Ben Shapiro critiques Democratic Tax Day celebrations, exposing alleged funding of gender-affirming surgeries for undocumented migrants in California and opposing Mayor Mamdani's luxury tax. He contrasts this with Trump's successful tax cuts while analyzing Iran's economic strangulation under "Operation Economic Fury" and criticizing Rep. Yasmin Ansari's alliance with anti-Trump figures like Nick Fuentes. The episode concludes by examining Carl Truman's arguments that modern identity politics, rejecting divine image, fuels radical individualism, necessitating a return to creed, cult, and code to restore humanity. [Automatically generated summary]
Yes, you might think of Tax Day as something annoying and awful.
That day when you slip a check in the mail that represents a gigantic chunk of your yearly earnings so that the federal government can then spend all of that money on a bunch of useless horse crap.
But that's where you're wrong, you see.
According to Democrats, Tax Day is a magnificent delight, a day of festivities for all.
We got to look forward to it every year because taxes are incredible.
As Joe Biden used to say, they're a sign of patriotism, of social solidarity.
And mostly, really, of sticking it to the people who actually earn money in the United States.
And then there's something even better for Democrats.
Spending all of that magical money on awful nonsense.
In fact, that's the best part.
Because here's the thing, folks.
It's not your money.
It was never your money.
It was always their money.
And they let you control some of it.
But the rest of it, they take from you, and then they basically just burn it.
You know, to show you that your economic freedom belongs to them.
We'll get into all of it in a moment.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Well, the purpose of taxes, according to Democrats, is not, in fact, a more prosperous society or the obliteration of poverty.
The purpose of taxes is super simple to punish success.
This is why they're always denying that's what they're doing, because it's what they're doing.
The more successful you are, the more you ought to be punished.
One of the seminal political debates that I've ever covered was a 2008 Democratic debate involving then Senator Barack Obama, who had become president.
And he was asked a question that in any normal world would be disqualifying for the presidency.
The question was Would you increase the capital gains tax rate even if it resulted in less tax revenue?
Because the idea is that if you increase taxes in a particular area, like capital gains, people just invest less.
And so the amount of money that comes out to the government can go down.
And he was asked Would you increase the capital gains tax rate anyway, even if it generated less revenue for the government to spend?
It is not more government revenue to use for useful things.
It is to punish people.
It is fairness.
Now, the thing no Democrat has ever been able to answer is what exactly represents a fair tax rate?
When is fair enough?
If the normal person were to pay a 40% tax rate and the richy rich were to pay a 90% tax rate, would that be fair?
If, in fact, everyone were to pay a 100% tax rate, would that be fair?
No Democrat can ever explain what the ideal fair tax rate is because fair is a fungible term.
It doesn't mean anything.
Fair is in the eye of the beholder.
The real key is that you are punishing and reveling in punishing the rich people.
That's what it's about, which is why the Democratic Party on tax day put out a tweet saying, Tax the rich.
Remember, not help the poor, tax the rich.
That's all they care about is taxing the rich.
And the way you know that it's working is because you are making the rich poorer.
This is why Zorhan Mamdani, the communist mayor of New York, Was sitting on a stage yesterday with a gigantic backdrop reading Tax the Rich, talking about how well all of this is working.
And so, for all of the discussion of the imagined exodus that would take place, were we to tax the wealthiest New Yorkers by the appropriate amount, I say imagined because before I was a mayor, I was a state legislator, and I was part of an effort to increase taxes on millionaires at that time.
We were told the same thing then.
And what we find now is that we have more millionaires today than we did at that time, even after having passed that tax.
Well, I mean, the reason you have more millionaires in the city is because of economic growth, not due to New York City, but millionaires and billionaires are fleeing the state, which is why.
Kathy Hochul has largely opposed many of Zar Mamdani's proposals.
Well, Zar Mamdani on tax day decided it was time to announce the new Pierre Terre tax.
The Pierre Terre tax is a tax on any home that is a second home for somebody, a home that they don't live in most of the year, that is worth more than $5 million.
And again, the sick glee with which he announces taxes has nothing to do with helping people, it has everything to do with punishing people.
That is the glee.
This is your smiling Jacobin.
If he had a guillotine nearby and he had the capacity to use it, he most certainly would.
So he cuts this ad, which should creep the living hell out of you if you have half a brain, talking about how excited he is to tax people on tax day.
Remember, most people think of tax day as a miserable day because, hey, you're giving a bunch of money that you earned to a bunch of people who did not earn that money so they can spend it on random crap.
But according to Tsar Mamdani, it's the best day because he, as a useless person for his entire adult life, got elected mayor of New York and now he finally gets to do the thing he wants to do, which is Bring the richies low.
Not the ones he's friends with, not like Alex Soros.
All the other rich people.
Here is Zarm Amdani.
He creeps me out, man.
The smarm is just off the charts.
This smarmy smile as he talks about punishing people for earning is disturbing.
I'm thrilled to announce we've secured a pied-a-terre tax, the first in New York's history.
This is an annual fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million, whose owners do not live full-time in the city.
Like for this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million.
This pied-a-terre tax is specifically designed for the richest of the rich, those who store their wealth in New York City real estate, but who don't actually live here.
But even so, they're able to reap the huge financial rewards of owning property in, dare I say, the greatest city in the world.
And most of the time, these units are sitting empty, since again, They don't actually live here.
