Reagan Connor (7:51)

Would you do something like that?

Ben Shapiro (7:53)

Would you say no men in female sports? Well, I think it's an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that. So that's easy to call out the unfairness of that. There's also a humility and a grace, you know, that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression. And the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. So that is Gavin Newsom giving up the ghost on this issue, which is, of course, the thing that Democrats must do. As I've been speaking about for years, at this point, the thing that makes Democrats seem totally nuts the most is this particular issue. But Democrats are having a hard time on this one, because just a few days ago, the entire House Democratic caucus voted in favor of the idea that men need to play in women's sports if they identify as women. The entire Senate Democrat caucus voted the same exact way and ended up defeating a bill that would have enshrined rights for women in sports. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, was asked about Gavin Newsom's comments, and here's what he had to say. I haven't seen his comments. What Democrats opposed was unleashing sexual predators on girls throughout the United States of America. The hell? The what in the what? So the way you oppose sexual predators being unleashed on girls is forcing grown ass men with their dingleberries hanging out to shower with the ladies in the women's room before a swim meet. That's the way you prevent sexual predation. According to Hakeem Jeffries. Again, at some point, the reality is going to set in for Democrats. That's what's gonna happen. The reality is gonna set in for them. Either it will because they decide to wise up or because the voters keep clocking them over and over and over. And so much of this again is being driven by the media's bizarre fixation on the idea that this, this is some sort of civil rights issue. So, for example, Politico has a piece titled Newsom's Move on Trans athletes jolts 2028 campaign Gavin Newsom's provocative new position on trans athletes on Thursday reopened a rift in the Democratic Party that could serve as one of the earliest flashpoints in the party's 2028 primary. Is it a provocative new position, or is it the position of literally all of humanity, for all of human history until the last seven minutes, when the entire media and Democratic Party decided that boys who cut off their junk were girls? Within hours of the California governor condemning trans athletes playing in female sports, shocking his party in his home state, some Democrats unloaded on the likely presidential contender. It's disgusting, said Lori Lightfoot, the former Chicago mayor with a an approval rating so low that she ended up being ousted as the mayor after one term. There are kids waking up in California with this news thinking their governor hates them, and rightly so, said Pramila Jayapal. She urged Democrats to, quote, not take the bait and give into their anti trans people rhetoric. But to moderates, Newsom was offering a lifeline for a party plagued by culture wars and the polarizing politics of trans women in sports. His comments were the latest from a field of potential contenders seeking to distance themselves from identity politics in 2024. Again, sort of fascinating to see some Democrats beginning to wake up to the political realities of the dumbass positions they've been holding on this one. And they're gonna need to come to terms with some other political realities. Like for example, the fact that Americans are very much in favor of closing the borders. It turns out that Americans don't like open borders very much, and some Democrats, say John Fetterman, have been coming to grips with this. The reality is that in order for Democrats to win the presidency, they have to run as left to moderate Republicans. They must. Joe Biden ran as a left to moderate Republican in the 2020 election. Barack Obama in 2008 before his reelect in 2008, Barack Obama ran as a person who wanted to bring common sense to government and unify the country after a divisive era. Bill Clinton, by today's standards would have been judged a left to moderate Republican. That's just the reality. And so Democrats are going to have to start to recognize they've ceded the middle ground to Republicans over and over and over again. And if they want to keep doing that, listen, I'm perfectly fine for them doing it. But at a certain point, reality is going to have to set in. Listen, reality needs to set in. We live in a world where narratives often matter more than reality. But here's the thing. The data don't lie. If you want the data, you need USAFax.org USAFax isn't about the narratives. It's about data. Real, nonpartisan, verifiable data straight from government sources. Whether it's taxes, health care, or the economy. USAFacts gives you the numbers you need to cut through the nonsense and make informed decisions. And they make it super easy. Go to USAFacts.org, sign up for their free weekly email the that you can rely on to get the data behind the news. It's like a personal briefing on the state of the nation delivered directly to your inbox. No spin, no bias, just facts. Like if you care about how our government is, for example, spending money and where your taxpayer dollars are actually going, this is for you. A lot of folks are interested in what Doge is doing. If you want the background, go to USAFacts.org right now. Get clear, contextualized facts on the issues that matter. It's time to know those facts because the data don't lie and you can always have your own narrative. But the data are the data. You wanna know the data so that you understand what the hell's going on in the world. That's USAFacts.org, go check it out. USAFacts.org all the rest is spin, but the facts are the facts. USAFAX.org to get just the data. Also, starting a business is really exciting, but the financial cash that comes with all of that, not quite as exciting. When I launched the Daily Wire, we became very familiar with compiling a sea of receipts, trying to track employee expenses, spending countless hours reconciling statements. It was a nightmare until we got it all figured out. But it doesn't have to be that way. You need Ramp. Ramp is a free corporate card. It handles all your tedious financial operations like like manually logging receipts and chasing approvals. Ramp does all that automatically so your team can focus on the stuff that truly moves the needle. Forecasting, planning, scaling your business. If you're an industry the way I am, time to execute breaking news coverage right when it happens. And here's the reality. Most finance teams, they spend 80% of their time on mind numbing, busy Work chasing down expenses, only 20% on what actually matters, strategic planning and growth. Ramp flips that equation completely. Over 25,000 businesses trust Ramp, including Shopify and the Boys and Girls Club of America. That's why they were just named number one in spend management by G2. And right now, for a limited time, listeners of the show can get 250 bucks. When you join RAMP, just go to ramp.com/shapiro. That's ramp.com/shapiro. R A M P.com/shapiro. Cards issued by Sutton bank member FDIC terms and conditions apply. Now, meanwhile, on the right side of the aisle, one of the big problems for the right side of the aisle is, yes, you want to move fast. You have power now. You got to move fast. You got to break things, got to do them. At the same time, you have to balance that with the reality that Americans actually don't like radical change very much. You have to somehow achieve the signal ability to craft radical change without undermining your own agenda. And so far, the Trump administration has been doing a good job on this. So, for example, despite all of the media freaking out over Doge, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, and Elon Musk, it turns out the poll numbers remain pretty strong on this. Here's Harry Anton explaining this. Americans on Trump and Joe's efforts. Musk and Doge should influence government spending and operations. Look at this. 54%, the majority say that he and they should. How about a proof of Trump trying to cut staff at government agencies? Again, you get a majority here, 51%. So, yeah, Elon Musk might not be that popular, but these cuts and the idea of spending cuts, at least within the federal government and cutting at government agencies, that actually has majority support. Okay, so herein lies the rub. If you look at that poll, it says Musk should have, quote, at least some influence on government operations. In other words, people don't want him to go in there with a chainsaw the way many people on my side of the aisle would love for him to do. They want him to go in with a scalpel. And President Trump recognizes political reality. Again, I've said this about President Trump before. This is a man who lives in the world of political reality in a way that most politicians do not. Most politicians are so ideologically attached to their positions that even if those positions start to go wrong with the American people, they hold by them. And there's something to be