← The Ben Shapiro Show
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2265 - STILL WINNING: Trump’s DC Crime Triumph PLUS Court Kills $500M Anti-Trump Judgment
01:19:20
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- [00:00]
Ben Shapiro
These are questions that take cultures thousands of years to answer. During Answer the Call, I take questions.
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Mark Krikorian
From people just like you about their.
- [00:09]
Ben Shapiro
Problems, opportunities, challenges, or when they simply need advice.
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Matt Nuclear
How do I balance all of this grief, responsibility?
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Mark Krikorian
How do you repair this kind of damage?
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Ben Shapiro
My daughter Michaela guides the conversations as we hopefully help people navigate their lives. Everyone has their own destiny. Everyone. President Trump meets with the National Guard because he is winning the war on Crime in Washington, D.C. new stats come out about immigration that show that his program to stop illegal immigration is working as well. And a huge judgment from a New York appellate court striking down that ridiculous 500 million dollar judgment against him. So a lot of victories for President Trump. First, quick reminder, new annual memberships are 40% off right now at dailywire+.com with code summer. Here's what you get. Brand new episodes of the Pope and the Furor, the secret Vatican Files of World War II, blockbuster documentaries like what Is a Woman? And Am I Racist? Plus, every show from the most trusted voices in conservative media, uncensored and ad free. You'll also be first in line for what's next, the premiere of the Isabel Brown show on September 8, the decade of Daily Wire anniversary special this fall. And when you're watching live, you can jump into that chat, react in real time, talk to my producers, debate the big stories, connect with millions of other Daily Wire plus members who actually think the way you do. Don't wait, go to dailywireplus.com, use code summer save 40% today. And by the way, if you are attempting to actually become a Daily Wire member, you can go check out our sponsors over at Comet because it can now effectuate actual things that you want to do. Do you want to become a Daily Wire member? Just go to comment and say make me a Daily Wire member. It will take you directly to our landing page. Alrighty. So President Trump has won a signal victory in this anti crime fight in Washington, D.C. the man has a gift for picking vulnerable spots for the Democrats, attacking those vulnerable spots and making the Democrats defend the vulnerability. It really is kind of an amazing thing. According to Breitbart, violent Crime in Washington, D.C. has dropped 22% over the last week following President Trump's crackdown in the city. According to Fox News Digital's David Marcus, there were no murders in the city over the last seven days. That is a feat that has not been seen for months, since actually March. Apparently there are other statistics available from the local police union revealing that since Trump's federal takeover, carjackings have dropped an astonishing 83%. Robbery has dropped 46%, which is indeed pretty amazing. And again, it's not all that amazing when you realize that the way to stop crime is to just put people on the ground who police crime. I know this is crazy to Democrats, but after you label the police the problem, crime goes up. After you bring people in to do law enforcement, crime goes down. And yet Democrats are still fulminating over this, claiming it's a fascistic takeover of the United States in toto. Even though President Trump did pick the area where the federal government has the most plenary power. Washington D.C. is not an independent state. It is not an independent polity. It is a federal district. It is run by Congress and by the president. And if they delegate power to the mayor, that power still exists under the authority of the federal government of the United States. Well, yesterday, President Trump met with police and military in Washington D.C. he visited the U.S. park Police Anacostia Operations Facility in southeastern D.C. which is seen as the gathering point for all the agencies involved in the operation. According to ABC News, he delivered hamburgers from the White House and pizza, which is again very trumpy. He has a fondness for bringing people fast food and good news. People like fast food. President Trump at this event, he said, listen, we're not going to stop this at Washington D.C. we are going to try to enforce the law in all the places, in other places as well.
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Guest Commentator / Panelist
We're not playing games. We're going to make it safe and we're going to then go on to other places. But we're going to stay here for a while. We want to make this absolutely perfect. It's our capital and I guess it used to be many years ago safe, but it certainly not had a very good run.
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Ben Shapiro
President Trump also did his usual sort of outreach to people. President Trump is an amazing retail politician. I've seen the man work. I've seen him deal with people on a day to day level. And he is tremendous in person, like really, really good. And you see this in all of his sort of tete a tete with various members of the public, public officials, public servants. He's really good one on one. And so he goes to this group and he starts praising them as being healthy and attractive looking, which is high praise in Trump world.
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Guest Commentator / Panelist
It's a healthy, attractive looking group of people. Well, I just want to thank everybody very much for being here. I wanted to do this. We've had some incredible results and results have come out and it's like a different place. It's like a different city. It's the capital. It's going to be the best in the world.
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Ben Shapiro
Yeah. Trump again, when it comes to the retail of this, he's amazing. Remember back during the campaign when he went to New York City and went into bodegas, was talking with people. This is Trump's bread and butter. He mentioned during his visit that the federal government and law enforcement have been cleaning up the parks in Washington, D.C. which is, of course, true.
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Guest Commentator / Panelist
One of the things we're going to be redoing is your parks. I'm very good at grass because I have a lot of golf courses all over the place. I know more about grass than any human being, I think, anywhere in the world. And we're going to be regressing all of your parks, all brand new sprinkler systems, the best that you can buy. Just like Augusta. No, it'll look like Augusta. It'll look like, more importantly, Trump National Golf Club. That's even better. But we're going to look, we're going to have all brand new, beautiful grass. You know, like everything else, grass has a life. Do you know that? Grass has a life? You know, we have a life and grass has a life. And the grass here died about 40 years ago. So we're going to be rebuilding all of your parks, and it's going to happen fast. It's going to go up like a miracle.
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Ben Shapiro
The free association about grass is pretty great. I mean, again, he does own a lot of golf courses. That is definitely true. I will say I've been to Trump Doral, and the grass there looks great. He is not wrong about, about the grass at his clubs. Very, very nice grass. He also added that he's been receiving lots of phone calls thanking him for what he's been doing.
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Guest Commentator / Panelist
I've never received so many phone calls thanking me for what we've done in Washington, D.C. from people that haven't gone to a restaurant in literally in four years. And they said, you know, what you've done is. It's unprecedented. Because what they, they, they said it was just unsafe. We couldn't do it. We'd go out and you'd see the stories, you'd read the stories, you'd see all of the things that are happening. And they said, we just, we couldn't, we couldn't stand it, sir. And now I take my wife and my kids to dinner. One of them said, he's gone out four nights in a row and he hadn't gone out for four years.
