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Jan. 19, 2026 - The Ben Shapiro Show
52:34
ICE Protesters Invade...A CHURCH?!
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Americans Split 50-50 00:05:45
Anti-ICE protesters take over a church in Minneapolis.
Americans' opinions on ICE action seem to be in chaos.
And we get into the latest on Iran, on Greenland, on new deals between Canada and China, a lot going on in the world.
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Characters that used to inspire now exist to check the box.
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Just like Hollywood, the left quietly took control of our curriculum and used it to push their views.
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If there is one key rule to American politics, that key rule is this: Americans do not like ugly pictures on their TV.
There's a lot that Americans will stand so long as they don't have to look at it on their TV.
Bad things are happening all over the world on a constant basis.
In the United States, there are 340 million people.
So bad things are constantly happening.
But when bad things elevate to our TV on a consistent basis, people tend not to like it.
And that's what has happened with ICE activity in major cities.
Now, who gets blamed for those ugly pictures on the TV becomes the question, but it is not typically good for the elevation of an issue when those issues are raised under a particular president.
So if there are lots of pictures of people crossing the border en masse, ugly pictures on our TV, and Joe Biden is the president, it is not going to redound to the benefit of the president of the United States.
If there are a lot of ugly pictures on the TV of ICE agents in confrontations with illegal immigrants or people who are attempting to block and tackle on behalf of illegal immigrants, it turns out that Americans aren't going to like that either.
New polling data from CBS News now finds that Americans are feeling a little bit skittish about the ICE activities that are going on around the country.
Again, Americans like generally the idea that immigration and customs enforcement is, you know, doing immigration enforcement, and they are finding people who are here illegally and they are deporting those people, particularly if those people are criminals.
However, what they do not like is pictures on their TV of mass mobilization in the streets.
They don't like pictures on their TV of people being shot in their cars, even under disputed circumstances like Renee Good.
This new CBS News poll shows that, according to this poll, when stopping and detaining people, ICE is being too tough.
56% of people thought they were being too tough in November.
Today, that number is 61%.
Only about 15% say they are not being tough enough.
How about protesters?
Well, according to the CBS News poll, 10% of Democrats think the protesters have gone too far.
48% say they have gone not far enough.
42% say about right.
Among independents, only 35% of independents say that the protesters have gone too far.
The biggest statistic in this poll that is not great for the Trump administration is the question for Americans: who is the Trump administration prioritizing for deportation?
The Trump administration would like to believe that the American people think the people being prioritized for deportation are criminal, illegal immigrants, because that is who is generally being prioritized: criminal, illegal immigrants.
Yes, illegal immigration is criminal, but people who have another crime to their name.
However, that is not what the American people increasingly are feeling.
In November, 48% of Americans said that it was largely dangerous criminals who are being prioritized for deportation, as opposed to 52% who said that it was people who aren't dangerous criminals.
Today, that number is 44% say dangerous criminals.
56% say people who are not dangerous criminals.
How about whether ICE is making communities more or less safe?
52% now say less safe.
31% say more safe.
17% say no change.
And as for approval or disapproval, the approval for the Trump administration's program to deport immigrants illegally in the United States has dropped from 51% in December down to 46% today.
The disapproval number is all the way up at 54%.
And among independents, disapproval is at 60%.
Now, it isn't about the goals.
Again, it is just about the pictures because there is a question in this poll asking if you like Trump's goal.
And the American people are stuck 50-50.
50% like his goals to deport en masse people who are here illegally, and 50% dislike it.
But when it comes to Trump's approach, how it's being done, only 37% of people say they like it.
63% of people say they dislike it.
And this is, of course, related to the shooting of Rene Good.
54% of people polled said that that shooting was not justified.
Only 28% say justified, and 17% say too soon to say.
All of which means that when you aggregate all of this, 53% of Americans apparently say that ICE operations in the United States should be decreased, as opposed to 25% saying increased and 22% saying not changed.
So again, those are not great numbers for the president on an issue where generally he is quite popular.
Now, that doesn't mean that people trust Democrats.
There is a poll out from the Wall Street Journal, same time period, looking at which party in Congress is best able to handle border security, Republicans, plus 28, immigration, Republicans, plus 11.
And so those numbers remain good, mainly because Democrats are not trusted on this sort of stuff.
With that said, the ugly pictures on the TV are making a difference.
Shopify's Sleep Solution 00:02:59
And presumably, this is why Democrats are sending protesters out into the streets.
Now, Democrats can overplay their hand.
They absolutely can.
Right now, people are attributing the ugly pictures to the activities of ICE.
But what happens when, for example, chaos breaks out at a church, which is something that happened over the weekend?
Already coming up, Democrats decide they're going to invade a church service in Minneapolis to protest ICE, which is about as stupid a thing as you can do.
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Churches Under Attack 00:15:18
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So, over the weekend, there was a chaotic mob storming through a Minnesota church over a pastor's alleged ties, true immigration and customs enforcement.
According to Foxnews.com, video shows agitators chanting justice for Renee Good inside the sanctuary at City's Church as the service began, raising concerns among law enforcement and religious leaders about protesters targeting houses of worship.
