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The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2231 - Diddy ACQUITTED On Major Charges…PLUS Will The Big Beautiful Bill Pass?!
01:02:50
Diddy’s trial comes to a shocking conclusion as a jury acquits him on the gravest charges; the Big Beautiful Bill heads to the House for another round of fisticuffs; and the Trump administration starts pulling back on weapons systems for Ukraine. Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/3WDjgHE Ep.2231 - - - Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings - - - DailyWire+: Right now, when you join DailyWire+ for a year, we’ll cover half of it. Join now at https://dailywireplus.com and use code FREEDOM. My new book, “Lions and Scavengers,” drops September 2nd—pre-order today at https://dailywire.com/benshapiro Get your Ben Shapiro merch here: https://bit.ly/3TAu2cw - - - Today's Sponsors: ExpressVPN - Go to https://expressvpn.com/ben and find out how you can get 4 months of ExpressVPN free! Balance of Nature - Go to https://balanceofnature.com and use promo code SHAPIRO for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer, PLUS get a free bottle o...
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Ben Shapiro
Get some more on this in a moment. First, you're great at protecting your personal information. You might use things like two factor authentication, strong passwords, vpn. As much as you try to be in control of how your information is protected, there are lots of other places that also have that information. They might not be careful the way you are. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Members of my own team use it. Producer Phil and his wife use it. They feel more protected. You will too. Save up to 40% your very first year with promo code ben@lifelock.com terms apply. Alrighty, folks. Tons. Coming up on today's show, the big beautiful Bill. What exactly is going on? Did he is he going to jail and for how long and why? Plus, we'll get to the latest on foreign policy, the latest immigration and the Democratic Party falling apart first. We have so much to catch you up on today. Let's start with this. We just released a video of me destroying my producers in a game of golf. If you missed it, that is me on the green actually wearing the new signature performance polo. I'm happy to report it's finally back in stock. It sold out fast last time. Don't wait. Grab your yours right now@dailywire.com shop before it's gone again, go to dailywire.com shop and lock in yours while you still can. Remember, that's where you can also get a signed copy of my newest book, Lions and scavengers. Seriously. Dailywire.com shop Also, tomorrow night, it's the 4th. The fireworks are flying. Nothing screams liberty like Tom Brady slow dancing with Sydney Sweeney. In Italy. It's been after dark. Friday night, 7:30pm Eastern only on TW Plus. I serenade Adam Carolla with baby lullabies. Take cinematic advice from Michael Moles because apparently I hate myself and test the outer limits of too far with your viewer mail. Plus, I destroy a British band so hard the Revolutionary War briefly restarts. So grab your sparklers like the grill. Join me on Ben after dark tomorrow night, 7:30pm Eastern, exclusive for members only on Daily Wire Plus. And if you become a member today, you get six months absolutely free. So head on over to DailyWire Plus.com right now. Become a member. Alrighty, folks, the big news of the day is that Sean Diddy Combs was acquitted on many of the major charges he in his trial. And this is, of course, a very large story. So there are a number of charges that have been put up against Sean Diddy Combs. There's count one, racketeering conspiracy, a RICO charge. He was found not guilty on that charge. I'll explain the charges and why in a moment. Count two, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion. This had to do with Cassie Ventura, his former girlfriend. Not guilty. Count three, Cassie Ventura, transportation to engage in prostitution. Guilty. This was him trafficking prostitutes across state lines, paying for them to be brought across the state lines in violation of the Man Act. For example. Count four, sex trafficking by force, coercion or pro or fraud. Not guilty. This had to do with an anonymous alleged victim named Jane. And count five, transportation to engage in prostitution. Guilty. So basically the charges upon which he was found guilty all had to do with transportation to engage in prostitution and those he was pretty much dead to rights because the reality is that there were people who were stated prostitutes who were transported to him for pay for use in his so called freak offs. The other charges fell apart and this was one of my questions that I had for a while on this trial. I've talked to Megan Kelly about it of course was how exactly do you prove racketeering conspiracy, which requires a criminal conspiracy, meaning a conspiracy to do criminal act when the alleged victim is a girlfriend who continued to come back and send you messages about how excited she was to participate in in activities like this one. How can you claim sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion with regard to Cassie Ventura when again she was his 10 year girlfriend? It makes it extremely difficult for a jury to come to the conclusion that beyond reasonable doubt he was guilty of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion with regard to Cassave Ventura or this other anonymous woman, Jane, who again they had apparently some communications suggesting that all of it was consensual or at least part of it was, was consensual and video of him beating up Cassie Ventura in a hallway. Well, that may be a case for state assault and battery, but that isn't necessarily a case for sex trafficking by force, fraud or, or coercion. So bottom line is that all the charges originally against Sean Diddy Combs would have added up to life in prison. So again, when it comes to the sentencing, transportation to engage in prostitution carries up to 10 years. However. However, the likelihood is that he will serve certainly less than two years in prison. The jury deliberated 13 hours across three days. There were eight men and four women on the jury. The age range was 30 to 74. Racially diverse. Many jurors of Color as they say. On July 2, the jury returned for less than an hour before reaching a verdict on the RICO count. So again, when it comes to rico, RICO of course, the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization act, which was designed to go after the Mafia in order to actually establish that RICO has been violated. You don't just have to show that people are combining to do a thing. You have to show that they have a criminal conspiracy, meaning a conspiracy that is deliberately organized in order to do criminal acts. And so the evidence on this particular charge that was brought by the prosecution is that his business empire, Sean Diddy Combs Security personal assistant supervisors functioned as a sort of criminal enterprise, not a business enterprise in which certain people may have engaged in criminal acts. The whole thing was set up in order to do crime. The predicate act, the criminal act supporting RICO include allegations that the Combs enterprise carried out, facilitated and covered up sex trafficking, forced labor, transportation for prostitution, narcotics distribution, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice. Now the case against that is that there was no actual criminal enterprise. The Combs acted independently, that all his expenses were personal, that the Combs enterprise was in fact a business enterprise. And that on a one off basis he would go to various people around him and ask them to do a criminal thing. And they may not have fully known what those criminal things were or he may have known and they may not have known or whatever. But bottom line is the jury found there wasn't enough evidence there as