Ep. 2169 - BREAKING: Le Pen BANNED?!?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 2169: BREAKING: Le Pen BANNED?!?

Release Date: March 31, 2025

Introduction and Overview

In Episode 2169 of The Ben Shapiro Show, host Ben Shapiro delves into a range of pressing global and domestic issues, primarily focusing on President Donald Trump's foreign and economic policies, the recent judicial actions against French politician Marine Le Pen, and the evolving political landscape in South Africa. The episode provides an incisive analysis of current events, interspersed with interviews and expert opinions, aiming to present a conservative perspective on complex matters.

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President Trump's Foreign Policy

Timestamp: 00:00 - 04:35

Ben Shapiro begins by highlighting President Trump's steadfast approach to foreign policy, emphasizing his resistance against both isolationist factions on the right and anti-American sentiments on the left. A key focus is the "Signalgate" controversy, where a national security group chat mistakenly included Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic. Shapiro asserts that President Trump effectively dismissed the incident, labeling it a "witch hunt."

Ben Shapiro [01:34]: "President Trump is ignoring the foolishness in favor of the actual policy."

Shapiro references a brief phone interview with NBC's Kristen Welker, where Trump expressed confidence in his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Walz, despite media scrutiny.

US-Russia-Ukraine Relations

Timestamp: 04:35 - 23:27

The discussion shifts to the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Shapiro criticizes Vladimir Putin's strategies, suggesting that Putin is prolonging the war to weaken Western support for Ukraine. He contrasts this with President Trump's clear stance against Putin, showcasing Trump’s willingness to impose secondary tariffs on Russian oil if a deal to stop the bloodshed isn't reached.

Kristen Welker [04:35]: "President Trump said he is, quote, 'pissed off with Russia's President Putin' and threatened to impose secondary tariffs on Russia's oil."

Shapiro explains that secondary tariffs would not only target Russia but any country buying Russian oil, potentially crippling Russia's economy. He underscores Trump's direct and transparent communication style, arguing that Trump doesn't engage in backroom maneuvers but speaks his mind clearly.

Iran Nuclear Negotiations

Timestamp: 23:27 - 38:53

Ben Shapiro addresses the Trump administration's handling of Iran's nuclear program. He criticizes the Obama-era JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal), labeling it ineffective and dangerous. Shapiro argues that President Trump has taken a firmer stance by opening negotiations and threatening significant actions if Iran continues its nuclear pursuits.

Ben Shapiro [28:16]: "We're going to provide tax benefits, tax credits to the people who buy American cars. This is a genius thing that President Trump promised on the campaign trail."

Shapiro contends that negotiating with Iran should empower the U.S. to exert pressure and ensure that Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons, contrasting this with previous administration policies that he views as too lenient.

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Domestic Economy and Tariffs

Timestamp: 38:53 - 74:00

Trump's Approval Ratings and Economic Impact

Shapiro cites a CBS poll indicating President Trump's approval rating holds steady at 50%, with specific breakdowns in areas like immigration (53% approval) and the economy (48% approval). However, he points out a significant 33-point swing in public perception regarding whether Trump's policies are making Americans financially better off.

Ben Shapiro [23:27]: "President Trump is at a 50% approval rating."

Shapiro critiques Trump's aggressive tariff policies, arguing that broad, high tariffs will harm American consumers by increasing the cost of imported goods. He debunks the notion that tariffs can serve as tax cuts, emphasizing that they are, in fact, taxes on consumers.

Senate GOP Budget Plans

The episode discusses the Senate GOP's plans to advance a budget resolution aimed at implementing President Trump's economic agenda, including significant tax cuts. Shapiro expresses skepticism about the executive's authority to impose unprecedented tariffs without congressional approval, stressing the potential economic fallout.

Ben Shapiro [28:34]: "Tariffs are a tax on American consumers."

He warns that aggressive tariff strategies could lead to economic downturns, referencing concerns about stagflation and reduced consumer spending. Shapiro underscores the importance of predictable economic policies to maintain investor confidence and economic stability.

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Foreign Policy and National Interests

JD Vance in Greenland

Timestamp: 09:13 - 17:45

Ben Shapiro highlights Vice President J.D. Vance's recent visit to Greenland, where Vance criticized Denmark for underinvesting in Greenland's security and infrastructure. Shapiro emphasizes the strategic importance of Greenland for U.S. national security, particularly regarding Arctic trade routes and military installations like the Pituffik Space Base.

J.D. Vance [10:17]: "There is no amount of bullying, no amount of obfuscating... You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland."

Shapiro notes President Trump's open interest in potentially acquiring Greenland, even without military force, underscoring the U.S.'s long-standing attempts to secure the territory due to its geopolitical significance.

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Judicial Political Actions

Banning of Marine Le Pen in France

Timestamp: 74:00 - 77:04

A significant portion of the episode scrutinizes a French court's decision to ban Marine Le Pen from seeking public office for five years and sentencing her to prison for misusing EU funds. Shapiro frames this as part of a broader pattern of left-leaning judicial bodies undermining populist politicians globally.

Ben Shapiro [77:04]: "They're suspending her jail sentence, but they are not suspending, banning her from running....just the latest NAITO member to reject a populist candidate over some sort of judicial intervention."

Shapiro draws parallels with similar actions against other populist leaders in countries like Brazil, Romania, and Israel, arguing that these judicial overreaches undermine democracy by thwarting the will of the people.

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South Africa's Political Issues

Timestamp: 38:53 - 74:00

Interview with Dr. Ernst Roots

In an extended interview with Dr. Ernst Roots, an Afrikaner activist from South Africa, Shapiro explores the deep-seated political and racial tensions in the country post-apartheid. Dr. Roots critiques the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), attributing South Africa's current struggles to oppressive policies and ideological shifts towards socialism and racial nationalism.

Donald Trump [64:40]: "Federalism. A decentralized system that's based on the idea of self-governance."

Dr. Roots and Shapiro advocate for a decentralized political system, suggesting that greater self-governance and federalism could alleviate the existing conflicts and inefficiencies. They argue that the current central government structure fosters division and fails to address the diverse needs of South Africa's multifaceted population.

Decentralization as a Solution

Shapiro and Dr. Roots propose that adopting federalism would allow various cultural and regional groups within South Africa to govern themselves more effectively, reducing friction and promoting unity. They criticize the imposition of top-down policies that do not account for the country's cultural and historical complexities.

Donald Trump [69:29]: "We need to find a solution that would work for people...bring government closer to the people is widely accepted."

The discussion emphasizes the failure of constitutional guarantees in materializing tangible benefits, such as housing and healthcare, highlighting a disconnect between written rights and real-world outcomes.

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Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Ben Shapiro wraps up the episode by reiterating the importance of addressing both foreign and domestic policies with clarity and conviction. He warns of potential economic downturns resulting from aggressive tariff implementations and judicial overreach, advocating for policies that prioritize American consumers and national interests.

Ben Shapiro [73:34]: "They don't mean anything."

The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to stay informed and engaged, emphasizing the significance of coherent and principled leadership in navigating complex global and economic landscapes.

Notable Quotes

• Ben Shapiro [01:34]: "President Trump is ignoring the foolishness in favor of the actual policy."
• Kristen Welker [04:35]: "President Trump said he is, quote, 'pissed off with Russia's President Putin' and threatened to impose secondary tariffs on Russia's oil."
• J.D. Vance [10:17]: "There is no amount of bullying, no amount of obfuscating... You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland."
• Donald Trump [64:40]: "Federalism. A decentralized system that's based on the idea of self-governance."
• Ben Shapiro [73:34]: "They don't mean anything."

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This episode of The Ben Shapiro Show provides a comprehensive analysis of current geopolitical tensions, economic policies, and judicial actions affecting both the United States and the broader international community. Through detailed discussions and expert interviews, Shapiro presents a conservative viewpoint aimed at dissecting the complexities of modern governance and policy-making.

Transcript

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, folks, America is on the comeback, but the fight for truth is far from over. While the left tries desperately to keep its grip on legacy media, education in the courts, Daily Wire is leading the charge for fearless journalism and the values that made our country great. Now is the time to join us. Stream my show ad free. Watch along with my producers in the chat plus, get exclusive content you're not going to find anywhere else. Access premium entertainment. Join a community of thinkers, not followers. Watch anytime, anywhere on desktop, mobile and TV with the Daily Wire plus app. Don't just watch the culture war happen around you. Be part of the movement. Subscribe right now at dailywire.com/subscribe. Well, President Trump continues to resist the calls from isolationists on the right and from insanely anti American voices on the left to essentially make his foreign policy subject to the whims of other countries. He's just refusing to do that. So this Signalgate story, which ate up the headlines all of last week, this idea that because there was a group chat involving the national security apparatus inside the Trump administration that also accidentally invited in Jeffrey Goldberg, the pseudo journalist editor of the Atlantic, that this was a rationale for him to blow up his entire national security infrastructure. That isn't true. President Trump addressed that over the weekend, according to a brief phone interview he did with NBC News over the weekend. He told the network, I don't fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts. Here was NBC's Kristen Welker reporting.

