The Ben Shapiro Show - Will AI End America?
Aired: 2026-04-21
Duration: 58:48


=== America Must Win Technologically (12:14) ===

[00:00:00]  America must win.
[00:00:01]  We have to win economically.
[00:00:02]  We have to win militarily.
[00:00:04]  And that means that we do have to win technologically.
[00:00:07]  But there's a movement afoot in our country that will destroy all of that, that will let China win economically, militarily, technologically.
[00:00:14]  And that will, if it wins, sink America into poverty and dependence.
[00:00:19]  That movement's fringes are pretty violent.
[00:00:21]  But the problem isn't just the violent fringes.
[00:00:23]  The philosophical moorings for that movement are pretty broad and pretty popular.
[00:00:27]  And if that movement wins, that spells catastrophe for the country.
[00:00:31]  I'll explain in a moment.
[00:00:32]  This is the Ben Shapiro show.
[00:00:40]  All right, folks.
[00:00:40]  So I understand all the questions about artificial intelligence.
[00:00:43]  I understand there are serious questions to be asked about AI, that it's scary, that it's uncertain.
[00:00:48]  We know all of that, right?
[00:00:50]  I mean, we, we understand that we are in not just a transition economically, but a revolution economically.
[00:00:55]  And revolutions are typically not stayed and steady.
[00:00:58]  They happen suddenly and they are disquieting and they create unintended consequences and all the rest.
[00:01:05]  And that's very real.
[00:01:07]  So three things about AI.
[00:01:09]  First, one, we understand that it's scary and uncertain, that we don't know exactly what's going to happen next.
[00:01:14]  Two, artificial intelligence is generating an outsized portion of economic growth.
[00:01:20]  And that is happening not because there are some tech bros who are sitting in a room somewhere magically generating economic growth.
[00:01:26]  It's because there is a market for AI, because AI makes things significantly more productive, because AI makes things more efficient, because AI is going to be the future of everything from robotics to military tech.
[00:01:38]  In other words, AI is generating an outsized portion of economic growth because we want it.
[00:01:44]  Not necessarily we intellectually want AI.
[00:01:46]  Everyone who is currently Yelling about AI and the dangers of AI.
[00:01:51]  And I don't just mean people who are asking questions.
[00:01:53]  I mean people who are anti AI.
[00:01:55]  A huge number of those people use AI, whether they are searching on Google or whether they're on ChatGPT, which is why it's generating this huge, outsized economic growth AI.
[00:02:05]  Because as it turns out, free markets reward people for creating things that generally people want.
[00:02:11]  And three, finally, if we choose to let our fear and uncertainty destroy our technological future in the country, and the only way to do that really is to destroy free markets.
[00:02:20]  We won't save our civilization.
[00:02:22]  We will lose to China.
[00:02:23]  Okay, so why am I bringing all of this up?
[00:02:25]  Because there's a brand new Quinnipiac poll, and it talks about Americans' use of AI, which is increasing, while the viewers of AI sour.
[00:02:34]  The number of people who like AI is going down.
[00:02:35]  The number of people using AI is going up.
[00:02:37]  So many of the people using it are saying they simultaneously don't like it, which, by the way, is very often common with the free market.
[00:02:44]  Pretty much everybody who complains about the free market is a beneficiary of the free market in the United States.
[00:02:49]  So, according to this new poll, 51% of Americans say that they use AI to research topics they are curious about.
[00:02:56]  That is up from 37% in April 2025.
[00:02:59]  By the way, a huge number of people who say they're not using AI to research topics probably are because every time you go to Google and you put in a question, the answer that comes up on Google is being driven by Gemini.
[00:03:11]  Same poll whether people are using it to analyze data.
[00:03:15]  27% say yes.
[00:03:16]  That is up from 17% in April 2025.
[00:03:19]  And people are using AI in increasingly thorough ways.
[00:03:23]  The advent of cloud.
[00:03:26]  Has been extraordinary for a huge number of people that I know who are in business.
[00:03:29]  They're using AI in pretty much every task every day.
[00:03:32]  Now, at the same time that a huge number of people are using AI, people are very, very disquieted about AI, which again, I understand it's a new tech.
[00:03:40]  It is rare to find a new tech in the history of technology that does not make people feel uneasy.
[00:03:45]  If you go all the way back to the invention of the automobile, people were very, very upset about the automobile.
[00:03:49]  It wasn't as safe and as thorough as, for example, a horse drawn carriage.
[00:03:54]  So, when asked whether AI will do more harm than good in your day to day life, in March 2026, 55% Said more harm versus 34% said more good.
[00:04:05]  That is up significantly from last year when only 44% said that it would do more harm than good.
[00:04:11]  How about whether AI is going to lead to a decrease in job opportunities?
[00:04:17]  As of March 2026, 70% of Americans think advancements in AI are likely to lead to a decrease in the number of job opportunities for people.
[00:04:24]  That is up from 56% of Americans in April 2025.
[00:04:27]  And again, that is because people's awareness of AI is becoming increasingly clear.
[00:04:34]  People understand that AI is making its way through the market and that there will be some fairly significant short term disruptions in the job market.
[00:04:41]  And by the way, there is a massive difference between age groups in their perception of AI and job opportunity.
[00:04:50]  81% of Gen Zers believe that AI is going to decrease job opportunities versus only 4% who believe it will increase jobs.
[00:04:58]  Boomers, 66% believe that it will decrease jobs.
[00:05:01]  So you can see the disquiet, right?
[00:05:03]  It's scary.
[00:05:03]  It's uncertain.
[00:05:04]  We're not sure what's going to happen next.
[00:05:05]  Now, at the same exact time that is happening, the reality is that economic growth in the United States is being disproportionately driven by AI.
[00:05:13]  According to Forbes, in August of last year, Renaissance Macro Research estimated that to date in 2025, The dollar value contributed to GDP growth by AI data center build out.
[00:05:24]  So that's just AI data center build out.
[00:05:26]  Had surpassed U.S. consumer spending for the first time ever.
[00:05:30]  Apparently, according to Jason Furman, who we've had on the show, professor of economics at Harvard, investment in information processing equipment and software was only 4% of US GDP for the first half of 2025, but it accounted for 92% of all GDP growth over that period.
[00:05:46]  So these companies are investing heavily in data centers because that is the basis for all of the compute that is necessary for AI.
[00:05:54]  They're building these giant data centers everywhere.
[00:05:56]  And as we'll talk about, this is becoming the target for people who are not just upset over AI, but seemingly upset about the economic future of the United States more generally.