recommended about that because at least, you know, the differentiation between the parties, I mean, I'm clearly an ideological person. I have A set of beliefs that fit into a broader worldview. And I think that that's helpful to my listeners because they know where I'm coming from. But for President Trump to be successful, he has to continue to be as pragmatic as he has been. So yesterday, he made clear that he would be. Yesterday, according to Politico, President Trump convened his Cabinet in person to deliver a message. You are in charge of your departments, not Elon Musk. According to two administration officials, President Trump told top members of his administration that Musk was empowered to make recommendations to the departments, but not issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy. Musk was in the room. The meeting followed a series of mass firings and threats to government workers from the billionaire Tesla founder who helms the Department of Governmental Efficiency. President Trump then stressed that he wants to actually keep good people in government and not to eject capable workers en masse. Here's President Trump saying just that yesterday. I want the Cabinet members to keep good people. I don't want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut. I want the Cabinet members to keep the good people and the people that aren't doing a good job, that are unreliable, don't show up to work, et cetera. Those people can be cut. So I had a meeting and I said, I want the Cabinet members go first. Keep all the people you want, everybody that you need. I mean, again, this is President Trump saying, let's use a scalpel, not a chainsaw. And then he put out a statement to that exact same effect. Quote, the Golden Age of America has just begun. Over the past six weeks, our administration has delivered on promises like no administration before it, always putting America first. Doge has been an incredible success. And now that we have my Cabinet in place, I've instructed the secretaries and leadership to work with Doge on cost cutting measures and staffing. As the secretaries learn about and understand the people working for the various departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain and who will go. We say the scalpel rather than the hatchet. The combination of them, Elon, Doge, and other great people will be able to do things, and at a historic level. We just had a meeting with most of the secretaries, Elon and others, and it was a very positive one. It's very important that we cut levels down to where they should be, but it's also important to keep the best and most productive people. We're going to have these meetings every two weeks until that aspect of this very necessary job. Is done. The relationships between everybody in the room are extraordinary. They all want to get to the exact same place, which is simply to make America great again. So again, that is President Trump reading the tea leaves. He understands that many people are going to start targeting these sort of broad level cuts without specificity and pointing to victim stories. And of course there will be victim stories. Because when you move fast and break things the way that you would at a tech company, then there are a bunch of people who lose their jobs, who are sympathetic. There are gonna be some things that get broken that actually might not need to get broken. And so Trump saying, listen, at the very beginning we go super hard, but now it's time to actually make sure that we don't break anything that we need and that the departments actually go through and take the recommendations under consideration and then with a scalpel, not with a baseball bat, go through their departments. That is a smart move by President Trump. A lot of people are painting this as a sort of flip by President Trump. It is not. It is what President Trump always does. He course corrects to the most successful position. That is the thing that he is attempting to do right now. Meanwhile, the same, I believe, is holding true with regard to tariffs. So yesterday, amid all of the hubbub about President Trump's new tariff regiment, President Trump reversed some of these tariffs. According to NBC News, President Trump issued exemptions on tariffs for a variety of goods coming into the United States from Mexico and Canada just two days after he put the sweeping tariffs in place, leaving investors and businesses grappling with the whiplash of his back and forth trade policy. Those exemptions to the 25% tariffs enacted on Tuesday would apply to about half of goods coming into the United States from Mexico and about 38% of goods from Canada that comply with the North American trade deal reached during Trump's first term, according to a senior administration official. So again, this is being portrayed as a flip flop. In a certain way it is, but it is also a recognition of reality, which is when the market takes a giant dump at a certain point, you're gonna look at that and go, hey, maybe we shouldn't do as much of this as we've been talking about. When the poll numbers start to go the wrong way, maybe that requires a course correction. A brand new poll from the economist YOUGOV on the tariffs explains that a majority of Americans believe that the cost of tariffs on foreign products imported in into the United States would fall mostly on companies and people in the United States. Now, whether that is true or not. That perception is really bad for President Trump. If the prices rise and all of that is blamed on the tariffs, the American people are not going to be happy. And trying to whistle past the graveyard on that was a mistake that Joe Biden made, right? You remember the transitory inflation that was not transitory at all. Or the implication that your life was better than you thought it was. People don't like being told that when the prices are going up, actually everything is hunky dory. So again, it is not about whether, in fact, China feels it more than we do, China will feel it more than we do. But what do we care? If you're an American citizen, you know, what you care about is how America is feeling it. Unless you actually believe that, like Canada and Mexico are enemies. Why do we care if a tariff is affecting Canada and Mexico more than it is affecting us? It's not a comparative thing. Most things affect foreign countries more than they affect the United States. Where you're uniquely strong, we are uniquely well positioned in the world. We have a uniquely strong economy and constitution. But if things are worse for Americans on an absolute level, not a relative level, with regard to other countries, on an absolute level, Americans feel it. This is why, for example, President Trump yesterday announced the reversal of the Mexico tariffs. He put out a statement on Truth Social. He said, quote, after speaking with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, I've agreed that Mexico will not be required to pay tariffs on anything that falls under the USMCA agreement. This agreement is until April 2nd. I did this as an accommodation out of respect for President Sheinbaum. Our relationship has been a very good one. We are working hard together on the border, both in terms of stopping illegal aliens from entering the United States and likewise stopping fentanyl. Thank you to President Scheinbaum for your hard work and cooperation. So, again, if the idea here, as I've said before, if tariffs are for leverage, if tariffs are a ratchet, then great, you got something you want from Mexico, you don't have to tariff the products. That's good. If, however, there is a principled attachment to tariffs, as though tariffs are going to make America economically stronger just on their own, that is not a saleable position for the vast majority of Americans when it comes to the economy. There's just reality, there are just facts. That's also true when it comes to nutrition. A lot of people worry about their kids nutrition. I certainly do. You know, most children's vitamins out there are basically candy with a vitamin label. They're loaded with two teaspoons of sugar. Artificial ingredients that kids really do not need. Well, this is where Haya comes in. They've created an amazing chewable vitamin that kids actually love. The best part? Zero sugar. Still totally delicious. What impressed me was learning about their ingredient list. They've packed in 12 organic fruits and veggies plus 15 essential vitamins and minerals and they've thought of everything. It's non gmo, vegan, allergen free, thoroughly tested for safety. 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Monthly donors receive stories and photos of the lives they've helped save. Dial £250 say baby. That's £250 baby or visit preborn.comben to make a difference today. Again, this. That's £250. Say keyword baby. So Scott Bessen, who's an excellent treasury secretary, he really knows what he's doing, but he's being put out there to defend tariff policy. He's at the Economic Club of New York, and he was talking about what he thinks the American dream is, and he dropped this line. Access to cheap goods is not the.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (24:24)

