The U.S. Olympic hockey team’s 2026 gold medal win over Canada—Jack Hughes’ injured game-winning goal and Connor Helibuck’s MVP-level defense—sparked debates on patriotism amid Trump’s presidency, while a Mar-a-Lago shooter’s texts linked Epstein conspiracy theories to extremism. Mexico’s cartel war escalated after Nemesio Mencho Aceguera’s death, tied to Trump’s anti-narcotics pressure, and Puerto Vallarta faced roadblocks. Trump’s flawed tariff threats (10%→15%) and NYC’s absurd snow-shoveling ID rules clashed with Democratic critiques, exposing regulatory overreach. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson’s false claims—threatened Israelis, Herzog-Epstein ties, and a dead Gaza child—risked fracturing conservative support, despite Trump’s private plea for restraint. [Automatically generated summary]
The American men's hockey team emerges triumphant at the Olympics.
We discuss why it was so awesome.
Another apparent assassination attempt against President Trump is thwarted, and Tucker Carlson made a fool of himself over the weekend with Ambassador Mike Huckabee.
We'll get to all of it first.
When Matt Walsh released episode one of Real History with Matt Walsh, The Real History of Slavery, we kind of knew what was going to happen.
A narrative we had been taught for decades, reinforced by institutions, dramatized by Hollywood, suddenly had to face the truth.
Well, now Matt is back with the next chapter, episode two: The Real History of the American Indians, is streaming right now exclusively on Daily Wire Plus.
Yes, we do want you to watch it.
We want teachers to watch it.
We want classrooms to watch it.
And yeah, Hollywood should pull up a chair as well.
Real history with Matt Walsh, episode two, streaming right now, only on Daily Wire Plus.
Well, it's been 46 years since American men were able to hold the hockey gold at the Olympics.
And both times we defeated a communist neighbor, a threat to our very way of life.
Last time, of course, it was the USSR.
This time, it was our evil northern neighbors, the Canadians.
But it was pretty inspiring nonetheless.
If you missed the Olympic gold medal hockey game between the United States and Canada, you missed a doozy.
It was a spectacular, spectacular hockey game.
So the U.S. took in the first period a 1-0 lead.
They held it all the way until the third period when the Canadians evened it up.
And then they ended up in sudden death overtime, where Jack Hughes delivered a game winner for the ages.
Amazing, amazing.
He'd already taken, by the way, a high stick to the face.
So he was missing a bunch of teeth.
It was the most hockey thing ever.
What was really refreshing about it was the way that the men's hockey team responded, which is with actual just basic patriotism.
I know this has now become a controversial thing, but actually, there is nothing controversial about America being awesome.
Jack Hughes, he and his brother are both on the U.S. national men's hockey team.
Here he was after the game, after having scored the game winner.
And by the way, notice how the men's hockey team, are they upset that Trump is calling them?
Are they?
Are they in any way experiencing interior pain because Trump calls?
No, because he's the president of the United States.
Just get over it.
You might not like him.
It doesn't matter when the president of the United States calls you on the phone to congratulate you for winning a gold medal on behalf of the United States.
You take the call and you smile and it's great.
It's just great stuff.
And of course, that's pretty funny from President Trump.
By the way, if you're on the men's hockey team, is your goal in life to be at the state of the union?
Yeah, it's not quite Disneyland.
Where are you going?
I'm going to the State of the Union.
Anyway, it is spectacular stuff.
And as I say, there are many reasons to feel good about this.
And it's a reminder of the sort of stuff that typically unites Americans.
One, we like meritocracy.
You know, one know why virtually every major television event of the last year and a half has been a sports event.
Why?
Well, because it turns out that sports is one of the few areas of American life where we all basically agree a meritocracy is taking place, that the best team wins or the team with the most guts.
That's where all the drama lies.
Meritocracy is about the adventure.
It's about the drama.
It's about the thrill of victory.
That's why Americans love it.
And so watching the hockey team win the gold is awesome because again, sports is the realm of meritocracy.
Also, one thing that always unites Americans is the fact that there is, in fact, a common enemy.
When it comes to sports, the common enemy is whoever the United States is playing.
And this has been true forever, and not just for the United States.
There is a very famous phrase that was used in the lead up to World War I with regard to the British, saying that the wars that were won on the battlefield were started on the playing fields of Eton, meaning that everybody kind of learned to play as a team in these arenas.
And then they channel that energy and that sort of masculine energy toward an opponent.
And so it's easy for Americans to come together when there's a common opponent.
One of the reasons why the United States has splintered so much over the course of the last several decades is because the United States is in fact a global hegemon.
