Caroline Levitt (13:58)

Later this afternoon, President Trump will sign an executive order on law and order and another executive order on sanctuary cities. The first EO will strengthen and unleash America's law enforcement to pursue criminals and protect innocent citizens. The second EO is centered around protecting American communities, communities from criminal aliens. And it will direct the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to publish a list of state and local jurisdictions that obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Ben Shapiro (14:28)

Okay, so all of that is quite good. He signed three executive orders, including one that instructed Pam Bondi and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Christine Ohm, to pursue all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures against so called sanctuary cities. Again, that is correct. If you have said so, here's the deal. Local law enforcement cannot be militarized by the federal government under the Posy Comitatus act to actually enforce federal law. That is not a thing. However, obstruction of justice, which is a thing that has been happening in these sanctuary cities where ICE goes in and you have local law enforcement actively obstructing, getting in the way, declaring their sanctuary cities, and going out of their way to sort of thwart federal law. That is something that the federal government should be cracking down on. Another one of these executive orders aims to bolster legal resources to police officers accused of wrongdoing. The third seeks to enforce existing laws requiring professional truck drivers to be proficient in English. Is according to the New York Times. Now, President Trump, of course, has also been unleashing ICE to actually go after illegal immigration wherever they find it in significant numbers. One of the big sort of splashy stories that happened over the weekend is U.S. federal agents, according to CNN, are early Sunday raided what authorities described as an underground nightclub in Colorado Springs and took into Custody More than 100 migrants accused of being in the country illegally. According to the dea. Jonathan Pon, the special agent in charge, said what was happening inside was a significant drug trafficking, prostitution crimes of violence. We seized a number of guns in there. So again, the raid had been planned for months. According to the dea, during surveillance, investigators documented drug trafficking, prostitution, and presence of people suspected to be members of the Venezuelan gang Trend Aragua, the international gang ms.13, as well as the Hells Angels. This is a very large raid. Attorney General Bondi, in explaining the nature of the raid, explained there have been a bunch of 911 phone calls during the Biden administration, basically ignored.

Caroline Levitt (16:25)

So to back up, during the Biden administration, they received 179, 911 calls to that club alone. That club we were just watching. 170 calls. Wouldn't you think that would have been a red flag? Nothing happened. Guns, shootings, ag batteries, nothing happened.

Ben Shapiro (16:42)