Asset is not the essence of the American Dream. The American Dream is rooted in the.

Ben Shapiro (24:31)

Concept of that any citizen can achieve prosperity, upward mobility, and economic security. For too long, the designers of multilateral.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (24:40)

Trade deals have lost sight of this.

Ben Shapiro (24:43)

International economic relations that do not work.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (24:46)

For the American people must be reexamined.

Ben Shapiro (24:50)

Okay, now, again, if these trade deals are actually hurting the American people, and there are some that are, then we should reexamine them. However, part of the American dream and part of upward mobility is being able to afford things, obviously making the argument to Americans that access to cheap goods, not part of the American dream. Tell that to people who have to pay more for their mortgage. That is a good. Tell that to people who have to pay more for services. Those are all goods and services that you have to pay for. Actually, access to affordable things is, in fact, part of the American dream because upward mobility relies on you being able to afford things. That is a reality. And so, again, I think President Trump is going to look to markets. I think that once again, he looks at the results of his policies, and if they are not achieving what he wants them to achieve, he changes the policy. Speaking of which, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has changed his tune entirely in Ukraine. He is now not saying any longer that the war is going to last a very, very long time. He was saying that just a few days ago. Now he is saying that they are seeking a swift end to the war. He says there were some special issues concerning our national resilience on the staff meeting agenda today. We are working on all possible scenarios to protect Ukraine. The baseline scenario is to hold positions and create conditions for proper diplomacy for the soonest possible end to this war with a decent peace. Again, Zelensky is where the United States wants him now. The United States needs to get Putin to the table. That's the next step. We have massaged the Russians enough. Now it's time for us to exert enough pressure to get Putin to actually come to the table, make some concessions, and get to the end of the war. It takes two. It takes two to tango with regard to that war. Now, speaking by the way, of corruption, I know a lot of people connect this war to corruption. You wanna hear about actual corruption? This is my favorite corruption story of the day because it is quite wonderful. So apparently, apparently Hunter Biden is no longer able to do his art. I know you're shocked. You thought that Hunter Biden was a great artist capable of selling his paintings for half a million dollars a pop. However, according to Politico Playbook, a pardon from his dad spared Hunter Biden from prison. But the former president's son remained saddled with debt and was forced out of a home he was renting by the recent Pacific Palisades fire. According to Politico's Josh Gerstein, Biden detailed his grim financial situation in a court filing yesterday saying he has struggled to sell his paintings in recent months, moving only one in the past 14 months compared with 27 in the prior two or three years. He reported significant debts and lackluster sales of his memoir, just more than 4,200 copies during a one year period that led up to the trial in Delaware last spring in which he was found guilty of lying about his drug addiction on a federal gun purchase form. Well, I wonder what happened. Why did the market drop for his paintings? I mean, that's weird. So for like two or three years, his paintings were selling like hotcakes because everyone wanted a Hunter Biden painting and then no one would buy his paintings. What could have changed? Hmm. It's a mystery wrapped in enigma. Or maybe people realized that his father was not going to be president for much longer. And then if you bought a Hunter Biden painting, you were flushing your money down the toilet. Whereas before, if the idea was that he was actually the president of the United States and you bought a Hunter Biden painting, guess who got access to Daddy. But don't worry, it was never corrupt. This family is as clean as the driven snow. I can't imagine why. The Biden administration was widely derided and hated by the vast majority of the American public. It is a gigantic, unsolvable mystery. Meanwhile, it's time to initiate a brand new segment here on the Ben Shapiro Show. We call it the Takedown. Here is the the left loves to put out monologues, speeches, grandstanding, diatribes, completely unchallenged. But not here. In Takedown, we're going head to head, breaking apart their arguments piece by piece, exposing the contradictions, the logical fallacies and the actual lies. It's time for the Takedown. Today we are going to Go through the response of the venerable intellect Alexandra Ocasio Cortez to President Trump's State of the Union address the other night. And it was amazing. She was knitting a sweater while she did it. And so, you know, her brain was apparently largely taken up by that absolutely difficult task. Here is some of what Alexander Ocasio Cortez had to say about the President of the United States address to a joint session of Congress.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (28:57)

