Donald Trump (2:44)

Because they're being killed, and we don't want to see people be killed. Now South Africa leadership is coming to see me. I understand. Sometime next week. And, you know, we're supposed to have a, I guess a G20 meeting there or something, but we're having a G20 meeting. I don't know how we can go unless that situation's taken care of. But it's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about, but it's a terrible thing that's taking place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they're white or black makes no difference to me. But white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.

Ben Shapiro (3:29)

Okay, the last part is actually the relevant part. We'll talk about about whether in fact there's a quote unquote genocide of whites in South Africa in just a little while with Dr. Ernst Roots, who is the Deputy CEO of Afraforum. And we will talk with him about what exactly is happening there, because obviously he's the guy on the ground. He's been on the show before and wanted to get an update. But in order to understand why the United States is bringing Afrikaners to the United States, we actually have to know a little bit of the history. So Afrikaners, Boers have been in South Africa since 1652. That's when the Dutch East India Company established a station at the Cape of Good Hope. What does this mean? Well, it means that for legitimately 350 years, there have been white people in South Africa. Originally, the the Africa were Dutch. Eventually they were joined by both German and French citizens. The British Empire came in the early 19th century to establish its own colonies in South Africa. Eventually this led to conflict. The British expanded their reach. The Boers made their way inland because they didn't actually want to be under the the edict of the British Empire. Eventually there were some conflicts. The biggest conflict was the second Boer War. That was because the Africans were in an area called the Transvaal. The Transvaal, it turned out, was a region very heavy in gold. Today you hear about the BRICS nations and you hear about the reliance on gold. South African gold has been a very big thing for a century and a half. The finding of gold in the Transvaal essentially incentivized the British Empire to try and expand its holdings in South Africa, leading to the second Boer War that eventually ended with the British empire victorious in 1948. Fast forward half a century. The National Party came to power and adopted a formal regime of apartheid. By 1950, the races were being categorized by law with special privileges for whites as opposed to blacks. In 1960, the so called Sharpeville massacre ended with the death of 69 anti apartheid protesters. In 1961, Nelson Mandela, who you'll know from all the movies of course, and the fact that he's one of the most famous men who ever lived, declared the end of nonviolent resistance and actually began engaging in violent activities to directed against the government. He was arrested the next year. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. And he would end up spending nearly the next three decades in prison. In 1965, South Africa finally gained its independence, but as Rhodesia with a whites only government. So the regime of apartheid, black people had no say in the government. They had no say over the direction of the country. Over time, international pressure led to the eventual end of apartheid with the ban on the African National Congress, which was Mandela's party and ended in 1990. Mandela was freed from prison in 1994. He was eventually inaugurated as president of South Africa. And according to the media, that's where the story basically ends. Because we're not supposed to talk about anything that happened after the end of apartheid. Apartheid bad apartheid ends everything hunky dory from here on in. Now two things can be true at once. Apartheid was an evil system. It was wrong morally and it was bad also. Things that happened after apartheid. Lots of bad things have happened after apartheid. There are lots of bad things in the world and, and one of the dumb ways to cover politics is to suggest that because a bad thing is happening in one direction, that means no bad things have ever happened in the other direction or will ever happen in the other direction. So since the end of apartheid, there has been a radical upsurge in the amount of racial discrimination against whites. Now we have to discuss the sort of population of whites in South Africa. How many whites are there? So let's talk about the population breakdown of South Africa by race. I turn to our sponsors over at Perplexity to answer that question. What is the population breakdown of South Africa by race and how has it changed since 1900? So today, black Africans represent about 81.4% of the population of South Africa. Colored, which is a reference in South Africa to people of mixed race ethnicity, represent 8.2%. Whites represent 7.3%. Is a massive change since about 1900. So if you look at the population in 1904, for example, according to our friends at Perplexity, 67.3% of the population was black African. But fully a fifth, 21.6%, was white. Even as of 1960, those population percentages were relatively similar. That 68% of the population of South Africa was black African. Almost 20% was white. By 1996, those percentages had shifted dramatically. Suddenly, 77% of the South African population was black African, as opposed to 11% white. And today, obviously, the white population has dropped dramatically even further than that. The government has increasingly started to pass laws that are directed against whites in South Africa. Most famously, just this year, the South African president, a guy named Cyril Ramaphosa, who again is the head of the anc. The ANC has been the governing party in South Africa since. Since literally 1994, which should be strange to you. I mean, usually you don't have one party that governs an entire country for 30 years, but that's what's happening in South Africa. He has now turned a bill into a law allowing land seizures by the state without compensation. This is one of the things that is driving so much angst and the possibility of violence in South Africa is the great fear that South Africa is going to do the same thing that Robert Mugabe did in Zimbabwe, in which Zimbabwe basically just expropriated all land from from whites and then targeted them as a government. Because land ownership in South Africa is still disproportionately white. And what that means is that South Africa, in an attempt to enact reparative justice. This is why reparations are always a problem, because you are taking away from a living human being because of something their grandparents did. When you do that, what you end up with is a system of racial discrimination. According to the BBC back in January, black people own only a small fraction of farmland nationwide. More than 