In one video circulating online, agitators can be heard chanting justice for Rene Good.
And who needs justice?
We need justice.
Here is some video of the anti-ICE protesters shutting down the church.
Don't shoot him!
They're still doing the hands-up to the church.
Don't shoot him!
It is pretty.
Don't shoot!
He was in the middle of a church service.
that's when we're praying for the protesters You see a little bit of chaos is breaking out here.
One person filming described the disruption as a clandestine admission.
They found out supposedly that a pastor had been connected to ICE.
One of the people who is a pastor is a pastor named David Easterwood, who shares the same name as the acting director as ICE's St. Paul Field office.
Unclear whether this is in fact the same human being.
Okay, well, Don Lemon happened to be at this church.
You would imagine this meant that he had some sort of heads up.
And Don Lemon proceeded to lecture the pastor for the great crime of, you know, being a pastor at a church while people were protesting in the middle of the church service, which is utterly inappropriate, of course.
I mean, this is unacceptable.
It's shameful.
It's shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship.
But there were folks who are saying, I have to take care of my flaw.
But listen, we live in a, there's a constitution in the First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest.
We're here to worship.
We're here to worship Jesus because that's the hope of these cities.
That's the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.
I'm going to be very respectful.
Please don't push me, though.
We're here.
We're here to worship Jesus.
That's why we're here.
That's why we're here.
That's what we're about.
Don't you think Jesus would be understanding?
We're about spreading the love of Jesus and they just try to talk to them.
Everyone is willing to talk.
Okay, I have to take care of my church and my family.
So I asked if you actually would also leave this building.
You don't want us to worship.
Let's get here to worship.
I'm always worship.
I'm a Christian.
Well, we're here to worship.
We're here to worship.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Don Lemon was not there to worship, obviously.
He was there to help promote the cause of these protesters who decided to shut down a service.
By the way, the First Amendment does not mean that you get to walk onto private property and start shouting in the middle of somebody's business or in the middle of a church service.
In fact, there is something called the FACE Act, which is all about desecrating houses of worship or interfering with Christian worshipers.
The DHS says they will investigate all of this, so will DOJ.
Agitators aren't just targeting our officers, said the DHS in a post.
Now they're targeting churches too.
They're going from hotel to hotel, church to church, hunting for federal law enforcement who are risking their lives to protect Americans.
And the DOJ, again, announced that they would be investigating all of this.
Now, Jacob Fry, the mayor of Minneapolis, has defended a lot of this sort of stuff.
And he says that order will be restored the minute that ICE leaves.
Here he was on CNN with Jake Tapper.
If the goal here is to create peace and safety and calm, there's a very clear antidote here, which is leave.
The second these ICE agents leave the city, I'm telling you, you're going to have calm in Minneapolis and you will continue to see the great comeback that we had been experiencing.
Now, again, this sort of activity by Democrats is likely to backfire.
So at the moment, the image that people have in their heads, the ugly image that people have in their heads right now, is again that image of Renee Good.
However, that image can be replaced by a series of ugly images from Democrats, including, for example, storming churches.
That is not going to help.
There's a fascinating piece by Roland Fryer in the Wall Street Journal talking about the sort of effect of protest, typically speaking.
And one of the points that Roland Fryer makes is that actually nonviolent protest that does not disrupt things like church services is likely to work out better for you than being absolutely confrontational or violent or chaotic.
He says in this piece, Roland Fryer, professor of economics at Harvard, when I was young, I mistook restraint for weakness and anger for honesty.
What I failed to see, what we still failed to teach students, was that Martin Luther King wasn't avoiding conflict.
He was engineering it on terms that made progress possible.
In other words, don't just kind of run into a church and start screaming at the top of your lungs and hope that Americans are going to like that sort of thing because they very likely will not.
But with that said, to pretend that the Trump administration has facilitated popular immigration policy here would be to belie the polls at this point.
So again, it's less about the policy than it is about the implementation.
Democrats who are smart are going to focus in on the implementation and they are not going to give credence or credibility to people who are violently protesting or invading churches.
They're also not going to use the sort of outstanding radical language that the radical left would like to use.
So for example, I was on Gavin Newsom's podcast last week.
I pressed him on the fact that his press office had suggested that what happened to Renee Good was state-sponsored terrorism.
What it really was was a tragedy, a tragedy presumably of a differential interpretation of circumstance.
As we say, I don't know what Renee Good was thinking when she decided that she was going to hit the gas on her car.
And when I look at that, say, I'm not sure that her intent is to hit the officer.
It looks to me like she's trying to turn the wheel to avoid hitting an officer who's in front of her car or stepped up in front of her car.
But that doesn't mean that he did not perceive her as trying to hit him.
Both of those things can be true at the same time.
And so when Governor Newsom suggested it was state-sponsored terrorism, that obviously is untrue.
However, now Gavin Newsom, who told me that he thinks that it was fair to criticize that particular statement, I don't know whether he's trying to buy back the love of his base after those comments or what.
But here was Governor Newsom over the weekend suggesting that President Trump is trying to stoke a civil war.
