Ben Shapiro critiques Jimmy Kimmel's shift to inflammatory rhetoric, arguing it creates a "permission structure for violence" exemplified by the attempted assassination of Governor Josh Shapiro. He contrasts this with California's chaotic gubernatorial race and Karen Bass's mismanagement of copper theft, while detailing Iran's economic collapse under U.S. sanctions, which has reduced crude storage to mere days and forced reliance on disused containers. Despite Iranian pleas for negotiation, President Trump and Marco Rubio reject overtures, asserting total control over international waterways as the regime's propaganda of armed children signals imminent internal failure. [Automatically generated summary]
Jimmy Kimmel is America's poster child for all idiotic political discourse.
Long ago, Jimmy Kimmel ditched comedy in favor of smug lectures and clapdor and fake tears.
He's not funny.
He's not clever.
He's just an annoying left wing agitprop creator.
But when Jimmy Kimmel and his ilk on the left and in the legacy media start pushing genuinely conspiratorial speech, their rhetoric is no longer just about bad jokes on the TV.
So should Jimmy Kimmel be on the unemployment line?
Why is political violence exploding in the country?
And why is the bulk of it coming from the left?
Yes, not the right, the left.
Well, it might have something to do with the mainstream left embracing terror supporters, conspiracy theorists, and people who justify murder.
But we need to dig even a little deeper.
What precisely is the kind of speech that promotes violence?
The First Amendment protects, of course, a huge variety of speech.
That doesn't mean there shouldn't be social consequences to how we do that speech.
So, what kind of speech deserves social consequences?
We'll get into all of that.
Plus, the impending collapse of California and maybe, maybe the collapse of the Iranian regime.
You're listening to the Ben Shapiro Show.
So, Jimmy Kimmel is possibly on the unemployment line soon.
And the reason for that is the administration is very upset at Jimmy Kimmel.
There's a lot of concern and consternation, and there should be, about violent rhetoric.
Yesterday, the Attorney General of the United States, Todd Blanchett, came out and, of course, condemned political violence.
And, of course, that political violence is not coming from nowhere.
With hundreds of federal agents between him and the President of the United States.
The Department of Justice approaches incidents like this with urgency and clarity of purpose.
Violence has no place in civic life.
It cannot and will not be used to disrupt democratic institutions or intimidate those who serve them, and it certainly cannot continue to be used against the President of the United States.
A lot of information about where this is coming from these days.
And the answer is mostly the political left.
So the Wall Street Journal has a big story today about the political orientation of the perpetrators of domestic attacks targeting the United States government.
These statistics, by the way, are wildly skewed in favor of the left.
In favor of the left.
I mean, the way you can tell this, by the way, is look at the year 2020.
If you look at the year 2020 on this particular graph, it actually shows more right-wing attacks against the government than left-wing attacks.
Uh, no.
Okay, the year 2020 featured the BLM riots, which were large scale attacks on law enforcement all over the United States.
And yet, somehow, the right sort of outnumbers the left on this particular chart.
But even the Wall Street Journal, using these bad stats from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, shows left wing extremist violence outnumbering right wing extremist violence in 2025.
Again, these stats are wildly wrong.
They're wildly wrong because these stats ignore the fact that, for example, The attempt to burn alive the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, in the governor's mansion, was perpetrated by a free Palestine extremist, meaning a member of the left.
But according to the Wall Street Journal, perpetrators often don't fit into neat categories.
Some attacks on U.S. political figures, like the one on Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, whose residence was set on fire last April, were allegedly motivated by events abroad.
Well, I'm confused.
Is motivation by events abroad foreign to American politics?
I think not.
Bottom line is absolutely 100%.
There is a problem on the left.
And again, I point to the fact that the latest Trump would be assassin called the president a pedophile, a rapist, and a traitor.
In a second, we'll get more into the violent speech of the left.
What kind of rhetoric is appropriate?
When is it appropriate?
Is all this rhetoric kind of the same?
Plus, we'll get to California in collapse, maybe Iran in collapse.
A lot to get to first.
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So, I want to discuss three basic standards when it comes to political speech in the United States.
First, there's the illegal.
There actually is illegal political speech in the United States.
If you say, I want to go kill the president of the United States, that's illegal.
It's incitement.