far as sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion. Cassie Ventura testified. His anonymous woman Jane also testified. And they had text messages with Combs about participation in freak offs. And they suggested they had done all of this due to fear of violent retaliation, shared opiate dependency and financial retaliation. And there are 30 witnesses who testified to Combs abuse of his business empire to facilitate and conceal coercive sexual acts. And testified to seeing Combs physically abuse Cassie Ventura. The defense says, well hold up a second. They say that the witnesses and victims may have been motivated by money because Cassie ventura receives a 20 million dollar settlement here. So maybe she stayed in because she wanted the settlement money, for example. They also claim that one of the more spectacular claims that Kid Cudi's vehicle was blown up by allies of Sean Z. Combs or by Combs himself. And the defense claimed that those arson kidnapping charges cannot be linked to Combs. And that the reason that he paid off hotel staff to get rid of a variety of tapes was to avoid bad publicity, not to obstruct justice. And one of the claims the defense made was, if Combs had criminal co conspirators, if this is in fact a racketeering conspiracy, where is the rest of the conspiracy? Why wasn't anybody else prosecuted? Right. These were the charges and this is why the jury came to the conclusion that it did. Now the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton and special agent in charge of the New York Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations, Ricky Patel, put out a statement, quote, sex crimes deeply scar victims. And the disturbing reality is that sex crimes are all too present in many aspects of our society. Victims endure gut wrenching physical and mental abuse leading to lasting trauma. New Yorkers and all Americans want the scourge stopped and perpetrators brought to justice. Prosecuting sex crimes requires brave victims to come forward and tell their harrowing stories. We and our law enforcement partners recognize the hardships victims endure and have prioritized a victim centered approach to investigating and prosecuting these cases. And then they say thank you to everybody at NYPD as well as to the witnesses and everybody else. Cassaventura's attorney, Doug Wigdor also spoke to the press. He said, we're happy he's been held responsible. Obviously they're not that happy considering that again, he made you no jail time at all when all is said and done. Would have liked to have seen a conviction on the sex crimes in RICO counts, but we're pleased that he's been held responsible for something which is something that hasn't happened in his lifetime. And you know, we're hopeful that ultimately he receives a substantial sentence for what he's done. And you know, we're pleased that Cassie's brought to light everything that has happened in this trial. I just spoke with her and with the U.S. attorney's Office team and she's in a good place. She's, she's pleased that again that the jury has found him liable guilty of two federal crimes. Now again, the, the case that was made by Diddy as well as his team, his legal team is that the women in consented to these encounters and that the feds criminalized his lifestyle and he was guilty of domestic abuse. Right, he admits that, but not the sex crimes with which he was charged. Combs lead attorney Mark Agnifillo said in his closing statement, he did what he did, but he's going to fight to the death to defend himself from what he didn't do. Now CNN's Eli Honick, he came out, he said, listen, Cassie Ventura, basically this came down to the jury, did not see Cassie Ventura as a Victim. They saw her as a person who was willfully involved with Sean Diddy Combs for a decade.
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Bernarda Villalona
Sex trafficking of Cassie Ventura. Not guilty.
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Ben Shapiro
Not guilty. Sex trafficking of Cassidy Ventura. So that is obviously an enormous win for the defense. It means the jury did not credit Cassie Ventura's testimony. That's a huge blow to the prosecution.
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Bernarda Villalona
That's.
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Ben Shapiro
And that, of course, is exactly right. Meanwhile, ABC News analyst Bernarda Villalona, she similarly pointed out, this is a slap in the face to the alleged victims.
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Bernarda Villalona
For the victims, I think this is a slap in the face for the victims. I think this is going to deter victims from coming forward and telling their story and being the voice for the voiceless in the sense of representing other victims that are not willing to come forward. I know that for a fact. I'm sure that the prosecution right now is very upset with this verdict because they definitely put a lot of time into this prosecution, into this investigation, and they also did a lot of comforting of trying to give strength to these women, to Jane and to Cassie, to come forward to show their face, to share their story.
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Ben Shapiro
Now, again, this is the way it's going to be interpreted by some of the press is that this is a slap in the face to all women and all victims. But one of the major issues in the case is whether if you are in a relationship for 10 years with somebody, it is going to be easy to establish that that person was an abuser. Even if they abused you, if you stayed in, it makes it very difficult legally to make claims against that person. That's just the reality of the world. It's just the reality of the world. Particularly in the post MeToo era, during the Me Too era, you could claim that you just had a bad feeling after having an encounter with a man, and everybody would rush to your defense. In the post MeToo era, people want to know that if you get the bleep kicked out of you in a hallway, for example, that you go to the cops, because otherwise they're going to assume that you are. Are consenting not to that act, but to the relationship in general. And that's particularly true if there are texts suggesting they are eager to engage in some of the activities in which you have engaged. And beyond a reasonable doubt is a criminal standard. I'm not sure that the jury got it wrong here. I know there are a lot of people out here who are suggesting that the jury got this totally wrong. It seemed to me, you know, in my sort of familiarity with the cases, it grew over time through Diddy Watch and other sort of coverage of the case that the prosecution was overreaching, that the prosecution was trying to make a case against Diddy that the evidence didn't quite sustain. Now, there are some people who are trying to make this into a racial issue. That includes MSNBC legal commentator Lisa Rubin. She says, well, one of the problems is that the prosecutors here were white women and there are a bunch of people on the jury who were not white.
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Bernarda Villalona
Well, and also there are some racial dynamics here on that were at play. And I think both the gender and the racial dynamics are worth talking about. Earlier this spring, I went to cover an unrelated event down near the federal courthouses. And I was there on May 1st when I saw all six of the prosecutors on this team walk from their office, which is now at the Court of International Trade, to the courtroom itself. And they filed in a single file line. And they are all white women to a person, six of them. And they almost look like lawyer Barbies proceeding as they were walking to the court. It's not lost on me that particularly given who the defendant was and in a jury that not only was mixed by gender but had, from my count, at least seven people of color on it, that that dynamic may not have gone over particularly well with that.