[00:06:05]  According to Boston Consulting Group, over the next two to three years, 50 to 55% of all jobs in the United States will be reshaped by AI.
[00:06:13]  Not replaced, reshaped.
[00:06:15]  They say, quote, for many employees, this will mean they retain the same or similar role, but face radically new expectations for how they work and what they produce.
[00:06:23]  Mark Andreessen, who is, of course, a major investor in this area, was on a podcast a couple of months ago explaining how AI growth is going to impact the economy.
[00:06:33]  Well, look, if we didn't have AI, we'd be in a panic right now about what's going to happen to the economy, right?
[00:06:39]  Because what we would be staring at is a future of depopulation.
[00:06:42]  And like, depopulation without new technology would just mean that the economy shrinks, right?
[00:06:47]  So it would mean that the economy kind of itself kind of shrinks over time.
[00:06:49]  You know, the opportunity diminishes.
[00:06:51]  There are no new jobs.
[00:06:53]  There are no new fields.
[00:06:54]  There's no new source of consumer demand for spending on things.
[00:06:58]  And so you would be very worried about going into a period of like severe decline and stagnation.
[00:07:03]  And, you know, essentially, you'd be looking at these like very dystopian scenarios of like an economy kind of self euthanizing itself.
[00:07:10]  Over time.
[00:07:12]  And so you'd be very worried about like the opposite of what everybody thinks that they're worried about.
[00:07:16]  The only reason we're not worried about that is because we now know that we have the technology that can substitute for the lack of population growth and then also for the lack of immigration that's likely.
[00:07:25]  And so I would say the timing has worked out miraculously well in the sense that we're going to have AI and robots precisely when we actually need them to keep the economy from actually shrinking.
[00:07:35]  So the point that Andreessen is making here is that we have a shrinking population.
[00:07:39]  That means that we have fewer workers.
[00:07:40]  And so if you're going to increase productivity, how do you do that?
[00:07:43]  AI is what does that.
[00:07:45]  Chen Sen Huang over at NVIDIA makes the case at the Stanford School of Business that the question is not your job being replaced by AI, it is your job being replaced by someone who uses AI.
[00:07:56]  So that person could be you if you learn to use AI.
[00:08:01]  There's no question that bringing everybody along is really the single most important thing to do.
[00:08:07]  And the fact of the matter is, it is unlikely most people will lose a job to AI.
[00:08:15]  It is most likely that most people will lose a job to somebody who uses AI.
[00:08:21]  And so we have to make sure that everybody uses AI.
[00:08:24]  It is also the case, you hear many examples of this, where somebody used to be a carpenter, but because of AI, they're now an architect.
[00:08:33]  You know, you could describe things into AI, and it comes out with an incredible design, incredible draft.
[00:08:39]  And they can be interior designers.
[00:08:42]  And so they elevate their craft, they elevate their service, and they elevate their business to a level to be able to offer more.
[00:08:52]  And again, one of the reasons why we are betting on American economic growth is because of AI productivity.
[00:08:57]  So, for example, people who are worried about inflation, one of the things that makes things cheaper is more productivity, more productivity means more supply.
[00:09:05]  More supply, same demand means lower prices.
[00:09:07]  So, Kevin Walsh, who's being nominated for FedShare and who's having his hearings today, back in December 2025, he says that a large part of his mandate, if he becomes FedShare, is going to be about bringing inflation down.
[00:09:20]  But one of the ways to bring inflation down is to bet on AI productivity, meaning investment in the private sector.
[00:09:26]  I think the difficulty of this for policymakers, let's say central bankers, let's say fiscal authorities, is the economy is going to be growing, but it will not show up in the productivity statistics.
[00:09:39]  So, they're going to have to make a bet.
[00:09:41]  Is the economy becoming much more productive?
[00:09:44]  Is the technology hitting more sectors?
[00:09:46]  And what should they do about it?
[00:09:48]  As a first approximation, my simple version of this is everything technology touches gets cheaper.
[00:09:56]  Okay.
[00:09:56]  And that is exactly right.
[00:09:58]  And of course, Warsh is also saying that it's very important that America lead AI development.
[00:10:02]  Like, we need to win that race.
[00:10:05]  Question economics is Is it an 18 month head start and everyone catches up, or can they permanently build a moat?
[00:10:12]  So I think it's super exciting for the United States.
[00:10:15]  And my bet would be that we're at the early innings, but the relative growth of the United States at the cutting edge of this productivity wave relative to the rest of the world will gap out even further in the next five years than it has in the past.
[00:10:30]  So it's an incredibly exciting opportunity.
[00:10:33]  And it's one where the U.S. plays its cards right.
[00:10:37]  We'll end up with A stronger workforce, more important companies, and that prosperity will have in economics will find its way into national security so the rest of the world can look at the US again as a shining city on the hill.
[00:10:54]  Okay, so again, three things that are important here about AI.
[00:10:57]  One, it's scary, it's uncertain.
[00:10:59]  We don't know enough about where things are going because we never know enough about where things are going.
[00:11:04]  And again, the sort of less intelligent take.
[00:11:09]  On economics, is that whenever there's a technological transition, people believe there will be mass and permanent job loss, and that is not what happens.
[00:11:15]  People find jobs in other arenas or they find jobs in other ways.
[00:11:18]  There is a transition, and pretending that transition doesn't exist is stupid.
[00:11:22]  Second, AI is part of our future, whether we like it or whether we don't, is where the economy is going, and it is going there because AI is an extraordinary tool, truly an extraordinary tool.
[00:11:33]  And that doesn't mean it doesn't have downsides.
[00:11:35]  The internet's an extraordinary tool as well, and that obviously has had some pretty significant downsides.
[00:11:39]  But this leads us to the third.
[00:11:41]  Important point about AI.
[00:11:43]  If we let our fear govern us, if we, at the violent fringes, attack the places that are generating our prosperity, if we go full Luddite and try to break the machines, if we turn against free markets because we're afraid of what's going to come next, then the answer is not going to be American prosperity.
[00:12:01]  It's going to be American poverty and loss to China.
[00:12:04]  Are you coming up?
[00:12:04]  Let's get into the free markets and why people are blaming them and why they should stop that first.
[00:12:08]  Here is the thing.
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=== Why Blame Free Markets (04:34) ===