[Kristen Welker]

In an exclusive phone interview on Saturday, the president told me, quote, I don't fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts. Mr. Trump said he still has confidence in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Walz.

[Ben Shapiro]

Now, why did he say that? Because, according to Trump, quote, we had a tremendously successful strike. We struck very hard and very lethal. Nobody wants to talk about that. All they want to talk about is nonsense. It's fake news. He says, I have no idea what Signal is. I don't care what Signal is. I can tell you it's a witch hunt. It's the only thing the press wants to talk about because you have nothing else to talk about. Because it's been the greatest 100 day presidency in the history of our country. So again, this is President Trump ignoring the foolishness in favor of the actual policy, which is if the Houthis hit at American assets or American allies, then they get struck. And President Trump seems to be upping the ante all over the world with regards to this sort of stuff so many people have been fearful that President Trump was simply going to cave to Vladimir Putin, that Vladimir Putin is sort of slow playing President Trump in Ukraine. Now, as you recall, Vladimir Zelensky came to the White House, got chewed out by both Trump and Vice President J.D. vance, and then expelled from the White House over his sort of brazen attempts to get Trump to commit to security commitments in the room. And then Zelensky effectively apologized on the world stage. And then he said that he was going to agree to an immediate cease fire. And in the meantime, Vladimir Putin has refused to agree to anything like a comprehensive cease fire. He said maybe he'll have a ceasefire with regard to energy infrastructure or maybe there will be a ceasefire in the Black Sea. Well, in reality, Vladimir Putin is playing a game, and everybody can see that he's playing a game. On Friday, he called for a transitional administration to be put place in Ukraine and then vowed his army would, quote, finish off Ukrainian troops. So while Putin is attempting to pretend that he actually wants to get to the end of the war, it is now pretty clear which side does not want to get to the end of the war. Zelensky has accepted the reality, which is that Ukraine is not going to, at least in this round of fighting, win back Donbassar Crimea. But Vladimir Putin does not want the war to end because he feels the momentum is on his side and that if he can sort of continue the push, that eventually the west will give in, stop funding Ukraine, and he will, in fact end up sitting in the presidential palace in Kyiv. According to Yahoo News, a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow since Trump's return to office and the US Leader's threats to stop supporting Kyiv have bolstered Putin's confidence more than three years into an offensive that has killed tens of thousands of people on both sides. The renewed call to essentially topple Zelensky was the latest demonstration of the Kremlin leader's long standing desire to install a more Moscow friendly regime. In Kyiv, Zelensky dismissed Putin's call for a UN Run administration as the Russian leader's latest ploy to delay a peace deal, which of course is true. Putin said that Russia could discuss with the United States, Europe and Moscow's allies, quote, under the auspices of the UN the possibility of establishing a transitional administration in Ukraine. And then he said that that would organize a democratic presidential election that would result in the coming to power of a competent government. So basically, he wants to oust Zelensky by threat of force, and then he wants his own man put in place in Ukraine. Well, President Trump is now seeing through all of this. President Trump, in an interview with NBC News, said that he was, quote, unquote, very angry and off when President Putin criticized the credibility of Zelensky's leadership, adding the comments were not going in the right direction. And there was a phone conversation between President Trump and NBC News. Here is Kristen Welker reporting.

[Kristen Welker]

President Trump called me to tell me he is, quote, pissed off with Russia's President Putin and threatened to impose secondary tariffs on Russia's oil, quote, if Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine. And if I think it was Russia's fault, which it might not be, but if I think it was Russia's fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on all oil coming out of Russia.

[Ben Shapiro]

Now, secondary tariff means that it's not just that the United States will put a tariff on oil coming out of Russia, is that he is going to essentially put tariffs on any country that takes Russian oil, which would devastate the Russian economy because Russia is basically a giant gas station with nuclear weapons. President Trump said that would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can't do business in the United States. There'll be a 25% tariff on all oil, a 25 to 50 point tariff on all oil. Now, again, this is the correct response from President Trump. He has now pushed the Ukrainians as far as it is possible to push the Ukrainians. They're agreeing to rare earth minerals deals. They're agreeing to immediate ceasefires. Zelensky gets the picture. The problem is that Vladimir Putin does not, in fact, get the picture. And so when President Trump is pissed off, he has every right to be off because he understands that Vladimir Putin is, in fact, playing him. And so for all the sort of tankies on both right and left who believe that Trump is going to simply cave into Vladimir Putin, that is not how Trump operates. The thing about President Trump is that all these people who sit around trying to figure out exactly what he is saying, what exactly he's doing, there is no massive backroom calculus that is happening here. He is not sitting in the back room with one of those Charlie Day is always sunny in Philadelphia boards with all of the strings connecting picture to picture, President Trump says exactly what he thinks, and he says it clearly and openly, which is why he's been president twice. The American people know what they are getting from President Trump. And everybody who keeps looking for some sort of secret motivation for. There's no secret motivation. He just does the thing. This also happens to be true with regard to Iran. So President Trump had sent a letter to the Iranian president saying, would you like to open negotiations over your nuclear program? And if you don't want to open negotiations over your nuclear program, bad stuff is going to happen. Well, on Sunday, Iran's president said that the Islamic Republic had rejected direct negotiations with the United States over its rapidly advancing nuclear program. President Massoud Pejekian said that Iran's response, delivered via the Sultanate of Oman, left open the possibility of indirect negotiations with Washington. But such talks have made no progress since Trump, in his first term, unilaterally withdrew the US from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers in 2018. That, of course, was the so called JCPOA, which was the ridiculous nuclear deal that was negotiated by Barack Obama that essentially gave Iran a clear pathway to a bomb. It said, you have to delay it for 10 years, but you can use all the money that we are giving you. And now freeing up to spread terrorism all over the Middle East. And we have seen the consequences of that over the past couple of years when the entire Middle east has gone up in flames, thanks in large part to the additional funding that was granted to Iran by the Obama administration and then the Biden administration. The relief that was given to them said they could then spread their terror all over the Middle East. Pojetkian said, we don't avoid talks. It's the breach of promises that has caused issues for us so far. They must prove they can build trust, that we can build trust with you, who are using all the money that the Obama administration freed up to pay for terrorist proxies all over the Middle east and ballistic missile development that we can. That you can trust us. Excuse me. So the US State Department responded well, President Trump has been clear. The United States cannot allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. The President expressed his willingness to discuss a deal with Iran. If the Iranian regime does not want to deal, the president is clear he will pursue other options which will be very bad for Iran. Again, this is not a complex calculus. President Trump himself said that if they don't come to some sort of answer with regards to their nuclear program, the United States is going to come to an answer with regards to their nuclear program. And that answer might involve some bombs falling on their nuclear facilities. Now, of course, it wouldn't be the United States predominantly that would do that. Presumably that would be the Israelis doing that with armaments essentially lent them by the United States. However, President Trump's foreign policy is very clear. He is willing to make a deal at any time with anyone. But if you aren't willing to make a deal, the kind of deal the United States wants to enter into, he is going to clock you or he's going to allow America's allies to clock you again. This is called peace through strength. It is not particularly difficult to understand. It's actually quite easy to understand. Now, meanwhile, in sort of funnier foreign policy news, JD Vance arrived in Greenland over the weekend and I think spoke for all Americans. When he dropped this particular line, he arrived, he was talking to American troops. We do have American troops stationed in Greenland for national security purposes. We have a base there. And here is JD Vance summing up the feelings of all Americans with regard to Greenland.

[J.D. Vance]

Hey, guys, how we doing? Please, at ease, at ease. Good Lord.

[Ben Shapiro]

Sit down and eat.

[Donald Trump]

Sit down and eat.

[J.D. Vance]

Don't let the vice President stop you guys from getting your chow here. How we doing? It's cold as here.

[Donald Trump]

Nobody told me.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, so yes, it is indeed cold as bleep in Greenland. He said nobody told me. JD is right about that. The vice President is correct about that. I will say that I think it's bizarre that we are extending the same sort of logic to many of our allies that we have extended to our enemies. So JD Vance slammed Denmark now again. Denmark, Greenland has like 50,000 people. If the Greenlanders wish to join the United States, they could hold a referendum tomorrow and join the United States. They've made clear they don't actually wish to join the United States. The United States does have serious national interests in Greenland because of the Arctic channels that flow around Greenland that are, that are now being victimized and used as bases in some ways by the Russians and the Chinese. However, slamming Denmark, like this part, I don't really understand. I'll be honest with you. Here's JD Van Slamming Denmark.

[J.D. Vance]

There is no amount of bullying, no amount of obfuscating, no amount of confusing the issue. Our message to Denmark is very simple. You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have under invested in the people of Greenland and you have under invested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful landmass filled with incredible people. That has to change. And because it hasn't changed, this is why President Trump's policy in Greenland is what it is.