And because of that, there's a feeling like most of our conflicts are internal.
But that's not true.
The vast majority of real conflicts on planet Earth are between the United States and other nefarious powers.
Now, this game meant a lot to America because it was sort of a unifying moment.
But of course, I'm joking when I equate the Canadians and the Russians.
If the United States had been defeating a global superpower in hockey that was also geopolitically an enemy, like the Russians or the Chinese, that would have even been bigger.
That's what 1980 was.
But America, in order for us to really feel unified, we have to also see kind of what's on the other side of the fence.
Otherwise, we tend to tear ourselves apart internally.
And it really is fascinating.
Just sociologically, the breakdown here.
Well, some people might be split over the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team winning the gold, but it was awesome.
And you know what else is awesome?
Peer talk.
Well, this month, PeerTalk celebrated President's Day based because they believe wireless service should only cost you a couple of presidents, a Lincoln and a Jackson.
That is $25 a month for unlimited talk text, plenty of data.
Even though the holiday may have passed, the PeerTalk savings have not.
Think about it.
That's the cost of one or two meals out versus the hundreds that big wireless charges families every single month.
There's no reason wireless service needs to be that expensive.
What makes Pure Talk different goes beyond just price?
They're an American wireless company that actively supports our veterans and invests in a U.S.-based customer service team.
So when you call, you're speaking with somebody right here at home.
I use PeerTalk all the time.
Obviously, I do all of my calls on it.
And guess what?
The Ty talk to my family and my business associates and all the rest.
PureTalk uses the same towers as the big carriers.
So you'll enjoy superior 5G coverage without the inflated price.
Just $25 a month for talk, text, and plenty of data.
No contract, no cancellation fee.
What exactly are you waiting for?
Go to peer talk.com slash Shapiro.
You'll get 50% off your very first month of coverage.
Again, that's puretalk.com/slash Shapiro to make the switch to Pure Talk.
So you're seeing two groups of people who are sort of looking at this wonderful event, this fun and unifying event, and trying to look a gift horse in the mouth.
One of them are people on the left who are saying, how dare we feel good about America in a time when Donald Trump is president of the United States?
The Huffington Post had a piece by Monica Torres saying, There's a name for the discomfort you're feeling watching the Olympics right now.
If waving the American flag or chanting USA turns you off right now, you're not alone.
Well, I mean, you should be alone because you suck.
But that's the basic idea here from some members of the left.
Mel Hill is doing the same routine.
America right now is very, very no good, truly bad, because of the evils of Donald Trump.
So I'm supposed to feel bad that the American men's hockey team won the gold because you didn't vote for the guy who's currently in the Oval.
By the way, this is a split between the right and the left in virtually all polling data.
Conservatives are always patriotic about the country, even when a Democrat is president.
Democrats are significantly less patriotic about the country when a Democrat is not president.
This is a long-term trend line in the United States, which is not a good thing.
But then there's sort of a bizarre, I'd say, fringe movement on the right trying to suggest that this isn't a cool thing.
Why?
Well, because it turns out that some members of the U.S. men's hockey team are not necessarily the most conservative on every single issue.
So now we're going to delve into their social media histories and try to determine whether Jack Hughes voted for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
It's like, come on.
Are you kidding me?
Are you kidding me truly right now with this crap?
But that should the innate annoyance that I think all of us feel when we hear that.
Everyone who's sane and rational.
It's because, yes, America, we are on the same team.
I know that a lot of the time it doesn't feel like we're on the same team.
And yes, there are Americans who are not on our team.
Usually the people who are not on our team are people actually rooting for foreign powers and who see America as essentially a dispensable nation unless they win, unless they get their way.
But the reality is that I think the reason why people feel good today about what happened at the Olympics, it was a nice reminder that actually we do share a country and it's good that we share a country.
Meanwhile, in other news over the weekend, it appears that another attempted assassination against President Trump was stopped.
According to the U.S. Secret Service, on February 22nd, around 1:30 a.m., a male in his early 20s was shot by U.S. Secret Service agents and a deputy from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office following an unauthorized entry into the secure perimeter at Mar-a-Lago.
The individual whose identity is being withheld pending notification of next of kin was pronounced deceased.
Apparently, he was observed by the North Gate of Mar-a-Lago carrying what appeared to be a shotgun and a fuel can.
At 1:30 this morning, the security detail detected that an individual had made his way into the inner perimeter of Mar-a-Lago.
A deputy and two Secret Service agents on the detail went to that area to investigate.
They confronted a white male that was carrying a gas can and a shotgun.
He was ordered to drop those two pieces of equipment that he had with him, at which time he put down the gas can, raised the shotgun to a shooting position.