30 years after the end of the racist system of apartheid, the majority remains with the white minority. This has led to frustration and anger over the slow pace of reform, Ramaphosa's ANC party hailed the law as a significant milestone in the country's transformation. Some members of the coalition government say that they might challenge it in court. The law outlines how expropriation can be done and and on what basis by the state and replaces the pre Democratic Expropriation act of 1975. Now that Expropriation act of 1975 put an obligation on the state to pay owners that it wanted to take land from under the principle of willing seller, willing buyer. Now it's basically just the state coming in and saying they will take your land and they can pay you zero, literally zero. The new laws allow for expropriation without compensation. What is the limitation? The government is only supposed to be able to do this in circumstances where it is, quote, just and equitable and in the public interest to do so, which means basically anytime the government wants. I mean, that that is not a limitation at all. Just and equitable and in the public interest. Ramaphosa can simply say it's in the public interest to rejigger land ownership in South Africa. We are now taking all the land of white people in South Africa in response to South African apartheid. The Pro Business Democratic alliance, which is part of the current government, says it strongly opposes the law. It was consulting with its own lawyers, but they've not yet left the government. Okay, so this has been just one indicator of how bad things are getting for the white citizens of South Africa. Again, the sort of hunky dory version of South African history says that everybody got together and gave a big group hug after the end of apartheid. And that is actually not what happened. The government has not done a particularly wonderful job of growing the economy, ending crime, or not discriminating against one entire class of its citizens. There are a lot of laws on the books in South Africa that were originally meant as, quote, unquote, reparations after apartheid. Those included the Employment Equity act, which basically acts as affirmative action for employment. It says that the government is supposed to mandate that certain numbers of black people be included in particular job sectors. There are. There's the broad based Black Economic Empowerment act that actually says that governments cannot give loans except if there is a certain level of black ownership, management or employment. There's the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework act that requires government entities to prefer suppliers that have high points ratings, again, based on the amount of black ownership or black employment. According to one source, as of October 2023, there are 141, Acts of Parliament in the statutes that were openly preferential to based on race. Again, this is the great danger of these sort of racial reparations logic that you've seen people try to enforce in the United States too. This is what so much of Black Lives Matter was about. The idea was that America needed to enact its own system of racial preferences as a reparative to the sins of the past. And what you end up with is actual sins of the present in order to try and react to the sins of the past. In the immediate aftermath of apartheid, there's actually a slight decline in race based law. But by the mid-90s, that had reversed dramatically. Now, as I say, the ruling anc, the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, has been in charge of the country since 1994. They have never lost an election. In 2017, Jacob Zuma, the corrupt former president of the country from 2009 to 2018, adopted ANC policy that included, quote, fundamental change in the structures, systems, institutions and patterns of ownership and control of the economy in favor of all South Africans, especially the poor. That's coded language for we're going to completely redo all the structures of on a racialized basis. That policy included the expropriation of land bill that eventually became law on the basis of race. The ANC is a deeply corrupt party. Again, you don't have to be speaking about Mandela to talk about the anc. The modern ANC is closely tied with the Chinese Communist Party. They receive money from it. They're also closely tied with Vladimir Putin's Russia. They are closely tied with Iran, which is, it's now suspected, probably bribed the country to initiate an international court of justice case against Israel just last year. The ANC has been losing electoral support over the years. It doesn't have a sheer majority in the legislature. It's in a national unity government with Democratic alliance, which again opposes some of these things. But Democratic alliance isn't standing up to the point that they can actually stop this agenda. Get to more on this in a moment. First, the American dream is under attack. Hardworking patriots like you are drowning in debt. That's exactly how creditors want it. They love trapping you with high interest rates, endless student loans, crushing mortgage payments. When you're broken, you are easier to control. Are you ready to fight back and take control of your financial future? That's where PDS debt comes in. 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Here is a giant rally just a few years ago in which Julius Malema is leading an enormous crowd, enchanting. Kill the boar, the farmer, which is, in fact, the language of genocide. If you're talking about just kill the Boers, that's no different than kill the blacks or kill the Jews. I mean, that. That is what it is. Everyone who's attempting to read some sort of crypto message in there that somehow lets Julius Malema and the people who are chanting this off the hook substitute any other race for boars. And tell me that this isn't genocidal language. It just is to kill. Commander. Kill the poor, the farmer. Kill the poor, the farmer. He's holding his hands in the symbol of a gun means an entire stadium. Okay, so he seems like a delightful fellow. A bunch of communists who are shouting to kill the boar. Because never in the history of humanity have we ever seen communists attempt to exterminate an entire class of people. I mean, except for pretty much every communist regime everywhere. So, yeah, you might see why South Africans who are white feel that they themselves are under threat. So why is it a big deal that Afrikaners are being granted refugee status to come to the United States? Well, the reason is because the left is utterly puzzled at the idea that white people can ever be refugees, ever. And they're absolutely puzzled at the idea that has been expressed by, for example, the State Department deputy Chris Landau, that Afrikaners might have an easier time assimilating in the United States than, say, Afghan refugees. Here's Chris Landau talking about this yesterday.