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[00:13:11]  So, David Friedberg over at the All In podcast, he made what I thought was a really good point on All In the other day.
[00:13:18]  Where he was talking about the tendency to blame free markets and blame technology for dyspepsia with the economy.
[00:13:28]  The suggestion being that it's this group of nefarious people who are destroying your way of life.
[00:13:32]  And he says the data center has become the symbol of that.
[00:13:35]  And he's saying that because people are literally attempting to attack data centers now.
[00:13:40]  Most people in America really are starting to really hate rich people.
[00:13:46]  And there's no physical space that better represents the wealth in America, the wealth creation that's happened that a lot of people feel left behind from than the data center.
[00:13:55]  What other physical space is there to go to?
[00:13:58]  It is the temple of the wealthy.
[00:14:00]  It is the mechanism, the tool, the machinery of the wealthy.
[00:14:04]  It is the way that the rich, elite, tech kind of political connected billionaires that we're obviously all attached to are.
[00:14:15]  Taking from the poor, getting themselves ahead, shooting themselves to space, leaving everyone else behind.
[00:14:25]  David Fribourg's explanation there is exactly right.
[00:14:28]  This is the way that economic populists have been pushing.
[00:14:31]  Now, again, I want to separate here between moral populism and economic populism.
[00:14:34]  Moral populism is the basic idea put forward by, say, William F. Buckley back in the 1960s that he would trust the first 100 names in the Harvard phone book on matters of public policy more than he would trust 100 professors at Harvard.
[00:14:46]  The idea being that the common man in the United States, shaped as he or she is by the institutions of church and family and community, has a better moral compass on average than the elites.
[00:14:56]  That I totally agree with because elites very often believe that they have been freed from the systems of morality.
[00:15:02]  However, when it comes to the economy, economic populism is almost the inverse.
[00:15:07]  Economic populism assumes that there should be some sort of centralized control placed into the hands of that central power by quote unquote the people, and that that centralized control should overwhelm.
[00:15:18]  The disseminated knowledge that is implicit in free markets and capital markets.
[00:15:22]  Again, the basic principle of capitalism is that disparate views on things lead to better outcomes.
[00:15:30]  That differential knowledge and the diffusion of knowledge is actually significantly more effective than one guy at the top with a stick beating people into submission.
[00:15:39]  Economic populism says that free markets are bad if the product of the free market is something I don't like.
[00:15:44]  Therefore, we should take power away from the free market to destroy it.
[00:15:48]  And right now, again, whenever there is economic unease, People tend to attack free market capitalism or what they see as the symbols of free market capitalism.
[00:15:58]  And they tend to blame people who are wealthy.
[00:16:00]  And again, the great lie about that is that people in the United States are wealthy because they are stealing from poor people.
[00:16:05]  It is a lie.
[00:16:06]  It is a full scale lie.
[00:16:08]  It is not true.
[00:16:09]  The only place in the world in which people are rich because they steal from the poor are communist countries and other forms of tyranny.
[00:16:15]  In a free market economy, the reason that people are rich is because they are providing products and services at a price that someone wants, and it turns out lots of people want.
[00:16:23]  That product or service, and that's how they make their money in a free market economy.
[00:16:27]  But if you can somehow recast the economy of the United States as quote unquote rigged on behalf of the wealthy, and then you can go after the means of production, right?
[00:16:39]  In this case, AI data centers, for example, then what you are going to end up doing in this view is overthrowing the capitalist system.
[00:16:47]  Of course, the outcome of that will be quite dire.

