with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Murz and British Prime Minister Kier Starmer. | ||
| The rumor is, very strong rumor, that the Trump administration has basically told the Ukrainians they need to sign on the dotted line by Christmas or U.S. support will go away, which of course would be incredibly self-defeating. | ||
| Russia would love for U.S. support to go away. | ||
| And by the way, the Europeans are beginning to act. | ||
| The European Parliament and member state governments, according to the journal, finalized a legislative agreement to phase out all Russian pipeline gas within two years. | ||
| Again, this move by the Trump administration to make nice with the Russians, it's hard to see that as anything other than a bizarre attempt to allow for spheres of influence, not just with regard to Russia, but also, as we'll discuss momentarily, with China. | ||
| For Ukraine, the question is: why would you sign a deal when the United States is cutting support to Ukraine in the middle of a war now? | ||
| Why would Ukraine believe that if Russia attacks again, the United States will rush back in with all of its resources? | ||
| Apparently, according to Axios, Ukraine has now given the Trump administration its point-by-point response to the latest draft of the U.S. peace plan. | ||
| Apparently, Zelensky's national security advisor and chief negotiator, Rustem Umarov, sent the Ukrainian response to Jared Kushner, President Trump's advisor and son-in-law. | ||
| A Ukrainian official said the response includes comments and proposed amendments to make the whole thing doable. | ||
| So is there a middle ground here? | ||
| Here's my problem. | ||
| Have we heard any response from the Russians whatsoever on what they are willing to do? | ||
| Have they moved one iota? | ||
| Have they moved one inch since the beginning of the war in terms of their demands? | ||
| Or at least since the latest iteration of demands, which mostly happened about three years ago? | ||
| The answer seems to be no. | ||
| Meanwhile, what exactly are we doing with China? | ||
| Now, it may very well be that right now, we have some military problems in the Far East that make China the favorite in a local or regional war in that arena. | ||
| According to the UK Telegraph, China would defeat the U.S. military in a war over Taiwan, according to a top secret U.S. government assessment. | ||
| U.S. reliance on costly, sophisticated weapons leaves it exposed to China's ability to mass-produce cheaper systems in overwhelming numbers, according to a highly classified overmatch brief. | ||
| A national security official under President Biden, who reviewed the document, is said to have turned pale on realizing Beijing had redundancy and after redundancy for every trick we had up our sleeve. | ||
| So in the brief, which examines what would happen if the U.S. went to war with China over Taiwan, for example, the USS Gerald R. Ford would be sent to that arena where it would likely be destroyed. | ||
| Again, that's because China is engaged in drone warfare. | ||
| Also, they have ship-destroying YJ-17 missiles that travel at eight times the speed of sound. | ||
| And yet the United States continues to play a bizarre game with its defense industries where we fight yesterday's war. | ||
| Apparently, the Pentagon is planning to build nine additional Ford-class aircraft carriers, but it hasn't deployed a single hypersonic missile as of yet. | ||
| According to Eric Gomez, a research fellow at the Taiwan Security Monitor, he said he did his own war game between the United States and China over Taiwan. | ||
| He said, even if the U.S. would win, the U.S. would suffer heavy losses, including a lot of ships. | ||
| A lot of F-35s and other tactical aircraft in the theater are degraded pretty rapidly as well. | ||
| He said, I think the high cost of it was really sobering when we did the after-action summaries. | ||
| We were like, okay, you guys lost 100-plus fifth-generation aircraft, multiple destroyers, a couple of submarines, a couple of carriers. | ||
| So, is our advantage in that arena real enough for us to take on China? | ||
| Again, this is why rebuilding the military is absolutely necessary and getting creative about how exactly we do that would be absolutely necessary as well. | ||
| It's also why it would be worthwhile to listen to Sham Sankar, who's been a guest on our program, the CTO at Palanzir, who's been talking for a while about modernizing our military procurement strategy and fighting future wars, not the wars of the past. | ||
| Well, if we are going to face down China, is it a good idea for the president to let NVIDIA sell its H-200 chip to China? | ||
| According to the Wall Street Journal editorial board, President Trump's move to ease export controls on computer trips illustrates his confusing China policy to the extent he has one. | ||
| In the first term, he changed America's China debate as a trade and security hawk. | ||
| Eight years later, he's sounding like the post-Cold War globalist he denounces who thought the lure of commerce would make the world safer. | ||
| According to the journal, one reason is that Beijing's semiconductor industrial policy has resulted in colossal waste and mismanagement. | ||
