| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
Grammys And Politics
00:05:46
|
||
| Our greatest artists gather at the Grammys in order to reward one another and also to rip on President Trump and ICE. | ||
| Plus, the Epstein files, three and a half million more files released. | ||
| What do they actually show? | ||
| We'll go through what the evidence demonstrates. | ||
| Plus, Democrats continue to push on the immigration issue. | ||
| Is that going to be a winning issue for them electorally? | ||
| We'll get to the polls. | ||
| First, January is finally over. | ||
| We used all 31 days of it to release a ton of new content. | ||
| Matt Walsh released a brand new series called Real History with Matt Walsh, starting with the real history of slavery, packed with facts, schools, and institutions conveniently left out for decades. | ||
| Episodes one through three of our long-awaited seven-part cinematic series, The Pendragon Cycle Rise of the Merlin, are streaming right now with new episodes every Thursday only on Daily Wire Plus Plus. | ||
| New episodes of Bar Fight with Michael Knowles and Daily Wire Plus originals, like How to Take Out a Dictator in 88 Minutes, Minneapolis Ride Along with ICE, and a lot more. | ||
| Watch now with your Daily Wire Plus membership. | ||
| If you're not a member yet, go to dailywareplus.com and join right now. | ||
| Well, folks, over the weekend, we learned about a very powerful, very rich cadre of people who have inordinate control over the direction of our nation's politics. | ||
| I'm talking, of course, about the Grammys. | ||
| So the Grammys were filled with our usual celebrity geniuses spouting their usual performative politics to the cheers of their other fellow celebrities. | ||
| And the reason I'm pointing this out, of course, is because if you wonder what the room is like, where people hash out, what the culture ought to look like, it looks like the Grammys. | ||
| It does. | ||
| The thing about the Grammys, and so many of our award shows that are really fascinating, is that it really is an inside look to the rest of the world at what these people actually talk like at dinner parties. | ||
| And I know a lot of the people who are in Hollywood. | ||
| I've spoken with many of them. | ||
| I've been at parties with some of them. | ||
| And their parties look like the Grammys. | ||
| It is performative, self-congratulatory nonsense far too often. | ||
| It's people patting themselves on the back for their performative version of the most extreme radical politics in our society. | ||
| And that's why we are also annoyed when it shows up on our TV, because typically when people tune into the Grammys or the Oscars or any other award show, what they expect is a celebration of the culture that we all share, the music that we all enjoy. | ||
| And instead, what they usually get is a cocktail party punctuated by some people holding up a trophy. | ||
| And those people do share a lifestyle. | ||
| They are the most protected, wealthy people in our society. | ||
| And the people who share that lifestyle are people who tend to share their politics. | ||
| And now they're sharing that politics with you, the little people. | ||
| And so last night at the Grammys, pretty much every performer decided that they were going to lead by ripping into ICE, immigration and customs enforcement, ripping the Trump administration. | ||
| Now, obviously, there are other things going on in the world. | ||
| And just a year or two ago, pretty much everybody at the Grammys was speaking up about the supposed evils of the Israeli defense forces in the Gaza Strip. | ||
| Now, of course, the Iranian government has been mowing down protesters, perhaps by the tens of thousands. | ||
| Not a single word about that at the Grammys last night, but lots of words for immigration and customs enforcement doing its job in Minneapolis. | ||
| So, for example, Bad Bunny. | ||
| That's not his real name, I assume. | ||
| I guess his real name is Benito Antonio Martinez-Ocasio. | ||
| He is nominated for six Grammys for his latest album, and he's supposed to perform at the Super Bowl, apparently wearing a dress, which is exactly what you want, right? | ||
| If you're showing your nine-year-old boy the Super Bowl, you know, where men are men and where athletic performance and grit and determination and heart, those are the keys to victory. | ||
| What you want is during halftime, a dude gallivanting around in ladies' garments. | ||
| Well, he won an award for his album, and he proceeded to rip into ICE, which is precisely what we need to hear from this human. | ||
| Before I say thanks to God, I'm gonna say eyes out. | ||
| He did it. | ||
| He did it, guys. | ||
| We're not animals. | ||
| We're not aliens. | ||
| We are humans, and we are Americans. | ||
| Also, I want to say to the people, I know it's tough to know, not to hate on these days. | ||
| And I was thinking sometime we get contaminados. | ||
| I don't know how to say that in English. | ||
| The hate gets more powerful with more hate. | ||
| The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Deep words. | ||
| Love is more powerful than hate. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That is some deep verbiage. | ||
| I can see why he is such an acclaimed songwriter and performer. | ||
| And also, it turns out there's no such thing as an illegal immigrant. | ||
| Now, he is a U.S. citizen because he's Puerto Rican. | ||
| I'm not sure what that has to do with ice out, but you can hear the applause in the room. | ||
| He did it. | ||
| He solved the problem. | ||
| I love that celebrities really believe that they are like Michael Scott in the office. | ||
| They can walk into the middle of a room, shout, I declare bankruptcy, and it is legally effective. | ||
| You're right, celebrities. | ||
| If you go into a room with all of your fellow celebrities protected by armed security outside, where every single human who comes into that arena has to have their background checked, that you can sit there and tell the rest of America that actually no protection is available to them. | ||
|
Billie Eilish's Sleep Solutions
00:02:15
|
||
| Billie Eilish, who I'm sure has not only armed security, but apparently a palatial estate surrounded by offense because she has stalker problems. | ||
| She says that there is nobody illegal on stolen land. | ||
| And by stolen land, I assume she means all of planet Earth since populations have been moving since legitimately the beginning of recorded human history. | ||
| She says nobody is illegal on stolen land. | ||
| So I guess party at Billie Eilish's house Friday night. | ||
| Is that how this works? | ||
| Okay, here we go. | ||
| No one is illegal on stolen land. | ||
| Oh my gosh, I'm Sabria Carpenter. | ||
| Oh, and lady wearing a peacock on her head. | ||
| I don't know who that is. | ||
| Yeah, it's just really hard to know what to say and what to do right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is. | |
| It's so hard. | ||
| I mean, if only you were in a profession where that was literally your job, Billie Eilish. | ||
| I will say she looks significantly less unhappy since she started dating a dude. | ||
| I mean, at least that's going for her. | ||
| More deep and important people at the Grammys in just a moment. | ||
| First, sleep quality matters an awful lot. | ||
| I have many, many children, as it turns out. | ||
| And that means that life is stressful and we got a business and all the rest. | ||
| When I get on that mattress, I need to go to sleep. | ||
| And that means I need a mattress made just for me. | ||
| Well, finding the right mattress doesn't have to be complicated. | ||
| Our sponsor, Helix, actually makes it incredibly straightforward with their sleep quiz, which matches you to the perfect mattress based on your specific preferences and sleep needs. | ||
| They're not just another mattress company either. | ||
| Helix is the most awarded mattress brand out there with glowing reviews from major publications like Forbes and Wired. | ||
| Folks, not just marketing hype. | ||
| A study they conducted found that 82% of participants actually saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle while sleeping on a Helix mattress. | ||
| It's pretty impressive when you think about how crucial quality sleep is for everything else in life. | ||
| I have a mattress that is firm but breathable, right? | ||