I didn't feel like I could legitimize his presence. And so Trump actually has to be formally invited to the House floor in order. Order to be allowed into the House floor. Same thing with all those senators and the cabinet members, etc. So, you know, I think other people had a certain logic, which is that this is the People's House and Trump showing up should not kind of force the duly elected representatives of that chamber, especially those who disagree with him, out.

Ben Shapiro (29:36)

Okay, so I assume here she's talking about Representative Al Green. You will note at this point that President Trump was in fact invited to address Congress. That is how he got there. He was invited by the speaker of the House to address Congress and then everybody else was invited. And then you get kicked out if you break the rules. So immediately she's starting off without any logical flip. And it gets worse from here.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (29:59)

The reason they're shaking all these couch cushions and the reason that they are rattling off all these numbers is because all those numbers, they are trying to add up into the one of the most massive tax cuts for billionaires and the 1% probably in modern American history. And do not forget that. Don't forget that it's not just about what Trump is saying.

Ben Shapiro (30:26)

According to Alexander Ocasio Cortez, it was the people at the top of the income tax spectrum who benefited the most from the Trump tax cuts of 2017. It was geared toward millionaires and billionaires. Now, I can tell you that my tax rate actually increased under the Trump tax cuts because in 2017, I was living in California. And the 2017 Trump tax cuts got rid of the so called state and local tax deduction, the SALT deduction, which meant I could no longer deduct my California state taxes against my income for purposes of federal income tax, which was astonishing. I mean, it meant that my income tax went up radically. However, the question that really should be asked is not whether people at the top saw more of a decrease in their taxes than people at the bottom. Of course they did. People at the top pay way more taxes than people at the bottom on both an absolute and A relative level, the top tax bracket in the United States at the time of the Trump tax cuts was 39%, and it dropped down to 37, 36%. Hey, if you're at the bottom of the tax bracket, you're paying basically no income tax. So it'd be very difficult to actually pass a tax cut that benefited you. Obviously, gains from income tax cuts are going to be disproportionately to the people who pay the taxes. The real question, and the only one that really matters, is after the Trump tax cuts, did the share of total taxes of, like all taxes paid by the top increase or decrease? So, in other words, if $100 in taxes got paid by the American people, what percentage of those taxes were paid by the top 1% in 2016 before the Trump tax cuts? And what percentage were paid in, say, 2020 after the Trump tax cuts? So I asked our friends over at Perplexity that question, quote, what percentage of total income taxes did the top 1% pay in 2016? And what percentage of total income taxes did the top 1% pay in 2020? And here's the answer, quote. In 2016, the top 1% of taxpayers paid 37.3% of total income taxes. In 2020, the top 1% of taxpayers Paid nearly 42% of all income taxes. This data shows an increase in the share of income taxes paid by the top 1% between 2016 and 2020, rising from 37.3% to 42%. So all that talk about how the richest in our society were sort of disproportionately benefited by the Trump tax cuts. If that's so, then why did we pay a larger share of the taxes total than we did before the Trump tax cuts? Can we continue with AOC here?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (32:54)

Medicaid? Don't you find it interesting that he did not mention Medicaid once? Once the largest source of health insurance, the large one of the largest insurers in the United States, that impacts most Americans. If he was confident about his attacks on Medicaid, he would have said something, wouldn't he? He's confident about his attacks on immigrants. He's confident about his attacks on federal workers. He's confident about all those things. Why won't he own up and Republicans own up to their attacks on Medicaid?

Ben Shapiro (33:39)

I love this non argument by AOC here. This is a tremendous logical fallacy. So she is essentially arguing that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, meaning that there's a complete absence of evidence that President Trump wants to cut Medicaid he said over and over and over he doesn't want to cut Medicaid. That's why he didn't mention it, because he doesn't want to cut Medicaid. And she is suggesting he didn't mention it because he does want to cut Medicaid. I'd need, like, some evidence to suggest that he wants to cut Medicaid. Like, where is she getting all of that? And the answer is she's sort of inferring it from the fact that if you are going to do a budgetary bill, as Republicans are proposing in the House, then it needs to be deficit neutral, and that means that there need to be cuts from somewhere. But again, President Trump has already said he doesn't want to cut from Medicaid, which means the cuts are going to have to come from somewhere else or the bill is going to have to change. Obviously, here's AOC continuing, because what they.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (34:36)

Are trying to cut from Medicaid, I'm going to tell you, is somewhere to the tune of $880 billion from Medicaid. Okay, $880 billion. And I sit on the committee that Medicaid goes through and the math ain't mathing.