Okay, so again, this is the upside of the Trump administration immigration. They've been doing an excellent job even though courts have been attempting to hamstring them pretty much every step of the way. In sort of a funny corollary to the the immigration situation over the weekend, Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, her handbag was stolen. She had put it underneath a chair in a restaurant and person atchers grabbed it. Well, the suspects were then nabbed by the authorities and one of them, it turns out, was apparently in the country, not legally. So that was a bad idea. Tom Homan, the bulldog border czar, had a bit of a, a funny quip about all of this. I, I don't have a criminal history, but I know the one that stole the purse is supposedly in the country legally. But, you know, pick the wrong person, steal first from. I mean, Secretary Noemi's a strong, strong secretary. Okay, so again, the Trump administration on this matter has actually been completely thorough. They are doing a good job on all of this and they're being very aggressive in their public facing about all of it as well. According to Axios, Trump administration officials late Sunday began placing dozens of posters of arrested unauthorized immigrants along the White House driveway. The posters retreat arrested, specify various crimes linked to the pictured immigrants, and have the White House's official logo at the bottom, according to Axios. So all of these posters were designed to point out that again, the goal here is to deport criminal illegal immigrants. Hundreds of these posters were put up and this is still President Trump's most popular issue, the immigration issue as well it should be. Meanwhile, the DOJ is reorienting in a positive direction as well. Our friend Herme Dhillon, who, full disclosure, we've worked with on a bunch of legal cases, her law firm is excellent. She moved over from her law firm to head the civil rights division over at the Department of Justice. And she's now reorienting the DOJ toward pushing against institutional discrimination under the Civil Rights act, including universities. And now that's been apparently a great way of getting people at DOJ to who are in fact many of them sort of deep state members embedded with the left to quit. According to the New York Times, hundreds of lawyers and other staff members are leaving the DOJ civil rights division as veterans of the office say they've been driven out by Trump administration officials who want to drop its traditional work in order to aggressively pursue cases against the Ivy League other schools in liberal cities. Well, good, hermeet said in an interview over the weekend. Now over 100 attorneys decided they'd rather not do what their job requires them to do. I think that's fine, she said. We don't want people in the federal government who feel like it's their pet project to go persecute police departments. The job here is to enforce federal civil rights law, not woke ideology. Now again, that is great. Harmeet is terrific. She's doing a great job over there. And it's specifically because again, that the administration is doing so many really important things that I am concerned about the administration's sort of generalized foreign policy approach. Because administrations rise and fall as a unit. If the American people like President Trump's immigration policy but do not like his economic plans, and the economic plans are pulling in the 30s right now, that is going to sink how they feel about his immigration agenda. If the American people like what President Trump is doing on dei, I love what President Trump is doing on dei, but they don't like his foreign policy or believe that his foreign policy is going to lead to a more fractious and conflict ridden world that drags him down. Again, presidencies rise or fall as a unit. Now one of these sort of truisms of American politics, that foreign policy doesn't tend to matter all that much. Well, here's the thing. It doesn't matter all that much until it absolutely does. Excellent example of this would be Joe Biden. So if you look at Joe Biden's approval rating during his presidency, his approval ratings from the time he was elected were fairly high. After his election, his original approval ratings were up in the 50s and then they started to slowly decline. Where they really started to cross streams, where the disapprove versus the approved started to cross streams was specifically around the withdrawal from Afghanistan. So his numbers had been declining, albeit slowly. And then the Withdrawal from Afghanistan absolutely cratered him. He was underwater the rest of his administration, because it turns out there's one thing Americans do not like, that is our enemies winning. We don't like it. And the world is filled with American enemies. And those enemies, yes, include Russia, yes include China, yes include Iran. Not because we don't like them, but because they very clearly do not like us and have their own actual interests. They say those interests out loud. I'm always bemused and puzzled by people who seem to believe that Iran, China, Russia, that our foreign enemies are only reacting to us as opposed to they have independent interests that conflict with ours, that their agenda for the world is not the same as ours, and they see us as an enemy. That is very clearly true. For example, about the Russians. They're not shy about this. I discussed this on the show at length on Friday. Went through the thought of Alexander Dugin. That happens to match up with the thought of Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov and everybody else who is in power in Russia. They believe that the great obstacle to Russian imperial ambition is the Atlantic alliance, meaning NATO, but effectively the United States. If Russia is able to take over Ukraine, this is one of their chief goals. It has been since the 90s. If they're able to completely ingest Ukraine, regardless of how many Americans don't care about Ukraine, they will care if Vladimir Putin starts strolling through the center of Keef. The same thing was true about Afghanistan. Look at the polls. Americans did not like that we were there in Afghanistan. You know what they liked even worse? When we withdrew in shame in September of 2021. When that happened, it absolutely cratered the Biden presidency. If Ukraine were to be full scale taken over by the Russians, that'd be quite bad for the United States, for our allies, for NATO, for all the other countries that are along the borders of Russia, and for international politics more generally. Because by the way, if Russia were able to completely ingest Ukraine, the next step would very obviously be a blockade of Taiwan by the Chinese government. They start to occupy the allying islands. And so far, President Trump, when it comes to Taiwan, has said that if that were to happen, we'd hit them with tariffs. Okay, well, we're already hitting them with tariffs and it doesn't seem to be deterring them at all, as we'll get to in a moment. First, not everyone who handles your personal information is going to be as careful as you are. It only takes one mistake to expose it to hackers and identity theft. That's why there's a new victim of identity theft every five seconds in the United States. Fortunately, there's Lifelock. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock US based restoration specialist will help solve identity theft issues on your behalf, guaranteed your money back. Plus, all LifeLock plans are backed by the million dollar protection package, meaning Lifelock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan if you lose money due to identity theft. You can't control how diligent others are with your personal information, but with Lifelock, you can help protect it. My producer Justin, he uses Lifelock and it gives him the peace of mind to know that his information is safe. He act right now. Save up to 40% your very first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code BEN or go to lifelock.com BEN for 40% off terms. Apply again. Go check them out right now. Lifelock.com BEN get 40% off your very first year. 1-800-LIFELock or lifelock.com BEN use promo code BEN also, why should Americans be worried about higher taxes on carried interest? Right? That sounds like a rich person thing. Well, the answer is because hiking the tax on carried interest means higher taxes on investments that are currently helping Main street economies grow and thrive. Left wing politicians in Washington have been trying to raise taxes on carried interest for years. They'd love America's tax rate to be higher than China, France, Germany, even Canada. Well, we don't want that to happen. American investment should stay in America, fueling the growth of businesses that create jobs and build communities. America's private equity investors directly support 13 million hardworking American jobs. It's time to take a stand for small business and speak up against tax increases on American investment. Tax hikes on carried interest are bad for the country. So what is carried interest? Basically, carried interest is the share of a profit of an investment that's paid to an investment manager. That is basically sort of an alternative investment bonus. So if you invest really well, then you get carried interest. And that carried interest then is taxed at a capital gains tax rate as opposed to a basic income tax rate. Why is that important? Because again, the way to incentivize better investment is in fact to keep the taxes low. Tax hikes on carried interest are bad for America, just like tax hikes generally are not good for the country. That is one of the reasons why you should care about all of this. This has been paid for by the American Investment Council. So what exactly is the Trump Administration approach with regard to Ukraine, it remains unclear. Russia continues to be intransigent. So Russia lies about their policies all the time. They are now ordering, quote, unquote, a three day unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine, supposedly for next week, according to the New York Times. Of course, their last ceasefire, which was for Easter, really wasn't a ceasefire. They're flying drones the entire ceasefire. I know because I was over there. According to the New York Times, the Kremlin said Russian forces would stop fighting on May 8 for 72 hours to mark the May 9 celebration of the Soviet Union's victory in World War II, which is a major holiday in Russia. In Russia, they do not celebrate the signing of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, which probably led to World War II in the first place. But put that aside. The Kremlin said during this period, all hostilities will cease. Russia believes the Ukrainian side should follow this example. And then Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the declaration underlines our willingness to get on the path toward a peaceful resolution. Well, no, it doesn't. If they wanted a 30 day ceasefire, they could do that literally right now, like today. They don't need these three day fake ceasefires, which are obviously an attempt to slow play the Trump administration. By the way, the demands of the Russians still today include full demilitarization of Ukraine. According to the New York Post, Russia shamelessly demanded the US Lifted sanctions and that Kyiv be demilitarized and recognized that 20% of Ukraine belongs to Russia. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted on Monday that Russia will accept nothing less than total victory over Ukraine. After Steve. After Steve Witkoff, the Trump special envoy. Again, the idea that Steve Witkoff has any sort of special negotiating expertise, I want to see one iota of evidence that this is the case, because he seems to just travel around the world being taken in by various dictators. The Emir of Qatar, or being taken in by Vladimir Putin, with whom he said he was striking up a friendship. When asked by the Brazilian newspaper O Globo what terms would Russia agree to come to the negotiation table with Ukraine, Lavrov then rattled off a list of items, quote, the international recognition of Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson of Parisia, regions as part of Russia as sovereign Russian territory, and then demilitarization, he insisted that basically Ukraine give up its military and also that at the same time the west lift all the sanctions and they changed their constitution. Okay, so in the Ukrainian constitution is a commitment to try to pursue entry into NATO. So they'd have to change their own constitution. So all of that says that the Russians are not interested whatsoever. I mean, there's no evidence of their desire for any serious peace negotiation here. Because what Lavrov is saying here is obviously complete non starter. Okay, but what is the US's perspective going to be here? Well, J.D. vance, the Vice President of the United States, he was on with our friend Charlie Kirk and he says if this doesn't stop, if the war doesn't stop, the Ukrainians won't win. Okay, well that's true if you cut off support for them. And by the way, there are actually three possible outcomes. One would be heavy support to the Ukrainians, sufficient that they actually push Russia out of these areas. That is a very unlikely outcome because it would require heavy levels of support the west is not willing to provide and risks the possibility of more Russian escalation. Then there is possible outcome number two, the most plausible and the outcome and the one that the west should be pursuing, and that is effectively a 1953 style Korean armistice. Meaning the lines are drawn where they are drawn. The war ends, Ukraine remilitarizes, strengthens, and everybody moves forward. Okay, and then there's possibility number three, which is that Ukraine just completely collapses because the west withdraws. Now here's the Vice President.