Chris Landau (17:39)

That pause, of course, was subject from the very beginning to exceptions where it was determined that this would be in the interest of the United States. One of some of the criteria are making sure that refugees did not pose. Pose any challenge to our national security and that they could be assimilated easily into our country.

Ben Shapiro (18:02)

Okay, it's that last statement that the left is freaking out about. Why are Africaners. Why. Why is it that they can assimilate easily to our country? Well, believe it or not, it isn't about the fact that they are white. They all speak English, they are, by and large, capitalists. They agree with fundamental constitutional rights which are being violated in South Africa. Those would be the reasons has nothing to do with the color of their skin and everything to do with the ideas that they hold and the cultural hallmarks that they bear in common with the United States. That may not hold true for, for example, Afghan refugees, where you literally have no idea what their ideas are. They don't speak English. There are a lot of things culturally they do not have in common with Americans, up to and including a belief in constitutional rights. So, yes, I mean, are we going to just pretend that all potential immigrants to the United States have an equivalent level of assimilative capability? Is that. Is that what we're going to pretend? Now, that's obviously untrue. It's clearly untrue. But the left is going insane about this. So the New Republic put out an entire piece just enraged about this Trump official says quiet part out loud on white Africana refugees. And so they say the Deputy Secretary's language indicates the Trump administration is willing to admit refugees who are more culturally and ethnically cohesive with the predominantly white US Population. Trump has repeatedly attempted to blow up perceived cultural differences between U.S. citizens and immigrants as a basis for installing blatantly racist immigration policies. Well, again, I'm not sure why this is chiefly about ethnicity. I mean, President Trump explicitly said it was not about ethnicity. It does have to do with the fact that, for example, they speak English and, for example, they believe in constitutional rights, like, for example, property rights and freedom of speech. That makes them much better candidates for assimilation than your sort of rando from the Middle east, because they are coming from, again, a country where they have been attempting to preserve in the same way that, for example, Cuban refugees who are coming to the United States because they hate communism are going to be more assimilatable than people who are coming from regimes with giant government services. And they're coming here for the welfare. Like, we can't pretend that everyone is equally capable or interested in assimilation. That's silly. And by the way, it's not just President Trump who believes that Keir Starmer, who's a full scale leftist in the uk, put out a tweet yesterday, quote, if you want to live in the uk, you should speak English. That's common sense. So we're raising English language requirements across every main immigration route. That's Keir Starmer. Is that the Labor Party? Does that mean that he's a brutal racist? How does this work exactly? But you can see why the left is upset. Because the truth is that the left believes many of the same fundamental things that the anc, the modern anc, believes in South Africa, which is to say that the world is basically just South Africa writ large. That the United States is South Africa writ large. That essentially any population that is white and successful, owes it to the rest of the world, literally the rest of the world, to import people, regardless of assimilative ability, because there is some sort of peculiar reparative guilt that must now be enacted. You can see that in much of the language that is being provoked and pushed forward by the left here. The Episcopal Church, by the way, has now withdrawn from its own working with the refugee program. They put out a statement saying, quote, in light of our church's steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and, and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step. Accordingly, we have determined that by the end of the federal fiscal year, we'll conclude our refugee resettlement grants agreements with the US Federal government. So, again, the idea is that if they're white people, then the Episcopal Church is out, which is an amazing statement. Why can't there be white refugees from a country that is clearly enacting racialist policies? Why is that? It's bizarre. William Schalcindor of MSNBC was doing the same routine, singing from the same hymnal here she was. So the Trump administration, they're saying that essentially these white South Africans assimilate better, and they're also not as much of a security risk. That's really causing a lot of people to be appalled, frankly. And I also should tell people that this violence that they're talking about that are dealing with these Africanas, I've been hearing from people that say there is violence in South Africa, but it's affecting everybody of every single race. Katie. Okay, so again, it's got a lot of people appalled, according to Yamiche Alcindor, to say that perhaps Afrikaners are going to be more easily to assimilate. So according to. It has people appalled, according to Yamiche Alcindor of msnbc, to say that it's easier to assimilate Afrikaners from South Africa than it would be to assimilate people from Third World countries who have no history whatsoever of engagement with Anglo American ideals, constitutional frameworks, property rights, or the language of English. Now, what's amazing about this is this is actually a widely held belief that inside the Democratic Party, and it has been since the 60s, this sort of idea that America bears some sort of bizarre blood guilt for its success, that the west bears a blood guilt for its success against all sorts of peoples who are unsuccessful and therefore owes an obligation to import people from all over the world, from these countries that actually do not share a cultural history with the Anglo American sphere. This, in fact, was one of the driving forces behind the shift in immigration in the United States. So here is a chart. This is a charge chart based on the yearbook of immigration statistics and crafted by a woman named Talia Bronstein, showing the point of origin, the country of last residence for immigrants throughout American history. And of course, what you see here is that if you go back to the 19th century, predominantly you are seeing immigrants from Europe. Are you seeing enormous number of immigrants in, say, 1850 from the UK an enormous number from Ireland, a huge number from Germany. Now, it's worth noting at the time that there were still major concerns in the United States about the assimilation of Germans and Irish. There is open anti German and anti Irish discrimination in the United States during this period. The Know Nothing Party, which was actually a rather large force in American politics, was created as a response to immigration, largely from Ireland. I mean, Gangs of New York, the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis, is based specifically on this thing, based on anti immigrant sentiment against what we would now call white people. So there's always been questions in the United States about how easy it is to assimilate people from various countries and what does that mean for the people who are born in the United States. But what you see is a massive shift in the immigration status of the United States, in how immigration is done in the United States beginning in about 1965. So all the way up until 1965, you see, first of all, enormous growth in the US population via immigration, basically all the way up to the early 1920s. And most of that immigration, again is from Europe. You're talking an enormous number from Austria, Hungary, from Ireland, from Italy, now from Russia. Right. There's a shift toward Eastern and Southern Europe as opposed to Western Europe. But all those people, you know, would now be considered, quote, unquote, white. And there again, there were serious considerations in American immigration history with regards to how do you assimilate, for example, Jewish immigrants from Russia? This is a major issue. And it led to some rather discriminatory policies at, say, country clubs, for example. Okay, so in the 1920s, there was a radical downshift in terms of immigration. That's what on this chart you can see a giant decline in immigration that stretches from about 1920 all the way until basically the end of World War II. And then following World War II, in 1965, there was an immigration bill sponsored by Teddy Kennedy, the so called Immigration Nationality Act. And it radically shifted how immigration was done in the United States. You wonder why it used to be all European immigrants. And now it is almost no European immigrants. And the answer is because of Teddy Kennedy's 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. So it used to be that the United States had a system of quotas. And those quotas were largely based on who can assimilate most easily. And, and so it preferenced people who are from, for example, Western Europe, and then it went to people who were from Eastern Europe and then went into people who were from Africa or from Asia. And there were quotas based on country. In 1965, those quotas were completely exploded. And instead it established a new preference system that was based on family reunification, chain migration. So if you got in, you got to bring your entire family. And it obliterated all sort of quota systems with regard to Europe. So the law set annual caps at the time, 170,000 visas for the Eastern Hemisphere and a cap of 120,000 visas for the Western Hemisphere. Now, again, the Western Hemisphere would be south and Latin America. And you can see the predictable result, which is that over the course of time, you now see a massive uptick in the number of immigrants from Mexico, a huge number of immigrants from the Caribbean and other Americas, like Latin America, Central America, huge uptick from Asia as well. European immigration basically plummets to almost zero. I mean, really, really, really down. And the question is, why exactly did Teddy Kennedy do this? And the answer is that Teddy Kennedy, like many members of the left, did believe in this idea of a sort of European guilt toward the rest of the world and an American guilt toward the rest of the world. And so what he said is that the existing quota system was fundamentally an unfair and inconsistent with American values. This is where you get the Democrats today saying that the sort of credo of Americanism is the Statue of Liberty, where we welcome your poor, you're tired, your huddled masses yearning to be free.

Josh Hawley (27:31)

Right?

Ben Shapiro (27:31)