It's either incitement or it's an active threat.
It came out of your mouth, so it's a form of speech, but it is also an active threat.
If I say, you should go kill the president of the United States, That would be under the Brandenburg test.
That's a Supreme Court piece of precedent.
That would be incitement and illegal.
Incitement under that test is any speech that is intended to and likely to incite imminent lawless action.
So even if I say you should go kill the president, I'd probably have to say for it to be legal incitement, I want you to go kill the president right now.
Go kill the president.
If I said that, obviously I'm using this as an example.
No one should ever do political violence.
Then in that particular scenario, that would be incitement.
Then there is typical inflammatory rhetoric.
This would be stuff like fight, fight, fight.
Or, for example, the Sarah Palin map of districts back in 2010 or so that targeted particular congressional districts.
One of those districts that was targeted was the district of Gabby Giffords.
And the left tried to claim that because of that map, somebody tried to shoot Gabby Giffords.
That's silly.
That's silly.
And when people say we need to go to war with the Democrats or we need to go to war with the Republicans, is that the sort of thing?
That is going to lead to actual violence?
No, because that sort of rhetoric is pretty typical in politics.
A normal inflammatory rhetoric.
And we should not conflate that with incitement.
Just to be perfectly honest about this stuff, we should not.
And then there is the permission structure for violence we have been talking about a lot over the course of the last couple of years.
That's the stuff that's truly dangerous.
This is the conspiracism, the justification of violence.
This is how you get to crazy people thinking the president is a pedophile, meaning a threat to children, a rapist, meaning a threat to women, and a traitor, meaning a threat to the country.
And in charge of all of the systems of power, and therefore can only be stopped through violence.
That's the sort of stuff that we are talking about as truly, truly dangerous.
And conflating these things leads to confusion that leads to inaction.
Because if you try to lump in together, you know, we should go fight the Democrats, or we should go fight the Republicans with the Democrats are pedophilically attacking children at a pizzeria, or the President of the United States is running a pedophile grooming gang.
Those are not the same thing.
And treating them as the same thing leads to, I think, inaction, inability for us to agree on what is appropriate and what is inappropriate.
So, Caroline Lovett yesterday at the White House, I think, focused in properly on the types of speech that Cole Allen was engaged in, the kind of stuff that was driving him toward violent action.
The left wing cult of hatred against the president and all of those who support him and work for him has gotten multiple people hurt and killed, and it almost did so again this weekend.
And she pointed out correctly at the White House that it's deranged lies that lead crazy people to believe crazy things.
This is correct.
This is correct, by the way.
Again, largely on the left, but certainly not relegated to the left.
If somebody were to take a shot at Erica Kirk today, that would likely be because of conspiracy theories about Erica Kirk and nutty things being said about Erica Kirk.
When you create insane theories about people being corrupt and evil and using their power in corrupt and evil ways, and those conspiracy theories suggest those people are a threat to you, it is not a gigantic surprise when somebody tries an assassination.
Just two days prior to the shooting, ABC's late night host Jimmy Kimmel disgustingly called First Lady Melania Trump an expectant widow.
Who in their right minds says a wife would be glowing over the potential murder of her beloved husband?
And having experienced what I did with the First Lady on Saturday night, I can tell you that she was anything but that.
This kind of rhetoric about the President, the First Lady, and his supporters is completely deranged, and it's unbelievable that the American people are consuming it night after night after night.
As President Trump said on Saturday night at this podium, we as Americans must recommit ourselves to resolving our differences peacefully and uniting around the shared values that make our country great.
The deranged lies and smears against the president, his family, his supporters have led crazy people to believe crazy things, and they are inspired to commit violence because of those words.
Okay, so you hear Caroline Lovett there talking, the last part of what she's saying there.
That crazy lies lead people to believe crazy things, which leads them to do crazy things.
That part is true.
She lumps in Jimmy Kimmel there.
Okay, now let me be clear.
I think Jimmy Kimmel is awful.
I think he is terrible.
I think he's been terrible for over a decade, like well over a decade.
The first time I got in a public spat with Jimmy Kimmel is when he was defending socialized medicine on the basis that his child had an open heart surgery at Children's Hospital in LA.
And he did a very weepy monologue on his show about that.