At that point in time, the deputy and the two Secret Service agents fired their weapons and neutralized the threat.
Now, we don't have total details on why the shooter, the attempted shooter, did what he did here.
However, TMZ has obtained text messages apparently sent by the alleged attempted shooter here to a co-worker February 15th, 2026.
So about a week ago, saying, quote, I don't know if you read up on Epstein files, but evil is real and unmistakable.
The best people like you and I can do is use what little influence we have, tell other people about what you hear about the Epstein files and what the government is doing, raise awareness.
Apparently, sources who worked with this person at the Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club in North Carolina say TMZ, they told TMZ, quote, he became fixated on Epstein following the latest release of information tied to the files.
Co-workers tell us he was deeply disturbed by what he believed was a government cover-up and often talked about powerful people, quote, getting away with it.
Apparently, he was outspoken about his Christian faith and political views, and he regularly expressed support for Trump, telling colleagues as recently as late last year, he believed that Trump was a strong leader.
Okay.
Conspiracy theories are brain poison.
They are.
They just are.
Again, specific crimes should be prosecuted.
Evidence should be requested for the allegations that are made.
This is why we have systems of justice in place.
Obviously, every single human being who committed crimes related to Jeffrey Epstein should be prosecuted and thrown in jails to the fullest extent of the law or worse, depending on the nature of their crimes.
But the general gestalt that has been put out into the universe by the idiocy of the internet, which is that Donald Trump is participating in a large-scale cover-up of a gigantic child sex trafficking operation directed at various dignitaries run by foreign influence operations, that sort of allegation, which is unevidenced by millions of files, millions of them, that has permeated the brains of a lot of people, including people who, again, exist on the fringes.
And I've said before, if you promote theories that are unevidenced and then a fringe actor goes and does something bad that is not directly attributable to you, you do not bear the moral onus for that specific action because you didn't tell them to go shoot Donald Trump or try to.
However, are you guilty of raising the temperature?
Is it immoral to spread information that is unevidenced?
Yes, it actually is immoral to spread information that is unevidenced.
It is a problem.
It is a bad thing to do.
And the consequences are for this person that he's dead, apparently.
This is why requesting evidence for whatever the theory is, whatever the contention is, should be the baseline for rational conversation.
And instead, obviously, that has become a secondary concern.
And then we pretend that there's no effect to that sort of stuff.
It's all fun and games.
In international news, the biggest story internationally over the weekend is this extraordinary civil war that has apparently blown up in Mexico.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Mexico's military killed the country's most powerful drug kingpin, Nemesio Mencho Aceguera, escalating the government's war against cartels amid pressure from President Trump to curb narcotics trafficking and sparking a widespread violent gang response.
Oseguera is a former Mexican police officer and was the leader of the Jalisco New Generation cartel.
The cartel also controls vast fuel smuggling schemes and other underworld rackets across Mexico and the United States, according to the Mexican authorities.
His killing marks the most significant operation yet in Mexico's recent crackdown on cartels.
Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum has expelled more than 100 convicted drug traffickers to the United States to their arrest.
She's trying to prevent direct U.S. military involvement in going after the leaders of drug cartels.
Mexico's security ministry said the country's special forces killed Osaguera in the rural municipality of Tapalpa, which is apparently close to a lakeshore community with a large American retiree community.
White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said Osaguera was a top target for the Mexican and U.S. governments.
And of course, last year, President Trump had designated his cartel as a foreign terrorist organization.
He controlled Osaguera, vast swaths of territory in the Jalisco state and beyond, and was known for sophisticated paramilitary tactics.
He basically has his own army.
There was a $15 million U.S. bounty on him.
He was mostly at this mountain compound, and he had, again, an entire phalanx of people protecting him, known as the special force of the high command.
They had heat-seeking shoulder-fired rocket launchers.
So, again, the goal here was to appease the United States, to go after the cartels.
This is a change in policy driven by President Trump, no question.
I mean, here in November 2025, is Claudia Scheinbaum saying that fighting the cartels is not an option, and yet now here is the Mexican government fighting the cartels.
Since returning to the war against the Narco is not an option, it is not an option.
First, because it is outside the framework of the law, all these of the right wing that fill their mouths are the words rule of law and defend the war against the narco.
The war against the narco is outside the law because, as I said or have said, on several occasions, it is permission to kill without any trial.
Okay, well, it seems that she has changed her mind about all of that.
Now, what's amazing about this is that actually Osaguera spent several years in the United States.
He actually was in jail in the United States for three years, convicted of selling heroin and serving three years in a California prison.