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Ben Shapiro
So, President Trump, again, this is A big win for him. The crime issue is a big winner for Republicans because Democrats are weak on crime. It is indeed that simple. The immigration issue is of course another major win for President Trump. So an astonishing report that apparently you Remember back in 2012, Mitt Romney suggested to the consternation of the entire left wing media that if you enforce the border you will end up with an enormous amount of self deportation. So this is part of his plan that, that if you enforce the immigration laws, people will not want to be picked up by ice. They will instead just leave. Well, that is a thing that has been happening under President Trump. According to Axios, the White House crackdown appears to have driven 1.5 million immigrants out of the country, according to a new tally from Pew Research. It is the first time the immigrant population has fallen in decades, a clear win for the Trump administration. In January, the foreign born population hit an all time high of 53.3 million, driven by a gigantic surge during the Biden administration. Since then, data from the Census Current Population Survey analyzed by Pew shows a decline. By June, the immigrant population had dropped to 51.9 million. 19% of the labor force were immigrants as of June, down from 20% last year, which is a decrease of more than 750,000 workers. The decline is mostly due to deportations and also immigrants voluntarily leaving the country fearing the crackdown. So the self deportation that Mitt Romney suggested, it actually is happening under President Trump and he is upping the ante, is President Trump, apparently. According to the New York Post, the Trump administration will begin reviewing all 55 million US visa holders to see they have committed any deportable offenses. So the idea here is that if you're here on a visa and you're overstaying the visa, or if you are here on a visa and you have committed a crime, you need to go. Any immigrants holding US Visas found with indicators of overstays, criminal activity, threats to public safety, engaging in any form of terrorist activity, or providing support to a terrorist organization will have their permits to live in the United States revoked and be deported, according to the State Department Under Secretary of State Marco Rubio. State Department representatives told the AP all US Visa holders are subject to continuous vetting, intending to identify deportable offenses. So it's not as though you get in once and now you can do whatever you damn well please. You still have to abide by the laws of the United States. According to the New York Post, since President Trump took office in January, 6,000 student visas have been revoked about 4,000 were taken from international students who broke the law. So again, President Trump is taking his task with crime and immigration very, very seriously. And these are big wins for President Trump. And by the way, it is also counteracting one of the things that happened under Joe Biden, which is the vast influx of illegal immigration that then proceeded to go to purplish states or blue states stacking their congressional representation. As Breitbart points out, in just two years of his one term presidency, President Joe Biden's border policies helped welcome more than a million illegal aliens to the nation's electoral swing states, which is pretty astonishing and again drives up the congressional representation in those particular areas. So an attempt to get that under control will have good upside for American citizens who vote already. Coming up, we'll speak to Mark recording from the center on Immigration Studies, as well as a young man named Matt Nuclear. He's 18 years old and he dominated a woman named Amanda Seals on Jubilee. We played a little bit of it earlier this week on the show. Pretty amazing stuff. From first, I think we've all felt bloated, sluggish, just off after a meal before. And that's where Peaks Pure fermented teas come in. Isn't just any tea. Peaks Pure is a living tea harvested from ancient 250-year-old trees in the Himalayas. No fertilizers, no pesticides. Unlike probiotic capsules that often don't survive, your digestive tract, Pure delivers a full spectrum of prebiotics, probiotics and postbiotic, just like the fermented foods eaten for centuries in longevity hotspots around the world. It's a reset button for your microbiome. The science is clear. These help with digestion and metabolism. Best part, it's in crystal form. No fuss, no steeping, you dissolve, you sip, you feel the difference. Producer Sarah has been very into it. Sarah, tell me all about this thing. You know, Ben, I normally am chugging coffee all day, every day in order to do all the amazing producing we do here at the Ben Shapiro Show. But ever since I started drinking Peak tea, I noticed that I can work even longer hours and I can keep that, you know, amazing content coming for you. So thank you. Peak T. Well, that is why we put it on an IV drip here at the office. It's reimagined, rooted in ancient tradition, upgraded for modern health and trusted by top health experts. Now for my listeners, peak is offering 20% off for life, plus a free rechargeable frother and glass beaker. With your Pure bundle, this is an exclusive offer with 90 day money back guarantee so you can try it risk free. Head on over to peak life.com Shapiro that's a P I Q U E life.com Shapiro your gut will thank you. Also I was recently up in New York for a day or two and I went to my favorite restaurant up there, Le Marais. Had their their amazing peppercorn steak. 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Crafting each meal by hand, delivering it fresh to your door without it ever hitting the freezer. It's restaurant quality cooking design for your everyday life. Get what you're craving. Try the freshest, best tasting meal delivery made by your favorite celebrity chefs. Head on over to cookunity.com ben free or enter Code Ben Free before checkout for free Premium Meals for Life. That's free Premium Meals for Life by using code BEN FREE or going to cookunity.com BENFREE Terms and conditions apply. Go to cookunity.com for details. Well, speaking of President Trump's successes on immigration, joining me online is Mark Ricorian, the nationally recognized expert on immigration issues. He has served as the executive director of the center for Immigration Studies since 1995. Mark, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.
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Mark Krikorian
Glad to be here.
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Ben Shapiro
So there are a couple of really stellar reports for the Trump administration on immigration. There was one that came out just yesterday. Axios reported on this that essentially there's been an enormous amount of self deportation since the Trump administration started actually enforcing the law with regard to immigration. What do you make of the report?
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Mark Krikorian
Well, we actually released the same report a week ago before and it we found a reduction both in the illegal and legal population. The illegal population seems to have gone down by 1.6 million people. Now, you know, it's preliminary numbers. We'll see later whether it's right. But the, all the indications are that it is going down. And that's not just deportations, obviously. That's mostly going to be people leaving on their own. Now every year. There's always churn anyway in the illegal population or the immigrant pop. Some illegals just go home for their own reasons without being, you know, self deported. But the key, and this is the key to success, is fewer illegals coming in and more illegals going out. I mean, it's, you know, it's sort of simple.
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Matt Nuclear
It's like dieting.
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Mark Krikorian
Fewer calories in, you know, more calories out. And that seems to be working. And, you know, we'll see. It's only been, what, eight months or something? Seven months. But, but it's definitely going in the right direction.
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Ben Shapiro
So there have been two aspects of the Trump immigration policy with regard to illegal immigration. One is shutting the border, which he did legitimately, day one. And it's an astonishing thing that we were told by the media, by the Biden administration, they needed more congressional power, they needed more funding in order to shut the border. Trump comes in, first day, says the border's closed, the border remains closed, and we basically have no illegal immigration since then without any substantive legal changes, really on that order. I mean, we have new funding for, for the border wall and all the rest, thanks to the big beautiful bill. But I mean, that stuff really hasn't even started to happen yet, and still illegal immigration dropped to zero. So we've had that, which has been great. On the other hand, we also have the deportation policies themselves, and there's a bit of confusion about how thorough the deportation policies currently are, how many people are being deported. What is ICE being told to do? We've been told by some people in the administration they're targeting people who have the most egregious criminal records by some others, that pretty much everybody is going to go. What do you make of the Trump administration's deportation policy?
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Mark Krikorian
Well, they always said from the beginning, Tom Homan, the border czar, has said they're going to prioritize the worst of the worst. The thing is that if you're going to go look for people that have warrants that are, you know, child molesters, what have you, you're going to run across a lot of other illegal aliens. And so this is a point Homan has made is that if sanctuary cities just let people into their jails, ICE into their jails, so that when people are arrested for the normal things people get arrested for, they check their status and they take them off their hands, ICE would have so much work on its hands, it wouldn't be able to wander around neighborhoods looking for people. But that's what they're doing because sanctuary cities keep them out of their jails. The other thing, though, is that work site enforcement by definition is not targeted toward criminals. I mean, if you're raiding some warehouse or something that you have intel, there's a lot of illegals there. Some of those people are going to be criminals because a lot of criminals have day jobs too, but most of them are just going to be ordinary working stiffs. Everybody who's here illegally is deportable at all times. So the analogy I draw is like to speeding. If a car is driving through a school zone, firing a machine gun out the window, everybody's going after that. That's priority. But that doesn't mean that the cops don't bother doing regular traffic enforcement. People whose, you know, inspection stickers have expired and all that stuff. You need to do both routine enforcement against people who aren't raping anybody and high priority enforcement against real lowlifes.
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Ben Shapiro
So let's talk for a second about what would be a realistic number that you'd be looking for as an advocate for deporting illegal immigrants. That, that seems like something that would be doable because there's been a lot of talk about there are 20 million illegal immigrants in the country, at least, there's probably more. And so the, the talk about, you know, how many are going to be deported. Obviously during the campaign, President Trump basically said all of them. That would require, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars, presumably in law enforcement resources, in order to actually effectuate what would be a realistic number that you'd be looking for. The Trump administration, not with regard to turn aways at the border, but like people who are actually in the country who we have to find and then deport.
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Mark Krikorian
The first of all, our estimate is probably is 14, 15 million illegals, maybe 16. The higher numbers, I think, are people kind of getting over enthusiastic and then they kind of outbid each other on how big is your number, you know, that sort of thing. I don't want to come up with numbers because the point is let's start squeezing the illegal population as much as we can. Maybe if it gets down to half its size, we can then talk about, you know, what else we do. But I don't, I don't. That's not a productive discussion. Now, the point is, you want to get as many people to leave as possible. Some deported, most leaving on their own. Only in the second term of the J.D. vance administration should we even be talking about, okay, now what do we do about the illegals who are still here?
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Ben Shapiro
So meanwhile, the Trump administration has also been cracking down on the ways in which legal immigration has, has been done. Obviously, they're now reviewing for criminality and for overstayed visas, people who came here on visas, enormous number of people who are here illegally actually got in legally through visas and then just overstayed their visas. But not just that. When people are now coming in, the Trump administration is looking at their social media history, trying to determine whether there's anti American sentiment, whether these are people we actually want to be immigrants to the country at all. The left is going nuts about this. I'm again, I think confused would be an understatement at the left's willingness to say the quiet part out loud, which is that they want people in the country who don't actually like the country. But that seems to be the tack that they are taking, is that they are fine with importing people without any ideological screening whatsoever, that somehow America owes citizenship to people who come here from abroad, no matter how much they hate the country or don't have anything in common with our principles.
