Yechiel Leiter (3:01)

A young couple about to be engaged.

Ben Shapiro (3:04)

The young man purchased a ring this.

Yechiel Leiter (3:07)

Week with the intention of proposing to.

Ben Shapiro (3:10)

His girlfriend next week in Jerusalem. They were a beautiful couple who came.

Yechiel Leiter (3:16)

To enjoy an evening in Washington's cultural center.

Ben Shapiro (3:20)

Leshinsky, according to Kasiakiva reporting, was a German Israeli dual citizen and a devout Evangelical Christian who immigrated to Israel at the age of 16 and served in the Israel Defense Forces. He studied Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was fluent in German, Hebrew, English and Japanese. He moved to work as a political analyst at the Israeli embassy in 2022, according to Israel's Ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosser. He said that he was his master's student at Rechman University. He said he was a Christian, a true lover of Israel, served in the IDF and chose to dedicate his life to the State of Israel and the Zionist cause. He embodied the Judeo Christian values and set an example for young people worldwide. One of his teachers, Ronan Chaval, said Lashinsky moved to Israel based on his faith and decided to immigrate to Israel, serve in the IDF and later dedicate his life to the State of Israel. He was a Christian, a great lover of Israel who immigrated to Israel, served in the army and decided to dedicate his life to the State of Israel and Zionism. A wonderful life story of a man with moral clarity, he said. Lenski's LinkedIn page Again, this is the young man who was murdered. He wrote that he is an ardent believer in the vision that was outlined in the Abraham Accords and believed that expanding the circle of peace with our Arab neighbors and pursuing regional cooperation is in the best interest of the State of Israel and the Middle east as a whole. To this end, I advocate for interfaith dialogue. Again, none of that mattered to the shooter, obviously. Mil Milgram grew up in the Kansas City suburbs. The young woman who was murdered she was a full time employee at the Embassy's Department of Public Diplomacy. She got her Master of Arts in American University and she was also a graduate of the University for Peace. She talked in her Ability about section on LinkedIn that her passion lies at the intersection of peace building, religious engagement and environmental work. So certainly these were not members of the so called political right. Very clearly the shooter was clearly a member of the political left. The shooter was apparently a member of a group known as the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Ryan Morrow, who's an investigative researcher for Capital Research, he notes that that group is one of 150 pro terrorism groups he identified as responsible for the anti Israel protests in his Marching Towards Violence study. The group is Marxist, communist, endorsed the October 7 attacks, pro Iran as well as linked to China. The shooter also released a manifesto that is replete with the same lies that you have heard from the quote unquote Free Palestine Movement, which is effectively just a pro terrorist movement in this manifesto released by the shooter. And again, the shooter is just a Marxist leftist. The shooter is not Muslim. He should appears to be secular, but is a member of the radical left. He writes in his manifesto, the atrocities committed by the Israelis against Palestine defy description and defy quantification. At the time of writing, the Gaza health Ministry records 53,000 killed by traumatic force. And the Gaza Health Ministry would be Hamas. He says the Gaza Information Office includes the 10,000 under the rubble with the dead in their own count. He says, like the Yemen death toll which has been frozen at some few thousand for years under Saudi UK US bombardment before being belatedly revealed to stand at 500,000 dead. All of these figures are almost surely a criminal undercount. I have no trouble believing the estimates that put the toll at 100,000 or more. He then justifies his violence by saying, and an armed action is not necessarily a military action. It usually is. Not usually. It is theater and spectacle, a quality it shares with many unarmed actions. Nonviolent protests in the opening weeks of the genocide, and again we'll note, that word genocide seemed to signal some sort of turning point. Never before had so many tens of thousands joined the Palestinians in the streets across the West. Never before had so many American politicians been forced to concede that rhetorically at least, the Palestinians were human beings too. Public opinion has shifted against the genocidal apartheid state, writes the terrorist murderer, and the American government has simply shrugged. And they'll do without public opinion, then criminalize it when they can suffocate it with bland reassurances. They're doing all they can to restrain Israel where it cannot criminalize protest outright. And then the shooter hat tips Aaron Bushnell, who is of course the soldier who set himself on fire based on propagandistic lies about Israel's actions in Gaza. The shooter wrote, the impunity that representatives of our government feel at abetting that this slaughter should be revealed as an illusion. And he then suggests a word about the morality of armed demonstration. Those of us against the genocide take satisfaction in arguing that the perpetrators and abettors have forfeited their humanity. I sympathize with this viewpoint and understand its value in soothing the psyche, which cannot bear to accept the atrocities it witnesses, even mediated through the screen. But inhumanity has long since shown itself to be shockingly common, mundane, posically human. A perpetrator may then be a loving parent, a filial child, a generous and charitable friend, an amiable stranger capable of moral strength at times when it suits him and sometimes even when it does not, and yet be a monster all the same. And then he suggests that actually these sorts of shootings should have been taking place 11 years ago, well before October 7th and well before the October 7th war, during October Operation Protective Edge, which he says, which was the time, quote, I personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. So this person is, of course, a radical leftist who is promoting lies. Of course, this person and his positions find some sympathy with the radical left, even in Congress. Representative Ilhan Omar, who, of course, is rhetorically in the past, a supporter of various terror atrocities. Here she was responding to the news of the shooting this morning. Congresswoman Omar, anybody said, can I get.

Ilhan Omar (8:59)

Your reaction to the shooting that happened.

Ben Shapiro (9:01)