He was then deported to Mexico, where he married the daughter of a boss of a Sinaloa-affiliated gang.
Imagine if he had just stayed in the United States.
He could be running around free today.
By 2011, he was leading his own organization based in Jalisco State.
And he had recently made an alliance with the Sinaloa faction known as the Chapitos, which is fighting a civil war with a rival gang.
The killing of Osaguera may unleash gigantic civil war in this particular region.
There are other neighboring regions where a civil war is already effectively underway.
The cartels immediately started stopping all traffic in Jalisco and started burning cars.
Now, it's not apparent at this point how many, if any, people have been killed, but the pictures and videos that are emerging are pretty clear that they are demonstrating they have control of the city.
That seems to be the goal here.
And again, Puerto Vallarta, which is located in this area, was one of the cities that was effectively taken over by the cartels.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the cartel is considered the country's most powerful organized crime group, one that doesn't shy away from conspicuous violence to send a message.
On Sunday, its gunmen shattered the peace in Mexico's premier Pacific beach destination, among the wealthiest places in Jalisco state.
Of course, Puerto Vallarta, I've actually been there on a cruise.
I mean, like it is a very frequently trafficked place.
A lot of cruise ships stop in Puerto Vallarta, and you can see the smoke emerging.
Now, there were a bunch of AI videos that were coming out, people supposedly being shot in the streets.
That apparently is not true.
It seems that this is more of an intimidation tactic than anything else by the cartels to demonstrate that there is a plan in place to take over the mechanisms of law and order in these areas.
This has been a long time coming, obviously.
And we'll have to see how all of it unfolds.
It may very well be that the Mexican government requires the help of the United States to knock off some more leaders of these cartels and take control of the actual country south of our border.
Well, Mexico is certainly taking a risk when it comes to going after the cartels, but it's a risk that is worth taking.
Speaking of which, when you start a business, you are also taking a risk and it is a risk worth taking, which is why you need to work with our sponsor over at Shopify.
Shopify is the e-commerce platform powering millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including our very own Daily Wire shop.
Getting started is incredibly easy.
With hundreds of ready-to-use templates, you can build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style.
Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, even enhance your product photography so you can accelerate your efficiency, whether you're uploading new products or improving existing ones.
Maybe you already know you have a good product, but you need help getting the word out.
Shopify helps you find your customers with easy-to-run email and social media campaigns, making it feel like you have a marketing team behind you.
You can tackle all those important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics without juggling multiple websites or platforms.
And if you ever get stuck, Shopify's award-winning 24-7 customer support is always around to help.
Plus, that iconic purple Shop Pay button, it's not just recognizable.
It's the best converting checkout on planet Earth.
That means more sales for you.
We use Shopify for our DW shop, which is why you get what you need on time.
Well, it's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today.
Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/slash Shapiro.
Go to Shopify.com/slash Shapiro.
That's Shopify.com/slash Shapiro.
The fallout at the same time from the tariff decision made by the Supreme Court on Friday continues.
President Trump gave a press conference, which we covered live, at which he said a number of things that I thought were not, shall we say, presidential.
The president attacked the justices who ruled against him as somehow dumb and also maybe in the pay of foreign officials or parties.
That's absurd.
The decision is well-argued and well-reasoned.
I frankly think that the dissents have the worst of it in the opinions.
And that's a rarity for me because normally I agree with Justices Thomas and Alito.
I think both of their opinions are not well calibrated.
Alito signed on to Thomas's opinion.
He also signed on to a dissent from Brett Kavanaugh.
I think if the shoe were on the other foot and it were Joe Biden attempting to declare tariff power over literally all of planet Earth based on a, at best, vague delegation in the IEEPA, I think that would have been struck down.
President Trump put out a statement based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on tariffs issued yesterday.
I'm just going to put it out there.
It is not anti-American to say that Article I powers, the tariff power, belongs with the Article I branch, the legislature.
Anyway, he says, after many months of contemplation by the United States Supreme Court, please let this statement serve to represent that I, as president of the United States of America, will be effective immediately, raising the 10% worldwide tariff on countries, many of which have been ripping the U.S. off for decades without retribution until I came along to the fully allowed and legally tested 15% level.
During the next short number of months, the Trump administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of making America great again, greater than ever before.
On a political level, I believe the president should have taken the win.
I really, I think he should have said, listen, I tried my best here.
The Supreme Court says I can't do it.
And then let the economy rip.
But this is one of the few areas in President Trump's agenda list that he actually is a true believer.
So President Trump is a pragmatist by nature, but when it comes to tariffs, he is a true believer in a very zero-sum game when it comes to trade.
Now, does he have the legal authority to implement what he's doing here under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act?
