Ben Shapiro defines the cultural divide between "American Exceptionalists" and the "bipartisan Grievance Party," asserting President Trump refuses to cave to Iran despite failed negotiations in Islamabad. He details a new naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz causing $435 million daily losses, while critiquing Pope Leo XIV's denunciation of the conflict and defending Trump's response. The episode also covers Democratic scandals involving Congressman Eric Swalwell's sexual misconduct allegations, Graham Platner's Nazi tattoo controversy, and Viktor Orban's defeat in Hungary after 16 years, ultimately arguing that American strength requires confronting threats rather than retreating into grievance. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, America is breaking down into two parties, not the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, two new parties, the American Exceptionalists and the bipartisan Grievance Party.
The American Exceptionalists believe in American exceptionalism, that America is awesome, that we have historically been awesome, and that we will be awesome again if we do the hard things that we must do.
The Grievance Party members believe America is not awesome, was never awesome, and will only be awesome if we fundamentally rewrite the American bargain and also retreat from the world for our great sins.
That battle between the American exceptionalists and the grievance party, left and right, will define our future as Americans.
And right now, that battle is being fought over Iran.
You're listening to The Ben Shapiro Show.
So, the American exceptionalist versus the grievance party.
The American exceptionalists think that America is unique and awesome.
We may argue over tax rates and the prosecution of particular wars, whether to do them, how to do them, but we generally agree America has the best constitutional system, the strongest and best free market economy, and the most powerful military in all of human history.
We know that America, in order to preserve the freest and most prosperous nation in world history, sometimes has to do the tough stuff, but that doing the tough stuff is part of what makes America great.
And then, there are the members of the grievance party.
They're on the left.
And they're on the right.
They're the people the president calls low IQ these days, and they become largely indistinguishable from one another.
Hassan Piker on the left say, and Tucker Carlson on the right.
They seem to believe that America's constitutional system is a mockery and a sham, that our free market economy is actually just a rigged oligarchy created by nefarious and evil elites at the expense of the poor, that our military is a gigantic terrorist operation, and that the world would somehow be better off if America abandoned the international playing field.
Now, that grievance party, they're gaining adherence because the world feels chaotic, and when the world feels chaotic, there is comfort to grievance.
When you feel like nothing is in your control, it is easy and politically productive to blame mysterious forces beyond your control.
That also happens to be a recipe for failure, both individually and nationally, which is what the propagandists for the Grievance Party are rooting for pretty openly.
They're openly rooting for the United States to fail in its battle to rid the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, an apocalyptic death cult that cries death to America from obtaining nuclear weapons.
They want America to lose.
They want America to give up power to China and to Russia, and they openly say so.
But here's the thing America is not losing.
And that is because American exceptionalists know that in a chaotic world, the only answer is to stand up for American values and to do that without apology, with strength, and with courage.
President Trump is doing that right now in Iran.
Now, if you listened to the low IQ grievance party propagandists and their left wing legacy media counterparts over the course of the last week, you thought that President Trump was caving in, that that ceasefire routine, that was chickening out, that was taco time.
Well, if you listened to this show, you knew he wasn't.
And then over the weekend, it turns out some of us were right and some people were wrong because he didn't cave in.
The Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, arrived in Islamabad.
He was along with Jared Kushner and Whitcoff, Steve Whitcoff.
And here he was greeting the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shabazz Sharif.
And, you know, shaking hands, being very friendly.
Now, Pakistan is sort of like Qatar in the sense that they are sort of an ally of convenience for the United States.
They do certain things for us in terms of anti terror.
They also tend to oppose America, generally speaking, they are an Islamist state.
The president on Wednesday put forward, on Friday afternoon rather, right before the negotiations began, he put forward a statement on Truth Social The Iranians don't seem to realize they have no cards.
Other than a short term extortion of the world by using international waterways, the only reason they're alive today is to negotiate, President Trump.
And of course, he is right about that.
The reality is that the Iranian government, people see the attempt to control the Strait of Hormuz as a sign of strength from the Iranian government, as we've been discussing for a while here.
That is not the case.
That is not the case.
Basically, the Iranians, in order to remain in power, given the fact that they have a completely defunct economy, an economy where the real, the Iranian real, is trading at zero.
Remember, there were millions of protesters in the streets before the current U.S. Israeli action against Iran.
Basically, Iran had only a couple of levers that it could pull in an attempt to maintain its power.
One is it could shoot its protesters in the streets en masse, and they were doing that.
The second was they could ramp up conflict via their terror proxies in an attempt to Extort the world.
They had tried that and it failed.
It began October 7th, 2023.
It began long before that with Hezbollah, but in sort of most modern iteration, it began October 7th, 2023, and that failed too.
And then they could try to rush their way to a nuclear weapon, and that failed because President Trump and the Israelis called their bluff.
And then finally, as a last gasp, they could try to shut down shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
The problem is, once you shut down that shipping, that is a problem that affects everyone.
And now, if Iran releases that, if suddenly the Strait of Hormuz were to be clear, If oil were to move in and out unfettered by the Iranian government, they would have no lever.
They would have no lever anymore.
All of their leverage would be gone.
If it turned out the Strait was clear and they have no nukes and their terrorist groups are dying and they have no control over the Strait of Hormuz, they really have nothing.
This is a point that President Trump was making Saturday afternoon saying, listen, if there's a deal, great.