=== The Danger of Destroying Tech (08:58) ===

[00:16:48]  So, here, for example, is a DC activist named Ariana Evans telling people they should destroy AI data centers.
[00:16:54]  I understand that there is a sort of horseshoe theory, grievance based economic right that also is wildly upset about AI data centers because they're big and ugly.
[00:17:03]  You know what else is big and ugly?
[00:17:05]  Walmart.
[00:17:06]  Kind of big, kind of ugly, kind of wonderful for the vast majority of consumers.
[00:17:10]  In any case, here is DC activist Ariana Evans.
[00:17:14]  Cause property damage is not violent protest.
[00:17:17]  Because property is not people.
[00:17:19]  Okay?
[00:17:20]  We should absolutely, absolutely keep this trend going.
[00:17:25]  AI data centers next.
[00:17:27]  White people, get on your job.
[00:17:30]  Okay?
[00:17:30]  Alright now.
[00:17:30]  All the white leftists need to learn from the folks that burn Kimberly Clark, the people that are burning the logging, the people that are burning the Amazon warehouses.
[00:17:37]  All the white leftists who be having a whole lot of this stuff on the internet.
[00:17:41]  Y'all need to take notes.
[00:17:42]  Because not only is it your time to step up, It is your time to organize your people.
[00:17:47]  Hey, you know, some folks don't want to do the past MAGA three time Trump voters.
[00:17:51]  It is your job, actually, to deprogram those people.
[00:17:54]  I don't give a about how you feel because you're not directly impacted.
[00:17:59]  You're not black.
[00:18:00]  You're not indigenous.
[00:18:01]  You're not, you are white.
[00:18:04]  So the white folks should be organizing the other white folks, deprogramming the other white folks, dismantling the system of whiteness within the other white folks so they can continue to burn down.
[00:18:15]  Right.
[00:18:15]  Burn this bleep down.
[00:18:16]  Right.
[00:18:16]  Is always and forever the coalition.
[00:18:18]  Of the supposedly dispossessed in the richest country in world history.
[00:18:23]  You can see, by the way, that her hat in this particular clip says, Immigrants forever, ICE agents never.
[00:18:26]  So it's all part of the uniclause.
[00:18:29]  All of this is part and parcel of why, for example, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's home has allegedly been targeted in the second attack in just two days.
[00:18:37]  According to the New York Post, Daniel Alejandro Morena Gama, 20, was arrested after allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at Altman's home, which caused a fire.
[00:18:45]  He then fled the scene before heading to OpenAI offices, allegedly threatening to burn down the building, according to San Francisco cops.
[00:18:51]  In a separate incident last week, a Honda car had been near Altman's $27 million Russian Hill mansion early Sunday morning before pulling up outside, and a shot was fired from the vehicle's passenger window.
[00:19:01]  And two people, one Amanda Tom and one Mohammed Tariq Hussein, were arrested at the property.
[00:19:07]  Again, this is part and parcel of a broader movement.
[00:19:11]  And that broader movement is targeting technology more generally, including technologies that are required for the United States to win wars.
[00:19:19]  So Stu Smith writes over at City Journal, a project of Manhattan Institute, over the weekend.
[00:19:24]  That there is a campaign against Palantir.
[00:19:26]  Palantir is a military contractor that generates extraordinary technologies in terms of intelligence gathering, in terms of capacity to target, and in terms of much of the actual technology that goes into the machines that we actually use.
[00:19:43]  And there's a charge being led against Palantir.
[00:19:45]  According to Stu Smith, while the Anti War Action Network presents itself as a broad, generic coalition, it operates as an umbrella organization that overlaps significantly with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization ecosystem.
[00:19:57]  Many of its affiliated groups, often branded as local anti war committees, have been linked to more confrontational forms of activism.
[00:20:03]  Clearly, the word is spreading.
[00:20:04]  Palantir is the new bete noir of far left activists.
[00:20:07]  Jewish Voice for Peace, which, of course, is neither Jewish nor a voice for peace, recently mobilized in the lobby of Palantir's New York City office alongside the Sunrise Movement and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.
[00:20:17]  Again, whenever you hear these groups that are led by quote unquote Jews, those Jews are not people who keep kosher, who keep Shabbat, who care about Judaism at all.
[00:20:23]  They're people who slap the name Jews on themselves so that they can pretend that they're an aggrieved minority.
[00:20:28]  That's what's happening.
[00:20:30]  The militant AIDS activist group Act Up New York even staged a die in outside Palantir's office.
[00:20:35]  And of course, this cross paths was all of America's enemies.
[00:20:38]  America's enemies are happy to watch us destroy ourselves by taking down the technologies that allow us to win.
[00:20:44]  This is why Alexander Dugan, again, Alexander Dugan is a Russian philosopher slash agent of Vladimir Putin who spreads anti-American trash on podcasts like, for example, Tucker Carlson's podcast.
[00:20:58]  He put out a word salad attacking Palantir.
[00:21:02]  Palantir Manifesto, illiberal, anti humanist, post globalist, the techno state of the global West as hegemonic pole.
[00:21:09]  Unipolarity, technological racism, individualism, Epstein style, quite compatible with Israelism, Tucker Carlson definition.
[00:21:16]  Of course, Alexander Dugan always name checks his buddy.
[00:21:19]  Absolutely disgusting antichrist.
[00:21:20]  So Palantir is the antichrist.
[00:21:22]  And now, if you buy into this entire shtick, if you buy into the idea that AI as a technology must be destroyed, It won't be destroyed.
[00:21:34]  We'll just lose.
[00:21:35]  If you think that China is going to forego AI, you're a fool.
[00:21:39]  They're not.
[00:21:40]  If the United States were to heavily restrict AI, not just in terms of preventing its gravest harms, but restricting the development of AI, or if there were to be a political party that attempts to prevent the building of data centers, not for any sort of understandable economic reason, like, for example, make the data centers pay their fair share of electricity production, which I think is a fair argument.
[00:22:03]  If really there's a broad scale movement.
[00:22:05]  To destroy the AI industry overall, out of either some sort of misplaced agrarianism, the idea that we must all live in villages free of AI, which of course is not how things work in the modern world.
[00:22:20]  Everybody in a village in the United States is still using ChatGPT, or out of a deep and abiding hatred for capitalism, or the generalized belief that capitalism rots the human soul as opposed to, you know, lack of traditional institutions preventing the rot of the human soul.
[00:22:35]  If we lose, China wins.
[00:22:37]  This is not a vacuum.
[00:22:40]  It is not as though if the United States just foregoes AI, magically we continue to have a burgeoning, wealthy economy.
[00:22:47]  And also, China just goes weapons down.
[00:22:49]  Alex Karpo Palantir pointed out in June 2025 AI is dangerous, and either we win or China wins.
[00:22:57]  If we didn't have the adversaries we'd have, I would be very in favor of pausing this technology completely.
[00:23:04]  But we do.
[00:23:06]  And that's why pausing is just, you can't pause it because it's a structural advantage.
[00:23:12]  We're not doing this in a vacuum.
[00:23:14]  We are going to be the dominant player, or China's going to be the dominant player, and there will just be very different rules depending on who wins.
[00:23:21]  And we cannot rely on anyone else to do this in our network of allies because Europe has given up on technology.
[00:23:29]  And he is right about all of this.
[00:23:31]  Again, when it comes to AI, yes, there are problems.
[00:23:34]  There are dangers.
[00:23:35]  And we should all recognize those dangers and not whistle past the graveyard on all of that.
[00:23:39]  At the same time, it is a tremendous opportunity.
[00:23:41]  And again, the reality is that we are pursuing it because if we do not pursue it, then China will pursue it.
[00:23:46]  And let's say that China were to run ahead of us in terms of AI development.
[00:23:50]  So what would that mean?
[00:23:51]  It would mean economic and military ruin for the United States.
[00:23:54]  A China in dominant AI position means a China in dominant military position.
[00:23:59]  The amount of AI that is being used right now, for example, by the United States military.
[00:24:04]  In the conflict in Iran, the amount of AI that is used in, say, an operation in Venezuela is tremendous and growing and growing.
[00:24:14]  If China outdevelops us, that means their military is now superior to ours.
[00:24:17]  If their military is superior to ours, that means they can not only effectuate change in their region, it means they can spread that technology throughout the world and make other countries dependent on the receipt of that technology.
[00:24:29]  It means that many, many other countries all over planet Earth suddenly become China's dependents.
[00:24:35]  That is a huge problem.
[00:24:36]  And it also leaves China in a dominant economic position because AI means more productivity.
[00:24:44]  If productivity goes up for China but remains stagnant for the United States, they outcompete us.
[00:24:48]  And then, if they outcompete us, one of two things happens either we block off our economy and we become backwards and protectionist, meaning we don't have any of the best goods and products and services at the best price, and so we're all poorer and we slide into poverty and stagnation, or we have to be dependent on Chinese products and our kids work for Chinese companies, and China is able to spread its influence that way.
[00:25:11]  When it comes to the game of economics, you must win.
[00:25:13]  When it comes to the game of military dominance, you must win.
[00:25:16]  And when it comes to the technological game, you must win.
[00:25:18]  Now, again, it may be and it should be that we have serious conversations with people who actually know enough about AI to know what they're talking about, about what are the real relevant dangers of AI and how do we curb those.
[00:25:32]  But the kind of broad scale economic populism that's been rising that says that we ought to tariff our way out of all problems, that we ought to attack technological development, that wouldn't it be great if we were making t-shirts, an economy based on t-shirts.
[00:25:45]  None of this is going to solve the bigger problem.