So it sort of comes down to the definition of balance of payments deficits.
I know it's a little technical, but the president has the ability, because of balance of payments deficits, to unilaterally declare tariffs for 150 days.
The problem is that that is not balance of trade.
So the United States has a trade deficit, meaning that we import more than we export.
That is not the same as a balance of payments deficit.
A balance of payments deficit, as John Puri writes over at National Review, is a comprehensive measure of all economic transactions between America's residents and the rest of the world.
That includes not only transactions related to imports and exports, but also to direct investments, loans, and asset purchases.
Because every dollar that we send abroad must eventually return to the United States for use, the balance of payments over a long enough period should even out to zero.
So the value of our trade deficit should be matched dollar for dollar by a nearly equal capital account or financial account surplus every year.
In other words, let's say that we import more than we export, dollars flow outward.
But do those dollars just live out there?
And the answer is no.
They are then invested back in the United States in bonds, in treasuries, in American businesses.
The most recent year that complete data are available on both the U.S. balance of trading goods and services and its net financial account in 2024, America's current account was $1.185 trillion, the largest trade deficit on planet Earth by far.
But also the financial account surplus was the largest in the world by far at $1.128 trillion the same year.
So supposedly this balance of payments deficit is $57 billion, which is 0.2% of the U.S. GDP.
So again, that is not crisis levels.
The reason, by the way, that originally the 1974 Trade Act had a section that allowed for tariffs in order to, for example, get rid of a balance of payment deficit is that we were worried about tremendous outflow of American capital because of the movement away from Bretton Woods.
That has not occurred.
So really, it's really not quite an emergency.
It'll get battled out in court.
President Trump also sounded off on Justices Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas, who were all dissenters in the case.
And my new hero is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
And of course, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
There's no doubt in anyone's mind they want to make America great again.
So here is the deal.
President Obama, pretty famously, went in front of members of the Supreme Court when they ruled against him in one case and basically insulted them to their face in the middle of the State of the Union address.
And it was really not great.
You know what?
Not great when President Trump does it either.
Scott Besant was out there defending the president and suggested that the president of the United States inherently has the power to tariff because he can embargo.
That is not technically correct.
An embargo is not the same as a tariff.
It's like saying that because the government has a law, for example, that bans cocaine, the government also has the power to tax cocaine.
They're two different things.
Those are two very different policy preferences, even if the tax were to be very low, for example.
But here's Scott Besson trying to conflate the two.
This is a point that Brett Kavanaugh tried to make in his dissent.
Now, again, that seems to me to be a bad argument.
It was an argument taken up by Chief Justice Roberts in his actual opinion, and then again by Justice Gorsuch in his concurrence with the opinion.
Nonetheless, Scott Besson says that the trade partners that we have want to keep their current trade deals.
I assume that's true because after all, why would they want to start over again given the inconsistency and vacillation from the administration on trade?
All that matters in the end is how the economy performs and Americans' perception of the economy.
The attacks on the Supreme Court, generally a waste of time, whether they are from Democrats or whether they are from Republicans.
The vice president also attacked the court, suggesting that they had participated in lawlessness, which is pretty astonishing.
He said today the Supreme Court decided that Congress, despite giving the president the ability to regulate imports, didn't actually mean it.
First of all, it's regulate dot dot dot imports.
There are 16 words between them.
This is a lawlessness from the court, plain and simple.
And its only effect will be to make it harder for the president to protect American industries and supply chain resiliency.
President Trump has a wide range of other tariff powers, and he will use them to defend American workers and advance this administration's trade priorities.
So, yeah, again, he's taking what you would expect, the president's position on this, that that does not happen to be a legally defensible position, in my opinion.
Meanwhile, Democrats continue to struggle with basic things like, you know, cleaning up snow.
So there's a giant freeze-on again in the Northeast.
And now Zarn Mamdani is calling upon New Yorkers to shovel their snow, but also you need a multiplicity of licenses, apparently, to shovel snow.
And for those who want to do more to help your neighbors and earn some extra cash, you too can become an emergency snow shoveler.
Just show up at your local sanitation garage between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. tomorrow with your paperwork, which is accessible online at nyc.gov slash snow, and you can get started right away.
Apparently, according to the New York City Sanitation Department, you can sign up for temporary work helping to remove snow and ice from bus stops, crosswalks, fire hydrants, and other public areas after heavy snowfalls.
Exciting, exciting stuff for, I think, all involved.
All you will need to do is show up with forms of ID.
You have to bring two small photos, the original and copy of two forms of ID, a social security card, and you have to be able to do physical labor and eligibility to work in the U.S.