J.D. Vance (28:55)

If this doesn't stop, the Ukrainians aren't winning the war. I think there's this weird idea among the mainstream media that if this thing goes on for just another few years, the Russians will collapse, the Ukrainians will take their territory back and everything will go back to the way that it was before the war. That is not the reality that we live in. If this thing goes on for another few years, we could have, you know, societies collapsing. The demographics of both of these countries are a nightmare. You could have millions of more people killed if this thing goes on for another few years and it can risk escalating into nuclear war.

Ben Shapiro (29:31)

Okay, so I have a question. What is the solution then? Because you need to get the Russians to the table. It takes two to tango. I mean, so I'm hearing Vance correctly assess that Ukraine is not going to be taking back Crimea or the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson region anytime soon. That's true, but what, like in order for there to be a deal, the Russians need to come to the table. What is the thing that would drive the Russians to the table? So far I'm not seeing it. And Steve Witkoff doesn't seem to be doing anything to actually to get the Russians to the table at all meanwhile, President Trump over the course of the last 24 hours has been saying that he believes there will be a deal with Iran. Now let me ask a very simple question. President Trump called the Obama deal with Iran the jcpoa. He called it literally the worst deal in history. In history. He said it over and over and over. Here's President Trump saying it.

Donald Trump (30:25)

I think the whole Iran deal is the dumbest deal that you can imagine. I think it's going to go down as one of the worst deals in the history of this country, maybe of the world. Never ever, ever in my life have I seen any transaction so incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran. It's just unbelievable. I think it's the worst document I've ever seen as far as administration. Let me ask you this concerned. The Iran deal was one of the worst and most one sided transactions the United States has ever entered into. Frankly, that deal is an embarrassment to the United States and I don't think you've heard the last of it. That horrible, disgusting, absolutely incompetent deal with Iran. I tell you what, I guarantee you.

Ben Shapiro (31:18)

That if I were president, this deal wouldn't be made.

Donald Trump (31:20)

A deal would be made that's a hundred times better.

Ben Shapiro (31:24)

So what was that terrible deal that Obama cut with Iran? Well, it included the so called P5 plus one, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, China, France, Russia, the UK the US and Germany, P5 plus one and the EU all signed in for the JCPOA, which is Obama's awful Iran deal. Again, not, not me saying it was an awful deal. President Trump saying it was an awful deal. What exactly did it do? Well basically it set a 10 year limit on the use of particular centrifuges. According to the Council on Foreign Relations synopsis of the deal, Iran agreed not to produce either highly enriched uranium or plutonium that could be used in a nuclear weapon. And they said they were going to ensure that. For now natals and the Iraq facilities, which are their, their various nuclear facilities, pursued only civilian nuclear energy. Now let's be real about this. Iran doesn't need nuclear energy like at all. They're one of the most oil rich, natural gas rich regions on planet earth. They are not technologically sophisticated, they are not interested in a green new revolution over there. The reason they are pursuing nuclear facilities is because they are pursuing nuclear weapons. Quite obviously the JCPOA was supposed to limit the numbers and types of centrifuges that Iran could operate and the IAEA was supposed to somehow enforce that they Were going to be allowed to use their centrifuges to spin up to a certain level of purity in their uranium enrichment in their uranium. If you enrich uranium to 5%, that's good for like a nuclear power plant at 20%, you can do it for a research reactor or medical purposes. You need 90% uranium enrichment in order to get to nuclear. So the idea was keep them to 5%. But the problem, of course, is that the spin up from 5 to 90 is actually quite fast. It doesn't take years to spin up uranium from 5% enrichment to 90% enrichment. The deal also got rid of sanctions on Iran, freed up them to use money for ballistic and terrorist activity. Ballistic missiles and terrorist activity. The IAEA was supposed to monitor them, but they weren't giving them full authority to see anything in Fordow or Natanz or any of the rest of their nuclear reactors. That's the deal that President Trump said was the worst deal ever. Okay, that's the deal. It also had a 10 year sunset that basically said after 10 years all the sanctions are gone and Iran can develop nuclear weapons. So it was clearly an awful deal. So the question right now is what deal is the Trump administration seeking to cut? And you hear a bunch of conflicting messages from the Trump administration. One of them, the only one that would be sufficient, is complete denuclearization of Iran. No nuclear facilities. None. Why? Well, because why would you possibly trust the, the molotocracy in Iran not to lie about what they are doing with their nuclear facilities? I mean, first of all, they don't even need to lie. We all know what they're doing with their nuclear facilities. You think they are really trying to power up their country on nuclear energy? That's like their big, that's their big priority. In a country that can't even export oil right now, they have such an oil glut that their entire economy has basically cratered because of the maximum pressure campaign of President Trump. So if you were to get rid of the sanctions and then to sign off on, well, they can have nuclear, but they can't actually have like nuclear nuclear. That is just the Obama deal. That's just Obama 2.0. Well, President Trump, after saying all that about the Obama nuclear deal, said yesterday that Iran's deal is going to happen.