In D.C. last night? I'm gonna go. For now, she's gonna go. She has nothing to say. No reaction to the shooting? Not even the sort of aoc, bland assertion that the murder of two people walking away from a Jewish event is actually bad? Nothing. Nothing. Of course. Of course, of course. And that, of course, is not any sort of shock at all, because the radical left fully endorses violence against people that it considers less than human monsters. So to Speaker 2 speak for not agreeing with them and their lies. And these are lies, by the way. Let's look into this lie, because this lie actually has consequences. Lies do have consequences, as it turns out. Lies have consequences. So beginning with the actual definition of genocide according to the United nations, according to the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, this, of course, was drafted by the UN member states in 1948 specifically to try and define what had happened in the Holocaust. Quote, in the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, etc. So genocide requires intent to destroy in whole or in part, an entire national group. It simply does not apply under these circumstances. Not even close. First of all, Hamas has a desire to obviously propagate this myth. This is why Hamas was thanking the uk, France and Canada for helping to propagate this myth. This is why Hamas deliberately hides behind civilians. The basic logic of Hamas is that they know that the Israelis don't want to kill civilians, which is the reason they hide behind them. The whole goal is to get as many civilians killed as possible so as to then claim that Israel is purposefully killing the civilians, when Israel is doing literally everything humanly possible in an urban warfare environment in which terrorists deliberately hide behind their own children, not to kill the children, by the way, Israel has done a remarkable job of that. Hamas has been lying the entire time about its own casualty statistics. They quietly, by the way, back in April, changed the own their own casualty statistics. They completely reclassified an enormous number of casualties in the war. They got rid of a certain number, number of, of deaths, like more than 3,400 deaths just disappeared off the rolls. This is why Hamas will immediately start releasing death statistics before it is even possible that account can be taken. And the west simply buys into it. Because the west does not understand the mentality of Hamas, which is use whatever tool is at your disposal to destroy the state of Israel and kill as many Jews as possible. And if that means killing their own children, they will 100% do it. Israel has not only not engaged in a genocide, Israel has engaged in the most humane war in the history of civilization. In an urban warfare environment in which the enemy has taken hostage 250 of their citizens, still is hiding dozens of those citizens in Gaza terror tunnels today deliberately hides its weaponry and its terrorists beneath hospitals and schools and in mosques. And Israel has somehow achieved a civilian casualty to combatant ratio of about one to one. Unheard of, totally unheard of. It may be even better than one to one. John Spencer, who's an expert on urban warfare, like a person who actually has spent his entire life studying it. And yes, people actually spend their life studying this stuff and actually have an enormous amount of knowledge about this stuff. And those are the people who that presumably you might get answers from. John Spencer points out in Newsweek that Israel has taken extraordinary efforts. Quote, I've never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. By my analysis, he says, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history, above and beyond what international law requires and more than the United States did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As he points out, Israel gave warning, in some cases for weeks for civilians to evacuate major urban areas of northern Gaza before it launched its ground campaign. Back in fall of 2023, the IDF reported dropping over 7 million flyers, but it also deployed technologies never used anywhere in the world. Israel made over 70,000 direct phone calls, sent over 13 million text messages, left over 15 million pre recorded voicemails to notify civilians they should leave combat areas, where they should go and what route they should take. They deploy drones with speakers and drop giant speakers by parachute. They began broadcasting for civilians to leave combat areas once they hit the ground. They announced and conducted daily pauses of all operations to allow any civilians left in combat areas to evacuate. As far as humanitarian aid, Israel shipped in literally tons of humanitarian aid into the very same area where the hostages were being held, where civilians were were helping to hold the hostages. You may have noticed there there's been no popular movement in the Gaza Strip to free the hostages. None. Zero. It doesn't exist. Even the protests that are out there against Hamas are protests against Hamas. They are not protests to free the hostages. Not one. Zero. And yet Israel has been supplying humanitarian aid throughout the war to that exact same population at the expense of its own hostages because Hamas routinely steals that aid and then uses it to in order to prop itself up. And the media, of course, have been complicit in this lie. Zach Goldberg, an independent researcher formerly at the Manhattan Institute, points out a massive spike in the use of the word genocide with regard to Israel. In reporting from every single outlet. He points out that actually coverage linking Israel to so called genocide now exceeds that of every actual or widely recognized genocide of the last 40 years, including Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Myanmar and the Aidis. He points out in the New York Times, the spike in 2023, 2024 mentions of genocide along Israel is more than nine times larger than the peak for Rwanda in the mid-1990s and nearly six times the peak for more recent Dar for genocide. These are lies. They are clear and obvious lies. And yet these lies have become quite popular. And it turns out that lies have consequences. So we understand why the genocide lie is so popular with those who wish to overtly destroy the state of Israel. We get it, obviously, because it means they win the PR war. Countries in the un, for example, who are enthralled to their Muslim populations. Yes, I'm looking at you, France and the UK or countries who might want to please their Chinese paymasters who are seeking to foster anti Americanism in the Middle East. And yes, that would be you, like Canada and South Africa. And I think we all get why Hamas is playing the genocide game. It gives Hamas an excuse to continue to exist and to be as actually genocidal as they want to be. I mean, their literal founding document calls for genocide. But the real question here is why this genocide lie has become so popular in the west more generally. And as we stated, it is in fact a lie by no definition. Is what is happening in the Gaza Strip a genocide? The answer is because our civilization, largely speaking, has fallen enthrall to a great conspiracy theory. Conspiratorial thinking has become wildly popular on both left and the right. It crosses all political boundaries. Now, there are, of course, actual conspiracies in real life. Those conspiracies involve actual planning and implementation by actual human beings. So, for example, there was a conspiracy among members of the Biden family and the White House staff to cover up Joe Biden's infirmities. That's like an actual, well substantiated conspiracy of people making a plan and then implementing that plan for a specific purpose. There's a difference between a conspiracy where there's evidence, people doing things, and then there are conspiracy theories. These are not the same. These are theories that are not rooted in evidence, but in a basic supposition that bad things that happen in the world must be the result of some sinister plot by some cleverly hidden group. The philosopher Karl Popper spelled out a pretty good definition for this in his book the Open Society and Its Enemies. He says, quote, the conspiracy theory of society is the view that an explanation of a social phenomenon consists in the discovery of the men or groups who are interested in the occurrence of this phenomenon. Sometimes it's a hidden interest which has first to be revealed and who have planned and conspired to bring it about. This view arises, of course, from the mistaken theory that whatever happens in society, especially happenings such as war, unemployment, poverty, shortages, which people as a rule dislike, is the result of direct design by some powerful individuals and groups. That's the great conspiracy theory. And that great conspiracy theory has become insanely popular on both the left and the right. So why on the left? Well, in the left wing, great conspiracy theory, every group disparity is discrimination. If, for example, black Americans are disproportionately lower income than white Americans, this has to be because of some actual conspiracy, systemic racism, white privilege, or policy of discrimination without stating the actual policy. Now again, it is possible to find policies in a wide variety of places and times across the world that do in fact victimize particular groups. That's true. That's not a conspiracy theory, that's actual policy. But if you cannot point to a policy or politician or institution that actually does the discriminating, you are now operating in the realm of conspiracy theory. And that's what the left does, both nationally and internationally. Crime rates are bad in the black community because all cops are bastards. White supremacy lies behind every corner. Racism is clearly the reason for disproportionate poverty. When you take that logic to the international stage, you end up with anti Americanism because America is disproportionately successful. And there are lots of other places that are not successful. You also end up siding with Hamas. You end up chanting free Palestine. In fact, support for Hamas is like the apex case of the left wing theory, the great conspiracy theory. If the Palestinians, who collectively as a group have made every single bad choice it is possible to make as a political body by embracing and supporting terrorism, rejecting peace agreement after peace agreement, channeling funding toward violence and hatred rather than economic development, and educating their own kids that wiping Israel off the map ought to be a lifelong goal, and all the rest, if they live in a failed state, both in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria, if no other country will take them specifically because they are shot through with enormous support for terrorism, then that's not their own fault. That must be the result of the more developed democracy on its borders. Even if, by the way, that developed Democracy is 1/5 Muslim, and if the Muslims in that developed democracy have the highest levels of political and civil freedom of any Muslims anywhere in the world, and by the way, some of the highest incomes in the region, if Hamas spends billions of dollars to line its own pockets, live in five star hotels in Qatar, build terror tunnels, if they fire rockets at Israel for nearly two decades and then launch a genocidal attack on Jews, an actual genocidal attack, like by UN definition, designed to exterminate a part of a larger whole for which Hamas seeks mass murder, and complete with the taking of hundreds of hostages again, dozens of whom are still, after a year and a half, being held in Gaza, then the left responds by excusing Hamas, because after all, the great conspiracy theory suggests they are poor, supposedly browner. They of course ignored the 45% of Israelis whose parents and grandparents are from Arab countries and are in fact brown and less successful. This is why there were left wing protests in solidarity with Hamas before Israel even responded to October 7th, before the response, like on October 8th. The genocide charge from the left is a fig leaf. Israel's very existence is the problem to the radical left, just as the existence of America is a problem because the successful are by nature the exploiters according to the left. That's the great conspiracy theory. And then there's the right, and there is a horseshoe theory of the right that shares many of the same basic conspiracy theories as the left. You can hear it on a wide variety of supposedly right wing or heterodox podcasts these days. This theory again is there are a group of victims, often lower income