| Because I took that quiz. | ||
| It told me what mattress I needed and it was right. | ||
| They even offer free shipping straight to your door a 120-night sleep trial so you can actually test it out in your own home. | ||
| They back everything up with a limited lifetime warranty. | ||
| Start sleeping right tonight by ordering a Helix mattress today. | ||
| Go to helixleep.com/slash Ben for 27% off-site. | ||
| Wide, that's helixleep.com slash Ben for 27% offsite. | ||
| Wide, make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helixleep.com slash Ben. | ||
| Olivia Dean also decided it was time to rip into ICE. | ||
|
Claims and Allegations
00:15:50
|
||
| So here she was. | ||
| I mean, again, look at the bravery of these people. | ||
| They all think alike. | ||
| They all act alike. | ||
| They all have similar lifestyles. | ||
| And they are speaking to you, the little people. | ||
| You know, the people who don't have armed security at your palatial estates, while people pay you millions upon millions of dollars to sing songs written by a large coterie of other people. | ||
| You need to hear their voices. | ||
| You need to hear their words. | ||
| These are the tastemakers. | ||
| These are the people who shape the culture in which your children grow up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I guess I want to say I'm up here as a granddaughter of an immigrant. | |
| I wouldn't be here. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Huge. | ||
| Big news. | ||
| Huge of truth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm a product of bravery, and I think those people deserve to be celebrated. | |
| I mean, so we're celebrating your grandparents. | ||
| I mean, I'm just going to point out a huge percentage of Americans have ancestors who came here at some point, like pretty much all Americans. | ||
| And therefore, this means what? | ||
| We have to have an open border, or that if you came during Joe Biden's open border and took advantage of our welfare systems, you have to stay. | ||
| Or that if ICE has a deportation order, they're supposed to ignore it because your grandparents, I assume, came here legally 60, 70 years ago to take. | ||
| Gloria Estefan showed up as well and talked about how basically this is like the Holocaust, which again, people stop. | ||
| Stop doing Holocaust analogies that are totally in opposite. | ||
| I'm not against a properly drawn Holocaust analogy, but you have to actually find an analog. | ||
| You can't just compare things to the Holocaust. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| ICE picking up individually legal immigrants and sending them back to their home countries is not the same as an entire war infrastructure set up to systematically murder millions of people of a particular race. | ||
| Turns out that's not the same thing, like at all. | ||
| And also, you know what's not similar? | ||
| America to Nazi Germany, because you know what you didn't see in the middle of World War II or the Nazi era? | ||
| What you didn't see was a bunch of artists getting up on red carpets talking about how terrible the Nazis were in Berlin. | ||
| Wasn't the thing that was happening very often. | ||
| Here's Gloria Estefan. | ||
| I have been very vocal about the fact that I'm scared of what I'm seeing in this country. | ||
| I've been living here for decades. | ||
| This is not the place that I grew up in. | ||
| We need to all stand up. | ||
| In college, I took literature of the Holocaust, and the biggest lesson that I learned was that silence is our biggest enemy. | ||
| We all have to stand together and say that we, okay, we agree that the border has to be secured, but this is not what's happening. | ||
| People, families are being torn apart. | ||
| Children, hundreds of children are in detention and in horrible conditions. | ||
| I have personal experience with people in my circle that their loved ones have been taken away and have been months in detention for no reason because they haven't been deported. | ||
| They haven't done anything. | ||
| So, no, we need to stand up and we need to vote and show our political and economic power. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Inspiring stuff. | ||
| And then, of course, Trevor Noah. | ||
| It amazes me. | ||
| What a great country where an immigrant like Trevor Noah can really make good despite having legitimately zero talent. | ||
| It's a pretty impressive feat. | ||
| Trevor Noah hosted the Grammys where he was his usual smart meeting obnoxious self. | ||
| And he dissed Nicki Minaj and he dissed President Trump, suggesting that President Trump was part of the Epstein scandal and all the rest of it. | ||
| Here he was dissing Nicki Minaj for the great sin of having gone to the White House to promote the Trump accounts, which, of course, are savings accounts being set up for American children, which, according to Trevor Noah, I guess, is a bad thing now. | ||
| Every single person here, John Legend, Billy Island is Phineas. | ||
| Nikki Minaj is not here. | ||
| She is not here. | ||
| She is still at the White House with Donald Trump discussing very important issues at Actually, Nikki, I have the biggest ass. | ||
| I have it. | ||
| Everybody's saying it, Nikki. | ||
| I know they say it's you, but it's me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wop, wop, wop. | |
| Look at it. | ||
| Look at it, baby. | ||
| I love that all the people there are cheering when he's like, Nikki Minaj is over at the White House discussing serious issues as though they are there discussing serious issues. | ||
| Their version of discussing a serious issue is they sing songs that are overproduced and auto-tuned, and then they go on a stage and pretend they know something about policy. | ||
| That's their serious discussion. | ||
| He went out of his way, Trevor Noah, to drop some sort of joke about Epstein Island and Trump and suggest that Trump has been to Epstein Island and that the reason he wants Greenland is because he wants his own Epstein Island with Bill Clinton. | ||
| And President Trump then went on Truth Social and threatened to sue Trevor Noah because we live in an alternative timeline. | ||
| Quote, the Grammy Awards are the worst, virtually unwatchable. | ||
| So far, so true. | ||
| CBS is lucky not to have this garbage litter, their airwaves any longer. | ||
| The host, Trevor Noah, whoever he may be, is almost as bad as Jimmy Kimmel at the Low Ratings Academy Awards. | ||
| Noah said incorrectly about me that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spend time on Epstein Island. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wrong. | |
| I can't speak for Bill, but I've never been to Epstein Island nor anywhere close. | ||
| And until tonight's false and defamatory statement, have never been accused of being there, not even by the fake news media. | ||
| Noah, a total loser, better get his facts straight and get them straight fast. | ||
| It looks like I'll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor pathetic, talentless dope of an MC and suing him for plenty dollar sign. | ||
| Ask little George Slapidopoulos and others how that all worked out. | ||
| Also ask CBS, get ready, Noah. | ||
| I'm going to have some fun with you, President Donald J. Trump. | ||
| Yes, this is the world that we now inhabit. | ||
| Now, why is any of this really important? | ||
| Well, I mean, it is important because when you have all the cultural tastemakers who are all pushing the same politics, that is likely to seep out into the broader culture. | ||
| And sometimes that can go viral and turn into a brainworm that sort of eats the American body politic. | ||
| You saw this, for example, with the trans issue pushed by every cultural arbiter in American society. | ||
| And for solidly a decade, this was promoted as the way to decide whether a person was virtuous or not, whether they were willing to say that a boy could be a girl and a girl could be a boy. | ||
| So it does make a difference when the entire cultural apparatus mobilizes behind a thing. | ||
| But there is something else here that is worthy of note also. | ||
| And that is celebrities, they have their own social circle. | ||
| And that social circle tends to mirror itself. | ||
| It, in fact, is a hallway of mirrors. | ||
| You're not welcome in a lot of these social circles if you have a different politics. | ||