This is a fundamentally unfair system that hurts working New Yorkers.
Now it's coming to an end.
This tax will raise at least $500 million directly for the city.
What is unfair about Ken Griffin spending a bajillion dollars for an apartment and then not spending time in the apartment?
Do we really think that Zoran Momdani would be fine with Ken Griffin if he lived in that apartment?
Beyond which, doxing Ken Griffin's apartment is kind of an effed up thing to do for the mayor of New York City.
You notice the succession music underneath, right?
All the people who are rich are just like the people in succession, except they're not.
I know an awful lot of rich people.
Some are like the people in succession, and many are not.
And I know an awful lot of people who are not rich.
And some of them are terrible, and some of them are wonderful.
The idea that virtue inherently correlates with level of wealth is nuts, but it is what undergirds the level of hatred that Democrats have for people who earn.
Of course, all that's really silly, because it turns out that people who are rich today were not rich yesterday.
You know, thank God I have a lot of money in my bank account.
I once did not have nearly any money in my bank account.
And that's the beautiful thing about America.
You can do both of those things in one lifetime.
It's pretty incredible.
But according to Democrats, that's the bad thing.
It would be better if nobody had that money in their bank account.
Again, notice the emotivism here, right?
The idea that it's all just about emotion, it's not about policy in any way.
What is unfair about Ken Griffin shelling out a lot of money to people who built an apartment who will then use that money to develop more properties in New York City?
Where is the terrible thing that Ken Griffin did there?
He's terrible just because he doesn't spend time in the city?
If that apartment were not bought, would that somehow amount to more housing in the city of New York?
Or would it undercut the housing market in the city of New York and lead to less development of more units?
By the way, that $500 million amounts to 9% of the total budget shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year.
And again, that's a high estimate because the reality is that a lot of these people are going to sell those apartments, get out.
A lot of deals are going to be killed.
I know people in the real estate industry, and a lot of people in the real estate industry are backing out of contracts in New York City specifically because of this sort of stuff.
And remember, earlier this year, Mamdani tried to threaten the New York governor by presenting a binary choice to fix the city's emergency by saying, one, he could tax the rich, which would either require her approval.
Or B, implement a steep 10% property tax hike on everybody and then dip into the city reserves.
So that was the blackmail here.
Already coming up, New York Governor Kathy Hochel is going along with this nonsense.
We'll explain why in a moment.
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Well, Kathy Hochel tried to explain in a written statement what she was doing.
She said New York City is the greatest city in the world, and people who call it home should not be left carrying the burden alone.
Again, this idea that if you own a second home that sits empty, that somehow that is sinful is kind of nuts.
I challenged Kathy Hochel.
Let's say that this is where their main residence and their second residence were down here in Palm Beach, which is true for a lot of New Yorkers, the snowbirds who come down here every winter.
Are you still okay with them buying that gigantic $238 million apartment or what?
I mean, honestly, if they're not actually living in the apartment, they're taking advantage of city services less often.
So actually you are gaining more in tax revenue from them.
Nonetheless, she says numerous media reports have revealed that many of Manhattan's largest new high rise developments are owned by foreign investors who spend little time in the apartments they have purchased.
The New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey conducted every three years found that in 2023, there are about 59,000 units that were held for seasonal recreation or occasional use, down from about 75,000 in 2017.
Okay.
So you may notice something.
Fewer units are being held that way.
What happened to the real estate prices?
Did they go up or did they go down?
Ah, well, look at that.
They continued to go up.
It did not cure your affordability crisis, did it?
Raihan Salam, who's the head of the fantastic Manhattan Institute, has a good thread over at X explaining the problem.
He says Consider that while the owners of Pied-A-Terres pay property and transfer taxes, they don't consume any taxpayer services.
It's hard to dispute that the net fiscal impact of Pied-A-Terres is positive.
Tax something, get less of it.
In this case, we'll presumably have fewer absentee property owners bidding up property values for $5 million homes.
That, of course, will dampen valuations, which in turn will dampen property and transfer tax revenues because you pay property taxes and transfer taxes based on the value of the purchase.
Notably, says Ryhan, while building more housing will tend to lower valuations of individual units, it would tend to increase overall property tax revenues.
The next step, of course, and you know this is coming, will be to lower the threshold from $5 million to $1 million and so on, and then.
The final step will be to broaden this out so that a new tax just applies to anyone who owns in New York.
It's not going to stop with second homes.
Because, again, the case will be made that actually second homes take less advantage of city services than first homes.
Now, one of the funny things about the way that New York does its work is that they are constantly attempting to incentivize cheap building.
And what they instead end up doing is creating incentive structures for people to just do strange things to avoid taxes.
So, for example, A 2024 city government program, according to the Wall Street Journal, offered a tax exemption to developers of most apartment buildings that have fewer than 100 units and include some affordable housing.
The idea theoretically was to get people to build larger buildings up to 100 units and then include some affordable housing.
So, what actually happened?
Well, wait for it.
Developers seized on the loophole and they secured the tax benefit for projects with more than 100 units.
They would assemble complexes with hundreds of apartments sliced up into 99 unit pieces while seeking city approval.
As the Wall Street Journal points out, real estate owners sew these buildings together with a joint facade, interlocking floor plates, hallways, and shared amenities, so tenants in one building can access the co working space, gym, or child play area in another.