Ben Shapiro (35:01)

The math ain't mathing. Wow, she sounds like a great accountant. The math ain't mathing. Well, I mean, what she's actually referring to is the fact that part of the bill refers to the committee that deals with Medicaid, among other things, to try to identify cuts, but it doesn't say that Medicaid has to be the source of the cut. So Democrats just keep saying a thing over and over for which, again, there is no evidence. So then she decides that she is going to start talking about the work requirements of Medicaid. Now, one of the things that Democrats don't like to talk about a lot is the fact that there are a lot of people who are on Medicaid who are on Medicaid because, in fact, they are claiming disability falsely. One of the great multipliers in terms of our welfare dollars is disability. But here was AOC talking about how work requirements were really not in any way being harmed by Medicaid disability.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (35:57)

Work requirements, the amount of people that, like, are actually, you know, if you are, for example, 29 and you're on Medicaid and you are not working, you are most likely disabled. You are most, you most likely have a major, major disability. Like these ideas when they talk about, like, you know, if you do not have a job and you do not have a job for a Long period of time. And like the, the percentage of people on that, on Medicaid, it's like, I, I don't quote me on it, but I think it's like 3 or 4%. Very, very, very small.

Ben Shapiro (36:53)

Okay, so a few notes here. Once again, I asked my search partner here, Perplexity, what percentage of people on Medicare are working? Because she says it's all hard working people. Nobody's jobbing the system or anything like that. The answer. In 2023, approximately 64% of Medicaid adults under the age of 65 were working either full time or part time. I'm just going to point out that means 36% more than one third of the people who are on Medicaid were working. Not at all. Not at all. Okay, so that is not a very, very minute percentage. That is a lot of people who are in fact not working. In fact, 44% of Medicaid enrollees under the age of 65 were employed full time. 20% were working part time. Now remember, these are people who are lower than the retirement age. They're lower than the retirement age. It is also worth noting here that enormous number of people on Medicaid do claim permanent disability, including huge percentages of people claiming disability who are relatively young. Again, according to perplexity, approximately 21 to 22% of Medicaid enrollees have a disability that is way higher than it used to be. By the way, the claims of disability in the United States have risen almost exponentially over the course of the last couple of decades. According to perplexity, adults age 19 to 49, 22% claim a disability on Medicaid. If you're 50 to 64, 43% are claiming a disability. So I asked my magical friend in Perplexity, what qualifies you for a disability under Medicaid? The answer is that you have to meet these criteria. One, the disability must prevent the individual from working and be expected to last for at least 12 months or result in death. Two, the condition must be a medically determinable physical or mental impairment that results in anatomical, physiological or psychological abnormalities as shown by a medically acceptable clinical and laboratory diagnostic technique. Now, there is only one problem with this. You know how easy it is to find a doctor who will say that because you have high blood pressure, you have a disability or you have back pain, and that is why you have a disability. And there is not a really fantastic way of checking whether these folks have disability. The instances of disability fraud in the United States are legion. They are radically High. Okay, here is an insane statistic for you. I asked my search partner Perplexity the following question, quote, how many Americans claimed disabilities in 1980? How many claim disabilities today? Here is the answer. In 1980, 933,597 disability benefits were awarded. In 2024, over 70 million Americans reported having a disability. Did we get all that disabled over the course of the last 45 years? Were people really that much healthier in 1980 that we went from like 1 million to 70 million reporting a disability in 2022? Really? I understand we're a little older of a country, but not 70 times older of a country. Hey, finally, finally, AOC had some ideas about the evils of tax. No tax on tips. This one is particularly rich because she used to be a waitress. Listen to her argument for why there should in fact be a tax on tips.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (40:12)

Let's talk about a couple of these things. In terms of no tax on tips, I obviously you all know I was a waitress for many years. I was a bartender on many years. Someone said, your sweater, guys. I made it. Thank you. It's all I. My hair's covering all the holes up here. So. But in terms of no tax on tips, listen, I was a waitress. I was a bartender. I get it. And if you live off of tips, I get it. I do think it's important for us to recognize the danger of every job becoming a tipped job. And all of us then now having to pay each other's wages, not just in waitressing, not just in bartending. And if you don't want every single person that you interact with starting to turn an iPad screen around, we need to take this very carefully because employers need to pay their employees a living wage. Employers need to pay their employees a living God wage.

Ben Shapiro (41:49)

Okay, so let's talk about the myriad idiocies in this particular segment, because there are a bunch. Number one, she's admitting full scale that a bunch of people are going to start taking tips in order to avoid taxes. Why? It's almost as though economics is dynamic and when you increase the tax rates on certain things and decrease them on other things, people do the things with less taxes. Remember, the entire democratic idea about economics is that it is a fixed pie. So if you tax people more, they won't change their behavior. You'll just get more money from them. And here she is acknowledging that if no tax on tips goes through, a bunch of people are going to start taking more of their pay in the form of tips in order to avoid taxes. Almost as Though tax rates impact economic activity. Mm, strong. And then she adds another thing here. I love this. She says, you know, the employers need to pay a li. Do you really want to be paying tips? Do you want to be paying tips to everyone? The employer should just pay a living wage. Now, this mistakes who actually pays the bills of the employers? The answer is the customers. So here are your choices as a customer. Either the employer pays a lower wage, say $7.50 an hour, if you're talking about the federal minimum wage. And then you take a bunch of tips on top so you don't have to pay taxes on it, and then the customer is the one paying for those things in order to achieve the same result as if you had to pay a higher price in order to pay the taxes that the employer is going to have to pay on the wage. You understand the customer has to pay for all of it. The employer don't got a source of money other than the customer. Doesn't matter how you slice it. Is the customer paying? The only question is, if, for example, you get rid of the tax on tips, are the employees going to be taking more of their pay in the form of tips from the customer or are they going to be taking their pay more in the form of a check from the employer? But the bottom line is probably going to be about the same. And if you force the employer to pay more to increase the quote, unquote living wage, that all gets passed down to the consumer anyway. So there you have it. The brilliance of Alexandra Ocasio Cortez. Just stunning, stunning stuff. Well, folks, since we do have this new segment called Takedown, if you see any crazy monologues that you'd love to see me debunk, leave them in the comment section below. Well, folks, it's a Friday, and that means it's time to talk about stuff that I don't know about, namely cultural stories. Now, you know, I'll talk about tariff policy. I talked earlier this week about whether the dollar will long remain the world's reserve currency. But the thing I don't know about is the stuff that literally millions of people actually care about and talk about, and that is these big pop culture stories. I brought on an expert on that. That's our Daily Wire host, Reagan Connor. Reagan, thanks much for stopping by.