| You don't go to the cool kid parties, right? | ||
| The story of Hollywood in its most depraved form, writ small, would be the Diddy White parties. | ||
| That is Hollywood in its most depraved form, written small. | ||
| It's like in a microcosm of what Hollywood is. | ||
| It's the most extreme version of what's happening in that cultural milieu. | ||
| And I think that is probably the best way to see the Jeffrey Epstein story as well. | ||
| So a lot of people are looking for the connection between the Jeffrey Epstein story, the saga, the details that are now coming out, and what that means about quote unquote, who runs our world. | ||
| Now, there are a lot of very powerful people whose names have been mentioned in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. | ||
| People who are hanging out, hobnobbing with Jeffrey Epstein, people who are asking dating advice like Lauren Summers, former president of Harvard, or people who are apparently soliciting visits to Epstein parties or whom Epstein was soliciting to go to his parties, including people like Elon Musk. | ||
| Obviously, Jeffrey Epstein was friendly with Bill Clinton. | ||
| There was a time early on in his life, earlier, when he was friendly with Donald Trump. | ||
| All of that is true. | ||
| Now, the leap that some people are making is that this means that Epstein was manipulating all of these powerful people through blackmail with regard to sex. | ||
| That is not in evidence. | ||
| If that turns out to be in evidence, then we will happily report on it. | ||
| That is not what so far has come out. | ||
| And the reason I'm making this distinction is because it is, in fact, a deeply important thing that some of the most powerful people in our society act in morally depraved ways, godless, virtue-free ways, hanging out with some of the worst people in our society, people they know to be trafficking in women who are very, very young, if not in minors. | ||
| When it comes to Epstein and Ghelaine Maxwell, what was criminally indicted was the trafficking of underage girls for Epstein's own use. | ||
| There have yet to be legally verifiable allegations that girls who are underage were trafficked to people who are not Jeffrey Epstein or by Ghelaine Maxwell, to people not Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| That does not mean the story is unimportant. | ||
| The story is still important because it exposes, again, the cultural milieu in which too many elitists in our society, people who control others, get together, formulate their values, hang out, and decide what they think is right, good, and true. | ||
| So, over the weekend on Friday, the Department of Justice announced the release of some 3.5 million pages of Epstein documents. | ||
| Now, I will say that I think that the way these documents were released, it appears not to be particularly smart. | ||
| It turns out, for example, that a huge number of names of the Epstein victims were exposed, which is illegal. | ||
| You are not supposed to do that. | ||
| That was originally the reason why the DOJ did not release these gigantic tranches of documents because they had not done the proper redactions. | ||
| And as it turns out, they actually didn't do the thing they were supposed to do. | ||
| According to the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department exposed the names of dozens of Jeffrey Epstein's victims, including many who haven't shared their identities publicly or were minors when they were abused by the notorious sex offender. | ||
| A review of 47 victims' full names on Sunday found that 43 of them were left unredacted in files that were made public by the government on Friday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. | ||
| Several women's full names appeared more than 100 times in the file. | ||
| The Justice Department was required to redact all victims' names prior to releasing the files. | ||
| Apparently, there was one minor victim who was mentioned over 160 times in the file. | ||
| So that's bad, and that is a bad job by the DOJ. | ||
| It is also true that because an enormous amount of this is sort of raw data that was taken in by the FBI, a huge amount of the stuff that is now being trafficked online is unverified, unverifiable, or from the tip line. | ||
| That is the reality. | ||
| So, for example, people going after President Trump and suggesting that Trump is in the files. | ||
| So, the DOJ had a document, August 7th, 2025, with the various mentions of President Trump in the National Threat Operations Center tip line. | ||
| Now, here's the problem: the National Threat Operations Center tip line receives somewhere between 3,000 and 4,500 calls or electronic tips per day. | ||
| Many report secondhand information. | ||
| Most claims, I think I believe all claims at this point, when they are taken in, are unverified, right? | ||
| It takes further investigation to verify them. | ||
| So, you've seen people on the left run around and say President Trump is alleged to have forced an underage girl, 13, 14 years old, to perform oral sex. | ||
| Well, it turns out that that is totally unverified. | ||
| They tried to run it down. | ||
| They were unable to substantiate it. | ||
| There is another complaint suggesting that a caller said that at age 16, she attended eight parties at Epstein's New York residence and on one occasion reported she was sexually assaulted by Epstein. | ||
| And then suggested also that there was a party involving a number of famous people, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, and that she was a victim and witness to a sex trafficking ring at the Trump golf course in Ranchos Palace, Virtus in California. | ||
| Well, the FBI actually spoke to that person, and the complainant was spoken to and deemed not credible. | ||
| And the person had had several mandatory psychiatric evaluations. | ||
| So there are lots of claims that are like this in these files, and trying to actually run down the source of the claims is really important because one of the things that happens in internet land is people will take unverified, salacious allegations that have not been run down by the FBI. | ||
| They will then run those through the internet machine, and suddenly this becomes likely probable truth. | ||
| Well, you actually have to run down each specific allegation in the three and a half million pages of data before you run with the it's definitely true or it's verified or this is the reason why policy XY or Z happened. | ||
| And this is just a call for evidence. | ||
| And if the evidence shows what people want it to show, and I really believe that, I think there are a lot of people who want this evidence to show that, in fact, the Jeffrey Epstein pedophilic sex ring has been running all of global politics for years because that is a comforting thought for a lot of people about the nature of how politics works. | ||
| That actually there is a coterie of people who are very sophisticated who are running everything in American public life. | ||
| And those people are being linked by pedophilic sex orgies and all this kind of stuff. | ||
| There's a large swath of people for whom this idea is appealing. | ||
| The evidence is not there. | ||
| If the evidence presents itself, we will be happy to cover it. | ||
| The evidence is not there. | ||
| There is evidence that there are a lot of pervs who hung out with Jeffrey Epstein and that Jeffrey Epstein appealed to those pervs with largely 26-year-old Russian models. | ||
| And there's a lot of evidence that Jeffrey Epstein never should have been in those circles and that these pervs are perfectly happy to hang out with Jeffrey Epstein and greenlight his criminal activities with a wink and a nod because they themselves hang out in those circles. | ||
| This is why I liken this to the Diddy White parties. | ||
| In any case, here is Deputy AG Todd Blanche announcing the release of 3.5 million pages. | ||
| Today we are producing more than 3 million pages, including more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. | ||
| In total, that means that the department produced approximately 3.5 million pages in compliance with the act. | ||
| Hey, he went on to explain that the excluded files included pornography, victims' personal ID, and active investigations. | ||