We should keep focusing on the fact that Iran's military has been wildly depleted.
Their Navy is at the bottom of the sea, their Air Force cannot fly.
Their government is so discombobulated that you have factions within the Iranian government legitimately arguing with each other fairly publicly.
You have Mohammed Khalibaf, who is the negotiator for the Iranians and the person who I suppose is who we are talking to.
And he's arguing with Vahidi, who's the head of the IRGC, fairly openly at this point.
So there's serious conflict, even within the Iranian government, as to who exactly is in the leadership.
It's not Mustab al Khomeini, who is one legged and in a coma.
So things are not going well for Iran.
Not only that, it turns out.
That actually, as the world reorients away from oil in the Persian Gulf, they're reorienting in the immediate term toward the United States.
And by the way, globally, they're going to reorient away from transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
You're going to see new pipelines being built from Saudi, probably all the way across to the Mediterranean Sea, possibly via Israel.
You're going to see new pipelines that are built in other directions in an attempt to avoid the overwatch of the Iranians.
But for the moment, the reality is that we are shipping a bushel of oil to the United States.
The president put out a statement again.
This was Saturday morning.
Quote, massive numbers of completely empty oil tankers, some of the largest anywhere in the world, are heading right now to the United States to load up with the best and sweetest oil and gas anywhere in the world.
We have more oil than the next two largest oil economies combined and higher quality.
We're waiting for you.
Quick turnaround, President Trump.
And here, in case you don't believe him, this is a map of tankers headed to the Gulf of America.
And as you can see, that is a lot of tankers that are no longer going to the Persian Gulf.
Instead, they are headed toward, you guessed it, the Gulf of America.
Formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico.
So, Iran is in a bit of trouble.
Already coming up, we'll get to why the blockade on Iran is actually going to affect China in some pretty negative ways.
You know, first, I've been working with PureTalk for six years.
I wanted to work with a wireless company that actually shares my values.
PureTalk is veteran led, so helping veterans is huge to them.
I think that's great.
They've donated over half a million dollars to America's Warrior Partnership.
It's a fantastic organization that's on the front lines of preventing veteran suicide.
And PureTalk is creating American jobs with a U.S. only workforce.
Sure, it'd be a lot cheaper to send jobs overseas like other companies do, but they're committed to delivering the best experience possible for their customers.
And of course, I love Pure Talk's service.
They give you the same towers, the same network, the same 5G coverage as one of the big guys, but for a fraction of the price.
Again, the service is great.
The customer service is great, and they're people who don't hate your guts.
I choose to do business with a company that shares my values, supporting veterans every single day, creating American jobs.
Go to puretalk.comslash Shapiro to switch to Pure Talk.
That's puretalk.comslash Shapiro to switch to my wireless company and America's.
Wireless company, PureTalk.
Go check them out right now.
PureTalk.com slash Shapiro.
That's puretalk.com slash Shapiro.
So, number one, it turns out that Iran may have planted mines and then may have just lost control of the mines.
Like they may not even know where they planted mines in the Strait of Hormuz.
That's the New York Times reporting it Iran's inability to locate its own mines is one reason Iran has not been able to quickly comply with the Trump administration's admonitions to let more traffic pass through the Strait.
Safe routes are limited in large part because Iran mined the Strait haphazardly.
It's not even clear that Iran recorded where it put every mine.
And even when they recorded the location, they sort of let them drift or move.
Well, this is a problem, not really for the United States.
It is a problem for China.
It is a problem for Japan.
It is a problem for Europe.
Truly.
Because if the Straits of Hormuz were to be, let us say, permanently closed or harmed, the chief, the chief problem would lie with the people who get their oil from the Straits of Hormuz.
That is not the United States.
That is jet fuel in Europe.
That is most of the oil that is going into places like Japan and China from that region.
And so how long is China going to simply allow Iran to hold the world hostage while it can't even get its own oil?
If it turns out that Iran is able to control that area, that is not a good thing for China.
That is a bad thing for China.
And this, I think, is part of the president's plan, as we'll get to in a little while.
China has been attempting to prop up the Iranian regime because they see Iran as a counterweight to Saudi, to UAE, to Bahrain, and to Israel.
They believe that Iran is the glue that sticks together their world coalition along with Russia.
And so they have continued, according to the Wall Street Journal, to sell the Iranians sanctioned dual use technology to enable Tehran to keep building weapons.
But what happens right now, the way that it was working, is that oil that was moving via the Persian Gulf was largely going to China, and Iran was letting it through, and so was the United States.
What happens when that oil stops moving, and now China has a serious fuel problem?
Well, as of Saturday morning, the president put out another statement saying they were already clearing out the Strait of Hormuz.
He put out a statement The fake news media has lost total credibility, not that they had any to begin with.
Because of their massive Trump derangement syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS, they love saying that Iran is winning when, in fact, everyone knows they're losing and losing big.
Their Navy is gone, the Air Force is gone, their anti aircraft apparatus is non existent, radar is dead, their missile and drone factories have been largely obliterated, along with the missiles and drones themselves, and most importantly, their longtime leaders are no longer with us.
Praise be to Allah.
The only thing they have going is the threat that a ship may bump into one of their sea mines, which, by the way, all 28 of their mind dropper boats are also lying at the bottom of the sea.
We're now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz as a favor to countries all over the world, including China, Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, and many others.
Incredibly, they don't have the courage or will to do this work themselves.