That that is how immigration needs to be done, as opposed to, you can come here, but there will be no welfare system to support you. And this is a huge difference, by the way, in the Pre World War II era in the United States versus the post World War II era in the United States, the type of immigrants who are drawn to the United States change over time. America in 1900 basically had zero welfare system for people who are coming here. So when my great great grandparents got to the United States in the early 20th century, there was no welfare system. Essentially, they came to the United States, they had to, by dint of necessity, learn English and assimilate, because if they did not, they would not make enough money to survive. And so they assimilated. This is very common, by the way, in Jewish households in the early 20th centuries, that they would come speaking Yiddish and then they would tell their kids they were not allowed to speak Yiddish in the house so that their kids would learn to speak English with more alacrity and assimilate more quickly. And that is for both cultural reasons you're leaving behind the old country, and also because the idea is that you need to assimilate to American culture. That's why you came, is to be part of the American dream, not to bring the European or Eastern European or Russian or Lithuanian dream to the United States. The American dream is a different thing. It's about upward mobility, assimilation to a commerce driven culture that has at its basis Anglo American law. Okay? After World War II, the growth of the American welfare state and the availability of that welfare changes the kinds of people who are coming to the United States, not in terms of race, but in terms of who's trying to get in. There is a difference between a job available sign in the window of a store and a free donuts sign in the window of a store. A jobs available sign is likely to draw people who want to work and get a job. A free donut sign is likely to draw everyone who wants a free donut. And the United States totally changed its immigration system for the free donut crowd. And again, the reason that Teddy Kennedy did this, and he literally said this openly, is that he believed it was unfair and un American to have quota systems based on the assimilative capacity of the people coming in. By the way, he also lied. He said that the bill would, quote, not flood our cities with immigrants or upset the ethnic mix of our society. So it's all based on the sort of fairness and justice and reparative fairness and justice. And this is why you're seeing so much heartburn over the possibility of Afrikaner immigrants. Because what President Trump is saying is the truth, which is that not everybody is going to assimilate to American values at the same rate. Not everybody has those same ideas. We should probably check before people come into the country. All of that makes perfect sense. The fact that the left is resisting that speaks to a bizarre idea about what America is and what it needs to be, which is basically an open door free donut shop to everybody who wants to get in. And somehow America owes that to the rest of the world because America is only successful through some form of exploitation. Right? That in the same way that there needs to be reparative justice in South Africa because whites used to harm blacks. America somehow owes it to the rest of the world to let anybody in. And if you say that that's not true, then you're undermining the left perception of Americanism and that that of course is wrong and destined for failure in the United States. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, Tax day may have passed, but for millions of Americans, the real trouble is just starting. If you missed the April 15 deadline or you still low back taxes, the IRS is in fact ramping up enforcement. Every day you wait only makes things worse. With over 5,000 new tax liens filed daily and tools like property seizures, bank levies, wage garnishments, the IRS is applying pressure at levels we have not seen in years. Increased administrative scrutiny means collections are moving fast. The good news? There's still time for Tax Network USA to help self employed or a business owner. Even if your books are a mess, they've got it covered. Tax Network USA specializes in cleaning up financial chaos and getting you back on track fast. 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Again, just visit helixleepleep.combenchmark for this exclusive offer. Well, joining us online is Ernst Roots. He of course is executive director of the Pioneer Initiative as well as an activist on behalf of Boers and Afrikaners living in South Africa. Dr. Roots, good to speak to you, Ben.

Ernst Roots (32:51)

Thank you very much for having me on the show. And thank you again also to the Daily Wire for being a voice of reason in crazy times.

Ben Shapiro (32:58)

So let's discuss what exactly is happening with President Trump and the South African refugee plan. So first of all, I just want to get some facts on the table for folks who are not familiar with the situation there. There have been claims that there is a quote, unquote genocide against whites in South Africa. There have been claims with regard to the targeting of white farmers in South Africa. What's true, what's false, what is the threat level to whites, particularly Africaners who are living in South Africa.

Ernst Roots (33:23)

Thank you. I think that's a very important point. The term genocide has been used quite a lot lately and it's a term that we have to be very careful in using because of course, it's a technical term and it's a legal term. And it opens up a can of worms in terms of debating what a genocide really is and so forth. I do think the appropriate way to describe the crisis in South Africa is to say that it is a systemic crisis, that we live under a political system that is very deeply and fundamentally structured in such a way that it continuously and inherently discriminates against minority communities treating us as second class citizens. And so we've gotten to the point now where we have more than 140 race laws in South Africa aimed at discriminating against the white minority and the Afrikaners. But other than the racial discrimination, we do have threats by the South African government. Not just threats, but attempts to change the property rights clause in the South African constitution to empower the government to expropriate property without compensation. And then we also have the violence. We have a very serious problem of farmers being targeted with very brutal farm attacks and murders. But on top of that, what we also have is politicians, very senior and very influential politicians, openly chanting about Kill the Boer, chanting about the extermination of minority communities, and them then being protected by the president, by the ruling party, and by the courts and the legal system in South Africa.

Ben Shapiro (34:57)

So let's talk for a second about these sort of Kill the boar chant. So those have been obviously issued over and over and over by Julius Malema, who's the head of the eff, which is a radical Communist party in South Africa. The ANC government, which has been running the place. The ANC has been running the place since the end of apartheid, essentially since 1994. They sort of want to play both sides. On the one hand, they'll say that they oppose Malema, that the Kill the board chants are, you know, they might not be the best thing. On the other hand, they've obviously made overtures to many of Malema supporters and to Malema himself. What is the relationship between all of those parties?

Ernst Roots (35:27)

So Julius Malema is the guy who's most famous for chanting this Kill the BUA chant. He was a member of the ruling party. He was the president of Youth League. And several years ago, he left to start his own party. He left because of internal faction fighting, not because of ideological disagreements. And so his new party is trying to present itself as the more radical version of what the anc, the ruling party, should be. But if you look at it from a policy perspective, there really isn't much difference. The ANC tries to come across as a bit more nuanced, a bit more balanced, but when you read their actual policy documents, it's very similar. And so what we do have is, even though between these parties, you would see them attacking each other politically, competing for votes, but on a personal level, we would often hear leaders, including the president himself, inviting Julius Malema in particular to join, to rejoin the anc, to become a member of the ruling party. So it's important to understand that even though the EFF is seen and presented as more radical ideologically, there's not much difference between them.

Ben Shapiro (36:34)

So, you know, there's been a lot of talk, obviously, in the United States about taking in Afrikaners to the United States, the refugee plan. There's been opposition from many of the usual suspects who suggest that perhaps they don't deserve refugee status, or people who are offended by the idea that whites can't Be refugees, which of course is absurd. What do you make of the refugee plan? Is it the right idea? What is the longer term solution in South Africa? Yep.

Ernst Roots (36:57)

So the refugee plan is a good thing for people who want to leave South Africa. And there are people who want to leave. And there are a lot of people who have experienced trauma, having been in a farm attack, having lost loved ones and so forth, or another form of trauma, and they want to get out. And then there are people who are really struggling because of these race laws, struggling to get employment, don't have a job, but who are willing to work and able to work, but they are pushed out because of the color of their skin. And so if these people want to leave, it's good for them to leave, to be able to do so. And we would hope our message to them would be to remain connected and to be ambassadors for our cause where they are. But that cannot be the only solution. And I have to say this, that if what the American government does is exclusively a refugee program, it has the potential to be very catastrophic for us. Because what we need is a solution in South Africa. We need systemic reform. We have a systemic crisis, which means that we need systemic reform. We need to relook the political system. And the only way through, the way we see it, is by decentralizing the system and giving communities self governance to have them have a say over their own affairs, as opposed to this very close to a dictatorial system that we have. So the refugee program could be a good thing, but if it's only that, then it would not be a good thing. If it's coupled with pressure towards relooking the political system in South Africa, then that's fine. And I think that's something that certainly will receive a lot of support from all over the world.