| The categories of documents withheld include those permitted under the act to be withheld, files that contain personally identified information of victims or victims' personal and medical files, and similar files, the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. | ||
| Any depiction of CSAM or child pornography was obviously excluded. | ||
| Anything that would jeopardize an active federal investigation. | ||
| And finally, anything that depicts or contains images of death, physical abuse, or injury, also not produced. | ||
| Although the act allows for withholding for items necessary to keep secret in the interest of national security or foreign policy, no files are being withheld or redacted on that basis. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Blanche went on to blast people, accusing the DOJ of somehow covering for or supporting pedophiles. | ||
| He says, listen, it's our job to prosecute crimes when we can uncover evidence of the crimes. | ||
| It is not our job to pretend that every tip that comes into the national center is somehow credible, verifiable, or prosecutable. | ||
| Over the past several months last summer and into the fall, we executed Operation Restore Justice, rescuing 205 child victims and arresting 293 offenders. | ||
| I point this out because I take umbrage at the suggestion, which is totally false, that the Attorney General or this department does not take child exploitation or sex trafficking seriously, or that we somehow do not want to protect victims. | ||
|
Epstein's Connections Revealed
00:12:46
|
||
| We do. | ||
| There are some select members of Congress and some in the public eye, including those most critical of our efforts at full transparency under the act, who remain silent as to all the work that we have done and continue to do every day in this space. | ||
| The Deputy AG Todd Blanche continued. | ||
| He said, a lot of these claims are basically uninvestigatable. | ||
| This is him on CNN with Dana Bash. | ||
| He's asking, you know, was full investigation done. | ||
| He's like, a lot of this is just kind of like raw material that's being culled from people who may not be particularly credible. | ||
| Did you look into what you have on those lists? | ||
| Yes, of course. | ||
| But no, but you're not being fair in that question because that index, that list you're talking about, was not just President Trump. | ||
| It was all kinds of individuals, other politicians, other, quote, famous people, where we wanted to understand, okay, there were members of Congress that were accusing us of hiding things, which we're not doing and which we haven't done. | ||
| And so we wanted to understand why and where that was coming from. | ||
| And it turns out there was a number of claims made by either, like I said, anonymous people or somebody, for example, calling and saying, I used to have a roommate who told me this sensational story. | ||
| So just, you know, obviously that's not something that can be really investigated, right? | ||
| What's your roommate's name? | ||
| I don't remember, right? | ||
| So that's what that's about. | ||
| I don't appreciate it being directed towards Donald J. Trump because that pushes a narrative that is completely false. | ||
| There are all kinds of people that are mentioned in the quote Epstein files that we had to look at and run down. | ||
| Yeah, no, I understand. | ||
| He is the only sitting president who we're talking about. | ||
| I do want to move on. | ||
| And Blanche did continue by saying, listen, there's nothing prosecutable in a lot of these documents. | ||
| The document release is not performative, but you guys wanted sort of the raw data. | ||
| Here's the raw data. | ||
| In July, the Department of Justice said that we had reviewed the files, the quote, Epstein files, and there was nothing in there that allowed us to prosecute anybody. | ||
| We then released over 3.5 million pieces of paper, which the entire world can look at now and see if we got it wrong. | ||
| And so it's not performative, and I respectfully disagree with that statement. | ||
| We were ordered to do so by Congress and then by the President of the United States, and that's what we did. | ||
| And let me, you know, I said it on Friday. | ||
| This Justice Department, the FBI, DHS, we have gone after more sex traffickers, more child pornographers, more men who have done harm to children and young women than any administration in history. | ||
| And so we need to separate those two ideas, the fact that there's the Epstein files and whether there's anybody there that we can go after, and the work that we are doing every day, which is extraordinary, and we will continue to do that. | ||
| And again, he keeps pointing out over and over and over that the people who are suggesting a cover-up by the DOJ, they don't have any evidence of a cover-up, and it's kind of absurd. | ||
| Here's Blanche saying that Thomas Massey, Chuck Schumer, they're making accusations they can't substantiate. | ||
| Leadership on the Hill, Congressman Massey, Senator Schumer, are quick to complain. | ||
| There is no way they have spent any time looking at the materials we produce because I know the materials we produce. | ||
| We produce them on Friday. | ||
| By Saturday, they're already complaining about what we did. | ||
| And by the way, apparently Massey and others wrote a letter to come and review unredacted materials. | ||
| I didn't get that letter yet. | ||
| They leaked it to the press before they actually sent it to me. | ||
| But yeah, that's absolutely totally fine. | ||
| We have nothing to hide. | ||
| We have nothing to hide. | ||
| We never did. | ||
| And our doors are open if they want to come and review any of the materials that we produced. | ||
| Now, it is true. | ||
| Again, this is a gigantic wasteland in terms of the amount of just raw sewage that's there, a lot of tips that are unverifiable, a lot of data that you can't track down. | ||
| MS Now says the files are basically impossible to sort through. | ||
| That, of course, is not a surprise. | ||
| When you have three and a half million pages of material and they're just sort of blown out into public view, it's going to be very difficult to sort those, especially when a huge amount of this stuff is either irrelevant or is coming in through the tip line or is coming in through sources that can't be checked. | ||
| Sarah Longwell put out a social media post that I think sort of encapsulated the day and the week. | ||
| And she said, the situation in Minnesota is so bad that they would rather talk about Epstein. | ||
| Isn't that extraordinary? | ||
| It is. | ||
| And this seems to be a case of buying time. | ||
| Like it's like, oh, here's millions of documents for you to sort through. | ||
| A lot of it will be impossible to sort through. | ||
| And we're going to keep millions more that you can never see. | ||
| Okay, I'm sorry. | ||
| This is just it. | ||
| Do you want the documents? | ||
| You don't want the documents. | ||
| If you want the documents, you know, you don't get to complain. | ||
| They're hard to sort through. | ||
| So you do an every diligence process, by the way. | ||
| Now, there are five separate claims that are being basically made about Epstein. | ||
| And I think that some of them are well substantiated and others of them are really not. | ||
| And they're all being conflated into the giant Epstein overall theory. | ||
| And I think that that's a problem because we ought to actually pursue the evidence where it takes us. | ||
| So one claim is obviously true. | ||
| Epstein was connected with a lot of famous and rich people, and many of them knew he was a pedophilical convict and they continued to hang out with him. | ||
| That is undoubtedly true. | ||
| That is undoubtedly true. | ||
| Apparently, according to NBC News, documents released Friday by the Justice Department show at least 16 emails, for example, between Elon Musk and Epstein in 2012 and 2013, including multiple instances where Musk expressed interest in visiting Epstein's island. | ||
| Musk wrote in an email to Epstein in November 2012, quote, what day or night will be the wildest party on your island? | ||
| And apparently he sought to visit the island at least twice, once in late 2012 and again in late 2013. | ||
| Now, again, if you look at the emails, it's really more Epstein pushing him hard to come than Elon out of the blue soliciting, can I come to your island? | ||
| In one post on X, Musk said, I've never been to any Epstein parties ever. | ||