So I can't believe that Dharmam Dhani is policing immigration this way.
It's terrible.
In fact, he too is upset about it.
He says, how dare the federal government require you to be a citizen, to do things like receive a check from the government?
Democratic 2028 candidate, AOC, she clearly wants to run, although, again, after her horrific showing in Munich, I'm not sure it's going to go well for her.
Here she was suggesting that people are angry at Zarmam Dhani because snow doesn't melt at 20 degrees.
Now, I'll admit there are some people of whom I have heard who do not know at what temperature snow melts.
Okay, so I mean, first of all, it is true that you could use salt to actually lower the temperature at which snow can melt.
So, I mean, that is a frequent thing.
From my days in Boston, this is a thing that people used to do.
The reason, by the way, that she's whispering like a kook is because her husband was asleep in the background and he's just snoring through whatever it is that she thought she was doing.
If you think that I don't understand foreign policy, because out of hours of discourse about international affairs, I paused to think about one of the most sensitive geopolitical issues that currently exist on earth.
I'm afraid the issue is not my understanding, but rather the problem is perhaps you've gotten adjusted to a president that never thinks before he speaks.
Oh, yes, the husband snoring in the background is classic.
I love it.
It's great.
It's so great.
That's an eternal meme.
That is fantastic.
That is all the rest of us.
Every time she starts talking about economics, AOC starts jabbering about whatever.
And we're all like, ah, love it.
Fantastic.
10 out of 10.
Would stay at this Airbnb again.
By the way, she, of course, is a mentee of Bernie Sanders, who is a dullard.
It is not worthwhile to go a week without a dullard Bernie Sanders take.
So he was asked a pretty solid question at a public forum over the course of the last couple of days.
He was asked, you know, it's weird because Europe has all the same regulations that you want, Bernie Sanders, and they are not world leaders in virtually any industry.
What happened?
And Bernie has no answer to this because it turns out that the regulatory state in Britain and the rest of the European Union, it turns out that it's not great for business development.
unidentified
And Shorten, I'm asking you to explain not why we have inequality, but why we've had so much growth over the last two decades.
I can't read a speech and I did poorly on my SATs.
That's a hell of a pitch to the black community.
Well done there, Gavin Newsom.
Oh boy.
Oh boy.
Well, those are your 20, 28 frontrunners, according to Calci Markets, AOC and Gavin Newsom.
Yay.
Well, in other news, last Wednesday, Tucker Carlson had flown into Ben-Gurion airport.
He stayed there for a few hours and then he left, claiming, of course, that he was under dire physical threat.
Apparently, in his little run-up to the interview that he did with Huckabee, which he released on Friday afternoon, Carlson claimed that he had tried to convey to the Israelis the tail number on his plane because he was afraid they would shoot him down because they are quote unquote the most violent country on earth.
This is asinine.
It's slanderous and it's stupid.
It is so stupid.
Truly, if you believe this crap, it's such dumbassery, an epic level of dumbassery.
And he proceeded, because he really did poorly in his interview with Huckabee.
He proceeded to do a 25-minute intro in which he claimed that his phone was likely going to be hacked, that he might have been killed coming into Israel, complained that he wasn't given a special interview with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who, like, why would he, considering that Tucker Carlson has essentially called him a genocidal war criminal, and then whined a lot.
In any case, this interview has had some somewhat far-reaching implications on a wide variety of scores.
It's a very aggressive interview that he did with Mike Huckabee, the United States ambassador under President Trump to Israel.
Tucker issued a bit of slander when he suggested that Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, was on Epstein Island.
He then had to issue an apology for saying that in an attempt, I assume, to cover his legal ass.
And if you believe his honesty and transparency, then there is a very, very large bridge in Brooklyn that is apparently for sale.
During this interview with Huckabee, Tucker retailed a bunch of specious theories up to and including he suggested that Jews should have to take a DNA test.
That was a thing he said.
He also pushed a hoax by a person named Tony Aguilar, who had worked with the group that had been attempting to feed people in Gaza.
Aguilar had claimed that he watched the Israelis murder someone.
It turns out that was not true.
Huckabee scored him on this.
And Tucker basically then shifted topic as per his usual arrangement.
He would never want to impugn anybody who is innocent for doing a thing except for the entire IDF shooting a kid that never happened.
That he's totally fine with.
He, of course, also made the claim, did Tucker too, Huckabee, that child soldiers, meaning like 16-year-old boys with an AK-47 pointing it at Israeli soldiers, because they're under, apparently you have to check their ID card when they're pointing a gun at you.
The obvious forced stupidity of this, truly forced stupidity.