Ben Shapiro (38:30)

And as you and I discussed when last we spoke, you're the executive director of the Pioneer Initiative. Your goal is to essentially have more sort of dissemination of rights to local government so that people can actually be protected in the areas in which they live, instead of having overarching, very strong government at the top that essentially presides over a racialized system. Instead, just evolve more authority to a local system that actually allows Boers to preserve their property rights, their rights, their culture and all the rest.

Ernst Roots (38:58)

Yeah, exactly. It's very comparable, you could say, to the American system or what. The American system is supposed to be a federal system where there is some form of decentralization. Now, decentralization can take different forms, and there are many examples. All over the world of decentralized system, we have the Canton system in Switzerland. We have attempts in countries like Finland and Estonia to accommodate minorities. And there are examples all over the world that we can find. But in South Africa, we're sort of stuck in this mindset that you have to choose between the apartheid system and the ANC government that we currently have. And our initiative is saying that we need to break through this false dichotomy. We need to look at good practices all over the world, and we need to find a system for South Africa that is based on self governance and it's not just for the Afrikaner people. Obviously, I am an Afrikaner, so I want my community to have self governance. But we are just one out of many communities in South Africa and I cannot speak on behalf of the others. But I think it's safe to say that most people in South Africa, we can already see that most people in South Africa very strongly agree with this idea that we need to bring government closer to the people.

Ben Shapiro (40:06)

Dr. Rus, if people wish to help out beyond obviously the refugee issue, how should they help you out?

Ernst Roots (40:12)

Well, thank you. So we have started this new initiative, the Pioneer Initiative. If people are willing to help, they can sign up with that. They can become a contributor from anywhere in the world. People in South Africa should know that we don't have the luxury of being idle bystanders. People should become involved with solutions, and people should do what they can do to raise awareness about what is happening in South Africa, to spread truth and facts about what is happening in South Africa and to apply pressure. People should understand that a solution. It would not be a solution for South Africa to simply have another president or another party governing the country, because that doesn't fix the systemic problems that underpin the political system. And so if people want to support the Pioneer Initiative, they can go to our website and they can sign up as contributors and they will. They will find the links. We'll post the links on social media. But that would be a great benefit to us.

Ben Shapiro (41:04)

Dr. Roots, really appreciate your time and your insight and good luck with that.

Ernst Roots (41:09)

Thank you very much and thank you for having me on the show and again for. For talking about this issue.

Ben Shapiro (41:13)

Okay. Meanwhile, President Trump, his trade thought is sparking a massive stock rally. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is kind of hanging around after its big jump yesterday. Again, everything is momentum driven in the stock market right now because of all the uncertainty. As I suggested yesterday, it was my feeling the stock market would. Would not continue to rapidly increase on the basis of President Trump rolling back the tariff regime. Because the reality is that before Liberation Day, we had a certain tariff rate, and we've now probably quadrupled or quintupled that average tariff rate. And that is going to have some impact on the American economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, stocks are surging, but Wall street isn't ready to declare victory in the trade war just yet. The Dow Industrials ended yesterday with a gain of 2.8% and settled above 42,000, which is above where they stood on Liberation Day. But investors remain cautious because they're not really sure what the impact of the continued tariff regime is going to be. President Trump yesterday talked up the total reset with China. Here he was.

Donald Trump (42:11)

In addition, yesterday we achieved a total reset with China after productive talks in Geneva. Both sides now agree to reduce the tariffs imposed after April 2 to 10% for 90 days as negotiators continue in the larger structural issues.

Ben Shapiro (42:32)

Okay, now the reality is the United States gained very little, kind of in general terms, from this mini trade war with the Chinese. I mean, we are not ending in a better position than we started with the Chinese per se. We could have put a 30% tariff on them in the first place. So all the kind of talk where people say, well, this is all strategic. It wasn't. It wasn't strategic. Liberation Day was quite real. And then reality hit and they walked back Liberation Day by giving Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant control of the vehicle, which is the correct move. There are some downside effects to what's been going on, namely a lot of heartburn with regard to our normal trade partners who are now triangulating with China. Also, Beijing now knows that if the United States threatens a thing, it is probably pretty easy to back the United States or off that threat. If the idea is economic sanctions, if, for example, they blockade Taiwan, well, how long would that last? Unclear at the. At the very least. And as far as where we currently stand, basically where we are now is a 10% global tariff and higher for China, probably 30% for China. There aren't these big, substantial trade deals quite yet. It's better than it was. It's not amazing. And I think that's where the markets are currently sitting. Now. Scott Besant is laying out the future of the Trump economic plans. And this, of course, is more salutary for investors. He says, yes, it's about trade, but mostly it's going to be about tax and deregulation. That's the stuff the markets are waiting for, is the tax bill to go forward. And deregulation of the economy.

Josh Hawley (43:59)

The Trump economic plan is three pieces, trade tax and deregulation. Trade has been implemented first and that process is occurring. We believe that the tax portion is going very well. Speaker Johnson, Leader Thune, who I am in constant contact with, believe that mid summer we will pass as a president, President likes to call it his one big beautiful bill and we believe that that will provide substantial relief for American households and then deregulation. A hidden and pernicious tax on American households is regulation. We believe that the last administration added several thousand dollars a year to American families cost and that we will be not only cutting those substantial, rolling that back but cutting those substantially.

Ben Shapiro (45:14)