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Ben Shapiro
Okay. But you know, the alleged victims in this case, I mean, Cassie Ventura is not a white person. Cassie Ventura's mom is of African descent and her dad is Filipino. So again, it shouldn't have to do with the prosecutors in this particular case trying to turn this into a sort of weird jury nullification on the basis of race case is definitely strange. What this does go to is that we now live in a time where people are very skeptical of claims being made about sexual abuse in which some of the claimed victims again, are engaged in long term relationships with the alleged perpetrators in these particular cases. So again, a bit of a shocking result here. But I. And just to sum up, I'm not sure the jury got this one wrong. I really am not. I think that by all available evidence, Sean Diddy Combs is an absolute piece of human trash. But that was true when he was just engaging in consensual freak offs. And one of the big problems that we have in our country and in our civilization as a whole is that when you use consent as the only standard for morality or even legality, when that is the only standard, you are going to end up with some of the most disreputable people being, quote, unquote innocent. You'll end up with the biggest people in Hollywood hobnobbing with Diddy at these freak offs and everybody looking the other way. And it's going to be hard to sort of backfill the rage that society feels. These sorts of activities through the criminal law. The criminal law probably was not the solution here. Societal ostracization was the solution long ago. The criminal law is the solution. He's beating the hell out of Cassie Ventura in a hallway. The criminal law may be a solution when he is trafficking in prostitutes, although increasingly the left is very much in favor of sex workers. So I'm not sure even what the left would say about all of this. But bottom line is that a society in which the only value is consent is going to end up in some pretty dark places. And the criminal law cannot fill in for a society that lacks all morality. Okay, we'll get to the latest on the big beautiful bill in a moment. First, it's pretty ironic when you think about it. Millions of military members have fought for our freedom, but we lose more of our privacy every day. Our phones are listening. Tech companies are tracking everything we do online. It's all completely legal. Fighting for freedom isn't just the military's job anymore. We need to do our part as well. That's why I use ExpressVPN. It's basically like a shield for your Internet activity. Everything gets sent through encrypted servers so nobody can see what you're doing online. Not your Internet provider, not data brokers, not government agencies. And here's what really impressed me. Last year, ExpressVPN got over 400,000 requests for customer data from tech companies and government agencies. You know how many times they actually handed over that data? Zero. Because they actually can't. Because they don't have the data because of their zero logs policy. The best part? It's stupidly easy to use. Just one click and you're protected. Works on everything too. Phones, computers, tablets, even your smart tv. You can protect up to eight devices at once, so your whole family gets that privacy back. I'm traveling right now. That means ExpressVPN. I'm using it all the time. If you want to fight for your freedom, ExpressVPN is one of the best tools you have right now. You can get an extra four months for free when you use my special link. Head on over to expressvpn.com Ben Gets. Get four extra months of ExpressVPN. 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That of course was a tie that had to be broken by the Vice President J.D. vance. And according to Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, he left House Speaker Mike Johnson with a non starter. Now again there will be negotiations between the House and the Senate. The version that will be eventually passed in the House and I believe it will be passed is not going to be the same as the version that was passed by the Senate. There will be further negotiations that take place and again reconciliation bills always turn into, as Axios points out, a power struggle between the House and the Senate. But if the current Senate bill prevails, Thune will end up winning on three much more consequential issues. Baseline policy permanence for business tax cuts and the scope of entitlement reform, according to Axios. For months, Thune and Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo of Idaho insisted the Senate parliamentarian should use baseline policy to determine how much tax proposals will cost. That would have implications for future Congresses. Now, again, that would be a good thing because again, using baseline policies means, for example, that instead of assuming that a policy is going to sunset and then if a tax cut remains right, nothing changes, then we count that as a deficit increaser. Instead, we basically just look at the rate of taxes now and we say, okay, if that's continued out into the future, then that doesn't increase the deficit. That's just what it is. The law is what the law is. Senate Republicans are convinced this will spur the kind of investment the economy will need to achieve 3% growth. The trickiest part of the Senate debate was lowering the threshold for the Medicare provider tax. He said. This is the first time we've done anything meaningful on entitlement reform. Democrats, of course, are freaking out about all of this. President Trump, for his part, is intervening. He is urging House Republicans to get behind the bill. He put out a statement earlier yesterday saying, quote, almost all of our great Republicans in the United States Senate have passed our one big beautiful bill. It is no longer a House bill or a Senate bill. It is everyone's bill. There is so much to be proud of and everyone got a major policy win. But the biggest winner of them all will be the American people who have permanently lower taxes, higher wages, take home pay, secure borders, and a stronger and more powerful military. Additionally, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security benefits are not being cut. They're being strengthened and protected from radical and destructive Democrats by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse from those programs. So the President of the United States spent all of yesterday basically lobbying various members of the House to get on board. Trump said in this statement on Truth Social. We can have all of this right now, but only if the House GOP unites, ignores its occasional grandstanders, you know who you are and does the right thing, which is sending the bill to my desk. We are on schedule. Let's keep it going and be done before you and your family go on July 4th at vacation. The American people need and deserve it. They sent us here to get it done. And then he says the country is going to explode with massive growth, even more than it already has since I was reelected. And of course, he is not wrong that the country does need a shot in the arm. According to a new report out of payroll processing firm ADP. As of Wednesday, private payrolls actually lost 33,000 jobs in June. Economists had expected an increase of a hundred thousand private payroll jobs for the month, and the May job growth figure was revised to 29,000 from 37,000. So again, there, there are concerns about the rate of hiring. People are sort of holding their money back waiting to see what's going to happen. And of course, there's still a weight on with regard to Jerome Powell and whether he's going to lower those interest rates and provide some liquidity in the economy. The question is whether House Republicans are somehow going to sink the mega bill. According to the Wall Street Journal, some House Republicans are already lining up to oppose President Trump's big, beautiful bill. The number of House Republicans vowing to oppose the Senate version is enough to block the bill's passage, but past standoffs have been resolved after successful pressure campaigns by the president and party leaders. Given the Republicans 2220 to 212 majority, the bill would fail if more than three House Republicans join House Democrats in opposing it. So it's a very slim margin. It is worth noting here that slim margins sometimes make it easier to get bills passed. Why? Because then every single person who falls off the bill is on the firing line and they know it. If Republicans had a 15 vote majority, then it might be easier to get together a block to vote against the bill and then there's sort of safety in numbers. But it's only three or four people who drop off. Every one of those people is going to be on the chopping block for President Trump and for the National Republican Congressional Committee, Representative Ralph Norman, member of the House Freedom Caucus, voted early Wednesday morning against moving the president's tax bill out of the House Rules Committee. He was joined by Representative Chip Roy of Texas. The panel debated and then narrowly advanced the bill to the House floor. Norman said, our bill has been completely changed from IRA credits to the deficit. The bill's a non starter. We want to do this. The bill doesn't do what the President wants it to do. Now again, I think that that Speaker Johnson has done a fabulous job thus far of working with an incredibly fractious Congress. I have faith that he's going to get this thing rammed through and there's a lot of negotiation that was taking place. Animated conversations between the House Budget Chair, Jody Arrington and Speaker Mike Johnson. Animated conversations between the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, Andy Harris and a bunch of other Freedom Caucus members. A lot of talk going on right now and President Trump is Weighing in, multiple groups of House Republicans were ushered to the White House to speak with President Trump. Some of the supposed holdouts, like Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, who announced his retirement already said in the end, it's hard to vote against making tax cuts permanent and fixing defense again. Some members of the House Freedom Caucus. Then you have a few, like the perennial no Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who basically exists just to say no to things and hate Israel. Those are his big things. There are a few. Will there be enough steam to actually stop the bill in the end? I doubt it, because as the Wall Street Journal points out, a piece titled the Met Tax Bill that has to pass. The bill's best news is the economic certainty will provide to businesses. Although largely extending the tax cut status quo, the bill could boost growth at the margin by giving businesses confidence they need to make long term investments. The bill also ends the Inflation Reduction Acts, tax credits for wind and solar projects that begin construction later than a year from now, and eliminates EV credits. In return, Republicans from windy Great Plains states extracted a two year extension of the IRA's plan biofuels tax credit. That's the Hawkeye heist, as they call it. They're saying basically there are a few groups of people who are getting giveaways here. There are some bad things in the bill, there's some good things in the bill. The bottom line is it needs to pass. That is a point made by Speaker Mike Johnson. Here he was yesterday, 85 to 90% of this bill is the House generated product. The Senate made some modifications to it. They made it more conservative in some places and moderated it a little bit in others. But I tell you what, as the President said so well today, this is no longer just a House bill. It's not a Senate bill. It's the bill of the people, of the hardworking American people. And we are going to deliver it, as you said, Sean, by July 4th. It is so critically important. Remember, we got a clear mandate from the people in November to do this. President Trump ran on a clear set of priorities and promises and we did as well. And this is the vehicle to deliver it. We're almost there at that finish line. And again, it appears to me that the bill will in fact pass some of the holdouts, like Representative Chip Roy. Listen, I really like Chip. I think Chip is an excellent Congressperson. My guess is that he is using what leverage he has to make the bill better on the margins. I mean, that's what this is going to come down to. Here's Representative Chip Roy, talking about Republican credits of the big beautiful bill in the House. This is where the, the, the, the crux of the problem is. There are those of us in the House that are reviewing the bill after it came through the Senate, and we believe it falls short. We believe that it will create too much spending, and that is too much in the way of deficits over the next four or five years, in particular, with backloaded savings and more deficits up front. We believe that it gutted our changes to the Green New Scam subsidies such that there won't be an effective termination of the Green New Scam. We believe that it continues to allow, for example, illegals to be able to get Medicaid. Now, again, he's right about all of those things. The question is going to be how many Republicans oppose and for how long and what they get in return. Because, remember, this thing has to go back to the Senate and then it has to earn for a second time the vote of Lisa Murkowski from Alaska. Meanwhile, Democrats are going nuts over this thing, particularly Elizabeth Warren. She says the bill is morally bad. Why? Well, because the bill does a few things that she doesn't like. One, it puts work requirements on Medicaid and food stamps. And two, it actually shifts some of the costs from the federal government back to the state level. And she doesn't like any of those things. She wants the federal government to pay for everything. That's because she believes in modern monetary theory and the basic idea that essentially the federal government should just endlessly deficit spend forever and it will have no consequences. Here's the Senator from Massachusetts leaving the.