- [19:13]
Mark Krikorian
I mean, some of the people on the left, they, I mean, they do see this as, let's import more people who hate America like we do. But I think there is a kind of broader ideological view there that a lot of the libertarians also share, which is that the American people have no right to keep anybody out. In other words, that mobility is a right. You not only have a right to leave your country, which I think pretty much everybody agrees is something that you have, but you also have the right to go into anyone else's country you want. And if that's your point of view, there is nothing to debate. You're not, we're not debating immigration policy anymore. It used to be the Democrats would say, okay, well, we want a little more of this or a little less of that, or let's turn the dial a little different way. That's normal political debate. What we're in the stage we're now at is that the left and the libertarians reject the concept of borders as such. And on the left, that's becoming a litmus test issue like abortion or something. And so what is there to debate with folks if that's their perspective.
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Ben Shapiro
That's Mark Krikorian. He of course, is the executive director of the center for Immigration Studies. Doing wonderful work over there. You can go check out all of his work over at cis. Mark, thanks so much for the time. Thank you already. Coming up, the FBI just raided John Bolton. We'll talk about that first. Big Bird is dead. Okay, maybe not literally, but PBS just lost its government funding, which is great. Means say goodbye to taxpayer funded WOKE programming. MSNBC is panicked over the idea of that. Without Elmo and other left wing programming, America's families might turn to Prageru instead. And they are right to be worried because Prageru is great. Every day, more and more people are turning away from WOKE content and finding truth, values and common sense through Prageru. Here's the thing. Prageru doesn't take a dime from Washington. Every dollar comes from people like you who care about truth, values, and raising kids who think for themselves. 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I have a firm breathable mattress which is what I need. And you know, there are other members of my family have gotten Helix and they got their own version of the Helix sleep mattress because they got what they need. Right now, Helix is offering an incredible Labor Day early access sale. Visit helix sleep.com BEN to get 20% off site wide. That's helixleep.com BEN for 20% off site wide, make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. Again, just visit helixleep.com ben for this exclusive offer. Meanwhile, another big win for President Trump. Yesterday, a New York appellate court throughout the ridiculous $500 million civil fraud penalty against President Trump. So you will recall that last year there was a decision that came down from a New York court. A trial judge found found that Trump was liable for fraud. Why? Because supposedly when he was getting loans, he had made statements about his, his properties and the value of his properties and then he'd gotten loans based on the value of the properties and then none of those loans were in default. Right. He ended up paying back all of those loans. It wasn't any of the lenders who were complaining about all of this. New York State Attorney General Letitia James decided that she was going to go after him. And so she kind of jerry rigged an entire case that violated the actual essence of the law because the law was not designed for any of this. And then you'll recall that Letitia James had actually put out a tweet celebrating the amount that he was fined. This $464,576,230 and and 62 cents. That was back in February of 2024. According to the court, it's insane that this pseudo crime should come with a $500 million fine. According to the Wall Street Journal, a New York appellate court threw out a more than $500 million penalty against President Trump and his business empire in a sharply splintered ruling that paves the way for further proceedings before the state's highest court. The decision on Thursday from a five judge panel of the New York Appellate Division's First Department is a significant legal boost for Trump, freeing him for now, from a massive penalty that caused him financial headaches. Last year, Justice Peter Moulton wrote, quote, while harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion dollar award to the state. And again, it was a sort of bizarre award in the first place, given the fact that the supposed crime was not committed against the State of New York. It was a misread of the law. Judge David Friedman said that the law that originally enabled Letitia James to sue President Trump was designed to protect consumers and the public marketplace from deception in consumer transactions. It was not designed to protect lenders who were not the ones who were. No one was damaged for it was not designed to protect them from people fibbing to them with regard to the value of the collateral that they were putting up. As the court says, quote, A.G. james's suit turns section 6312 on its head. The leniency with which the courts have construed the requirements for pleading and proving fraud under that section, a leniency that has been extended for the purposes of facilitating the use of the provision to prevent the exploitation of unsophisticated consumers, investors and small businesses, is here being used by Attorney General Leticia James to apply section 6312 to a scenario to which that provision has never before been applied or even thought to apply. Judge Molton, writing for the court, said, presiding Judge Renwick and I find the Supreme Court correctly found the defendants liable. We agree with the Supreme Court that the Attorney General acted within her lawful power. We find the Supreme Court properly ruled on claims that are timely. However, we would modify the remedy ordered by the Supreme Court. While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb a defendant's business culture, the Court's disgorgement order, which directs defendants to pay nearly a half billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. So the court didn't go as far as the dissenting Judge David Friedman, in pointing out that this entire case was a sham. But it did say, you got to be kidding me. $500 million fine? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? So Letitia James put out a statement, quote, the first department today affirmed the well supported finding of the trial court. Donald Trump, his company and two of his children are liable for fraud. The court upheld the injunctive relief. We won, limiting Donald Trump and the Trump Organization's officers ability to do business in New York. It should not be lost. To history. Yet another court has ruled that the President violated the law and that our case has merit. We'll seek to appeal to the Court of Appeals. Okay, so she's saying that the part of the decision saying that the actual filing wasn't illegal, that, that, that is a vindication for her. But I'm sorry, if the thing that you were bragging about went away, namely a 500 billion billion dollar penalty, then you kind of lost. And that's the point that President Trump was making over at Truth Social. Quote, total victory in the fake New York State Attorney General Leticia James case. I greatly respect the fact that the court had the courage to throw out this unlawful and disgraceful decision that was hurting business all throughout the New York State. Others were afraid to do business there. The amount, including interest in penalties, was over $550 million. It was a political witch hunt in a business sense the likes of which no one has ever seen before. This was a case of election interference by the city and state trying to show illegally that I did things that were wrong, when in fact everything I did was absolutely correct and even perfect. Every single dollar was thrown out, even the penalties imposed on us by the corrupt judge, one of the most overturned in history, Arthur Engoron. I wasn't given a jury during the course of the trial, says President Trump, which lasted a long time, was not given one ruling in my favor by this political hack. But worse than him, if that's possible, was Letitia James, a corrupt and incompetent Attorney general who only brought this case in order to hurt me politically. She's a Trump deranged lunatic. I mean, so far, can't really argue it made me bond the outrageous zone, which never happened before and which cost me millions of dollars a month. It should never have been allowed to happen, and everyone knew it. Importantly, that vote was 5 to 0. I'm so honored by Justice David Friedman's great words of wisdom, which should be read by everyone. I'd also like to thank the court for having the courage to make this decision, which is already going to go down as one of the worst business persecutions in the history of our country. Sadly, there are other cases against me that are equally disgraceful. And here he points out the judge, Juan Merchan, whose daughter collected millions of dollars in fees from crooked Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. That presumably be with regard to the ruling on E. Jean Carroll and the suggestion that President Trump was liable for some form of sexual assault. And then he points out other judges that he doesn't like, and all the rest. But the bottom line is it's a big victory for Trump. And every time you fire at President Trump legally and you miss it makes him stronger. I think there's a solid case to be made that the turning point in the 2024 election, it wasn't even the assassination attempt or even Joe Biden dropping out. It was the Mar A Lago raid. That Mar A Lago raid really turned the entire election on its head because people rightly believed that Trump was being politically persecuted. Eli Hoenig, who's the CNN legal analyst, certainly no ally of President Trump. He says this is clearly a big, big win for Trump. This is a huge win for Donald Trump, any way you cut it. And this is a stinging rebuke to the attorney General. Letitia James, the, the finding here, it's a very long, complicated ruling. But the bottom line is while the finding of liability against Donald Trump can stand, for now at least, the damages award, which started at $350 million with interest, gets up close to $500 million, that is thrown out. And the core reason for that ruling, according to the judges, is essentially that there was not enough of a showing here that there were actual victims. And of course, that that is right. That is correct. Okay. Well, while all of that is going on and one of the things that President Trump is, is he punches back always, always, always, always. And if you give him a tool, he is going to use it against you. There's no question about this. And so it is not a surprise, but I do not think it is a good thing that President Trump has now unleashed the FBI to raid the home of former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton, who's been, of course, quite critical of President Trump since he left working for his first administration. Now, again, perhaps there will be material to justify the raid. Maybe, maybe there will be. And if there