[Ben Shapiro]

And President Trump said we will get Greenland yet 100%. And then added, there's a good possibility we could do it without military force. But I don't take anything off the table. So war for Greenland apparently is still on the table. Okay, Greenland. Prime Minister Jens Friedrich Nielsen pushed back and said, president Trump says the United States is getting Greenland. Let me make this clear. The United States is not getting that. We don't belong to anyone else. We decide our own future. Again, I don't think that's what President Trump is actually going for. Maybe he is. Maybe he is. It would be a large use of political capital to go get Greenland. I suppose there are some reasons to get Greenland, but expending political capital in this way? It's a choice. I'm not sure it's a choice most Americans are deeply invested in. So obviously the United States does actually have some pretty significant national security interests in Greenland. I asked our friends over at Perplexity to spell those out. Of course, Perplexity is a sponsor of the show. By the way, I should mention here, perplexity is such a great tool. They're not even paying me for this particular bump. I'm just saying this. Producer Zach went to the car dealer over the weekend and Producer Zach got like a $10,000 bump discounts on his car by using information that he got from Perplexity about, for example, the VIN number of the car, how long it had been on the lot, how much it was costing them to keep the car on the lot every day. It had been there for like 200 days. And he negotiated down his car price based on information he got from Perplexity. So good for Producer Zach, a smart use of Perplexity. Anyway, I asked Perplexity, what are the United States national security interests in Greenland? What is the US's history of protecting and defending Greenland? And here's what Perplexity says. Greenland holds significant strategic importance for the United States due to its location in the Arctic and its role in global security. It's situated at a critical juncture between North America and Europe, making it vital for monitoring air and sea routes. The US operates Pitufik Space Base, formerly called Thule Airbase, which serves as a key installation for missile detection and Arctic operations. The 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement allows the United States to establish and maintain military facilities on the island, ensuring rapid response capabilities as global rivalries intensify, particularly with Russia and China. Greenland is pivotal for maintaining US influence in the Arctic region, which is becoming a contested area due to climate change and emerging trade routes, because a lot of the ice up there is thawing, and that means that ships can now travel up there. The United States has a long history of protecting Greenland. During World War II, the U.S. actually established military bases there because Denmark of course, had been occupied by the Nazis. The 1941 defense of Greenland agreement allowed American forces to protect the island from Germany influence during the Cold War. It was a strategic outpost for us to monitor the Soviets. The US has tried to buy Greenland a bunch of times, all the way from 1867 to 1946, basically. So nothing new in what President Trump is trying to do, whether we take it by military force or not. You know, I'm a little skeptical while President Trump's polling remains solid because the government continues to do better things under Trump than it would otherwise, as Doge continues to surgically cut the fat from decades of bloated government spending and corruption, PureTalk, the cell phone company I use for business every day, they are cutting the fat from the wireless industry. That is correct, PureTalk says I don't think so. To $100 a month cell phone plants. 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Also, if you're the owner of a growing business the way I am, imagine a hiring approach similar to speed dating. But instead of meeting potential romantic partners, you'd meet multiple qualified job candidates in a single scheduled session. Granted, no one actually likes speed dating, but people do like hiring those qualified candidates quickly. Wouldn't it be nice if there were an efficient format that allowed you to connect with several pre screened interested applicants all at once, streamlining that recruitment process. Well, there's good news. There is. It's Zip Intro from Zip Recruiter. You can post your job today and start talking to qualified candidates tomorrow. Right now you can try Zip Intro for free at ZipRecruiter.com Daily Wire Zip Intro transforms your hiring process with our streamlined approach to candidate assessment. Just select a convenient time slot. We handle everything else. Finding qualified candidates, managing all the scheduling logistics on your behalf. 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As I've been saying for weeks, at this point, the only thing that can stop the Trump train here is a sinking economy. A sinking economy stops any train. Doesn't matter who the president is. If you're the president, you have a bad economy, it really stops you in your tracks. Well, right now, the polling data show that the American people are pretty skittish about some of the economic plans that President Trump is making, particularly with regard to tariffs. And again, there's plenty of great stuff happening on the economic front, everything from doge to tax cuts. However, these swings with regards to the economy in public opinion polling are not good for President Trump right now. That same CBS News poll determined 50%, which again is a very solid number for President Trump. The question of whether Trump's policies are making you financially better off, worse off, or the same. In January, 42% of people said better off, 28% of people said worse off, 30% of people said the same. Today, only 23% of Americans say that Trump's policies are making them financially better off. 42% say worse off, which is a 33 point swing, and 35% say the same. When it comes to inflation, 38% of Americans say that Joe Biden's policies are still to blame the most for Today's inflation rate, 34% say Trump's policies and 19% say both equally. Well, that means that 53% of Americans say that Trump bears some responsibility for the nation's inflationary policies. This is a problem in the middle of President Trump's threats that he is going to have a liberation day with regard to the global economy. And by that he means that we are going to push extraordinarily broad and high tariffs. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is scrambling to determine the specifics of its new tariff agenda ahead of its self imposed deadline of Wednesday, weighing options as the President has promised to remake the American economy with a swath of new levies. One key point of debate is whether to impose individualized tariff rates for US Trading partners as President Trump has previewed in recent weeks, or to revert to his campaign pledge for an across the board tariff that would affect virtually every country doing business with the United States, according to people familiar with the conversations. Trump spent most of last week playing down expectations for his so called reciprocal tariff plan on April 2nd. But in recent days, Trump has pushed his team to be more aggressive, according to people familiar with his conversations, encouraging them to devise plans that apply higher rates of tariffs on a broad set of countries. Trump reinforced that narrative on Sunday night. He said he would target, quote, essentially all of US Trading partners with tariffs of some kind. Well, that would be an extraordinary move by President Trump. Frankly, I don't understand how he has the executive authority to do that. This really is in Congress's purview and if the Republican Congress wishes not to lose a bunch of seats in the midterm elections, I would highly recommend that if President Trump pushes really high tariffs over the next couple of days, the Congress start thinking about taking back some of its, some of its constitutionally mandated authority over tariff policy. Regardless of what you think of President Trump's policies, no president, Democrat or Republican, should have the unilateral ability to simply increase the prices on goods across the board by 20% on all Americans. That is not a power delegated to any President under the Constitution of the United States. In recent days, advisors have considered implosing imposing global tariffs of up to 20% that would hit virtually all US trading partners. Trump and his team for months promoted such a plan on the campaign trail before the President publicly ditched it in favor of that so called reciprocal tariff plan that is still possibly on the table. Whatever the final plan, the official said the president wants the policy to be, quote, big and simple, which means the final action will be broader than earlier plans to prioritize levying tariffs on the US's biggest trading partners. About 15% of the world's nations will, which Treasury Secretary Scott Besant had labeled in the media appearances as it's quote, the dirty 15. Now, again, this is not good policy. It just isn't. Again, I want President Trump's policies to succeed. This is not a policy geared towards success. Now, the case to be made, if you're gonna steel man, the argument in favor of a broad tariff regime, the steel manned case, is the effect of the tariffs over the long haul. Let's say that you believe that trade deficits are one of the biggest problems facing America. The idea that we buy more from other countries than that other countries buy from us, I don't believe in this because again, you have a trade deficit with your grocery store, you have a trade deficit with your barber, you have a trade deficit with your local auto dealer, you have a trade deficit with everyone from whom you buy. That does not mean they ripped you off. It does not mean some great injustice has been done. That is not the way global economics works. And in fact, when we run a trade deficit with another country, they have to use those dollars for something. And typically they use it to buy up Treasuries. Very often they are using that in international trade in order to finance our debt. So let's be clear that it is not just we spend money on Vietnamese T shirts and that money disappears into the ether. That is not the way any of this works. You may not like the fact that Vietnam makes T shirts in the United States no longer does, but we also make the entire world software industry and Vietnam does not. There are good purposes to tariffs for national security reasons. I've said this a thousand times. When it comes to important national defense industries, obviously we have to maintain their production capacity in the United States because we don't want to be reliant on anyone else if it comes to a war. For sure. And for national security reasons, there may be reasons to tariff other countries as a punishment. You want to do a tariff, as we mentioned earlier, on Russian oil because you want to stop them from pursuing a particular policy, or you want to tariff China because you want to stop them from stealing our ip. Totally in for that as well. But the idea that tariffs in and of themselves are going to be good for the economy, that's wrong. But to steel man, the argument, the basic idea would be that the American dollar right now is very strong in international trade. And the reason the American dollar is very strong is there's a large demand for American treasuries and services and all of that because of the trade deficits that we run. If you end those trade deficits and you rebalance it, you weaken the American dollar. What is the good part about weakening the American dollar? Well, if you're President Trump, the good part about weakening the American dollar is that it leads to more domestic consumption because everything becomes more expensive imported from overseas to the United States. Your dollar doesn't go as far. It's not as strong. And two, it means that we get to pay off our debt in inflated currency. However, we're already in the middle of an inflationary spiral. It has not ended yet. And so the deliberate idea that we are going to essentially inflate the currency by weakening it against other currencies and making prices higher for Americans in the process, that's a lot of pain for what I think is not a lot of gain. The reality is we are not going to, at this rate, inflate our way out of our national debt without crushing the economy. The actual way that you are going to be able to get out of the national debt is by growing the economy by leaps and bounds. And that does not happen via tariff regimes. That is, tariff regimes do not lead to massive economic growth. There was something that was widely applied in Latin America, South America, during the 1970s and 80s. It was called dependency theory. It was actually a Marxist theory. The basic idea was that all of these countries in South America were being ripped off by the more sophisticated Western countries who are trading in sophisticated products. And then all of these countries in South America were trading out unsophisticated unfinished materials, for example. And this was leading to, quote, unquote, dependency. And so what these countries did is they raised tariffs on developed products from other countries that did not make their countries richer overall. It made their countries significantly poor. It was very, very bad economic policy. So what does this look like? Well, President Trump already, this is not a great political pitch. It just isn't. He told NBC News on Saturday he does not care, for example, if foreign automakers raise their prices for US Consumers in response to new tariffs, quote, I couldn't care less. Here's Kristen Welker reporting on President Trump. I promise you, by the way, American consumers do care if their prices go up by leaps and bounds on the cars they want to buy for their families.

