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The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2200 - What’s In The Trump BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL?
01:16:00
We examine the contents of the House version of President Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill; President Trump makes deals in Qatar; and RFK goes to war with Congressional Democrats. Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/3WDjgHE Ep.2200 - - - Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings - - - DailyWire+: Join us at https://dailywire.com/subscribe and become a part of the rebellion against the ridiculous. Normal is back. And this time, we’re keeping it. The hit podcast, Morning Wire, is now on Video! Watch Now and subscribe to their YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/42SxDJC Get your Ben Shapiro merch here: https://bit.ly/3TAu2cw - - - Today's Sponsors: Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine that searches the internet to deliver fast, unbiased, high-quality answers, with sources and in-line citations. Ask Perplexity anything here: https://pplx.ai/benshapiro ExpressVPN - Go to https://expressvpn.com/ben and find out how you can get 4 months of Expres...
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Ben Shapiro
Well, folks, tons to get to on today's show. President Trump over in Qatar, what's happening over there. Plus the big beautiful bill being negotiated. What's in that on the House and does it pass RFK in front of Congress? We'll get to all of it, but the news is moving faster than ever. People have been telling us they can't make sense of it all. So we are giving you more Ben Shapiro show. More facts, more analysis, more clarity. Same time every day in a new, longer format. Tune in on Spotify, Apple, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Plus, tomorrow night, we cross the line. Not sure what that line is, but it'll probably be obvious after we do it. That's right, it's Ben After Dark. The show that started as a harmless late night experiment is now a full length weekly show with significantly fewer boundaries. Exclusive for Daily Wire plus members. Ben After Dark gives you everything you never knew you needed because you didn't. Unfiltered takes that probably should be behind a paywall. Segments no. 1 approved. Celebrity guests who agree to come on then immediately regret that decision. Tomorrow, I ask Ambassador Mike Huckabee the question that's been keeping me up at night. Does he know who the latest WrestleMania champion is? Producer Savvy introduces me to Internet talent that make me question America's future. And of course, a new Ben destroys because someone did something so weird I needed a segment just to process it. It's weird, it's wild. It's everything late night TV would be if it had a smaller audience and no legal department. Ben After Dark tomorrow night only@dailywireplus.com we will regret it. You won't. Alrighty, folks. So President Trump's economic success rests on the passage of his one big, beautiful bill. We've been talking about this for months and the timeline on the big, beautiful bill is still somewhat in doubt because obviously it has to pass through the House and then a version has to pass through the Senate and then there's going to be reconciliation between the House bill and the Senate bill. And so whatever you see in the House bill might not end up in the final bill. However, massive controversy already breaking out in the House over where the cuts are going to come from. Many House Republicans are calling for cuts that are going to make up for the loss in revenue to the federal government that occurs when taxes are not increased. Now, as you know from sort of conservative discussions for the last 50 years, there's something called the Laffer Curve. The Laffer Curve is a suggestion by the economist Art Laffer, that if you're looking for sort of the proper rate of taxation, it can't be zero because then the government has no money to spend. And it also can't be 100 because then the government has no money to spend. No one will actually go out and. And do business if, if they are going to have all of their money removed by the federal government. So the Laffer curve is a suggestion that there is in fact a point at which if you tax people more, then you will actually end up with declining government revenues as a result, because people will simply work less in order to avoid the top tax bracket, for example. And there's certainly truth to that. It's unclear where exactly the inflection point is with regard to the Laffer curve. However, it has been longstanding to conservative economic dogma that if you increase taxes, you will end up quashing economic growth because you're taking money away from the more efficient private sector and sticking it in the public sector where it gets doled out by a bunch of politicians to their favorite pet projects. Also, how you look at government revenue differs between conservatives and people on the left. People on the left believe that the government basically owns your money and then allows you to keep some of it. Conservatives believe you own your money and then you have to give some of it to the government in order to do public services, for example. So when it comes to even the discussions of what government revenue looks like, the real discussion that should be had, and it's the discussion no one will ever have, is what is the proper role of government in our lives? Why is it that our government is spending 6, $7 trillion a year on the federal level? This was not the case when the com. When the Gov. When the original country was founded, when the United States was founded, the original expenditures by the federal government were absolutely minimal. And it stayed that way except for times of war, like the Civil War, all the way up through essentially the end of World War I. And then government spending began to grow slowly. And then with fdr, it just exploded all out of proportion. And so now we have $7 trillion being spent every single year. That's what's racking up the national debt. And so there are a couple of sort of different takes on what should be done. A traditional classical conservative might say we need to cut massive reams of government spending, but push it all back down to the states. The states wish to do things like Medicare and Medicaid, then the states can do that. But it shouldn't be up to a taxpayer from Montana to pay for the health care of a guy from California because he's 70 years old, for example. And then you have the sort of Republican Party position, which is let's cut around the edges. And then you have the Democratic Party position, which is let's never cut anything ever for the rest of time. The latter two positions are the ones the American people have opted for. The latter two positions are let's spend all the money in the world and let's spend just slightly less than all the money in the world. And that's what a lot of the debate is with regard to this current GOP tax bill. Inside the Republican caucus, there are a bunch of Republicans who believe that cutting spending in any way, shape or form is detrimental to Republican electoral chances. The American people don't want it. And by polling, basically there's truth to that. By polling, the American people say they don't want the government to be so big and provide so many services. And then when you ask them which services they would like cut, they started. They scratch their head and really have no idea of the answer to that question. Then you have sort of traditional Republicans who say, listen, if we're ever going to get to anything more like big restructuring of government, you have to start somewhere or we are going to plunge off the debt cliff. So all of this is manifesting in the debate over the current big beautiful bill in the Republican House. There is no question spending is going to continue to increase. The only question is whether the rate of the increase is slightly slower or slightly faster. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Republican tax bill looks very different depending on your income and your political lens. For the top sliver of taxpayers, it gives a permanent extension and expansion of expiring tax cuts from 2017, coupled with some new limits. Middle income households would get permanent tax cut extensions as well. They would also gain temporary tax cuts, including a larger standard deduction and child tax credit and targeted benefits for senior citizens and people receiving tips and overtime pay. There's not much in the tax cut bill for people who are low income, mainly because people who are low income are not paying taxes in the United States. This is why never people say this tax bill disproportionately benefits the rich. Well, I mean, I would assume because the rich absolutely overpay proportionately based on their income. Like wildly disproportionately. The top quintile of income earners in this country pay all net taxes in the country, all of them. Net taxes, meaning the amount you pay to the government versus the Services you get back from the government. A lot of middle income people are paying taxes, but they're also receiving tremendous benefits back from the government in the form of various forms of welfare, social support and all of the rest. Representative Blake Moore of Utah said this is not a bill for billionaire relief. But Democrats are casting the bill as an unacceptable giveaway to well off people at the expense of most Americans. So there are a bunch of different provisions that are controversial here. One is the tax data and then one is the the question of where some cuts are coming from. So if you look at the actual material in the bill, the Tax foundation has a good rundown on the bill, taxfoundation.org and what they find through their preliminary analysis is that the tax provisions would increase long run GDP by 0.6%, which is a solid increase in GDP and national growth. It would reduce federal tax revenue by $4.1 trillion over the course of the next decade. Again, what does that mean? It means the federal government will take in less money than it would have if it left the top tax rates at a higher rate. So you're increasing growth, but you're decreasing the revenue to the government, the amount of money that the government steals from the taxpayers. On a dynamic basis, the revenue reduction would fall by 19% to $3.3 trillion over 10 years before the added interest costs. So they're saying that basically that $4.1 trillion that you're missing, that's assuming a static level of economic growth. If you include the economic growth, then you end up with more revenue back to the government, but you're still going to end up with in addition to the deficit of some $3.3 trillion. Overall, the bill would prevent tax increases on 62% of taxpayers. That would occur if the Trump tax cuts were to expire. But there are other provisions that are being eliminated, like for example, bonus depreciation and research and development expensing. So in some ways this is a significantly more populist tax cut bill than the Trump tax cut bill the first time around. This is why, for example, there's no tax on tips included. But they're getting rid of bonus depreciation. The House passed budget resolution would allow a $4.5 trillion increase in the deficit from tax cuts over the next decade, so long as spending is also cut by $1.7 trillion. But if they don't cut the spending, if that spending never materializes, then the cap on the tax cuts gets reduced dollar for dollar. So the question is where those cuts come from. This is where most of the controversy is occurring, not with regard to the tax rates per se, but with regard to the cuts. Where are the cuts occurring to offset some of the loss in revenue to the federal government? And the answer is in restructuring of Medicaid, particularly. Get some more on this in a moment. First, free online services like Google actually charge you. They use your personal data. They track your behavior. They sell this information to advertisers. When something is free, you're. You're not the customer you are now. The product being sold, your digital self, is traded to unknown entities who might want to sell you products, influence your political views, or even manipulate your vote. To reclaim your privacy and protect yourself online, you should use ExpressVPN. Without a VPN, your Internet provider can legally track and sell your browsing data in the United States. 