whites or Christians, who are being victimized by a shadowy group of people. Now again, there are absolutely 100 policies that do victimize white people or Christians right here in America. We talk about them on the show a lot actually. Say affirmative action on race or anti Christian anti discrimination regulations that are directed at the little sisters of the poor. These are actual policies, for example, policies. Policies directed at Jack Phillips for baking, for not wanting to bake a transgender cake, for example. Those are all real things, like an actual conspiracy. That's not a conspiracy theory. If you can't point to a policy or politician or institution that is making that conspiracy happen, you are now in the realm of conspiracy theory. And what these conspiracy theorists often do is they target a shadowy group who they say are running the system. This shadowy group of people is often characterized as clannish or cosmopolitan or rootless, deracinating in some peculiar way. And the supposed policy that is somehow victimizing the conspiratorial rights victim class is either with regards to foreign policy or capitalism. So on the foreign policy front, you'll hear these folks claim that American foreign policy is being run by aipac, which is an absurd claim. AIPAC is one of the least effective organizations in America. Or that capitalism is being run by a conspiratorial elite who just so often have these Jewish last names. So why is the conspiratorial right now embracing the genocide in Gaza lie and very often making common cause with Hamas propaganda? Well, here's the thing. The problem for the conspiratorial right when it comes to Israel is that Israel factually happens to be the only state in the Middle east where Christians live safely and openly. Israel is also clearly responding to a Muslim genocidal terror assault. And those same people hate Americans and hate Christians. Hamas is not a fan of America or Christians. And this is why the conspiratorial right, unlike the conspiratorial left, didn't immediately start tearing into Israel on October 8th. They just went peculiarly silent. None of them had anything to say. They just went totally quiet. Nothing on their Twitter feeds, nothing. No comment, Nothing for a moment. Then the minute that Israel responded, they jumped into action. You see, the conspiratorial right needed a reason for why. Actually, the same people who supposedly control American foreign policy and capitalism are the actual bad guys in the Middle east too. And that's why they're fond of chattering about genocide in Gaza, despite the fact that there is no genocide. If you can claim that Israel is a genocidal state, and the same people on the conspiratorial right who claim this also tend to claim that Israel is anti Christian, a giant lie, and spend their days trying to dig up bad translations of the Talmud, then you can maintain your own great conspiracy theory in which this shadowy group of rootless cosmopolitans is in control of of all the bad things in your life. The genocide lie is just as valuable to the conspiratorial right as it is to the conspiratorial left. So why does this matter? Well, because lies have consequences. Lies have consequences. This doesn't mean that we have to buy into the theory of stochastic terrorism that the left so often promotes. It doesn't mean that opinions ought to be censored or deplatformed. Let me say that again for the morons in the room. This does not mean opinions ought to be censored or deplatformed. No one is calling for people not to be on x, or on YouTube or on Facebook or anything like that. And this terrorist is responsible for his own actions. Of course he is. Just as the Congressional baseball shooter was responsible for his own actions, or the Dallas police Shooter back in 2014 was responsible for his own actions, just like Hamas is responsible for its own actions. However, lies change the way people think and act. Again, if I have to. If I have to explain this to you, I would suggest that. That you're mentally deficient. Of course lies change the way people think and act. That is what they are designed to do. If you keep saying over and over again, for example, that Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler, it's not a giant shock when someone actually multiple someones tries to assassinate Donald Trump. If you keep saying all cops are bastards over and over and over again, it should not actually be a shock when someone tries to shoot cops. And if you keep claiming or implying that the Jews run the world and engage in genocide. It should not be a shock when someone murders people at a Jewish event in Washington D.C. in other words, take some damned responsibility for the things you say and the positions you take. I know responsibility. I know, I know it's a bad word now. Yes, you have responsibility for the things that come out of your face. It is worthwhile to be responsible in how we speak about issues and engage with, with the world. You know, we in, in the sort of speech sphere focus a lot on rights and of course we should because the violation of rights is bad. But there are also duties, like duties to the truth and to fact and to speak into reality. Again, I know responsibility makes people feel all icky when people say responsibility. I get it. I get that a lot of people over the past couple of decades have improperly used the Overton window, the so called acceptable range of useful discourse to crush debate and dissent. Hell, I personally have been censored on a variety of platforms by exactly that movement for saying basic things like men aren't women for years. It cost my company millions of dollars. So I, I get it. I get the impulse that says we ought to pretend no one has any duty to be responsible in the language they use or the questions they ask or the arguments they make. But just because bad people abuse the word responsibility to suggest that true things were lies does not mean that lies don't exist and that responsibility does not exist. They absolutely do. And lies have consequences. So back to this case. Propagating absolute lies about genocide in Gaza and then spewing that out into the world over and over raises the temperature. Vomiting N word Heil Hitler into public discourse raises the temperature. As does treating with absolute credulity a variety of specious claims ranging from Hitler's well intentioned oopsies in Europe to Israeli genocide to conspiratorial Jews and their Tom. Would running the banking system and Hollywood stop with the bull about just asking questions? Just asking questions doesn't cut it. The whole purpose of a question is to seek an answer. The people you listen to should be seeking answers. Getting answers is better than than just asking questions. Let me say that again. Getting answers is better than just asking questions. If you want to live a better life, if you want to improve yourself and the world, you need actual answers to hard questions. Responsible people base those answers on evidence, fact, reality. They don't just ask questions or ignore actual answers in favor of a pseudo ignorance masking itself as a sort of semi retarded Profundity. I don't know the answers. All I know is what we've been told is insufficient. Or pretend that answers given by people we trusted a moment ago are now insufficient because those people aren't giving us the answers we want. Dan Bongino must be lying about Jeffrey Epstein, cuz they probably got to him. People who do this sort of stuff aren't just play actors at a sort of teenage cynicism. They are actively misleading you. They are lying to you. They say they want answers, but when they absolutely, positively do not want answers, in fact, they want to prevent you from getting actual answers because the evidence and the facts and the real answers too often debunk their theories. Such people, left and right, do not want you to have answers. They want you to be satisfied with their leading questions, which all lead to one gigantic false conclusion. That in the world of conspiracy theories you are a victim. And by the way, only they, the real askers, can guide you toward the light. Only they can be trusted. This stuff is demagoguery of the highest order and it's ugly. It's ugly because it not only is a lie, it makes your life worse. Because in the end, their argument is actually really simple. It's not a question, it's an argument someone else is responsible for problems that you can solve. That argument is bad for you, it makes you dumb, it makes you useless, it makes you vicious, it's bad for your soul, it's bad for America, it's bad for the world. Meanwhile, yesterday, President Trump met in the Oval Office with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Ramaphosa was looking for what he called a reset in relations with the United States. President Trump has pointed out repeatedly that South African land expropriation policy is a disaster area that is in fact racist and is going to have racist effects. And you want to talk about actual, like, racist policy? The land expropriation policy in South Africa is designed to be racially discriminatory. It is the Expropriation act of 2024 replaces the prior Land act of 1975 in South Africa. And it says that land can now be seized for a public purpose and that compensation does not need to match fair market value, especially in cases of what is called public benefit. This is the text of the act. No compensation, meaning no compensation is possible when it is, quote, just and equitable and also in the public public interest. So what exactly does all that mean? Well, the law itself defines public interest to include, quote, the nation's commitment to land reform and to reforms to bring about equitable access to all South Africa's natural resources in order to address the results of past racially discriminatory laws or practices. In other words, because of apartheid, the argument goes, a disproportionate amount of land in South Africa is owned by white people. This means that if South Africa decides that for purposes of fairness, right, in order to, quote, redress the results of past racially discriminatory laws or practices, that land should simply be seized from the white farmers who own it and then redistributed that that's okay under the Expropriation act of 2024. And we keep being told that, well, you know, the judiciary will protect the South African judiciary is going to say that that's what you trust, that's who you trust. And people who are attempting to draw distinctions between, for example, Zimbabwe and land expropriation policy, which ended with the complete destruction of that country and what's happening in South Africa are relying on some slim reads, shall we say? We'll get some more on this in just a moment. First, Pure Talk, my wireless company, veteran led company, believes every man and woman who has faithfully served this country deserves to proudly fly an American flag that was made in America. 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Again, that's PureTalk.comShapiro to support veterans and to switch to America's wireless company, Pure Talk. Go check them out right now. PureTalk.com Shapiro that's Pure Talk.com Shapiro Also, not everybody who handles your personal information will be as careful as you are about it. It only takes one mistake to expose that information to hackers and identity theft. That's why there's a New victim of Identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock US based restoration specialist will help solve identity theft issues on your behalf, guaranteed or your money back. Plus, all Lifelock plans are backed by the million dollar protection package, meaning Lifelock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan if you lose money due to identity theft. You can't control how diligent others are with your personal information. But with Lifelock, you can in fact help protect it. And we have producers who are using Lifelock right now. They feel a lot more secure. Act right now, save up to 40% your very first year of coverage. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code BEN or go to lifelock.com BEN for 40% off terms apply. Go check them out right now. Lifelock.com BEN get 40% off or give them a call at 1-800-LIFELock right now. So President Trump faced down South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa. Of course, the South African ANC party has been linked to significant corruption and they themselves have accused others of genocide, unfairly, including an ICC case in which they accused Israel of genocide. As we've discussed, that is absolute nonsense. So here is President Trump confronting Cyril Ramaphosa about this.