He is trying to stoke a civil war in this country.
It is a disgrace what he's doing in Minneapolis.
It is a disgrace what he's doing all across the United States of America, terrorizing communities.
It is a disgrace what his Department of Homeland Security is putting out.
I mean, these ads of evoking the worst, the 1930s, very intentionally stoking tensions, white supremacy being promoted actively by this administration, the corruption and graft, the likes of which we've never seen in modern history, modern world history.
And now, again, is this sort of language useful?
My guess is not.
It wasn't useful last week when he denounced it.
It's not useful now when he's sort of using it again.
Meanwhile, Democratic strategist Megan Hayes says President Trump wants to normalize the use of the military on the streets.
And we are now in this reactionary ping-pong that is not great.
I think this is what he is planning all along with these ICE raids and wanting to call for an insurrection in most of these places.
He wants to normalize military on our streets so he can call for an insurrection so he doesn't have to have elections.
So I don't necessarily think that the American people should think this is outrageous.
I think this is part of Donald Trump's plan and it's been part of his plan all along.
Now, again, ripping into Trump may be a sort of rich vein for Democrats, but the minute they decide to push the abolish ICE program, things are going to go squirrely on them because Americans, once again, do not like ugly pictures on their TV.
And when ICE pulls out and then violence reigns, that is not going to be a wonderful program either.
So when Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, a supposed moderate, overturned this weekend an executive order mandating cooperation with ICE, you know, that's a risky move.
Here she was doing that over the weekend.
And this executive order rescinds executive order number 47.
State and local law enforcement should not be required to divert their limited resources to enforce federal civil immigration laws.
It is a responsibility of federal law enforcement.
Virginia's state and local law enforcement officers must be able to focus on their LaCore responsibilities, investigating crime and community policing.
Now, again, do I think that's going to work well for Democrats?
I do not, especially when it's being pressed forward by celebrities like Bruce Springsteen, who says ICE should get the hell out of Minneapolis.
If you believe in the power of the law and that no one stands above it, if you stand against heavily armed mass federal troops invading an American city and using established tactics against their fellow citizens,
if you believe you don't deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest, I send a message to this president.
And as the mayor of that city has said, ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis.
This home is for you and in the memory of the mother of three and American citizen Renee Good.
Thank you.
Again, this is starting to feel an awful lot like BLM summer in 2020, when a bad situation involving the death of George Floyd under, at the very least, significantly disputed circumstances turned into widespread rioting and chaos and looting.
And the blowback to that was actually in the short term good for Democrats, but in the long term, very, very bad for Democrats because Americans, once again, do not like ugly pictures on their TV.
Now, the Trump administration, the way they should be handling this is with absolute calm, with just tremendous, predictable enforcement of the law.
That's what they should be doing.
So when Stephen Miller goes on TV and he says federal law must rule, that of course is right.
Federal law, of course, does have to preside here.
It does have to take the four.
We have one nation.
We have one set of federal laws.
We have one constitution.
We have one law of immigration.
We have one law of citizenship.
If you allow a city or a state to decide immigration laws for themselves, you have an immigration law for Minnesota.
You have an immigration law for Minneapolis.
You have an immigration law for St. Paul.
You have an immigration law for Los Angeles and for San Francisco and for New York.
What you have then is total, complete anarchy and the dissolution of the American Republic.
And again, that's not wrong.
He is right about that, which is why it is so important that in the pursuit of the law, the Trump administration has to be the most effective it can be.
And this has been sort of one of the bugaboos of the Trump administration, number two, and that is very good ideas on policy, sometimes poorly executed.
I would say that the Department of Governmental Efficiency would be a good example of this.
I know that the Trump administration, number two, really wants to move fast and break things.
And you know what?
I totally get it because you only have a certain limited time in office in order to get things done.
On the other hand, if you move so fast and break so many things that you end up generating a tsunami of anger at you, what you end up with is a reaction that wipes away the effect of what you're trying to do in the first place.
So as an example of this, when it came to the Renegade situation, I said from the very outset that the DHS should not have called her a domestic terrorist.
They should have said this is a tragic circumstance.
We are doing a full investigation.
We'll get back to you when we get to the end of that.
It appears to us that an objective officer could believe or should believe that she was trying to hit him with the car or that he was going to be hit by the car.
And therefore, it looks like the shoot was justified.
Instead, the administration came out very strong with language that I thought was, frankly, not connected strongly enough with the facts on the ground, which is what the polls are showing right now.
And so it's not a particular wonder that Harry Ensign over at CNN is now reporting that a majority of Americans don't trust the feds to investigate that case.
Do you trust the federal government to investigate the Minneapolis police shooting, the federal government?
And I think it just sort of speaks to the trust of the federal government overall.
And the overwhelming majority, more than three in five you see on your screen, say 62% say, no, they don't trust the federal government.
And this comes on top of other polling data, which shows that ICE's net approval rating is way, way down from where it was back at this point during Trump's first term.
It also shows at this point that Trump's net approval rating on immigration is way, way down from where it was just, say, at the beginning of last year.
So what should the Trump administration do?
Again, calmly and consistently enforce the law.