| Huawei has struggled designing high-end and high-powered chips needed to train those advanced AI models. | ||
| And this has frustrated Beijing, which presumably is why China keeps trying to smuggle NVIDIA H-200 chips into the country. | ||
| Now, President Trump wants to allow China to just buy those H-200s without any strings attached. | ||
| So is that a smart move? | ||
| The 25% tax payments that NVIDIA will pay to the Treasury Department, that is not enough to pay for the possibility of a competitive China in the AI sphere. | ||
| And it's hard to read that as anything other than a sort of tacit recognition of Chinese power in the Far East or Russian power in Eastern Europe, none of which is going to redound to the benefit of the world. | ||
| The United States, as the world's global hegemon, you're going to miss it when it's gone. | ||
| That doesn't mean that we ought to police every single thing happening on planet Earth. | ||
| It does mean that we do have to push our opponents geopolitically off the ball. | ||
| Well, I will say that at least the House seems to be moving towards something useful. | ||
| The House on Wednesday apparently approved a $900 billion defense policy bill that gives U.S. troops a raise and codifies a lot of President Trump's national security agenda. | ||
| It seeks to curb his pullback from Europe and mandate more Pentagon consultation with Congress. | ||
| The bill goes to the Senate. | ||
| It will probably pass there as well. | ||
| So, again, we actually do need a military rebuild. | ||
| That means contracting to do more sophisticated things, newer things, robotics, AI, all the rest. | ||
| We can't just build yesterday's aircraft carriers anymore and hope to defeat our enemies. | ||
| More on the economy in just one moment. | ||
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| Now, meanwhile, all of this is dependent on a robust American economy. | ||
| Yesterday, the Federal Reserve cut the rates as expected by the prediction markets at our sponsor Calci. | ||
| There were three dissents. | ||
| It wasn't unanimous. | ||
| According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve officials cut interest rates for a third straight meeting, but signaled they might be done for now in the midst of unusual divisions over the path forward. | ||
| That decision to cut the benchmark federal funds rate by a quarter point is aimed at protecting against a slowdown in hiring. | ||
| The Fed voted nine to three. | ||
| That is the first time in six years that there were three officials casting dissents. | ||
| Two thought there was no use in the reduction. | ||
| Another actually wanted a much larger reduction, like half a point, as opposed to 0.25%. | ||
| Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, he said, well, you know, the reason we cut is because job markets actually might be shrinking. | ||
| It's possible we're missing some data here. | ||
| In October, I said that there was no certainty of moving, and that was indeed correct. | ||
| I said it's possible you could think about it that way, but I was careful to say other people could look at it differently. | ||
| So why did we move today? | ||
| You know, I would say point to a couple of things. | ||
| First of all, gradual cooling in the labor market has continued. | ||
| Unemployment is now up three-tenths from June through September. | ||
| Payroll jobs averaging 40,000 per month since April. | ||
| We think there's an overstatement in these numbers by about 60,000. | ||
| So that would be negative 20,000 per month. | ||
| And also, just to point out one other thing, surveys of households and businesses both show declining supply and demand for workers. | ||
| So I think you can say that the labor market has continued to cool gradually, maybe just a touch more gradually than we thought. | ||
| Okay, so that presumably is what prompted the Federal Reserve to lower those interest rates because again, there's liquidity in the economy, but the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate: keep inflation low and keep unemployment low. | ||
| And so if they feel like people are losing their jobs, the idea is to inject more liquidity into the economy, put more money in there. | ||
| That will cause people to spend more, which will cause more people to have jobs. | ||
| That at least is the logic. | ||
| Now, with that said, it's also possible that the jobs market is at least in part stagnant or shrinking, partially because of, for example, things like, yes, wait for it, tariffs. | ||
| Jerome Powell pointed out that inflation on the price of goods is in fact up because of tariffs. | ||
| So when you're talking affordability, the tariffs do have an impact. | ||
| Total PCE prices rose 2.8% over the 12 months ending in September. | ||
| And excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core PCE prices also rose 2.8%. | ||
| These readings are higher than earlier in the year as inflation for goods has picked up, reflecting the effects of tariffs. | ||
| Okay, so, and he said the thing that he's not supposed to say, if you don't want to tick off President Trump, but it also happens to be true. | ||