So you would have people who would build a 500 unit apartment complex, and then they would basically artificially divide that in order to take advantage of the tax benefits.
It turns out that tax policy is an incentive.
When you raise taxes on things, you get less of that thing.
And again, none of this, none of this is about paying for these magical services that Mamdani wants.
It's not about the services.
Zoran Momdani believes that people who earn more in a capitalist society are worse human beings.
This is what he thinks.
This is what he thinks.
And again, this is a universal idea among top tier Democrats these days, or near universal.
I have to say, one of the most despicable people in American politics, Tom Steyer, who manned up the governor of California thanks to Eric Swalwell's inability to keep his penis out of other people.
Tom Steyer, he is a billionaire.
He has run for president.
You don't remember him running because he won zero votes.
But he has spent.
Legitimately, billions of his own dollars on a random variety of left wing radical causes.
Well, now he's trying to spend his way into the governor's house in California to succeed Gavin Newsom, who himself is running for president.
And he says billionaires like him need to pay more.
It's time for billionaires like me and big corporations to buy into the future of California and be willing to pay more.
A lot of people in California are acting as if we have a zero sum game and they're defending their wealth and they're trying to make sure that they minimize their taxes.
I can't believe they would try to minimize their taxes, those rich people.
Unlike you, you love paying taxes.
Everyone tries to minimize their taxes because you know what they want?
To keep the things they have made, to keep the things they have earned.
California is driving billionaires out by the bushel.
They're driving tax revenue out.
By the bushel.
And again, he's lying because the fact is that the vast majority of federal income tax revenue comes from the people who earn the most.
This notion that somehow our tax rates are unfairly beneficial toward the rich is nonsense.
America has one of the most progressive tax systems on earth.
On earth, here, for example, is a chart from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.
And it shows the adjusTedros income, that's the AGI.
The bracket versus the percentage of federal personal income tax paid.
If you're in the top 50%, meaning you made more than $50,000, you paid 97% of all taxes.
If you are in the bottom 50% of earners in American society or below $50,000, you paid 2.96% of the taxes.
According to USA Facts, most of the government's federal income tax revenue comes from the nation's top income earners.
In 2023, the top 5% of earners, people with incomes $272,000 and above, collectively paid over $1.27 trillion in income taxes, or about 60% of the national total.
If you include the top 10%, everyone who made at least $187,000 and above, that figure rises to $1.5 trillion, 70% of the national total.
So again, the people at the top are in fact paying the most, and that's not just how Democrats want it, that's how they need it.
And then they claim that the rich don't pay their fair share.
How do we know?
Well, because they're still rich.
The best way to know if they're paying their fair share is when they're not rich anymore.
According to data from the Tax Foundation, nearly one third, one third of all income tax filers.
All of whom are in the bottom 50% paid no income tax at all.
And then, if you actually compare what people get out from the government to what they put into the government, it turns out that the people who are in the top 1% get nothing out and pay everything in.
So, again, according to the United States Congressional Budget Office, if you are in the top 1% of earners and you pay a dollar in taxes, you get back four cents of services.
If you are in the lowest quintile, meaning you're not paying pretty much anything in, You're getting $68 in services for every $1 you pay in in federal transfers.
That doesn't even include state.
If you're in the second lowest quintile, for every buck you pay in, you get $6.29 out.
But the bottom line is that if you are in the top 20% of earners, anywhere in that top 20%, you are paying in significantly more than you are getting out from the federal government.
The notion that the rich don't pay their fair share is just crap.
It is not true at all.
And the wages of this will, of course, be felt in these blue states.
So good luck to them.
Good luck to them.
I've said for a while about New York and California you voted for it, and now you got it.
There's a reason I left California.
Every time I go back to California, I say to everyone I can find, I don't know why you're still here.
They're going to wreck you.
They're going to wreck you.
For a thousand reasons, they're going to wreck you.
Because it is the only way that they can justify their failure is that there is a cadre of terrible people who are just too greedy.
They're really, really, you who are stealing their money as a government member, you're not greedy.
You're just for the people.
But the people whose money you're stealing, they're the people who are greedy because they want to keep their money.
And greed is a human universal.
But only one group is sticking their hand forcibly in the pocket of another group.
And those are the members of the government sticking their hand in your pocket because only they have the power of compulsion.
The president put out a statement last Saturday on Truth Social, heading to Virginia for meetings at Trump National.
I can't believe what this new Governor Spanberger has done to the Commonwealth.
So sad.
She's adding so many taxes a food and beverage tax, digital services tax, utilities tax, and more.
It has lost its energy, vitality, and strength.
People are leaving that would never have even thought of doing so.
New companies that signed to come into the Commonwealth under Governor Youngkin are now looking for ways to get out, break their deal.
It all happened so fast.
This went from a thriving and powerful place once envied by all to a Commonwealth run by a person who has no concept of low taxes and economic strength.
People that voted for Spanberger are saying to themselves, Why did I do that?
What have I done?
He said, We have a similar situation in New York and most of all in California, where rich, job producing people and companies are being forced to flee at levels never seen before.
The tax base in California is literally disappearing.
And they do want to put a wealth tax on there.
That wealth tax is scaring the bejesus out of everyone, everyone in California who has any level of wealth.
Truly, the wealth tax is terrifying anyone with any real level of wealth in a company, for example.
They're all going to leave.