Donald Trump (33:23)

Excuse me. Turn the lights down. Turn the lights down and just put this on. It's right behind you. Johan.

Ben Shapiro (33:31)

There's nothing this parliament can do. With or without you people are going to occupy land. We require no permission from you, from the president, from no one. The mayor of DA in pe, he is a white man, so he's playing clips here of Julius Malema. We played clips of MMA on this show. We've covered pretty extensively what's going on in South Africa with Ernst Rhodes, who's the head of Afro Forum, among other organizations in South Africa. We've covered it pretty significantly on the show for the past several weeks. And actually we covered it even going back a couple of years. Well, those clips obviously of Malema are very bad. And President Trump said this is very bad. Are people that are officials, they're saying, kill the white farmer and take their land. Here's President Trump making that claim yesterday.

Donald Trump (34:22)

You're taking people's land away.

Ben Shapiro (34:24)

We have. Not from them.

Donald Trump (34:26)

And those people in many cases are being executed. They're being executed and they happen to be white and most of them happen to be farmers. And that's a tough situation. I don't know how you explain that? How do you explain that?

Ben Shapiro (34:41)

So President Trump has used the suggestion or people around him have suggested that white genocide is taking place in South Africa. Now, as Roots suggested on the show, white genocide is not actually a good description of what's happening in South Africa. What is happening in South Africa is horrifyingly bad government policy that is discriminatory against white people. That's just a reality. There are over 140 laws on the books in South Africa that are racially discriminatory. That is a reality. And President Trump is totally right to call that out. Obviously, President Trump said, we have many people that feel they're being persecuted. They're coming to the United States. So we take from many, many locations if we feel there is persecution or genocide going on. Now, again, the use of the word genocide is not accurate in this context, but there certainly is persecution going on in South Africa. Pretty clearly. Ramaphosa tried to claim that he had nothing to do with Julius Malema. He has, in fact made overtures to Malema. Malema was a member of his party originally before he moved on to found a more radical left wing group called the eff. Malema, for his part, by the way, responded by suggesting that he was going to double down on this sort of stuff. So President Trump played a clip that we've played on the show of Malema jumping in front of like tens of thousands of people at a rally shouting, kill the Boer, kill the farmer, shoot to kill and other incendiary slogans. He put out on X the following statement. A group of older men meet in Washington to gossip about me. No significant amount of intelligence evidence has been produced about white genocide. Will not agree to compromise our political principles on land expropriation without compensation for political expediency. And then his party issued a statement in which it declared, kill the boar, kill the farmer. Victory is certain. So is that movement afoot? Certainly in, in South Africa, of course, the EFF won about 10% of the vote in the most recent general elections. That is the fourth biggest party that is right behind another radical party called the MK Party at 15%. Both of those parties call for the overt expropriation of land from white farmers. Well, the media came out in defense of Ramaphosa and the government of South Africa suggesting this was a good day for white nationalists and that songs like Kill the Boar aren't actually literal. Here is CNN reporter Larry Madawao making those claims.

Larry Madawao (36:50)

This was a good day for white nationalists in South Africa. This was a good Day for Afriforum. This is the white African lobby group that's considered white nationalist group by the Southern Poverty Law center because these were the talking points that President Trump has repeatedly said from the platform of the Oval Office. So they've gotten the best possible validation they could have imagined. This is a historical anti apartheid song that many black South Africans grew up singing, and they saw it as not a literal call to kill the farmers, but as a song against white supremacy.

Ben Shapiro (37:26)

So it's a song about white supremacy killing, killing the farmers and killing the Boers. Well, I mean, again, I've heard these sorts of arguments before. They are not particularly convincing or good. Ramaphosa in the room decided to knock Trump about taking the Qatari jet. Here he was yesterday in the Oval.

Donald Trump (37:43)

But Boeing's a little bit late, unfortunately. So why did they give us a plane to the United States Air Force? That's what that idiot talks about after viewing a thing where thousands of people are dead.

Ben Shapiro (37:54)

I'm sorry, I don't have a plane to give you.

Donald Trump (37:57)

I wish you did.

Ben Shapiro (37:57)

I take it.

Donald Trump (37:59)

I would take it. If your country offered the United States Air Force a plane, I would take it.