Reagan Connor (44:30)

Thank you for having me. First of all, I just have to say that I've worked at this company at Daily Wire for three years. Before that, I was a fan of the show. So it is a full circle moment to be on here. Telling you about pop culture. There's a massive story going viral about an old mommy vlogger. And there are so many ethical implications that come from this story, which is why I wanted to talk to you and your audience about it, because it talks about exploiting children, but also the implications of what family vlogging can do to a family. And it's also important to point out the crazy juxtaposition that happened because this woman was famous and viral for being this beloved mommy vlogger. She was so happy, so great, painted such a perfect life until she got arrested for child abuse, has been convicted of child abuse and will remain in jail for 30 plus years. So the story got even wilder because the daughter now has come out and she's an advocate against family flogging. So she speaks publicly about it all the time. And one of her quotes said, there is no such thing as a moral or ethical family vlogger.

Ben Shapiro (45:21)

I mean, once you involve the kids in that, I kind of agree with it. Meaning that if you're kind of blogging about you cooking at night or it's you and how you put the kids to bed or something, that's one thing. But once you start actually involving your kids in the making of this sort of stuff, then you're just a Hollywood mom. And I mean, I've known a lot of Hollywood moms because I used to live in Hollywood and I knew a lot of people who had kids in the industry. And that stuff is always borderline exploitative. There's a reason why Hollywood kids generally end up screwed up adults. And so it's not a real shock that when you take those means of production that used to require an entire studio system in order to make it happen and then you just give it to everybody. There can be a lot of people who exploit their kids for the money. I mean, I think it's a pretty good take, actually. My wife has said, I've mentioned this on the show before, that she at some point wants to write a book titled I'm a Terrible Mother and so are you. Because that's actually the reality of being a parent, is that you realize that you fail literally all the time. And so the sort of perfect parent that mommy vloggers very often are portraying, the only way you can achieve that is actually through just lying or through exploiting your kid. There's no way to do it.

Reagan Connor (46:23)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Ruby is proof on that, unfortunately. So I want to show you some of these footage first before I get into this, because it's crazy And I just want you to react to this. So if we could roll the. Roll the footage on this one.

Ben Shapiro (46:33)

Do you know where your name came from? Grandpa.

Reagan Connor (46:37)

Of course you know, Grandpa Tattell suit.

Ben Shapiro (46:41)

You're named after Grandpa.

Reagan Connor (46:45)

Which Grandpa?

Ben Shapiro (46:46)

Okay, we're gonna try this again.

Reagan Connor (46:48)

You'd be a little more talkative here.

Ben Shapiro (46:50)

I am.

Reagan Connor (46:50)

I'm talking. I'm answering your questions.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (46:57)

Hey, if I hear one more word.

Reagan Connor (47:00)

Get out. If I'm gonna let you.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (47:10)

I don't vlog.

Ben Shapiro (47:12)

And if I'm gonna spend all my time helping you, you're gonna do be excited to tell him where your name.

Reagan Connor (47:21)

Came from, even if you have to fake it.

Ben Shapiro (47:26)

Fake being happy.

Reagan Connor (47:31)

Okay.

Ben Shapiro (47:33)

I don't know if I can right now. I don't know why. It's just.

Reagan Connor (47:36)

Okay, well, I'm gonna take a.

Ben Shapiro (47:39)

Well, that seems not great.

Reagan Connor (47:40)

Just a clip. Again, this is. There's a whole docu series about this, but you see that she's just saying, you know, do it regardless if you're happy. Fake it.

Ben Shapiro (47:48)

I mean, it's Hollywood production very clearly, right? And I think that's the thing people miss about this is true of reality tv. It's also obviously true of mommy blogging or whatever. There's a reason none of my kids. There are no pictures of them online. Maybe we keep them completely away from the spotlight specifically because of safety reasons, and we don't want their life to be dominated by it. But, I mean, if you're making money off putting your kids on camera, then it is likely going to devolve into that. Unfortunately, that looks pretty much like every Hollywood mom that I've ever. That I've ever met. It's pretty. It's pretty bad. So kind of like OnlyFans for moms, right? They democratize the means of production. Speaking of which, apparently there are OnlyFans updates that I have not yet heard.

Reagan Connor (48:25)

Unfortunately, yes, there are many of those. The same kind of unethical and ways that you make money is exactly obviously what they're doing with OnlyFans and what women, unfortunately, are seeing too. So they're seeing role models like the Ruby Frankies of the world, and then they're seeing the role models like Bonnie Blue, who is the woman I'll specify, because there are multiple now, but the one woman is Bonnie Blue. She slept with a thousand men in 24 hours. That's her claim to fame.

Ben Shapiro (48:47)

And I have so many questions about the logistics. I mean, just like the. Who provided the buffet? Like, I just. I don't know.

Reagan Connor (48:53)

I know too much about the logistics.

Ben Shapiro (48:54)

And I.

Reagan Connor (48:55)

And I'm not going to share because.