Very interestingly, empty oil carrying ships from many nations are headed to the United States to load up with oil.
And the president, again, is not wrong about this.
Meanwhile, it turns out that on Saturday, actually, two American ships transited the Strait of Hormuz and are operating in the Arabian Gulf.
Those would be the USS Frank E. Peterson and the USS Michael Murphy.
According to Admiral Brad Cooper, who's the commander of CENTCOM, quote, today we began the process of establishing a new passage, and we will share this safe pathway with the maritime industry soon to encourage the free flow of commerce.
Additional U.S. forces, including underwater drones, will join the clearance effort in the coming days.
The president did make clear that if we're the ones who are going to do the work, this is not the little red hen.
If we're the ones who do the work, then we are the ones who are going to reap the benefit.
And now all we do is we'll open up the strait even though we don't use it because we have a lot of other countries in the world that do use it that are either afraid or weak or cheap.
I don't know what it is, but we were not helped by NATO, that I can tell you.
Again, this we'll get to in a minute the international community's failure to actually be a community and instead to just sit there and let America do all of the heavy lifting.
All right, so all this was happening while negotiations were supposedly taking place.
And those negotiations went for something like 21 hours straight.
And they ended with nothing.
This, of course, is not a surprise to those of us who have been pointing out that Iran was going to be intransigent on its nuclear weaponry.
It was not possible for the Iranians to give up their nuclear program.
The minute that they do, their leverage is gone.
Again, they're trying to turn themselves into North Korea.
Remember, never forget when it comes to the Iranians, they could end.
All measures against them with one statement, all they would have to do is announce they are done developing nuclear weapons and they're going to give up the nuclear materials they have.
They're not going to block the Strait of Hormuz.
They're not going to develop offensive ballistic missile capacity.
And they're going to stop funding terrorist groups.
That's it.
If they did all of that, all of this would be over.
And in fact, it would have been over decades ago.
The reason they're not doing that is because they do have regional and global ambitions.
That is the reason they are doing this.
And so they're not giving up the ghost.
Well, the Vice President, JD Vance, who no one could accuse of being a neocon warmonger, he was the one leading the negotiations.
And even he had to say listen, the Iranians are not willing to make any sort of serious concession in terms of acting like a normal state.
But the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon.
That is the core goal of the President of the United States.
And that's what we've tried to achieve through these negotiations.
Again, their nuclear program, such as it is, the enrichment facilities that they had before, they've been destroyed.
But the simple question is do we see a fundamental commitment of will for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon, not just now, not just two years from now, but for the long term?
Now, again, the chances that we will, absent significantly more coercion, low.
What exactly was it that the United States wanted from Iran?
Again, the list of demands is just be normal.
That's it.
One, an end to all uranium enrichment.
This is according to Fox.
Two, dismantling all major nuclear facilities.
Three, retrieving highly enriched uranium.
Four, accepting broader regional peace and de-escalation framework, including regional allies.
Five, stop funding proxy groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
And six, fully open the Strait of Hormuz.
That's it.
Act like a normal country and all of this stops.
And they won't.
And they won't.
Mary Margaret Olihan has a good piece over at Daily Wire reporting on what exactly the United States learned in these negotiations.
Quote The negotiations helped the United States understand just how little Iran understood their situation.
U.S. officials told the Daily Wire.
A U.S. official said that Vance entered the negotiations well aware the U.S. and Iran had hardly interacted with one another for half a century.
Vance probed the Iranian assessment of their own position and discovered that they fundamentally misunderstood their own position walking into the negotiations.
That was why the vice president left Islamabad after he gave that final offer.
If the Iranians believe they have leverage that they do not have, the official said, no deal is achievable.
And that's the thing.
The Iranians, you can only close the strait once.
Once it's been closed, it's closed.
So what exactly do you do next if you are Iran?
You simply, presumably, hope to wait out the United States.
That's it.
Well, President Trump then issued a statement that followed hard upon JD Vance's statement Saturday night quote, Iran promised to open the Strait of Hormuz, and they knowingly failed to do so.
This caused anxiety, dislocation, and pain to many people in countries throughout the world.
They say they put mines in the water, even though all their navy and most of their mine droppers have been completely blown up.
They may have done so, but what ship owner would want to take the chance?
There's great dishonor and permanent harm to the reputation of Iran and what's left of their leaders, but we are beyond all of that.
As they promised, they better begin the process of getting this international waterway open and fast.
Every law in the book is being violated by them.
I've been fully debriefed, says the president, by Vice President JD Vance, Special Envoy Steve Whitcough, and Jared Kushner on the meeting that took place in Islamabad.
Through the kind and very competent leadership of Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif of Pakistan.
Again, understand that Pakistan in this particular situation is a cutout for China.
Pakistan and China have a very warm relationship.
China is the one trying to get to an off ramp here because it is China that is worried about the Strait of Hormuz being closed, considering that 37% of imported Chinese oil comes via the Strait of Hormuz.
According to the president, I always appreciate hearing that the amount of humanity that he has saved, he's talking about the war with India, is incomprehensible.
And then he says, the meeting with Iran began early in the morning and lasted throughout the night, close to 20 hours.
I could go into great detail and talk about much that has been gotten, but there is only one thing that matters.
Iran is unwilling to give up its nuclear ambitions.