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Bernarda Villalona
Senate now at the end of the vote when the Republicans won, they cheer. They cheered over taking away health care from around 17 million people. They cheered over giving huge tax breaks to a handful of billionaires. They cheered over running up the national debt by another $3.5 trillion. You know, this bill, it's bad. It's bad economically, it's bad morally. Uh, this bill is just wrong.
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Ben Shapiro
Okay, well, whether she believes the bill is wrong or not, if taxes go up, it will be a death knell for the Republican Party come 2026. Now, there is another point to be made here, and that is that, yeah, we're not solving our deficit problem like we are not. And you can see what's going to happen to the United States down the line, because no one takes this problem seriously. Most Republicans don't, most Democrats don't. The American people certainly do not. And all you have to do is take a look across the pond or over at Great Britain. So there's a shocking and fraught moment that happened in Great Britain yesterday when investors, according to the Wall Street Journal, sold off British government bonds and the pound fell sharply on Wednesday after the labor government abandoned plans to cut ballooning welfare costs and the country's chancellor of the Exchequer was seen crying in Parliament. The sell off came hours after the government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer shelved a plan to cut disability payments following a rebellion by Labor's own lawmakers. The U turn raised the prospect of the government hiking taxes or issuing even more debt to fund its welfare system. It also cast doubt over the future of Rachel Reeves, the UK Chancellor who took the job just over a year ago, promising a return to economic stability by sticking to strict spending rules. The pound sank in value. It lost more than 1%, trading at a buck 36. UK government bonds also tumbled in price. Markets have latched onto the idea that Reeves departure might be much more imminent, said Mark Dowding, chief investment officer for Fixed Income RBC at Blue Bay Asset Management. That is unsettling to investors in terms of what that means of the labor government's commitment to the fiscal framework. And of course labor didn't have any commitment to the fiscal framework. Of course they didn't. It's a far left wing party. They were never going to be fiscally responsible. And this is just demonstrative of a crisis that is going to face every Western government, including the government of the United States, eventually, as the Wall Street Journal points out, the government's climb down points to a broader truth for governments across Western Europe. But it's also for the United States, which is where weak economic growth means countries are struggling to raise enough revenue to pay for rising costs from an aging population. With voters largely wary of spending cuts, that leaves higher taxes, which could hurt growth further as the most likely outcome. Britain is already on course to register the highest tax burden Since World War II, thanks to big spending during the pandemic and paying out for energy subsidies after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Its growth prospects remain meager. Now, if you look into the future for the United States, this sort of thing could happen here, too. The United States is demographically growing only because of immigration. The reality is that the fertility rate in the United States is actually below replacement levels. It is 1.66 births per woman. The United States is not replacing its own population. The only way we were able to do that is through large scale immigration, which we have stopped, which means that we have a shrinking tax base, an aging population, just like Western Europe. Slower but similar. And we also have the possibility of serious economic stagnation absent a massive breakthrough in AI that suddenly translates into higher productivity. If all that materializes and we don't cut any of the massive welfare state that we have built, we are going to end up inflating our way out of this. That's just the reality. Because as I've said a thousand times, there are only three solutions to massive debt. One, inflation. Two, massive tax increases. Three, Three, austerity. And the population is so used to its benefits, they do not want austerity. They don't. Well, eventually the west is going to have to grow up and recognize the welfare state has costs attendant upon it. And those costs are going to have to be paid for by someone. They can't be kicked down the road indefinitely. You can't just magically manufacture money and hope the economy is going to continue to sail forward. And so what does the United States need? It needs massive economic growth. And eventually it's going to need some actual real cuts to the size and scope of government. It is. And the kind of stuff that's being done in the big beautiful bill is not going to do it. It's going to need to be a lot larger than that. I know that's an unpopular view. It also happens to be an economically sane view that very few people are willing to take in politics because again, most people don't want to hear it. Coming up, President Trump. It looks like the tariff war may be slowing down in certain places, but heating up with regard to Japan, we'll bring you the latest. First, there's a great Fourth of July sale happening at Brick House Nutrition right now. You can save 25% on everything with the code FIREWORKS. 25. Pretty solid deal if you've been thinking about trying their stuff or you need to restock. Their lean supplement has been really popular. You've heard me talk about it before. It's their top seller for weight management with no injections. Nice thing is it's all perfectly natural ingredients that have been studied. Perfect timing if you're looking to get in better shape for summer. And if you're more into the wellness side of things, their field of greens is worth checking out as well. It's basically a super fruit and veggie drink. They're so confident in it, they guarantee your doctor will notice improvements in your health or they will give you your money back, which is a pretty bold claim. That's a lot of great products. One of our very own daily wire account executives, Butch started taking lean. He's been impressed with how effective it's been in such a short period of time. There are a bunch of other producers and staff who've been reliant on their product over here at the Daily Wire. Plus, you know how beauty experts are always talking about collagen being the secret to keeping your skin and hair looking young. Well, this might be your chance to try out their new collagen peptides. If you've been on the fence about any of their supplements, now's a great time to give them a shot. You can still get 25% off everything@brickhouse nutrition.com or with the code FIREWORKS25 before products sell out. Visit brickhouse nutrition.com code FIREWORKS25 now. Meanwhile, speaking of the state of the economy and economic growth, there are some nice spring signs that perhaps the tariff war is coming to a bit of an end here. One of those is that President Trump has apparently now come to an agreement with Vietnam. In return for the US And Vietnam striking a tariff deal that sees American goods enter the country completely duty free, the US will charge 20% tariffs on Vietnamese goods instead of the 46% tariffs he had announced in April before putting the duties on pause to allow for negotiations. Additionally, goods from other countries that pass through Vietnam on their way to the United States will be charged a higher 40% tariff. According to President Trump. Those would presumably be Chinese goods that get shipped through Vietnam. Those sorts of trans shipments will still be taxed at 40%. Now again, you'll notice that those tariff rates are not reciprocal and that is still increasing prices on the American consumer. This is the reason why Jerome Powell is holding off on lowering those interest rates is because if you have a 20% tariff on Vietnamese goods, and if you have a 10% tariff on UK goods and a 