I was less than sympathetic because my child had had a similar open heart surgery from the exact same surgeon, and that did not make me an expert on the healthcare system.
What makes you an expert? Is actually knowing things.
So I think Jimmy Kimmel's been terrible at his job for years.
I think that he has surrendered laughter in favor of clapter, applause from his left wing friends.
So if Jimmy Kimmel were to get fired, I would shed zero tears.
Zero.
I think that he is a propagandist.
I do not think that he is funny.
I think that he has sort of betrayed his audience in surrendering humor in favor of left wing agitprop.
But in this particular situation, I will say I think that if Jimmy Kimmel were to be fired over his comments about Melania again last Thursday, And again, listen, I'd be the first person to celebrate Jimmy Kimmel being on the unemployment line for being bad at his job and for some of the other things that he said.
But getting Jimmy Kimmel for saying what he said on Thursday is like getting Al Capone for tax evasion.
You're hitting him with the wrong charge.
So let's reverse time for a second.
Thursday night is before the latest assassination attempt on the president.
Jimmy Kimmel did a White House correspondence dinner spoof.
It is not funny, it is not entertaining, it is incredibly stupid.
And he makes a joke.
About Melania being an expectant widow.
I want to play the joke so you can see the context and decide for yourself what you think he's saying here.
Jimmy Kimmel, who is in no way funny, as attested to by his terrible television ratings, made a statement on his show that is really shocking.
He showed a fake video of the First Lady Melania and our son Barron, like they were actually sitting in his studio listening to him speak, which they weren't and never would be.
He then stated, Our First Lady Melania is here.
Look at Melania.
So beautiful.
Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.
A day later, a lunatic tried entering the ballroom of the White House correspondence dinner, loaded up with a shotgun, handgun, and many knives.
He was there for a very obvious and sinister reason.
I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel's despicable call to violence and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said, but this is something far beyond the pale.
Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Trump.
Melania Trump then followed up with her own tweet Kimmel's hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country.
His monologue about my family is in comedy.
His words are corrosive and deepen the political sickness within America.
People like Kimmel shouldn't have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.
A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him.
Enough is enough.
It's time for ABC to take a stand.
How many times will ABC's leadership enable Kimmel's atrocious behavior at the expense of our community?
Now, listen, I think that Melania has every rationale for being super pissed at Jimmy Kimmel for being a scumbag.
And that is a scummy joke.
It's a scummy joke.
Because, again, the joke, I do not think that it is a call to violence.
I do not think that Jimmy Kimmel is saying someone should shoot the president there.
I think that what Jimmy Kimmel was joking about.
Was the idea, which is egregious enough, that Melania hates the president, would be happy if he were dead, could inherit his wealth.
I think that's what Kimmel is actually doing in that joke, which is pretty disgusting, but is not in fact a call to violence.
And in a second, I'm going to explain why Kimmel should have been fired long ago, actually.
Which obviously was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they're together.
It was a very light roast joke about.
The fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am.
It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination, and they know that.
I've been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular, but I understand that the First Lady had a stressful experience over the weekend, and probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house.
And also, I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject.
I do, and I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.
I'm sure that all of you here and most of you watching tonight understand why we'd have delayed this program for 24 hours.
Because of the incredible events of yesterday, that old adage, the show must go on, seemed relatively unimportant.
The Academy, ABC Television, and all of us connected with the show felt because of the uncertain outcome, as of this time yesterday, it would have been inappropriate to stage a celebration.
But the news today is very good, as you know.
The president is in excellent condition at last reports.
So, again, do you think that you'd get anything like that from Hollywood today if the president had been shot in the chest?
Okay, so that said, and I think that Kimmel's jokes are terrible, I think they're unfunny.
I think that, frankly, I don't even believe him in his politics.
This is a dude who used to do a show with Adam Carolla in which women bounced around on trampolines without wearing bras.
The Man Show on Comedy Central.
Those women, by the way, were called the juggies.
So, do I believe the new anti woke Jimmy Kimmel?
Do I believe that that is the real Jimmy?
I don't.
But again, bad jokes, tastelessness, being bad at his job.
That's not the reason why Jimmy Kimmel should have been fired long ago.
If you want to talk about the kinds of rhetoric that lead people to try to kill the president, the answer is not his joke about Melania or making light of the idea of the president passing away or something.