[Kristen Welker]

And the president telling me tariffs are, quote, absolutely permanent. And on fears of foreign automakers raising prices, quote, I couldn't care less if they raise prices because people are going to start buying American made Cars.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay? Autarky is bad economic policy. It just is. It's been bad economic policy forever. The idea you can produce everything within America's borders for the same prices that you're currently getting is not true. I understand that politicians have a stake in pretending that magic can happen in the economy whereby you shut down global trade and you don't import anything and everything gets produced right here in America and it's the same price and your life doesn't change in any way. That is not true. Things are going to get more expensive. The product in the United States, by the way, gets worse. Because if you don't have competition with foreign competitors, there's no reason for you to make a product any better. This is basically the story of the American car industry during the 1950s and 60s. We dominated the planet in the 1950s. By the end of the 1960s, Toyota was eating our lunch. Why? Because we had massive tariffs on foreign automakers. We had huge subsidies to American automakers. The subsidies were largely going to the UAW and other union members. And then when we finally lowered our trade barriers, better cars came in at a lower price and they completely swamped the American auto industry to the point that we had multiple bankruptcies in the 1970s. And tariff policy, protectionist trade policy is overall not good for. It can be good for certain sectors of an economy that are now receiving benefit at the hands of loss for the vast majority of American consumers. But let's not pretend that it is good economic policy for the vast majority of of American consumers. It's just like any other subsidy. If you tax everybody a buck and then you pay somebody $300 million, great for the guy who gets $300 million. Not great for everybody who has to pay a buck. And here we're talking about a lot more than a buck. Tariffs, as it turns out, are not amazing for the vast majority of Americans. 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Instead, check protecting your memories off your spring cleaning to do list with Legacy box, visit legacybox.com Shapiro to shop their $9 tape sale. You get 90 days free access to Legacy Box Cloud. That's legacybox.com Shapiro to unlock this incredible offer again. Legacybox.com Shapiro the price of core goods, by the way, in the consumer price index fell 1.7% between December 2011 and December 2019 over the same Period. Prices of core services like housing, healthcare, and education rose 2.7% per year. That led to an inflation rate of 2% a year overall. According to the Wall Street Journal, goods prices shot up during the pandemic. They peaked in summer 2023. But in September, core goods prices started rising again by an average of 0.1% a month, including 0.2% in February. So we already do have inflation, and that inflation continues. Now, the Trump administration, because of course, they work for President Trump, they continue to push forward this vision of tariffs. Peter Navarro, who's a big fan of tariffs and one of the President's advisors on trade policy, he said that we are going to make $600 billion in tariff revenue. This is not true. It is not going to happen. Here's Peter Navarro.

[Peter Navarro]

We're going to provide tax benefits, tax credits to the people who buy American cars. This is a genius thing that President Trump promised on the campaign trail. So that's going to happen. In addition, the other tariffs are going to raise about $600 billion a year.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, so last year, tariffs in the United States were responsible for about $80 billion in revenue. To get to $600 billion in tariff revenue, we would need to assume that people are gonna continue consuming foreign products at the same rate. These sort of mutually exclusive ideas. One is that we're gonna continue to consume foreign products, and thus the tariff revenue will increase, but also we're not gonna consume foreign products and we're gonna buy American. So one of those two things is not true. Either we're going to redirect our consumption toward American products, in which case, the tariffs actually are not gonna raise that much money. Or we're gonna continue to buy foreign products, in which case we're going to raise more money via the tariffs, but we are not going to buy American. Navarro and some of the team wants to have it both ways. By the way, even if we raise $600 billion through tariffs, you've heard from people that this is gonna pay off our national debt. It is not going to pay off our national debt. Not remotely. Not close. We run a deficit every year in this country because we spend too much money. It is not because of lack of tax revenue. We pay an enormous amount of tax revenue in the United States. It rises pre every year. It just doesn't keep up with our spending. And then Navarro suggested that tariffs are tax cuts. They are not, in fact, tax cuts. That is silly. You can have tax cuts. You can have tariffs. Those are not the same thing. Tariffs are, in fact, an increase. They are a tax on the consumer.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

That is what they are.

[Ben Shapiro]

In the same way that Obamacare was a tax on consumers because it got passed along to the consumer every time he paid a bill. Tariffs are a tax on American consumers.

[Peter Navarro]

The message is that tariffs are tax cuts. Tariffs are jobs. Tariffs are national security. Tariffs are great for America. Tariffs will make America great again.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, well, I mean, you can try this cell. The bottom line is that if Americans feel it in their pocketbook, they're not gonna care about the sell. Vice President J.D. vance was on the campaign trail as well, and he was explaining why he was a fan of the tariffs while he was in Greenland for 40 years.

[J.D. Vance]