Donald Trump (34:38)

On the Iran situation. I think we're doing very well. I think a deal is going to be made there that's going to, that's going to happen. Pretty sure it's going to happen. We'll have, we'll have something without having to start dropping bombs all over the place.

Ben Shapiro (34:54)

Okay, well, the problem with that, obviously, is that when the President says a deal will happen, we'll have something without dropping bombs all over the place. Well, I mean, first of all, it's not necessary for the United States to drop bombs all over the place. I mean, I'm sure it'd be helpful to Israel, for example, if the United States were to lend some B2s for one sortie over Iran. And that could destroy the nuclear facilities. And no, it wouldn't start a giant world war. Iran is so weak right now that after Israel destroyed their entire air defense system, they uselessly fired a bunch of missiles at Israel, which caused zero casualties. So this idea that Iran is like a sleeping giant waiting to awake if their nuclear reactors are finished off is not true. That's not true whatsoever. And we also know that the United States actually has struck significant Iranian targets before with no actual serious blowback, including the killing of Qasem Soleimani during Trump administration number one. But if the Trump administration were to sign a crappy deal with Iran, that would allow them a pathway to a nuclear weapon, that would allow them to open up their markets again to reconstitute their terror network. That would not be good for the world either, and would be bad for the Trump administration. And then there is China. China continues to grow more and more aggressive, and this is where our trade policy comes in. So if the idea was that tariffs on China were somehow going to curb their aggressive intent, that is not yet in evidence, at the very, very least. And again, there have been some mixed signals from the Trump administration on this. Remember, TikTok is still operating despite the fact that there is a congressional mandate for TikTok to come to an end or at least be divested of its Chinese ownership. Right now, China is making aggressive moves in the South China Sea. According to the Washington Post, the Philippines and China have each unfurled their flags on a disputed reef claimed by both nations in the South China Sea, escalating tensions, reigniting hostilities over Beijing's expansive territorial claims in regional waters. Now, why does that matter? Well, because the South China Sea is the source of pretty much all shipping coming from the Far east to the rest of the world, and vice versa. So a lot of shipping moves through the South China Sea. I asked my friend and sponsor, Perplexity, approximately how much? And the answer is, according to estimates, one third of all global maritime trade, somewhere between 30 and 33%, passes through the South China Sea every year. That's like 3.4 to $3.6 trillion worth of goods annually is particularly important for energy shipments. About 40% of all global petroleum products and 45% of crude oil transported by sea pass through the South China Sea, its crucial artery for China, Japan, South Korea, and many other Southeast Asian nations. A Chinese takeover of the South China Sea could effectively cut off the east from the west in a lot of very important ways, which is why I also asked Perplexity about China targeting islands and land masses in the South China Sea. There are a couple of areas where China has been particularly heavy on. This one is called the Spratley Islands. They've apparently reclaimed land and built artificial islands on seven reefs in the Spratly Archipelago, equipping them with military installations, airstrips, ports and surveillance equipment. There have also been recent standoffs, as we mentioned, at Sandy Cay, which is a small sandbar near Thitu island, which is controlled by the Philippines. There's also the Paracel Islands. China's controlled those since 1974, but they've been increasing their militarization. They've actually been attempting to build entire islands in the Spratlys in an attempt to. To maximize military presence there. Who controls the South China Sea has a bottleneck on global trade, which is one of the reasons why the Chinese are attempting to turn the South China Sea into essentially a Chinese lake. Manila deployed Navy and Coast Guard ship Sunday to San DK and two neighboring islands where its national flag was planted, according to a statement in photos from its national task force for the West Philippine Sea. And that, of course, is a response to China's Coast Guard seizing the sandbank earlier this month and then planting their own flag on it. Now, again, China is moving aggressively to consolidate space in this entire area, figuring that if it can push the US Navy further and further away from Taiwan, that will also solidify its opportunity to take Taiwan or blockade Taiwan, which would completely melt down the world economy, probably comparatively to China's benefit. Now, again, the way that President Trump was attempting to deal with this was through a. A massive tariff on China. As I've said before, I'm totally on board with this. President Trump should be doing that. But you actually have to fulfill the preconditions before you do that. You have to make sure that you are economically ready for that, militarily ready for that, your supply chains are in order and all the rest. The question is whether President Trump is actually doing that, this whole tariff process because he's trying to shut down China or because he has a sort of bizarre view of. Of trade. So President Trump did an interview with the Atlantic. Now, again, I don't think the president should be doing interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg. I think Jeffrey Goldberg is the lowest of the low. He was an Obama stenographer. And reaching out to the Atlantic, I just don't see why. But President Trump gave an interview to Jeffrey Goldberg in which he talked about his tariff plan. And here is how he discussed it. Quote, look, we lost trillions of dollars last year on trade with Biden. Trillions of dollars. Every year we lose trillions. Trillions, right. Hundreds of billions, but basically trillions. We went over the ledge into the T world T word. And I can't imagine it's sustainable to have a country that can lose that much money for years into the future. Okay? So, first of all, it's not how trade deficits work. You're not losing money when you run a trade deficit any more than I lose money when I buy a product from the grocery store. That money comes back in the form of people buying Treasuries, in the form of people investing in American companies, in the form of them buying real estate. The money comes back just in a