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But with Lifelock, you can help protect it. And identity theft is quite terrible. Producer Jess left the office, which means that the rest of the team is fighting over who gets to work with LifeLock. Right now as Act now, save up to 40% your very first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK use promo code BEN or go to lifelock.com BEN for 40% off terms apply. Go check them out right now. 1-800-LIFELOG ACT NOW. Save up to 40% your very first Year. So Medicaid has been a massive income suck for the United States for an extraordinarily long time. It has basically become a massive welfare program, including for many people who don't want to work. So Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Mehmet Oz, Brooke Rollins and Scott Turner. That'd be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Administrator for cmms, right? The center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. They have an editorial in the New York Times talking about what exactly is going to happen to Medicaid. And the point they make is that there are a lot of people who are on Medicaid. Again, Medicare is for the elderly and Medicaid is for people who are are too poor. Basically they're very poor and so they require government assistance on the federal level. That's what Medicaid is for. Again, the United States. The idea of the United States is somehow mean to the poor is ridiculous. The United States has the most progressive tax system on planet Earth, meaning that the differential between what the top tax brackets pay and what the people at the bottom pay is the widest of virtually any OECD country. The United States also has massively generous welfare benefits. Whenever you see the so called income gap in the United States that is always ignoring the welfare benefits that go to people in the bottom half of income earners. Because when you include that, a lot of the income gap actually erodes pretty quickly. In any case, these administrators and secretaries over at the Trump administration point out welfare programs have now deviated from their original mission both by drift and by design. Millions of able bodied adults have been added to the roles in the past decade primarily as a result of Medicaid expansion. Many of these recipients are working age individuals without children who might remain on welfare for years. Some of them do not work at all, or they work inconsistently throughout the year. The increased share of welfare Spending dedicated to able bodied working age adults distracts from what should be the focus of these programs, the truly needy. This should not be the American way of welfare. As leaders of the agencies they say that oversee the largest welfare programs in the nation, snap, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Medicaid and Federal Housing Assistance, among others, we see the data, hear the stories and understand that these programs are failing to deliver results for able bodied adults. Welfare should be a short term hand up, not a lifetime handout. But too many able bodied adults on welfare are not working at all. And too often we don't even ask them to. A recent analysis from an economist at the American Enterprise Institute examined survey data from December 2022, that's the most recent month available, and found that only 44% of able bodied working age Medicaid beneficiaries without dependents were worked at least 80 hours in that month. That's an insane statistic. So only 4 in 10 Medicaid recipients who are in fact able bodied and working age were working at least 80 hours in the month. 80 hours, by the way. And if you just do the math right there, 80 hours would be 20 hours a week, I. E. 5 hours a day. And only 4 out of 10 Medicaid recipients were working 5 hours a day. That is not because of lack of job opportunity. By the way, folks, we still have more job openings in the United States than people applying for those jobs. Establishing universal work requirements for able bodied adults across the welfare programs we manage, they say will prioritize the vulnerable, empower able bodied individuals, help rebuild thriving communities and protect the taxpayers. And they point to the Clinton welfare reform as a model for this sort of stuff. They say it's true a work requirement protects taxpayer dollars as it provides income to the worker and lessens dependence on government funding. But it's not just about money. Work provides purpose and dignity. In other words, get off your butt and work. Now the counter perspective is being provided by Josh Hawley. As I say, there is a debate inside the Republican Party between people who sort of side with Democrats like we'll never cut any welfare spending ever, ever, forever because the American people don't like it. And people who say we need to restructure some of this or we're going to hit the fiscal cliff soon, sooner than humanly possible. And then there are sort of true believers in the Republican caucus, the people who believe that the federal government has no role in virtually any of this. And that would be people like, for example, presumably Chip Roy in Texas or Rand Paul in the Senate. In Kentucky, Josh Halley is on the populist side. And in a piece indistinguishable from that of any Democrat, he wrote in the New York Times just a couple of days ago, don't cut Medicaid. And he says polls show Democrats down in the dumps at their lowest approval level in decades. But we Republicans are having an identity crisis of our own. In can see it in the tug of war over President Trump's one big beautiful bill. Will Republicans be a majority party of working people or a permanent minority speaking only for the C suite? So the question I have for Josh Halley is if to be the party of the working people means you are supposed to basically allow tax increases and broader welfare spending, how does that distinguish you from the Democratic Party across the aisle? And if you're going to get into a battle of who spends more on blue collar people in terms of other people's money, Democrats are always going to win that race because they have no principles at all that hold them off from just continuing to expand benefits. Halley says Mr. Trump has promised working class tax cuts and protection for working class social insurance like Medicaid. But now a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans call it the party's Wall street wing is urging Congress to ignore all that and get back to the old time religion, corporate giveaways, preferences for capital and deep cuts to social insurance. Again, this sounds exactly like what Elizabeth Warren might write. So again, he suggests that we should give more child tax credits, which again, a child tax credit should be for people who pay taxes. Right now, child tax credits go to people who do not pay taxes, which means it is just a handout, basically, if you want to do a handout, by the way, a handout that actually works. There is a proposal in this bill that's quite great called Invest America. That proposal basically says the federal government, for every child who is born, that child gets a savings account with the federal government that is essentially invested in the s and P500 and then it's just left there, right? That, by the way, was actually the Social Security privatization plan that George W. Bush proposed back in 2006. Except this time it's a thousand bucks for every kid in the United States. That would actually be a smart investment play if you want the government investing in this sort of thing. Because then you actually have people who are invested in, say, the stock market, and you get the natural growth along with the economy of those funds, as opposed to most other social welfare programs or pyramid schemes like Social Security, where the government Just tells you that they're taking your money and putting it in a lockbox and they spend it on some other dude. And then when you get real old, we tax somebody new to pay for you. So that is the debate inside the Republican Party right now. Again, the right side of that debate does include all of these secretaries. In the Trump administration. The attempt to get people back to work is really important. Brad Wilcox, who does excellent work over at the Institute of Family Studies, he showed, he has a statistic showing that before 1980, only about 5% of able bodied men age 25 to 40 were not looking for work. Today, that number is 11%. So it is more than doubled over the course of time. And that how can they not work? And the answer is because the federal government is paying for them. Nonetheless, this is creating an enormous amount of dyspepsia inside the Republican Party. Some Republicans, particularly in purple districts or purple states, are upset about this. They're afraid that maybe they're going to lose their seats if there are any sort of restructurings of Medicaid. Meanwhile, those same Republicans very often are arguing about state and local tax deductions. So the original Trump tax bill did not allow state and local tax deductions. So the, the so called SALT deductions basically allowed you to take off the taxes for your state government before you paid your federal income tax. So if I was in California and I paid a 13 state rate on say a million dollars of income, just to make the statistics easy, So I take $130,000 off my income before I submitted my federal tax return. I paid the, the state tax first and then I paid the federal income tax on the remaining income of $870,000. Trump got rid of that because what he said is, why is it that a person who's in a zero tax state like Florida should essentially be subsidizing a person who lives in California? Why should the federal government be giving benefits to people who live in blue states that tax their citizens highly? Well, now a bunch of Republicans who are in those blue states have been pushing for SALT deductions. The current plan approved by the House Ways and Means committee includes a $30,000 cap for individuals and married couples. That starts phasing down when the income reaches $400,000. That is a boost from today's $10,000, but it's still not high enough for some of the Republican lawmakers in places like New York, like Mike Lawler and Nick Lalota. They're trying to push for more, an increase in the so called SALT cap. But there are a bunch of Republicans in red states with zero tax rates who are looking at this and saying, why are we giving a bunch of tax breaks to people who live in New York and California? According to the Wall Street Journal, it's a tables have turned moment inside the House GOP where the typical pattern is that hardliners draw red lines while moderates get in line. SALT is one of several concerns conservatives have with the latest version of the big beautiful bill. They want faster repeal of clean energy tax breaks, a quicker start to Medicaid work requirements, and smaller federal support for the expanded Medicaid program created by Obamacare. Meanwhile, there's all sorts of hubbub inside the Republican caucus over what to do with the Doge cuts. So Elon Musk and Doge have gone through. They found a bunch of cuts that they have identified as potential cuts. In order for those to become permanent, you need Congress through a process called rescission, to actually vote on making those tax cuts, on making those cuts in waste, fraud and abuse permanent. Russ Vaught of the Office of Management and Budget, he says that that's one of the goals here, is to make those Doge cuts permanent. We intend to take the Doge agenda and the cuts and the momentum and the initiative and turn those into permanent savings.