30% tariff on Canadian goods and all the rest, eventually that is going to make its way into the markets. The agreements do mark the second trade pact that Trump has struck under the threat of his so called reciprocal tariffs. Now again, they were put on pause in early April for 90 days. We are reaching the end of that time period. I would assume that President Trump is going to delay that still further. There are some countries that are slow to come to the table, including Japan. According to the Wall Street Journal, after failing to cut a trade deal with Japan following weeks of talks, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer decided to turn up the pressure. When Japanese officials arrived in Washington in late May, Lutnick and Greer warned them. If the two sides couldn't work out an agreement soon, the conversations might start shifting from easing the tariffs Trump had recently imposed toward additional punitive measures. The Japanese stood their ground. They told the Americans they would not agree to any deal that preserves President Trump's 25% automotive tariff. That impasse continues. And on Monday, President Trump appeared to cut off talks with Tokyo. He said, Japan won't take our rice, but they have a massive rice shortage. Japan imports hundreds of thousands of tons of US Rice annually under a wood to agreement. By the way, President Trump suggested what a letter to Japan might say. Dear Mr. Japan, here's the story. You're going to pay a 25% tariff on your cars. So we give Japan no cars. They won't take our cars. So I asked our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity about American Japanese trade and what perplexity says that in 2022, U.S. exports to Japan totaled approximately $80 billion. Imports from Japan were about 150 billion. More recently, in April 2025, U. S. Exports to Japan reached $6.83 billion. That is an increase from April 2024. We have a persistent trade deficit with Japan. In 2022, that trade deficit was $68 billion. In 2024, it was again about $68 billion. Monthly data for early 2025 indicate the U.S. trade deficit on goods with Japan fluctuating between $6 billion and $7 billion per month. So again, they are a major trade partner of the United States. Is this good for American consumers? Probably not. We can hope for more trade agreements because again, if you want a robust American economy, you do need export markets. And again, when people buy American goods or when we buy Japanese goods, American dollars go to Japan and then they use those dollars to invest in American products, including on our stock market. Trade deficits usually mean capital surpluses. Okay, so again, the, the trade war is not going to be particularly good for the American economy. Sure, we're picking up some tariff income from American consumers because of course, we're the ones who end up paying the bill for that. But with that said, hopefully we come to the end something like a reasonable trade policy. That is presumably what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant has been pursuing. As I've said from the beginning, Listen to the treasury secretary on this stuff. He's the one who knows what he's doing now. Meanwhile, a couple more victories for President Trump. So Paramount has now agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit from President Trump. That lawsuit was based on Trump suing 60 Minutes. For basically cutting apart a Kamala Harris interview during the last election cycle in order to make her look better. The settlement does not include an apology from 60 Minutes, but it comprises payments made to the president's future presidential library and legal fees. Paramount also agreed that 60 Minutes would release transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates in in the future after they had aired. Again, the goal of this particular settlement was to get more transparency from CBS and Paramount. CBS News settled. CBS said the broadcast was not doctored or deceitful. Now, there are a bunch of members of CBS News who have left in the interim during all of this because many Paramount leaders were concerned that that might expose directors and officers to liability and potential future shareholder litigation, which or even to criminal charges for bribing a public official. But there's also concern that if the Trump administration didn't get what it wanted here, there might be an attempt by the FCC to block some sort of merger between Paramount and Skydan. So again, I don't like the government being used this way, frankly. With that said, was the 60 Minutes attempt to make Kamala Harris look better absolutely corrupt? It absolutely was. I'm not sure there's a legal remedy for that that's appropriate. But CBS News settling is just as a descriptive matter, A victory for President Trump. Meanwhile, another victory for President Trump, apparently. University of Pennsylvania has now stripped swimmer Lia Thomas of his titles. So you'll recall that Lia Thomas was a man who raced against a bunch of women and set a bunch of records. Well, now the University of Pennsylvania is going to strip Leah Thomas of his swimming titles because they're pointing out, along with the Trump administration, that dudes racing against ladies don't win titles. The university will issue formal apologies to every biological female competitor who lost out to a transgender competitor. According to the New York Post, following an investigation by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. That probe found that Upenn violated Title 9 by allowing a male to compete in female athletic programs and occupy female only intimate facilities. And of course, we've talked with Riley Gaines on the program before. We've also talked about Upenn swimmer Paula Scanlon. She, of course, first appeared anonymously in what Is a Woman? To discuss what it was like having to be in a locker room with a full grown male with full twig and berries. Leah Thomas. And then we actually talked about who Paula Scanlon was. Right. Daily Wire allowed her to publicly come out as the person who was talking in the video. She became very public advocate for female sports. There's a big Win for Paula Scanlon. Big win for Riley. Here is Paula Scanlon describing.
- [38:33]
Bernarda Villalona
You know, this announcement has actually come at a really interesting time for me because it was July two years ago that I quit my full time corporate America job to enter the political world to focus on lobbying for legislation to keep men out of women's sports, to posting on X that many people have probably seen me do. It really shows how far we've come. I think we forget what the climate was actually like back in 2021 when I was going through it, what the climate was like when I was anonymous in the what Is a Woman documentary because I feared the University of Pennsylvania was going to revoke my diploma if they figured out that it was me in that film. I mean, it shows how much we've really won on the culture here and I'm so grateful to be part of that. But I'm really grateful for all the wonderful people that have been part of this process. And I think for me, this entire outcome is really just reflecting on that and reflecting on all the friendships I've made along the way and all the wonderful creators that have worked on bringing awareness to this. And, and really I'm so appreciative for, for you guys, the Daily Wire, for, for being part of this and for, you know, highlighting my story back then two years ago when I came public for the first time or even making the what Is a Woman documentary altogether, back when it was in Joe Biden's America and no one wanted to talk about this issue. And I think more than anything else, this is just the beginning. I want to see more wins. And I'm grateful to the Trump administration for really taking leadership on this and getting this done. And I can't wait to see more of these Ivy League institutions bend the knee to this administration because that is exactly what I'm looking for. And it really makes me so happy. As a female athlete. The last thing I'll end with is I really want no female athlete to go through what I did. And, and that's exactly why we fought so hard for this.