That is not the thing that leads to.
Violence.
The thing that leads to violence is pretty obvious.
The actual conspiracism.
The actual conspiracism.
Jimmy Kimmel has spent years at this point calling the president a pedophile.
He has imputed Epstein involvement to him.
Again, that is the thing in the actual shooter's manifesto.
It's actually in the manifesto.
I don't have to speculate because he released a manifesto.
Here was Jimmy Kimmel doing that for like a long time.
So, again, it was Jimmy Kimmel calling Trump a cover up artist for pedophilia and a rapist and all the rest, which is the permission structure for the violence.
That is the permission structure for the violence.
Should Jimmy Kimmel lose his job?
He should have lost his job long ago because he's crappy at his job.
But if we're going to talk specifically about the kinds of rhetoric that need to be called out, that should have social consequences, conspiracism, anti evidence, idiocy that imputes evil to an opponent without evidence, that's the kind of stuff that's bad.
And again, I'm not blaming Melania for being deeply upset with that joke from last week because obviously you hear that joke and time flattens and then somebody tries to shoot your husband, you might be a little ticked and you should be ticked.
But let's be real about the kinds of rhetoric that actually we all should be fighting.
I mean, Democrat and Republican, we all should be fighting because here's the thing we have to have some common standard when it comes to the kinds of speech that receive social blowback and social consequence.
Otherwise, it just turns into a war of all against all.
All right, in just a little bit, we'll get to the collapse of California.
They're bringing it on themselves.
It's truly insane.
Plus, Iran, they might be on their last legs.
I know the media are trying to tell you that we're in trouble.
I mean, Iran has got some serious troubles.
They're putting out propaganda about women and children carrying guns.
That's how bad things are getting in Iran at this point.
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So we should be focused more as conservatives.
We should be focused a lot more on Kimmel's conspiracism.
We should be focused a lot more on the violence that has been full scale embraced by the Democrats, not, you know, them saying that you need to fight back or political warfare or that kind of stuff.
That's kind of normal political rhetoric.
The thing that they actually should be smacked for in political terms is their willingness to go along with actual violence.
So, for example, there was an event called the People's Forum, and there's a person named Mohsen Madawi who was speaking there.
And what he had to say, and again, these are all people who would be perfectly comfortable in the halls of power with Democrats.
Democrats would be perfectly happy hanging out with these people.
He suggested Hassan Piker is a victim now because people have pointed out.
That Hassan Piker, just last week, a few days before the assassination attempt, was talking about how maybe Luigi Mangione was justified.
Sure, he wouldn't want Luigi Mangione to do what he did, but it was kind of you understand it.
I mean, after all, Brian Thompson was doing social violence to people.
By the way, Mohsen Medali, in a brief filed by the DOJ, was cited as admitted to being involved in and supporting pro terrorist acts of violence.
He told a gun shop owner he had considerable firearm experience and used guns to kill Jews while he was in Palestine, according to that DOJ report.
And here he was at a People's Forum defending Hassan Piker.
These are the kinds of people that Democrats are welcoming into the halls of power.
And we know that Viktor Orban, allegedly, allegedly, according to Washington Post reporting, there was a plot by the Russians to stage an assassination attempt.
Fake assassination for Orban.
So, all of this throws in together.
You're like, when something seems too perfect, people don't believe in it.
And Donald Trump now again gets victimized by an alleged would be assassin in front of the perfect witnesses, the press.
This sort of conspiracism is insane, but it has become totally mainstream inside Democratic circles.
That's the stuff that's dangerous.
The stuff that's dangerous is not Hakeem Jeffries saying that he wants to wage maximum warfare on redistricting.
That's not the stuff that leads people to go shoot people.
It isn't.
It isn't.
Again, far be it from me to defend Hakeem Jeffries, who I think is truly a terrible politician who defends some of the worst people in America.
Again, he is perfectly willing to defend the Zorhan Mamdanis of the world.
But when Hakeem Jeffries suggests that he stands by his maximum warfare comments, because he had suggested maximum warfare on redistricting, again, that is normal political rhetoric.
The reason that I'm pointing this out is because if you conflate all of these things, you end up getting nothing done.
I think Americans agree that conspiracism is bad and wrong and generates violence.