Ben Shapiro (48:56)

Thank you, I appreciate that. Actually, I wasn't that curious about it.

Reagan Connor (48:58)

But yeah, no, it's horrifying. But she has been flaunting a lot, like her money, obviously. So she's making tons of money because of this. And a bunch of young girls are seeing that. Bonnie Blue, the infamous OnlyFans model, has recently made so much money that she has bought a $500,000 Ferrari. And she's posting about all of her social media. So I wanted to show you that because I think, again, there's more ethical and important questions to talk about regarding these women.

Ben Shapiro (49:20)

You ready to see your one of one custom 458 Limited walk?

Reagan Connor (49:23)

I am. I'm ready.

Ben Shapiro (49:28)

Fully customized blue wrap carbon every wear wide body kit.

Reagan Connor (49:32)

Okay, so you just saw that, right? She's making tons of money. Obviously someone commented something which I did want to share with you because, well, we all thought it was funny. She said, I wonder if she would let 1000 random men take it for a spin or if it's too valuable to her to let that many people touch. It was just brutal.

Ben Shapiro (49:49)

Yeah, that's. That. I mean, that. That was, I will be honest, one of the first things that. That occurred to me about that. That car. But it's. It is your right. A horrifying thing. Unfortunately, mainstreaming pornography has been a thing for a very, very long time. I wrote a book back in 2005 that I was widely derided for called Porn Generation, all about the pornification of American society. And I suggested that it would become absolutely endemic that every young person in America would have seen pornography by the time they were 13, 14 years old. And again, everyone mocked me at the time for saying that, but it became very clear that that's exactly what's happened here. Of course, young women are only seeing sort of the quote, unquote upside and never the downside, which would be, you know, the fact that she has no soul. That. That. That's going to drive a bunch of young women to do really, really stupid and terrible things to themselves. And if they think that the money is going to pay for all the damage they're doing themselves, I have a hard time believing that.

Reagan Connor (50:37)

The other thing that I wanted to point out, though, specifically with Bonnie and why I wanted to show you anything about her, is that her mom is her manager.

Ben Shapiro (50:44)

That's so nice.

Reagan Connor (50:44)

Isn't that so nice?

Ben Shapiro (50:45)

That's beautiful.

Reagan Connor (50:46)

Watch this clip of her mom talking about her daughter's new profession. What Was it like after cleaning up after messy. Hundreds of condoms, boxer shorts, tops, stained.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (50:57)

Bed sheets, wet bed sheets.

Ben Shapiro (50:59)

So even when you hear, you know, that she slept with 158 guys in, in two weeks, it's just part of.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (51:05)

A job and that's it.

Ben Shapiro (51:06)

So you don't have any kind of, you know, emotional response to it?

Reagan Connor (51:09)

At first I did, but not anymore.

Ben Shapiro (51:13)

Yeah, well, I can see why Bonnie Blue turned out the way she did. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty, pretty obvious. And by the way, not a rarity. We now know that Kim Kardashian sex tape was pre screened by her mother for like, particular particularly salacious cuts.

Reagan Connor (51:26)

So good times even in the duration of that. Further on in that clip, the mom talks about, well, you know, I get good holidays now. She was so proud to keep saying, well, you know, the holidays are nice and she's safe. She's saying the quiet part out loud that, oh, we have money now, and that justifies my daughter's soul. But the other thing that I want to note about these girls, unfortunately, is Lily Phillips announced just yesterday that she's going to old folks Home, specifically elderly care facilities, and meeting her men there, which is, here's a video from that. I found my oldest fan via Facebook. And when I asked for his address, he actually sent me the address of a care home. So I'm actually here with him and his friends and I'm going to show them a good time. I think people are waking up because it's so absurd. They're finally realizing, hey, maybe we should have this conversation. Maybe these things are bad. Which I'm absolutely, very happy to say that there's also some more improvements in Hollywood. And I say it, I'm sort of celebrating crumbs here, but I'm gonna show it nonetheless because we gotta take the wins when we get them. White Lotus, the show that I know you're familiar with, there's a new season out and a new episode in which a Trump supporter is talked about in a good light. So I wanna show you the scene because frankly, I've never seen a Trump supporter even really talk about in television, let alone not being exclusively made fun of. And yeah, watch this.

Ben Shapiro (52:41)

Yeah. Cause like Christianity and most religions, they're made for men, right? The father sacrifices the son, the son's a man, dies on the cross, the heroes are all men, and the women just cry on the sidelines.

Reagan Connor (52:55)

You want the woman to be centered in the story.

Ben Shapiro (52:58)

No, no, no, no, no.

Reagan Connor (52:59)

It's all just so male, you know.

Ben Shapiro (53:01)

The epic battle for good and evil just doesn't speak to me. Well, I'm a woman and I get a lot out of going to church.

Reagan Connor (53:14)

I just.

Ben Shapiro (53:15)

I love the people. It's very moving. I didn't know you went to church. Oh, yeah, we go every Sunday. Yeah, every Sunday since we moved to Austin. Is it like a real Texan church, like, with Bible thumpers and. Well, the people are, you know, more conservative than, like, LA people or like, New York. Mm. Is that weird for you? Why would it be weird? I. I don't know. If I was just around a bunch of Texans who voted for Trump, I guess I'd just feel a little alienated. They're nice people, really good families. Cool. But do you ever talk politics with them?

Reagan Connor (54:06)

Sometimes. It doesn't get awkward.

Ben Shapiro (54:10)

Why would it? Because.

Reagan Connor (54:14)

Wait, are. Are you a Republican?

Ben Shapiro (54:18)

No, I'm an independent, but Dave is an independent. Since when?