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Unknown Republican Representative
That's, that's what we believe is our responsibility.
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Ben Shapiro
Okay. There are a lot of Republicans in the House and the Senate who don't actually like many of those cuts. Now, we should, we should again point out a lot of the cuts that we are talking about. Yes, they are sizable in sort of the absolute in terms of comparison to the spending of the federal government. They are not in fact, sizable at all. If you really wanted to prevent fiscal crisis in the United States over the course of the next 10 years, it requires moves much bigger than simple work requirements for Medicaid by Republicans, unless they have a broader majority, aren't going to be able to do any of that. That's why you are seeing an incrementalism even from the conservatives inside the Republican caucus. It's going to take again, an act of political leisure domain, some political magic for Mike Johnson to pull this thing off. And even if he does, in the House with this extremely narrow majority, in some ways, the narrow majority helps Johnson, right, Because it means that every Republican is going to be pressured in order to vote for the bill. If he had a broad majority, then you could see a bunch of people who weren't going to be identified as the problem, who'd vote against it. But if you need everyone, then in the end, President Trump is going to put his boot down and force a bunch of reluctant Republicans to support whatever the big beautiful bill is. But then you go to the Senate. And again, the Republican majority in the Senate is not particularly large. The Republicans currently have 53 seats in the Senate. You could easily see some of the, quote unquote, moderate Republican senators, like for example, Lisa Murkowski in Alaska or Susan Collins in Maine drop off if the bill is not conservative enough. You could see people from the opposite side drop off. This is a very complicated process. Now, the markets right now have a tax cut already priced in. They believe it's going to happen. If this tax cut does not happen, if somehow this whole thing falls apart. Disaster area for the Trump administration, quite obviously. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin on Wednesday, one of the more conservative members of the Republican caucus, he said that he's worried the House Republicans reconciliation bill is going to go down. I think that other ship with the big beautiful bill, I think that's the Titanic.
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Donald Trump
I think that's going down because I.
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Ben Shapiro
Think I have enough colleagues in the Senate that this has resonated with that are saying, yeah, we've got to return to a reasonable pre pandemic level spending. But I always add this plus a process to achieve it and maintain it. Okay, so again, if somehow Trump pulls this off, major act of political magicking by the Trump administration and by Senator John Thune, the Senate Majority leader, and by Mike Johnson in the House. It is pretty amazing that the United States is so addicted to spending that even talk about work requirements for welfare. This is incredibly controversial. It's an amazing thing that, by the way, is the mark of a country that has been high on its own supply for far too long. It is an unserious country that refuses to come to a reckoning with the reality that is for example, our $37 trillion national debt. That is not going to get smaller anytime soon. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, you know what's kind of funny? When we started Daily Wire, I thought the hard part would be creating the show. Turns out dealing with all the behind the scenes stuff like the hiring, the HR policies, employee issues. That's the stuff that really eats up your time. And I know I'm not alone. When you're a business owner, every second of your time is incredibly valuable. So don't waste your energy and risk losing money dealing with time sucking payroll issues and HR infractions. Focus on what matters most. Running your business with help from Bambi. Here's what makes Bambi different. They give you access to your very own dedicated HR manager at a fraction of what it costs to employ somebody full time. And get this Bambi costs just 29 bucks a month whether you have 10, 75, even 100 employees. If I had Bambi when I was first building this business, it would have saved me countless hours and headaches. Instead of getting bogged down with paperwork and compliance, I could have focused on growing my business and connecting with my audience. Even better, with Bambi's HR autopilot, you'll never have to waste your valuable time getting into the weeds of HR policies, onboarding or terminations. Plus, Bambi is month to month, no hidden fees. You can cancel anytime right now get one month of Bambi for just one dollar. Go to Bambi.com to type in Ben Shapiro under podcast to schedule your first call with an HR manager right now. That's one month of Bambi for just $1 at B A M B E.com Ben Shapiro podcast also choosing SimpliSafe for this studio One of the easiest decisions we've ever made when we arm the system before leaving or calling it a day, my team and I know that we have peace of mind because our equipment and creative work are protected. With Simplisafe standing guard, I can focus on my projects, rest easier, confident and I'm covered if anything happens, especially while I'm out of the office and traveling. I would love for you to experience that same security in your home. With Simplisafe, families enjoy the gold standard in home security and genuine peace of mind whenever they arm the system. Unlike traditional systems that only respond after a break in occurs, SimpliSafe's Active Guard outdoor Protection works to prevent intrusions before they happen. Their AI powered cameras with live professional monitoring detect suspicious activity, allowing agents to intervene in real time, speaking to potential intruders, activating spotlights, contacting police before anyone enters your home. With no long term contracts, affordable monitoring at about a buck daily and a 60 day money back guarantee, Simplisafe delivers both protection and value for homeowners. Visit simplisafe.comshapiro to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan. Get your first month for free. That's SimpliSafe.com Shapiro there's no safe like SimpliSafe, so obviously a lot going on in Congress. Congress is also considering measures to enshrine the Trump administration's moves against transgender propaganda and ideology. Joining us on the line to discuss is Mary Margaret Ohan, the Daily Wire White House court correspondent. Mary Margaret has been at the White House. President Trump, of course, is overseas, but a lot is going on domestically as well. Mary Margaret, thanks for joining us.
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Mary Margaret Ohan
Good morning, Ben. It's great to be here.
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Ben Shapiro
So the big news of the week in D.C. outside of the Middle east, obviously, is the Trump Justice Department moving against transgender grants. Maybe you can tell us about what's going on on that score.
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Mary Margaret Ohan
Absolutely. So of course, we know that since January, late January, February, the Trump administration has been taking steps to cut funding for things that they call like WOKE or ideological purposes, grants to things like transgenderism or dei. And we've seen this in the Department of Transportation, Department of Education, and now in the Department of Justice, where we reported this week exclusively that the Trump administration is hacking away, slashing away at grants to causes like transgenderism and dei, and instead turning that money and those funds, funds towards supporting our law enforcement. And we learned about this because Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking for clarification on these grants. And there had been a big hubbub in the media about how the Department of Justice was slashing, I think, around $800 million in grants and retaking a look at those funds that if they weren't being appropriately used, aligned with the missions of the the Trump administration reallocating them. So Grassley wanted to know more about what was in these grants and where they were going. And we exclusively obtained his letter to Bondi, also the Department of Justice's response to him, in which we learned that the majority of those grants were going to a majority of the grants that the Department of Justice slashed were going to non governmental entities. And some of those included some very WOKE causes. For example, there was a massive amount of money going to the Washington State Department of Corrections to support that State Department of Corrections efforts to promote transgenderism in prisons where a young woman named Mazi Clark had sued the state for allowing a man to sexually assault her in her woman's prison. So a variety of different issues like this, Ben, the Department of justice is cutting the funding towards those issues and saying we're no longer going to be funding these types of things and instead we're redirecting those funds towards law enforcement. And I think of lot, a lot of Americans, you know, we are very decidedly against these types of ideological purposes, very excited about some of the things we're hearing about defecting, protecting the border and supporting our law enforcement.
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Ben Shapiro
Mayor Margaret, you've also been covering some of the stuff that's been happening in Congress. So obviously Republicans are trying to follow on this in Congress. They're trying to actually endorse what President Trump is doing via the executive branch in the so called big beautiful bill. How are those negotiations going?