Ben Shapiro (38:04)

Okay. And by the way, we should not take United States planes from. From South Africa either. The general policy. We should not take planes from literally anyone as a foreign gift unless it is cleared by Congress. And we certainly shouldn't take lanes from Qatar, which is an Iranian cutout, or South Africa, which is increasingly an Iranian Chinese cutout. Just a general. Just general policy consideration right there. It's one of the reasons why President Trump shouldn't do that is because it leaves him open to precisely that criticism from bad characters like Cyril Ramaphosa. The fact that President Trump was willing to raise these issues with Ramaphosa is a particularly good thing that is definitely worthwhile. So good for President Trump along those lines. Okay. Meanwhile, in huge news for President Trump, the Trump tax bill has now been passed in the House. It passed by an extraordinarily Narrow vote of 215 to 214. One lawmaker voted president. That's a major win, of course, for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who had to somehow maneuver this very complex piece of legislation through the process. Obviously, you had people on the right who were criticizing the bill for not cutting spending enough, people on the left who were criticizing the bill for not raising salt deductions enough. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the passage of the big, beautiful bill marked a major win for Trump and Johnson, who again found the formula had steered a course between hardliners who wanted deeper spending cuts, and moderates who worried the bill would hurt their districts, hospitals and clean energy projects. Thursday morning's vote was a significant step toward extending Trump's expiring 2017 tax cuts and cementing other conservative priorities while trimming spending on Medicaid and food aid. It again showed the president's power to unite fractious House Republicans, whose narrow majority meant any handful of dissidents could have sunk the bill. Now, again, one of the weird things about very narrow majorities is very often they're actually more durable than big majorities. Why? Well, because you can tell who the outliers are. If you have 220 votes, as opposed to 240 votes, 240 votes, you might have a bloc of 30 people who all vote against the bill and it goes down in flaming defeat. But who exactly do you blame for that? 30 people voted against it. If it's like three people, you know individually, who to blame? The only Republicans who did not vote for the bill, Representatives Andy Harris. Who voted present, Representatives Andrew Garbarino of New York and David Schweiker missed the vote. And of course, Thomas Massey voted against the bill as well. So Massey and another Representative, Warren Davidson in Ohio. Every Democrat was opposed. There were some late breaking updates on the bill. Those include an acceleration of the Medicaid work requirements to December 2026 from 2029. Right. Which makes the cuts effectuate faster because the Medicaid work requirement, again, the fact that this is controversial on any level is insane to me. Of course, if you are able bodied and just poor, you should have to work in order to receive Medicaid. That, that like 80 hours a month. Again, that's 20 hours a week. That's four hours per workday. My kids are in school for like twice that length of time. Is ridiculous to suggest that you are entitled to Medicaid if you are unwilling to work. That's silly. Also, it's going to end certain tax credits for wind energy and solar energy by 2028 instead of 2031. So those were the concessions to the fiscal hawks. The updates also locked in a $40,000 cap on state and local tax deductions starting this year, up from a $30,000 cap in the prior plan. And again, that was designed to satisfy people in New York and New Jersey. So Johnson was able to shepherd this through. Now a completely different bill is likely to pass in the Senate, and then those two bills will come together. Now, the CBO is saying that, effectively speaking, this is going to eventually cause Cuts to Medicare. Now, the bill doesn't cut Medicare. It doesn't. There's nothing in the bill that cuts Medicare. Why is the CBO claiming that the bill is going to cut Medicare? Well, because the idea is that it adds so much to the national debt that would force cuts in Medicare beginning in 2026 because it would officially add apparently $2.3 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years. The congressional Budget Office projects that would force budget officials to mandate across the board spending cuts over that window that would hit Medicare. The legislation significantly adds to the national debt when it exceeds $36.2 trillion. It triggers sequestration when or compulsory budget reductions. In that scenario, Medicaid, Medicare cuts would be capped at 4% annually or $490 billion over 10 years. So again, those reductions, by the way, are not a foregone conclusion. So when the CBO says Medicare will be cut, that's not a foregone conclusion. In all likelihood, by the way, it won't be in all likelihood, we just take out some more debt. Congress can simply instruct the CBO to disregard the reconciliation package's debt impact, passing new legislation to reduce the deficit or change federal budget scorekeeping rules. So again, this is a stretch by the cbo. Again, it's all provisional. It's like, oh, well, if everything got left in place and nobody changed anything, then maybe there would have to be cuts. Ok, that's ridiculous. All these things are going to change. Congress will move to stop cuts to Medicare. We all know that's going to happen. The real question here is not that the real question is not cuts to Medicare. The real question is what the hell do we do about our debt? And that is a real question. The American national debt is a, is a disaster area. There's a reason why the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 800 points yesterday. And that's because of a weak bond market. So again, what does that mean? It means that people have very little faith that in the future, 20, 30 years from now, they're going to be able to get back their money if they buy a bond from the US Government. A bond just means essentially you're loaning money to the US Government at a rate of interest for a period of time. That's what a bond is. And so if people don't want to buy bonds, that's because either they believe they're not going to get their money back or they believe that it's going to be paid back in inflated dollars. And that was sort of the evidence From a bond auction that happened yesterday. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 817 points or 1.9%. Leading indices lower longer term US treasury yields rose again with the 10 year yield approaching 4.6% and the 30 year surging above 5%. That was the highest in the 30 year bond since October of 2023. Yields extended their gains in the afternoon after a $16 billion auction of 20 year treasury bonds attracted soft demand from investors selling at a higher yield than traders had anticipated. A higher yield just means a lower price. And the yield is the difference between the interest rate on the bond and the price that you're paying for the bond. Right? That's the yield. So if the yield increases, that is a reflection of, of there not being a lot of desire for people to, to buy the bonds. And that's why the markets are freaking out, because they're saying, okay, maybe at some point the debt is going to, is going to become a serious real issue. So again, the Wall Street Journal has a pretty good explanation as to why the yields are actually increasing. Some are not bad. I mean, for example, people run to bonds when they're unsure about the economy. They run to stocks when they think the economy is going to go up. So as people worry less about recession, they're not running as much to bonds. But there is persistent inflation anxiety. You don't buy a bond if you believe that your gains in the bond are going to be inflated away. Right? If I lend you a hundred dollars expecting to get back $105, but I know you have a money printing machine in your basement that's gonna just print out counterfeit bills that are indistinguishable from the real ones. I'm not gonna lend you the money. That's essentially why you have a problem. People believe that eventually the American government's gonna inflate, inflate its way out of all of this. And again, they're also rising yields overseas because everybody is now doing debt led growth at this point in time. This is a serious, real crisis. It's a debt spiral that is beginning to occur in the United States. Neither party is willing to take it on. That is just a reality. It is just a reality. Neither party is willing to take that on. And that is a disaster area. That is, that is a failure of your politicians. But let's be real about this. This is a representative democracy is a failure of the American people. The American people have come to expect that the government is going to pay extraordinary amounts of their bill. And if you believe that, then you can't be surprised when the government has to take out extraordinary amounts of debt. And that means later either extraordinary cuts, extraordinary inflation, or extraordinary tax increases. Those are really the only options. This is a point made by William Galston over at the Wall Street Journal today. He says the Congressional Budget Office in March issued a report on America's long term fiscal situation. If current laws remained generally unchanged, the 2017 tax cuts would expire at the end of this year and discretionary spending would shrink as a share of GDP. Under that scenario, the annual budget deficit in 2035 would remain roughly in line with where it now stands, about 6% of GDP. And we would add more than $20 trillion to publicly held government debt between 2025 and 2035, raising debt as a share of GDP from about 100% to a record 118%. And he says let's be clear about what changing course means. As the US Population continues to age, the cost of Social Security and Medicare as a share of GDP will mount inexorably. Together, these two programs will account for more than 100% of the increase in federal spending as a share of GDP over the next decade. These demographic and political realities point to the same conclusion. Increased revenue will be needed to secure these programs for the long term. And so what is coming is probably a tax bomb somewhere along the line here. Either a tax bomb or an inflation bomb or austerity measures. Those are the only choices there. There are no other choices. Because at a certain point you can't just sell your debt into a market that doesn't want to buy your debt. That may not be the short term concern, but it certainly is a mid to long term concern and and really, really should be. There's more on this in a moment. First, choosing SimpliSafe for my studio really, really easy decision. Whenever we arm the system before leaving or calling it a day, my team and I get instant peace of mind knowing our equipment and creative work are protected. With Simplisafe standing guard, I can focus on my projects and rest easier. Confident I'm covered if anything happens, especially while I'm out of the office and traveling. 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Also, starting a business can be really exciting. The financial chaos that comes with it, not so much fun. When we launched the Daily Wire, we became very familiar with compiling a sea of receipts, trying to track employee expenses, spending countless hours reconciling statements. That was all a nightmare until we got it figured out again. When you start a business, you just don't have time to do any of this stuff. And that's why I want to introduce you to Ramp. Ramp is a free corporate card that automates your entire tedious and time consuming expense process. Most finance teams are trapped, spending about 80% of their time on tactical busy work like chasing expenses and reconciling statements. With only 20% left for strategic thinking, Ramp flips that equation entirely. Their corporate card automates operations, freeing you and your finance team to focus on those strategies that truly drive growth. Forecasting, strategic planning, high value, decision making. It's no wonder over 25,000 businesses trust ramp and including Shopify and the Boys and Girls Club of America. That's why they were just named number one in spend management by G2 Plus. Switching to ramp is simple for new members. Ramp offers a complimentary white glove onboarding service to help you migrate from your current corporate card to start using Ramp. And now for a limited time, listeners of this show can get 250 bucks when you join RAMP. Just go to ramp.comshapiro that's ramp.comshapiro R M P.com Shapiro cards issued by Sutton bank member FDIC terms and conditions apply. And meanwhile, in a bit of shock news, apparently Donald Trump Jr. Is now hinting that he wants to run for president at some point in the future. Here he was yesterday. Would you consider picking up the reins? Would you run for office?