=== Grievance Culture and AI (07:47) ===

[00:25:47]  And it plays into right now what is a part of a broader grievance culture.
[00:25:51]  Again, there is a reason why you saw that activist complaining about black and indigenous voices and illegal immigration being curbed by the Trump administration.
[00:25:59]  In the same sentence, she's trying to burn down data centers.
[00:26:02]  There's a reason for that.
[00:26:04]  Because it turns out that attacking tech CEOs or healthcare CEOs the way Luigi Mangi owns it, or burning up Teslas and attacking Tesla's showrooms, or, say, shooting Charlie Kirk, or attempting to shoot President Trump, all of these are the most extreme manifestations of an ideology that says that you are a victim of American society, and therefore you get to do bad things.
[00:26:26]  And on a broader political level, you are a victim of American society, and therefore you ought to get together with the other victims, take over the government, and use centralized tyrannical power.
[00:26:35]  In order to cram down your view of the world, this is where Momdaniism comes from on a political level.
[00:26:41]  It's where grievance culture left comes from and grievance culture right.
[00:26:46]  Momdani is the avatar of this entire grievance culture.
[00:26:49]  So he's not making life better for anyone in New York City.
[00:26:52]  Instead, he's going around posturing as though he is.
[00:26:55]  Already coming up, Zoran Momdani is making all the problems worse, but at least he is making individuals feel better by getting them to show him violations of fire code and such.
[00:27:05]  I'll explain in a moment.
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[00:28:11]  It's kind of amazing to watch Hugo Chavez come to New York City.
[00:28:14]  So Hugo Chavez, the former dictator of Venezuela before Maduro, he was famous for doing this routine where he would, he would do a TV show that was hours long on Venezuelan TV, where he would basically have people come and bring him specific problems in front of the camera.
[00:28:28]  And then he would quote unquote solve the problem.
[00:28:30]  Now, the overall system of Venezuela meant impoverishment of the population.
[00:28:33]  It meant tyrannical control of every part of Venezuelan life up to and including the economy.
[00:28:38]  It meant people eating dog in the street.
[00:28:41]  But as long as Hugo Chavez was on the TV telling people that he was solving their specific housing problem, he felt this would make him popular.
[00:28:48]  Well, Zoramamdani is doing the same thing.
[00:28:50]  Zoramamdani is doing the same thing.
[00:28:52]  So, one of the things that Mamdani has been pushing is this idea that developers in New York City are rampantly cheating their tenants.
[00:29:02]  You know, number one, there's a lot of law on this.
[00:29:04]  There's a lot of law, including in New York City, about the requirement for hospitable tenements, that you have to have habitable tenements, rather, that you must have.
[00:29:14]  Habitability as a condition to paying rent.
[00:29:17]  So you can't just leave the place crappy.
[00:29:19]  Additional regulation, additional cost means less building.
[00:29:23]  That means higher costs.
[00:29:25]  But what is Mamdani going to do?
[00:29:26]  He's going to ignore the bigger problem and, in fact, exacerbate the bigger problem a lot.
[00:29:31]  But he will go conduct housing inspections himself, thus, to find violations and then claim that he is some sort of hero while simultaneously making housing significantly more expensive in the city.
[00:29:42]  How are you doing, sir?
[00:29:43]  How are you?
[00:29:44]  I'm all right.
[00:29:45]  Pleasure to meet you.
[00:29:46]  Mayor Maldani, we're here to inspect the home and to make sure everything's up to code.
[00:29:49]  You're in charge now.
[00:29:50]  All right, where do you go?
[00:29:52]  You want to check the window guard?
[00:29:55]  Okay.
[00:29:55]  Okay.
[00:29:56]  11 is a negative.
[00:29:57]  Let's find that one.
[00:29:58]  It's broken.
[00:30:00]  We're also going to hit him with a window guard violation.
[00:30:02]  And then we have here the one violation for the local law 86.
[00:30:06]  Which is the incomplete information on the side?
[00:30:09]  No, that's another one.
[00:30:10]  That's another one.
[00:30:10]  That's a different one.
[00:30:11]  So that's two.
[00:30:12]  That's another one.
[00:30:13]  Yes, so that's two.
[00:30:14]  Okay.
[00:30:14]  It was a pleasure to be here at this building with a number of inspectors.
[00:30:17]  From HPD to ensure that these conditions are up to code.
[00:30:22]  They didn't put up their acquired information on the side of the building.
[00:30:26]  And therefore, the mayor of New York will show up in order to, of course, make the broader point that all over New York, renters are the victims of the people they are renting from.
[00:30:36]  What developer in their right mind would build in New York right now?
[00:30:38]  What developer in their right mind?
[00:30:40]  But again, it's never about a better life for the people you pretend to represent.
[00:30:43]  It is all about tearing down the system.
[00:30:44]  That is the entire goal of all of this.
[00:30:46]  The same thing.
[00:30:47]  Happens on the right.
[00:30:48]  Fascinating article in the Washington Post about Nick Fuentes.
[00:30:52]  Fuentes, as you know, is a white supremacist, Nazi loving piece of dreck.
[00:30:58]  He's also making a lot of money.
[00:31:00]  So a lot of his fans are donating money to him.
[00:31:02]  He will go on Kickstreet, I guess, for long periods of time, or Rumble, he will go on there for long periods of time and people will just give him money.
[00:31:13]  And how much money did he make?
[00:31:14]  Well, apparently, since the start of 2025, about $900,000.
[00:31:17]  People just donating.
[00:31:18]  Now, again, it's a free country.
[00:31:19]  If you wish to donate money to Nick Fuentes, That is your prerogative.
[00:31:23]  I think that that is a foolish move, but okay.
[00:31:25]  But the fascinating part of this story is not how much money Fuentes is making from his super chatters, and how many of those people are actually poor and are giving him money in order to promote an ideology that actually is less likely to lead them to success.
[00:31:41]  The story is the people who are doing it.
[00:31:43]  So this Washington Post story centers on a person named Ryan Kasabiansky.
[00:31:48]  And here is what his story is.
[00:31:50]  Quote, living in Ohio on full-time disability, Ryan, now 36, spent so many hours at home immersed in the streamer's show that he said he began thinking of Fuentes as a little brother.
[00:31:59]  The heart of Fuentes' message was that young men in the United States have gotten a raw deal.
[00:32:03]  In his telling, a nation of entitled baby boomers, like those leading the Republican Party, had poisoned American society with bad jobs, unbearable women, and a racially diverse population intent on depriving white people of what they're owed.
[00:32:14]  Now, why do you think that people are watching that stuff?
[00:32:18]  Well, because as it turns out, always and forever, there's a part of every human being, this is essentially the premise of my book, Lions and Scavengers, that wants to blame other people for your problems and not solve the problems.
[00:32:31]  Again, you got to feel terrible for this person who is donating serious amounts of money to Fuentes.
[00:32:38]  This guy lives in Ohio on full time disability, which means that you, the taxpayer, are supporting him.
[00:32:42]  Now, maybe he has an actual real disability.
[00:32:44]  That's possible.
[00:32:46]  I will say that the disability system of the United States is widely abused.
[00:32:49]  A huge number of young people who do not have full scale disability are on disability in the United States.
[00:32:54]  It is one of the most abused and wasteful programs in the United States.
[00:32:59]  So this person is living at home on full time disability, and he's being told that that's the reason why he can't get a good job and why women are unbearable, and it must be racially diverse populations that are really creating all of this.
[00:33:12]  Grievance culture is the source of pretty much.
[00:33:16]  All the existential threats to the United States.
[00:33:18]  This grievance based culture that suggests, again, that the problems that people experience in their daily life is the fault of these broader systems.
[00:33:26]  And those systems just happen to be very often the systems that actually create the preconditions for prosperity and flourishing in the United States.