is, then obviously the raid was well founded. If, however, this is basically the Mar A Lago raid, but against John Bolton, that President Trump believes, and the Trump administration believed, that Trump was wrongly targeted by law enforcement. Therefore, he's going to turn around, he's going to target people who have been critical to him on tv. That, of course, is a major problem. Law enforcement should not be weaponized in this way by right or left. According to the New York Post, FBI agents raided the D.C. area home of President Trump's former National Security adviser, John Bolton on Friday morning in a high profile national security probe. Federal agents went to Bolton's house in Bethesda, Maryland, from 7:00am in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Cash Patel. Cash Patel then put out a tweet saying, no one is above the law. FBI agents on a mission. The probe, which is said to involve classified documents, was first launched years ago. The Biden administration shut it down for political reasons. According to a senior U.S. official. Bolton's X account blasted out a message at 7:32am criticizing Trump's approach to Russia's war on Ukraine as the FBI agents were inside his home. It's unclear whether that post was originally scheduled. That post said Russia has not changed its goal, drag Ukraine into a new Russian empire. Moscow has demanded that Ukraine cede territory it already holds and the remainder of Donetsk, which it has been unable to conquer. Zelensky will never do so. Meanwhile, meetings will continue because Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize. But I don't see these talks making any progress now. Bolton was accused by the Trump administration number one of including classified information in his 2020 book called the Room Where It Happened. President Trump had fought to quash the publication over the inclusion of national secrets, saying that Bolton had signed an NDA as a condition of employment. Ultimately, he was unsuccessful, and his own DOJ opened an inquiry into that book in September of 2020. And then apparently the Biden administration, when they came in, they basically said, enough of that. This is one day after Cash Patel revealed that former FBI Director James Comey had authorized leaks of classified documents while misleading Congress just before the 2016 elections. Now, again, some of these investigations I would assume are going to be well predicated, some are not. I. I will say that the can of worms opened by the Biden administration in repeatedly targeting President Trump legally, the can of worms opened by the Obama administration in Russiagate going after the Trump campaign, it weighs far worse than what happened with Watergate, that that has opened a can of worms. It's very hard to get that can of worms closed again once it has been open. That does not mean that if this is not well founded, that if this is just a raid directed at political opponents. Raids directed at political opponents are bad, full stop. They are bad, whether it's a Republican targeting enemies or whether it is a Democrat targeting enemies. Now, I'm going to hold off judgment on whether that is happening right now because I don't know exactly what they are rating yet. It's possible that all this is well predicated. We'll have to find out. But at the very least, it is not out of the realm of possibility that what we are watching here is a reactivity by the Trump administration that will not redound to its benefit. Political targeting is not something I think anybody in the country should be in favor of. Again, we'll have to see whether that's what's happening here or whether it's not. Well, one of the reasons I think that the Trump administration should not get itself enmeshed in anything that is questionable with regard to things like going after John Bolton. If there is nothing there, and again, there may very well be something there, I don't know if there is nothing there there, it's a distraction. This administration cannot afford distractions because again, the Democrats, they're going crazy right now. And there is no reason to get in the way of your enemy hanging himself. When, when your enemy is in the middle of hanging himself, the first thing to do is to not interrupt. And right now, Democrats seem to be going totally crazy. Gavin Newsom over in the state of California signed a bunch of bills on Thursday, according to the Washington Post, aimed at redrawing California's congressional maps as Democrats try to counter Republican driven efforts in Texas to remake it's maps. Gavin Newsom said they fired the first shot. We wouldn't be here had Texas not done what they done. Well, I mean, still, by the way, the population of, in California that is Republican is underrepresented to a larger degree than the population of Texas that is Democrat that is underrepresented, Congressionally speaking. But this is all part and parcel of a broader left wing narrative that President Trump is Hitlerian, that we are living in nascent Nazi Germany and all the rest. JB Pritzker, who again has to be lowered into the Capitol building by Crane in Illinois. He says that America is now like Nazi Germany or increasingly like Nazi Germany. I built a Holocaust museum.
- [34:04]
Mark Krikorian
And one thing about that experience that.
- [34:07]
Ben Shapiro
I can tell you, and I worked with Holocaust survivors for more than a.
- [34:11]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
Decade to build this museum. One thing I learned in the process of that is that it doesn't take very long to tear apart a constitutional republic.
- [34:21]
Mark Krikorian
Indeed, the Nazis did it in 53 days.
- [34:25]
Ben Shapiro
And our democracy is almost as fragile. And we're seeing it right now. So we are not seeing that right now. We're not even seeing anything remotely like that right now. First of all, it's ignorant of German history. The consolidation of extraordinary powers in the central government predated Hitler. Actually, it went back to Bruning and Hitler, if you want to get more specific. The death of the Weimar Republic started years before Hitler actually took power. There was a gradual and then very, very quick erosion of the powers of the Various principalities inside Germany. Not to get too abstruse about German history here, but that is just a bad historical analogy. So here's the thing about redistricting and various states and how they work. Districts. Congressional districts can be drawn in a wide variety of ways, and the imbalance is almost solely due to state legislatures that actually don't count the minority votes in a presidential election in a proportional way with their congressional seats. This is not rare at all. So I asked our friends and sponsors over a comment. Please list the percentage of voters who voted for President Trump and the percentage of Republican congressional districts in the following states. California, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Delaware and Maryland. In California, about 38.33% of voters voted for President Trump in the last congressional cycle. Only 21% of their districts, 11 are apparently Republican at this point in time. Believe it's lower now. I believe it's nine. In New York, 43% of voters voted for President Trump. Only 31% of their districts are Republican. In Connecticut, 42% of the vote went to President Trump. Zero percent of their districts of their five districts are Republican. In New Jersey, 46% voted for Trump. 33% of the districts are Republican. In Illinois, 44% voted for Trump. 18% of the districts are Republican, only three districts out of 17. And in Delaware, 42% voted for President Trump. Only zero districts are Republican. There's one district, it's totally Democrat, of course. In Maryland, 34% voted for President Trump. 12.5% are Republican. So, again, this idea, the gerrymandering, is just a unique Texas thing. How dare they? How dare Texas. Now, if you look at Texas, by the way, 42.4% of voters voted for Kamala Harris in Texas. And about 30% of the districts are Democrat in Texas right now. And after the adjustment, then that number will probably be about 25, 23, something like that. Meanwhile, Texas State Representative Nicole Collier is comparing Democrats fleeing Texas to black people fleeing slavery and Jews fleeing Nazis, which I can give you a couple examples why that's not right. Number one, the Texas Democrats came back. So slaves who are fleeing slavery did not go back to Georgia, and Jews who are fleeing Nazis did not head back into Berlin. So, no, on this. Chairman, are you aware that during slavery, blacks fled. Are you aware that during the slavery times, blacks fled? They ran away.
- [37:31]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
I can't hear you very well.
- [37:32]
Ben Shapiro
Are you aware that when there was slavery times, blacks fled? During the Nazi times, Jewish people fled? They fled their oppressor. Well, I mean, keep going with this. I suppose Gavin Newsom wants to be the leader of the resistance. He's out there saying that we have to all wake up, wake up, be intense with hand motions, hand motions, and wide eyes. Go, Gavin Newsom, go. It's all at stake. It's happening in real time.
- [38:05]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
People need to wake up, need to open their eyes.
- [38:07]
Ben Shapiro
He's rigging the 26 election before 1.
- [38:10]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
Vote is even cast. He's going after redistricting. Not just mid decade, but he's also talking about who should be included in the next census.
- [38:18]
Ben Shapiro
Across the spectrum, these are acts of authoritarianism. Oh, my God. First of all, please clear your throat. For the love of God. If I have to listen to years of Gavin Newsom down here, seriously. To drink a cup of tea, grab a lozenge. The verbal grind is just too much for me. I can't. I cannot. But if this is the way Democrats want to play it, I guess I suppose that they can. And the Democrats are, in fact, going crazier and crazier. There is a woman with a sign outside of a rally that was being held for Virginia's Lieutenant Governor, Winsome Sears, who is, in fact, black. She's running for governor of Virginia right now. And some crazy person held a sign outside her latest event saying, hey, Winsome, if trans can't share your bathroom, then blacks can't share my water fountain. So, first of all, why are you threatening segregation? That seems bad. That seems kind of bad. I'm not sure why one follows the other. If. If men who believe they are women cannot enter women's bathrooms, then blacks should not be able to drink at your water fountain. It feels to me like you really just don't want black people drinking at your water fountain is what it kind of sounds like right there. Well, joining me online is a young man named Matt Nuclear. You may know him from a clip that I played on the show just the other day in which he was going up against Amanda Seals on this kind of crazy show that I've done before on YouTube called Jubilee. She was sitting across from Amanda Seals. He made her look pretty foolish because he was saying things that were true, and she legitimately had no response. Matt happens to be 18 years old. It was very impressive. Matt, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.