I think that the vast majority of Americans, left, right, and center, agree.
That if you impute to your political opponents evil without evidence, that foments violence.
But if you conflate that with jokes you don't like, or you conflate that with kind of inflamed political rhetoric about how you're going to fight an electoral war, how you're going to go to battle, as though that is what's actually.
Again, there's very specific lines of thought that generate violence.
And we should pick those out and we should be specific.
Specificity is what allows for agreement and change.
Generality just turns everything into a war of all against all.
That's what happens.
And again, I think that there is a larger problem in our body politic of trying to impute evil motivation to your political opponents without evidence.
Sometimes there is evil motivation.
Notice that phrase without evidence.
Sometimes there's actual evil motivation or at least unjustifiable motivation.
I, for example, do think that it is evil to lie to people that boys can be girls.
I think that is, I think that is, you can impute that to stupidity.
I try to impute as much on this show to stupidity as opposed to malice as I possibly can.
I think there are cases where it's clearly malicious, and there are cases where people have been bamboozled and they're dumb.
That happens a lot.
But it has become de rigueur in politics, particularly on the left, to claim that everything you don't like is being motivated by evil.
So, a great example of this in a much softer way.
So, yesterday, the EPA head, Lee Zeldin, was testifying before Congress.
In front of the Appropriations Committee.
And Representative Rosa DeLauro, you might remember her from her Halloween hair.
She's the one with the gigantic purple strip down the middle of her hair for no reason that anyone can discern, and some of the ugliest glasses you've ever seen.
I'm doing this so if you're listening, you actually know who I'm talking about.
Now you know exactly who I'm talking about.
Anyway, she was questioning Lee Zeldin.
And she was questioning him about the fact that the EPA has said that it cannot regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act, which, again, is black letter law.
The Clean Air Act says nothing about carbon emissions or global warming.
And thus, if Congress wants to regulate, it can.
But it is not up to the executive branches to do it.
And this is what Lee Zeldin says.
And listen to how DeLauro approaches this issue.
The way she approaches this issue is she says, It's because Lee Zeldin is a liar and a bad man that he is not using the EPA to do something illegal.
And meanwhile, he's just like, hey, that's the law.
I'm just telling you what the law is.
If you want to go do something as Congress, you can.
But she wants to ignore the law in favor of what the philosopher Alester McIntyre called emotivism, suggesting that Zeldin is a bad man with terrible intent.
He is not just a good person trying to effectuate the law as he sees it.
He must be a very, very terrible bad man who wants children to die or some such.
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Meanwhile, the state of California is in a state of slow rolling collapse.
The polls have been tightening in California, in Los Angeles in particular.
So, the gubernatorial race there is hilarious because you have 25 people who are running for governor.
And since Eric Swalwell was apparently engaged in alleged acts of impropriety with a wide variety of women, and then he dropped out and he was the front runner, now it appears that everybody in the gubernatorial race is getting 15%, like every single human.
Meanwhile, there's a mayoral race in Los Angeles.
Karen Bass is the incumbent mayor who's done an awful job.
She's still the front runner in both polling and total cash on hand, demonstrating once again that my old hometown of LA is filled with dullards.
But there is a three way battle for the top two spots because you have to have a runoff.
If nobody gets 50%, then the top two run against one another.
Spencer Pratt has raised nearly $540,000 since January 1st.
He is raising money like nobody's business.
He was a registered Republican, he is running as an independent.
And here he was talking about the state of Los Angeles and California on Adam Carolla's show.
We're here at the 6th Street Bridge in downtown Los Angeles.
It is beautiful.
If only you could see it.
But all the lights have been allowed to be stolen from our taxpayer money because Mayor Basura and Nithya Rahman and her DSA City Council let criminals.
Run the streets.
But don't worry, Mayor Basura is planning to take $200 more million of our tax money to get solar power lights.
Oh, because the criminals won't steal those.
But don't worry, Nithya Raman has suggested putting cages around the lights.
I've been informed by producer Savvy, who is my interpreter.
So that is what Spencer Pratt is saying right there.
Meanwhile, California.
Determined to cut off its nose to spite its face.
They're very angry that there are rich people in California.
So Gavin Newsom, the governor, will wander around the land talking about how California is the top income creating state in the nation and how it's filled with innovators and billionaires.