Yechiel Leiter (49:55)

Here we go. Well.

Ben Shapiro (49:58)

Oh boy. Well, it's an honor to be asked and an honor to see that some people are okay with it. Those are just our friends, probably just a couple people we know team. Those are the three people we got. Yeah, you never know. Okay, again, that would be Omid Malik and Don Jr. Sitting at the Qatar Economic Forum in a session that was originally titled Monetizing maga. Not a great look. Not a great look. By the way, Tucker Carlson, who is funded by Omi Malik and Don Jr. At 1789 Capital, has said, not a particularly good look. He's right about that. It is not, in fact, a a good look. I'm just going to put it out there right now. No, no. Okay. I'm Dynasties are un American. They are not good. Okay. I George W.W. After George H.W. was not great for the country. The idea of Michelle Obama for Barack Obama, not great for the country. The idea of Hillary Clinton for Bill Clinton, not great for the country. No. We elected Donald Trump for a reason. But connection with President Trump's name does not mean that you should be president of the United States. President Trump ran against dynasties when he opposed Jeb Bush in 2016. This is literally one of his leading gambits, was attacking Jeb Bush for being part of a political dynasty. Why are we why the American obsession with political dynasties? And that's not a critique of Donald Trump Jr. As a person or as a future. That's just a reality that dynasties in American politics are typically bad. Kennedy dynasties, Bush dynasties, none of this is good. And when you combine that with the fact that many of the organizations that Donald Trump Jr. Is connected to are making an enormous amount of money during this period of time when his father is president, which raises awkward questions certainly, about Trump administration policy, ranging from Trump meme Coin to World Liberty Financial to gigantic real estate deals in Qatar, none of this is an amazingly good look. It's this administration is doing too many important. I'll say it again, this administration is doing too many important things to be bogged down with conversations about how members of the Trump family or the Witkoff family or any of the other families surrounding the administration are making bank while President Trump is president in countries that President Trump is attempting to negotiate with, that is not a good thing. At the very least, it is not a useful thing. Meanwhile, President Trump seems to be coming to better conclusions with regard to Vladimir Putin and Ukraine, according to the Wall Street Journal, on a call Monday, President Trump told European leaders Russian President Vladimir Putin isn't ready to end the Ukraine war because he thinks he's winning, according to senior European officials familiar with the conversation. Good. That is actually a a realization of reality from President Trump. Obviously, that's true. In a statement after an earlier version of this article from the Wall Street Journal, Caroline Levitt disputed the account, saying that President Trump says he believes Putin is winning the war, but he never said Putin isn't ready to end the war. Levitt said that Trump said several times during the call that he believes Putin wants peace and wants the war to be over. One of the officials who was on the call said Trump began the discussion by saying, I think Vladimir does not want peace. Okay, well, I certainly hope the Europeans are right and Caroline Lovett is incorrect here because Putin does not want peace. I would like to see one single, solitary piece of evidence that Vladimir Putin wants peace. Seriously, like one. That's all. That's all I'm asking for. Like one sign, one indicator. President Trump lives in reality. I'll say it again. And reality never lies. Reality is reality. And the reality is that Vladimir Putin obviously does not want peace, which is why he's avoiding direct negotiations and has been for months, while Vladimir Zelensky in Ukraine is literally doing every President Trump says to Zelensky at this point, jump. And Zelensky says how high that is the relationship between the United States and Ukraine, clearly. Apparently, Trump held an earlier call with European leaders on Sunday, a day before his two hour conversation with Putin. He had indicated he could impose sanctions if Putin refused to cease fire, according to officials. By Monday, he shifted again. Instead, he said he wanted lower level talks between Russia and Ukraine at the Vatican. So Europe is seeing some upside here. The entire process is showing that Vladimir Putin actually is not particularly interested in serious negotiations, which of course he is not. Putin is waiting everybody out, that's all. America's enemies are waiting America out, which, by the way, not bad strategy, traditionally speaking, waiting America out in Afghanistan, in Iraq, anywhere a good strategy. The American people get bored and they get tired and their presidents like pulling them out of places, even if it ends in ignominious defeat, as it did in, for example, Afghanistan. Speaking of ignominious defeat and ignominious people, the scandal surrounding Joe Biden continues. Who knew what when Jake Tapper has been making the round with his new book, Original Sin. Say what you will about Tapper's coverage of the president's infirmity over the past several years. And you can say a lot, Tapper is now saying many true things. Ok, that is just the reality. And Tapper was on MSNBC where he told Joe Scarborough that actually Joe Biden was almost singularly focused on convincing Joe Scarborough that he was not senile.

Ilhan Omar (55:13)

When David Ignatius wrote that column In, I think, August 2023, saying that Joe Biden should not run for Reelection because of what he had been hearing.