And if the law is violated, arrest people in calm and consistent fashion.
That is the best thing they can do and wait for the left to make the mistakes that they certainly will make because they will.
They'll continue to go into churches.
They'll continue to call for the abolition of ICE.
And this will be a boon for Republicans in terms of policy.
Because again, you want solid immigration policy to be popular.
Just pursue that policy with the least amount of hubbub possible.
Again, the most solid part of Trump's administration thus far has been the thing that's gotten the least attention.
He just closed the southern border.
Why?
Because it was effective and it was quiet.
Effective and quiet is a really, really good thing, politically speaking.
Less effective and very loud is likely to lead to the kind of blowback that leads to your electoral loss or your party's electoral loss.
Now, Democrats should pay attention to the same thing because if their resistance to ICE is both ineffective and loud, then they are likely to be in a world of hurt themselves.
All righty.
Meanwhile, on the economic front, the Trump economy continues to do really well, and yet enormous amounts of dyspepsia about the economy, according to the polling data.
According to the Wall Street Journal, by 15 percentage points, more voters rate the economy as weak rather than strong.
That's a deterioration from July when negative views predominated by four points.
About half of voters say the economy has gotten worse in the past year compared with 35% who see improvement.
That finding continues a years-long disconnect between traditional measures of inflation and economic growth, which are relatively positive, and a negative public outlook.
So President Trump's in-party approval rating remains 92%.
There is not a split inside the Republican Party.
However, 54% of voters disapprove of the president at this point.
Trade War Over Greenland 00:13:09
He is at a 54% job disapproval rating at 45% approve.
And when it comes to the handling of the economy, his numbers have been dropping.
So as I was just saying, if you look at the breakdown, President Trump's approval rating, where is it the best?
On border security, right?
The thing where he is most effective and the quietest.
The border closed?
His net approval rating is plus six.
On immigration, Americans generally like his immigration policy, but they are gradually moving against it as it gets louder and louder.
He's at minus four.
On the economy, he's at minus 10.
On tariffs, he's at minus 10.
I'm looking out for the middle class, minus 11.
On inflation, at minus 17.
So, what is happening here?
Again, I think that doing things well and doing them quietly is the way that presidents become popular.
What Americans mostly want, and no president has allowed them to do this, maybe for most of my adult lifetime at this point.
What Americans mostly want from the president is to be left alone.
They want to believe that they'll wake up in the morning and life will be the same or slightly better than it was yesterday.
They don't want to wake up and be bothered by the latest chaos.
And that is why it is a mistake for the president to futz around so much with, for example, tariff rates and to tie those so much to international issues, like, for example, should we grab Greenland?
Americans do not want to pay higher rates at the grocery store because the president wants Greenland.
They don't want to do that.
They don't even understand why we need Greenland in terms of actual sovereign American territory.
Why does this come up?
Well, because it turns out that we're about to launch apparently a new trade war over Greenland.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the president announced over the weekend that he would impose 10% tariffs on imports from several European countries in an effort to pressure Denmark to sell Greenland to the United States.
So there was a trade deal that President Trump reached with the EU last year, and it was supposed to lower tariffs on many U.S. exports.
The president in a social media post on Saturday said the 10% tariffs would go into effect February 1 and would apply to all goods sent to the U.S. from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, Netherlands, and Finland.
Then, apparently, the tariffs are going to go up to 25% on June 1st and remain in place until a deal is reached for what he called the complete and total purchase of Greenland.
That is after the Europeans sent like a dog sled and a couple of guns to Greenland to deter the United States.
That would not stop us if we wished to invade Greenland.
President Trump wrote on Truth Social: These countries who are playing this very dangerous game have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable.
Therefore, it is imperative that in order to protect global peace and security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly and without question.
Now, again, the United States under 1951 treaties does have the ability to radically increase our military presence in Greenland if we so choose in order to deter the Russians from their predations in northern waters.
The EU, for its part, started to push back.
The EU's top two officials, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa, said, quote, tariffs would undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral.
Europe will remain united, coordinated, and committed to upholding its sovereignty.
The Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Christerson, said, quote, we will not let ourselves be blackmailed.
President Trump did not say if this would be added on top of the existing levies, which are still like 15% for most EU countries and 10% for most UK goods.
So, again, those Greenland threats are starting to make waves, and they'll make economic waves as well.
The NATO allies put out a statement complaining about all of this.
Their joint statement suggested: quote: As members of NATO, we are committed to strengthening Arctic security as a shared transatlantic interest.
The pre-coordinated Danish exercise, Arctic Endurance, conducted with allies, responds to this necessity.
It poses no threat to anyone.
We stand in full solidarity with the Kingdom of Denmark and the people of Greenland.
Building on the process begun last week, we stand ready to engage in a dialogue based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that we stand firmly behind.
So NATO is saying, I don't even understand what is going on right now.
Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, seems to be trying to talk people off of a ledge.
He says, there's not really a choice between Greenland or NATO.
We're not trying to undercut NATO here.
Since 1980, the U.S. has spent U.S. military spending versus NATO military spending.
We have spent $22 trillion more than the Europeans have, that we are peace through strength.