| I have many times called for the prosecution of those who have committed crimes with Epstein. | ||
| The asset test for justice is not the release of the files, but rather the prosecution of those who committed heinous crimes with Epstein. | ||
| Okay, but that is assuming facts not in evidence, namely that there is evidence to prosecute people who committed heinous crimes with Epstein and those prosecutions have not yet been done. | ||
| Again, that will get to some of the other claims in just a moment. | ||
| But the fact that people were continuing to hold on conversations with Jeffrey Epstein in 2012 after he pled guilty in 2008 to procuring an underage girl for prostitution and then registered as a sex offender is a problem. | ||
| There was a copy of Epstein's daily schedules released September 26 by House Democrats, and it showed that Musk was tentatively expected to visit Epstein's island in December 2014. | ||
| Musk said that the schedule entry was false. | ||
| He said Epstein tried to get me to go to his island and I refused. | ||
| But I mean, it is incontrovertible. | ||
| It is non-contested that Epstein had relationships with a bunch of very rich and powerful people and that he did what a lot of con artists do, which is he would use his association with certain rich people to get in bed with other rich people. | ||
| And then he would offer them perks or benefits and some would take them up and some would not. | ||
| I think it is almost incontrovertible that Epstein probably connected some of these people with prostitutes. | ||
| That is in the files. | ||
| He certainly did, apparently, with Prince Andrew, allegedly with Prince Andrew, is that he was hooking people up with women who were overage. | ||
| That we know from some of the emails. | ||
| We also know, again, that he was connected with a wide variety of powerful people, ranging from Bill Gates to Kathy Ruhmler, the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs, and a White House counsel under former president Barack Obama. | ||
| In December 2015, there was an email exchange where she said, I adore him. | ||
| It's like having another older brother. | ||
| So, again, very highly connected. | ||
| No shock here. | ||
| Scumbag and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak used to routinely stay at the New York apartment Jeffrey Epstein owned. | ||
| Barack, of course, has been complicit in a wide variety of activities undermining the Israeli government, actually. | ||
| Also, there are reports that apparently Epstein sent an email to himself claiming that Bill Gates had obtained an STD from a prostitute and then passed it on to his wife. | ||
| That is, again, according to an email that Epstein sent to file. | ||
| The files include two draft emails dated July 18th, 2013, according to Newsweek, written from Epstein's own email address back to the same account with no indication they were ever sent or that Bill Gates ever received them. | ||
| One draft takes the form of a resignation letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, alleging that medication had been procured for Gates to, quote, deal with the consequences of sex with Russian girls. | ||
| The other begins, Dear Bill, and accuses Gates of ending a friendship while repeating lurid claims he concealed an STD, including allegedly from his then wife, Melinda. | ||
| Gates' spokesperson told the allegation, said the allegations come from, quote, a proven disgruntled liar and reiterated they are absolutely absurd and completely false. | ||
| But we know, obviously, that there have been troubles between Bill and Melinda Gates for a long time. | ||
| Meanwhile, there is a report. | ||
| Again, these are unsubstantiated reports. | ||
| So you try to kind of look at the source of each one of the claims. | ||
| There's an unsubstantiated report attributed to, quote, intelligence sources by the UK Daily Mail, suggesting that Epstein was running the world's largest honey trap operation on behalf of the KGB. | ||
| But there are no actual supporting documentary details that are provided in this piece. | ||
| The files include over a thousand documents naming Russian President Vladimir Putin and almost 10,000 referring to Moscow. | ||
| And Epstein was able to secure audiences with Putin after his 2008 conviction. | ||
| The sources say it could explain why Epstein appeared to enjoy an ultra-wealthy lifestyle out of kilter with his career as a financier. | ||
| Although there's no documentary evidence linking Putin and his spies directly to Epstein's illicit activities. | ||
| Again, people are looking at smoke, and I understand they want to look for fire. | ||
| Okay, so here's the stuff that seems to be true. | ||
| Again, Epstein connected with famous rich people who knew he was a pedophilic convict and continued to hang out with him. | ||
| In some cases, he continued to try to burnish his reputation and getting good with him. | ||
| That would include Steve Bannon. | ||
| Two hours of tape between Bannon and Epstein were released from interviews that happened some years ago. | ||
| And this was in the part of Steve Bannon's career where he saw Epstein as a powerful connection and a person presumably he was going to try to rehab. | ||
| There are apparently 13 hours more of that that has not yet been released. | ||
| It's kind of shocking to me that Bannon basically was doing PR rehab on Jeffrey Epstein and continues to go out there and be one of the main progenitors of the sort of Epstein's. | ||
| Dude, you should know better than anyone. | ||
| You hung out with the guy. | ||
| It's pretty impressive. | ||
| Okay, two, Epstein connected some of these people with prostitutes. | ||
| I think that that's quite likely. | ||
| I mean, you assume that the parties he was holding on Epstein Island did include women, which is presumably why so many people, again, like Diddy White parties, why they wanted to go there. | ||
| Now, is there evidence that he trafficked underage girls to them? | ||
| That's the part where the DOJ has yet to substantiate because the conviction of Jeffrey Epstein and Glenn Maxwell was on the basis of him trafficking underage girls to himself and Glenn Maxwell obtaining underage girls for him. | ||
| Okay, then there is the corollary of that, which is that Epstein was supposedly blackmailing these people. | ||
| Again, we have yet to see any hard evidence of blackmail of these people. | ||
| That evidence has not emerged. | ||
| Maybe it's true and maybe it's not, but there's no evidence of it in a hard way at this point. | ||
| There just isn't. | ||
| And then the final corollary of that is the theory that Epstein was blackmailing them on behalf of a foreign power or a cadre of powerful people who are attempting to shape global policy. | ||
| And that is not an evidence either. | ||
| So, again, I think it's very important in the Epstein scandal to try and distinguish what is true from what is supposed because those are not quite the same thing. | ||
| And in the interest of accuracy, we should actually follow what is true and what is evidenced at this point. | ||
| Again, we will follow where the evidence leads. | ||
| But so far, the evidence of the more outlandish claims is scanty, and the evidence that this dude was trafficking with a bunch of his friends and very powerful people, the evidence there is very, very solid. | ||
| And that evidence, unfortunately, is unsurprising. | ||
|
Judicialantics And Warrants
00:04:33
|
||
| And meanwhile, in other news, ProPublica has now released the names of the Border Patrol agents who fired on Alex Predi. | ||
| And it turns out it's very awkward for everyone because, as we have talked about, Border Patrol and ICE are both disproportionately Hispanic. | ||
| So it turns out the names of the people who fired are both Hispanic. | ||
| You know, that kind of gives the lie to the idea that ICE and Border Patrol, it's all about racism, racism. | ||
| Meanwhile, one court actually got it right. | ||
| A Minnesota district court denied Attorney General Keith Ellison's request for a temporary restraining order against ICE. | ||
| They said, based on the record before the court, a fact finder could reasonably credit that plaintiffs' sanctuary policies require a greater presence of federal agents to achieve the federal government's immigration enforcement objectives than in a jurisdiction that actively assists ICE. | ||
| That, of course, is true. | ||