And it looks like it's going to pass, which is crazy towns.
By the way, even Gavin Newsom realizes it's crazy towns.
He doesn't even like that proposal.
So, this is one area where Republicans ought to be significantly more popular.
It turns out that according to Gallup, Americans don't like tax day.
They do not like taxes.
In fact, 59% of Americans say they pay too much in taxes.
37% say their taxes are about right.
3% think they are too low.
That 3% would be billionaires like Tom Steyer.
The 37% who say their taxes are about right are not paying taxes.
And the 59% are people who are paying taxes, basically.
All righty, coming up, President Trump is actually doing the right thing on taxes.
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Now, the president's tax cuts have been beneficial for Americans.
According to the Washington Post, the Internal Revenue Service is sending more money back.
The average refund for the almost 100 million households who had already filed their returns as of April 3rd was $3,462.
That's more than 10% above last year's average for similarly early filers.
They're applying more deductions.
They are increasing things like the child tax deduction.
More than 45% of the filers of the returns that we have seen have had at least one of the four president's signature policies no tax and tips, no tax and overtime, the deductions for our great seniors, and the deductibility of interest on auto loans for American made cars.
And I will tell you that the biggest one of those that Americans have taken is no tax and overtime.
And it's the American way.
If you want to work longer hours, you get to keep more of your money.
And this is one area where Republicans have a significant advantage.
And then there's another area where we actually spend those tax dollars.
Where we actually spend those tax dollars.
So when it comes to spending our tax dollars, is California doing an amazing job?
Well, as it turns out, the answer is no.
Chris Ruffo and Jonathan Cho over at City Journal, which is a project of Manhattan Institute, they have a piece out today titled California Paying Illegal Immigrant Sex Changes.
Isn't that exciting?
Aren't you glad that your taxpayer dollars are being spent this way if you're a Californian?
Tom Steyer says you don't pay enough.
You need to pay for more illegal immigrant sex changes.
It is the only way.
Quote Last month, they write, we received a report from a whistleblower who claimed that illegal aliens were staying in San Francisco's homeless shelters.
Following up on the tip, we visited numerous publicly funded shelters in San Francisco and spoke to employees and residents about their policies, sometimes through a translator.
We discovered not only that the shelters were housing illegal immigrants, but also they were apparently housing a population of male to female transgender illegal aliens.
Who had hoped to obtain gender affirming care.
And to our shock, state and local governments apparently are providing it.
So congrats, California taxpayers.
Look at you.
Things are going great.
Aren't you proud that you pay those taxes?
Aren't you happy?
Again, the waste and the fraud are the point.
It's one of the great puzzlements.
If you're a Democrat and you supposedly believe that tax revenue is necessary to better people's lives, shouldn't you be the most angry at waste, fraud, and abuse?
But you're not.
If you're a Democrat, you want that ignored because you're afraid that waste, fraud, and abuse will discredit the system.
What you really should be doing is trying to wipe that out so that every dollar taken in.
Goes to a useful and good place.
But I think that's kind of the point for a lot of them.
They don't care.
They don't care.
It's not about where the money goes, it's about who is deprived of that money.
The Manhattan Institute did an interview with a transgender migrant living in a California homeless shelter.
Here's what it sounded like.
unidentified
What is your name again?
Jacqueline.
Jacqueline.
This is the first time I live in a shelter.
Yeah.
A lot of Latino here.
So definitely some are migrants or undocumented.
And me as a trans woman, I feel safe.
Were you able to get the hormones or, you know?
Yeah, I did that with my doctor.
So, Medi Cal, you got the breast implants?
Yes.
Wow.
Taxpayer funded.
So here in California, they gave you the breast implant here.
Yes.
Free?
Yeah.
Wow.
Congratulations.
Do you feel like that's a good benefit for other migrants here in California?
Yeah, even though you're undocumented, you can get it.
I'm sure the taxpayers are happy paying for this person's fake boobs and eventually paying for this person's snip snip.
Downstairs.
Well done, California.
You're doing great.
You're just doing great.
Now, speaking of immigration policy, the immigration policies in California are indeed insane.
They're going to get worse.
Tom Steyer, again, wants to run for governor of California.
He is running, and right now, he is the front running Democrat.
Now, Steve Hilton, who is the Republican candidate in the polls, is the front runner because it's an open primary system.
He's got 25%.
Democrats are split eight different ways.
Steyer is clocking in at 16 to 20%.
So Steyer put out a thread.
On how to jail members of ICE.
This is what California can look forward to.
Folks, if you can afford to leave California, what are you doing?
What are you doing?
It's time to go.
I've made it clear ICE must be abolished.
ICE is acting like a criminal organization carrying out indiscriminate racial profiling and using violence, intimidation, terrorism, and the murder of Americans to extend Trump's rule by fear.
It's not enough for Democrats to simply engage in rhetoric and stand against ICE or Trump.
California must build a system that fights fire with fire.
You see, ICE is evil.
And they're using violence and intimidation and terrorism and murder.
That's what ICE wants to be the governor of California.
Get ready, gang.
Oh, man, there are going to be so many brand new illegal immigrants for you to perform transgender surgery on.
That's some California innovation for you.
Number one in transgender surgeries for illegal immigrants.
And this is the kind of thing where if you said this in polite company, they literally would not believe you.
They would think that you're crazy.
But this is California.
So what exactly is he proposing?