And the Europeans now are only trying to play catch-up.
And that is only through President Trump.
President Trump believes in NATO, but he does not believe in the American people being dragged in.
Okay, I understand that he doesn't want the American people being dragged in, but it seems to me that if we are in a conflict with NATO and NATO is redirecting its resources from, you know, our enemies like Russia toward, say, Greenland, that is not necessarily the best use of NATO resources.
Scott Besson's also suggested we're not going to outsource our national security.
And that is why we must have full control over Greenland.
Again, we have by treaty power the ability to place more troops in Greenland if we so choose.
We could do it right now.
We are not going to outsource our national security.
We are not going to outsource our hemispheric security to other countries.
In Trump 1.0, President Trump told the Europeans, do not build Nord Stream 2.
Do not rely on Russian oil.
And guess what, Kristen?
Guess what?
Is funding Russia's efforts against Ukraine?
European purchases of Russian oil.
So America has to be in control here.
Again, this notion that the United States has to be, like, if we want to defray costs, why are we then picking up more costs?
It will cost more, by the way, to actually administer Greenland than it would to have Greenland administered by Denmark and for us to just place a few military bases.
That's just the reality of the situation.
Again, this is more of a territorially expansionist policy for the United States.
And if we wish to buy from Denmark, that makes some sense to me.
But the idea that this is like a core national security interest is such that we must grab the territory, not that we must increase our military presence, but that we must own Greenland is strange to me.
The reason that this is a problem, because normally I just sort of laugh this stuff off.
Why is this a problem?
Because what is actually happening?
The world is adjusting to America's sort of aggressive take against everyone, not just against our enemies or our opponents, but also apparently against our allies, by reorienting, by shifting its own strategy on a broad level.
So I've been commenting about this with regard to, for example, Canada for a while.
The president decided to slap Canada with extremely high tariffs.
I mentioned when this happened earlier last year that this would only drive Canada into the arms of the Chinese.
And this is also true with regard to the Canadian elections, where the president of the United States slapping tariffs on Canada helped to ensure that the Canadian election would move in the direction of Mark Carney, who is a far left-winger, as opposed to in the direction of a significantly more right-wing figure, Pierre Polyev.
There are knock-on effects to doing things.
Now, the president of the United States is wonderful at a great many things.
He's heterodox on a great many things.
But also, he can be a hammer in search of a nail.
And when he doesn't have a nail, he sometimes hits a baby.
And the problem is there are knock-on effects to all of that.
And so when we look at the international results of all of this, what it seems is happening is that all over the world, everyone is reorienting in their perception of the United States.
Instead of the United States being the country that is sort of the black hole of politics where everything revolves around us, instead of that, it seems as though people are looking for new loci of gravity.
They're looking instead to other places.
They're looking for other relationships.
They're looking to defray the cost of losing the United States as, for example, a trade partner or a security partner.
So what does this mean in practical terms?
Well, to take one example, this means that the EU and the Mercosur bloc of South American nations have now signed a landmark free trade agreement.
So they could get a free trade agreement with the United States.
Instead, they decided to sign one with each other, which means they're maximizing trade with each other, but not with the United States.
According to the Associated Press, the EU and the Mercosur bloc of South American countries formally signed a long-sought free trade agreement on Saturday, strengthening commercial ties in the face of rising protectionism and trade tensions around the world.
The signing ceremony in Paraguay's capital, Asunción, caps more than a quarter century of torturous negotiations.
It marks a major geopolitical victory for the EU in an age of American tariffs and surging Chinese imports, expanding the bloc's foothold in a resource-rich region increasingly contested by both Washington and Beijing.
Now, this will likely be ratified in South America.
It includes, by the way, Argentina and Brazil, as well as Paraguay and Uruguay.
It is not including Bolivia.
And Venezuela, of course, was suspended a long time ago.
But the goal here for the EU is to forge trade relations outside the United States.
And if this were relegated to simply increase trade relations between some of our allies and other allies, that'd be one thing.
But actually, what's happening here is that China is beginning to capitalize with regard to trade relations.
I warned last year that alienating the Canadians by smacking them with lumber tariffs and all the rest, that all this was going to do was give a permission structure an excuse for Mark Carney to draw closer to China.
You know what?
I don't want China to have great close relations with our northern neighbor.
I think that's a very bad thing for the United States.
Well, unfortunately, that's what's happening.
According to Axios, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's decision to ease trade tensions with China is the latest sign that U.S. allies squeezed by Trump-era tariffs are recalibrating and in some cases drifting closer to Beijing.
President Trump's tariff-driven trade strategy is accelerating efforts by U.S. partners to hedge and diversify, creating openings for China as countries manage retaliatory trade fallout.
China and Canada struck a deal on electric vehicles, agriculture, and energy.
A statement said, quote, Canada's new government is working with urgency and determination to diversify our trade partnerships and catalyze massive new levels of investment.
As the world's second largest economy, China presents enormous opportunities for Canada in this mission.
So Canada dropped its 100% electric vehicle tariff on China and will allow up to 49,000 Chinese EVs into the Canadian market.
So more relations between China and Canada.