| When you see an increase in the price of goods that you buy at the grocery store because there is a tax on the goods coming from abroad, obviously you're going to see some inflation. | ||
| So we have the beginnings of what looks like, not in major measure, but at least a little inkling of what you would call stagflation, continued too high pricing, combined with a jobs market that might be shrinking. | ||
| Now, is any of that a serious problem? | ||
| Again, inflation is way down from where it was a year ago. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Also, the employment market continues to remain robust. | ||
| That is also true. | ||
| And President Trump is not wrong when he says that the economic pain people are feeling is largely because of Joe Biden. | ||
| As we've discussed, the vast majority of the inflation that people are currently feeling, meaning like the much higher prices now than there were in 2019, a huge portion of that happened under not President Trump, but under Joe Biden. | ||
| I inherited very simply the highest prices in history, and I'm bringing them down really fast, led by energy. | ||
| And when energy comes down, everything else comes down. | ||
| But I've only been here a short while, and we gave them a beautiful, beautiful thing, and they destroyed it. | ||
| They would have destroyed our country had they been allowed to stay. | ||
| If we didn't win this election, if we had Kamala, who's the same as Joe, low IQ people, but if we had Kamala, you would have a country that would be right now in ruins. | ||
| I believe that 100%. | ||
| So he's not wrong about that either. | ||
| With that said, Democrats are, of course, jumping on the political train that is taking them somewhere. | ||
| And that is suggesting that President Trump is uncaring about the economy. | ||
| And Chuck Schumer, who, again, helped preside over much of this for Joe Biden, is out there rallying against the president. | ||
| What was Donald Trump's solution to affordability? | ||
| Well, last night, Trump said parents should buy their kids fewer dolls for Christmas. | ||
| We're not talking about fewer dolls for Christmas. | ||
| We're talking about necessities like food, like medicine, like fixing your car when it gets damaged, like maybe going to see the grandkids who you haven't seen in two years because you can't afford the trip. | ||
| He said kids at school should have fewer pencils. | ||
| And then he repeated his favorite, that his favorite word was tariffs. | ||
| What kind of world does he live in? | ||
| Does he understand that these tariffs are raising prices through the roof? | ||
| Now, again, one of my great annoyances here is that Chuck Schumer is not one to talk. | ||
| With that said, obviously, if people are concerned about affordability, then you do have to get rid of the policies that are likely to continue to cause inflationary policy. | ||
| Now, Jerome Powell is going to be gone pretty soon. | ||
| Kevin Hassett is the person most likely to replace him over the National Economic Council. | ||
| He also is blaming Democrats for people's dyspepsia about the economy. | ||
| And again, he's not wrong. | ||
| I'm not saying Republicans are wrong when they say this. | ||
| I'm saying it's not an effective political tactic, generally speaking. | ||
| The pot of light is that the Democrats are out there saying things that are false and like they're not holding up charts telling you what's going on. | ||
| But, you know, we have a chart that showed that the typical family buying a new home saw their mortgage rate go up at an annual rate by $14,000 because of Biden's inflation and the high interest rates that followed from it. | ||
| And so people who have to pay $14,000 a year more just to have their home, of course they were harmed a lot by Biden. | ||
| But already because we've been getting closer to a balanced budget and leading interest rates down even before we control the Fed more, that we've saved a couple thousand dollars of that $14,000 already. | ||
| Now, again, none of this is wrong. | ||
| If, however, you wish for people to see you as an affordability presidency, then you need to announce more policies that lead to affordability. | ||
| Hassett is likely, again, to chair the Federal Reserve in the near future. | ||
| And he says that the Fed has been way behind on reducing rates. | ||
| I just, I'm sorry. | ||
| The reality is that our inflation rate is still riding 50% higher than it normally is supposed to. | ||
| So hard for me to believe that they've been that wrong in refusing to reduce the rates. | ||
| The fact is that they've been way behind getting the rates down. | ||
| The economy is doing well, but because of all the supply-side action that we've taken, we've got high growth with declining inflation. | ||
| And so they've got plenty of room to cut rates. | ||
| They'll do a little bit this time, but they'll probably need to do some more. | ||
| So, you know, we'll see if that's true. | ||
| But again, if you are reliant, if yelling at the Federal Reserve or changing Federal Reserve policy is your way of somehow establishing economic affordability, and you're talking about lowering the interest rates, not increasing them. | ||