- [28:39]
Mary Margaret Ohan
Yes, Ben. So we've been reporting this week. My colleague Leif at the Daily Wire broke a big story yesterday on how Congressman Dan Crenshaw is taking steps to prevent any transgender surgeries, hormones or puberty blockers to be funded by this reconciliation bill. He knows, like I was just saying, that this is a very unpopular issue for Democrats. It's something they've been pushing repeatedly. And he also pointed out that there has been no amendment introduced trying to block his measure here, which is really interesting and I think backs more than ever this understanding that this is an unpopular issue. We even saw multiple Democrats kind of flip flop on this issue and on men and women's sports during the 2024 election cycle right before the elections and say we no longer support this type of thing because they recognize how unpopular it is. So Dan Crenshaw is taking steps in Congress to protect kids in this way. And we're seeing all over the country legislation introduced as well. So lots of steps being taken here. And of course, this supports President Donald Trump's agenda to protect children and to keep men out of women's sports. So a lot of cooperation between Congress and the president. And I think President Trump is very excited about that.
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Ben Shapiro
It's Mary Margaret Olihan from the White House. Mary Margaret, thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it.
- [29:52]
Mary Margaret Ohan
Thank you, Ben.
- [29:53]
Ben Shapiro
And meanwhile, the markets continue to roil. I know there's a widespread perception, particularly on the right, that the markets have now recovered. Everything is hunky dory. President Trump backed off the most damaging aspects of his trade war and now everything will be fine. That is not what the markets are saying right now. The markets are saying we don't know where the hell this is going. And it turns out that the tariff rates that President Trump left in place are still wildly higher than they were before Liberation Day. As I said yesterday on the show, the removal of many of the provisions that Trump put in place did not remove all of the provisions that Trump put in place. And the provisions he put in place leave the United States with an average tariff rate that is higher than any time since the 1930s. What's the impact of that? Well, Walmart apparently is now going to raise its prices. This is what people have been predicting, according to The Wall Street Journal. The retailer said on Thursday it plans to raise prices this month and early this summer, passing along some of the costs as tariff affected merchandise hit store shelves. Walmart CFO John David Rainey said the magnitude and speed at which these prices are coming to us is somewhat unprecedented in history. He said sales rose steadily in the latest quarter as shoppers flocked to deals in fast shipping. But the full impact of the trade war has yet to come. He said it's dynamic and fluid environment already, for example, tariffs have driven up the price of bananas. The US Again has agreed to temporarily lower the tariffs. But if we think that we are past the woods here, I do not think that that is in fact the case. And again, President Trump continues to make comments are likely to lead to uncertainty in the markets. And uncertainty in the markets is its own form of damage to the markets. For example, yesterday, President Trump said that he has a disagreement with Apple's Tim Cook about the construction of the iPhone. So Tim Cook has been attempting to reshore manufacture of the iPhone away from China and toward India. That's a giant win for the Trump administration. Take the win, Mr. President. That is a good thing. India has been increasingly oriented toward the United States basically since the late 1990s. China is a geopolitical enemy of the United States. Moving the manufacture of the iPhone from China to India is a win. But President Trump said in Doha, Qatar yesterday that he is interested in reshoring the manufacture of iPhones completely to the United States, which would only increase the price of the iPhone by what, double? I mean, really like this sort of talk, not just let Scott Besson talk about the economy, please. Mr. Just let the Treasury Secretary do his thing. Here's President Trump on Apple and I.
- [32:15]
Donald Trump
Had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday. I said to him, tim, you're my friend. I treated you very good. You're coming in with $500 billion. But now I hear you building all over India. I don't want you building in India. You can build in India if you want to take care of India, because India is the highest, one of the highest tariff nations in the world. It's very hard to sell into India. And they offered us a deal where basically they're willing to literally charge us no tariff. So we go from the highest tariff. You couldn't do business in India. We're not even a top 30 in India because the tariff is so high to a point where they have actually told us, I assume you too, Scott, you were working on that also, that there will be no tariff. Right? Would you say that's a difference? They're the highest, and now they're saying no tariff. But I said to Tim, I said, tim, look, we've treated you really good. We put up with all the plants that you built in China for years. Now you got to build us. We're not interested in you building in India. India can take care of themselves. They're doing very well. We want you to build here. And they're going to be upping their production in the United States. Apple. So Apple's already in for 500 billion, but they're going to be up in their production.
- [33:30]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so what do markets do? Markets are effectively prediction mechanisms. And markets are trying to figure out what Trump means, what he's going to do. And this sort of uncertainty, this is not tactical uncertainty, this is not strategic ambiguity here. This is actual confusion. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen says a thing and then it's immediately contradicted by Peter Navarro or Howard Lutnick or the President in this particular case. That is not going to make the markets any more sanguine. So what do we actually need? If we want a successful economy, we need the tax cuts to be made permanent. Obviously, that doesn't happen. Disaster area. We need the trade barriers to continue to come down. 10 cannot be the minimum trade barrier. It's not going to be good. Okay? That will have some dire impact on, for example, pricing in the United States and small businesses in the United States that rely on imported goods screwing around with the free market system. It's. It's a lot easier to screw up that system than people believe it is. It turns out that the basic theory of free markets, which is that diffuse knowledge is better and more efficient than centralized knowledge. If you ignore that rule, you are going to do damage to the economic efficiency that the American people have come to rely upon. And that is a problem. Okay. Meanwhile, President Trump was in Qatar yesterday. And President Trump did some good things, like, for example, he cut a deal with Qatar, apparently to generate $1.2 trillion in economic exchange. According to the White House in a fact sheet, that agreement includes a $96 billion deal with Qatar Airways to buy up to 210 Boeing 787 Dreamliners and 777X airplanes with GE Aerospace engines. According to the fact sheet, also a statement of intent that would lead to 38 billion in investments at Qatar's Al Udaid airbase and other air defense and maritime security capabilities. Qatar, of course, wood the hell out of President Trump. They put on a big show they had a bunch of cyber trucks painted red that were ushering him. Like, they understand how to woo President Trump. The way to woo President Trump is that you do big shows. Okay. President Trump obviously loves that sort of thing. And so they did. They brought out all the camels. Not even kidding. They brought out. It was. It was basically the scene from Aladdin where Prince Ali arrives in Agrabah. They brought out the golden peacocks and everything. Here's what it looked like. He's got 75 golden camels, purple peacocks. He's got 53. Yeah, that. That's what it was in Qatar. President Trump loves that kind of stuff. And then President Trump announced this sort of investment package, and Qatar itself announced that they would be purchasing a bunch of Boeing aircraft. Here's what that sounded like. Boeing purchase agreement signed on behalf of the state of Qatar by His Excellency Bedram Hamidin Mir, CEO of Qatar Airways Company on behalf of the United States. Kelly Ortberg, president CEO of the Boeing Company. How exciting. Okay, so people signing these defense contracts and all the rest. Alrighty. There's only one problem. Qatar doesn't do this stuff without strings. And Hatch, they just don't. And pretending they do is silly. And President Trump, when he does business deals, presumably there are strings attached, right? That's true of every business deal. Why would Qatar, they have a population that is about one eighth the size of the state of Florida, and they are expending $100 billion to impact American policy. And so, just so we know, how big is Qatar? The answer is it is tiny. Tiny, tiny. So I asked our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity, what is the population of Qatar? And then to compare that to the size of the United States state, so we know what we're talking about. According to Perplexity, Qatar's population in 2025 is estimated to be approximately between 2.75 million and 3.6 million people. Bunch of different stats coming in, but that's roughly comparable to the population of Connecticut. Okay, maybe 3.6 million people. As far as the size of the state, Qatar covers about 4,500 square miles. That is smaller than any American state except for Rhode Island. So it is tiny. It is a tiny country, and it is expending tens of billions of dollars to impact American policy. You think they're doing that without any strings attached? Any. I would love to hear the theory of what even Qatar is doing. They spend more money. They spend, I believe, two thirds of the amount of money that China does. Lobbying China has 1 billion citizens. Plus Qatar has 2.6 million. What are they doing? And the answer is they are punching above their weight and basically buying people. This is what they do. The Wall Street Journal has an entire piece titled How Qatar Spent Billions to Gain Influence in the United States. And of course they do. That is exactly what they do. Whether it's buying politicians like Robert Menendez or whether it is subsidizing an American air base in Qatar so as to gain control over American foreign policy in the region, whether it is subsidizing American universities to the tune of billions of dollars and subsidizing radicalism at those universities, or whether it is signing people on as foreign agents, which is literally what they do. That have included in the past a former Qatar lobbyist, Pam Bondi, the current Attorney General, who just signed off on this 747 arrangement. I mean, this is what Qatar does, and then they throw their weight around, and that has some impact. So Qatar, for example, the prime minister of Qatar, he came out yesterday and he was talking about the situation in Gaza, and he said, the Palestinians want to end the war. No, they clearly do not. If by the Palestinians, you mean the people. I'm sure many of the people do. If by the Palestinians you mean the leadership like Hamas, clearly they don't. Hamas clearly does not actually want a deal. If they did, all they would have to do is go into exile, give up their. Their aspirations to rule the Gaza Strip, and release the hostages, and the war would be over today. That was true October 8th, by the way. But here is Qatar trying to promote its agenda. And again, when you have your hands stuffing money into the pockets of Americans, it makes it a lot easier to make this sort of nonsensical play.