- [39:55]
Matt Nuclear
I am honored to be here, Ben. I'm honored to be here.
- [39:58]
Ben Shapiro
So, first of all, I have to say, very impressive. What did you know going into the Jubilee debate and. And how had you sort of prepared for. For the moment with Amanda Seals?
- [40:07]
Matt Nuclear
Well, I've always kind of been interested in these conversations about black on black crime, gang violence, reparations and all these sorts of things that are, you know, a big topic, big subject in the black community in general and in politics. And so I kind of had like, kind of my arguments already, you know, worked out. I already knew certain things that I wanted to go in there and say and make points of. And so I kind of went in with the flow with those types of arguments.
- [40:32]
Ben Shapiro
So you're 18, obviously you're black. And so there are a lot of questions that I think people have, you know, whenever there's a racial or ethnic minority who votes Republican. And this is happening a lot now. I mean, there's been a big movement in the black community, particularly among young men, toward the Republican Party, toward President Trump. It's happening with Hispanic young men. Obviously I'm Jewish. Even the Jewish vote has been moving toward the Republicans and President Trump. You know, when this happens, people start asking the question, so what, what exactly is going on? Right. There's now generational difference between me and you. I remember when I was the 18 year old phenom, I'm now 41. So tell me what exactly is happening among your peer group that is leading young men in particular, and also young black men in specific to move toward President Trump?
- [41:12]
Matt Nuclear
I think just the truth, I think going over data, going over the facts, understanding what is going on in America, understanding that the Democratic Party has been consistently lying to us and not giving us the truth on how to fix the issues within the black community, continuously telling us that it's external oppression that we can't find, we can't find the laws that are, you know, systemically oppressing black people. We, we elected a black president, right? Barack Obama. The majority of Americans that were white voted for him. This country is not a majority racist country whatsoever. So when we see all of those facts and we see these disparities that still exist, we have to say that there is some other reason for these disparities other than just discrimination. Because this is kind of like a presupposition that I think the left has a lot of the time is which if you see disparities between these ethnic groups, there must be some sort of discrimination. And so what I really wanted to ask her as well, what I did mention the median household income of East Asians. I wanted to ask her, are the East Asians oppressing the white people? Is that how they make more like it? Because that's the kind of thing they make more. Or if you make Less or whatever, you must be getting suppressed or oppressed or something like that, which I don't just buy into.
- [42:16]
Ben Shapiro
Right. So, I mean, that attitude, I think, obviously, is a better attitude for the country generally. I think one of the worst things that's been happening, I do think it's happening on the left, predominantly, but you're even seeing hints of it on the right are this sort of victim mentality where America is an oppressor country and it's somehow oppressing your particular identity group, and therefore nobody can get ahead in America. It seems like more and more young people are rejecting that message, particularly young men, because the alternative is really, really enervating. It's basically saying to young people, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, you can't get ahead because there's some sort of shadowy conspiratorial force that is. That is keeping you down. And. And what that shadowy conspiratorial force is may differ from sort of the left, broad, broadly speaking, and. And a small segment of the right, but that it is. It is a very enervating feeling for people. I think young people are rebelling against that. No.
- [43:02]
Matt Nuclear
Yeah, for sure. I think young people are rebelling against it. I think they should be rebelling against it because you can only hold up that lie for so long. You can only tell black Americans that the reason why they make less than white people or Hispanic people is because of the historical injustices for so long. I did mention to her as well that Chinese people went through the Rock Spring massacre in Wyoming in, I believe, was it 1861. They went through the Chinese Exclusion Act. They were only able to gain citizenship here in the country in 1943, yet they make the most amount of money, median household income. They don't commit a significant level of crime at all. Right. So I believe in group actions and in group priorities. I also wanted to mention her gang crime. I mentioned her a prominent rapper who gained hundreds of millions of views talking about unaliving other black men. The BLM didn't come out for that. I mentioned Katie yesterday, Katie Astray, who was a black man who was unalive by other black men. No, BLM came out for that. BLM relies on this narrative of white oppressor versus black slash brown victim. If that doesn't happen, then they don't come out. And they like to play this game where like, oh, it's only if cops do it. Well, Daniel Penny, when he, you know, unalived what's called Jordan Ely at the subway train where other people felt threatened, they called the cops as well, and people helped him. BLM New York came out for that as well. And they were threatening white people saying, you know, we need to protect ourselves from these weird white people who just want to come attack us. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I think this, this victim narrative is going to fade away. And of course, how she presented herself or responded to the arguments shows that she really doesn't know how to respond to these arguments. And she's really not answering the questions we want to ask.
- [44:32]
Ben Shapiro
So, Matt, you're 18 years old. What do you do next? I mean, are you planning on going to college? If so, where? What's the story?
- [44:38]
Matt Nuclear
Yeah, I'm thinking about going to college for sure. I have not truly made up my mind around that, but I have been, you know, doing these pod ever since this jubilee video released. I'm getting more and more into politics. I've been debating really for about three years. Like, I've had these discussions online with people for. For a decent amount of time, but I've only recently, in the last, I believe six months, been doing TikTok debates where I have, like, people come up and just debate me on, like, subjects like Israel and Palestine and a lot of these different subjects. I'm a person who's very interested in politics and yeah, I'm just interested in politics and just trying to get into the political sphere.
- [45:12]
Ben Shapiro
I think one of the things that's changed for people of your generation, as opposed to people of my generation, when I was growing up there, there still was, although the Internet was starting to blossom, a sort of legacy media domination that has totally ended. What, what is your typical news diet? How do you gather information?
- [45:28]
Matt Nuclear
Well, I gather information by looking at all of the different sources online. I don't just look at one. If I'm looking at Reuters, I'll look at npr. I look at AP News. I'll look at everyone and what they're saying. And it's not even just a source. It's what is the evidence for that source, which is also an important. What is the primary information? What is the primary data that we can gather and we can look at? And I think this is what individuals should be focused on, is understanding the facts, not just reading headlines, but reading past the headlines, getting into the context and actually making their opinions. Because I believe the majority of Americans don't really get that deep into understanding what goes on. The majority of Americans don't know the three branches of government and so many of these different things So I think getting more involved in understanding context, understanding what is going on, and primary sources is a good way to go about research.
- [46:15]
Ben Shapiro
So, meanwhile, I saw that you got into a bit of a tete a tete with Rob Smith, who attacked you for the great crime of apparently your parents are from Angola, you grew up in Maine. Apparently this means that your opinions are somehow not as relevant as a, as a black American because you're of African extraction. More recently. So what did you make of the criticism?
- [46:34]
Matt Nuclear
Well, I thought it was pretty humorous. I thought it was pretty silly. I don't. I mean, I did used to watch, you know, Rob Smith as well. I thought he was a decent, you know, black Republican I used to look up to. But, yeah, I didn't understand the attack like I was. I started, you know, I moved here when I was 6 years old and I was raised here. You know, since being six years old, I don't think my experience has been that much different from other black Americans because I was, you know, born in a state that is 90% white. And is that supposed to be a crime? I don't know why he mentioned that. I was raised in Maine as if that's supposed to be a crime. Was I supposed to be raised in the south side of Chicago where there's a lot of gang crime because I happen to be black? Is that like the, the, the thing here that he's trying to mention? Where was he raised? So it's. I think it's pretty silly. I don't, I don't. I didn't like that. It's kind of disappointed me a little bit that he said that, but, yeah, it's just humorous, I think.
- [47:19]
Ben Shapiro
Well, that is Matt Nuclear. You can go check out all of his work on X at Matt Nuclear. It's M80 nuclear. Go check it out right now. Again, I'm really impressed. I wouldn't have brought you on the show. It's pretty rare that I bring on somebody of your age range on the show at all, Matt. So, you know, again, well done.
- [47:34]
Matt Nuclear
I am so honored. I have to tell you, I am a big fan of you, Ben. I've been watching you for a very long time. I've always been a fan of your debates and the way that you articulate yourself. I believe you are the, the greatest political commentator we've seen the last 10 years, especially a conservative one. So I applaud you so much for bringing me on your show, and I am very much honored.
- [47:52]
Ben Shapiro
No, it's very kind of you.