A lot of our friends all over the world have used America as a piggy bank. They have used us to absorb all of their excess economic production. What does that mean for Americans? For Americans, that's meant manufacturing jobs declining. That's meant middle class wages going down. That's meant whole towns that have been hollowed out by empty factories. And that means an America that is less safe because our manufacturing isn't as powerful now as a was 30 years ago.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, so that is not true. J.D. vance is a very, very smart person, and what he's saying here is just economically false. When he says that our European friends have, in fact taken money from us, he's correct. On the defense side, that is absolutely true. They've been living off our largesse since World War II. It's one of the reasons why President Trump is absolutely 100% correct to demand that NATO countries pay a certain percentage of their GDP for defense. He's totally right about that. However, when he suggests that the Europeans have used us to, quote, absorb all of their excess economic production, that is not remotely capitalist language. What exactly is excess economic production? Please, I want to hear it. Do you think that there's a factory in Germany, this churns out things at zero cost, basically for no reason, and then just ship them here? And what force us to buy them? Well, what exactly is. Please define excess economic production. The laws of supply and demand do not work that way. If there is no demand for T shirts, then no one is going to produce the T shirts or they're an idiot. It bankrupts them. When he says that using America as a piggy bank to absorb all of their excess economic production, what does that mean? That we are buying their stuff. You know, like you buy a thing at the store, that's you absorbing their excess economic production. When he says that's meant manufacturing jobs declining and middle Class wages going down, middle class wages have in fact not gone down in the United States, adjusted for the benefits that are received from the federal government. In fact, much of the middle class in the United States over the course of the past 40 years has become upper middle class over the course of the last 40 years. And as far as the manufacturing decline in the United States, the truth is that manufacturing production has gone up in the United States. The number of jobs that it takes to make the manufacturing go up has gone down. That is because of technology in the main. It is not, in fact because of outsourcing to China. Now, again, you can make the argument we shouldn't outsource that stuff to China, but to pretend that America was going to look in 2025 the way it looked in 1980 is not true. So again, you can make this case. It's just not going to be a particularly successful case. When this was pointed out, by the way, then J.D. vance, who spends an awful lot of time on X sort of fighting his critics, he said it is this brain dead liberalism pretending to conservatism that saw the US go from the world's manufacturing superpower to one in which the PRC makes nearly twice as much as we do and where, if the small island of Taiwan fell to an invasion, we'd be hurled into a Great Depression. Now I'm confused at the idea that if the United States had divested itself of global trade, then magically all manufacturing of semiconductors would be done in the United States as opposed to, say, in other places in Southeast Asia or in other places in Europe. It turns out actually that the line of manufacture for, for example, superconductors for semiconductors goes through places in Europe as well. There are many firms that are involved in the production of this sort of stuff. He says this is not just about a few union workers. This is about a globalized economic system in which the United States absorbs much of the producer surplus of the world. Again, producer surplus is a term that does not appear in classical economics for a reason. What is a producer surplus that is absorbed? Who is sitting around just making extra stuff, hoping that people are going to, quote, unquote, absorb it? He says a system whose brittle supply chains exposed our economic vulnerability. After Covid. And speaking of those autoworkers this guy has such contempt for, it was Autoworkers of the 40s who allowed the United States to go from a peacetime economy to the best mass producer of aircraft the world has ever seen. Is anyone making the suggestion that GM and Ford are going to be making our airplanes now like the F47 that President Trump talks about is going to be manufactured by GM and Ford. It is true actually that the auto manufacturers turned to wartime production during World War II. And again, if you're doing tariffs in order to maintain our national security production, I'm with you, that's fine. But the idea that you need broad based tariffs in order to protect what, not even Stellantis, to protect Tesla, I guess, because Tesla is then going to make our national security apparatus if there was a global war. And there's a lot of misdirects from the Vice President, it just is. And I'm not saying this because I want the President to fail on this stuff. I'm saying this because I think that his economic plans here can harm him. The worst thing that could happen to the Trump administration, by the way, the Vice President Vance too, who wants to run for president in 2028. The worst thing that could happen here is an economic downturn. That is the worst thing that could happen. As Axios points out, economic growth has flatlined so far this year. Inflation has picked up. Consumers expect both to get worse in the months ahead. Stagflation is starting to be pretty openly discussed. The backward looking data lately has been distinctly stagflationary. Consumer spending in the first two months of 2025 has been soft, coming in 0.6% below its December rate when adjusted for inflation. A real time estimate of GDP published by the Atlanta Fed is now pointing to economic activity shrinking at a 0.5% rate in Q1. Meanwhile, the inflation measure favored by the Fed has risen at a 4.1% annual rate in the first two months of 2025, the highest in a year. I'll repeat again, if you like President Trump's agenda, he needs to avoid stepping on economic rigs. He needs to avoid it. The notion that you're gonna rejigger all of global trade and that's gonna have no effect on American consumers, on the American economy, on American businesses, that is a hell of a gamble because either several hundred years of economics are wrong or this policy is and we are apparently gonna find out which. Now, the good news again, I think President Trump, he sticks, he moves. I think he adjusts to the bad headlines. If the economy downturns, do I think he's gonna stick with these big broad inflationary plans? I don't. I think that he's proved that over and over and over again, actually over the course of his career. However, that does not mean that this is in fact A wise move. And there is a reason that the markets are really, really nervous right now. Meanwhile, there are, in fact, good things about to happen for the economy. Just get out of the way. Just get out of the way. According to Politico, Senate GOP leaders are gonna move as soon as Wednesday to begin advancing a budget plan. That is the next key step to unlock President Trump's massive agenda through a party line bill. Under the ambitious timeline being privately considered by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the Senate would adopt its budget resolution before heading home for the weekend. A marathon vote, a Rama could kick off on Thursday. Four people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. Caution could slip to Friday depending on how quickly the chamber moves. In order to make all of that work, the Senate parliamentarian would need to sign off on the Republicans plans to use a tactic known as the current policy baseline, which allows them to pursue trillions of dollars in tax cut extensions while claiming it doesn't cost anything. Well, it doesn't cost anything. That's silly. That's, that's the assumption of a current policy baseline is that what is current policy is in fact the baseline. And so when the Senate parliamentarian has to decide on the cost of a bill saying that you're going to continue to extend the same level of taxation that has obtained in the United States for the last 10 years or so, that is not, in fact, some sort of weird economic trickery that makes perfect sense. Otherwise, why not assume that the taxes are going to revert to, like a 60% rate? Then everything costs an enormous amount of money anytime you want to lower the taxes or even maintain them as they currently are. Senators believe they could secure such a ruling from the parliamentarian as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday of this week, though the meeting has yet to be scheduled. This ruling is crucial because Republicans can't finalize the reachable budget resolution until they know if that accounting gambit will in fact be approved before Wednesday. The big six budget negotiators, that would be John Thune, Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Finance Chair Mike Crappo, Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, and top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett will huddle on Tuesday for their standing weekly meeting. Now, again, the Senate parliamentarian could throw a wrench into this entire timeline if they suggest that they can't use the current policy baseline. With a 53 seat majority, Republicans can still lose three votes and pass something. But a big, beautiful bill will certainly go a long way toward making investors feel more sanguinity about the future of Economic performance under President Trump. Again, business people are ready to invest. They're ready to do it. The uncertainty with regard to things like tariff policy are causing investors to hold back their dry powder.

[Donald Trump]

Again.

[Ben Shapiro]

I spent a lot of time talking to investors and business people and right now they are all very nervous because they don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. Predictability in the markets is probably the number one factor in allowing investors to actually put their money where their mouth is. We got some more on this in a moment. First, you know, every time I go shooting, I think to myself, this is great. It could probably be a little better.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

Guess what?

[Ben Shapiro]

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With their nationwide dealer network and easy to use kiosk system, you can get started in minutes and have your suppressor faster than ever. So don't wait. Visit silencershop.com Shapiro turn your tax return into the ultimate shooting upgrade. That's silencershop.com Shapiro again. Silencershop.com Shapiro that's silencershop.com Shapiro and meanwhile, in absolutely extraordinary news. This really is crazy. A court has now banned Marine Le Pen, who is very, very likely to win the next election in France, from seeking public office for five years. This is crazy. And this is part and parcel of a broader attempt by left wing judiciary activists across the globe to stop quote, unquote, populist politicians from being able to run. We saw it with President Trump, where the DOJ went after President Trump for supposed crimes that they then let Joe Biden off the hook for. We saw it in New York where a New York Attorney General filed a civil fraud lawsuit in an attempt to stop President Trump. We have seen it In Brazil, where the entire judicial apparatus had been brought down on the head of Yair Bolsonaro, the former President of Brazil, in favor of Lula da Silva, who was then freed by that same exact judiciary. We have seen it in Romania. There was a candidate named Georgescu who won an election in 2024. And then the judiciary found, they said that basically the election had been rigged by the Russians, and they just said that the election didn't count at all. We have seen it in Israel, where the Attorney General of Israel has been going after Benjamin Netanyahu on specious charges for literally years at this point. And the judiciary keeps saying that Netanyahu can't do, like, the basic functions of an executive, like fire his Attorney General or fire anybody in the executive branch. It's pretty crazy. And now we are seeing it in France. It is absolutely amazing to watch these unelected officials going out of their way to thwart the will of the people in supposed democracies. It's really insane. You want to talk about undermining democracy itself? This undermines democracy. Because the reaction to this is, okay, well, what if we just overthrow the judicial institutions? That's going to be the reaction. According to the Wall Street Journal, a French court convicted Marine Le Pen of misusing EU funds, sentencing her to prison and banning her from France's next presidential election. Judges handed down a sentence on Monday that bars Le Pen from seeking public office for the next five years. Le Pen also received a four year prison sentence, half of which was suspended. The ruling takes Le Pen out of contention for the 2027 race when President Emmanuel Macron finishes his second and final term. She was expected to be the front runner. The court ruled that Le Pen and other members of her party illegally used millions of euros in EU funding that was earmarked for assistance helping lawmakers in the EU Parliament with their work. Instead, judges said Le Pen and her lawmakers used the money to pay party staffers who weren't involved in work for Parliament. So just to get this straight, they're putting her in jail for two years and banning her from running for five because her party, which sits in the European Parliament, was paid money by the EU to help lawmakers. And those aides did work for both Le Pen's party and the lawmakers. And this is worth banning Le Pen from the election entirely over. Why do I feel like this is a put up job? I mean, the answer is because it's a put up job. Judges applied provisional execution to Le Pen's ban. That means it takes effect immediately. Even if Le Pen appeals Monday's ruling, her prison sentence remains suspended while any appeals are underway, which I think shows exactly where they are. The big thing is get her out of the elections. That is the big thing. So they're suspending her jail sentence, but they are not suspending, banning her from running. I wonder what their goal is. Hard to hard to. Le Pen has denied the charges. She testified it was appropriate for the assistance to perform other party related work because they were political aides, not direct employees of the European Parliament. In other words, they didn't work for if the European Parliament wanted them working on just European Parliament stuff, maybe the European Parliament should have hired them as opposed to paying the party to do some of the work for the European Parliament. Seems like a fairly strong defense. Is the idea here that Marine Le Pen desperately needed a couple of million euros in order to pay off her political party? I feel like she probably could have raised it. Her party's pretty big in France. And again, this is just the latest NAITO member to reject a populist candidate over some sort of judicial intervention. Pretty unbelievable. And you want to talk about again undermining the argument that democracy must flourish in Europe. This would be a great way to do it. Meanwhile, these same courts all over the world are perfectly willing to allow left wingers to do whatever the hell they want. So for example, a South African constitutional court has now decided that a controversial song featuring the lyrics Kill the Boer and shoot the boar, boars being a term for white farmers of originally German extraction. That song actually is not a violation of the law in South Africa. So it's not hate speech. Shouting, singing Kill the boar and shoot the boar is apparently totally fine. That is not incitement in any way. According to the UK Independent, a decades old anti apartheid anthem recently denounced by Elon Musk for allegedly inciting violence against white South Africans returned to the spotlight last week following a ruling by the country's highest court. The controversial song featuring the lyrics Kill the Boer and shoot the Boer bower being a term for a white farmer, has long been a source of contention in South Africa. Its use has been primarily confined to political rallies of the Economic Freedom Fighters. Eff, a small far left opposition party, but is not a small left wing opposition party. It is a party that has large scale agreement with the ruling anc. The song's resurgence in the headlines follows a rally last Friday where EFF leaders sang the anthem. The EFF maintains the song is a tribute to the struggle against apartheid and should not be interpreted Literally, this is one of the games that gets played in South Africa, is that you either have to choose between the currently racist regime of South African government and the apartheid regime. There's no in between and there's no other solution. The only answer is you have to be totally fine with kill the Boer or you have to be in favor of apartheid. No answer in between. Which is a lie. It is not true. Well, we had the opportunity last week to sit down with Dr. Ernst Root, he's an Afrikaner activist, author and filmmaker from South Africa, to discuss exactly what's going on in South Africa which should terrify anyone who believes in equal protection of the laws. Here's what it sounded like. Dr. Roots, thanks so much for stopping by.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

Really appreciate it.