| Ellison had been trying to boot ICE out of Minneapolis on the basis that they don't have the legal authority to go effectuate the law. | ||
| And the district court judge said no. | ||
| But there is another judge who decided to really go after it. | ||
| This judge is in the district court for the Western District of Texas San Antonio Division. | ||
| His name is Fred Bieri. | ||
| And he wrote what has to be one of the most insipid responses to a case that I have seen in recent memory. | ||
| The case is about an asylum seeker named Adrian Conejo Arayas and his five-year-old son. | ||
| Now, you remember that these folks came up a couple of weeks ago because there was a picture of this kid being held outside of an ICE vehicle. | ||
| And that was because he had been arrested along with his dad. | ||
| And apparently his dad took off down the street. | ||
| Well, now he has been ordered for release. | ||
| The judge decided this was time for some performative judicial antics. | ||
| He wrote, quote, the case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently, even if it requires traumatizing children. | ||
| You may notice this has nothing to do with legal analysis. | ||
| That is just a political take. | ||
| This court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported, but do so by proper legal procedures. | ||
| Apparently, also is the government's ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. | ||
| This judge, okay, judges don't do this. | ||
| This sort of Katanji Brown Jackson performative nonsense is just ridiculous. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| You know, it says on the base of the Statue of Liberty. | ||
| Could you be a lawyer for like half a second? | ||
| If you want to run for office, run for office, but this is really silly. | ||
| 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson, writes this judge, enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nation. | ||
| And then a bunch of quotes, a bunch of quotes about from the declaration, quote, civic lesson to the government. | ||
| Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. | ||
| That is called the fox guarding the hen house. | ||
| The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer. | ||
| Accordingly, the court finds the Constitution trumps this administration's detention of prisoner Adrian Conejo Araz and his minor son. | ||
| The great writ and release from detention are granted pursuant to the attached judgment. | ||
| Well, there is a problem with this. | ||
| There's a problem with this, which is administrative warrants have been used by every administration, including the Obama administration, in order to effectuate deportations. | ||
| This judge condemned the, quote, perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty. | ||
| But, of course, the Department of Homeland Security said that the asylum charge was basically false. | ||
| That this person claimed asylum. | ||
| This is what you did, by the way. | ||
| Under the Biden administration, you showed up at the southern border. | ||
| You said, I have credible threat to fear of my life, and I need entry. | ||
| And the administration under Biden, instead of actually investigating asylum before taking people in, decided to just release them into the interior. | ||
| The administration says Liam, the son, was not targeted or arrested. | ||
| Konejo Arios has asked that his son remain with him after he tried to flee from federal immigration agents. | ||
| This was reiterated by a spokesperson for Homeland Security, quote, the alleged mother refused to accept custody of the child. | ||
| The father told officers he wanted the child to remain with him. | ||
| So apparently it looks, from the administration's point of view, as though dad kept the kid with him specifically in order to obtain his own release. | ||
| Gary, of course, was appointed by Bill Clinton. | ||
| Administrative warrants have typically been used for effectuation of deportation orders, meaning you can arrest somebody in a public area. | ||
| The question, more controversial question of whether an administrative warrant or a judicial warrant is necessary to knock down a door, for example, or do a full Fourth Amendment search, that is a more controversial issue. | ||
|
Republicans And Immigration Law
00:11:12
|
||
| That is not what happened here. | ||
| This is an arrest in a public place. | ||
| If the idea is that administrative warrants cannot be used in order to effectuate deportations, basically that ends all deportations in the United States, which may in fact be the goal. | ||
| Secretary of Homeland Security Christy Noam said, listen, this was about like they wanted the kid to be with the dad. | ||
| That's why the kid was picked up. | ||
| Here she was on Fox and Friends. | ||
| Let me be clear. | ||
| These families always get the opportunity to stay together. | ||
| This child has been with his father, which was the father's choice. | ||
| We offered them the opportunity to go home, to send them back to their home country if they would like to. | ||
| The father chose to stay, and therefore we're following the legal process. | ||
| But it's shocking to me the media's lies about not just that story, but day after day after day about what we do for work in this country to bring people that are dangerous criminals to justice and then remove them from our country if they don't belong here, if they came here illegally. | ||
| Well, again, she's not wrong about that. | ||
| Meanwhile, Don Lemon has been released, and this is the best thing that has happened in Don Lemon's career for quite a while. | ||
| He was fired from CNN, and then he started his own independent journalistic outlet. | ||
| And I used the term journalistic there lightly. | ||
| He says he's not going to stop ever. | ||
| He'll never stop. | ||
| You can't stop Don Lemon. | ||
| Don Lemon is a hero, according to Don Lemon. | ||
| Don Lemon loves Don Lemon. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| I will not stop now. | ||
| In fact, there is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable. | ||
| Again, I will not stop now. | ||
| I will not stop ever. | ||
| Well, that is why he is a happy camper. | ||
| He also said that he is not worried, legally speaking. | ||
| If you think that I was outspoken before this, just wait. | ||
| Just wait. | ||
| So I know that there are people who think like, oh, you know, do this and, you know, that I'm going to be locked up or whatever. | ||
| I ain't worried about that. | ||
| You heard the truth and the truth shall make you free. | ||
| I ain't even worried about that. | ||
| Like not. | ||
| Don't even think about it. | ||
| Man, he were you worried about him? | ||
| You can't shut down Lemon up. | ||
| Nothing can shut down Lemon up. | ||
| That dude just won't stop. | ||
| Honestly, if there was an error here by the Trump administration, it was in just maximizing his platform and giving him credibility because my goodness. | ||
| By the way, the indictment has now been released. | ||
| The DOJ accuses Lemon of conspiring and agreeing with one another to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate multiple persons, including clergy, staff, and congregants of cities' church. | ||
| Defendant Levin told his live stream audience about congregants leaving the church and about a young man who Lemon could see was frightened and scared and crying. | ||
| And Lemon observed the congregants' reaction were understandable because the experience was traumatic and uncomfortable, which he said was the purpose. | ||
| Defendant Lemon said he was not saying what's going on and advised his live stream audience, we're going to head to the operation. | ||
| Again, we're not going to give away any of the information away. | ||
| Now, we'll have to see what evidence they show of sort of prior involvement. | ||
| So it is true that journalists, people who claim First Amendment privilege, they can ride along with a criminal as long as they are not effectuating. | ||
| They do not have a duty to report in order where criminals are, what they are doing. | ||
| What they do have a duty to do is not to aid and abet criminality. | ||
| So you're actually going to have to show that Lemon aided and abetted criminality. | ||
| We'll see how this plays out in a court of law. | ||
| President Trump, for his part, he enjoys the conflict, obviously. | ||