- [40:06]
Ben Shapiro
Again, good for Paula Scanlan, good for Riley Gaines. And of course, Daily Wear was very involved in this particular victory. Meanwhile, the university has completely exposed themselves, the university system, they've completely exposed themselves. A shocking story from the Washington Free Beacon about Columbia President Claire Shipman. Apparently before she became acting president of Columbia University, Shipman argued that Columbia needed to get, quote, an Arab on our board and suggested that a Jewish trustee should be removed from over her pro Israel advocacy. According to Text messages obtained by the House Committee on Education and Workforce. She wrote on January 17, 2024, we need to get somebody from the Middle east or who is Arab on our board quickly. I think somehow. Then she told a colleague that Shoshana Shendelman, who is one of the board members who doesn't like campus anti Semitism, which was rife at Columbia University, had been, quote, extraordinarily unhelpful, adding, I just don't think she should be on the board. Amazing, Amazing stuff. Well, those messages were included in a letter sent to Columbia on Tuesday by committee chair Representative Tim Wahlberg of Michigan, as well as Representative Elise Stefanik. Addressing Shipman by name, the committee requested clarifications on the attached correspondence. The remark about needing an air board member, quote, raises troubling questions regarding Colombia's priorities just months after the October 7 attack, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was were Colombia to appoint someone to the board specifically because of their national origin, it would implicate. Title 6 concerns the exchanges about gentlemen, they say, quote, raise the question of why you appear to be in favor of removing one of the board's most outspoken Jewish advocates at a time when Columbia students were facing a shocking level of fear and hostility. Well, the answer, of course, is because the left is always going to side with the scavengers in any battle between lions and scavengers, always and forever. And the Democratic Party is now the party of the scavengers. CNN's Harry Enton did a report just yesterday about the shift in the Democratic Party on the question of Israel versus the Palestinians. Now remember, Israel is a multi ethnic, multiracial and yes, multi religious democracy. The Palestinians are governed by a terrorist group, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, another terrorist group, the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria. By every polling statistic they supported October 7th, they support high levels of terrorism. They hate America by all available polling. And yet somehow Democrats are more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis. According to Harry Anton, in 2017, the Democratic Party was a pro Israeli party. Look at this. They sympathize with the Israelis by 13 points, more with the Israelis than the Palestinians. But look at this sea change now. Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians by 43 points. Oh my God. That is a change in the margin of 56 points over the course of just eight years. So all of a sudden it's the pro Palestinian position that actually reigns supreme in Democratic politics, not the Israeli position. And that is part of the reason why Mandani was able to do so. Well, in this primary, because those attacks over Israel, simply put, did not ring true for Democrats. They are now on the side of the Palestinians, not the Israelis. Well, again, I do not think that that is a coincidence. I do not find that shocking in the slightest, like at all. The same party, only 36% of whom say they are proud to be Americans, is the party that likes the Palestinians. Because it's all the same thing. It is all a hatred of a generalized Western civilization they feel victimizes them and all the marginalized people who comprise their coalition. This is why they like Zoram Hamzani. Again, people who are analyzing Zoramdani's win in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary and saying that they can't understand how he overcame his hatred for Israel and, and his obvious dislike for Jews. Those same people, those same exact people are getting it totally wrong. That was a feature, not a bug. He was running for the heart of the Democratic Party. Democrats are fighting a rear guard, losing battle against their radical base. And they're radical on every score. I mean, here is Zoran Mamdani saying that his plan is to buy up private housing in New York and convert it into communes. Further toward the Vienna model, we'll have to go beyond the market. We can establish community land trusts to gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership. We can give tenants a right of first refusal to buy out their landlords when buildings go up for sale. And we can fully commit to a new era of social housing, ending subsidies for luxury housing development and using our wealth to build beautiful, high quality social housing projects that offer offer good homes and strong communities to everyone. We won't decommodify housing overnight, but we know what we have to do and we have history to guide us. I'm just going to point out that we do have history to guide us. Public housing is one of the worst boondoggles in the history of the American Republic. Public housing has been a full scale disaster. Public housing developments in places like, for example, St. Louis turned into absolute hell holes because publicly funded areas like this end up being mistreated very often by their tenants. They do not have a profit motive, which means that there is no rationale for keeping them in good shape. They turn into slums. That is very often what happens in a lot of these areas. And that's exactly what he wants to replicate. And yet, at the same exact time, Hakeem Jeffries, again, this is the Democratic minority leader who will take over the House if Republicans Somehow lose in 2026, put out a tweet quote, stop lying about Assemblyman Mamdani. He is neither a communist nor a lunatic. And New York City doesn't need to be saved by a wannabe king. He's referring to President Trump. Besides, you are too busy destroying America with your one big ugly bill to do anything else. So, first of all, he is a communist. He has called himself. He's a Democratic socialist of America. He full scale stands with the Marxists. He is not a lunatic. I agree with that. He is perfectly rational. He is running directly for the heart of the Democratic Party. His radicalism is thought out. It's why he's so smarmy. It's why he's got this pasted on, overwrought grin that he just brings out at every available opportunity in the most obnoxious and cloying way. Because it's all thought out. It's all thought out because, as CNN's Audie Cornish says, calling him a Muslim socialist isn't gonna hurt him with his base because they know he is one. It's one of those things where it's one thing to call someone a Muslim socialist who is not. It's another thing when someone, someone is basically like, you can't hurt me with those words, right? Like, these are the things that he stands for. And it's a new sort of position in the Democratic Party of strength Democratic socialists. Now, the reality is you can call him Muslim socialist all you want. He openly embraces that label, by the way, like so many other Muslim socialists. He's very much in favor of trans pride, progress stuff that he wouldn't be if he were, you know, in the third world that he purports to love so much. But the coalition of scavengers must come together under all circumstances. And this, by the way, is a point that President Trump is making. President Trump has pledged to stop Zoran Mandani calling him a communist lunatic, as we've already mentioned, and suggesting that he wants to save New York, quote, as President of the United States, I'm not going to let this communist lunatic destroy New York. Rest assured, I hold all the levers and of all the cards. I'll save New York City and make it hot and great again, just like I did with the good old usa. Now, the reality is that that actually helps Mamdani in his race for mayor, because New Yorkers, by polling data, are not hugely fond of the presidents of the United States. Probably Eric Adams would prefer if the President stayed out of this particular race, but doesn't matter. It's not going to happen. Meanwhile, Representative Brandon Gill says he's fetishizing the third World. And that's a weird thing to do, considering the Third world is specifically what it is, because it is not a great place to be, live, grow up or emulate. This is a guy who wants to defund the police, who wants to get rid of billionaires, doesn't believe they should exist. Who said that his end goal is to seize the means of production. I mean, that makes Bernie Sanders sound like a moderate and then turns around and defends the phrase globalize