[Donald Trump]

Thank you very much.

[Ben Shapiro]

So for our listeners who are not.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

Familiar with South Africa, they might be seeing a tweet from President Trump here or a tweet from Elon Musk, but they don't actually know the roots of South African history. And so they look at the racial issues that have arrived there and they.

[Ben Shapiro]

Have sort of a left wing view.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

That'S been drilled into them that essentially this is just a matter of decolonization, colonialism. Why don't we go back to the beginning? What are Afrikaners doing in South Africa?

[Donald Trump]

Well, thank you, Ben, for having me on the show. So the Afrikaner's history in South Africa goes back to 1652, which is before the Declaration of Independence. So we've been there for hundreds of years, almost 400 years. It started initially as a settlement or a refreshment station in the Cape, where Cape Town is today. And eventually they were joined by other groups coming in from Europe, French, Germans, and then in smaller numbers initially some other groups as well. Later the English came. So we have a big white Anglo community in South Africa. And we've been there for hundreds of years. We're not Dutch anymore. We have developed our own culture. We have our own language. We named ourselves after the continent. We are the Afrikaners. Our language is Afrikaans and we have our own literature, our own poetry, our own philosophy. We have all these things that we have had again developed for hundreds of years and over time. Obviously, in any country like this, our history is very similar to the American story, in a sense also with the pioneers, the great track that we had into the interior. In America, you had the track to the West. So. And there's. In a story like this, there's always friction and it's almost like news. People like to focus on the Friction and ignore the cooperation. But there were incredible stories of cooperation between communities in South Africa. But when you talk about history in South Africa now, you're only allowed to talk about the friction when the truth is that we've had a history, a long history of cooperating with communities and so forth. And yes, one thing led to another. The Cape was colonized around the time of the Napoleonic wars by the British. We then moved in towards the interior. We had some battles, we had some treaties, we bought land. There were some areas that weren't settled. You're not allowed to say that. But South Africa wasn't densely populated back then. We started the Boer Republics, the Transvaal and the Free State, which led to the Anglo Boer War after gold and diamonds were discovered, after which, South Africa became a union in 1910, which means all the republics, the kingdoms of the African tribes and so forth, the colonies, everything was combined into one big whole, which became South Africa. And then, of course, we had the apartheid history. And this is a very quick overview leading to the negotiated settlement in 1994, which led to this new South Africa, which was celebrated all over the world as a miracle. And it was sort of the shining example of what the United nations can do to save a country. And the Constitution was celebrated. And now we are here, where it turns out that that story, this miracle story, was not as shining as people would have liked it to be.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

And I think it's that part that is puzzling to people because they've been taught the miracle story. They've seen the movies about Nelson Mandela.

[Ben Shapiro]

They've seen.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

They've seen the films and TV shows about the great moment when apartheid ended. And there's sort of been a ban publicly on talking about the problems that exist in South Africa post that. Because to mention that there are some fairly significant problems, as it turns out in post apartheid South Africa is seen as some sort of endorsement of apartheid itself. Which is a false binary.

[Donald Trump]

Yeah, exactly. So that's the problem that we have, is we have this narrative that you can choose between the apartheid system and the current system. And there's only those two options. You have nothing else to choose from. And so you have to choose what's currently happening in South Africa. And if you don't choose that, or if you say this is a problem, that by definition means you want to go back. You want to go to the apartheid system, which no one wants to do. The fact is that the apartheid system didn't work. The current system isn't working. And we need something else. We need a Better system. But it's been, we are very happy that a lot of people are taking note about what's happening in South Africa because this has been going on for decades and I think the pendulum has swung so far to the one side or to the left. You could say that it has. The narrative about South Africa has become so detached from the realities on ground level that it's just not possible to ignore what's happening in South Africa. And so we are grateful that people are talking about this and people should be talking about it more.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

So let's talk about the history of South Africa since the end of apartheid. Again, that's where most people's story ends, is end of apartheid, happily ever after. What has actually happened? What were the political transformations that took place in South Africa after the settlement of 94?

[Donald Trump]

Well, one way I think to understand what's happening is the negotiations for the new South Africa started immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And that was, you know, the end of history era. And there was a sort of a narrative that capitalism and liberalism has won and it's going to be the standard, the gold standard all over the world eventually. And we need to write a constitution for South Africa along these lines. And the problem with that in South Africa is that it's a very big country, it's very diverse. It's more like Europe than like the US In a certain sense it's almost as big as Western Europe at least. And there are, it's many diverse nations and peoples living there. And so the ruling party, the anc, back then they said the way we're going to do this is we want what they call a national democratic revolution. And that essentially means using democracy as a way to promote socialist ideals. And the way they did that, they said it's going to be a two phase revolution. Phase one is present ourselves as very liberal, very open minded, very pro democracy to get more and more support in South Africa and all over the world, which worked obviously brilliantly. And then the theory or the strategy that they wrote it out, it's all on paper. They said that once we have the power or the levers of power, as they put it, then we should eventually move to the second phase of the revolution. And that means using the state mechanisms to become much more aggressive in implementing socialist policies. And so the first big one was 1996 with the in America you call it DEI, we call it BEE, which is black economic empowerment. But it has nothing to do with empowerment. It's about, it's handing out social grants and it's discriminating against people who aren't black. So they started with that in 1996, which became more and more aggressive over time, up to the point where there are now more than 140 race laws in South Africa today. So that was one strand. Another strand was the property rights thing, where they said, In 2018, we're gonna start a process to change the property rights clause in the constitution so that the state can. Can expropriate private property without compensation, which is just confiscation of property. So that's another strand. And then there's also the strand of the hate speech and real hate speech. I mean, actually targeting a group of people, identifying them based on their ethnicity, and then saying, we need to go out and kill those people. It's not offensive speech. It's calling for the Boers to be slaughtered. And that's combined with political speeches, with statements such as, and this is a direct quote, all white people are criminals and they should be treated as such. And then these politicians would burst out chanting, kill the Boer. Kill the farmer. And the Boers, of course, a reference to the Afrikaner people. And this has been getting worse and worse and worse up to the point where, again, as I said, you cannot ignore what's happening in South Africa. But what's really strange is how people in South Africa and unfortunately in America and some other places are trying to deny the existence of the problem by saying it doesn't exist. But it's. So the farm killings, you have the names of the people who have been murdered. I mean, I knew people who have been murdered on farms. And for someone to say, well, this problem doesn't exist, it's really, really bizarre.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

So let's talk about the details of that, because a few years ago, this started to pop up in the news. I remember we covered it on the show at the time. That's when you and I first got in contact, actually. And the take from the media is that statistically speaking, it's not a big deal.

[Ben Shapiro]

People are being killed at kind of.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

The normal rate that people are killed. There was a comparison between the rate of killing of farmers in rural South Africa to the rate of killing of people in Johannesburg, which is notorious for having significant violence problems. Talk a little bit about that. What's been happening with the killing of farmers?

[Donald Trump]

Well, the counter argument that you presented now is based on the idea that there are other problems as well. Therefore, you shouldn't talk about this problem. And the people who are saying this is a problem, we should do something about this. Are not saying that there aren't other problems. So just to point out the lunacy in this, one way to respond to this is there's a big problem in South Africa with the poaching of rhinos. But no one is saying why are you talking about rhino poaching? You are discriminating against elephants that are also being poached. The fact is that rhinos are poached in disproportionate numbers and it has very particular consequences. And so to say that the farm murders have to stop is not to say that there isn't gang related violence in Johannesburg or Cape Town. But as far as the murders are concerned, it started in 1990 and it gradually got worse and up to so. And there's been some debates on how to calculate it. If you use the police statistics, I think the police data is quite accurate in terms of the murders, but not in terms of the attacks. The attacks are much more like this shadow number that you don't know of than what the police say. But according to police data, if you look at a period of two years, there were two farm attacks every day in South Africa during which two people were murdered every week. So it's. And it's been going on and on and on up. And it's a small community. The farming community is There are about 30,000 commercial farmers in South Africa. So it's a small community. And if you're a farmer in South Africa, you know people who have been murdered. That's just the reality. Or you have been attacked yourself. And I personally know people who've been attacked, people who've been killed and so forth. So that's the one aspect is just the rate at which it's happening. The second aspect is the, the brutality. And it's the worst tortures you can imagine. Really. I can't think of worse methods of torture than the ones that we've seen in South Africa with gorging out of the eyes. We've had one farmer where I grew up, they had a shower nozzle turned up on the highest warm water. They shoved the nozzle down its throat. And there are many, many, many such examples. I mean, I can go on. Every torture you can imagine has been applied during these years.