Here's Mark Carney over the weekend announcing his strategic partnership with the Chinese.
It's been eight years since a Canadian prime minister visited China, and this is a relationship that has been distant and uncertain for nearly a decade.
That has held back investment, it's stalled business growth, and cost Canadian workers good opportunities.
And that's why Canada's new government began to recalibrate our relationship with China.
Through periods of global tension and disruption, we've created more opportunities for our workers, businesses, and investors by working together.
That's the opportunity before us now.
More stability, more certainty, and prosperity on both sides.
Okay, now, again, do we want the Canadians reorienting toward the Chinese?
I think not.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, he said, I think Canada is going to regret the day that it did this.
I love my brothers and sisters to the north.
I'm from northern Wisconsin.
And I'm not going to accuse them of making the smartest decisions all the time.
I think they will live to regret the day they partner with China and bring it in their vehicles.
Now, China's increasing flex is going to move toward Taiwan.
Taiwan, in an attempt to keep the United States in the fold, is trying to build more resources in the United States, less because they're trying to offshore to the United States, more because they're trying to please the Trump administration, which again is fine, so long as the quid pro quo is that the United States actually is going to provide for some element of defense to Taiwan in case of a Chinese move.
The big question with regard to President Trump's foreign policy after all is said and done here is whether what we are looking at is a hawkish realist foreign policy from the president, one where he pursues America's interests aggressively around the globe, from Venezuela to Greenland to the Middle East, to Taiwan, to defending trade routes, or whether what we are watching is a retrenchment in which the United States strengthens its hand in places like Greenland, maybe Cuba or Venezuela, but other places on earth basically draws back.
And nobody seems particularly clear on this at this point, which is why presumably you are starting to see all the geopolitical puzzle pieces moving, China getting more aggressive, the EU starting to make overtures toward both China and towards South America.
The Canadians trying to make their move toward China.
California's Wealth Tax Debate 00:06:46
Things are in flux right now.
And to pretend otherwise would be to ignore the chess pieces as they move on the board.
Meanwhile, Democrats seem pretty confident that they are going to take over Congress.
And you can tell by the kind of language that they are using.
Chuck Schumer is vowing that if the Democrats were to take over the Senate, that they would restore all Doge cuts, which is pretty astonishing since Doge cuts some pretty useless stuff.
If you look at the budget, actually, we're working on right now, and we'll have the T HUD budget, you know, transportation and HUD budget, we restore most of the cuts and even go higher than previous years on many of the programs that Doge slash.
So again, the fact that Democrats are perfectly willing to go right back into spending even bigger than we are currently spending is pretty incredible.
Meanwhile, other Democrats are openly promoting the idea that there should be such a thing as a wealth tax.
The big force behind that in the state of California, again, Gavin Newsom, who I spoke with last week on his show, denounces a wealth tax in the state of California because he understands it will drive all the wealth out of his state.
Ro Khanna, the congressman, is one of the people pushing a wealth tax.
Newsom has sort of suggested that while he opposes it on a state level, because it will drive wealth out of his state, it's fine and dandy on a federal level, which is insane.
Because again, very, very wealthy people can actually move offshore as well.
This actually happened in France.
France had a millionaires' tax at one point, a wealth tax, and people just moved.
They just left.
Wealth taxes are crazy.
A wealth tax, for those who missed out, is not an income tax.
A wealth tax is a tax on your unrealized assets.
So, for example, just to take an example that might arise in everyday life if the wealth tax applied broadly, you buy a house, the house was worth $200,000 when you bought it.
Today, the house is worth $500,000, but you didn't sell it.
And now they're going to say you have to pay a couple percentage of tax on the value of the house, the unrealized value of the house.
So now you're going to owe, say, $60,000, $70,000 on a house you never sold.
How precisely is that fair?
How is that right?
And how doesn't that actually end up harming business creation?
The answer is it absolutely does.
But for Democrats, it's never about the efficacy of the program.
It is all about the revenge to be taken on the people who actually earn.
So Kara Swisher had Rokana on her show, and she suggested that if you leave the state, if you're Larry Page or Sergey Brin or other founders who are leaving the state now because they don't wish to bankrupt themselves or their companies, which is what would happen here, then this means that you are somehow ungrateful.
I got 100 people, I think it is, who are threatening to leave California, except for Jensen Huang, who's apparently staying.
I have two minds of this.
One is you made your, and I said it to one this weekend.
I said, you made all your money in California, you ungrateful piece of sh.
You could figure out a way to get pay more taxes, and we deserve the taxes from you, given you made your wealth here.
The second thing is, yes, there are different ways to do this, but the length of time it would take at the kind of vehemence you would fight, whatever happens, means nothing would happen.
So why don't we just do shock and awe at this point?
Because you don't seem to be, you know, availing yourself to thinking that you owe your state something more.
Okay, you don't owe the state of California gigantic chunks of the wealth that you built in the state of California because you happened to be in California when it was built.
You could have easily built it in Nevada or someplace else.
The state of California benefited from having your gigantic business in it, not the other way around.
This is an absurdity.