In many ways, the points that were agreed to are better than us continuing our military operations to conclusion, but all of those points don't matter compared to allowing nuclear power to be in the hands of such volatile, difficult, unpredictable people.
My three representatives, As all of this time went by, he became not surprisingly very friendly and respectful of Iran's representatives, Mohammed Bagher Khalibaf, Abbas Araki, and Ali Bagheri.
But that doesn't matter because they were very unyielding as to the single most important issue.
And as I have always said right from the beginning and many years ago, Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.
And that, in the end, is the thing that matters.
Okay, so the president then said what would happen next Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the finest in the world, will begin the process of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz.
At some point, we will reach an all being allowed to go in, all being allowed to go out basis.
But Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying there may be a mine out there somewhere that nobody knows about but them.
This is world extortion, and leaders of countries, especially the United States, will never be extorted.
I've also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in international waters that has paid a toll to Iran.
No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas, says the president.
We will also begin destroying the mines the Iranians laid in the straits.
Any Iranian who fires at us or a peaceful vessel will be blown to hell.
Iran knows, says the president, better than anyone, how to end the situation, which has already devastated their country.
The blockade will begin shortly.
Other countries will be involved with this blockade.
Iran will not be allowed to profit off this illegal act of extortion.
They want money, and more importantly, they want nuclear.
Additionally, and in an appropriate moment, we are fully locked and loaded, and our military will finish up the little that is left of Iran, President Trump.
And that blockade was commenced this morning at 10 a.m. Eastern.
It was effective on vessels attempting to reach Iranian ports or that were leaving Iranian ports.
The president also pointed out on Truth Social this morning that the United States would be obliterating any fast attack ships.
These are the small boats that Iran has been launching at tankers.
He says if they come anywhere close to our blockade, they will be immediately eliminated.
Now, again, what does this mean?
Well, it really means that the Iranian economy is dead.
Like DOA.
The Iranian economy was already basically screwed.
They had continued to benefit economically from the blockade because as the supply of oil was lowered, as they blockaded pretty much all non Iranian ships or Iranian flagships or Iranian allied ships, the supply of global oil declined and the price of Brent crude skyrocketed.
And so Iran was shipping out more oil at higher prices.
And so the United States just said under President Trump, you don't get to do that anymore.
You're going to blockade.
Pretty much everything except your own stuff?
Well, now we are going to blockade your stuff, and you're going to have to deal with the fallout.
Well, Myad Maleki of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy points out what that means in terms of Iran's economy.
And the answer is it means they have no economy.
Quote The U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would cost Iran approximately $276 million a day in lost exports and disrupt $160 million a day in imports, a combined economic damage of $435 million a day or $13 billion per month.
Over 90% of Iran's $110 billion in annual trade transits the Persian Gulf.
Oil and gas accounts for 80% of government export earnings and 24% of GDP.
Karg Island alone generates $53 billion a year or $78 billion a year in energy revenue.
The rial has already cratered from $42,000 to $1.5 million per dollar.
Banks are currently limiting withdrawals in Iran to $18 to $30 per day.
The overall inflation rate is 47.5%.
And a blockade eliminating all foreign exchange earnings pushes the rial into terminal hyperinflation.
The regime just issued its largest ever banknote, 10 million rials.
That sounds like a lot of money, 10 million reals.
That is $7.
$7.
So the blockade basically ends the Iranian economy.
Now, the Iranians presumably are hoping that this only lasts for a short period of time, but the New York Post is reporting this morning that the Iranians are already talking about the possibility of giving up the ghost and ending their nuclear program.
This is exactly what President Trump predicted yesterday with Maria Bartiromo over on Fox.
Sure, we can embargo all of the oil that is coming out of Iran, we can blockade it.
We could also just blow up Kharg Island and create a permanent problem for them.
The Israelis could do a special operation and grab the nuclear materials right now.
And as the economy collapses, if you believe that there won't be bread riots, meaning people just don't have any money at all in Iran, and they don't have a choice but to try to overthrow the government and restore normality, well, that is a thing that is happening too.
Iran is in very, very serious trouble.
Coming up, we'll get to where Americans are on this war.
You keep hearing that Americans hate it.
It's just that's not the truth.
First, when you're hiring, it's not just about qualifications on paper, it makes a gigantic difference hiring the right people.
This is exactly why you should use our sponsor, Zip Recruiter.
If you're hiring, you want a candidate that's passionate about your role, but you can't get that insight from a resume unless you post your job on ZipRecruiter.
And now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash daily wire.
ZipRecruiter's matching technology is seriously impressive.
It doesn't just throw resumes at you.
It finds qualified candidates fast.
And now they've rolled out a new feature that actually prioritizes the most interested, most qualified people first.
So you get to the right hires without wasting time.
Candidates can tell you directly, yes, in their own words, why they want the job.
It's efficient.
It's personal.
It's one of the reasons that ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site according to G2.
Find candidates who really want your job on Zip Recruiter.
Four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter will get a quality candidate within the very first day.
Try it for free at ziprecruiter.comslash daily wire.
That's ziprecruiter.comslash daily wire.
Meet your match on Zip Recruiter.
Again, that's ziprecruiter.comslash daily wire.
This raises the only possibility Iran has left, and that is convince members of the grievance party that if they complain loud enough, the president will stop.
So, first of all, the American people, there are a lot of polls out there saying the American people, they don't love the Iran war, that a minority like it or a plurality like it.