Ben Shapiro (55:21)

Right.

Ilhan Omar (55:21)

And he came on this show and you guys had a robust conversation about this. You largely agreed that you'd been hearing things about this, but that there was really no alternative, that Kamala Harris was not up to the job. That's what Democrats were telling you behind the scenes. Joe Biden saw that. Joe Biden said to staffers that he wanted to convince you that you were wrong. And he focused on you like you were a constituency, like you were farmers in Iowa, like you were the Kiwanis Club in New Hampshire. And he made sure that you thought farmers.

Ben Shapiro (55:52)

Joe. Okay, well, I mean, that's pretty amazing. It's also amazing that Scarborough fell for it. Meaning, I mean, what? Biden didn't have the ability to string together two sentences. And no matter how strong the PR operation is, I'm not sure how you get that past somebody like a Joe Scarborough. By the way, all these revelations from the book are pretty incredible. According to Axios, needing video of then President Biden speaking sharply and fluidly in a freewheeling setting, his campaign staged a closed to the press town hall with a friendly audience in April 2024. The resulting footage was unusable. That's unbelievable. So they literally staged a fake town hall for him so he would look like he could talk, and they couldn't use any of it in April 2024. And then the part that just boggles the mind is that then they allowed him on camera to challenge Donald Trump to a debate. Now, I don't know what they thought. Did they think that Trump wouldn't take him up on it? Of course Trump had to take him up on it. What was he going to do? Not debate Biden? Of course he was going to debate Biden. Like that was. That was red meat for President Trump. Are you kidding? Like, that's the part that's astonishing. And I think the, the only plausible explanation for some people buying into the idea that Biden wasn't quite as senile as it seemed was you would have to be insane to trot a senile man out in the middle of a campaign to do a debate with his chief opponent, who is a debate bulldog. Like, just rips people apart. A bulldog jaws on President Trump in debate, like the meanest debater of all time. He's a mean man when he debates. There's no question. Like putting him in the debate ring with challenging Trump to a debate. A lot of people must say, oh, well, maybe he's better than he looks. I mean, you'd have to be like a complete nut or maybe senile in order to, you know, challenge Trump. And then he did it. According to the book, the event at a high school gym in Biden's home state of Delaware was supposed to be the basis for a campaign commercial. The idea was to create scenes of Biden taking off the cup. Questions from voters that could be used in ads. The campaign had a pre screened list of questions the voters would ask. The cameras rolled for 90 minutes with Biden on stage. Apparently some blamed the lighting for the. The problem was not the lighting. The problem was, I'm sure, his performance. The campaign regularly needed recorded remarks from Biden that could be played at events or used in fundraising pitches. But the candidate was often unable to tape even mundane remarks without botching the lines. When supportive groups requested a taped 5 minute video address from Biden, the White House would respond by saying the video could be one or two minutes. What? What, what, what? As a workaround, Biden would be filmed with two cameras instead of one. So any flubbed lines could be smoothed with jump cuts. And by the way, we knew this, right? We were covering this on the show. We literally play tape of Biden and then we would have like a, a counter in the corner of the screen going like 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 8 jump cuts in 13 seconds because that's evidence that the dude couldn't speak words from his face hole. Unbelievable. Staff apparently, according to the book, blamed Biden's inability to find words or stay on a train of thought, not his stutter for the issue, despite the fact that the media kept claiming that it was a stutter. Thompson and Tapper write every shoot was anxiety inducing for Biden's team. Meanwhile, Jill Biden continues to push back. The Biden spokespeople are not, are not commenting on any of this. Shocker there. Of course they're not commenting on any of this. The minute they comment, they're finished. Meanwhile, it's fun to watch Democrats scurry around trying to avoid the consequences of their own complicity. It's really, really funny. According to Politico, 24 hours after the Sunday announcement that President Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer, one of his staunchest supporters, Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, said Monday he had yet to connect with him. Another close Hill ally, Senator Chris Coons, had not spoken with Biden as of mid afternoon on Tuesday. Biden's longtime friend Bill Bob Brady, the former House member from Pennsylvania who's known Biden for decades, said he still had not Talked with Biden again. Biden is not hearing from anybody. Ain't nobody hearing from Biden. Most Democrats are still trying to pivot from Biden self to stay on message. Representative gave Ammo of Rhode island, who is a former Biden White House aide, he's now in Congress, faulted Biden's critics for capitalizing on what he called the politics of the moment. Ah, we're back to the Republican pounces nonsense. Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas, who's a Biden reelect co chair, says quote, we are living through a historic terrifying backsliding of our democracy. I'm so profoundly uninterested in talking about this issue. Yeah, I, I noticed you guys are profoundly uninterested in talking about the biggest presidential cover up in history. Like literally the only one that would even be remotely close would be the COVID up of Woodrow Wilson being completely feeble and feeble minded by the end of his administration. And to be fair to the media, that happened in 1919 as over a hundred years ago. What a media fail. What a gigantic media fail. Meanwhile, speaking of COVID ups, the Daily Wire is now reporting, according to a Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations, that Biden administration officials knew as early as February 2021 that the vaccines for COVID 19 were associated with myocarditis and pericarditis. Myocarditis is the inflammation of the heart muscle itself. Pericarditis is inflammation of the thin sac that surrounds the heart. They waited to warn the public until June while they continued to push the vax. The report concluded that U.S. health officials knew about the risks of myocarditis, downplayed the health concern and deliberately delayed informing the public about the risk. That is insane. That is legitimately insane. Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs that committee, said in being concerned about vaccine hesitancy they violated the inviolable principle of informed consent. Well, yes. He says that Israeli officials were informing the United States as early as February 2021 about side effects they were noticing from the vax. In late February, there was a CDC official named Lori Markowitz who co led the Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group, who sent an email concerning draft minutes and summary report from a call. And apparently that call included an update about nearly 1,000 death reports to VAERS following vaccination. Notably, the email said that in the cases where cause of death was known, it was often cardiovascular. Apparently, according to the report, the Israeli Ministry of Health notified CDC of large reports of myocarditis, particularly in young people following the administration of the Pfizer vaccine. This is totally insane. And honestly, if you covered that up, you should, that, that, that should be maybe a prosecutable offense. If you know about legitimate, well researched risks and you don't inform the public about those legitimate, well researched risks, that should be a prosecutable offense for sure. Without a doubt. Massive scandal, truly amazing. But this was an administration of COVID ups, that is for sure. Meanwhile, the time has come. It's time for a Diddy update. I know, I know you've been waiting with bated breath for me to actually, you know, get back into the trial of Diddy. And again, it's, it's sort of fascinating on a prurient level. It's also fascinating because once again the gap in American perception between the illegal and the immoral has I think never been wider. It's very bizarre. In any case, according to the Washington Post, the government is working through its list of witnesses in the second week of testimony. The Sha Diddy Combs sex trafficking and racketeering trial in New York. Special Agent Gerard Gannon continued testifying on Wednesday describing finding gun components, platform heels and a ton of baby oil. Apparently when the Department of Homeland Security raided Combs's mansion in Miami last year. A forensic psychologist also testified that domestic abuse victims often love their partners, abuse drugs and repress memories. Testimony that recalls Cassandra Ventura's account of her 11 year relationship with Combs Thursday. Apparently we'll see more testimony from a former assistant to Combs who said that Ventura quit after he saw his boss abuse her. Prosecutors also hope to call five new witnesses that will include Kid Cudi, Kudai Cudi, I don't care, Cuddy, whatever. A rapper who briefly dated Ventura while she was involved with combs. Ms. Cootie's car, that would be Kid Cootie. Cudi exploded after a jealous Combs threatened to blow it up. If you threaten to blow up a car and then it blows up, that's a kind of an indicator that maybe had something to do with it. It's kind of weird. Cars don't tend to blow up all that much, just like randomly. So again, this case, what I'm curious to know is whether it fulfills the definition of the federal crime. Again, the defense is going to claim that he's just as bad as you say he is. Was it sex trafficking on a federal level? And I'll be interested to hear what the actual charges for sex trafficking are. It'll be fascinating. And meanwhile, speaking of Diddy, there are all these sort of again, when we talk about conspiracy theories that are that are sort of being put out there. Again, I think that you can plausibly ask a question about which there is no evidence. But I. When you do it over and over and over again, I start to get a little suspicious. So podcaster Patrick bet David he went after the Diddy case, suggesting the Diddy has been working with intelligence agencies. Maybe. Maybe. Again, anything is possible. But anything is possible usually is not my standard for sort of airing a theory, because anything is indeed possible. I mean, if you have evidence of this, then you could show it, like, as opposed to just speculating, maybe it's true. But, like, evidence, please.