Okay, so again all of this is good. All of this is necessary. It should be noted at this point that the trade war that President Trump has declared is not by any stretch of the imagination over. Austan Goolsbee is president of the Federal Reserve bank of Chicago. He says yes, the new tariff regime that we sort of backed into is definitely less impactful stagflationarily than the path they were on. Stagflation being higher inflation and lower growth. But it's three to three to five times higher than it was before. So it's going to have a stagflationary impulse on the economy. It will make growth slower and make prices rise. With that said core price inflation, core CPI continues to move in the right direction. Consumer prices rose 0.2% in April. Core CPI was up 0.2%. That is below the 0.3% forecast. So we are again moving toward normality in terms of inflation. So all of that is quite good. It's more on this in a moment. 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According to the Hill, the proposal, which was included in legislative text unveiled by the House Ways and Means Committee on Monday, is in line with House instructions outlined in a blueprint adopted by congressional Republicans last month to kick off the process in order to push forward the big beautiful tax bill. Including the debt ceiling in the broader bill allows Republicans to avoid Democratic demands in exchange for their votes to raise the debt limit. So that also means they need to move faster because you actually have to push the debt ceiling in a faster timeline. You have to do it by July, essentially. Obviously, this is going to happen again, this idea that the Congress is ever going to get spending under control. Let's just be real about this. They're really, really not. Unless they're willing to full scale restructure entitlement programs, nothing is going to change about the debt trajectory of the United States. Anybody who's telling you differently is lying to you. It ain't going to be done through cutting, quote, waste, fraud and abuse. That is not enough. What actually needs to happen is restructuring the entitlement programs. Meanwhile, House Republicans have released a highly anticipated plan, according to the New York Post late on Sunday to slash roughly $900 billion in spending over the next decade that is supposed to, quote, unquote, pay for the tax cuts. How are they going to do this? By doing something they should be doing anyway, imposing work requirements on Medicaid. Now this actually is a structural change that is good and useful. And Medicaid is a means tested welfare program. An enormous number of people on Medicaid claim that they can't work when actually they probably can. The committee's main job has been to figure out what to do about Medicaid. That'd be the Energy and Commerce panel. They're supposed to come up with more than half of the $1.5 trillion in total cuts that House Republicans were eyeing for the legislation. So Medicaid, of course, is a means tested welfare program that is directed at the poor. So what exactly are they proposing? Well, they're mandating an 80 hour per month work requirement on able bodied adults aged 1964 enrolled in the program. Volunteer work and school would count toward the requirement. First of all, it's insane we don't already have this 80 hours per month. Per month. I mean, let's just chart that out, gang. That's 20 hours per week. That means that if you want to be eligible for Medicaid, then you have to work for four hours per weekday. Four hours. And you can do it via volunteer work or by going to school. Also, to be eligible for Medicaid, that does not seem like too big a push for me. Unless you're on full scale disability, in which case you can show a disability and you'll still be eligible. Yeah, you should have to work like a little in order to get Medicaid. States that enrolled in the Affordable Care act expansion of Medicaid would see a federal reimbursement rate drop from 90 to 80% if illegal immigrants are part of the program. So again, the goal there would be one. Why should the federal government pay for a state that is essentially taking care of illegal immigrants? Because then they're just passing that cost on to the federal government. Medicaid beneficiaries with incomes over the federal poverty line would have to pay up to 35 bucks per medical service. And again, it's a means tested welfare program, so that makes sense. It required eligibility checks on expanded Medicaid enrollees every six months as opposed to annually. State Medicaid programs cannot reimburse healthcare providers like hospitals more than Medicare does, because then you're basically competing against yourself. So if the idea is that Medicare is paying for a reimbursement of a state hospital and Medicaid is coming in at a higher rate, then obviously that leads the hospitals to take Medicaid more than Medicare. It thrust people onto Medicaid rather than Medicare. And that is not salutary. You put a ban on Medicaid and chip. That's Children's Health Insurance Program funding for transgender nonsense. And it bars middlemen, pharmacy benefit managers from charging higher prices to Medicaid than if they were to actually just pay for the drugs straight up. Now, of course, the CBO is freaking out about this. They're saying it could lead to 8.6 million Americans losing health insurance and $715 billion worth of cuts over a 10 year period. But in reality, the program was designed for people who are disabled, for people who are truly poor. I mean, that is what it was for, for the working poor and people who are severely disabled and, and the elderly and children and mothers. Democrats are going to demagogue this, of course, because they have to. But the truth is that it is foolishness for them to have to tie this to a tax bill in the first place. I mean, they should really just do this anyway. I mean, this is essentially just a form of welfare reform that Bill Clinton would have signed into law in 1997. There are some Republicans on the Senate side who are very much in favor of a sort of big government European rightism. Josh Howley is one of them, the senator from Missouri. He called the proposal, quote, morally wrong and politically suicidal. He writes in the New York Times, quote, a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans call it. The party's Wall street wing is urging Congress to ignore all of this and get back to old time religion, corporate giveaways, preferences for capital and deep cuts to social insurance. That is not social insurance if you are not working and if you're not trying to work, that's not social insurance insurance. That is just mooching unless you have a severe disability, obviously, or you're unable to work for some other reason. And again, we have provisions for that in law. Medicaid says Chip Roy, the excellent congressperson from Texas said was never meant to be this expansive. We have a duty to safeguard taxpayers and ensure Medicaid does not bankrupt us. Cut the waste, cut the fraud, cut the abuse. So it'll be fascinating to see how this plays out with various dynamics in the Senate and the House as well. Meanwhile, speaking of deregulation, I'll tell you what is not deregulation is this Trump executive order to quote, unquote, lower drug prices by essentially cramming down Medicaid prices on pharma companies. That is not, in fact deregulation. That is in fact a brand new regulation and a very heavy regulation. Here is President Trump explaining his plan yesterday.

Donald Trump (53:06)

But it's called most favored Nation. We are going to pay the lowest price there is in the world. We will get whoever is paying the lowest price. That's the price that we're going to get. So remember that. So we're no longer paying 10 times more than another country. Whoever is paying the lowest price, we will look at that price and we will say that's the price we're going to pay. Most favored nations. That's what it is.

Ben Shapiro (53:34)

Okay. Now, in reality, what is this actually going to do, according to Axios, is not quite as clear cut as President Trump just yelling at pharma companies. The order calls for drug makers to voluntarily cut their prices or face the threat of a most favored nation pricing regime that would peg the cost of their medicine to what's paid in other wealthy nations where they often sell for less. Again, he's applying the pressure in the wrong place. It shouldn't be on the pharma companies in the United States. The pressure should be on foreign countries to pay what the price would be in a free market. That's where the pressure should be applied. Now, President Trump loves clocking our European allies. How about do that? Clock them over that. That'd be worthwhile. Clock the Canadians over that. You want to talk about the Canadians and the Europeans cheating us? That is an area where they actually are cheating us, where you have nationalized health care systems that are basically cramming down pricing on America pharma companies. And then by squeezing the price balloon at one end, the EU forces the price to inflate in the United States. President Trump could reverse that. He could force other countries to pay what the going market rate would be for these drugs. Instead, he's pressuring the pharma companies, which again, just kills R and D in the United States. This is not the kind of deregulation that the Trump administration should be seeking at this point. The EO does call for other countries to increase what they pay for drugs, to share the cost for biomedical innovation, but there are no actual methodologies attached to forcing all these other countries to actually do it. So it'll be fascinating to see how all of that plays out as well. Meanwhile, President Trump is in Saudi Arabia today to kick off his Middle Eastern trip. He's going to be visiting the Saudis, then he's going to head on over to the UAE and then finally to Qatar. Of course, massive controversy breaking out over Qatar, as we discussed yesterday on the show. And when it comes to his trip to Saudi, he's bringing with him an enormous number of business and tech leaders. The goal being to get the Saudi Royal Kingdom to actually invest in American tech, which is wonderful. Getting Saudi money to invest in American business is great. The question is what concessions lie on the other side of the of that and what can actually be done in the Middle East. And President Trump's signal contribution to Middle Eastern history in his first term was the recognition that there are a lot of countries there that actually care more about the economy. Than just hating Jews. That was the basis of the Abraham Accords. It's why, for example, the UAE and Bahrain and Morocco all joined the Abraham Accords. The idea was economic development, tech development in the region would be better served than a sort of cross religion hatred. That was also pushed forward by the fact that Iran was deeply threatening. Well, now the question in the Middle east is whether President Trump is going to maintain that very wise strategy in the Middle east or whether he's going to shift off of that toward something else. The reality is that America could easily push into Abraham Accords too, by linking many of the things that are happening in Saudi, uae, even Qatar with what's happening in Israel. The United States seems to be simultaneously linking and delinking. It's kind of a strange strategy. Honestly. It's kind of unclear what the strategy is with regard to Saudi Arabia and Israel with regard to some sort of Abraham Accords. Are they going to try to speed run and end the war in Gaza? Are they going to let Israel finish the job in Gaza and then approach an Abraham Accord? What, what is happening along those lines? But the idea that President Trump is bringing along business leaders to meet with the Saudis or the UAE to actually invest in American business without the possibility of, say, policy concessions on the other side by the United States, that's fine. That's fine. Again, more investment in American business. Better. The concessions from the United States should not be particularly rich to countries that historically have not had a particularly wonderful record with the United States. President Trump was asked about all of this yesterday when he was still in Washington, D.C. while signing an executive order by a member of ABC News.