Okay, here's the reality.
Always and forever, Americans don't like wars until we win them.
That's all.
And even the wars that we do like at the very beginning, if we start to lose them, Americans don't like them anymore.
Americans like winning and we don't like losing.
It is that simple.
And Americans are willing to undergo this for a temporary period of time, as they've said over and over and over.
The polls that say, Do you like the war right now?
No one likes the war right now.
No one's like, Yes, war.
The question is, What do we get in exchange for not doing what we're doing?
And the answer is a nuclear Iran with its foot on the throat of global oil supply.
Well, that's unacceptable.
Every poll shows that a short term, a short duration war that achieves our goals is popular with the American people.
And a long term war that doesn't achieve any of our goals is wildly unpopular.
Because, duh.
Well, Representative Mike Turner of Ohio made this point pretty clearly.
He says, listen, does anyone like higher gas prices?
And who spend all of their time trying to trot out the propaganda of our enemies.
Tucker Carlson did this on the BBC yesterday.
He explained that President Trump is actually a slave to the Israelis.
A slave.
The President of the United States is a slave.
Which is psychotic.
It's crazy.
And the President has multiple times told the Israelis not to do things.
Like a lot.
You'll recall that last year, during the 12-day war, The Iranians fired some missiles at the very end of the 12 day war.
Israel had planes in the air to retaliate, and the president called them up and told them no.
One of the reasons that Israel ramped down action in Lebanon over the course of the last couple of days is because the president told them that he wanted them to stop so he could pursue negotiations.
It was the president's deal to end the war in Gaza, and there are certain provisions of that deal that I am sure members of the Israeli government did not particularly like.
The notion that Israel controls America's politics is asinine.
Truly asinine at every level, but because Tucker Carlson is a conspiracy theorist who believes that America ought to give up its global leading role to China and Russia, because he believes that, he believes that the President of the United States is a slave.
Donald Trump announced a ceasefire, clearly with relief, and made its terms or most of its terms public.
And then that ceasefire ended within two hours because Israel intentionally violated the terms by attacking not just southern Lebanon, but the city of Beirut.
unidentified
So are you saying he's a slave to Benjamin Netanyahu?
By the way, this is the same schmuck who says that Senator Ted Cruz is morally worse than Nick Fuentes because Senator Ted Cruz is a supporter of Israel.
Well, Nick Fuentes, you know, just loves Stalin and Hitler and openly roots for Iran to win and hates black people and hates Jews.
But don't worry, Tucker Carlson says that Ted Cruz is the true threat.
Well, I mean, it is kind of saying an ugly thing and also a moral crime to claim that a defensive action in the Gaza Strip with specific attempts to prevent civilian casualties is somehow a genocide.
But of course, Tucker Carlson is no different from Hassan Piker.
They're going to hold hands and walk off into the distance together.
This is the grievance party.
It is not a shock to see them on the same page with regard to the Iran conflict because that has become the flashpoint for that divide that we are talking about between America being exceptional and our allies being good.
And America being evil and our allies being horrible.
Hassan Piker, who again, the left is now treating Hassan Piker with undue respect.
Ezra Klein, who again, I like Ezra, but he's off his rocker in suggesting that Hassan Piker ought to be treated as a mainstream voice in the Democratic Party.
Hassan Piker has supported pretty much every terror group on planet Earth, he has supported open communist states, repressive tyrannies everywhere.
If there were grounds to deport Hassan Piker for his viewpoint, if there were legal grounds, certainly on a moral level, this person is as anti American as anyone in the country.
And he sounds just like Tucker Carlson these days.
Here he was calling the GOP the biggest terrorist group on the planet.
I think that the Republicans are far more damaging.
The biggest terrorists, the biggest domestic terrorists in this country, the biggest terrorists internationally is the Republican Party.
And not only that, but it's just like.
They like, I want to fight against the growing fascist movement in this country.
My frustration with the Democrats is their conciliatory attitude towards that and their lack of investment in this struggle.
This idea that, you know, on the one hand, you say Donald Trump is a dangerous force.
I see that, I recognize that.
But then you turn around and you take on his anti immigrant narratives and anti immigrant messaging from the 2020 election that you won and decide you're going to be the sincere candidate that ends up, you know, Dealing with the growth of migration in this country, it's a failure.
What, I mean, the fact that he's on Pod Save America, those are the Obama bros.
And the Obama bros try to proclaim that they are some sort of mainstream moderate Democrats.
I mean, again, the grievance party is real and it is indeed bipartisan.
Are you coming up?
Saturday Night Live sounds exactly like Tucker Carlson these days because they are all part of the grievance party.
First, here's the thing.
If you own a business, you probably have no idea how many brokers it takes to actually insure your business.
That is a gigantic problem for your business.
You've got policies scattered everywhere.
You've got applications that keep asking for the same information over and over again.
You have no idea how all those policies fit together when something goes wrong.
Our sponsor, SuperSure, is built to blow all of that up.
It's one brokerage.
It's a one stop shop.
For your business coverage with a licensed super agent and account team that actually works your account year round, not just at renewal.
So instead of wondering who to call, you have one place, one team, one platform to keep your policies organized in a single insurance vault.
It's an unbelievably sophisticated tool.
I've taken a look at it, I've explored it.
It's amazing.
It's going to save you so much time and so much money.