intifada. And he puts these videos out online of him eating rice with his hands, which by the way, is not something that Americans do. That is very. That is Third World behavior and that is connected to his policies. You know, the goal here is to undermine Western civilization, to fetishize the third world, which is what he's doing. That video to look other, to look unique, to look interesting, so that he can then push in these policies. You know, the next step after that is he's going to make another video in a couple years, but instead of having a bowl of rice, it's going to be an empty bowl because that's where his policies are going to get us. He is not wrong about that. He's not wrong. Now everyone's gonna call him racist for pointing this out, but he happens to be correct about it. Meanwhile, the NYPD Chief of the department office, John Chell, points out that it's insane what Mamzani's proposing. He's. He's actually seeking to destroy the strategic response group which actually prevents violence in the city of New York. So look, since October 7, we have over 6,000 protests. We had our no Kings protest a couple weeks ago with 75,000 thousand protesters. Our strategic response group as known as SRG are highly trained, highly professional men and women who hold the line. In the last two years of protest, we've had no major incidents in this city. The no Kings protest, about 500 out of 50,000 thought they were going to tear our city apart and our SRG stopped them. So for anyone to say they're going to disband, that kind of success and you unit quite frankly is foolish and doesn't know what they're doing. He is right about all of that. But again, whether it works or not is not the point. The point is what it stands against. And that is the American system. That's the American system. That is the thing that they are looking to tear down. And meanwhile President Trump actually attempting to bring people together in the Middle East. So President Trump is desperately attempting to broker a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. The goal would be to free all of the hostages Hamas is currently holding. Hamas's last leg of support. Iran is down and out for the camel. Iran has been destroyed in terms of its nuclear program. It's effectively isolated. It has no allies on the world stage of any real measure at this point. China is not interested, Russia's not interested. And so now hostage negotiations, end of war negotiations have been taking place between Egypt, Qatar, Hamas and Israel. The Saudis are also putting a word in. Now the question here is what Qatar is going to do because Qatar could end this today. All Qatar would have to say is to Hamas free all the hostages, all you guys go into exile and then there will be a, an Arab administration of the Gaza Strip that would include presumably the Egyptians, the Saudis, uae, Qatar and all the rest. The question is whether Qatar is actually willing to do that. So far the only offer on the table has been freeing 10 hostages. Now for a 60 day ceasefire and there would still be 10 hostages held for another two months in the GAZ. These are the live hostages. There'd be some bodies that were released as well. Hamas appeared to have sort of accepted the deal a couple of days ago and then they reversed themselves and suggested that actually they still want to run the Gaza stripe, which of course is a total non starter for the Israelis. They're not going to allow the terrorist group that perpetrated October 7th and that has left its own population as victims of its disgusting, horrifying evils in charge of the Gaza Strip. It's not going to happen. President Trump said on his truth social media that Israel and American representatives had discussed his conditions. Quote, israel has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize the 60 day ceasefire, during which time we'll work with all parties to end the war. He said the mediators and Qatar in Egypt were set to deliver a final proposal to Hamas. He said, I hope for the good of the Middle East, Hamas takes the deal because it's not getting better. It will only get worse. Meanwhile, according to i24, an Israeli news outlet, apparently the Saudis are saying that the only way that normalization is back on the table is if Israel ends Hamas's rule. So this is like a precondition for everyone is that Hamas can no longer be involved in ruling the Gaza Strip. Saudi wants Israel to involve the Palestinian Authority instead. Now again, the Palestinian Authority does not even have the capacity to rule the Judea and Samaria areas it currently controls. However, the basic idea here from the Saudis presumably would be as long as Israel doesn't administer and run the Gaza Strip, like, formally, and as long as they don't annex it, and as long as Hamas doesn't run it, they'll probably settle for anything else that's on the table. The source stressed that as long as Hamas is involved in managing Gaza, quote, the job isn't done. Without removing Hamas, there'll be no peace. Again, that's coming from the Saudis. That's not even coming from the Israelis. Hamas should accept the deal because things are going to get harder, not easier, from there. Here's President Trump talking a potential Gaza ceasefire before next week. We hope it's going to happen, and we're looking for it to happen sometime next week. Okay, you know, his mouth to God's ears. That would be ob. Everyone wants this except for, presumably Hamas. Israel has accepted all the preconditions at this point. Meanwhile, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Arahi, is now admitting that Fordo, which of course is that nuclear facility that so many people on the left and on that horseshoe theory, right, were interested in pretending was fine, that actually it was seriously and heavily damaged. Here he was. What is the status at Fordo?
- [53:14]
Bernarda Villalona
No one exactly knows what has transpired in Fordo. That being said, what we know so.
- [53:22]
Ben Shapiro
Far is that the facilities have been seriously and heavily damaged.
- [53:29]
Bernarda Villalona
The Atomic Energy Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran is currently undertaking evaluation.
- [53:36]
Ben Shapiro
And assessment, the report of which will.
- [53:38]
Bernarda Villalona
Be submitted to the government.
- [53:40]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so in other words, yeah, Ford was not in great shape. Shocker. That's what happens when you drop bunker busters of £30,000 apiece from a B2 on top of those nuclear facilities and probably hit an air shaft at the same time, like that. That's probably what ends up happening. Meanwhile, it is worth noting that there is a report from Israel's Ministry of Diaspora affairs and Combating Anti Semitism reported in Israel Hayom earlier this week, showing at least 100 fabricated accounts on X systematically promoted Tehran's strategic messaging during the recent war. Researchers examined approximately 100x accounts exhibiting clear signs of automated rather than human operation. Those accounts maintain continuous activity across all hours without typical human patterns of rest. That Network ultimately distributed 241,000 posts, reaching millions of users worldwide. Now, that doesn't mean that those Iranian bots directly coordinated with actual American opposition voices. But what it does mean is that if you are looking for traffic, if you are looking for bot driven upvotes, A good way of doing that is to program directly into the center of sort of the bot storm that is created by America's enemies. X does not represent real life. This is why you will see people who cover X believing there was a serious split in the Republican Party over President Trump's action against Iran, when the polls suggest precisely the opposite. Now, in a piece of news that I don't particularly like, the Trump administration is apparently halting certain U.S. weapons supplies for Ukraine. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is withholding critical Patriot interceptor missiles and and other weapons from Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal calls this a body blow to the embattled country's efforts to withstand Russia's mounting and increasingly deadly aerial assaults. Even before that decision, Kyiv was struggling to counter Russian technology, tactics and troop numbers. Russia is already deploying maneuverable ballistic missiles able to avoid the vaunted Patriot air defense systems radar and launching record numbers of drones to bombard Ukraine every two or three nights. A halt in the interceptors will keep further pressure on Ukraine. Now, again, Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky have done what President Trump has asked. They've said they will do a ceasefire today. No preconditions, except for it just being a ceasefire. They have said that they want an end to the war. Mean Vladimir Zelensky even wore a suit to the last meeting he had with President Trump. They clearly know where the power lies. For Ukraine, there are not a lot of alternatives because European allies do not have the capacity to increase their own missile production at this point. Now, is this because the United States is really cutting off Ukraine? Well, according to Douglas Berry, a specialist in military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, he said that the US Reducing that supply of interceptors was inevitable given their scarcity. He said Western defense ministries and governments are having to talk about resilience and part of that is manufacturing depth in terms of what they can produce. On Tuesday, US Shipments that are already in Poland were halted, including more than two dozen of Patriots, the PAC3 missiles, more than two dozen Stinger Air defense system Hellfire air to ground missiles, and more than 90 aim air to air missiles, among other systems. Right now, Russia has been trying to overwhelm the Ukrainian air defenses. There was just that kind of bombardment last weekend involving 477 drones, 46 crews and 11 ballistic missiles in a barrage targeting Ukraine's western region. Actually, when I visited Ukraine and interviewed President Zelenskyy, the night after I left was at that time the biggest barrage of the war. Now, there have been several barrages there are larger. So far, Russia has launched over 20,000 drones this year trying to overcome the Patriot missile defense system. So what is going to happen here? Unclear. Ukrainian interceptions of Russian ballistic missiles aren't markedly down yet, but they do have a lack of missiles the other way, those Patriot interceptors. Again, the United States, we have to ramp up our military capacity. The big beautiful bill will help us do those sorts of things. The hope from the United States is that our allies are going to pick up the slack. The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, he says, Listen, NATO's job is to pick up that slack. You know, the great thing that came out of the NATO summit with President Trump's leadership and the 5% commitment is that now our allies are going to be equally capable. They're going to live up to their targets and what they should deliver if somehow, you know, peace is broken by an adversary. But they're going to be strong, and that strength is what's going to secure the peace. Maria, hey, so, you know, hopefully that is right, hopefully NATO is able to fill that gap. But this is the sort of biggest issue with American withdrawal of support. Can the Europeans fill the gap fast enough to prevent the Russians from being able to do what they want in Ukraine? Okay. Meanwhile, random judges still doing random things all across the country. The Wisconsin Supreme Court. Remember, there was a big Supreme Court election in Wisconsin a little bit earlier this year. The left took over. Well, now the liberal majority has struck down a 176-year-old abortion ban in the state. When Roe vs. Wade was overturned, the abortion ban that had been on the books in Wisconsin went back into place. Well, now the liberal Supreme Court has decided to strike it down. According to the Associated Press, the Wisconsin Supreme Court's liberal majority struck down that abortion ban on Wednesday, ruling 4. 3. It was superseded by newer state laws regulating the procedure and including statutes that criminalize abortions only after a fetus can survive outside the womb. There was a ban in effect until 1973, and legislators never officially repealed it. Conservatives argued that The Supreme Court's 2022 decision reactivated it. Then Democrat Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Call filed a lawsuit arguing abortion restrictions Republican legislators enacted during the nearly half century rose in effect Trump the ban, which is a weird argument again because the Supreme Court changed the law. And so there are responses to that to try to restrict abortion within Roe vs Wade. When Roe vs Wade went away, if you didn't explicitly overrule the legislation from before, that's still in place. It wasn't, it wasn't just replaced. This is what the liberal justices were going to do Always, justice Janet Protestant stated on the campaign trail she supports abortion rights. During oral argument, she declared the ban was authored by white men who held all the power in the 19th century. And justice Jill Karofsky likened the ban to a death warrant for women and children who need medical care. So again, not a shock. This is what happens when Republicans lose elections. Radical left wingers take over. Meanwhile, another judge has now ruled that the Trump administration cannot cut short TPS Temporary protected status for migrants from Haiti, which has been under a state of emergency since March 2024. The New York Eastern District Judge Brian Kogan, a Bush appointee, ruled that Kristi Noem's decision was unlawful ordered the designation must remain in place until its scheduled end date of February 3rd. Nome had moved to shorten the designation period in February. Right now there are over half a million people from Haiti living in the United states eligible for TPS. About 350,000 have been granted it, according to the DHS. So again, the DHS sought to end this designation during Trump's first term. It was most recently granted for Haiti in July of last year. For an 18 month period by the Biden administration, the government has to comply with the timelines dictated by legislation governing the designation, according to the judge. He said when the government confers a benefit over a fixed period of time, a beneficiary can reasonably expect to receive that benefit at least until the end of that fixed period. But that's, that's a weird statement considering that again, it was put in place by the Biden administration. It was not really put in place by a piece of legislation, presumably that'll be elevated to the Supreme Court as well. Meanwhile, Democrats are freaking out over so called the Alligator Alcatraz and the Trump administration is sort of marketing it strangely, like they're selling hats to Alligator Alcatraz and all the rest. Democrats, of course, are treating this as though this is Auschwitz, literally. Joy Reid, who used to be on MSNBC and now haunts the cable news airwaves late at night when no one is watching the ghost of cable news past, she says that President Trump is building a concentration camp for brown people. Oh good lord. Learn some history, lady. And I will note that, you know, we tried to forget about him, but Ron DeSantis is still governor of Florida. He took the Comfy Couch hosts on a tour of the concentration camp that he's building in Florida in order to round up people, brown people, and throw them in a camp because he doesn't want them in Florida. Surprise, surprise. The economy of Florida is going to be severely harmed by rounding up brown people who by the way, all over this country, Latinos are afraid to go to work. It's a concentration camp for brown people. Learn something about actual concentration camps before you declare that people who are not in the country legally being put in air conditioned trailers in Florida. By the way, I live in Florida. I understand it's hot. And also what air conditioning is that is not the same thing as concentration camps, like Nazi concentration camps or something. Meanwhile, again, newfound Democrats are even more crazy than the old Democrats. Bill Kristol, who of course flipped from Republican to Democrat because of President Trump. He now says he just wants to defund the DHS completely. I sort of had come around to defunding ICE about a month or two ago, but now I'm just on the defund DHS thing. Would this country ultimately be safer if there were no dhs? Would it? I'm gonna. It's weird that you would say that only once the DHS actually starts enforcing the law, but you didn't care at all when it was Alejandro Mayorkas allowing the border to remain totally open. Alrighty folks, the show continues for our members. Right now we'll be getting into the latest in the Elon vs Trump fight. Plus we'll check the mailbag. 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.
- [63:23]
Bernarda Villalona
Thanks for selling your car to Carvana. Here's your check.
- [63:25]
Ben Shapiro
Whoa. When did I get here?
- [63:27]
Bernarda Villalona
What do you mean?
- [63:27]
Ben Shapiro
I swear it was just moments ago that I accepted a great offer from Carvana online. I must have time traveled to the future.
- [63:33]
Bernarda Villalona
It was just moments ago. We do save same day pickup. Here's your check for that great offer.
- [63:37]
Ben Shapiro
It is the future.
- [63:40]
Bernarda Villalona
It's the present and just the convenience of Carvana. Sorry to blow your mind.
- [63:44]
Ben Shapiro
It's all good. Happens all the time.
- [63:46]
Bernarda Villalona
Sell your car the convenient way to Carvana. Pickup times may vary and fees may apply.