Five things to take on ICE quote the same way we took on the mob.
One, criminally prosecute ICE agents for violence.
Two, ban any law enforcement agency from using race, ethnicity, language, or location to detain or arrest migrants.
So, like any of those, like all of those in combination.
So, if you are at like a Home Depot where illegal immigrants are known to be, and you know that those people are typically from, say, El Salvador, and they're speaking only Spanish.
And they're waiting to be picked up by a random truck, then you should be criminally prosecuted if you are an ICE agent and you use that for a detention.
They want to send special investigative units to collect evidence at detention centers to prosecute ICE agents.
That's great.
You can have state investigative units going into federal facilities to seek prosecution, which I can't see how that goes wrong.
They want to bring home ICE detainees by using taxpayer funds to pay for attorneys and legal aid.
So you will get to pay to bring people back to the United States who shouldn't be here in the first place.
Isn't that exciting?
You can pay for that in California if Tom Steyer wins.
And finally, launch a Know Your Rights campaign across California.
And the wages of craziness in some cases are death.
Which brings us to this horrible story about a DHS employee who was murdered by a convicted felon immigrant naturalized by the Biden administration.
According to the New York Post, Lauren Bullis, who worked as an auditor for DHS's Office of Inspector General, was shot and stabbed in Atlanta when a 26 year old.
Immigrant who was given temporary protected status and then final status went on a deadly rampage on Monday morning.
Bose was a 40 year old auditor for DHS.
She had taken her dog out for a stroll about 7 a.m. when she was targeted as part of three random attacks carried out by the madman across the Atlanta area.
The alleged rampage also killed another woman outside a Checker's restaurant and critically injured a homeless man who was sleeping outside a Kroger store.
Apparently, this alleged perp was born in the UK and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2022 under Joe Biden and had a lengthy rap sheet.
And then there is the case of a Haitian illegal immigrant who bludgeoned a Florida mother to death.
Horrifying, horrifying video.
According to the New York Post, Rolbert Joachim, 40, is accused of striking a Florida mother multiple times, leaving her to die in the parking lot of a Chevron gas station in Fort Myers, according to court records reviewed by the Post.
That Haitian native arrived in the United States in August 22 and was released into the country by, wait for it, the Biden administration.
He was given temporary protected status and then was issued a final order of removal by a judge, but.
He was safe because TPS ran out in 2024.
And the results of that a dead person.
Again, this is your warning, this is some graphic footage.
Yeah, this is the woman walks out, and here comes an in.
We blurted out.
He literally hits her in the head with a hammer and then just beats her with the hammer.
Horrifying, horrifying story.
This is just one reason why many in the GOP are objecting to extending legal protections for Haitian migrants.
According to the Washington Post, several House Democrats and Republicans have now joined to oppose President Trump's immigration policy Wednesday.
They are forcing to advance a measure to reinstate temporary protections for 350,000 Haitians living in the U.S. for three years.
Trump is saying no.
He's saying no.
There will be no more TPS for Haitians living in the United States.
People who are here illegally need to go home.
Now, again, I understand that there are a lot of people who are sympathetic to Haitian immigrants who are really being sent back to a place that is hellish.
The United States does not have an obligation to take in every person who is leaving a bad place.
And if we are going to do temporary protected status, then we ought to try to cut a deal.
With some other country, a third party country, a Mexico or El Salvador or somewhere else, because those people do not have to come to the United States.
There are many other places they can go, and we can help facilitate that.
But the notion that you're coming from a bad place, therefore, we must inherently grant you asylum no, that is incorrect, especially when we have no great way of actually enforcing our immigration laws.
All righty.
Meanwhile, on foreign policy, well, it seems as though something is coming to the end when it comes to the war and run.
And the thing that's coming to the end is.
Iranian dominance in the region.
That is the thing that is coming to an end.
The Kalshi markets, by the way, are right now suggesting that traffic at the Strait of Hormuz is going to return to normal.
And by the way, in relatively short order, which is to say that the war is going to end.
According to those Kalshi markets, some 30% of people believe that the Strait of Hormuz will return to normal before May 15th, which is like one month from now.
A majority, 53%, believe that it will be open completely, like back to normal before June 1st.
And 70% believe before July 1st.
So that is why, whenever people are pretending panic, oh no, it's never going to end.
This is going to be the issue that decides the election.
Wrong.
It is not.
That is not the way this is going to work.
Now, listen, the Iranians are continuing to try to posture for their own population, mainly because if they do not posture for their own population, they're in serious trouble.
They are also, of course, posturing on behalf of the woke right, of the grievance party right.
They're trying to take advantage of any split they can find in American public opinion to try and rip into Trump.
So they took that dumb meme that Trump posted where he appeared to be.
According to Trump, a Red Cross doctor, or alternatively, Jesus.
And then he deleted it.
They took that meme and then they turned it into an AI video mocking Trump.
Only on X are memes and AI videos a substitute for military victory.
This was originally posted by the Iranian embassy of Tajikistan on X. Here's what it looked like.
The people in the Trump meme started, Your reckoning has come.
And then Jesus, muscular Jesus, comes from the sky and smashes Trump in the face and sends him into the fiery bowels of hell.
Well, unfortunately for the Iranians, the only people who have been sent to the fiery bowels of hell are, you know, their entire leadership cadre, who are now legitimately burning in hell.