Ernst Roots (57:16)

Mr. President, what do you say to.

Ben Shapiro (57:17)

People who view that luxury jet as a personal gift to you?

Donald Trump (57:21)

Why not leave it behind your ABC fake news, Right? It's only, only abc. Well, a few of you would let me tell you, you should be embarrassed asking that question. They're giving us a free jet. I could say, no, no, no, don't give us, I want to pay you a billion or 400 million or whatever it is. Or I could say, thank you very much.

Ben Shapiro (57:44)

Okay, well, beware of Qatari's bearing gifts. Well, meanwhile, something I do love. Okay. President Trump did, in fact, through Steve Witkoff, broker the release of Idan Alexander, the last American hostage who was left in Gaza. Again, I know the family. I introduced the family to the Trump, to President Trump himself yesterday in video. That has to move you. Idan Alexander greeted his family for the first time. So that's his mom. I see big Hugs for those who can't see. He was held in captivity for well over 500 days. Reports are that he was tortured and held in a cage by Hamas, which is why it would be ridiculous for Hamas to have any role in governing the Gaza Strip anytime in the future. He's hugging his dad, hugging his brother. Idan Alexander, obviously extraordinarily grateful to President Trump, held up a sign for President Trump on his way back into Israel from the tunnels that Hamas was holding him in for well over a year, saying, thank you, President Trump. Amisrael Chai, meaning the nation of Israel lives. And he was a member of the Golani Brigade. So he has a, he has a saying there in favor of the Golani Brigade. Again, thanks to President Trump and yes, thanks to Steve Woodkoff, who I've criticized a lot on this program. I think deservedly so. And we'll see what, what deal. Steve Witkoff tries to cut off the back of all of this. With that said, big credit for freeing Iran. Alexander, obviously. Now, meanwhile, again, the relationship with Qatar continues to be a problem. The Palestinian Authority obviously is now working in coordination with Qatar, which is a bad thing. The Palestinian Authority is slightly better than Hamas. I say slightly because the Fatah wing of the Palestinian Authority is in fact a terror group. And the Palestinian Authority still has on its books pay for slay, meaning that if you kill a Jewish in Israel in a terror attack, the Palestinian Authority will pay your pension. The Palestinian Authority had a ban on Al Jazeera because Qatar was so radical that it was sponsoring Al Jazeera in order to push pro Hamas propaganda, and Palestinian authorities didn't like that. Well, now, as the days of Hamas seems to be waning, now the Palestinian Authority is warming up to Qatar. According to the New York Times, the Palestinian Authority said late Monday it would lift a ban on Al Jazeera in the west bank that it put into effect after accusing the outlet of inciting sedition and interfering in internal Palestinian affairs. I think this may be the prelude to a sort of rapprochement between Qatar and Palestinian Authority to use the Palestinian Authority as the new tool to attack Israel, which, of course, the Palestinian Authority historically was. Joining me on the line is Jerome Spielman. Born and educated in the United States, he moved to Israel in 2000. He serves as international spokesperson in the IDF reserves with the rank of major. And he is also working to transform the City of David, which is an amazing site. Full disclosure. I'm a donor and into one of the world's most significant archeological and historical sites. And one of the reasons I donate to City of David is because of the archeological work they are doing, which is truly incredible. He has a brand new book titled when the Stones Speak the Remarkable Discovery of the City of David and what Israel's enemies don't want you to know. Jerome, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.

Chris Landau (60:49)

Nice to see you, Ben. Thanks for having me.

Ben Shapiro (60:52)

So, you know, why don't we actually start on current events. Obviously a lot going on in the Middle East. We've seen the release of the last American hostage by Hamas. A lot of discussion about what's going to happen next in the Gaza Strip. There are some people who are suggesting that Hamas should be allowed to remain in some sort of governance structure in the Gaza Strip. Seems like a lot of confusion on all sides. What do you make of it?

Chris Landau (61:14)

I think it's insane. I think we actually need to zoom out. If we look at this, let's say 20 years from now, a two year period, Hamas goes over the border, they massacre 1200 civilians, they take 250 hostages. They let some of the hostages go and now they're back in power in the Gaza Strip. I mean, there is rarely been an example in world history. Can we imagine doing this with Al Qaeda where a terror group is then going to be encouraged to take hostages? It's an absurdity. It makes absolutely no sense. And the army today, I was in the Gaza border just a few days ago. The soldiers are committed to finishing this job. The State of Israel, even though our heart's torn over the hostages, is committing to finish this job. And the military plan that was put forth now is, is a plan that says we will hold territory as opposed to doing strike, moving in and out. And we will push Hamas to the limit. This is the opportunity to finish them off. Giving them any type of state is a historical blunder and would not serve US interests either. I mean, basically it's supporting an enemy that denies Israel, denies Jewish faith, denies the sources, foundations of America.

Ben Shapiro (62:19)

Well, that gets to the topic of your book, when the Stones Speak, which is about the sort of archeological history of the land of Israel and the attempt by the Palestinian Authority and much of the Arab world to deny the connection between Judeo Christian heritage and the land of Israel. So why don't you talk a little about what City of David is for people who don't know?