- [39:23]
Unknown Middle Eastern Official
It's good that you have mentioned the case of Idan Alexander, whom we are happily seeing him free. Finally, this took us like a long, you know, a lot of time and a lot of efforts and a lot of pressure without any exchange, which is basically something has never happened. Now, we wanted this to be also as a first step toward having a complete hostage deal. Unfortunately, the next day being followed by a massacre on a hospital in Gaza. And just the time Israelis, obviously, to say they were going after senior Hamas. Yeah, but going after senior Hamas leader doesn't mean killing 70 people just as a collateral damage, which has just been the justification for the last year and a half. We cannot reach a deal.
- [40:17]
Ben Shapiro
I'm sorry, What a joke. These people are. What. What a. Seriously, what a joke. These people are pretending. These people are on the side of Western civilization is a lie. He literally calls it a massacre. When Israel, in one of the most targeted strikes ever, killed, it appears, the entire leadership case of Hamas that is remaining in the Gaza Strip, they were hiding beneath a hospital, the European hospital, in the tunnel beneath the European hospital. They hit the area right outside the hospital, hit that tunnel. And he calls that a massacre because he's on the side of Hamas. How do we know? Because they funded Hamas to the tune of $2 billion. Two billion. And these are the people who were praising and calling honest brokers. It's a joke, of course. They're paying lots of money into the United States to impact American policy. That is the explicit goal. What, are we pretending that these are charitable, wonderful people now? Are you even kidding? By the way, the only reason that any of these regimes continue to exist in the Middle east is because the United States props them up militarily. That is true for uae. It is true for Qatar. It's true for Bahrain. It's true for Saudi Arabia. It's true for Jordan. It's true for Egypt. It's true for all of them. Otherwise the Muslim Brotherhood, who would be in charge in most of these places. So it's good that these regimes are in charge. It also happens to be the case that all of these places would be dirt poor if it were not for the technological innovations of the west that built their entire oil industry. All of it is deeply irritating to be lectured on foreign policy by people who support terrorism everywhere they can find it. Particularly Qatar. Particularly Qatar. Meanwhile, again, if you think there are no strings attached, there clearly are strings attached. The reason Qatar is doing all of this is to influence policy everywhere, from the Houthis in Yemen to the Iran deal itself to. To Syria. So yesterday, President Trump praised the new leader of Syria. Okay, here is the thing. If you want to make the case that we need to relieve sanctions on the Syrians temporarily to allow them to find some sort of more stable fiscal footing with actual strings attached. Like, for example, all the things President Trump wants. Normalization with Israel, expelling terrorists, allowing some level of religious diversity in Syria. If you want those things to happen, then what you gradually do is release the sanctions as you have proof of concept. What you don't do is relieve them all at once and then meet Al Jilani, the new head of Syria, who is a terrorist. He was a member of Al Qaeda. He's a member of isis. And then he broke away from them and created his own terrorist group called hts, which is sponsored by the Terror backing Turkish government. But here is President Trump speaking in warm tones about a man who just a few weeks ago, people were noting was killing the Druze at an extraordinary rate and also possibly targeting Christians. And yet here we are with. With praise for Al Jelani.
- [42:52]
Mary Margaret Ohan
How did you find this area, President?
- [42:54]
Donald Trump
Right, right. I think very good. Young, attractive guy, tough guy. You know, strong pass. Very strong pass. Fighter.
- [43:04]
Ben Shapiro
Does that worry you?
- [43:06]
Donald Trump
He's got a real shot at pulling it together. I spoke with President Aaron Waddle. I'm very friendly with him. He feels he's got a shot.
- [43:17]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah. No wonder President Erdogan thinks he has a shot. President Erdogan is in charge of Syria. Okay. Erdogan is a dictator who is a terrorist supporter of Hamas and HTS and a bunch of other Sunni terror groups. Erdogan himself has Ottoman aspirations for the Middle East. The reason HTS took over Syria is because they were sponsored by Turkey. Yeah. No wonder Erdogan likes Al Jilani, is a client. He is a proxy. Pretending this is not happening is not a way to do policy. And when you say has a strong past, do you mean, like, murdered a bunch of people? Because that's what Al Jelani did and apparently continues to do with the Druze. So much so that the Druze in southern Syria, remember, the Druze, are not Jewish. The Druze are openly appealing to Israel to go in and try and protect them in southern Syria from hts and from other terrorist groups in Syria. You think there are no strings attached? Of course there are strings attached. I think President Trump is too smart to be played in this way. I think he is too intelligent to be played in this way. But certainly that's not what the Qataris think, and certainly not the Iranians think either. Okay. Speaking of people who think they can play the President of the United States, Iran clearly believes that they can outplay the presidents of the United States. Yesterday, a top Iranian official said to Richard Engel of NBC News that they are ready to sign a nuclear deal with certain conditions with President Trump. Ali Shamkhani, a top political, military, and nuclear advisor to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is one of the most senior Iranian officials to speak publicly about the ongoing discussions. He said that Iran would commit to never making nuclear weapons. Oh, maybe they're pledging to be goody goody gumdrops. Wow. They're pledging to be just the best. Probably. Probably they'll keep their word. The Iranians have never lied to anybody. The Iranian regime, the I told, has never lied to Anybody, they are perfectly honest all the way across the board. And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that is for sale. He said Iran would commit to never making nuclear weapons. Getting rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, which can be weaponized. Agreed to enrich uranium only to the lower levels needed for civilian use. What does that mean? If you keep your nuclear facilities and you can enrich to 3.67%, then you can also ramp up the centrifuges and enrich to 70 or 80 or 90%. That is the whole point of keeping them. Iran does not need nuclear energy. It is one of the most oil rich states on earth. Why are they looking for nuclear energy in Iran? Because they're so green in Iran. They're environmentalists. Are they? That's. That's the suggestion. All in exchange for immediate lifting of all economic sanctions on Iran. Shamchani said they'd sign an agreement today if those conditions were met. You bet your ass they would. Because those conditions mean that they get a nuclear weapon in short order and their economy is open. And notice some of the conditions that are not placed there. Using that economic foundation to build back its terror bases. Using that economic foundation to build ballistic missiles. Of course they'd sign on to that because it's just the Obama deal that Donald Trump called the worst deal in human history. You can't just take the Obama deal, stamp a big T on it and call it a good deal. It ain't how this works. President Trump, however, was expressing optimism about the Iranian deal yesterday. Here he was probably read today, the.
- [46:22]
Donald Trump
Story about Iran has sort of agreed to the terms. They're not going to make, I call it, in a friendly way, nuclear dust. We're not going to be making any nuclear dust in Iran. And we've been strong. I want them to succeed. I want them to end up being a great country, frankly. But they can't have a nuclear weapon. That's the only thing. It's very simple. It's not like I have to give you 30, 30 pages worth of details. There's only one sentence. They can't have a nuclear weapon. And I think, I think we're getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this. There's two steps. There's a very, very nice step and there's a violent step. The violence like people haven't seen before. And I don't, I hope we're not going to have to do this. I don't want to do the second step. Some people do. Many People do. I don't want to do that step. So we'll see what happens. But we're in very serious negotiations with Iran for long term peace and if we do that, it'll be fantastic.