I think they had a big surprise.
I think when Ayatollah Khomeini woke up, And there are not 72 virgins.
There is a very different thing in store for him.
It was probably a little surprising.
The naval blockade has now been fully implemented.
According to CENTCOM, no ships are being allowed in or out of Iranian ports.
The blockade is being enforced impartially against vessels of all nations.
Freedom of navigation remains for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, except for the ones that are going into or out of Iran.
In the first 24 hours, no ships from Iranian ports made it past the blockade, and six merchant vessels complied with directions from the United States to turn around.
And this is unbelievably damaging to the Iranian economy.
Really, really bad for the Iranian economy.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Rich Stari, a sanctioned Chinese oil and chemical tanker, masked its exact location in the Persian Gulf for more than 10 days before leaving through the Strait of Hormuz this week.
When it emerged into the Gulf of Oman, near where the U.S. Navy is operating to enforce its blockade of Iranian ports, the tanker made an abrupt U turn.
On Wednesday, it anchored off the coast of Iran.
The ship's maneuvers, tracked by shipping data firms and analysts, are evidence of an emerging cat and mouse game.
Between the so called shadow fleet of tankers and U.S. troops blockading Iran's coast on the orders of President Trump.
Ships that have been changing their names, trying to evade shipping databases and all the rest of it, they are no longer able to evade the United States.
Those ships employ various methods to avoid detection.
They turn dark, they switch off their transponders, but the United States is monitoring all of this.
And this is doing massive damage, massive damage to the Iranian economy.
The Iranian economy is in serious, serious trouble.
And by the way, again, it is not just that we are turning around all of their tankers.
It is also that we have now announced Operation Epic, Fury's counterpart in the economic sphere, Economic Fury.
The Treasury Department put out a tweet saying Treasury is moving aggressively with Economic Fury, maintaining maximum pressure on Iran.
Financial institutions should be on notice that the department is leveraging the full range of available tools and authorities and is prepared to deploy secondary sanctions against foreign financial institutions that continue to support Iran's activities.
The short term authorization permitting the sale of Iranian oil already stranded at sea is set to expire in a few days and will not be renewed.
So, no more sale of Iranian oil.
Money being held by Iranians in foreign banks not being allowed to go forth.
Those banks will now be sanctioned by the United States.
Here was the Treasury Secretary announcing this yesterday.
We have told companies, we have told countries that if you are buying Iranian oil, that if Iranian money is sitting in your banks, we are now willing to apply secondary sanctions, which is a very stern measure.
And the Iranians should know that this is going to be the financial equivalent of what we saw in the kinetic activities.
And again, this is hitting people directly in the Iranian regime.
According to the Treasury Department, this intensifies pressure on Iran's illicit oil transportation infrastructure by sanctioning more than two dozen individuals, companies, and vessels operating within the network of Iranian oil shipping magnate Mohammed Hossein Shamakhani.
That would be the son of Ali Shamakhani, who, of course, was killed in the middle of this operation.
Scott Besant continues to say that oil will come down again.
He is right about this, of course.
The calcium markets are not wrong.
Here was Scott Besant yesterday.
unidentified
So, when are we really going to get $3 a gallon gas?
Now, the reality is that the strategy in use here is putting significant pressure on China.
China is heavily reliant not only on the oil that is coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, they are also heavily reliant on trying to move away from the so called petrodollar.
The petrodollar system was based on the United States getting off of the Bretton Woods system.
It was born in 1974.
Under a security for oil pricing bargain between the United States and Saudi Arabia, in which people everywhere were buying oil in dollars and transactions were settled in dollars and oil revenue was recycled into dollar denominated assets.
Well, there were certain players like the Chinese who were trying to start paying for oil in, for example, Chinese Yuan.
Well, no longer, because it turns out the United States is in charge of basically a lot of the global oil supply at this point.
We are currently choking off Venezuelan oil, which is a big supply point for China.
The Straits of Hormuz are now under basically our control, which means that China isn't getting what it wants.
And if it wants what it wants, it's going to have to actually pay in American dollars.
We are redirecting enormous amounts of traffic to the American oil industry.
The amount of oil that is being bought in the United States right now is extraordinary, like the highest in human history because of what's going on right now.
China, thus, is looking for an off ramp.
The president put out a statement on Truth Social saying that China is happy that he's opening the Straits of Hormuz.
He says, I'm doing it for them and also the world.
The situation will never happen again.
They've agreed not to send weapons to Iran.
President Xi will give me a big fat hug when I get there in a few weeks.
We're working together smartly and very well.
Doesn't that beat fighting?
But remember, we're very good at fighting if we have to, far better than anyone else.
And meanwhile, negotiations continue.
That, of course, is not a surprise because the Iranians need an off ramp here.
Really, really need it.
Now, the Iranians are split.
The IRGC wants to go down fighting.
The rest of the Iranian regime, that would be Mohammed Khalibaaf, the parliament speaker, probably Mahmoud Pazeshkian, the president, they may not have any authority, but they also understand if this keeps going, the regime just will not exist.
If they have no money to pay their IRGC guys, Then their security, Praetorian Guard, is basically gone.
Caroline Lovett at the White House says those discussions continue via intermediaries.
We remain very much engaged in these negotiations, in these talks.
You heard from the vice president directly and the president this week that these conversations are productive and ongoing, and that's where we are right now.