Chris Landau (62:39)

So the City of David is actually ancient Jerusalem. Most people think ancient Jerusalem is in the walls of the old city, which would make sense if it was anywhere else in the world. However, Queen Victoria sent an explorer to find the Ark of the covenant 150 years ago. And he didn't find it or anything biblical in the old city walls. So one day he leaves the old city walls and finds a spring of water, walks through a cave and finds a shaft. And when he climbs up, he uncovers an entire ancient city beneath the ground. After a short period of time, he realizes, wow, the ancient city of Jerusalem from the Bible, the city of King David is actually outside the old city walls. And that is the site that I spent over 21 years excavating. And today, if you want to walk around with the Bible and, and pull stuff out of the ground and match the pages of the Bible, that's the city of David. It is essentially, it is, it is the foundation of Jewish, Christian and American faith. And every time we find something Ben, it sends out shock waves. One part of the world cheers when we find a name that matches from the book of Jeremiah. However, another part of the world, the part of the world you just mentioned, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, that have been denying Israel's history as part of this campaign, they then circle the site and say, that's something we have to stop and that's what the City of David's been facing.

Ben Shapiro (63:52)

Yeah. I think that one of the things that's so fascinating about your book when the stones speak and about this entire controversy is if you really want to understand what happened on October 7, you have to understand that it is not a territorial issue. It is really in its essence, a historical issue in which you have one party that basically denies the historicity of the entire Bible, suggests that everything that is Jewish related or Christian related in Jerusalem is, is an overt falsehood, and that that is why the land ought to belong to the Palestinian Authority or to the Muslim Brotherhood or to whomever. I mean, the stuff that you're uncovering, the reason it's controversial is specifically because it connects the history of Jerusalem to an ancient past that predates Islam by several thousand years.

Chris Landau (64:36)

That's why they call it ripen the Al Aqsa flood. They didn't call it the Gaza War. They didn't call it the war to take over southern Israel. Al Aqsa is the Temple Mount. Right. So I stood on, on October 8th in the Southern border and massive wreckage, hundreds of hundreds of cars. I describe it in windlesston speak that had just been obliterated and the smoke was still coming out of them. And I opened up the door, I could see the driver's Registrations there. And I looked around, I said, this is a flood. But they're not calling it Southern Israel flood. Their whole intention, it goes back to Al Aqsa, to the foundations of Jewish belief. And they have spent decades, and we saw this in the City of David, denying the foundations of Jewish belief. Every time we found something, they would claim it was a Zionist plot. And to the point of which we found this incredible road which you've been on, this pilgrimage road that stretches all the way up to the Temple. It's the most miraculous thing ever. And they threatened, not the Jewish workers, they threatened our Arab workers until the Arab workers quit. And when that didn't work, they tried assassinated the head of the City of David. And when that didn't work, they took us to court. They even enlisted the State Department in the Obama presidency. All because they realized that when we uncover this foundation, it bashes and obliterates this entire Palestinian narrative out of the water. And as you've talked about so eloquently, this is now spilled over onto American campuses. This is the battle in Israel and in the United States.

Ben Shapiro (65:59)

I mean, it truly is kind of incredible that you actually have an entire group of people who deny that the Temple Mount has anything to do with the Temple, which is truly. I mean, it beggars the imagination to make that argument. But that argument is constantly made, which is why, if you're wondering why they care about a pilgrimage road. So there's a giant road that people at City of David have. Have uncovered that goes from the Siloam Pool, which is a place where people used to essentially cleanse themselves before going to the Temple. And then they would walk up like two thirds of a mile from the Siloam Pool all the way up to the Temple Mount. And you guys have actually uncovered this gigantic staircase that goes all the way from the bottom of the City of David up through. And in order to preserve Arab housing and shore it up, actually you built this entire extraordinarily expensive tunnel. In the United States, we would just declare eminent domain, blow up whatever was on top, and then uncovered and uncovered the staircase. In Israel, because of the political sensitivity, billions of dollars have been spent in order to preserve the housing on top and shore it up against earthquake and. And built this entire tunnel. And still you have the Palestinian Authority and advocates for Palestinian Arab domination of the land and Muslim domination of the land. You have those advocates suggesting that this staircase is somehow fake or unreal. And folks should understand that this staircase is certainly when Jesus was yelling at people as they Were going up to the temple about corruption in the temple. He was literally standing on the staircase. You can watch. I did a documentary with Jordan Peterson about the foundations of Western civilization. He you can watch us walk this road and stop by a stone that almost certainly Jesus stood on while yelling at his fellow Jews not to corrupt the temple.

Chris Landau (67:29)

You know, Ben, the time that this really struck me and why I wrote this book is I was explaining this to Leslie Stahl. She came to the site to do 60 Minutes and she brought her husband with her. She said to me, for the first time ever of any shoot she's ever done, Leslie Stahl from 60 Minutes. I show them the clay seals that we found of the two people that tried to kill the prophet Jeremiah. And she's blown away. Her husband is crying. Then the show begins. It was like windshield wipers. The smile's gone. She never mentioned those whatsoever. The only thing she talked about was the fact that we were digging underneath Arab homes and Arab homes are falling under, which the reality is exactly the opposite. In addition to preserving archeology, we have spent so much money that the only homes in the entire area that now have supports underneath them are the Arab homes we've actually dug beneath because of what we've built. And at that moment, I realized if Leslie Stahl, if I did a whole 60 Minutes episode, and she can't get off the story, I have to write the story of the City of David. And that's basically why I wrote the book. Because these challenges and the efforts to stop the archeology are so intense and they affect Jews all over the world on campus. They affect Americans because the founding fathers of America, of course, the Liberty Bell declare liberty. All these symbols come from the Bible. If you wither away, if you chop away at the Jewish Bible, there's nothing left for any of us. And that's exactly what the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, their head, by the way, the US still keeps talking about, certainly in the Biden administration, he should head the new Gaza. He said three weeks ago on the news that the temple is in Yemen. So, you know, it's right up to the top when it comes to this.

Ben Shapiro (69:09)

Well, that is Daron Spielman. You can check out his brand new book, when the Stones Speak. The remarkable discovery of the City of David and what Israel's enemies don't want you to know. Daron, really appreciate the time.

Chris Landau (69:17)

Thank you so much, Ben.

Ben Shapiro (69:19)

Alrighty, folks, the show continues for our members. Right now we'll be getting to Alex Jones, suggesting that world leaders are doing cocaine plus Diddy and Diddy watch. Yes, there's. There's a lot on that. Remember, in order to watch, you actually have to be a member. If you're not a member, become member. Use Code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.