- [47:25]
Ben Shapiro
Ok, so I'm just going to make one thing clear. When he says the only thing is they can't have a nuclear weapon. You don't need 30 pages of detail. You absolutely need 30 pages of detail. Abso freaking lutely you need the details. They can't have a nuclear weapon just means they can't have the actual nuclear weapon. How about the centrifuges that can spin it up in two weeks, can they have those? That's the question. Do they have the capability to develop a nuclear weapon? How about if we open sanctions on them, can they use that to rebuild Hezbollah or Hamas or Islamic Jihad or fund the Houthis? What can they use the money for? Right. There are a bunch of like that. 30 pages makes a big difference. You know, it turns out, putting on my lawyer hat for a moment, that when people structure the outline of deals, all the devil always is in the details. Because the deal he's talking about right there is the Obama Iran deal. It is just the JCPOA Congress has already said that's not going to fly, by the way. Congressional Republicans are saying no, it's complete denuclearization. And President Trump himself has said consistently, complete denuclearization. If somehow his special envoy, Steve Whitkoff or anybody else in the Trump orbit tries to steer him in the direction of the jcpoa, it will be one of the most giant fails of Trump administration too. The Iranians are counting on their ability to play these people. That's what they are counting on. Qatar is counting on its ability to play these people. The Trump administration, that's what they are counting on. And right now, right now, President Trump should make clear that he is not going to be played on all of this. This means conditions attached, for example, to the desanctioning of Syria. It means actual pressure on Turkey, which needs our F35s to stop its support for terrorism. It means, for example, that Qatar should be cut off at the knees in its support for terrorism. And frankly, if Qatar wanted tomorrow, what they just showed by the release of Idan Alexander is that if Qatar decides to tell Hamas what to do, Hamas actually listens. If the United States actually wanted to end the conflict in Gaza, they could do it literally today. The Trump administration could just say to Qatar, here's the deal. The air base goes away, it moves over to uae. Unless all the hostages come out and Hamas goes into exile, that'd be the end of the war today, literally today. But that would require seeing Qatar clearly for what it is, which is a, which is a deceitful state that plays both sides and stuffs cash wherever it can find it, oil cash that they're digging out of the ground. And meanwhile, in other non salutary news, Tulsi Gabbard, who is the Director of National Intelligence, she is consolidating control of the President's daily Brief. Why does that matter? Well, because the information that President Trump receives when it comes to intelligence matters an awful lot to his decision making. So Tulsi Gabbard is now attempting to sort of centralize the power over the Daily Brief. And she's doing so in ways that seem to sort of be geared toward confirming the President's priors on a wide variety of issues. Gabbard's decision, according to the New York Times, comes as President Trump has openly mused to AIDS over time about whether the office she leads should actually continue to exist. Gabbard's office announced the decision internally on Tuesday. The memo said there was much to be worked out about the transition timelines and our own processes. Again, the goal here with regard to the Daily Brief is to take control away from, for example, the CIA, whose current director is John Ratcliffe. One of the reasons that she is doing that, presumably is because there was a controversy that arose over Venezuela. So, for example, Gabbard removed the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, Michael Collins, and his deputy. Why? Well, because he had actually written along with the rest of the council that Venezuela is not, in fact, actively deploying members of Trenda Aragua MS.13 into the United States. And President Trump has used that idea as a lever for using the Alien Enemies Acts for deportations. Okay, well, it's either true or it's not. Okay, if the, if it's not true, then sure fire them. But if in fact it is true, then simply censoring the intelligence that reaches the president because it, it doesn't match with his priors, that is not a good way to make policy. Reality continues to exist, whether you like it or not. In February, the intelligence community circulated an assessment that reached the opposite conclusion. The administration asked the National Intelligence Council to take a second look at the available evidence. And the National Intelligence Council reaffirmed what the intelligence community was saying. And so Laura Loomer then attacked the National Intelligence Council as career anti Trump bureaucrats who needed to be replaced if they wanted to promote open borders. Again, the job of the dni, the job of the intelligence community is to provide best available intelligence. It is not supposed to be politically driven. It is not a good thing. If you are firing people not based on your belief that they are doing a bad job, but based on the idea that the facts that they are presenting to the President don't match with the things you want. The President told that is not a good thing. It turns out intelligence bubbles have had some pretty dire ramifications over the years. The most obvious being the invasion of Iraq, which was based on an intelligence bubble suggesting universal support for the idea that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. What you want is the best available intelligence available to the President full time, all the time, without some sort of political bias or censorship being attached on top of that. The President, when given full information, makes good decisions. If you deprive him of full information, that is a problem. Meanwhile, on the foreign front, there were talks that were supposed to be happening in Turkey with regard to Ukraine. Vladimir Putin originally said that he was going to show up in Ukraine. Vladimir Zelensky said, I'd like a 30 day ceasefire and then I'll show up. President Trump pressured Zelensky. Zelensky said, okay, and then he showed up in Turkey and Putin then didn't show. Instead, he sent a second tier team of negotiators to hold peace talks with Ukraine, spurning Keeves, challenged to go there in person to meet with Zelensky. Of course, the reason that Putin won't meet with Zelensky is he claims that Zelensky is an illegitimate leader, which is an amazing statement from a man who's consolidated his power over the course of the last two and a half decades by murdering nearly all of his political opponents or jailing them in any case. President Trump kind of changed his tune on this originally Yesterday he was saying that maybe he would fly to Turkey if Putin showed up to help broker this thing. Here's what he had to say yesterday.
- [53:40]
Donald Trump
Well, I don't know if he's showing up. I know he, he would like me to be there. And that's a possibility. We could end the war. I think it meant it. Tomorrow we're all booked out, you understand that? And said, but you gonna go UAE tomorrow. And so we have a very well situation now. That doesn't mean I wouldn't do it to save a lot of lives and come back. But yeah, I think they're thinking about something. I don't know that he would be there if I'm not there.
- [54:12]
Ben Shapiro
Okay? And then President Trump reversed himself after Putin said that he wasn't gonna go, and he said he was never gonna go. So originally, President Trump was like, maybe he'll go, and then I'll show up and we'll actually make a deal. And then Putin said he wasn't going to go, and Trump said, no, no, no, it was never going to happen. Mr. President, are you disappointed in the level of the delegation that the Russians send to Turkey?
- [54:32]
Donald Trump
No, Putin, I'm not disappointed in anything. Where are you? Who are you from?
- [54:36]
Ben Shapiro
BBC News.
- [54:38]
Donald Trump
I'm not disappointed. Why would I be? We just took in $4 trillion, and he says, are you disappointed about a delegation? I know nothing about a delegation. I haven't even checked. Look, nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together, okay? And obviously, he wasn't going to go. He was going to go, but he thought I was going to go. He wasn't going if I wasn't there. And I don't believe anything's going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together. But we're going to have to get it solved because too many people are dying.
- [55:07]
Ben Shapiro
So, you know, again, this sort of idea that the too many people are dying, we need to get. So if Putin never shows up, what's the plan then? Russia continues to make outsized demands. By the way, Russia is demanding territory it hasn't even occupied yet in Ukraine, according to its newest round of proposals. According to the New York Times, Andrei Kartapalov, the head of the Defense Committee in the lower chamber of Russian parliament, reiterated his message on Tuesday, saying Ukraine needed to recognize that the Russian military was advancing in 116 directions. And if Ukrainians do not want to talk, they must listen, quote, to the language of the Russian bayonet. And so Putin continues to sort of run around and. And not go to the negotiations while constantly maintaining a vigilant and increased military presence in eastern Ukraine. You know, what is the alternative going to be? I mean, presumably it's going to be President Trump saying that we continue to support the Ukrainians to prevent them from collapsing. And to President Trump's absolute credit, he is recognizing what Putin is doing right now in some ways. So President Trump in recent weeks asked advisors if they think that Putin has changed since his last time in office and expressed surprise at some of Putin's military moves, including bombing areas with children. That is according to the Wall Street Journal. And so at least he's waking up to the reality that is a good thing. It also happens to be that he is, I think, becoming increasingly concerned with the simple fact that the Russians have kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children back into Russia for some sort of radical indoctrination. Now, all of that, again, reality just exists. And as I've said before, President Trump is very much attuned to reality. And so the more he is attuned to the reality, the better his policies will be. Here are some realities on the foreign front. Vladimir Putin is not going to come to the negotiating table unless he believes he has no other real alternative. Two, Qatar is attempting to manipulate the president of the United States and American foreign policy. Three, Iran is not going to denuclearize. They are not. They've openly said this. This is not conjecture. They are not going to denuclearize in any way, shape or form that provides any sort of security for the Saudis, for the uae, for the Israelis, or anyone else the Iranians are targeting. Four, al Jelani in Syria needs to be held to account before you start shoveling money into his pockets. 5, Erdogan in Turkey is a disaster area. And trusting Erdogan in Turkey with American foreign policy is about as bad an idea as I can think of. Those are all realities, okay? And so whether or not those realities are acknowledged, they will continue to exist. Reality is undefeated. And again, the reason President Trump historically has done well is because he recognizes reality. I think he will again, I hope sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, RFK Jr headed over to the Hill for a grilling from lawmakers on a wide variety of topics. Actually, one of the people who was kicked out at the very beginning of his grilling on Capitol Hill was Ben and Jerry's co founder Ben Cohen, who's recently on Tucker Carlson, spewing about his views of foreign policy, which obviously are trash, but, you know, his ice cream is tasty. We'll say that. In any case, RFK showed up and made some really good points, and then he was grilled on some not so wonderful points. So on the good point, RFK Jr. Had been ripped by Rose DeLauro, she of the purple hair from Connecticut, because she was upset with how grants were being held up or spent under hhs. And here is RFK slamming her back.