The president has said he is not particularly interested in extending the ceasefire beyond the next week and a half.
He believes he can get to a deal before that.
Pakistan's Field Marshal General Asima Munir, who is One of the people leading the negotiations showed up to Iran and hugged the foreign minister, Abbasaraki.
Of course, Pakistan and Iran are very much aligned, and both of them are aligned with China.
Here's the footage, him coming off the plane and him giving a big old hug to Abbas Araki, the foreign minister of Iran.
The president, however, believes that he has the leverage.
He says the field marshal is doing a great job.
I think he's a great guy.
He ended that war with India and saved 30 million people.
We'll have to see how this plays out.
Suffice it to say, the president has already shown the willpower to walk away from the table if he doesn't get what he wants.
Now, the Iranians are trying to grab a victory from the jaws of defeat here.
They're trying to claim that they have to force Israel to stop fighting a Hezbollah.
In Lebanon is part of the deal.
The United States has already said that's not part of the deal.
So, Iran, which has basically abandoned Hezbollah at this point, Hezbollah is on its own, which is why they're in serious trouble.
Iran is trying to say to Hezbollah that we are going to wrap your conflict into our conflict.
And Israel is saying, no, that's ridiculous.
We are not going to stop fighting Iran's proxies just because Iran wants America to stop pummeling it.
That's not the way this works.
Otherwise, that basically allows Iran, again, deep and abiding control of the Middle East via its terrorist proxies.
So, Khalibaf is projecting here.
He says the resistance at Iran are one and the same entity, whether in war or in a ceasefire.
America must back down from the mistake of Israel first.
I have a question.
Why should America back down from the mistake of Iran and its axis of, of evil first?
That seems very, very stupid.
And I don't think that's going to happen.
Meanwhile, you can always count on, again, the grievance party to come together in the end, which is why Representative Yasmin Ansari of Arizona, Democrat is now praising Nick Fuentes.
Again, she's a Democrat praising Nick Fuentes, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, And Marjorie Taylor Greene, yes, the coalition is coming together.
I have been very impressed actually to see non elected, but Republicans, people like Tucker Carlson, former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, people like Nick Fuentes, Alex Jones, people I never thought I would ever agree with on anything, recognize that Donald Trump is so mentally unstable and he clearly is in a state of cognitive decline.
And I'm grateful that Representative Braskin is leading the charge on this 25th Amendment bill and has started an investigation into.
His cognitive decline because he is unfit and he is a national security threat to the United States of America.
One of the most delicious things will be when all of these people, many of whom have already come out and said vote Democrat, when they try to undermine the Republicans in the midterms and then they turn around and blame everybody else if the Republicans do poorly in the midterms.
They are actively working with Democrats at this point, clearly and actively doing so.
Hassan Piker, Tucker Carlson, MTG, this Congresswoman, they're all on the same page with Mick Fuentes.
That's a coalition.
It's a hell of a coalition.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Kimmel is making the rounds.
In the world of entertainment, Jimmy Kimmel continues to walk around complaining about his life and how difficult he has it.
He is a very irritating person, obviously.
And when you say to him, weren't you supposed to be funny?
He gets mad.
So here he was on a podcast with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson.
That one's got to be just a riveting listen, saying that his job is whatever he decides, his job is.
He's the decider.
Well, yeah, and then the audience can decide that they're not interested.
Well, actually, he literally tells people what their job is.
And then he tells them when they're not fit for their job because they once ran a plumbing outfit, which he did with the DHS secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen, like a week and a half ago.
But of course, Jimmy Kimmel is also very, very critical of comics who are picking up the MAGA tour.
She says it's just terrible.
It's just terrible.
You know, for a man of moral clarity and stature like Jimmy Kimmel.
But I do think that there are people who are pretending to be something other than what they are in search of an audience.
And it's especially sad to me.
It's especially sad to me because you look at some of these comics and maybe they're not doing so great and they, you know, I'm going to pick up this MAGA torch.
So, in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, you talked mostly about how there has been a shift in the nature of how human beings in the West define themselves, how they define their own identities.
The suggestion was if I I'm not simplifying the thesis too much.
That it used to be that the way that you created your identity was the interaction between you and the rest of society, between you and institutions.
You were shaped by those institutions.
You, in turn, shaped those institutions.
And it was that interaction with the world that defined you, as opposed to the way that we now think of ourselves, which is in opposition to everything external, in opposition to institutions.
Anything that is not quote unquote authentically me is somehow an imposition on me.
And I think that way of thinking about it is really useful.
And you helped explain things like the transgenderism movement through that lens and the desecration of man.
You go further.
You talk about sort of the belief systems that undergird a lot of that sort of move.
Yeah, well, what I was intrigued by at the end of the earlier book was the fact that we seem to be taking such exultant delight in what seems to me to be a basic destruction of what it means to be human.
In the new book, I used the example of how the language on abortion has changed from safe, legal, and rare to something one shouts about or boasts about.
Why is it we take such glee in these anti human philosophies?
And the thesis of the latest book is, well, actually, it's a way of asserting our God-like powers.
If human beings are made in the image of God, how do we demonstrate our freedom from God?
By destroying his image.
Paradoxically, that is both an exhilarating thing, but also reduces us to nothing, even in our own eyes.
You know, one of the striking things is the number of what I would describe as the sort of the intellectual class who are beginning to take Christianity seriously again.