If you've ever stared at a policy and thought, I speak English, this is not English, SuperSure's fine print fax tool translates the legalese into plain language so you can finally see what you have, what it covers, and what it doesn't.
Right now, head on over to supershare.com, get a full report on your current policies with no obligation.
Find out if you're overinsured or underinsured or somewhere in between.
You want to make sure that your coverage gaps are filled.
You want to make sure you got the coverage you need.
Head on over to super sure.comslash Shapiro.
One super agency, one powerful platform, all your policies in one place.
Head on over to super sure.comslash Shapiro.
That's super sure.comslash Shapiro, paid for by Super Shore Insurance Agency LLC, a licensed insurance agency.
And of course, it is eaten all the way into left wing entertainment.
Saturday Night Live's Michael Che over the weekend did the same routine.
He suggested that the United States military, again, when Michael Che and Tucker Carlson are on the same side, says something.
He suggested that somehow Benjamin Netanyahu controls the United States military, which, again, if that is the case, I would really, if Israel were truly controlling America, I would truly like to understand how it is that Tucker Carlson and Hassan Piker and all these folks are so wildly successful.
I mean, kind of incredible.
How nice of Israel to allow that to happen if indeed they exert that sort of control, or maybe they don't, and you are liars.
The reality is that if the United States had forced Israel to stop attacks on Iran's proxies a thousand miles away in Lebanon, then that would have been a victory for Iran.
Clearly.
Clearly.
Now, here's the thing How much of an impact does this have inside the Republican Party?
The answer is not much.
In fact, as Harry Enton of CNN points out, Tucker Carlson's net favorable ratings among Republicans have nosedived.
No, but the captions on X were Trump gets booed at UFC.
That is a lie.
It is not true.
Okay, but the demoralization effort must continue at pace.
One of the cases that people like Tucker Carlson or Hassan Piker or all the members of the Grievance Party make is that people who are young in the United States have no future.
This is why we must withdraw from the world.
It's why we must rewrite the American bargain.
It's why we must take free markets and grind them under our boot heel in order to make it easier for the youngs.
Well, here is the problem.
It's not true.
It's not true.
The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating piece out today talking about the financial status of millennials versus baby boomers.
And here's what they find older millennials graduated into the 2007 to 2009 recession.
Most of the generation was in their 20s and 30s during the COVID 19 pandemic.
Boomers weathered an oil crisis, high inflation, and high interest rates as they got their start in the 1970s and 1980s.
And what do they find?
Well, they find actually that if you take a look at, for example, the 25 to 34 age group for boomers and also for millennials, what you find is that millennials earn more.
And in the age group 35 to 44, so baby boomers who are in that age group in, say, 1980, versus millennials who are in that age group in, say, 2017, millennials earn way more, way more.
Okay, if you take a look at the median price of a new home in 2025, Adjusted for median household income and mortgage rates, what you will find is that baby boomers remember how we keep hearing that your parents could afford a house, but you can't afford a house?
A lie, not true.
It turns out that actually, baby boomers were paying significantly more for a house as a general rule than millennials.
So again, this idea that young people, millennials and Gen Xers, they have it worse than any generations of the past.
It is not true.
It is not true.
Now, where you can see serious problems for people who are younger is the elevation in the cost, for example, of things like college tuition and fees, which have skyrocketed, which have skyrocketed since the 1980s, right?
But what you see overall is that incomes are actually higher for the younger than they were for the older.
Than your parents.
So much of what we're talking about right now is an op.
An op to demoralize Americans, make them feel terrible about the country, make them feel terrible about the state of the world, make them believe that the only future for America is a weak America.
An America that takes free markets and pretends that free markets are bad.
An America that looks at America's role in the world, keeping the sea lanes open and preventing evil states from going nuclear.
And that not only can't we do it, we shouldn't do it.
We have no moral capacity to do it.
It makes us immoral to do it.
Again, there are lots of questions.
About prudence.
There are lots of pragmatic questions that we can ask about whether particular interventions or particular measures in an intervention are good or bad, productive or unproductive, or even counterproductive.
But the main difference that we are seeing emerge in American politics right now, and this will decide the future of the country, is between the American exceptionalists, the people who believe that America was good, is good, and will be good again, and the people who believe that America was never good, fundamentally gave up the ghost decades ago, if ever it had one.
And that the only cure for the United States is, as Barack Obama once suggested, fundamental change.
This has been a long battle incoming.
The fact that it's infused a little part of the right, a splinter fragment of the right, not a great shock and a time again of social media brain rot algorithmic nonsense.
But it is the fight.
It is the fight.
Now, the good news is the president is not caving in that fight.
The president didn't announce a negotiation with Iran and then immediately cave on his central principles.
And again, the leverage is against Iran right now.
It is not that Iran.
Has all of the controls.
Iran does not have the controls.
The only question is how long they can last in the face of overwhelming firepower, in the face of overwhelming economic downturn, in the face of the fact that most of their leadership class is dead.
That is just a timing game.
But there is no question that on any raw level, the United States has done tremendous damage to Iran and is continuing to do so right now.
Okay, now, meanwhile, that was the positive part of the weekend the president taking a strong position.
And then there was the bad stuff.
So, first of all, we should point out that Pope Leo, you know, I think there are great hopes from some of us who are not big fans of Pope Francis that he would steer more toward Pope Benedict or toward Pope John Paul II.
And it turns out that that seems less and less likely these days.