- [47:54]
Matt Nuclear
Thank you.
- [47:55]
Ben Shapiro
But again, the Insanity of the left knows very few boundaries and it is now extending to full scale, full scale speculation about President Trump's health. Lawrence o', Donnell, the long forgotten man over at msnbc. Yeah, he still has a show over there, believe it or not. Lawrence o', Donnell, who is beginning to. I have to say he looks more and more like a character from one of the Lego movies, like just in terms of head shape and all this. Anyway, he says that there is a gigantic Trump health cover up that is happening before our eyes.
- [48:26]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
Donald Trump did nothing today. He wasn't publicly seen anywhere today. Perhaps because his 79 year old swollen ankles are bothering him. Or maybe he just couldn't really.
- [48:42]
Ben Shapiro
Walk.
- [48:43]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
Or stand up very long today, Something like that.
- [48:46]
Ben Shapiro
Who knows?
- [48:46]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
We don't know. Maybe he couldn't speak coherently today. Maybe it was one of those days. Actually, we do know about that. Donald Trump has never had a single day in his life as a politician when he could speak coherently about anything. That is a cognitive test that Donald Trump began publicly failing 14 years ago at age 65 in 2011 when he started lying about President Obama's birth certificate.
- [49:08]
Ben Shapiro
So I'm noticing your attempts to sort of launder the Biden actuality into a narrative about Trump is going to fail, particularly because we just keep finding out more details like the fact that apparently everybody who is close to President Biden was not all that close. Like they kept them at arm's length because he was senile in the back room, drooling into a cup, apparently, according to Representative James Comer, who runs the House Oversight Committee, Ian Sams, who is a supposed close advisor to President Biden and who vouched for his health many, many times. Apparently he only met Joe Biden in person two times during his entire presidency.
- [49:44]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
Ian Sams, who was the White House spokesperson for a significant amount of Joe Biden's time as president, interacted with him two times. Two times. So you know we're going to continue to bring people in. And again, this person, Ian Sams, is the one that would counter everything. Robert, her or anytime anyone would suggest that Joe Biden wasn't mentally fed, he would say, no, he's at the top of his game every time. He tweeted out several times. He gave interviews on msnbc. Every time I've interacted with the president, he was sharp, he asked great questions in there under oath. He interacted with the president two times the entire time.
- [50:31]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, well, that is not a good look at all. It's Representative James Comer from Kentucky So again, Democrats are in real trouble. So what could save them, as always, has always the possibility of an economic downturn. You keep saying this until I go blue in the face. Bad economic policy does have downstream ramifications. I understand there are a lot of people who are currently trying to talk to themselves into the proposition that a radical increase, a radical escalation in tariff activities will have no impact whatsoever. I have yet to see a situation where radical escalation in tariff policy did not have downstream effect. Now, maybe this will be the exception. Maybe somehow because of all the various cross currents, investment in AI and the interest rates possibly being lowered by the Fed, maybe it turns out that this is the exception. But it's an awful risk, Vader. It had better work. But right now the United States is about to dump a 50% tariff on on India. Now, to be fair, we actually the amount of product trade with India is somewhat limited. According to the New York times, there's about $46 billion that we have as a deficit in goods that we ran with Indian companies in 2024. Most of the stuff that we do with India at this point is in the services industry. Presumably that will not be hit by tariffs at this point, at least not yet. And that is the great fear is that eventually these tariffs move over to the services industry. But if you are seeking to box in China and you want to make the iPhone somewhere else, it's not going to get made in the United States. It was going to be made in India. But if you tariff everything coming in from India at 50%, it won't get made there either. And you're going to raise the prices on American consumers. Here is Peter Navarro, the President's trade adviser, who again is just not good, not good at all, talking about the magic of tariffs on India.
- [52:17]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
The doubling of tariffs to 50% is supposed to take place August 27, just six days from now. Yes, see that taking place. I see that taking place. India doesn't appear to. To want to recognize its role in.
- [52:35]
Ben Shapiro
The bloodshed.
- [52:36]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
It simply doesn't.
- [52:37]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, now let's be clear about this. Navarro would be in favor of these tariffs, whether or not India were purchasing oil from Russia. And it makes very little sense to me to go after India with regard to Russian oil unless we are going to offer them carrots like American lng. On the other end of that, what we really ought to be doing is using our massive advantage in natural resources in order to undercut the Russian market. Even if that causes a loss to us, we should be doing that because getting the world off of the addiction to Russian oil would be excellent. That'd be excellent foreign policy. That is a better move than effectively alienating the Indians, who right now are or could at least be a bulwark against Chinese predations against things over there. Very complicated. China happens to be pretty close to Pakistan. We fund Pakistan. We happen to have some counterterrorism operations with Pakistan. Pakistan is a fairly radical state, to say the very least. We also have a relationship with India. And so there are a lot of sort of trilateral arrangements happening in that area of the world. But alienating India doesn't seem like smart foreign policy to me. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pledged to protect his domestic producers no matter the cost. Apparently, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, President Trump tends to approach issues with other countries primarily with a bilateral focus and largely in the context of a particular set of concerns. He is concerned about India's high barriers to trade and the significant US Trade deficit with India. So what exactly is going to happen here? Well, it's possible that he ratchets back down. The reaction in India apparently has been multifaceted. Initially, because the government of India felt the parties were close to announcing a trade deal, the reaction was one of surprise. There were additional issues to address. More recently, when the president announced the threatened imposition of a 25% additional tariff on August 27, Industry India's Ministry of External affairs called it unfair, unjustified, and unreasonable and asserted that India will take all necessary steps to protect its own national interests. But the United States is India's largest and most important trading partner, so maybe we can leverage them. With that said, can there be a win win here? A win win would be better than simply leveraging India at this point because India is a growing economy. India is the most populous nation on earth. India is or could be a bulwark against China as well as against Islamic fascism. Wooing India with carrots rather than sticks if possible seems to me a better policy now. Meanwhile, apparently Boeing is in talks to sell China hundreds of planes as part of a U.S. trade deal. This is according to the Wall Street Journal, US Passenger jet orders are becoming a favored concession for countries looking to improve tariff terms from American authorities. And this sort of kind of trade corporatism, again, this is just mercantilism. I'm not a huge fan, and it seems to me that selling, you know, high tech airplanes to China, I'm not sure why we are doing that. If we wish to box them in, then we should Just box them in. That should be the move that we are attempting. And the reason all of this matters, of course, is because on the other end of any sort of economic downturn stands the Democratic Party of Zoran Mamdani. And believe you me, the, the trumpy corporatism that we are seeing. And again, I don't think everything they're doing is corporatist a lot. It's free market oriented. But the, the part that is corporatist is going to be trumped by the full scale socialistic slash communistic policies of the Democratic Party moving in Zoran Mamdani's direction. Zoran Mamdani spent this week trying to rail at hotel workers for refusing to use union labor. When they reopened this hotel last October.
- [56:06]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
They did it without the union workers.
- [56:09]
Ben Shapiro
And we know what that is.
- [56:11]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
It's two words, union busting.
- [56:14]
Ben Shapiro
And it may go unnoticed in another.
- [56:16]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
City, but this city right here is a union town. I don't care if you bring a garbage truck to drown us out.
- [56:29]
Ben Shapiro
You will still hear our calls no matter what floor of this hotel you are on. Shame on Missouri.
- [56:38]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
Let every worker come back to continue to serve this hotel in the ways.
- [56:43]
Matt Nuclear
They did for years.
- [56:45]
Ben Shapiro
Okay? So good luck to New Yorkers and good luck to the United States. If there's an economic downturn, it's going to be this guy's party that rises, which is indeed quite scary. Well, one of the other things that could cause the Democratic Party to rise is just generalized Republican stupidity. So there has always been a problem with the Republican Party. There has been a, a belief among traditional conservatives that the Democratic Party could be termed, in many cases the evil party, and the Republican Party could be termed the stupid party. And the problem is that when you say dumb things and when you elevate dumb people, what you end up doing is creating fodder for your opposition. What the American people want is a policy moderation that is incrementalist in its implementation. From the federal level, they may want to be more conservative on their state level or local level, or maybe you're in California, you want to be a lib. But on a federal level, what Americans really want is predictability, stability, incrementalism. That is the thing generally that they want. Now, there may be some serious moves that have to be made. The Trump administration is making them to reverse decades of actual radicalism by the Democratic Party. But what nobody wants, you can see this in the Democratic Party. What people do not want is wild insanity. The Democratic Party was damaged by the trans issue because they took a full scale insane position, a full scale insane position, which is that boys can be girls. And everyone looked at that, moderates, even some Democrats, and said, anybody who says that is crazy. Association with that position is nuts. And so we're not going to do that. We're just not interested in any of that. Well, the same thing can be true on the Republican side of the aisle. If Republicans elevate figures who are, in fact, unintelligent, who say crazy things, who make claims that are untrue on a repeat basis. If they do that, there will be a reaction to that by the general body politic, which is why we have started here at the Ben Shapiro show, something that we are calling the Billy Madison Award. It doesn't apply just to people on the right. We're going to be using this repeatedly. The Billy Madison Award goes to politicians, political figures, commentators, who say some of the most insanely idiotic things that we have ever heard, in which at no point in their rambling, incoherent responses were they even close to anything that could have been considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber.