If a 16-year-old boy invaded Tucker Carlson's home with a gun, Tucker would not ask for his ID before shooting him, obviously.
This is boob bait for rubes, truly.
Well, the other viral moment from this interview, and there are many.
I mean, aside from the asking for the DNA tests for the Jews and all the rest of it.
Tucker questioned Mike Huckabee about the Christian Zionist vision of the eschaton of biblical promises in the book of Genesis.
And this made a bit of a splash because Tucker then cut this out of context to suggest that the Israelis are seeking to invade Syria and Iraq.
I will explain in a moment why this is idiotic and also wildly dishonest because, of course, the full clip shows Huckabee then saying Israel has no desire to invade any of its neighbors and grab territory promised in the book of Genesis.
You're missing something because they're not asking to go back to take all of that, but they are asking to at least take the land that they now occupy, they now live in, they now own legitimately, and it is a safe haven for them.
And I'll explain, I'll explain why this is nonsense.
Okay, let me explain why this is nonsense.
So the Bible makes several references to the borders guaranteed to the Jews.
Okay, first, there's the Abrahamic promise in Genesis 15:18 through 21, which is mirrored again in Deuteronomy 11:24.
And that's the big borders that Tucker is talking about here.
That's the one that goes all the way from the Nile to the Euphrates.
It's basically a biblical promise that someday in a millennial world that the children of Abraham will dominate this area.
Okay, fine.
Then there is the actual borders that Moses is commanded to have the children of Israel, the various tribes, conquer when he enters Israel.
That appears in Numbers chapter 34, verses 1 through 15.
And those borders look like this.
This is a map of the border.
Okay, now, what you may notice is actually smaller in the south than the current land of Israel and does not really extend into any of the areas that Tucker Carlson is talking about.
So was Moses not fulfilling the biblical promise?
Moses, is that the contention of Tucker Carlson here?
Like, what's the contention?
The idea of the biblical promise is that Abraham is wedded to the land, but the core of the biblical promise is the area where the kingdom of David was, namely Judea, Samaria, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Those borders are largely mirrored in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 47, 13 through 30.
But here's the thing: no matter what the biblical promise is, the question on the table from Christian Zionists is, and for I think anyone who is a biblically based Zionist, do Jews have an inherent biblical connection to the land of Israel?
And the answer, of course, is yes.
You can say, well, is it all the way to the Euphrates?
And you can make the answer no, well, really, no, because they've never conquered that area.
When you talk about does a country have a right to exist, first of all, this entire argument is really stupid because countries don't inherently have quote unquote rights to exist.
They either create their own existence and effectuate their own existence or they don't.
In the world of international politics, a polity that can defend itself, quote unquote, has a right to exist.
A polity that can defend itself effectuates its own existence.
The idea of some sort of adjudicatory body that determines a quote-unquote right to exist.
I never see this applied to Pakistan.
I never see this applied to Saudi Arabia.
I never see this applied to Syria as it is currently constituted or Iraq or Iran, all of whose borders were drawn after World War I during the same time period that the modern state of Israel was included in the Balfour Declaration.
But of course, Tucker doesn't care about any of this.
And by the way, one thing you will notice, Tucker has now interviewed a wide variety of Islamic leaders.
Has he ever asked a single one of them about the Quranic promises of territorial domination?
Because here's the thing about that.
So the Bible makes many references to different sets of borders that the Jews apparently are given by God.
The Quran has a very specific set of borders that eventually are supposed to be Islamic.
The whole shebang, New York, Chicago, LA, Tucker's cabin in Maine, all of it.
Has he ever asked any of these people about the Islamic will to power and the promise that all the world shall indeed be Islamic?
I mean, speaking of which, I mean, theoretically, if you're going to take this to the biblical context, it does say in the book of Philippians that every knee shall bow.
So, does that mean that there is now a mandate for everyone to be forcibly converted to Christianity?
I think there are very few Christians in the United States who believe that everyone should be forcibly converted to Christianity.
When it comes to the complexities of biblical prophecy and actual effectuation of biblical morality, that is where human beings come in.
That's where practicality comes in.
So, Tucker's trying to play a really stupid trick here in order to sort of trap Mike Huckabee.
All of it is motivated by ill intent.
The amount of falsehood here is extraordinary.
And apparently, it has now raised the level of the White House, which is quite annoyed by Tucker's routine at this point.
Joining us on the line to discuss all this is Eli Lake.
He is a columnist for the Free Press.
He has a piece called Trump Has Had Enough of Tucker Carlson.