Again, you're talking about someone when I speak who has tremendous respect for the Roman Catholic Church.
Again, I traveled to Rome and literally went to a service at the Vatican and then gave a gift to Pope Leo.
So I have no animus for Pope Leo, particularly in his office.
I think that the Catholic Church has been a bulwark of Western civilization for millennia.
And I think that that's why it's important what the Pope says.
The Pope, this Pope, just like the last Pope, tends to make extremely political pronouncements in broad and vague terms that then either require cleanup or are broadly interpreted as critiques of conservative American policy.
The Pope does that a lot.
So, on Saturday, Pope Leo XIV denounced what he called the delusion of omnipotence.
That is fueling the U.S.-Israel war in Iran, according to AP, and demanded political leaders stop and negotiate peace.
He presided over a weekend evening service in St. Peter's Basilica.
On the same day, the U.S. and Iran began face to face negotiations.
Now, again, he didn't mention the U.S. or President Trump in his prayer, but his tone and message appeared directed at Trump and U.S. officials.
And he said, enough of the idolatry of self and money, enough of the display of power, enough of war.
Now, again, if the Pope wants to make a fulsome case, may I discuss this with Matt Frad just last week?
If the Pope wishes to make a fulsome case as to why he believes that.
The war in Iran is somehow a violation of just war principles.
He should go ahead and do that.
We can have an open argument about that.
Some Catholics will agree, some Catholics will disagree.
But when he says things like enough of war, it sort of depends on the war you're talking about.
And if the Pope expends significantly more ire at the United States for attempting to stop the nuclearization of a terror state that sponsors anti Christian, anti Jewish, and anti Muslim, depending on which Muslim, terror all across the region.
If he spends more time on attacking the U.S. for attacking that state than he does on attacking that state, I would suggest that his political suasion is being misplaced.
And while this ticked off the president, and the president then went directly at the Pope.
This, again, is not a shock.
The president, shall we say, on truth social, lets it all hang out.
So he said, Pope Leo is weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy.
He talks about fear of the Trump administration, but doesn't mention the fear the Catholic Church and all other Christian organizations had during COVID when they were arresting priests, ministers, and everybody else for holding church services, even when going outside and being 10 and even 20 feet apart.
I like his brother Louis much better than I like him because Louis is all MAGA.
He gets it and Leo doesn't.
I don't want a Pope who thinks it's okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
I don't want a Pope who thinks it's terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a country that was sending massive amounts of drugs into the United States, and even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers, and killers, into our country.
And I don't want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I'm doing exactly what I was elected in a landslide to do, setting record low numbers in crime and creating the greatest stock market in history.
Again, he's not just criticizing the Pope here over what he said at this peace vigil.
He's also criticizing the Pope because the Pope.
Did some sort of event with migrants who were attempting to go from North Africa to Italy.
And it seemed as though he was critiquing the president's immigration policy.
And President Trump continued Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise.
He wasn't on any list to be Pope and was only put there by the church because he was an American.
And they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Trump.
And he keeps going in this direction.
Now, again, on the politics, I agree with President Trump's agenda and I do not agree with Pope Leo's agenda.
Pope Leo is a religious leader.
And again, I wish that the Pope would be clear in what he is saying about what is spiritual and what is political, what exactly he's saying.
And I think that this happens a lot.
And unless I were able to speak Italian, which I assume is what he was speaking, it's hard for me to speak to exactly what the Pope said.
Very frequently, I'll find myself critiquing a report of what the Pope said.
And then I will have a Catholic friend who will say, that's actually not what he said.
And that happens a lot.
With that said, is it a good strategy or a good thing?
For the president to be attacking the Pope this way, it is certainly bad strategy.
It is certainly ill timed.
Here's the president being asked about Pope Leo yesterday.
Okay, so again, when it comes to the politics, and when it comes to Pope Leo's critique of America's war to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and building ballistic missiles and all the rest of it.
So, not only is Eric Swalwell famous for sleeping with a Chinese spy, but also it turns out that he now has a bevy of sexual misconduct and rape allegations following him around.
CNN reported over the weekend quote, a former staffer of Representative Eric Swalwell, a leading Democratic candidate for California governor.
Says the congressman raped her when she was heavily intoxicated and left her bruised and bleeding, an allegation Swalwell strongly denies.
I was pushing him off of me, saying no, the woman told CNN of the incident, which she said happened in 2024 after she had stopped working in Swalwell's office.
He didn't stop.
She said it was the second time Swalwell had non consensual sexual contact with her while she was drunk.
In 2019, when she was still working for him, she said she woke up naked with him in a hotel room after a night of heavy drinking.
She said she had no memory of what happened, but could feel physically that they had had sexual contact.
Now, Again, whenever it comes to these allegations, you're making criminal allegations.
Outside evidence would be welcome.
However, that is not the standard that Eric Swalwell uses.
He's a believe all women kind of guy.
He's a me too kind of guy.
So, CNN reports three other women who spoke with CNN also alleged various kinds of sexual misconduct by the Democratic congressman, including Swalwell sending them unsolicited explicit messages or nude photos.
So, first of all, note to dudes, ain't no lady on earth who wants a nude photo.
Ain't a thing.
Ain't a thing.
Maybe a thing for gay dudes, not a thing for the ladies.
There is not one woman on planet Earth who's desperate for Eric Swalwell's dick pic.
Not a real thing.