| He says that Don Lemon is a washed up sleazebag. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know. | |
| I don't know anything about the Don Lemon thing, but he's a sleazebag. | ||
| Everyone's still there. | ||
| So why shall probably, from his standpoint, the best thing that could happen to him. | ||
| He's getting, you know, he got no viewers. | ||
| He had a failure. | ||
| He was a failed host. | ||
| And now he's in the news. | ||
| I didn't know anything about him. | ||
| Well, you know, President Trump does enjoy these sorts of high-profile conflicts. | ||
| So I guess we'll get more of that. | ||
| Meanwhile, other cities, not just Minneapolis, are considering attempts to obstruct federal law enforcement. | ||
| Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson put out a series of images on Instagram in which she says that she will direct Seattle PD to investigate, verify, and document ICE activity, prohibit ICE from staging operations on city property, establish the Stand Together Seattle Initiative. | ||
| And all of this is dangerous stuff because when you're talking about SPD obstructing ICE, now you're talking about actual nullification of law. | ||
| If dispatched to location where ICE activity is underway, Seattle PD will apparently cooperate with city departments and trusted community organizations to ensure everyone has the latest and most accurate information about ICE activities. | ||
| So now SPD is going to facilitate law breaking. | ||
| This is dangerous stuff, obviously. | ||
| Philadelphia is apparently doing the same. | ||
| Philly is introducing ICE out legislation. | ||
| The Philadelphia City Council apparently is promoting legislation that will prevent local law enforcement from working in any way, shape, or form with the feds. | ||
| Jasmine Rivera, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition, said there shouldn't be a single dime of Philadelphia tax dollars and not a single second of Philadelphia workers collaborating with an agency that is stomping all over the Constitution. | ||
| The bills would prohibit ICE and other law enforcement agents from concealing their identities with face masks and using unmarked vehicles. | ||
| It would not allow city agencies to collaborate with ICE and would prevent them from collecting immigration status and sharing data with ICE, among other things. | ||
| Now, again, the federal government can't force local law enforcement to do federal immigration law. | ||
| But if you decide that you are going to make it easier for people to get away with violation of federal immigration law, you shouldn't be surprised when more ICE agents show up to effectuate it. | ||
| Attorney General Letitia James in New York had said something similar in October 2025. | ||
| Meanwhile, Los Angeles has also promoted a mask ban. | ||
| This is Gavin Newsom has done that, that they would ban federal agents from being able to wear masks. | ||
| The LAPD chief actually came out and his name is Jim McDonnell. | ||
| He said, what are we supposed to do now? | ||
| Like, is LAPD supposed to walk up to federal officers and unmask them? | ||
| What are they supposed to do? | ||
| The reality of one armed agency approaching another armed agency to create conflict over something that would be a misdemeanor at best or an infraction, it doesn't make any sense. | ||
| Hey, that is, of course, true, but that's not going to stop the performative politics. | ||
| Representative Maxine Waters, one of our most corrupt members of Congress, she was out there on the LA street saying she is not going away, which, by the way, is actively technically true with regard to her political career. | ||
| She has now been in Congress for, I believe, several millennia. | ||
| What is your message to ICE agents? | ||
| ICE agents, we don't want you in Los Angeles. | ||
| And we thought you had sense enough with the president to start getting out of Minneapolis. | ||
| But I guess you have no sense and you don't understand the power of the people. | ||
| We are not going away. | ||
| We don't want you in any of our cities in this country. | ||
| And we're going to fight you every inch of the way. | ||
| And so Democrats having some fun with all of this, despite the fact that it, or maybe because of the fact that it obstructs federal law. | ||
| Now, how is this having a bearing on our politics? | ||
| In terms of sort of general politics, none of this is great for Republicans, is the truth. | ||
| This has not redounded to Republican benefit yet. | ||
| Now, again, it may, it may be the Democrats overstep, and Americans get sick of watching bad bunny condemn them for wanting immigration law enforced and all the rest. | ||
| For the moment, however, Democrats definitely have momentum. | ||
| In Texas, there was a state Senate seat that was up in a special election on Saturday. | ||
| It was in a reliably Republican district that President Trump won by 17 points in 2024. | ||
| A Democrat named Taylor Remett defeated a Republican named Lee Wamsgans in the Fort Worth area district. | ||
| So it was a 17-point victory in that district for Trump 2024. | ||
| It flipped to 14 plus for D, D plus 14 in that district. | ||
| That is a 31-point shift in that district. | ||
| So Democrats so far have, in fact, been winning a bunch of special elections all over the country, not just in blue areas, not just in purple areas, in red areas as well. | ||
| The Democrats are very happy about it. | ||
| DNC chair Ken Martin called it a warning sign to Republicans across the country. | ||
| Democratic candidates have won special elections in Kentucky and Iowa. | ||
| You remember that there was an election for Congress in Tennessee, a special election where Matt Van Epps won, but his margin of victory was significantly slimmer than Republican margin of victory in past elections. | ||
| One of the problems for Republicans is that when you look at the stats in this seat, it was independents and even some Republicans who flipped Democrat in that particular election. | ||
| People who had voted in Republican primary who flipped Democrat. | ||
| So Republican momentum going into 2026, let's say it has significantly slowed. | ||
| This, by the way, does have some implications for the Texas Senate seat, like the federal Senate seat from Texas, because there is a very hot primary that is currently going on in the Texas Senate between the current Texas Senator, | ||
| John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, the extraordinarily controversial attorney general of the state of Texas, Wesley Hunt, who's a congressperson in Texas. | ||
| Right now, Paxton and Cornyn are stuck in a dead heat. | ||
| There have been multiple polls done over the past couple of months, and they show Paxton at 29 and Cornyn at 29, Wesley Hunt trailing a little bit at 19%. | ||
| Let's just say Ken Paxton has a significantly lower shot of winning that sentence seat than Cornyn. | ||
| Cornyn has won that senate seat repeatedly. | ||
| The current polling shows him with a slight lead over James Callarico, who is the likely Senate nominee for the Democrats. | ||
| If it's Ken Paxton, maybe Paxton wins. | ||
| I mean, polling very often tends to be warmer to Democrats than reality is in Texas. | ||
| With that said, do you want to take that risk in a time where Republicans drop four seats and they lose the Senate? | ||
| When you look at that 2026 Senate map, that is not a Senate map that looks great for Republicans right now. | ||
| Republicans have a bunch of seats that are up that are not going to look amazing for them. | ||
| They have one in North Carolina. | ||
| That is a rough race. | ||
| They have one in Ohio. | ||
| That is a rough race. | ||
| They have one in Iowa that has now become significantly rougher. | ||
| Texas is up as well. | ||
| And one in Maine. | ||
| These sorts of seats are risky at best, shall we say, for Republicans. | ||
| So why take additional risk would sort of be the question. | ||
|
Defending the House
00:08:17
|
||
| Well, among the things I like is a brand new book. | ||
| It is out February 10th called A Better Life by Lionel Shriver. | ||
| Lionel Shriver, of course, you know her work, most famously, her book, We Need to Talk About Kevin, but she's written a huge variety of books and articles that are just spectacular. | ||
| A Better Life is maybe her most controversial book yet. | ||
| Lionel Shriver, thanks so much for joining the show. | ||