But again, the sort of jealousy and nastiness of that particular comment is really quite astonishing.
The idea that Larry Page or Sergey Brin, Elon, all these billionaires, that they should be sitting around grateful for the wonders of California's regulatory structure as California attempts to bankrupt them, because that is actually what you are talking about, or attempts to radically change the market cap of their company through a wealth tax is totally insane.
But this is what happens when you have a Democratic Party that, again, can't go back to normalcy.
All people want is just some level of normalcy.
That's all they want.
I will say that Republicans have done a pretty poor job of fighting back ideologically against all this sort of stuff.
This is one of my big problems with the new pro-centralized state Republican Party.
There are large swaths of the Republican Party that have jettisoned economic, laissez-faire conservatism, that have decided that the free markets are bad now, that actually what we need is some state-sponsored capitalism.
Other words, corporatism.
We need the state picking and choosing winners and taking stakes in private companies.
We need the centralized government deciding what is good business and what is bad business and which deals are fair and which are not.
Well, if you do that, it's going to be very hard to make the case against the centralized state as run by the Democrats, because frankly, the case against the centralized state in the economy is a case that the state really has no part to play here other than ensuring that people don't defraud one another, that they don't steal from one another.
But the minute that you get into the state should pursue the common good with your money, there's no limiting principle there.
And this is why I think that if you look at all the polls recently, what you see is the rise of socialism.
You see people who are getting warmer and warmer toward the concept of socialism.
They never had to live under it.
And so when you hear Senator Tim Scott saying we have a chance to make sure America is never socialist, which of course, you know, is something you have to fight for consistently, it is hard for Republicans to make that argument while continuing to use the government to do outsized things.
The truth of the matter is that when you look at the candidates that they're putting up, they're Democrats, socialists, or just outright socialists.
We have a chance to reinforce that America will never be a socialist nation.
Holding the House, holding the Senate, and making sure that President Trump has a Republican majority means the attention, as he said, will not be on impeaching him.
The attention will be on the American people who deserve a president who listens to the people and then delivers.
Again, I think Republicans can campaign against socialism.
We'll make it a lot easier if they stop, you know, acting kind of like socialists.
Meanwhile, on foreign policy, President Trump continues to push for the ouster of the Iranian regime.
The president told Politico over the weekend it's time to look for new leadership in Iran, which, of course, is true.
The president said on Saturday, the best decision that Ayatollah Khomeini ever made was not hanging more than 800 people two days ago.
Syria's Conflict Continues 00:05:50
That came shortly after Khomeini's ex-account posted a series of hostile messages aimed at Trump.
President Trump said, quote, what he is guilty of as the leader of a country is the complete destruction of the country and the use of violence at levels never seen before.
In order to keep the country functioning, even though that function is a very low level, the leadership should focus on running his country properly, like I do with the United States, and not killing people by the thousands in order to keep control.
Leadership is about respect, not fear and death.
The president said, the man is a sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people.
His country is the worst place to live anywhere in the world because of poor leadership.
Now, obviously, I think that that's true.
The question is, what's going to happen now?
Because this idea that things have gone silent, that everything is fine and hunky-dory there, is not true.
We have reports ranging from 3,000 dead all the way up into the 23,000 range dead.
There have been multiple reports anywhere in that spectrum.
At the very least, you're looking at thousands upon thousands of people who have been murdered by the regime, tens of thousands of people who have been wounded by the regime.
Right now, Iran has basically locked down the entire country.
The internet is still dead.
You're still unable to get on the internet in Iran.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the protesters who filled the streets of Tehran are gone, replaced by security forces and reminders of the violence used by the regime to suppress a national uprising aimed at ending its rule.
Members of the Basij pro-government militia patrolled the streets of Tehran on motorbikes in recent days, with some shouting, Don't come out, we'll shoot you.
A medical student in Tehran said he counted the charred remains of at least five men's.
Many shops remain closed.
Universities are still closed.
There have been only two new protests across Iranian cities since Monday, according to human rights activists in Iran.
That is not because the Iranian government has calmed everything down and now everything is back to normal.
The help has not yet arrived.
The president said that people should remain out in the streets and they should continue protesting, and help was on its way.
The help did not come.
All that happened is that Iran shot a crapload of people in the streets and then put guns and tanks and human beings on motorcycles in the streets and threatened to murder people for walking out.
Authorities said they are easing an internet shutdown that started January 8th, but apparently it is still not possible to fully get on the internet.
Tehran continues its crackdown.
Tajrish, an affluent neighborhood of North Tehran, normally known as the capital's top dating spot, has been eerily quiet in the past week, according to one resident.
Most shops remain closed.
Armed security forces have taken over the streets of several cities across the country, imposing what some Iranians have described as unofficial martial law.
In Karaj, an industrial town to the west of Tehran, police loudspeakers are blasting calls to people to stay away from their windows, apparently.
So there's still rumors coming out of people being shot in back rooms, that there's still murders that are going on.
They're just not happening in the middle of the street.
We don't know the answer to any of that.
Suffice it to say, the crisis in Iran is not yet over.
Meanwhile, nearby in Syria, the Syrian regime, which again is supposed to be this moderate regime, it is not in fact a moderate regime in any real sense of the word.