different. On capital services, there's all sorts of ways the money comes back. It just may not be on manufactured goods. He says, we're going to be very rich. We're going to make a lot of money. I don't think the answer is that it will affect me. It always affects you a little bit, I don't think. There's certainly no theory, like you say, that if it hits a certain number, I don't know where it is today. How's the stock market? And then he said, this is a transition period. It's a big transition. I'm resetting the table. I'm resetting a lot of years. Not from the beginning. You know, our country was most successful from 1850 or so. To think of this, from 1870, really, from 1870 to 1913. And it was all tariffs. And then some great genius said, let's go and tax the people instead of taxing other countries. So, again, that is a vision of tariffs that is very much in line with the idea that he just likes tariffs. And so what he's doing with China is actually more of a cover for his love of tariffs than it is about boxing in China. Either way, the markets are not responding particularly well to this. And again, the effect of the tariffs has not really hit yet. The empty ships are going to start arriving any moment now. According to investors, business Daily. The Port of Los Angeles is now warning that there will be difficult decisions ahead as all the shipments from China cease again. It is one thing to cut off China at the knees. It's another thing to set up a trading system that actually in some ways benefits China comparatively, meaning that if the EU doesn't cut off China but the United States does, if countries in Southeast Asia start reorienting toward China as opposed to the United States, that is not a win for the United States, particularly when the president is slamming those countries with their own tariffs. According to Investors Business Daily, President Trump's trade war policies are expected to bring about a 35% decline in cargo arriving at the Port of LA by next week. That is according to the executive director, Gene Soroka. His warning came during the port's Board of harbor commissioners meeting April 24, with the executive director saying retailers and manufacturers typically put in orders to factories in Asia around three to four months in advance of shipments. Trump's 90 day pause on the broad reciprocal tariffs resulted in no real difference for businesses because everybody is sort of not sure what's going to happen whether Trump puts those back in place or not. He added that US Exporters are getting hit hard by retaliatory tariffs amid Trump's trade war, and that includes agriculture, heavy duty manufacturing and information technology services. Unions are starting to sound off right? This is supposed to benefit manufacturing unions, but the long short and warehouse union came out with a very strong statement yesterday, quote, unquote, unequivocally condemning the recent tariffs the Trump administration has imposed. Tariffs are taxes. These and other reckless, short sighted policies have begun to devastate American workers, harm critical sectors of the economy and line the pockets of the ultra wealthy at the expense of hardworking families. Prices for food, gas, household goods are rising due to tariffs. Again, this is a very strong statement from a union, right? Those are the people that President Trump is supposedly attempting to protect with a lot of this tariff policy. Now, President Trump has also suggested that revenue from tariffs is going to somehow replace the income tax. Well, if that were to happen, basically you'd have to increase tariffs on all incoming goods to the United States by 67% or something. You'd have to increase them to 67% and then you'd have to assume no drop off in actual purchases in order to replace anything remotely like the income tax. As the Wall Street Journal points out, Trump's statements point to a central riddle of his trade agenda. Whether the point of higher tariffs is raising money or gaining leverage to strike better deals with trading partners, as some administration officials and congressional Republicans insist. But the idea that, that we are going to be replaced. Listen, if we were able to replace the income tax and tariffs, I'd be for it. It's just the math doesn't work. And so the biggest thing right now that matters for Republicans is getting this gigantic, big, beautiful bill done. It has to get done. It just has to. Because if that falls through, if there is no preservation of the Trump tax cuts, the economy is going to freefall. So right now, Speaker Johnson is pushing for passage of the big, beautiful bill by Memorial Day, which is four weeks away. According to Politico. House Republicans will launch a legislative sprint when they return to Washington on Monday, with key committees set to finally put GOP pledges on taxes, energy, defense, and border security into legislative text. The problem is unclear if you can get everybody on board, including many of the conservatives in the caucus. Representative Darren LaHood of Illinois suggested his colleagues on the House Ways and Means Committee will not be ready to advance the tax portion of the bill until early June, which, of course, is way past the Memorial Day deadline. There's been a lot of infighting inside the House Republican caucus. Meanwhile, Johnson is pushing to move quickly, but there are a lot of pitfalls ahead. On spending, Republicans still haven't seen a plan to meet the shared goal of slashing $1.5 trillion in spending over the next 10 years. And some Republicans want that number to be even higher. But then you have some populist Republicans say Josh Howley in the Senate, who doesn't want to cut Medicaid at all, doesn't want to touch any of the entitlement programs. So it will take a, an act of political leisure domain. It will have to be basically political magic for Johnson and th to get something through. I think it will happen, but it's going to be a complex and difficult process. Absolutely. For sure. Okay. Meanwhile, in other news, the media continue to melt down over the failures of 60 Minutes to basically allow the inmates to run the asylum. So 60 Minutes has had serious credibility and reporting problems for quite a while. It's a very biased program. Sherry Redstone, who's the head of CBS's parent company Paramount, has basically asked to screen or at least know what exactly 60 Minutes is talking about. And this, this caused Bill Owens, who was the show's executive producer, to resign because he basically said, if I don't get to run the show the way that I want, well, then I'm not going to run the show at all. Well, Scott Pelley who is one of the faces of 60 Minutes. He did a monologue at the end of 60 Minutes on Sunday in which he ripped into management.