So I'm having conversations with people now that I would not have had 10 or 15 years ago.
On the other hand, I'm concerned that the recovery of a sort of cultural Christianity doesn't go to the real heart of the issue of, you know, does God exist?
God has to be more than a good idea, if you like.
You know, if you go to mass, Because you think mass is beautiful.
Well, that's great, but do you actually think the mass is true as well?
I think that latter point is really important when it comes to passing that on to children.
It is certainly possible as an adult to sort of hold the cognitive dissonance of seriously questioning faith and thinking it through and then thinking, well, you know, in the absence of clear answers, the utility of faith is what's going to carry me through.
But you can't transfer utilitarianism over to a child.
It's just not possible to do that.
And so the idea of utilitarianism, you know, requiring A sort of faith practice, how deeply do people actually have to believe in order to preserve and restore the civilization?
I think you have to be able to answer the why question.
You know, I think your analogy with children is a great one.
You think when you were being brought up and your parents would tell you to do something and you ask them why and they would say, because I say so.
And that sort of carried power and punch up until the age of about 10.
And then suddenly you start asking, well, why shouldn't I steal?
Why should I speak respectfully to other people?
You need to be able to answer the why question and simply answering, well, Well, everybody's always done it this way or, you know, it just makes the world a better place raises big questions about, well, how do you find, define the world as a better place?
Why is it that the way people have always done things is the way we should do them?
So I think you're pointing to the importance there of, of, of a proper catechesis that goes beyond mere cultural concerns and towards the, the importance of religious metaphysics.
Well, one of the things I think that you make so clear in the book, and I think that that's quite beautiful, is the reason why, as you say, there is this radical shift in language and thinking that is legitimately anti-human.
The ways that even the left used to talk about these issues had as its baseline the idea that, for example, there was something that was not quite morally right about abortion.
Maybe it was something that you feel like you had to do, or the balance of competing interests weighed in favor of abortion, but nobody was proud of it.
Nobody celebrated abortion.
The same thing was true with regard to things like euthanasia.
The idea was that, yes, it was a tragedy.
Somebody who had terminal cancer, we wanted to Make sure that they suffered less pain.
And instead of simply relying on sort of old Catholic or religious ideas of essentially dual purpose, that essentially when you are giving somebody opium in order to relieve pain, that it then may end with that person's death, instead of relying on that sort of idea, instead it was no, no, you just go ahead and kill them.
But it's a tragic thing that they're being killed.
Now it's sort of celebrate euthanasia to the extent that you're trying to legitimize euthanasia of people who are otherwise healthy, not people who are terminal.
Why do you think?
That's cropped up particularly recently.
It seems like that has really spiked over the course of the last 15 to 20 years.
That even in the 90s, there was a sort of normality to the idea that there was something tragic about euthanasia or abortion.
And now, 2026, there's a whole wing, maybe the majority of Western civilization, that says there's nothing tragic about it at all.
I think some of it comes down to the psychologizing of the human person when we tend to think that how I feel in the here and now is definitive of whether I'm living a I think some of it comes down to the radical individualism that's come to grip society.
And we tend to, you know, in an expressive individualist world, we tend to look on other people as always potentially first and foremost threats to us.
So the elderly become a threat to my ability to do what I want at weekends.
If I have an elderly parent, for example.
Um, and I think the, the whole idea of, of human beings as, as being exceptional creatures has vanished.
Peter Singer, the, the great advocates of euthanasia and infanticide, I think he makes a very good point.
point when he says that, uh, a high view of life and of living creatures is really built around the fact that, you know, as, as Judaism and Christianity teaches, we're made in the image of God.
Once that belief has gone, the question comes up, why should I treat grandma any differently than I treat my, my elderly dog?
Uh, if grandma is ill, if grandma is a burden on me, then I can have her euthanized.
And you look at a place like Canada, where roughly one in 20 deaths in Canada now is as a result of medically assisted, uh, uh, suicide.
So, when you talk to people who are coming from a secular place and you're saying, listen, you need to get right with sort of your basic philosophy here, how would you recommend that people get involved?
Would you recommend that they go to church and just start practicing?
Would you recommend that they sit and they read?
What would be the best way for people to get involved?
I think there are three factors really that shape our imagination of what it means to be a human being.
And in the last chapter of the book, I talk about the church's creed, cult, and code.
Certainly, I think having the right beliefs is very important, reading the right books.
Hearing the right lectures.
That's very important.
I think that being part of a worshiping community is very important as well.
And that binds us together.
There's even been research done that shows that people who sing corporately tend to think of themselves less as individuals and more of part of a group.
So I think worship is something that helps shape our imagination of what it means to be human.
And then finally, I think something like hospitality.
We're told there's an epidemic of loneliness today.
Yeah, opening our homes to other people is a way of acknowledging their humanity.
When you look into the eyes of another person, it's very, very hard to treat them as an object.
I think actually of Peter Singer here.
Peter Singer's mother was, I think she had some form of dementia and Singer helped care for her.
And he's, there's an interview online where he's asked, you know, is this not inconsistent with your philosophy?
And his comment is, uh, well, yes, I guess it is, but it's, I guess it's different when it's your mother.
Well, of course, it's different when it's your mother.
You've looked into her eyes.
You know her as a person.
She's not an abstraction.
So I think there's a strong local dimension to our recovery of what it means to be human.