- [58:34]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Allow me to answer that by pointing out the absolute cataclysmic disorganization of this agency under your oversight. For 40 years, we had nine separate spend, nine separate offices of Women's Health. When we consolidate them, the Democrats say we're eliminating them or not. We're still appropriating the 3.7 billion, but we're not keeping all nine. We had eight separate offices for minority health. We eliminated one. We had 27 HIV offices.
- [59:09]
Mary Margaret Ohan
Okay, let me just.
- [59:10]
Ben Shapiro
I'm going to.
- [59:11]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
We had 59. Behavioral health.
- [59:13]
Ben Shapiro
Well, over time. Okay, so Again, good for RFK Jr. Also, Democrats went after RFK Jr. For supposedly cutting into Medicaid. And he made the point that we were talking about earlier, which is that what they're actually attempting to do is get people who are on Medicaid to do the work that they are supposed to do to be eligible so they're not engaging in Medicaid fraud. He obviously is right about that. He also talked about some of the changes that he's been making that even some Democrats are happy with, especially concerning things like food dyes.
- [59:41]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Anybody thinks that we did gold standard medicine in this country from these institutions. Look at our children. They're the sickest children in the world. Laurie, you say that you. Excuse me, Congressman DeLauro, you say that you've worked for 20 years on getting food tie out. Give me credit. I got it out in 100 days.
- [60:04]
Mary Margaret Ohan
I'll give you that credit.
- [60:06]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
All right, so let's work together and do something that we all believe in, which is have healthy kids in our country. For God's sake.
- [60:13]
Ben Shapiro
Ms.
- [60:14]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Vain together. It's not. There's no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children. There's just kids.
- [60:22]
Ben Shapiro
Again, this is the stuff. This is the stuff that makes RFK Jr. Popular across the aisle is the fact that he does talk in these sort of universalist terms now, where he did get himself in some hot water as he was talking about vaccines and his comments on the COVID vaccine and whether it should be on the child vax schedule. Of course the COVID vaccine should not be on the child vax schedule. That's ridiculous. As I've said before, I took the COVID vaccine originally because we were told by the. By the Pfizers and the White House actually that it was going to prevent transmission, which it turns out there was no data to support and was not true. But when it came to my kids, none of my kids were vaccinated because the statistics on vaccination for children were sketchy at best and damaging at worst. And so, you know, there was. There was really a lot of counterproductive data suggesting that, in fact, one of the people who we had on routinely during the pandemic, Dr. Marty McGary, is now one of the heads of President Trump's health division. Well, Senator Kennedy went Beyond that, he was asked specifically about the measles vaccine and he started talking about the problems with the measles vaccine. And here you get into hot water because some of the stuff he's saying here is not factually accurate.
- [61:24]
Unknown Republican Representative
You also promised Chairman Cassidy that the FDA would not change vaccine standards from, quote, trump historical norms. But what happened? As soon as you were sworn in, you announced new standards for vaccine approvals that you proudly referred to in your own press release as a radical departure from current practice. And experts say that that departure will delay approvals. You also said, specific to the measles vaccine, that you support the measles vaccine, but you have consistently been undermining the measles vaccine. You told the public that the vaccine was wanes very quickly. You went on the Dr. Phil show and said that the measles vaccine was never fully tested for safety. You said there's fetal debris in the measles vaccine. And this morning.
- [62:08]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
All true.
- [62:09]
Unknown Republican Representative
All true this morning, in fact.
- [62:10]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Do you want me to lie to the public?
- [62:12]
Unknown Republican Representative
That's not, none of that is.
- [62:14]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Of course it's true. Of course it's true. Senator, Senator, begging your project. Do not know what you're talking about.
- [62:23]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so you know the, the idea that, that the measles vaccine has not been extensively tested. I mean, it's been deployed for literally decades. So actually we do have really good evidence on the measles vaccine. The, the notion there's fetal tissue that's in the measles vaccine. No, that in, in the development of the measles vaccine, fetal stem cells from lines that were developed in the 1960s have been used. But that's not the same as like fetal tissue. You don't have like fetal tissue that's roaming around in the measles vaccine or whatever. And it's that sort of stuff that actually undermines a lot of the good stuff that I think RFK Jr. Is attempting to do. Overall, Democrats really did not lay a significant glove on RFK Jr. In the end. Meanwhile, how much is President Trump winning on issues like immigration? He's winning so much that Gavin Newsom is now back walking an enormous part of his own agenda. So he has now proposed scaling back health care for illegal immigrants. According to the New York Times, quote, Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday called for California to scale back health care coverage for undocumented immigrants to help balance the state budget, retrenching on his desire to deliver universal health care for all. That move came two days after the Trump administration targeted a different state funded program for immigrants in California and signaled it would continue to scrutinize benefits for undocumented individuals. Again, it's always the New York Times saying undocumented individuals, they're called illegal immigrants. In a budget presentation on Wednesday, Mr. Newsom proposed freezing the enrollment of undocumented adults in the state's version of Medicaid, known as Medi Cal, as soon as January. So he's back walking a lot of this stuff, which of course is perfectly predictable from a man who wants to run in the sort of moderate lane for the Democratic Party for president. Fascinating to watch him revise all that. Speaking of his home state of California, the Daily Wire is now reporting on continued discrimination at UCLA Geffen School of Medicine. That's actually where my wife went to medical school, apparently. According to the daily wire, on May 8, 2025, do no harm sued the Geffen School of Medicine for racial discrimination in admissions. The Geffen dean of admissions has both publicly and privately said she uses race as a factor in making admissions decision. A white Juno Harm member was unfairly rejected by Geffen despite stellar academic achievements. And whistleblowers describe how the Geffen admissions committee routinely gives black and Latino applicants a pass for subpar metrics, saying that whites and Asians need near perfect scores to even be considered. They continue, by the way, not to produce MCAT scores in response to public records requests. So MCAT scores would be a great way of telling whether there are people getting in who should not be getting in. If there are a bunch of people who aren't getting in with high 30s MCAT scores and a bunch of people getting in with 20s MCAT scores, so long as they have the right race, that's obviously racial discrimination. So I would presume this isn't going to stay a civil lawsuit. Obviously, if this sort of thing is happening at UCLA School of Medicine, that's a violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. The DOJ could step in. So we will stay on top of that case, obviously. And meanwhile, in sort of the biggest nice news of the day, Klaus Schwab, who is the bizarre James Bond villain mastermind of the World Economic Forum, it turns out that he may have been a scam artist. According to the Wall Street Journal, Schwab was seemingly headed for a graceful exit from the organization he founded more than a half century ago after a 2024 investigation by the Wall Street Journal exposed evidence of a toxic culture at the Forum for Women and Black Employees. Which again, it's delicious to watch all of these people who push wokeness and DEI and all this nonsense now be eaten by the machine they created by Friday, April 18, the trustees audit committee recommended opening a probe in to a new wave of whistleblower allegations against Schwab and his wife Hildy. Incensed, Clous Rob fired off a two paragraph message to the board's audit committee threatening trustees with an investigation into how they were carrying out their duties. That email was specifically aimed at stopping trustees from responding formally to accusations that for years the Schwabs improperly intermingled their personal finances with the well endowed nonprofit's accounts. Instead, that letter, that threatening letter backfired Anfab. So again he had handpicked executives at the forum and then fired employees who crossed him and his wife was granted wide leeway as the head of a forum link foundation. But it turns out that probably there was intermingling of funds or at least those are the allegations. There are allegations that he was using private flights for example, that he was having enormous fees paid to people associated with him and all the rest. So it is perfectly on brand that that all of this is now backfiring on Klaus Schwab, that one of the great elitists of all time who believe that basically the world should be remade from the top of Davos is now falling apart. Behind the scenes, tensions ran high. In an August 2024 email, two trustees Schwab defended his legacies. Quote, I could have created the Forum as a commercial company since I carried the full entrepreneurial and financial risk when creating the Forum. I would now probably be celebrated as a self made billionaire. However, again the controversy continued to roil. There are 11 areas of complaints ranging from allegations of misuse of foreign resources to Clauster Schwab's behavior with female employees, including personal remarks and other communications that made the women uncomfortable and his son Olivier Schwab's handling of the sexual harassment issue. It expounded on other alleged governance failures, including lavish spending on a luxury property called Villa Mundi, a project overseen by Hilda Schwab. The forum spent $30 million on the mansion next to its headquarters overlooking Lake Geneva and launched into a roughly 20 million dollar renovation. And Hilde steered the project and she maintained control over how the World Economic Forum could use that property limited an entire floor just for the Schwab's exclusive use. So yeah, unsurprising, but delicious nonetheless. All right. Meanwhile, a brand new poll shows that the Democratic front runner. I've been saying this. The Democratic front runner for 2028 for the Democrats AOC. According to a new poll taken by coefficient from May 7 to May 9, 26% of those surveyed say they think no one is the face of the. Of the Democratic Party. But 26% say that it's Alexander Ocasio Cortez. Bernie Sanders receives 12%. So you combine those two, and you're talking about 38% of the Democratic vote believes that either Bernie or AOC is the face of the Democratic Party. Bernie's not running. He's going to shift that support over to AOC. So you could theoretically be talking of upward of 30% support for AOC going into the Democratic primaries in 2028. That is a disaster area for all of these other candidates. And it shows how wildly to the left, the Democratic Party is swinging. Meanwhile, AOC continues to posture for the cameras. So she had a bit of a run in. In Congress the other day after Representative Randy Weber accused AOC of grandstanding for the cameras, which is, of course, her M.O. here she was responding. All right, I'm have to stop. I'm gonna recline my time.