And meanwhile, California is actively attempting to undermine all of that, which is the reason why Gavin Newsom, despite his sort of quasi Marxist leanings on economics, has been opposing a referendum that would force a wealth tax onto the ballot.
Well, it turns out it made the ballot.
According to the Wall Street Journal, on Sunday, advocates for the wealth tax said they have gathered enough signatures to place a wealth tax referendum on the November ballot, even as a new study shows it is likely to result in less state revenue.
Of course, it's likely to result in less state revenue.
All the billionaires can leave.
See, that's the nice thing about being a billionaire.
You can afford a house somewhere else.
The proposed ballot measure would impose a supposedly one time 5% tax on individuals with more than $1 billion in wealth.
By the way, again, that is very supposedly.
There has yet to be a tax that does not expand the minute it hits the books.
Remember, the income tax was initially supposed to hit only the very top income earners in the United States, and it kicked in at an exorbitant income.
And now it applies to half the country and takes a giant chunk of your wealth.
This tax, according to the Wall Street Journal, would hit nearly all of a billionaire's assets, including trusts, as well as voting interests in a company if that exceeds his equity stake.
And it applies to billionaires who are California residents as of January 1st this year.
So if you didn't get out in time, then they would try to grab 5% of your entire wealth.
So the reason this is insane is because this also applies to unrealized wealth.
Okay, so for example, let's say that you own a company, like a nice sized company.
Let's say you own half of it and it's a $2 billion company, but you own stock in the company.
If you own stock in a company, that doesn't mean that your stock is liquid.
It doesn't mean that you can just take that money out of the bank and start spending it.
It means that maybe you pay yourself a salary, a nice salary, like $5 million a year.
Let's say you pay yourself $5 million a year.
Well, if you're being taxed on your billion dollars in assets, then 5% of $1 billion.
That would be $50 million.
Just to do some quick math over here.
So you might be taking a $5 million salary, which is a really, really nice salary, obviously, but you own a billion dollars in stock.
Well, you're going to be paying $50 million in tax, which means you have to sell stock, which means the price of the stock goes down, which means the company is unable to achieve more liquidity, which means maybe people get fired, which then hits all of your workers.
Well, billionaires are doing what you would expect, they're leaving.
France tried this, by the way.
France had a wealth tax for a little while and they had to repeal it because it was so bad.
All the rich people in France were leaving.
The California Tax Foundation visiting fellow Jared Walzak estimates in a new paper reported departures already total $777 billion.
And there are more quiet departures that do not draw media coverage because there are solid legal reasons to believe the initiative's residency date and approach could be challenged successfully in court.
By his estimate, the wealth tax exodus could total $1.23 trillion.
Reduce annual state revenue by $3.53 billion to $4.49 billion, mainly from lower income tax collections.
Because again, it turns out that, you know, who pays people's salaries are the rich people.
It takes money to pay people's salaries.
The businesses they run pay the salaries.
There's another report in the New York Post suggesting that this wealth tax could cost 100,000 jobs and $28 billion in wages.
So congrats to California.
Again, this is the way that Democrats play the economic game.
They, they leech Off of the people who actually generate innovation and outsized earnings.
They tax those people.
And then when those people leave, they blame them and suggest that they are somehow morally deficient in some way.
Meanwhile, on the foreign front, this morning, President Trump put out a truth saying Iran has just informed us they are in a state of collapse.
They want us to open the Hormuz Strait as soon as possible as they try to figure out their leadership situation, which I believe they will be able to do.
Well, the answer there should be obviously we're not opening up a damn thing until you collapse or give up what we want.
The reality is their economy is in serious trouble.
The way you can tell, by the way, that their economy is in serious trouble is they're executing everybody they possibly can.
They are deeply afraid that there is going to be a rebellion from inside Iran.
Some smuggled footage, smuggled out to the New York Post from an infamous Iranian prison, has now captured six dissidents breaking into song to defy the Islamic regime one last time before being hanged.
Pretty tragic stuff.
Here's what that sounds like.
unidentified
Musallah kun selahatra, beho gordolera zobar, po beshian sah de rohatra.
That is because the Iranian regime is freaking out, freaking out.