=== Redeeming the American Dream (15:42) ===

[00:33:34]  That is the danger.
[00:33:36]  What's the cure?
[00:33:37]  The cure is self starting, the cure is gratitude, the cure is an understanding that the vast majority of decisions in our life are up to us.
[00:33:48]  And that you are not being victimized by an AI data center.
[00:33:51]  And that you burning down the AI data center is not going to fix the problem.
[00:33:54]  It's going to make the United States markedly worse off.
[00:33:58]  The answer is, as always, adjusting to the circumstances of life and also recognizing that the great prosperity that we enjoy, this is the other side, the great prosperity that we enjoy, the fact that you have any fact in human history at your disposal, the fact that you can push a button and magically a car or a drone will arrive carrying the product you ordered for cheaper than any human being has ever been able to buy that product will arrive at your door.
[00:34:19]  All of that is the result of the very systems that a lot of folks are blaming for their individual problems.
[00:34:25]  And if you blame the system and you tear down the system, you know who wins?
[00:34:28]  Not you.
[00:34:30]  Not you, America's enemies win.
[00:34:32]  That is the danger here.
[00:34:33]  That is the broader danger to the United States.
[00:34:35]  It manifests in domestic policy.
[00:34:37]  It manifests in a view on foreign policy that says that America exercising her strength to protect our interests abroad is somehow a great evil and that we're better off if we surrender the world to China and Russia, a perspective of, again, Tucker Carlson on the right and people like Hassan Piker on the left.
[00:34:53]  That is the danger existentially to the United States.
[00:34:57]  A great power like the United States does not die by homicide, it dies by suicide.
[00:35:01]  And that suicide is generally the result of a population deciding that the systems that made America great in the first place are the problem themselves and must be torn to the ground.
[00:35:09]  Okay, meanwhile, Democrats being wildly hypocritical, it is pretty amazing how Democrats have decided that they are the ones who stand for democracy.
[00:35:17]  And then meanwhile, they apply as much anti institutional power as they can in order to enshrine themselves permanently in power.
[00:35:26]  Cory Booker, who wants to run for president for some godforsaken reason, no one understands why, he was speaking to a Michigan Democratic women's group over the weekend.
[00:35:34]  And he popped in the crazy eyes.
[00:35:36]  Cory Booker, Mr. Potato Hitter went crazy eyes.
[00:35:39]  And he, will you stand for our democracy?
[00:35:41]  I mean, he stood for 27 hours without going pee pee.
[00:35:44]  And that means that he's a special dude.
[00:35:46]  So here he was.
[00:35:47]  Again, why Cory Booker thinks he's a presidential candidate remains a mystery beyond reckoning.
[00:35:53]  Ladies and gentlemen, there is a storm in our nation.
[00:35:57]  There is darkness and wind.
[00:35:59]  People are getting hurt.
[00:36:01]  What we need is not from on high.
[00:36:04]  Soldiers of our democracy who, in times of trial, are willing to stand up.
[00:36:10]  Will you stand for our democracy?
[00:36:13]  Will you stand to get out the vote?
[00:36:15]  Will you stand for our children?
[00:36:18]  Will you stand up for our elders?
[00:36:21]  And will you stand together, unified, strong, be the hope that people need?
[00:36:28]  We are Democrats.
[00:36:29]  It's time for a new deal.
[00:36:32]  It's time to redeem the dream of America.
[00:36:36]  Thank you.
[00:36:41]  The wheels of history will be greased.
[00:36:45]  Going full Dwight Truth there.
[00:36:46]  Cory Booker.
[00:36:47]  Strong stuff.
[00:36:48]  Well, of course he loves democracy.
[00:36:49]  Democrats love democracy, which is why they're putting on the ballot in Virginia a ballot proposition that would give 91% of all House seats in Virginia to the Democrats in a state where Kamala Harris won 52%.
[00:37:04]  So Virginia is a fairly purple state.
[00:37:08]  The new Virginia congressional district map would turn a state That is fairly evenly divided in terms of its districting right now into a full on Democratic state.
[00:37:20]  There would be one giant Republican district and all the rest would be Democratic districts.
[00:37:25]  Right now, Democrats have 55% of the current House seats and they own 52% of the Democratic vote.
[00:37:31]  So that's pretty proportional.
[00:37:34]  And so now Democrats are trying, apparently, to enshrine in the law, because they love democracy, you see, that essentially 45% of the population of Virginia should go completely without.
[00:37:47]  Any sort of representation, which is astonishing.
[00:37:51]  Here is a chart of the popular House vote versus the House seat disparity by state.
[00:37:57]  As you can see, Virginia will be a wild outlier.
[00:38:00]  So, Democrats, of course, are pointing to Texas.
[00:38:03]  Texas redistricting means that that state is split 60 40 somewhere in that neighborhood Republican Democrat.
[00:38:10]  Texas is moving more heavily in the direction of Republican redistricting, and that, of course, created a counter movement in California and now a vast counter movement in Virginia.
[00:38:20]  Yeah, again, all of this is within play.
[00:38:22]  I mean, this is all legal.
[00:38:23]  You're allowed to do it.
[00:38:24]  But don't complain about redistricting on the right if you're then going to turn around and say that redistricting on the left is totally appropriate, which is what's hilarious.
[00:38:32]  Senator Tim Kaine, who you may recall from that time he ran for vice president, I know you don't recall it.
[00:38:36]  No one remembers.
[00:38:36]  But he was actually Hillary Clinton's VP candidate.
[00:38:39]  Great quiz questions of history.
[00:38:40]  Well, he was on Fox News Sunday trying to explain why it was the most democratic thing in the world to disenfranchise half your population.
[00:38:49]  90% of Virginians are not Democrats.
[00:38:50]  That's true.
[00:38:51]  But about 100% of Virginians want. election results to be respected.
[00:38:56]  We're deeply worried that Donald Trump will try to interfere with the election results this November or in 2028 because we saw him do it before.
[00:39:04]  And we have to have a Congress that will stand up to it.
[00:39:07]  In 2021, all five Republicans in Virginia went along with Donald Trump in his effort to overturn election results.
[00:39:15]  And so we're giving Virginians a chance to vote, which Republican states have not done, about whether they want to have a congressional delegation that will stand up against Donald Trump's tyranny.
[00:39:27]  The essence of democracy is that a state split about 50-50 should actually be 91% represented by Democrats.
[00:39:34]  Again, all of this is well within boundaries with regard to gerrymandering and all the rest.
[00:39:37]  I just can't deal with the hypocrisy of Democrats who are whining about it.
[00:39:40]  Eric Holder, who again, threat to democracy.
[00:39:43]  Remember, Eric Holder actually launched a group in 2017 to combat Republican gerrymandering.
[00:39:48]  So now he's standing in favor of Democratic gerrymandering.
[00:39:50]  Again, what's good for the goose is never good for the gander.
[00:39:55]  The Democrats can certainly win if it's a fair fight.
[00:39:58]  And the question I have it wasn't going to be a fair fight in Virginia?
[00:40:01]  No, it wasn't going to be a fair fight nationally if you try to steal seats in Texas, in North Carolina, and in Missouri.
[00:40:09]  And so the question I have for people who are critical of that which we're doing is what were we supposed to do?
[00:40:14]  Nothing?
[00:40:14]  Just allow them to try to stack the deck, to try to steal seats?
[00:40:18]  And all we're trying to do is meet them and try to make the system as fair as it possibly can be.
[00:40:25]  That is not what they are trying to do.
[00:40:26]  Let's be very, very clear.
[00:40:28]  Democrats who have been lecturing Americans about the threats to democracy, very often the threat is coming from inside.
[00:40:34]  The House.
[00:40:34]  James Carville is pretty open about this.
[00:40:36]  He says that if Democrats were to win the House and the Senate and then they were to win the presidency, the very first thing they would do is add states like Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., thus to stack the Senate against Republicans and to pack the Supreme Court, thus breaking the institution.
[00:40:51]  The Democrats win the presidency in both houses of Congress.
[00:40:54]  I think on day one, this should make Puerto Rico, D.C., a state, and it should expand the Supreme Court to 13.
[00:41:00]  Eat our dust.
[00:41:02]  They've done everything they could that they held up to the 2000 election.
[00:41:07]  They stole it.
[00:41:08]  They've stolen Supreme Court seats.
[00:41:12]  They've gerrymandered everything that you can.
[00:41:14]  And the only way to fight this is don't run on it.
[00:41:17]  Don't talk about it.
[00:41:18]  Just do it.
[00:41:20]  Amazing.
[00:41:21]  Amazing.
[00:41:21]  The Democratic Party is wildly radical, not only in their actual methodologies for retaining power, but increasingly in their very bones.
[00:41:31]  The Michigan Democratic Party convention is pandering to radical Islam.
[00:41:35]  Of course, they are.
[00:41:36]  That, of course, is not a shock at all, considering it's very, very likely.
[00:41:39]  That the Michigan Senate candidate is going to be a pro terrorist candidate named Abdul El Sayed.
[00:41:44]  Here is a clip from the Michigan Democratic Party convention.