[Ben Shapiro]

And these are race based murders.

[Donald Trump]

So not all the victims are white. The victims are people of all races. I'm not aware of a black farmer that has been tortured. So it's a big phenomenon and a lot is happening and surely not all of them are politically motivated. Some of Them certainly are. And we know that because sometimes the attackers write political slogans on the walls during these attacks, or they would chant slogans, and then the survivors would come and say. The attackers said something like, die white man, Viva Malema. Who's the politician who's chanting this? Kill the Boer, kill the farmer. So some of them are obviously and overtly politically motivated, and some of them probably aren't, or some of them aren't, but we don't know those statistics in terms of the motivations, but it's very, very alarming.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

So when it comes to the politics here and the excuse that you hear in the world media is when you see videos of Malema saying kill the boar, number one, you'll hear, well, he doesn't actually mean it. It's just song, who cares?

[Ben Shapiro]

Which is absurd on his face.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

But the other thing they'll say is, well, he's part of a party that isn't actually the governing party. ANC is the governing parties. Why are we focusing so much on Malema, for example? Isn't ANC just fine?

[Donald Trump]

Yeah, so he is. Some people have called him the most influential. I think that's an exaggeration. But some have called him the most influential politician in Africa. He's certainly one of the most influential. And certainly in South Africa, his party has had some difficulty in the last election. But the thing is, ideologically, he's not far away from the EFF in terms of rhetoric, he's much worse. I mean, he's not far away from the ruling party, from the anc, in terms of rhetoric, it's worse. And so a few years ago, he made a speech where he. One of the statements he made during that speech was, we are calling. We are going to slit the throat of whiteness. And then everyone was applauding. And then two days after the President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, publicly said, we invite this guy to come back and join our party because we can see that deep down in his heart, he's still a member of the anc. So we do find that the ruling party is a bit more subtle in its approach, although just as racist in terms of the policies that they are implementing. And then we have these parties to the left of them that are much more radical. But again, ideologically, there's not much of a difference. They both, the ruling party and the EFF think of people like Robert Mugabe as a hero. Mao Tse Tung, they think he's a hero. Joseph Stalin, even Maduro, they go, all these. Fidel Castro, all these communist examples. And then they would not only say that these people are heroes, they would say, we need to duplicate their policies, we need to bring their policies. But in South Africa, it's going to work. In as far as they would be willing to concede that it hasn't worked, they would say, this time it's going to work.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

One of the things that is fascinating about what's happening and horrifying is the connection of a sort of communist philosophy of economics with a Franz Fanon decolonization. Violence is the solution and transforms people's spiritual attitude. That seems to have crept in South Africa and is part of a sort of Third Worldism that now spans not just South Africa, but wide parts of the Middle east, enormous parts of Asia. And it's part of a broader movement that we're seeing globally that basically suggests that anyone who is failing is a victim of capitalist excesses, predominantly by white people, and that all of that has to be overthrown.

[Donald Trump]

Yes. So Frantz Fanon has become more and more popular in South Africa, and it seems like in other places of the world. And his philosophy could be summarized in the Wretched of the Earth. He says that more or less that if someone treats you like an animal, you don't need to behave like a human being towards that person. So it's, in a way, a justification of violence. And now the Marxist line on that is, if you are poor, it is because someone stole something from you, and if you are wealthy or successful, it is because you exploited someone or you stole from someone. So being poor by definition means that you are a victim, and being wealthy by definition means you're a perpetrator. But then they blend that with race nationalism, saying that only black people are poor and only white people are rich, or that's the only ones we care about. We only want to talk about wealthy white people and poor black people, when reality is much different than that, of course. And so then they blend these two by saying that the poor and the black. Black South Africans are the same thing, and whites and wealthy South Africans are the same thing, when that's not true. And then they say now, and that's because they stole from us. And so we need to take this stuff. And then we have our own blend of philosophy in South Africa called a Zania critical theory. Azania is sort of the leftist name for South Africa, which is taking some stuff from Frantz Fanon, taking some stuff from philosophers, critical race theory in America, Robin Diangelo, people like that. And then in a way, justifying you Know that we should apply violence. And if you apply violence, it's actually morally, it's appropriate to apply violence to the white, white minority.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

And you can see this manifesting domestically. You can also see it in terms of the foreign policy of South Africa. South Africa famously sponsored this ridiculous International Court of Justice assault on the Israeli government, suggesting that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. And there are deep connections between Hamas and the South African government, between Iran and the South African government. There's presumably money that's changing hands along those lines as well.

[Donald Trump]

Yes. So looking from a South African perspective at that court case, it was really bizarre to watch the arguments because they used the same legal team as was used in South Africa to defend the kill the Boer, kill the farmer chant. So they would say in South Africa that chanting about murdering people based on their ethnicity is not hate speech. And then they would say it's not. Because you have to look at the context. So don't look at the words, look at the context. And the context is, of course, apartheid. So because there was apartheid, we can now talk about killing people in South Africa. And then the same legal team, the same lawyer argued in the, the case against Israel that do not look at the context, so ignore October 7th, that context is irrelevant. And only look at this particular statement that was made by this particular soldier or something like that. And so it's really bizarre. And so the argument was that we need to do this because we have a strong moral conviction and we have a strong sense of morality. And it's in the consistent application of our idea of morality that we have to take Israel to court. When if you really look what that sense of morality is, and you compare the, and you look at the application there of how some of the world's worst dictators, historically they regard as heroes, currently, they would defend them, they would not arrest them when they come to South Africa, even though they are the International Criminal Court, have sanctions on them and so forth. So it's really bizarre. But they seem to get away with that because there is this movement in the world that is so hell bent either on participating in these type of activities or defending it and pretending that, you know, it's okay. Cause morally it's appropriate to be on this side of the argument.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

So what are the answers in South Africa? Obviously, the Trump administration is now applying sanctions or talking about applying sanctions to South Africa based on the racial discrimination in the law, based on their threats to expropriate property from essentially white people. What would the actual solutions be domestically? What would A better govern in South Africa look like?

[Donald Trump]

Yeah, that's the important question. So one way to answer it is in your book Three Steps, Easy Steps to Destroy America. It's in a sense the answer. You said that America. There's a sense of unity in America because of a shared philosophy, a shared culture and a shared history. The problem in South Africa is that we don't have any of those. So we have different. The proper way to think of South Africa is a region. So East Africa is a, is a series of countries. North Africa is a list of countries, West Africa is a list of countries. South Africa is one country. But in South Africa there are many nations living in South Africa and within these nations they have shared philosophy, shared culture, shared history. But as a whole we don't have that. And the problem is if you govern, it's pretty much the equivalent of the European Union as the government of Europe. If you approach things like that necessarily, it would lead to conflict and friction. And so the only long term solution is to work towards a more sustainable political dispensation or political system.

[Ben Shapiro]

Federalism.

[Donald Trump]

Yeah, exactly, federalism. A decentralized system that's based on the idea of self governance, that local communities or cultural communities or however you want to frame it can have a degree of self governance. Because currently we have this very big country. The distance from the north to the south is the distance from Rome to London. And it's just as diverse, perhaps even more diverse than Western Europe. It is more diverse than Western Europe Europe. And so we have this central government trying to enforce its ideas. A government that says our philosophy or ideology is a blend of race, nationalism and socialism as if that's never been tried before. And so it's just not going to work. It's going to lead to more and more friction. So we need to move towards either federalism or some form of decentralization. And that could take many forms.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

I mean, the fact that that's even remotely controversial is sort of beyond me because that is the way that it has historically worked. It worked that way in the United States originally, where even the states, members of states had their own identities. And that's why we have a very weak central government. And that's why Virginia was governed different than Massachusetts, which is governed different from New Hampshire. And the same thing is obviously true in Europe. I mean, much of the angst about the EC and then the EU has been specifically about the idea that a French identity is different from a British identity. And when you have people who are, who don't share A philosophy or a history or a culture or an ideology.

[Ben Shapiro]

Or anything like that.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

What you end up with is one group having to dominate another group. And in one form that can take is apartheid. And a reverse form of that can be a racist regime that cracks down on white people.

[Donald Trump]

Yes.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

And so the idea that, and what you're talking about here is not racial identitarianism. What you're talking about here is cultural affinity and the fact that you have cultural affinities between people. That of course is totally real and inarguable. You're not suggesting that white is better than black, black is better than white, black can't live with white.

[Ben Shapiro]

What you're saying is that there are cultures that are different.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

Those cultures should be able to self govern. And the idea that those cultures have to be put into a system that is ruled top down in tyrannical fashion by either one group grabbing the gun.

[Ben Shapiro]

Or the other group grabbing the gun is unworkable.