According to Iran International, Iran's Supreme National Security Council has held a meeting to address growing concerns among security agencies over a possible resurgence of protests.
Sources familiar with the discussions told Iran International.
According to information presented at the meeting, officials believe mounting economic hardship, driven by rising prices, unemployment, and damage to key industries, such as petrochemicals and steel could become the main trigger for renewed protests.
Estimates shared during that meeting suggested Iran's economy may not be able to withstand more than six to eight weeks of a naval blockade.
That blockade began April 13th.
Around two weeks have now passed.
Another major concern is the near total shutdown of production centers in key sectors, including oil, petrochemicals, and steel.
Apparently rebuilding those industries could take years.
Security officials also say internet shutdowns have left around 20% of the workforce dependent on online activity The reason they've shut down the internet is they are deeply afraid that people are going to start coordinating about getting out in the streets again.
And apparently, these security officials are warning that, based on the economic forecast, an additional 2 million people could lose their jobs in the private sector by the end of spring.
Also, the closure of markets has halted all economic activity.
And so that means that basically the real is worthless at this point.
The New York Times has a piece about the cooking oil trade.
Quote, As the prices of basic goods have spiraled in Iran, they can sell olive, sunflower, and corn oils for a modest profit to Iranians at the border, who will either sell the oil inside their country or use it themselves.
Dozens of people were seen carrying multiple four and five liter bottles of oil as they walked from Turkey into Iran over the course of a single morning and afternoon.
So people are literally trying to walk cooking oil across the border.
The government gave Iranians a direct monthly cash payment last month, amounting to 10 million Iranian rials, which sounds like a lot of money.
You know how much 10 million Iranian rials is?
Seven American dollars.
Seven.
Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg, Iran is rapidly running out of places to store their crude oil.
That is because of the blockade that we have put on Iranian ships.
The Islamic Republic has enough unused storage capacity to last another 12 to 22 days.
At that point, they have to stop pumping.
So right now, they're keeping up the pumping, but because they can't get it out, they're filling up legitimately like old storage facilities that are incapable of even holding the oil.
Iran has already curtailed as much as 2.5 million barrels of daily crude production, according to Goldman Sachs.
Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, says, While the surviving IRGC leaders are trapped like drowning rats in a sewage pipe, Iran's creaking oil industry is starting to shut in production thanks to the U.S. blockade.
Pumping will soon collapse.
Gasoline shortages in Iran next.
So again, they don't have the capacity to refine the way they did.
They do not have the capacity to export literally at all.
Miyad Maliki, over at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, says, This confirms about a 13 day onshore storage estimate.
Iran is now using containers and junk storage.
Those would be disused tanks in poor condition.
In Akhvaz and Asulaya to avoid cutting production.
And now they're trying to use rail.
But rail is not going to work because Iran's own senior rail transport experts are saying there are only two rail corridors to China.
They have never been used for petroleum.
They have very limited capacity and zero bulk crude infrastructure.
And the floating storage fix, like just putting them on ships and letting them float there, that's equally thin.
They're pulling retired shipping containers and retired ships literally out of retirement in order to try to float this oil.
They have about 48 hours worth of containment storage there.
Bottom line, apparently, according to Malachi, containers, junk tanks, retired VLCCs, and rail fantasies are not a storage strategy.
They're the last moves of a system running out of room exactly on the timeline that that was estimated.
This would be why the Islamic regime is getting more and more desperate.
The Islamic regime is putting out propaganda showing women and children with guns.
That, by the way, is not a sign of strength.
That is not a sign of strength.
When you have to show your women and your kids with guns, that means you are down to the very end.
This is like the last days in Berlin in the Nazi regime.
Here is some of their propaganda.
And it's literally women in burqas.
And small children behind machine guns.
This is not a sign of strength.
If this video looks to you like strength, I don't know what to tell you.
This does not look like strength.
This looks like it's pathetic.
It's pathetic.
They've got a real problem on their hands when they're relegated to using human shields like women and children and just stuffing guns into the hands of nine year olds.
Pretty amazing stuff from Iran.
I mean, again, that's their propaganda.
That is not our propaganda about them.
That is them putting out their own propaganda, and the best they can do is.
Here is a child with an M4.
My goodness.
Here is a baby with a Kalashnikov.