- [58:57]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
For having listened to it.
- [59:00]
Ben Shapiro
The Billy Madison Award is designed so that you can know, the audience can know, everyone can see that there are certain people who might not actually be worth listening to because they say dumb things on the regular. They say unintelligent things on the regular, uninformed things. And when those things are promoted as sort of factually based, more intelligent, then the world gets dumber as a result. Well, today's inaugural Billy Madison Award goes to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Now, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene originally became famous because she said a bunch of dumb crap, and Democrats decided that they were going to target her specifically for this. And because we live in an incredibly reactionary political moment, the right immediately said, well, if the Democrats hate her, then she must be awesome. And it turns out that two things can be true at once. One, the Democrats hate her. And two, she's not particularly bright. And not only is she not particularly bright, she is wildly misinformed at the best. I'm not going to go to motivations or why she says what she says. All I'm going to point out is that if you use Marjorie Taylor Greene as your source of verifiable or verified information, that is a category error. This is not a person who is reliable when it comes to the fact. And let's just say that many of her political positions are at best, misinformed. And so when people treat her with a great Deal of seriousness. I'm just wondering why, like, truly why, to understand what I mean by this. And she's appeared, I know, on a number of podcasts, including people with whom I'm friends. I'm just going to say that, you know, taking her at face value, you would not allow this person to be your child's 5th grade social studies teacher. You wouldn't. Because at least if you want your kid to know social studies or history or anything. Just a. A few brief indicators before we get into why she's being named the inaugural Billy Madison Award winner this week. You'll recall that she is a person who literally did not know the difference between the Gestapo, meaning, like the German secret police, and gazpacho, like the cold vegetable soup often served in Spain and Portugal during the summer months. This is from 2022. This is the person who we are supposed to believe is a leading light, by the way, a massive critic of President Trump, it should be noted, right, she's constantly attempting to claim her loyalty to President Trump. She spent nothing but the last six months basically ripping and many of Trump's policy moves ranging from the bombing of Iran to Epstein. Anyway, here she was in 2022 talking about, you know, Nazi soup or something.
- [61:41]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Not only do we have the D.C. jail, which is the D.C. gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi's gazpacho police, spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff, and spying on American citizens that want to come talk to their representatives.
- [61:57]
Ben Shapiro
I'm only pointing that out because this is the kind of error that she makes fairly routinely. And that says something. I mean, first of all, gazpacho police, do they provide the gazpacho or do they take away the gazpacho? Nobody actually really knows. And of course, she has a long history of foolish commentary, ranging from 2018, where she made a wide variety. This is before she was in Congress, of course. She's been in Congress since 2021, where she has co sponsored zero pieces of actual legislation that have passed zero. So very useful. And, you know, her commentary includes things like in 2018, sort of bizarre notions about Jewish space, lasers and such, in which she said, quote, as there are now over 70 people confirmed Dent and over 1000 missing, the fires in California are a horrific tragedy. I'm praying for all involved. And then she goes on a long rant about various solar projects, and she says, at some point, quote, I'm posting this in speculation because there are too many coincidences to ignore and just putting it out there. From some research I've done stemming from my curiosity over PG and E stocks, which tanked all week, then rallied Thursday night after California official announced they would not let PG&E fail. I find it very interesting Roger Kimmel, on the board of directors of PG and E is also Vice chairman of Rothschild Inc. International investment banking firm. I also find interesting the long history of financial contributions PG and E has made to Jerry Brown over the years. It must be a coincidence that the fires are burning in the same projected area that the $77 billion high speed rail project is to be built, which happens to be Governor Brown's pet project. And then she says the idea is clean energy to replace coal and oil. If they are beaming the sun's energy back to earth, I'm sure they would never miss a transmitter receiving station, right? I mean mistakes are never made when anything new is invented. What would that look like anyway? A laser beam or light beam coming down to earth? I guess. Could that cause a fire? Hmm, I don't know. So yeah, solid take there. Obviously that one was pretty famous, the Jewish space laser stuff. Of course she was a backer of QANON conspiracy theories. She has made comments about 911 truthing and that is not a gigantic shock. Of course here she was in 2018 at the American Priority Conference.
- [64:09]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
But we had witnessed 9 11, right? We had witnessed 911 the terrorist attack in New York and the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and the so called plane that crashed into the Pentagon. It's odd. There's never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon. But anyways, I won't. I'm not going to dive into the 911 conspiracy.
- [64:30]
Ben Shapiro
Okay? So this is a very highly respected person. She has also suggested that school shootings have been false flags for gun control. She said this in 2018. And of course in 2022 she spoke at an event with Nick Fuentes at AFPAC, the American First PAC, which is of course a white nationalist group. And then she suggested just a few months ago actually that Israel assassinated jfk. So that's who we are talking about here. Now the reason this comes up is because she was on Megyn Kelly's show again. I think Megan's great. Megan is a tremendous broadcaster. The she made a bunch of comments in Marjorie Taylor Greene that are truly ridiculous and they sort of went unchallenged but they ought to be called out because they're quite stupid. And I make this point because again, she's getting an awful lot of attention recently and we should just point out when Billy Madison, like politicians are making the rounds. So here she was claiming that in America it is illegal to burn an American flag, which is not only untrue, it is ridiculously untrue. In fact, you can burn an American flag, you can burn an Israeli flag, you can burn a Mexican flag, you can burn any flag you want in the United States. What you cannot actually do, and the thing that she is apparently referring to is a judgment from Washington D.C. in which someone tried to strangle someone using an Israeli flag, which is illegal because you can't strangle people. That's. But, but here she was saying silly things.
- [65:50]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Just like the same exception that Israel has that this just came from Judge McFadden. He just had a ruling that you can burn any flag in the United States of America and including our own American flag, except you can't burn the Israeli flag in America.
- [66:05]
Ben Shapiro
Who said that?
- [66:06]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Judge McFadden.
- [66:07]
Ben Shapiro
In what context?
- [66:08]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
In his court. It just happened.
- [66:09]
Ben Shapiro
Well, that's not going to be upheld.
- [66:11]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Shouldn't be. That's a violation of the First Amendment blatant. And it will be struck down as.
- [66:14]
Ben Shapiro
Soon as it goes up on appeal.
- [66:15]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
What a ridiculous notion.
- [66:17]
Guest Commentator / Panelist
Should be.
- [66:18]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
He said in what he wrote is that the Israeli flag, it's an identity erase and it would be a hate crime. Yeah, wrong. Yes, wrong. That's getting struck down.
- [66:30]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so that's not what the judge said. What the judge actually said is that if you purposefully yank on an Israeli flag around a Jewish person's neck, that that is indeed an evidence of discrimination. Now you can make the claim that judge is wrong and overstepping, that's fine. But the claim that it is somehow weirdly illegal to burn an Israeli flag in the United States is not true. By the way, I'm in favor of a flag burning amendment, but only about the American flag. I think you should not be allowed to burn an American flag in the United States. I think it's ridiculous. So she claims that aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, controls Congress. This claim is frequently made by people who have conspiratorial feelings about shadowy figures influencing the American Congress. It can't be that many Republicans just are pro Israel. It has to be that Jew money. It's got to be that, that AIPAC money that's making it happen.