| You're not going to do the Paul Volcker thing under Ronald Reagan, where inflation is running in double digits. | ||
| And so you radically increase those interest rates to get the extra money out of the economy. | ||
| If you're talking about how affordability is a problem, now let me lower the interest rates. | ||
| I'm not sure that that totally scans. | ||
| Now, meanwhile, again, Democrats are making hay over problems they created in the first place. | ||
| This is particularly true when it comes to health care. | ||
| So, some frustrated Republicans, according to Politico, are going to force a vote on extending Obamacare health insurance subsidies expiring in just three weeks. | ||
| These are all Republicans from swing states. | ||
| They're all set to lose their seats, probably, if there's a gigantic spike in the health insurance rates. | ||
| According to Politico, at least six Republicans have signed a discharge petition filed Wednesday on a bill authored by Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Jared Golden of Maine that would extend the expiring tax credits for two years while imposing some new eligibility requirements. | ||
| Fitzpatrick said it's a time-sensitive matter. | ||
| It's an existential matter. | ||
| You try to do things through the normal course. | ||
| You try to do them through regular order. | ||
| This is a move to sidestep Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, who, of course, is trying to unify against extending those subsidies. | ||
| And you can see why the Trump administration and the Speaker of the House, they're not interested in continuing to spend money like water the way the Democrats have. | ||
| It also happens to be the case that if those insurance rates spike, Republicans will be blamed at the polls. | ||
| Representative John Rutherford of Florida said, quote, if we fumble this health care ball, nothing else is going to matter. | ||
| If we don't win the majority in the midterms, none of it matters. | ||
| We can't do anything good then. | ||
| I think everybody understands that. | ||
| Well, Speaker Johnson has presented another menu of options to Republicans. | ||
| But that menu of options seems to be relatively non-popular with other Republicans who are in those swing state areas. | ||
| According to Meredith Lee Hill of Politico, House Republican leaders presented no firm plan yesterday for advancing health care legislation as anxiety rose in GOP ranks over the impending expiration of key Obamacare subsidies at the end of the year. | ||
| So there are some 10 policies that could get votes in the coming weeks or months. | ||
| Some were specific, like expansion of AHSA's health savings accounts or overhauling pharmaceutical benefit manager oversight. | ||
| Others were pretty vague. | ||
| The most likely scenario here is a partial extension of the Obamacare subsidies for, say, a year or two years in exchange for some policies, like, for example, the gradual sunsetting of that and the addition of new health savings accounts, for example, or the higher funding of health savings accounts. | ||
| Meanwhile, President Trump correctly slammed Obamacare at the White House, saying, you know, it's weird. | ||
| You guys keep coming back to me for money after telling me it was all going to work. | ||
| Well, the Unaffordable Care Act, which is Obamacare, they call it now the unaffordable because it's unaffordable. | ||
| It used to be called the affordable, but it was never affordable. | ||
| It was always been. | ||
| It was basically designed for the benefit of insurance companies. | ||
| And what we're doing is we want all of the billions and billions of dollars that went to insurance companies to go directly to the people and they can buy their own health care. | ||
| And people love it. | ||
| I don't know if the Democrats are going to approve it because they want the insurance companies to make money. | ||
| It was a scam. | ||
| Obamacare was a scam. | ||
| And again, he is not wrong about this. | ||
| However, the American people, you know, once you get people dependent on government benefits, very difficult to get them non-dependent on those government benefits again. | ||
| Amy Klobuchar, senator from Minnesota, she's taking full advantage. | ||
| The plan that we're offering is something that they've had in place before that allows people who are on the Affordable Care Act, 20 million people, to be able to get their insurance premiums that they can pay for and continue their plan. | ||
| The plans they have is just a made-up thing that is not going to help these people for what they need to be able to afford insurance. | ||
| Now, again, your plan seems to be continuous subsidies for literally ever. | ||
| But this is why Republicans in the end are going to have to offer free market-based solutions that are at the state and local level. | ||
| Because once you start playing this game, once you start playing the we can make everything more affordable at the federal government level through subsidies game, you're never going to outbid the Democrats. | ||