The world's best, you know, they're probably just like us.
Probably they're just like us.
Well, meanwhile, Pzeszkian, who is the president of Iran, he says that the blockade and sanctions are undermining trust.
He says that any diplomacy requires a shared understanding and the right conditions for meaningful dialogue.
And he says that, that basically we need to let up the blockade in order to get negotiation.
Ah, that's not happening.
And if it does, that would be very stupid.
We should not do that.
That would be foolish.
Why would you let up the pressure when it clearly is working?
It is the reason they are desperate.
This is why, you remember that just last week, the Iranians didn't send people to Pakistan because they thought they had the upper hand.
Well, now they are unilaterally sending people to Pakistan, basically attempting to draw the United States into negotiations.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbasarrahi is set to return to Islamabad on Sunday for further discussions with Pakistani officials, even though U.S. envoys won't be there after President Trump canceled their trip.
Meanwhile, Marco Rubio.
The Secretary of State explained yesterday on Fox News with Trey Yingst that Iran's open straits, you know, they say that they have open straits.
If what they mean by opening the straits is, yes, the straits are opened as long as you coordinate with Iran, get our permission, or we'll blow you up and you pay us, that's not opening the straits.
Those are international waterways.
They cannot normalize, nor can we tolerate them trying to normalize a system in which the Iranians decide who gets to use an international waterway and how much you have to pay them to use it.
Well, again, that's the president's decision to make.
I would start out by reminding everybody that the level of sanctions on Iran are extraordinary, the pressure on Iran is extraordinary, and I think more can be brought to bear.
But I hope that in the aftermath of this conflict, the whole world's eyes have been opened to the threat Iran poses.
One of the things that he says here is listen, if they're willing to drop the economic nuke of shutting the straight, what would they have actually done with a nuke nuke?
That's what people should keep in mind.
And honestly, the cowardice of our allies here, of our purported allies, is truly extreme here.
They've been bitching and moaning for legitimately decades over the threat of Iran.
The minute that the president actually does the thing that needs to be done, they're completely in the wind, completely in the wind and complaining about it.
And you can always trust the Europeans to be the Europeans when the chips are down.
At the same time, Qatar is now running away from what Qatar is.
Qatar was a cutout for Hamas.
They announced yesterday that they would no longer be hosting Hamas.
All it took was Hamas to completely collapse, for Qatar to stop playing cutout on behalf of Hamas.
All it took was Iran being attacked, for Qatar to suddenly shift its position.
But we should remind you that Qatar is not an ally to the United States in any true and real way.
They are a place that hosts an airbase for us, an airbase that sometimes they refuse to allow us to use properly.
Qatar is a giant bribery center.
That's what it is.
It is a giant bag of money to bribe people on behalf of extremism.
One great example of this unbelievable report from the Wall Street Journal.
You may remember that in 2024, there was a prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, a totally illegitimate body, supposedly enforcing international law by asking the opinions of the people in Iran and South Africa about members of the United States or Israel or other allies.
Well, Karam Khan put out a An arrest warrant for Israel's leaders in 2024.
That was Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the defense minister at that time.
That was shortly after he had learned he had been accused of sexual assault, and then he went on leave in May 2025.
Well, now a witness statement says the Qatari government promised to look after Mr. Khan if he moved against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
So Qatar, a U.S. ally, was literally promising, apparently, according to this witness, to bribe the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court if he went after the Israelis.
Slow clap for all the geniuses who have been pretending that Qatar is not spreading its money around for nefarious purposes.
That built on the UK Guardian's November report on a Qatar linked private intelligence operation by at least two firms, Highgate and Aliceus Intelligence, hoping to discredit Mr. Khan's alleged assault victim as an Israeli plot.
In recordings, private investigators discussed their intelligence operations' connections to what seems to be Qatar, which they called the client country.
Folks, if your university is accepting funding from Qatar, you should be asking a question why?
Why?
Why is Qatar so interested in American universities?
If Qatar is funding a group, you should be asking yourself why is Qatar funding that group?
Qatar is a tiny little, tiny country, tiny, tiny country with a bunch of oil and very few citizens and a gigantic slave labor pool.
And they are bribing the hell out of people.
Why should they be, why do they own half of the real estate in London?
These are serious questions we should be asking ourselves.