[00:41:56]  The Times at the Michigan Democratic Party convention.
[00:41:59]  And here was Abdul Al Sayed, who was criticizing JD Vance, suggesting that JD Vance is an anti Brown kid, which is weird since he has a few of them.
[00:42:09]  That's the thing.
[00:42:09]  JD Vance is not a dumbass.
[00:42:11]  Yeah.
[00:42:11]  You know, he graduated from Yale, no?
[00:42:13]  He graduated from Yale Law.
[00:42:14]  He's a smart guy.
[00:42:16]  The thing about it is he's like soul corrupt.
[00:42:18]  So, like, you got Donald Trump, who's just an ego with no brain.
[00:42:21]  Then you've got a brain, like, with this, like, soul corruption for power.
[00:42:25]  Right.
[00:42:26]  And I don't know which worse.
[00:42:28]  Part of me is like, it must suck to live inside your head to know that your entire politics is incoherent with the way you live your life.
[00:42:36]  How do you deal with that every day?
[00:42:37]  Like, there's a cognitive dissonance that comes out, and like, maybe it just sucks out his charisma.
[00:42:40]  I don't know.
[00:42:41]  Huge cognitive dissonance.
[00:42:42]  Just absolutely.
[00:42:43]  He's got to look at his kids and be like, yeah, those are brown kids.
[00:42:45]  They're mine.
[00:42:46]  You know what I mean?
[00:42:47]  And I had brown kids.
[00:42:49]  I have brown kids.
[00:42:49]  I love my brown kids.
[00:42:50]  And I think my brown kids are just as American as everyone else.
[00:42:54]  JD Vance has brown kids who thinks he thinks are less American than everyone else.
[00:42:58]  That's wild to look at your own kids and be like, you don't actually belong as much in this country that I brought you into.
[00:43:04]  This is the, this is, this is the guy that Democrats are going to run for the Senate.
[00:43:07]  He also happens to be a sympathizer with his terror supporters in Dearborn, Michigan.
[00:43:11]  Speaking of which, apparently, he is not the only one in Michigan who has such feelings.
[00:43:16]  According to the Free Beacon, Dearborn, Michigan attorney Amir Makled, who shared since deleted social media posts praising Hezbollah terrorists as martyrs and urging Iran to show no laxity in the sacred war against the enemy, just won the Michigan Democratic Party's nomination for the University of Michigan Board of Regents.
[00:43:32]  During the party's convention on Sunday.
[00:43:34]  Well, you can see why that happened.
[00:43:37]  So, the Democratic Party, full in line more and more with fairly open terror supporters.
[00:43:43]  And meanwhile, speaking of international terrorism, Iran continues to play around with the President of the United States.
[00:43:50]  Over the weekend, the President put out a statement on Truth Social The Democrats are doing everything possible to hurt the very strong position we are in with respect to Iran.
[00:43:59]  Despite World War I lasting four years, three months, and 14 days, World War II lasting six years and one day, and the Korean War lasting three years, one month, and two days.
[00:44:06]  The Vietnam War lasting 19 years, 5 months and 29 days, and Iraq lasting 8 years, 8 months and 28 days.
[00:44:11]  They like to say that I promised 6 weeks to defeat Iran.
[00:44:14]  And actually, from the military standpoint, it was far faster than that.
[00:44:17]  But I'm not going to let them rush the United States into making a deal that is not as good as it could have been.
[00:44:21]  I read the fake news saying I'm under pressure to make a deal.
[00:44:24]  This is not true.
[00:44:25]  I am under no pressure whatsoever, although it will happen relatively quickly.
[00:44:28]  Time is not my adversary.
[00:44:29]  The only thing that matters is that we finally, after 47 years, straighten out the mess that other presidents let happen because they didn't have the courage or foresight to do what had to be done with respect to Iran.
[00:44:39]  We're in it.
[00:44:39]  And it will be done right.
[00:44:40]  We won't let the weak and pathetic Democrats, traitors all, who for years have been talking about the dangers of Iran and that something has to be done, but now since I'm the one doing it, belittle the accomplishments of our military and the Trump administration.
[00:44:51]  This is being perfectly executed on the scale of Venezuela, just a bigger, more complex operation, and the result will be the same.
[00:44:57]  Which may, in fact, be a hint, because obviously the way that things have gone in Venezuela is we ended up in control of their oil supply and we are dictating terms to the regime.
[00:45:04]  Perhaps that is a hint at a move against Karga Island or against the oil supplies of Iran more directly.
[00:45:11]  He says, In my first term, I built the greatest military our country has ever seen, including adding Space Force.
[00:45:15]  In my second term, I am properly and judiciously using our military to solve problems left to us by others of far less understanding or competence, make America great again.
[00:45:24]  And of course, that is exactly right.
[00:45:26]  Now, the UAE has been asking for a financial lifeline from the United States because obviously the Persian Gulf has been shut down by Iran.
[00:45:34]  And so the UAE's government has been suffering.
[00:45:36]  They are very much allied with the United States.
[00:45:38]  They're also allied with Israel in this fight against Iran.
[00:45:40]  The UAE Central Bank governor, according to the Wall Street Journal, Khaled Mohammed Bellama, Raised the idea of a currency swap line with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and Treasury and Federal Reserve officials in meetings in Washington last week.
[00:45:53]  Usually, those swap lines are reserved for relieving severe funding market pressures that could spill back into the United States economy.
[00:46:00]  We have arrangements with banks in the UK, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, the EU.
[00:46:04]  Basically, during periods of acute stress, we extend swap lines to other central banks to sort of prop them up.
[00:46:11]  So, you know, that's not a terrible ask by the Emiratis.
[00:46:14]  And again, this thing is going to be over sooner rather than later.
[00:46:19]  Either way.
[00:46:21]  Now, Iran continues to violate the ceasefire.
[00:46:23]  On Tuesday, he put forward a post, the president saying Iran has violated the ceasefire numerous times.
[00:46:28]  And then he appeared on Squawkbox and he explained that either they will make a deal and be rational or they will not.
[00:46:37]  Iran can get themselves on a very good footing if they make a deal.
[00:46:41]  They can make themselves into a strong nation again, a wonderful nation again.
[00:46:45]  They have incredible people.
[00:46:47]  But they seem to be, you know, bloodthirsty.
[00:46:51]  They're led by some.
[00:46:53]  Very, very unfortunately tough people.
[00:46:55]  And I don't mean tough in a good way.
[00:46:56]  I think it's very negative for the country because we're much tougher than they are, like not even close.
[00:47:02]  But they have to use reason and they have to use common sense and they can get themselves into a great position to make themselves into a great country.
[00:47:12]  Now, again, what appears to be happening here is that there are more moderate factions.
[00:47:16]  I say moderate sort of in scare quotes here because they ain't that moderate.
[00:47:18]  Mahmoud Pazeshkin, the president of Iran, or Mohammed Khalifa, the speaker of parliament.
[00:47:23]  And they're not in control of the country right now.
[00:47:25]  The IRGC is in control of the country.
[00:47:27]  Pesezhkian put out a statement via Twitter, quote, honoring commitments is the basis of meaningful dialogue, which is hilarious from the Iranian government, which has yet to ever honor a serious commitment.
[00:47:36]  Deep historical mistrust in Iran toward U.S. government conduct remains.
[00:47:41]  And then Abbasaraki, the foreign minister, also said the exact same thing, essentially.
[00:47:46]  They seek Iran's surrender.
[00:47:47]  Iranians do not submit to force.
[00:47:49]  Well, I mean, we'll find out if this continues for a very long time.
[00:47:53]  I mean, let's be clear.
[00:47:54]  Right now, the embargo on Iranian oil supplies, which is what is happening, is depriving the government of Iran of some $400 million a day.
[00:48:01]  That is crippling their economy.
[00:48:03]  And that includes CENTCOM footage that has been released of Marines repelling onto an Iranian flagged ship called the Tuska.
[00:48:10]  Here is some of that footage.
[00:48:15]  Can see here, American helicopter taking off and then hovering over the Tuska as American Marines rappel down onto this Iranian ship.
[00:48:27]  That ship had already been essentially disabled by one shot through the engine room.
[00:48:33]  It turns out, by the way, that that ship was carrying propellants and materials from China.
[00:48:38]  The President of the United States said that that was happening here, and honestly, we should very seriously, he's letting China get away with it for now, presumably because there are negotiations that will happen.
[00:48:48]  China in the near future, and because he doesn't wish for our sort of anti China arrangement to go hot in the middle of trying to finish the war with Iran.
[00:48:59]  Meanwhile, Mohammed Khalibaf put out a statement saying, We are prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield.
[00:49:05]  Well, first of all, I don't know why you'd reveal new cards on the battlefield.
[00:49:08]  It's a weird thing to like an ace of spades.
[00:49:10]  What are we talking about here?
[00:49:11]  They keep threatening this.
[00:49:12]  They've been threatening this for a long time.
[00:49:14]  I find that highly, highly doubtful.