In any case, CNN continues, one woman who connected online with Swalwell over her interest in Democratic politics says she ended up extremely drunk inside his hotel room after a night out with the congressman with little memory of what happened.
Earlier in the night at a bar, he kissed her and touched her leg without consent, she said.
Another woman who described receiving unsolicited nude messages from Swalwell was social media creator Ali Samarco.
She said she initially reached out to the congressman on Twitter to discuss politics.
I truly never thought he'd respond.
I had like a thousand followers at the time, she said, and he actually responded.
Well, it turns out he was ready to deploy.
CNN found corroboration for key elements of each of the women's claims.
Two family members and a friend said that one woman told them about the alleged 2024 assault in the following days.
CNN also reviewed text messages that she sent two friends describing her allegations at the same time.
Quote, I was sexually assaulted on Thursday, she wrote to one of her friends, adding by Eric.
She then went and got an STD and pregnancy test.
So scratch what I said earlier about the external evidence.
Uh, it seems like there's lots of external evidence, actually.
Swalwell, who is married and has three kids, showed close interest in their lives when they were in their 20s and finding their footing professionally.
Then he would send them increasingly sexual messages.
Many said they reciprocated and engaged with him in part because of his position of power.
So, again, this is where it starts to get into is it Me Too territory?
Was it consensual?
But in some cases, these inappropriate exchanges escalated to alleged unwanted physical touch or sexual assault, often tied to episodes of heavy drinking.
Hmm, someone found it difficult to restrain himself.
Someone might have wanted to exercise a little restraint.
Well, 55 of Swalwell's former staffers signed a letter calling for him to resign from Congress and for a full law enforcement investigation.
In fact, by the way, there's now a movement afoot in Congress to kick a bunch of Congress people out people who have engaged in sexual misconduct and all the rest.
They said, quote, as leaders of teams working for Eric Swalwell were horrified.
By the recent reporting in the San Francisco Chronicle and by CNN.
We stand with our former colleague and the other women who have come forward.
We believe you should stand with them too.
So, a bunch of people are going to resign for sure.
A local reporter named Stephen Tavares admitted that a lot of people knew about all of this.
He's author of something called Bay Area Insider.
Quote I've covered Eric Swalwell since he was a member of the Dublin City Council.
Shortly after being elected to Congress in 2013, his behavior towards women was known by all levels of our local government and the Alameda County Democratic Party.
Don't get it twisted.
Nobody has been more critical of Swallow over the years.
I tried repeatedly to get the stories out.
I can't force women to speak out.
And when they chose not to, I didn't push.
I also knew that Swallow was known to threaten litigation.
Again, we get into a bit of a dicey area here when apparently everyone knows that he was doing it, but no one reported it.
Remember that Cesar Chavez story from a few weeks ago where it turns out the labor leader was extremely rapey, allegedly?
Well, yeah, it's kind of like that.
People decided to look the other way because of his politics.
I'm sure it was the military that did it weird because I know a lot of members of the military and members who have served in the military before, people who have served in the military, and none of them have a Nazi tattoo.
In international news, meanwhile, Viktor Orban's 16-year rule has ended.
If you want to learn more about Viktor Orban, what his rule meant, what he was doing, I did an hour-long interview with Viktor Orban last year.
You can go and you can watch that over at our YouTube channel.
It is not really an upset.
There had been significant movement in the polls toward his opponent, a man named Peter Magyar.
There's sort of an attempt to play this as though Magyar is a liberal in some way.
There's very little evidence that Magyar is, in fact, a sort of trans flag flying open borders liberal.
That is not the case.
In fact, he used to be a member of the Fidesz party, which was Orban's party, and then he broke out because he was opposed to Orban on a couple of issues.
One was allegations of corruption inside Fidesz, and the other was The issue of the Ukraine war because Orban had taken a very pro Russia position with regards to Ukraine, and Magyar took a pro EU position trying to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Magyar, according to Breitbart, attempted to portray Orban and his party as beholden to Russia.
And then there were a bunch of scandals in the final days of the campaign.
There were recordings emerging of Orban's foreign minister, a guy named Peter Zhuzarto, allegedly passing on EU classified information to Moscow's top diplomat, Sergei Lavrov.
And also, Magyar had broken with Orban over allegations of corruption.
It was revealed a couple of years ago that the then Hungarian president, Katalin Novak, had pardoned the ex-deputy director of the Kasuth Zhuza's children's home after being convicted of helping cover child sex abuse by his boss.
That is what led Magyar to leave.
He says that he is going to.
He was actually campaigning against Orban from the right on immigration.
He has stronger anti immigration views even than Orban.
He still has sort of vague views on LGBTQ divided by sign, which is a big issue over in Hungary.
When it comes to Russia, obviously he's significantly more anti Russia than Orban was.
And he has vowed that he is going to take the International Criminal Court and the rest of the EU's institutional framework on sort of a case by case basis.
So, is this a wild switch away from conservatism in Hungary?
It seems like not.
And an attempt, a sort of bizarre attempt to swivel this over into a referendum on American politics.
It's like a Democrat just won in Hungary, like Kirsten Darmur just won in Hungary.
That's not quite accurate either.
All right, folks, the show continues for our members right now.
I'm going to answer a question I've been getting a lot about whether President Trump is about to draft everybody or something.
We'll get to that in just a moment.
Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
If you're not a member, Become a member.
Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.