| It's just not going to happen. | ||
| Alrighty, coming up, Christy Noam, is she on the shopping block or not really? | ||
| First, America is approaching its 250th birthday. | ||
| It should be a time of celebration. | ||
| But did you know only 41% of Gen Z say they are actually proud to be American? | ||
| Why is that number not 100%? | ||
| We need to fix that fast. | ||
| Thankfully, there's no organization better positioned to educate young people about the true history of this country than Prager U. For years, young Americans have been fed a steady diet of misinformation, taught to believe this country is racist, sexist, and bigoted. | ||
| PragerU is correcting the record. | ||
| They tell the whole story, the good and the bad, but always with accuracy and appreciation for the patriots who sacrificed everything to create the greatest country in human history. | ||
| Through powerful storytelling, engaging videos, and family-friendly resources, PragerU is reaching the next generation. | ||
| Millions of young people are finally hearing a message that inspires pride, not shame. | ||
| And here's something you need to know. | ||
| While plenty of nonprofits line up for government money, PragerU refused it, even when partnering with the White House. | ||
| They will not let the government fund their message. | ||
| That's why they rely on patriotic Americans like you. | ||
| I've worked with PragerU. | ||
| I've seen what they do. | ||
| If we're going to win the fight for the next generation, we need PragerU well-funded. | ||
| Right now, every dollar you give to PragerU will be triple match, which means every dollar you give will have three times the impact. | ||
| Go to PragerU.com slash DW during the triple match and make your gift today. | ||
| That's PragerU.com slash DW. | ||
| Also, the Daily Wire Shop's best deals of the year are still live right now, and we're taking up to 70% off conservative gifts for everybody on your list. | ||
| Gifts like my New York Times bestseller, Lions and Scavengers, signed copies only available at the Daily Wire shop, plus merchant inspired by the book, the new Truth Bomb Golf Driver and Putter covers. | ||
| They're awesome. | ||
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| Head on over to dailywire.com/slash shop right now. | ||
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| That's dailywire.com/slash shop. | ||
| Meanwhile, President Trump has announced that he has no intentions of firing the Department of Homeland Security head Christy Noam. | ||
| There had been a lot of speculation about that possibility earlier this week. | ||
| The president made that clear yesterday. | ||
| I read the same stories that I'm unhappy with this one or that one and I'm not. | ||
| I think the cabinet's done a great job. | ||
| I read a story that I was unhappy with Pete because he was attacking drug dealers. | ||
| I said, that's not exactly right. | ||
| I would say very much the opposite. | ||
| Pete Hegsab has been phenomenal. | ||
| I read a story recently, I'm unhappy with Christy. | ||
| I'm so happy with it. | ||
| I mean, we have a closed border. | ||
| We have a border that's the best border in the history of our country. | ||
| Why would I be unhappy? | ||
| She's fantastic, actually. | ||
| So I guess that one is put to bed. | ||
| Meanwhile, the president has announced his gold card. | ||
| This would be a $1 million gold card, which is a visa fast track for wealthy foreigners. | ||
| Here's the president announcing this yesterday. | ||
| We've just launched the Trump gold card. | ||
| It was about 30 minutes from now. | ||
| The site goes up and all funds go to the United States government. | ||
| Could be a tremendous amount of money. | ||
| It'll also be able to help people like this keep, as an example, just one example. | ||
| There are a lot of examples, people just buying that. | ||
| It's somewhat like a green card, but with big advantages over a green card. | ||
| So apparently, Howard Luttnick believes that this will raise $100 billion to lower taxes or pay down the federal debt, according to Politico. | ||
| Howard Luttnick, the commerce secretary, said we were taking in the bottom quartile. | ||
| We're going to stop doing that. | ||
| We're going to take only extraordinary people at the very top instead of people trying to take jobs from Americans. | ||
| So apparently, it's similar to the green card model. | ||
| The individual will pay global tax just as a U.S. citizen or permanent resident would. | ||
| Individuals will be charged $1 million for the gold card, $2 million for corporations sponsoring an employee in addition to a $15,000 vetting fee. | ||
| There's also going to be a Trump platinum card. | ||
| All these, by the way, do have the president's face on them. | ||
| But that one's not coming anytime soon. | ||
| It would apparently cost $5 million and allow holders to spend up to 270 days in the United States without being taxed on their non-U.S. based income. | ||
| So again, not a terrible idea. | ||
| It'll be interesting to see how many people take the United States up on it. | ||