Yechiel Leiter (65:16)

The story has it that Diddy's father was an FBI informant leaking a lot of information to the FBI. These types of behaviors, you're gonna pick it up from somebody, some kind of bad influence, somebody that taught you how to be an informant. Nobody wakes up one morning and just becomes diddy. There's a lot of things that taught you. Could be trauma, could be bad habits. And you're like, look, if this works effectively on me, I'm gonna use this exact system on other people. And maybe he did.

Ben Shapiro (65:41)

Maybe he. I don't even know what we're talking about now. So his dad worked for intelligence. I mean, Tucker Carlson's dad worked for, like, the intelligence community. So what? Who cares? What does it have to do with the price of D in China? Again, I'm not defending Diddy from anything. I'm just wondering, like, at some point, when we hear all of these theories, could we hear, like, a shred of evidence that doesn't involve a distant relative? The reason this is irritating to me is because people should actually sort of demand that when people make outlandish claims or outsized claims, they have outsized evidence to back those outsized claims. And I. I've named several conspiracies on the show today that actually existed. The conspiracy to cover up Joe Biden's mental health problems. The apparent conspiracy, now evidenced by Senator Ron Johnson at the highest levels of the Biden administration, to not report to the public what they knew, for example, about myocarditis in patients who are using the Fiservax. Like, those are actual, real conspiracies. But that's because I'm citing evidence to you of those things happening. I mean, again, you can play these theoretical games all day. I suppose, if it floats your boat, that's fine. Where it starts to get even more uptight is when you start impugning the honor of people that I know, like friends of mine, because you believe that your specious conspiracy theories are somehow more important than the people who actually see the evidence. So, Dan Bongino, of course, a friend. Dan's great. Dan is now the deputy FBI director. He did an interview recently in which he stated that Epstein killed himself. Now, again, if Dan says it, I'll take his word for it, because Dan's seen the evidence and I ain't. I've seen the same evidence everybody else has, the same evidence that Patrick Pat David has seen. Unless Patrick Pat David has evidence that I don't know about. I trust that Dan is not lying to me because, again, I know Dan. And so when I hear this kind of junk where people suggest that government officials are being pressured by. By various agents to suppress information. Okay, again, anything is possible, but anything is possible should not be your standard of reportage.

Yechiel Leiter (67:37)

Look what happened with all the guys that said, the day one, I'm going to release all the Epstein files, all the this and all the debt and all of this. And then they go in and it's like, you know, I saw this stuff. There's nothing there. He killed himself. He committed suicide. They're like, wait, what? And these are friends of ours? These are not people that we're not supportive of. We're excited for them. They do great work. But, you know, something happens when you get a certain job at a level of clearance that the rest of the world does not have access to. We don't know. We can speculate and say what happens when you walk into that room after you get a job, There's a briefing. Let's talk about Epstein. You've not got the job. This is a big job. How important is it for you to make sure America stays free as the greatest country in the world? Very. Well, guess what. There's a few things you have to do now that you have this job. You're going to get a briefing from five people are going to come in. They're going to tell you exactly what intel we have and why. It's important for us to make sure the story stays aligned, because we have enough inventory to hold 220 very powerful people in the world hostage. And if we don't, and we can't blackmail them, then guess what? A lot of deals are not going to get done. And one of our assets, that's another. You know, a secret intelligence agency has also a lot of assets on this that. That could expose their relationship and their history. And we can't do this right now. And you need to be aligned with that. Can we count on you doing that? Yes, sir. All right, great. Here's what we need you to say to the media. I foresee a conversation like that taking place.

Ben Shapiro (69:02)

I foresee. Ok, do you have any evidence of a conversation like that taking place, like, at any level, or is that you just impugning Dan Bongino and saying that Dan's lying? Sure, he's lying for the good of the country, sure, he's lying for the good of the intel, but he's lying that Dan's a liar. I know Dan. I don't believe that Dan's a liar. And by the way, if Dan had come out and said Epstein did not kill himself, all these people would be like, yes, because Dan's a truth teller. Because Dan is in fact, a truth teller. But if your definition of a truth teller or a liar comes based on their confirmation of the theories that you are spinning out in your own head, like, I'm sorry, this is just. It's unintelligent and it is not useful speculation without any evidence whatsoever. I'll bet there was a conversation that took place between Dan Bongino and Jimmy Hoffa in the back room over at the FBI in which Jimmy Hoffa, who they've been hiding in the back room for 30 years, came out and told Dan Bongino that he definitely needed to cover up the involvement of foreign intelligence agencies in the assassination of jfk. And Dan Bongino said, yes, sir, I could totally foresee a conversation like that happening. What evidence do you have that Dan Bongino's a liar? What evidence do you have that that Dan is somehow lying to a public that he has spent years informing and talking to, that he's lying to his own audience? By the way, you think Dan doesn't know what his audience is speculating about with regard to Jeffrey Epstein? You think Dan is unaware of that? Dan had one of the biggest audiences in this entire space. Is it. Honestly, this is just. If you fall for this kind of garbage, truly. Sure, it's fun. It's always fun. It's just after dinner, drunk conversations about who killed jfk. Fine, it's fun, it's enjoyable. I get it. But if we're going to pretend this is like a source of useful and good information, I'm just wondering on what basis conversations like this, not everything. Patrick. Patrick. Bet David says conversations like this one, how is that useful or good? And the answer is it's not. It's stupid and it's. And it's useless and it's counterproductive because it makes us unable to distinguish fact from fiction or speculation from reality. All right, the show continues in a moment with the vaunted Ben Shapiro show Mailbag. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member right now and get access to all of our amazing behind the Paywall content. Use code Shapiro Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.