- [69:19]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Okay. What about miscarriage?
- [69:21]
Ben Shapiro
Thank you.
- [69:21]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
What about miscarriage?
- [69:22]
Ben Shapiro
I'm reclaiming my time. Thank you. I just want to make the point.
- [69:25]
Donald Trump
That we'd like for you to address.
- [69:26]
Ben Shapiro
The Republicans and let's have a dialogue this way and not to a camera.
- [69:30]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
There are 13.7 million Americans on the other side of that screen right there. Hello. Hello. I'm talking to you because I work for you. And they deserve to see what is happening here because there are plenty of districts, including Republican ones, where 25% of your constituents are on Medicaid, 40% of your constituents are on Medicaid. And yes, I am.
- [70:01]
Ben Shapiro
Well, the gentle lady yield.
- [70:02]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
I am talking to them. And I will not yield because it was a terribly disrespectful comment. And I will not yield to disrespectful men. Thank you very much.
- [70:13]
Ben Shapiro
Oh, my gosh. You will not yield to disrespectful men. This is the kind of stuff that earns you street cred in the inside the Democratic Party. And still she persisted. We saw this routine with Kamala Harris. We saw this routine with Elizabeth Warren. And now AOC is trying to play this card as well. Stephen A. Smith, for his part, he's saying, here's the problem. Aoc, even if she were to get to a general election, is going to have a problem in that general election.
- [70:36]
Stephen A. Smith
AOC, who is 35 years of age, has emerged as a leading voice for Democrats. But some within the party are concerned she'll turn off Centrist voters who are needed in the swing states that Trump swept in November. For the record, they are absolutely right. She will turn off centrist. If you believe that higher taxes is the way to go, that a focus shouldn't be on securing the borders, if you believe those kind of things, and that's where you stand ideologically, AOC is your candidate. And not to be literal, not to be taken literally, but she gives the impression that when you talk about universal health care and you talk about other things, if it equated to taxing Americans 70% of their income, she wouldn't be against it. That ain't gonna win you elections.
- [71:34]
Ben Shapiro
Hey. So again, I think he's right. But will Democrats be able to escape that? Going to be difficult to see how Democrats escape the AOC juggernaut that is coming. Meanwhile, amidst all of this economic uncertainty, one consistent winner has been gold. I've talked about this before, obviously. Birchgold is one of our big sponsors here at the Ben Shapiro show. I, full disclosure, personally invest with Birch Gold. Philip Patrick is a precious metal specialist and spokesman for Birchgold Group. He joins us right now to discuss the status of the American dollar and where we are. Philip, thanks for taking the time.
- [72:07]
Philip Patrick
Thanks for having me, Ben.
- [72:09]
Ben Shapiro
So let's talk about the status of the dollar right now. There's been a significant amount of de dollarization over the course of the last couple of months, but it's been going on for years at a time. First of all, why don't we talk about what that means? Why is the global reserve status for American currency important?
- [72:23]
Philip Patrick
Yeah, look, it's very important. It gives the US what's called exorbitant privilege, right? It's allowed cheap borrowing thanks to huge global demand for our dollars, massive control over global financial flows. In essence, the US has the veto power over any nation's ability to engage in international trade. It's allowed the federal government, of course, to run massive deficits without facing immediate collapse. So ultimately, I think it's made American capital markets dominate the globe and ultimately made us the wealthiest nation in history. So I think it's hard to overstate how important important global reserve currency status is. It underpins our economic, diplomatic and I think military power worldwide.
- [73:09]
Ben Shapiro
So let's talk about the status of the dollar. Given the fact that there's a lot of economic uncertainty, we've been hearing rumors about an upcoming meeting of the so called BRICS nations. That'd be Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. They're meeting in Rio de Janeiro this summer. What is the Goal.
- [73:25]
Philip Patrick
Look, I think officially it's another working session between bureaucrats talking about economic cooperation. Unofficially though, the BRICS leadership are expected to announce major advancements essentially in a shadow financial system, a 21st century alternative to the existing dollar denominated system. Inside sources are hinting now at a coordinated push to link the various systems that they've created over the last decade. Things like Enbridge and BRICS pay and commodity settled trade with the goal of making dollar free international transactions possible at scale. Ultimately, I think it's a culmination of their ongoing project to reduce the dollar's monopoly as global reserve currency.
- [74:11]
Ben Shapiro
So given the fact that there are all these nations aligning against the American dollar, that obviously means that you would expect that gold will be more in demand. I mean there's an attempt by all these nations to find some sort of new global reserve. The Russian currency is not strong enough to withstand that. Neither is the Chinese currency. All these are subject to manipulation. And so you're seeing people rush for various safe havens. Gold obviously historically has been one of the big safe havens, maybe the key safe haven.
- [74:39]
Philip Patrick
It's exactly correct and we're seeing it. So US dollar holdings by central banks are 30 year lows. Gold buying by central banks hit records year on year on year for the last three years. And actually last year officially gold overtook the euro as the number two global reserve asset. And it's for the exact reason that you mentioned, right? Russia, China, countries like this, they want to de dollarize. They want to take that non kinetic weapon away from us, but they don't have a viable alternative. So they're using gold as a means to de dollarize. The longer that happens, the more that gathers steam, ultimately the weaker the dollar becomes. So it's becoming problematic for sure.
- [75:22]
Ben Shapiro
All right, well, that is Philip Patrick, precious metal specialist and spokesman for Birch Gold Group. As you say, they're a sponsor on the show. If you wish to check them out and get involved, then you should actually check out Birch Gold grouping. Text my name Ben to 9,898 98 to get started today. Philip, thanks so much for the time.
- [75:39]
Philip Patrick
Thank you.
- [75:40]
Ben Shapiro
Alrighty. Coming up, we're going to be reviewing the brand new Superman trailer. Plus Dove is in trouble because they're now Dylan Mulvaneying themselves. Remember, in order to watch you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.