Reagan Connor (54:31)

You didn't vote for Trump, though, did you?

Ben Shapiro (54:39)

Are we really going to talk about Trump tonight? That's amazing. I mean, White Lotus actually is pretty subversive in this particular way. They take a bunch of liberal values and then they really mock the hell out of them. It doesn't make the show conservative. I mean, the first season is certainly not conservative, but they will definitely mock the living hell out of kind of the pretensions of the limousine liberals. And that's really what the show is about. It's about limousine liberals from New York and LA who go on these extraordinarily expensive vacations and just act like horrific human beings, basically.

Reagan Connor (55:07)

Yeah. I'm wondering, though, if in the future her character will end up being.

Ben Shapiro (55:10)

That makes sense, too.

Reagan Connor (55:11)

The worst person. I'm giving Hollywood too much credit, maybe. We'll see. But the other thing that I want to show you is from Disney's Pixar. They just released this show and they talk about Christianity for a bit, which, again, never happens. And so I wanted to show you this as well. First episode of the new Pixar Disney series Win or Lose features a character called Laurie, the daughter of the team's softball coach who struggles with insecurity. In one of her first scenes in the show, she begins with the words, dear Heavenly Father, please give me strength. This is the first first Christian character from Disney since their 2007 film Bridge to Terabithia, in which kids Jesse and Leslie attend church together and discuss religion.

Ben Shapiro (55:51)

The shocker there is that it took them 20 years, basically, to put another Christian in a kid's movie.

Reagan Connor (55:59)

And so subtly. But I, as a Christian, watching that I didn't even realize that it had been 20 years. I watched Bridge of Terabithia and wouldn't have thought anything of it at the time. But thinking back, that there literally hasn't been anything like that since is crazy to me.

Ben Shapiro (56:12)

Now, that show originally, I believe was supposed to feature a transgender character. Correct?

Reagan Connor (56:16)

It was, exactly. But they removed that and added this in which potentially, is that a sign of the times changing, that they're catching on too?

Ben Shapiro (56:23)

I mean, they better because they have completely failed. I mean, Disney's stock has been just ravaged over the course of the last few years. Their growth trajectory is terrible because they alienated all the parents. Like they forgot that the people they actually need to cater to are the people like me. With four kids, we used to be Disney annual past members in California. We used to go to Disneyland almost, you know, twice, twice a month maybe. And we used to take the kids out of school and go. And I have not been back to Disney World now that we're in Florida for several years because of the move that they made into sort of wild social leftism.

Reagan Connor (56:54)

Do you think there's any world in which they could change course and you'd go back?

Ben Shapiro (56:58)

Yeah. I mean, if they change course, sure. You know, you know, forgiveness is, is I think, a virtue. And so if they actually change course and you start to see more of a consistent stream of non woke nonsense coming from Disney, then absolutely. I mean, I would love nothing better than to take my kids to Disneyland. It's great. Disneyland is wonderful. I mean, it's some of the greatest IP in history. It's gonna take a while to earn back trust.

Reagan Connor (57:17)

Yeah. More than just the crumbs of saying maybe one nice thing for people of faith to actually appreciate. But there was kind of to end this segment about pop culture and obviously some negativity with it and the chaos of onlyfans and all that. There's a new study out about Christianity leveling off and no longer being on decline in America. And I think that that's a sign of potentially the changing times about the perspective of faith and the importance of having faith in a household again, which I found shocking. The headline was from New York Times and it was a Pew Research study. And they said Christianity's decline in us appears to have halted. Major study shows. That one shocked me because what they pointed out in the article was over the last 20 years, ironically the same time that we're talking about Bridget Terabithia till this. But it was going down and now it's stopped for A couple years, it's not going any lower. So maybe that's changing.

Ben Shapiro (58:07)

Well, and as they say, it's young white males who are going back to church.

Reagan Connor (58:12)

Yep.

Ben Shapiro (58:12)

So I'll take a little credit for that one, guys.

Reagan Connor (58:14)

I was gonna say. Yeah, yeah, Ben deserves some credit here. I mean, that's huge. And it's again, young conservative males. Now, the other thing, for Gen Z to give us a little bit of credit because we don't typically get a lot of credit. You know, we're typically always the ones causing chaos. There's another article that I saw. It said Gen Z is more pro marriage than millennials and have less casual sex, which is surprising.

Ben Shapiro (58:37)

That's a backlash. There we go.

Reagan Connor (58:38)

Yeah, so we're redeeming ourselves a little bit. Except we still have the Bonnie blues in our generation. But the study went on to say that in 2004, 78% of people commonly engaged in one night stands. In 2024, 23% did. So a huge shift.

Ben Shapiro (58:54)

Well, hopefully that, that, that results in marriage and not just insultness. That would be the only complicating factor.

Reagan Connor (59:00)

Also that. Also that. But I just thought it was at least something hopeful to end on of. Maybe not everything is doom and gloom and the generations can kind of change course.

Ben Shapiro (59:08)

Well, Regan Conrad, thank you so much for stopping by and informing me on all the things the world actually talks about most of the time. I really appreciate it. Great to see you.

Reagan Connor (59:15)

More than welcome. Great to see you too.

Ben Shapiro (59:16)

Well, folks, it's time for you to go behind the paywall and explore the rest of the news with me. But in order to do that, you actually have to be a member. Here at Daily Y we have so much great stuff behind the paywall. So, Reagan, what is your favorite thing that we have behind the paywall?

Reagan Connor (59:30)

Now, I know a lot because again, I work here and have for three years, but I would say my favorite is still what is a woman? That is the absolute. If you haven't watched it, you are missing out.

Ben Shapiro (59:39)

I'm a little bit hurt and insulted, but if you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.