It was run by an Islamist who was a member of ISIS and al-Qaeda and now is backed by the Turkish regime.
Syria has been slaughtering the Kurds.
Again, the Kurds have been fighting for their independence in this region for quite a long time.
They are opposed by the Turks in this effort.
Well, now this has resulted in the Syrian military seizing swaths of Kurdish-held territory at the behest of the Turks.
The Turks are now trying to turn Syria into essentially a Turkish client state.
That's what they are attempting to do.
Erdogan is a radical Islamist himself.
He has full solidarity with, for example, Hamas.
He has said so.
The fact that Turkey is a NATO power is insane.
It should not be.
It should be expelled from NATO.
The fact that it's being treated by the United States as an erstwhile ally is similarly insane.
Turkey is not a moderate power.
It is increasingly Islamist, and the military has basically been purged of any of its secularist elements.
And now it is working hand in glove with Syria to wipe out the Kurds.
According to CNN, in the space of two days, the Syrian military, aided by tribal militia, has driven Kurdish forces from wide swaths of northern Syria that they've held for more than a decade.
Among the towns and cities reported to have fallen is Raqqa, that is once the notorious capital of ISIS.
After the territorial gains, Syria's president said Sunday an agreement had been reached with the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces to end the fighting in the northeast of the country.
Why did this apparently happen?
Well, the SDF, the Syrian Defense Force, again, a Kurdish force, is a U.S.-backed group that was not part of the rebel alliance that overthrew Bashar al-Assad in 2024.
And so the Syrian government decided to basically wipe them out with the help of the Turks.
Now, for some odd reason, members of the administration seem to believe that the Turks are friends to the United States and to the Western powers.
There is zero evidence this is true.
The United States has announced that the Turks are going to be involved in the so-called Gaza Oversight Board, the Gaza Peace Board.
I see zero reason why the Turks, who again were pretty openly allied with Hamas, should be part of helping to reconstitute the Gaza Strip when the entire question is whether Hamas is going to retain any controlling part of the Gaza Strip.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Israel is publicly pushing back against the makeup of a U.S. committee created to oversee Gaza, which includes both Turkey and Qatar.
Turkey, again, is an Islamist rival to Israel, and Qatar, of course, is in Iranian cutout.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday the committee established by the White House to help advance the next phases of the Gaza ceasefire was, quote, not coordinated with Israel and contrary to its policy.
Queen Dylan's Brand 00:04:14
Among the members included on the board are Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and senior Qatari official Ali Tawadi.
That is nuts, frankly.
The Turkish president, Rasib Tayyap Erdogan, of course, has been, as I say over and over again, a deep ally to Hamas.
So, of course, has Qatar.
So this would be a large-scale mistake.
Okay, closer to home on the cultural front, the most bizarre story of the day.
Apparently, Dylan Mulvaney, I don't know why brands wish to touch with a 10-foot pole, Dylan Mulvaney's brand, but apparently they want to.
Dylan Mulvaney has now been cast in the Broadway musical about women's history 6, which is about the six wives of Henry VIII.
Dylan Mulvaney will now play Anne Boleyn, which makes perfect sense because certainly the king would have been very upset when his trans female bride could not give birth.
I mean, if you know your history, gang, the reason the king was pissed is because Anne Boleyn gave birth to a female child, but not a male child.
I have a feeling that the king would have been significantly less concerned about that if Anne Boleyn had been a dude.
Just putting it out there.
That doesn't seem to make a lot of historical sense.
The musical's official ex-ann account announced Friday, quote, losing our heads to introduce your newest Anne Boleyn.
Show some royal love to Queen Dylan Mulvaney.
Again, like the whole point of this show supposedly is that it is re-centering the female experience.
Well, now the female experience is male.
And again, if we are just talking about the history of Henry VIII here, it doesn't make a ton of sense that a woman executed for her failure to bear a male heir would be played by a male who can't bear anything not having a uterus.
So there's that.
Well, I hope everyone who is going to see Dylan Mulvaney enjoys sex.
Enjoy that.
Alrighty, the show continues for our members right now.
A kind of shocking story about how many Democrats are trying to avoid the trans issue come 2028.
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What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God?
Is that who you think I was alone with?
Marin, I knew your father.
I am yet convinced that he was not of this world.
All men know of the great Taliesin.
You are my father.
Are the gods should war for my soul?
Princess Garris, savior of our people.
I know what the bull got offered you.
I was offered the same.
And there is a new pirate work in the world.
I've seen it.
A god who sacrifices what he loves for us.
We are each given only one life, Singer.
No.
We're given another.
I learned of Yazoo the Christ, and I have become his follower.
He's waiting on a know, and I think you can give him one.
Trust in Yezu.
He is the only hope for men like us.
Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the Great Light.
Great Light, Great Darkness.
Such things mattered to me then.
What matters to you now, Mistress of Lies?
You, nephew.
The sword of a high king.
How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield?
Still clinging to the promises of a god who has abandoned you.
I cannot take up that sword again.
You know what you must do.
Great Light, forgive me.
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