I think since the summer, there has been a steady con of call from a lot of the president's supporters saying, why is Tucker Carlson attacking more, you know, the majority of your supporters, Mr. President, who are pro-Israel, who supported Operation Midnight Hammer and generally think that, you know, you're doing the right things in the presidency, in your presidency when it comes to foreign policy.
And for a long time, I think the White House was sort of like, well, we don't really want to get involved in this.
Tucker's a journalist.
He's going to do what he's going to do.
But the calls have been getting louder and the critiques from Tucker Carlson have become, you know, kind of, he's been steadily up in the ante.
And he's been, you know, talking about the Epstein files and how the government is hiding still more of them, even though they've released an unprecedented number of things that, in my view, probably should never have seen the light of day because they were like internal law enforcement investigative notes.
But let's leaving all that aside, when it comes to Israel and particularly what Trump is trying to do now with Iran in trying to at least kind of engage in gunboat diplomacy and having a credible threat to unleash a military attack if they do not give up their nuclear and missile programs and their support for terrorism abroad, that it's become, from both a policy and political perspective, kind of an untenable situation.
So what I'm reporting is that in January, Trump privately asked Tucker to just tone it down with the kind of internal MA Civil War stuff over Israel.
And I think that Tucker has taken that seriously.
He spoke with the nationalist conservative nationalist philosopher, writer Yoram Hazoni.
He revealed those private conversations.
Then Yoram Hazzoni posted on his ex account even more details.
But basically, Tucker was like, all right, what do I need to do so people stop calling me anti-Semitic?
And I think he also wanted to have a meeting, a private meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu.
So that is the state of play right now.
But I think there was a lot of hope in the White House, a lot of hope for people who support Trump that this interview with Ambassador Huckabee might be the beginning of a kind of way to sort of say, all right, we're through with this internal fighting.
Instead, I would say it opened up a new front.
It caused a minor diplomatic incident because Tucker Carlson's team put out a deceptively edited clip that made it seem like Ambassador Huckabee endorsed this notion that Israel was going to rule over the entire Middle East, which is not what he said.
So if anything, I think it made it worse.
And, you know, I've heard that they are meeting this week, if not today, in the White House, Tucker and the president.
And we'll see what happens.
So far, the president has kept his criticisms in private.
We'll see if he goes public with it.
But I do think that there is more and more pressure on him to do so.
I mean, I do wonder exactly how far Tucker Carlson would have to go in order for there to be some sort of distance drawn between the White House and Carlson, given the fact that, again, this was apparently, according to Melissa Francis, who basically brokered this interview between Tucker and Huckabee, she had said that the whole goal of this was to sort of find an off-ramp here to say, okay, we'll agree to disagree.
We can both have legitimate points of view.
And instead, Carlson came in, made a bunch of false, like overtly false allegations about what happened to him, for example, at the airport, proceeded to spew sort of a weird stew of conspiracy theory and false allegations, ranging from one that he actually had to come out and denounce himself.
He claimed that Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, was on Epstein Island, which is clearly not true.
And he actually had to back off it, I assume, under threat of lawsuit.
He also made the claim that the Israeli security had to be assured, or he was seeking assurances that he wouldn't be shot down like an Iranian drone.
He was asserting that Israel was behind the pressure campaign to launch the original Iraq war in 2003.
And that's just not true because, I mean, Benjamin Nanyahu at the time was a private citizen.
He testified before Congress that he was in favor of it.
But the actual head of the Israeli state, Ariel Sharon, counseled privately for George W. Bush not to go into Iraq.
And so there's a lot of kind of fake history and half-truths that are mixed in that he asserts as if these are facts and he is a truth-seeking journalist.
I say at the end of my piece that he poses as a journalist on his show, but he's acting like a movement leader.
And in that respect, he's much more of a kind of political animal than the charade that he puts out there that he's like, you know, just out there trying to get the story and everything else.
And I would say that this is also about the future of the conservative movement, something you've done a lot, I think, to sort of stake out the higher ground here, which is where does this party go after Trump?
And if it goes in the Tucker direction, I just think it's not only the end of the Republican Party politically, but it says something about the soul of the American right.
It'll be interesting to see what sort of calculations are made, because I think that, as you say, there's sort of a political risk-reward game that is being played at very high levels.
On the one hand, there are people who believe that if they alienate Tucker, they will lose a large chunk of his audience, or that Tucker may himself try to run for office and sort of lead a movement himself.
And on the other hand, there is what I think is the reality, which is that once you get off of X, Tucker's views are not held even by a vast majority of people who listen to Tucker's show, which has been shown by some polling data.
It'll be interesting to see how the White House plays it.
Eli, thanks so much for your reporting.
And you can check out Eli's work over at the Free Press.