| I really appreciate it. | ||
| Oh, I'm pleased to talk to you. | ||
| So why don't we begin with sort of the premise of the book? | ||
| Obviously, this one is going to set the world on fire because it really does attempt, I think, to encapsulate so much of the immigration debate, but basically in one house and one family. | ||
| What's the premise of the book? | ||
| Well, in 2023, in real life, Mayor Eric Adams in New York proposed a method of dealing with the inundation of the city with tens of thousands and what became hundreds of thousands of migrants thanks to Joe Biden's open border. | ||
| So he suggested that maybe New Yorkers could put migrants up in their spare bedrooms and he would pay them to do that. | ||
| Now, Adams never actuated this program, but it did give me ideas. | ||
| So I actuated the program. | ||
| In my novel, there's a family in Ditmus Park in Brooklyn. | ||
| They have a big house with plenty of spare bedrooms, and they decide to take in one migrant, but it doesn't stay one migrant. | ||
| And I am willing to concede that the house is a metaphor for our country. | ||
| And I think that that is what's so kind of amazing about the book is that what you do in the book is you use the house as a metaphor and you sort of use the family to examine a wide variety of beliefs about immigration. | ||
| But the central character is actually the son. | ||
| So it's a mom, and the mom is the one who's kind of a typical, what the right would call a soy-drinking latte liberal who decides that she is going to take in this migrant out of sympathy. | ||
| And the son is really ticked off by this, but is so enervated in his own life and so sort of lazy about his own life that he can't even make an excuse as to why he thinks it's bad that the house is being taken over. | ||
| And that I think is sort of the central tragedy and theme of the book, no? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I mean, it's a complication in terms of the whole perspective of the book because my protagonist, and I say protagonist loosely because protagonists usually make things happen and he basically doesn't. | ||
| My protagonist is living at home at 26. | ||
| He's got a college education, but he's not doing anything with it. | ||
| He has absolutely no interest in becoming an adult. | ||
| And I found myself strangely sympathetic with this character the more I wrote him, even though I'm a kind of standard. | ||
| I believe in hard work and, you know, but I could see how he wouldn't have an appetite for becoming a grown-up. | ||
| So he resents the dependency of the migrant population, all these people pouring into New York, depending on New York taxpayers. | ||
| And he's not a New York taxpayer, though his mother is, and expecting other people to take care of them. | ||
| But that's what Nico, my friend Nico is, is also a dependent. | ||
| He's a mooch. | ||
| And he's dependent on his mother. | ||
| He's dependent. | ||
| He's also dependent on New York taxpayers, ironically. | ||
| So, and he's representative of an aspect of our country that isn't taking responsibility for the country's adulthood, that isn't contributing, that isn't having children, for example. | ||
| And by the way, this is your author, the hypocrite, who hasn't had children either. | ||
| But that's not planning for tomorrow. | ||
| And that's one of the reasons that we're constantly being given now that we need an open border, that we need as many immigrants from wherever, and no matter who they are, just to put bums on seats in the country, that we have to, because otherwise we're going to disappear because we have too low a fertility rate. | ||
| And so, you know, if you take a look at my family, the family I've constructed, there are three children, three adult children in the family, two of them female. | ||
| Nobody's had kids, right? | ||
| So who's going to inherit the house eventually? | ||
| And that I think is the thing about the book that really is astonishing in a lot of ways is that, again, your central character, Nico, it makes the conflict so much more interesting that you chose a central character who doesn't know how to defend his civilization, doesn't feel a necessity to do so, doesn't feel the necessity to work, has a sort of belief that by birthright, this is his, but he doesn't actually have to justify that birthright. | ||
| And therefore, he has no systemic immunity other than a sort of xenophobia to why people shouldn't be in his house. | ||
| And that isn't enough, I think, is sort of the case that you're making, that if you actually wish to defend the house or the civilization, and you have a couple of characters who articulate this, you actually have to have babies. | ||
| You actually have to go and produce. | ||
| You have to work. | ||
| You have to say, like, this is ours. | ||
| And if you're not willing to say, if you're not willing to act in a way that says that a thing is yours, then you shouldn't be surprised when people not only try to take it, but when you have no capacity to defend it. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| As a matter of fact, the thinking in a better life connects very directly with the thinking in your own book, Lions and Scavengers, because Nico is a scavenger. | ||
| And the immigrants are lions, right? | ||
| They're coming after what is his. | ||
| And he doesn't defend it. | ||
| He defends it in his mind. | ||
| He defends it as an abstract argument, but not in terms of what he's doing. | ||
| He doesn't work. | ||
| He's not making another generation. | ||
| He's just using the resources that and the civilization that has been built for him. | ||
| He's using it. | ||
| He's in fact, in a way, using it up, but and he's taking it for granted, as a lot of younger people do. | ||
| I mean, it's one of the things that we have to contend with as our country turns 250 years old. | ||
| It is now in its maturity. | ||
| It's no longer really a young country anymore. | ||
| And an older country has different problems. | ||
| We have a history of being, you know, explorers, adventurers, rugged individualists, looking for, you know, brave new worlds, Star Trek. | ||
| But we have evolved a culture which is much more static. | ||
| We've got this one little layer of tech that's still out there finding brave new worlds with AI, etc. | ||
| But the abundance of the country has become very placid and I would have to say, neurotic. | ||
| Well, the book, again, is a better life. | ||
| The author is Lionel Shriver. | ||
| It's going to be the most controversial book of the year by far. | ||
| I've had the opportunity to read it, so I can say that. | ||
| It is phenomenal and fascinating, as all of her books are. | ||
| Lionel, thanks so much for the time. | ||
| Really appreciate it. | ||
| I really enjoyed talking to you. | ||
| All righty, folks. | ||
| The show is continuing for our members right now. | ||
|
Lionel Shriver's Controversial Book
00:02:03
|
||
| We will get to the latest in Economic News Plus, a story about one of the Trump companies that may be an electoral problem. | ||
| 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. | ||
| What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God? | ||
| Is that who you think I was alone with? | ||
| Maradin, I knew your father. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am yet convinced that he was not of this world. | |
| All men know of the great Taliesi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You are my father. | |
| Are the gods of war for my soul? | ||
| Princess Garris, savior of our people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| We're given another. | ||
| I learned of Yezu the Christ, and I have become his follower. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's waiting on a miracle, 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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great light. | |
| Great darkness. | ||
| Such things mattered to me then. | ||
| What matters to you now, Mistress of Lies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You, nephew. | |
| The sword of a high king. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield. | |
| So clinging to the promises of a god who has abandoned you. | ||
| I cannot take up that sword again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what you must do. | |
| Great life, forgive me. | ||