- [67:13]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
So we have tons of lobbyists that foreign countries lobbyists that come to Washington D.C. pretty much every country has some sort of representative. They have an ambassador, they send a Washington. It's naturally in their interest we can understand that they also are required to register under Farah. It's a law. They have to register as a foreign agent, a foreign lobbyist. That is required. It's extremely important. Here's the, here's the difference with apac. AIPAC is not registered under FARA under this law. That requires anyone coming to lobby a member of Congress or a senator or, or department of the government and the federal government on behalf of another country. So AIPAC argues, oh, but we're Americans. Yes, they are Americans, but they are coming to Congress and to the federal government asking on behalf of the country of Israel.
- [68:11]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, first of all, that is not remotely true. Actually, that is just factually false. So whatever you think of AIPAC, and I've had many criticisms of AIPAC, including the fact that, that AIPAC in 2015, as a good rebuttal to everything she just said, In 2015, AIPAC had the opportunity to push against the Obama nuclear deal. And because they wanted to maintain friendly relations with the Democrats, they basically didn't. And by the way, Israel was very much opposed to the Iran nuclear deal at the time. So by the way, is President Donald J. Trump. She of course, has been very antagonistic toward President Trump and his approach to Iran. AIPAC is an American funded group, meaning it's all American, Meaning people who have an interest in American Israeli relations sometimes give money to aipac. Full disclosure, I've never given money to aipac. I've never received money from aipac. Contrary to a bunch of lies out there from, you know, people who like to claim that every Jew is somehow in the pay of aipac. AIPAC is actually historically a relatively ineffectual organization with a moderate sized budget. By this I mean that they are ranked in American political terms in terms of lobbying groups, 199th in America in terms of the size of the lobbying group. They're fully funded by Americans to the tune about $50 million. And there are other foreign interest lobbies, meaning, you know, other lobbies funded by Americans seeking better relations with foreign nations. Like for example, the U. S India Business Council which was funded to the tune of over $200 million a year. Or the U. S Saudi Councils which represent hundreds of millions of dollars, or UK US Parliamentary groups. By the way, worth noting that when it comes to quote, unquote, foreign lobbying money, Israel barely charts. China has spent since 2016 $460 million on lobbying in the United States. Japan has spent $410 million. Liberia has spent $353 million. This is according to Open Secrets. South Korea has spent $320 million. Saudi Arabia has spent $310 million. Qatar has spent $256 million. The Marshall Islands has spent $286 million. The UAE has spent $242 million. APEC's total lobbying spend since 2016 is $134 million. And they are domestically based. And then of course she claimed that, you know, people are being paid for visits to Israel. Oh no. People are being paid. Ok, so first of all, untrue. Congresspeople all the time go on foreign junkets. It is a thing. In fact, congresspeople just went on foreign junkets to UAE in June 2025. They went on a congressional delegation to visit Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE in April of 2025. Senator Joni Ernst and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz traveled to the UAE that same month. Representative Stacey Plaskett visited Qatar in 2022. It's very, very common, but apparently it is some sort of nefarious payment buy off. What the people are going to flip their position on Israel because they got a plane trip to Israel. Strange.
- [71:01]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
AIPAC takes every single that they can. Freshmen member of Congress their first year in Congress, they take them on a very special trip to Israel in August. That's our. August is our recess. It's our, it's our month long district work period. Dems and Republicans or just Republicans? They take both of them. Yes. And they invite pretty much everyone to my knowledge. So they take him on this trip to Israel. They, I guess they go on tours all around. I didn't go, so I don't know what they do there. But they take them on tours. Like the pictures we've seen recently of the speaker and other members of Congress at the Wailing Wall.
- [71:40]
Ben Shapiro
They've all gone.
- [71:41]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
They've all gone.
- [71:42]
Ben Shapiro
I see them all.
- [71:43]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
And they wear the kippah even though they're Christians, they're not Jewish, but yet they're adorning Jewish attire and they're at these Jewish religious sites. Then they also meet with different members of the Israeli government. Now we got to recognize the Israeli government is secular. This is not the biblical Israel. It is the secular government of Israel. And so they meet with their members of, you know, all throughout their government. And the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with them. And so they've done that trip already this month.
- [72:19]
Ben Shapiro
Oh my goodness. You mean that people go on a trip to a foreign country and they meet with the foreign leader there? Why that's shocking. Except that that happens all the Time. As far as this notion. Okay, can I speak to this notion that everybody who goes to the Western Wall has to wear a keepah? First of all, it's dumb. If you're not Jewish, don't wear a kippah, like you just shouldn't. It's like, I think it's a really, really dumb thing. However, I should point out here that there are many holy sites all around the world where when people visit, they wear particular attire. Now, the keepa is not mandated. It isn't. But when. When you go to the Golden Temple in India, people are supposed to wear modest attire. If you are going to a mosque, you are supposed to wear modest attire. When you go to the Vatican, you are supposed to wear modest attire. Right? This. This bizarre idea that if you go to Israel and then you go visit the Western Wall, no one is making these politicians wear a yarmulke, by the way. Like, no one I know because I've been with politicians in that area and they've asked me, do I. Do I need to wear a keepa? And I always say to them, of course not. You're not saying abracha, and you're not Jewish, so, no, you don't. Abracha is Hebrew for a blessing. But the idea here is supposed to be that somehow the Jews are forcing the Jew hat on people and just ridiculous, ridiculous stuff. And then finally, she suggested, of course, that America's economic problems are because of American aid to Israel. Now, I've made the case for years and years that Israel should get off American aid. I think it'd be better for America. I think it'd be better for Israel. The reason that I think would be better for Israel is because that American aid comes with extraordinary strings. And when Democrats are in power, they use those strings against Israel, which is what Joe Biden actually did. If you take a look at what the United States, what we get for that aid, we get military cooperation. We get intel cooperation. Now, maybe you get that in the absence of that. But one of the things America does is we subsidize Israel to buy American military weaponry, and then we get the Israeli upgrades to that weaponry. So, for example, our F35 pilots wear helmets. Those helmets can see over the horizon. That is Israeli tech developed by the Israelis. America has access to that tech because of the aid package that we have with the state of Israel. We have the greatest intelligence sharing with Israel of any other country on earth, as far as I'm aware, largely because of that aid package. America, in other words, pays. Israel also not to develop its own tech and then sell it abroad back in the, in, in the 1980s. Israel is developing its own military jet. That military jet was called the Levy. There was worry in the American military complex that the Levy was actually a threat and a rival to the F16. And so what did America do? We gave aid to Israel and then we made a deal with Israel where Israel could make upgrades to the F16 and we would have access to the kind of technological upgrades available to the F16, which means that both countries benefit. But it also means that Israel is locked out of international markets with regard to virtually all military developments except for some of the drone technology at this point. But according to Marjorie Taylor Greene, apparently it's just charity that's bankrupting the United states. That, that $3.3 billion that we, that we allow Israel to buy military equipment from then mandate to be spent in the United States. It's bankrupting the United States despite the fact that we are spending on the order of $7 trillion actually. And that 3.3 billion, again, you can make the case that we shouldn't be spending it, but the idea that that is what is bankrupting the United States is totally insane. What you are talking about here is 0.04% of the American budget every year. Anyway, here is Marjorie Taylor Greene saying silly things.
- [75:43]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
If you look at Israel, it's, you have to recognize in the context of these conversations, not only are they so such a strong economic country, not only have they proven that their military can almost, they're annihilating their enemy almost completely. They're going to finish the job. And they're saying they're going to finish the job. They also have nuclear weapons. This is a nuclear armed nation. So you're saying you agree with all that, but they got it. I'm saying America is a sinking ship. We're sinking so badly our children have no hope of ever buying a home in the future. We, we, we pass a budget that is overblown and ridiculous every single year and we are dragging. We're going to be 40, we're 37 now. It'll be 40 trillion in a matter of who knows, months or.
- [76:32]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so bottom line here with Marjorie Taylor Greene, and I'm only pointing this out because it got an outsized amount of attention on X. But this is not a person who has wildly intelligent things to say. This is not an authoritative source on pretty much anything. And if the Republican Party continues to elevate people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, my assumption is that there will be an electoral price to pay. Because if the Democratic Party pays an electoral price for elevating their most radical and kind of nutty members, I assume the same will happen with the Republican Party. Alrighty. Coming up here on the Ben Shapiro show, we will get to the latest in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin being rather intransigent. Remember, in order to watch you have to be a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. Paquetes expedia vivies paradis frutar de la.
- [78:12]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Musica contodos tu centidos.
- [78:16]
Ben Shapiro
Bv mos parabrindarte.
- [78:17]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Paquetes experiencias pormenos expedia BB mos paraviajar.