[Donald Trump]

Yes. So if democracy means two wolves and a lamb have to vote on what's for dinner, you shouldn't blame the lamb for losing faith in democracy. But the good news is that's not democracy. That's not what democracy is supposed to be. Democracy is about self governance. And unfortunately we have this tyranny of the majority that many Americans have warned about over the centuries where some ideas are just enforced. And let me give you a quick example. We have the name changes in South Africa that's gonna make the country better, just change all the offensive names, which actually started there and now it's sort of flown spilled over to America as well. And so they change. There would be street names and city names named after murderers, people who had just murdered innocent people. And if you ask the ruling party, how do you determine if something is offensive or not, like Church street is offensive, but the name of a murderer is not offensive, Then they would say, we are the people, we represent the people, and therefore we decide. And so it's just not gonna work. And I think the answer is to go to the Jefferson line of eternal solutions. We're not trying to figure out some new ideological solution that no one has ever thought of. It's been a principle since the beginning, since Rome and Athens and Jerusalem. The idea that there must be some form of self governance. People should be able to govern themselves. And with that in mind, you should have mutual relations with other communities. And yes, it is very politically incorrect to talk about that, but we need to break that wall because that's the only way forward. That's the only solution for South Africa.

[Ben Shapiro]

Right.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

I mean, again, I think that one of the things that people are trying to tie this into is sort of white nationalism or white supremacy. And that's a category error. That's not actually what you're talking about.

[Donald Trump]

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And so they try to blend it with all these sort of. These slogans that have been devised to sort of just swipe something off the table. I think there was a saying, one of the biggest Afrikaner entrepreneurs of the previous century, Anton Rupert, who was world famous in his days, said that you can't go to bed and rest assured at night if your neighbour is hungry. And so that's also. And that's an important thing for us as the Afrikaner community. We don't want to find a solution for us at the expense of everyone else, because that's not a solution either. The solution must be a solution for everyone. And I think what we have currently is a problem for everyone. There are very few people who would still say that South Africa is working. They would concede that it's failing. The debate is, is it a failed state or a failing state? But then they would sort of defend the government still. And so it's not working for everyone, for anyone. And so we need to find a solution that would work for people. And the idea that bringing the government closer to the people is an eternal solution, it's something that has been the idea since the Roman Republic and before that, basic Montesquieu.

[Ben Shapiro]

Right?

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

I mean, there's nothing new here. I mean, this is what all the American founders talked about. The idea of your local government is gonna be the government that is best for you, that you do have to have decentralization, that you do have to have local rule, that most of the things you agree on with your neighbors are gonna be things that you agree on with your actual neighbors, not people who live thousands of miles away and share a completely different culture and affinity for different philosophy. Again, the fact that this has become controversial is because we live in a sort of bizarre world where you have to force yourself into these false choices again, that it's either apartheid or it's racial rule by the anc, and there's no in between. There's nothing else that can be done here. And that obviously is untrue. So is there any level of support inside South Africa for this sort of decentralization? How does that level of support.

[Donald Trump]

Yes, it's growing. It's fast growing. So firstly, it's not that controversial anymore to say, look, guys, this isn't working. Again, you would have people in the media defending it. There was a piece just published today in South Africa how expropriation of property would rejuvenate the economy. So you get that. You still get that. But the idea that it's not working is widely accepted. I think the idea that we need to bring government closer to the people is also widely accepted. People agree with that. So there's talk about Cape secession, sort of the Western province. There's really a movement. They're saying we need to break away from South Africa. The Zulus in KwaZulu Natal are concerned that the central government isn't representing them. There's a project called Waranya in the Northern Cape to develop an Afrikaner city. So there are already many such projects. And I think that's naturally where things are headed. There's going to be some form of a crash, you might say, or some form. Something's going to happen in South Africa. And we must just ensure that when something happens, it's a turn to a.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

Better system rather than chaotic violence and warfare in the streets or anything like that. Yes, I mean, I think there's also a great example of how paper guarantees mean nothing if you don't have some level of cultural affinity and unity among the population. When the South African Constitution was written, Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously suggested it was a better constitution than Constitution of the United States because it guaranteed things like a right to health care and a right to housing.

[Donald Trump]

A right to a good environment.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

Exactly. It's like a list of these rights that aren't actually rights. They're things that have to be provided to you by others.

[Ben Shapiro]

And it's not like a right to.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

Free speech, where essentially a right to free speech means you have a duty not to infringe on my free speech. A right to housing means you have a duty to provide me housing. And it turns out that none of that materialized. There's a lack of housing. It turns out that the duty to the right to healthcare doesn't mean that healthcare in South Africa magically materializes in amazing ways, where the healthcare is just tremendous. All these sorts of paper ideas that were put forward at the expense of realism in the 1990s in places like South Africa have completely fallen.

[Donald Trump]

Exactly. And so. And you've spoken about this a lot, it's one thing to talk about rights and rights are great, but if there's no focus on responsibility added to that, then the rights don't mean anything. So almost all of these rights in terms of the difference between dayure and de facto. The de facto reality has gotten worse. Constitution guarantees the right to healthcare, but in reality the health system is deteriorating. The Constitution guarantees good education, but in reality the schools are failing and we can go down the list. And so this idea that if you have something good written as a document that means, you know, the country has been saved is very naive. And I think maybe it's one of the consequences of modern ideologies that, you know, you look at the text and that sort of gives you an overview of what's happening. But you have to look at what's happening in reality and compare those two and the reality between the written document and what we call the actual Constitution. And the written Constitution has gone like this. It's just, it's not comparable anymore. And so the question is then, what does it. It's a great document, but what does it mean to have a great document if that's just not reality? And I think there's an important lesson in that also. That, and this is something that Edmund Burke cautioned against with the French Revolution, saying it's one thing to have great theory, but you need to look at experience and what's happening in the real world before you look at the theory for sure.

[Ben Shapiro]

And one of the things Burke warned.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

About was the idea that these sort of free floating rights were equally applicable at all times in all places, without any roots in the actual soil of a culture. I mean, the idea of Western based rights are based in a particular ideology of the west that is an outgrowth of thousands of years of history. And the idea they sort of magically manifest anywhere you drop them is obviously untrue. You have to put in place institutions, you have to develop cultures around them. And if those things don't happen, then.

[Ben Shapiro]

They don't mean anything.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

It's just a paper.

[Ben Shapiro]

Right.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

So you're looking at what the Trump administration is doing. Obviously, the State Department is now sounding off pretty openly about this. Under Secretary Rubio, what would you like to see the Trump administration do?

[Donald Trump]

Thank you. Well, so we are very grateful for the focus they're putting on what's happening in South Africa. They have announced a process of refugee status to farmers. Now that in a certain sense is good because there are people who want to leave. But I think our message to them is a lot of people and the majority wouldn't want to leave. It's almost like saying to Americans, listen, there's trouble in America, you need to all move to Europe or something like that. So, I mean, we've been there for hundreds of years. That's where our culture became, was developed. That's where our ancestors are buried. And so we are very attached to Africa and we are concerned that if we just leave in big numbers, then we will dissolve as a community and we want to see a future for our community. But there are people who want to leave, and if they want to leave, that's fine. But I think a more sustainable approach would be to work towards some form of dispensational change. Recognising firstly that it's not working, that the problem is wider than just not that the wrong person is the president of the country. If you put a white liberal, make a white liberal the president of South Africa, it's not going to work either because it's a system problem and we need to work towards a better system. And we don't want other countries to solve our problems on our behalf. But I think firstly a recognition that there needs to be a more decentralized solution. And then secondly, support to or initiative to support for initiatives in South Africa to try to promote this. I think that would be good.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

And so for normal American who's watching this, and I think that we've talked about this, that the fact that what's happening in South Africa is a bleeding edge indicator of sort of trends that are growing across the world.

[Ben Shapiro]

Also in the West.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

I mean, this is an internal battle in the west that is happening right now about what exactly the west means. What are the West's values? Do the west values require that you essentially sacrifice all the values of the west on behalf of empty rhetoric about rights or about constitutional guarantees or about that sort of stuff like what does it mean to be a member of a culture?

[Ben Shapiro]

What does it mean to be a member of the West?

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

What do you recommend that resources for Americans want to learn more about this and also if Americans want to help, because this actually does have ramifications far beyond what's going on just in South Africa.

[Donald Trump]

Yeah, there are many ways in which people can help. One way is just to help to talk about this. The more people talk about this, the better. The easier it is to better solutions. The easier it is, for example, for the government to do something or people in Europe to support. So help spread the message. That's one way. But another way is there are many institutions in South Africa. If people spend a little time looking into what's happening in South Africa, they will find that there are a lot of institutions who are working towards some form of decentralization or working towards community organizing, towards safety initiatives, towards things like that. And I think support for such institutions will definitely go a long way.

[Dr. Ernst Roots]

Well, Dr. Ernst Roots, really appreciate you being here, and thanks for what you're doing.

[Donald Trump]

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me on the show.

[Ben Shapiro]

All right, you guys. Coming up, Representative Jasmine Crockett, the hot new face of the Democratic Party. She just goes totally racist. Plus, we'll jump into the mailbag. Remember, you can only ask questions in the mailbag and hear my answers if you are a member over at Dave Daily Wire. Plus, if you're not, now's the moment. Become a member. Use code Shapiro checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.