Scott Pelley (46:05)

Stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial lately. The Israel, Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way. But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked. But Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires. No one here is happy about it. But in resigning, Bill proved one thing. He was the right person to lead 60 minutes all along.

Ben Shapiro (46:52)

Well, was he though? Was he? Because here is the thing. You have Scott Pelley there saying they do a wonderful job with all these stories. Well, here was Leslie Stahl, like two weeks ago asking a person who was literally in a Hamas tunnel, like kidnapped by Hamas in a Hamas tunnel, whether Hamas was nice to him or not. Just genius level journal. I can't imagine why Shari Redstone was concerned about 60 Minutes. They were beating me and starving me. Do you think they starved you or they just didn't have food? No, I think they starved me and they, they would often eat in front of me and not on offer me food. I mean, what a crazy question from Leslie Stahl. Do you think that actually they were starving? Or maybe, maybe it was the Israelis starving them, which is why you were st. Hamas has been stealing all the food aid coming in. It's the reason why Israel has now cut off the food aid is because Hamas was stealing all of it. And the only way to get the hostages free, presumably, is to actually cut off the. That's what 60 Minutes is. So what they're really mad about is the same thing that the Washington Post editors were mad about when Jeff Bezos was like, guys, by the way, you don't get to basically, basically run whatever you want using an outlet that I own. So again, 60 Minutes has been a wildly biased program for decades. They're getting what they deserve right now. And no, Bill Owens isn't a hero for standing up to management in any way, shape or form already. Coming up, we'll get to a brand new study on the abortion pill that says the reverse of what many people on the left have been saying. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.