=== Sympathizing with Enemies (05:43) ===

[00:49:16]  But the president, in going after Democrats over all this, saying they're undermining the war, he is right about that.
[00:49:22]  There's no question.
[00:49:23]  They're just repeating propaganda that is being put out there by the Iranian government itself.
[00:49:28]  Like literally doing that.
[00:49:29]  Chris Murphy, for example, the Senate Democrat from Connecticut, there's a piece of fake news, it was not true, about Iranian tankers continuing to transit the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:49:39]  And he literally tweeted back, awesome.
[00:49:42]  I mean, that's literal Iranian propaganda, and he's tweeting awesome to it.
[00:49:45]  So when I say they're mirroring Iranian propaganda, I literally mean they are mirroring Iranian propaganda.
[00:49:52]  Meanwhile, Representative Adam Smith. Of Washington says that Iran is somehow more truthful than the White House, which is a weird take.
[00:49:58]  It's a weird take to say about the leading terror sponsor on planet Earth, but Democrats hate Trump so much and they believe so much in a grievance about the United States that they're willing to even make common cause with the Iranians.
[00:50:11]  I would think it quite likely that Iran will not show up and negotiate because what they've said about where negotiations are at has turned out to be a lot closer to the truth than anything coming out of the White House.
[00:50:23]  So you believe Iran over the White House?
[00:50:27]  Well, I wouldn't put it that way.
[00:50:29]  I would put it exactly the way I just put it.
[00:50:34]  So, um, that is ridiculous, but Democrats are increasingly ridiculous and hysterical here.
[00:50:41]  This, of course, includes people like Mehdi Hassan, who was for many years a Qatari mouthpiece at Al Jazeera.
[00:50:47]  He says that we are on the verge of nuclear Armageddon.
[00:50:50]  Uh, no, we're not.
[00:50:51]  No, we're not.
[00:50:52]  Uh, like he doesn't believe that.
[00:50:54]  If he were, he'd be in a bunker.
[00:50:55]  It's not, it's not true, but here we are.
[00:50:59]  I didn't think that we would be, you know, on the verge of a nuclear Armageddon in the Middle East, uh, as much as I didn't buy this.
[00:51:06]  That he was a dove and I knew he was a warmonger.
[00:51:08]  But this Iran war, I think, is even beyond what I thought we'd be at 14, 15 months in.
[00:51:13]  So everything is worse.
[00:51:15]  I can't think of a single area of public life where things are not as bad as we thought they would be and are, in fact, worse than they would be.
[00:51:22]  And I think that's also partly to do with the fact that he surrounded himself with the worst people, right?
[00:51:27]  We are in a truly cacistocratic age, governed by the worst people, worst people morally, worst people intellectually, worst people politically.
[00:51:36]  Well, I mean, when you sympathize with the other side of every war that America has fought in the Middle East, that tends to be how it goes.
[00:51:43]  Meanwhile, Kamala Harris, I still can't believe she's trying to make a comeback.
[00:51:46]  It is insane.
[00:51:46]  It is insane.
[00:51:47]  Now, again, she's doing pretty well in the Democratic primary polls, mainly because people still remember her, kind of.
[00:51:54]  She's not going to win the nomination, though.
[00:51:56]  I mean, if she did, I mean, listen, my mouth to God's ears.
[00:52:00]  If she were to win the nomination, that is the best thing that could happen for Republicans.
[00:52:03]  Here is Kamala Harris speaking at the Michigan Women's Democratic Group and the utter charmlessness.
[00:52:09]  I can't imagine why she lost.
[00:52:11]  We are dealing with the most corrupt, callous, and incompetent presidential administration in the history of the United States.
[00:52:25]  Period.
[00:52:29]  I really like the faux seriousness where she kind of stares into the camera when she says that sort of stares out at the crowd.
[00:52:34]  You were in the Biden administration.
[00:52:37]  Your boss pardoned his entire family on his way out of office after running a scam with his son to go pick up the bags of cash.
[00:52:44]  Abroad.
[00:52:45]  And in terms of incompetence, dude left the entire southern border open for four years and brought us 40 year highs in inflation.
[00:52:51]  So, yeah, sure.
[00:52:52]  Meanwhile, Whoopi Goldberg out there claiming that you will be drafted for the Iran war.
[00:52:57]  If you believe this, I'm sorry, but you really, really, really require some sort of checkup or you're just a dummy.
[00:53:05]  No one is getting drafted.
[00:53:06]  We're not going to nuclear war and no one's getting drafted.
[00:53:09]  Can we start there?
[00:53:10]  Here's Whoopi Goldberg.
[00:53:12]  Keep in mind, the Iranian regime is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism.
[00:53:16]  Ten years from now, 20 years from now, they may try to strike the homeland.
[00:53:20]  They may try to strike troops in the region.
[00:53:21]  This doesn't go away just because you said you're a terrorist.
[00:53:23]  None of it goes away.
[00:53:24]  And that's why they are planning on a draft.
[00:53:28]  They're planning on a draft.
[00:53:29]  And you're bitching and moaning that there are women who are part of the Army, Navy, and you're getting rid of people and you're talking about who shouldn't be.
[00:53:39]  What the hell are you people doing?
[00:53:41]  What it is, is they're changing that you no longer have to operate.
[00:53:44]  You used to have to opt into the draft.
[00:53:45]  Now it makes it automatic.
[00:53:47]  It's a draft.
[00:53:48]  I'm sorry, it's a draft.
[00:53:50]  Because if you're 18 to 25, they're looking at you.
[00:53:54]  Well, they're increasing that age too.
[00:53:56]  You are obligated by law to register.
[00:53:59]  This is so stupid.
[00:54:00]  You are obligated by law to register for the draft.
[00:54:03]  And if you don't, you're in violation of law.
[00:54:05]  Now the rule is you're automatically registered for the draft because if you didn't, you would be in violation of the law.
[00:54:10]  But now it's just automatic.
[00:54:12]  This is an administrative issue and they're trying to turn it off.
[00:54:15]  It's just, it's also stupid.
[00:54:16]  It's also stupid.
[00:54:17]  But, The stupidity extends to all sides of the aisle.
[00:54:20]  Over the weekend, Tucker Carlson had on his insipid brother, Buckley, a bizarro world version of Tucker.
[00:54:29]  He's like the bad Superman, like kryptonite Superman, except that in this case, both Supermans are bad.
[00:54:34]  One is just significantly more, say, impaired than the other.
[00:54:40]  Buckley and Tucker sat there and talked about how they are sorry that they helped get Trump elected.
[00:54:44]  Presumably, they would like Kamala Harris as president of the United States.
[00:54:47]  That's how much they are upset about the war.
[00:54:49]  In Iran and Israelism, because Tucker is too cowardly to say what he actually wants to say.
[00:54:55]  You and I, and everyone else who supported him, you wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him.

=== Tim Cook's Propaganda Claims (03:31) ===

[00:55:00]  I mean, we're implicated in this for sure.
[00:55:02]  Yes.
[00:55:03]  It's not enough to say, well, I changed my mind or like, oh, this is bad, I'm out.
[00:55:08]  It's like in very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now.
[00:55:17]  Yes.
[00:55:18]  So I do think it's like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences.
[00:55:25]  We'll be tormented by it for a long time.
[00:55:28]  I will be.
[00:55:29]  And I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people.
[00:55:33]  It was not intentional.
[00:55:34]  That's all I'll say.
[00:55:38]  What a good-hearted person he is.
[00:55:41]  So you're all suckers and you're suckered by Tucker Carlson, but he apologizes for suckering you.
[00:55:46]  Or alternatively, something else is going on.
[00:55:49]  Alternatively, he is bought into a widely now apparent view that the United States is bad, that President Trump standing up for American interests is bad.
[00:56:00]  It's also gut-churningly ugly, truthfully.
[00:56:02]  Truthfully, he's such a propagandist for terrible things at this point.
[00:56:05]  Okay, meanwhile, in other news around the United States, Tim Cook has now stepped down as the Apple CEO.
[00:56:10]  John Turnis is the head of the hardware division.
[00:56:12]  He's going to take over as chief executive.
[00:56:15]  Now, there's been a lot of critique of Tim Cook's tenure at Apple because he wasn't as transformative in some ways as Steve Jobs.
[00:56:22]  I will say that he radically increased the market cap of the company.
[00:56:25]  And the reason is because he focused in on the hardware.
[00:56:28]  And while the company is not focusing in tremendously on AI, there's a reason for that.
[00:56:34]  They're basically letting all other companies compete on the AI front, and they're developing all the hardware on which the AI will live inside phones, which frankly is pretty smart.
[00:56:42]  They're zigging while everybody else is zagging.
[00:56:45]  The company's App Store AI revenue is set to top $1 billion this year simply by collecting subscription fees from companies like OpenAI.
[00:56:55]  So, again, Tim Cook is out.
[00:56:56]  Meanwhile, in other sort of political news, Lori Chavez Duremmer is out.
[00:57:00]  She was the labor secretary who never should have been selected in the first place for the Trump administration.
[00:57:06]  She's a left wing anti markets person who's basically selected for her temporary support for President Trump.
[00:57:13]  And it turns out that she was, she quit amid a bunch of investigations into her activity.
[00:57:20]  According to CNN, for months, the Labor Department's Inspector General's office has been investigating a complaint that Chavez de Remer was having a sexual relationship with a member of her security team, as well as other allegations of inappropriate behavior, such as sending staff to pick up liquor and attempting to use business trips as an excuse for personal travel, according to a Department of Labor source with knowledge of the situation.
[00:57:43]  So that's great.
[00:57:45]  Maybe she'll start a business with Christine.
[00:57:47]  You never know.
[00:57:47]  I mean, everyone has a future.
[00:57:50]  In other administration news, Kash Patel is now suing The Atlantic for $250 million.
[00:57:55]  The reason being there's an article from The Atlantic suggesting that he was quote unquote MIA.
[00:58:01]  That Atlantic piece suggested that Patel is a drunk, essentially, that he has been known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned's in Washington, D.C.
[00:58:11]  And he's also known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room in Las Vegas, where he goes for the weekends.
[00:58:17]  And so basically, they're calling him an alcoholic.
[00:58:19]  So Patel is suing them for $250 million.
[00:58:22]  He accused the defendants of publishing an article replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel's reputation and to drive him from office.

=== Kash Patel Sues The Atlantic (00:16) ===

[00:58:32]  And they were warned, he says, that the central allegations were categorically false.
[00:58:35]  So it'll be interesting to see how all of that plays out as well.
[00:58:38]  All righty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.
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[00:58:42]  You can ask whatever question you want, and I will answer it.
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