| Better to have people paying a million dollars to get the Trump gold card than to continue to import refugees from various areas of the world who are then wildly dependent on welfare. | ||
| New report out of the Center for Immigration Studies. | ||
| Breitbart reports it. | ||
| More than eight in 10 households headed by Somali refugees in the state of Minnesota are on one or more forms of American taxpayer welfare. | ||
| The data is based on 10 years of data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, and it shows drastic disparities between native-born American households and Somali-born households in Minnesota, where nearly 80,000 residents have Somali ancestry compared to zero who had Somali ancestry back in 1990. | ||
| 81%, 81% of all Minnesota households headed by Somali refugees are on one or more forms of welfare, including 27% on cash welfare, 54% on food stamps, 73% who are on Medicaid. | ||
| How about native-born Americans? | ||
| 21% are on one or more forms of welfare. | ||
| So yeah, we may not be importing the people who are the greatest assets to the future of the country. | ||
| Meanwhile, it is always amusing whenever there are Republicans who appear with Democrats to watch Republicans go out of their way to condemn bigotry on their own side. | ||
| Very often this happens, not always, but very often. | ||
| And to watch Democrats then completely ignore the bigotry on their own side. | ||
| So there was a sit-down recently between Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who's a quite moderate Republican in Utah, and Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania. | ||
| Josh Shapiro said that it's very important that all leaders must condemn all political violence. | ||
| Very, very important. | ||
| This is for NBC's Finding Common Ground series. | ||
| Let's be clear: political violence has hit people on the left and the right. | ||
| It's been engaged in by some people on the political left and the political right. | ||
| Let's remember when you pick up a gun and try and shoot someone, you are not sane and rational and a linear thinker. | ||
| And so sometimes your views can be characterized on the political right or the political left. | ||
| In just the last few months, you've seen Charlie Kirk, a conservative, and Speaker Hortman in Minnesota murdered people on the left and right in my home state. | ||
| You've seen an assassination attempt on the president of the United States on the right and myself and my family on the political left. | ||
| We need to begin by saying that all leaders must condemn all political violence, not cherry pick which violence to condemn and which violence to accept. | ||
| So, again, all of that is well and good. | ||
| The only problem, of course, is that Democrats, then when asked for specifics on who on their own side, they will condemn, they can come up with no one. | ||
| It's very easy to say, I condemn political violence on the political right and I condemn it on the political left. | ||
| But then when it comes time to name names, then all of a sudden everybody goes silent. | ||
| And no mention of Black Lives Matter. | ||
| No mention of the political identity of Charlie Kirk's murderer, for example. | ||
| It is a constant irritant to me when people will sort of say both sides are responsible for a thing. | ||
| And then when it comes to their own side, they will go completely silent. | ||
| Chuck Schumer did this yesterday. | ||
| So Chuck Schumer was at a congressional menorah lighting ceremony in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And again, as an Orthodox Jew, Chuck Schumer's continual attempts to call upon his ethnic Judaism in order to cover for his shameful behavior in office is of high irritation to me. | ||
| He condemned anti-Semitism and Nazism and other forms of bigotry. | ||
| He has yet to say a word in anger about any of the anti-Semitic nonsense in his own party, ranging from Zarn Mamdani in New York to Ilhan Omar. | ||
| Here he was yesterday. | ||
| The evil forces of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and other forms of hatred and bigotry are running rampant in our society. | ||
| And too many, far too many, are silent against these threats. | ||
| But when it comes to anti-Semitism, silence is dangerous. | ||
| When we stay silent, that's when the poison of anti-Semitism spreads like wildfire. | ||
| We have seen that throughout our history. | ||
| Okay, well, I mean, you did stay silent on your own side, and you remain silent on your own side. | ||
| If you actually want to fight bigotry, you actually have to call it out on your own side. | ||
| I know, difficult lessons for everybody to learn. | ||
| Okay, meanwhile, the Warner Brothers deal continues to be a little bit up in the air. | ||
| Netflix, of course, had issued a deal that was taken up by Warner Brothers, but the deal is still up in the air. | ||
| According to The Verge, Netflix is still the frontrunner to become Warner Brothers' new owner, but the war for control of the legacy studio is not yet over. | ||
| Paramount Skydance has now made its own outsize offer for the company. | ||
| It would give CEO David Ellison even more control over the news and entertainment landscape. | ||
| While Warner Brothers Discovery has repeatedly turned down Paramount Skydance's previous offers, Netflix's bid could also fall apart because it is subject to regulatory scrutiny by the FTC and the Department of Justice. | ||
| Apparently, Warner Brothers has signaled it's open to the Netflix $82.7 billion acquisition proposal, which would include both stray cash and stock options, and would follow the split of Warner Brothers Discovery into two companies. | ||
| Netflix would only acquire part of the company, would not acquire, for example, CNN. | ||
| Paramount Skydance is trying to buy all of it for $108.4 billion in cash, like with no stock. | ||
| That deal would give Paramount Skydance control of Warner Brothers movie and TV production studios, the HBO Max brands, and unlike Netflix's proposal, all of WBD's cable networks like Discovery Channel and TNT as well. | ||
| So really interesting to see how this is going to work out. | ||
| So apparently, there is talk that if Larry Ellison and David Ellison take over Warner Brothers, including CNN, that there will be changes made to CNN in the same way as changes were made by the Ellisons to CBS News, which, by the way, for the country, it'd be great. | ||
| CNN has been for a very long time a dying channel on the verge of collapse that is very left-oriented while claiming objectivity. | ||
| Apparently, in recent days, David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he would make sweeping changes to CNN. | ||
| Now, again, we will have to see what legal boundaries are tied up here. | ||
| It seems difficult for me to see how Paramount ends up pulling this out, given that Netflix has already been accepted by WBD. | ||
| President Trump, for his part, of course, on a political level, would love to see Paramount acquire Warner Brothers. | ||
| He said that he believes that any deal for Warner Brothers has to include CNN right now. | ||
| Of course, Netflix doesn't want to buy CNN because, you know, frankly, who would unless you want to change it? | ||
| But I think CNN should be sold because I think the people that are running CNN right now, CNN right now, are either corrupt or incompetent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that may not be a factor in decision making because you know we've got some. | |
| Well, in my mind, but I can be talked out of that by some very talented people that we have, antitrust people. | ||
| But I just think that the people that have run CNN into the ground, by the way, nobody watches, very few people watch, I don't think they should be entrusted with running CNN any longer. | ||
| So I think any deal it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it. | ||
| Now, generally, you know, I do not think that the government should be involved in these sorts of decisions, and that generally applies specifically here. | ||
| Regardless of my personal feelings on which corporation would be better for the country in terms of acquiring Warner Brothers. | ||
| And again, I'm a fan of what the Ellisons are doing. | ||
| I do not think that the federal government should be using its regulatory leverage in order to make certain deals that it finds more politically palatable because I don't like it when the shoe is on the other foot. | ||
| With that said, Bernie Sanders ripped into Jared Kushner because Kushner is involved in that takeover bid of WB. | ||
| He tweeted a handful of giant corporations already control much of the media. | ||
| Trump wants to make it worse. | ||
| He vows to be involved in allowing his billionaire allies, his son-in-law and the Saudis, Qataris, and Emirates, to buy Warner Brothers. | ||
| That's authoritarianism, not democracy. | ||
| Well, I mean, it sort of depends on the outcome. | ||
| But also, I noticed that Bernie Sanders is not particularly concerned about the other giant corporation that is trying to, you know, take over Warner Brothers. | ||
| So I guess certain giant corporations, according to Bernie, are better than other giant corporations. | ||
| All righty, folks. | ||
| Coming up, we are going to jump into that vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag. | ||
| Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. | ||
| If you're not a member, become a member. | ||
| Use code Shapiro. | ||
| Check out for two months free on all annual plans. | ||
| Click that link in the description and join us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All of 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 in David. | ||
| The son of a princess of lost Atlantis. | ||
| They say the future and the past are known to him. | ||
| That the fire and the wind tell him their secrets. | ||
| That the magic of the hillfolk 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 Emirus has returned to the land of the living. | ||
| Vortiger is gone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Room 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, you stand together. | ||
| You stand as Britons. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Esse Merden slew 70 men with his own hands. | ||
| At Cathay, he slew 500. | ||
| No man is capable of such a thing. |
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