Rev. Al Sharpton (14:34)

Rev. Again, Donald Trump is attacking anyone and everyone except for the cost of groceries. He is working through this enem enemies list every day, prioritizing political retribution and grievance. And again, working an enemy's list instead of a to do list. I mean his to do list I think just says golf attack black women, attack enemies, alienate our allies and continue to create crushing hurt for working families instead of what he should be doing which is lowering cost of, for the American people and, and keeping his word.

Ben Shapiro (15:12)

So again, according to the left, President Trump just doesn't differ with them with regard to his political arguments. He actually wants to somehow harm black women. And by the way, Ayanna Pressley, you know, I'm kind of tired of hearing Democrats talk about how much they abhor violence while they literally praise people who are murderers. Okay. Ayanna Pressley did that over the weekend. She openly praised Assada Shakur. Assada Shakur was a murderous terrorist. She died over the weekend and the Chicago Teachers Union paid tribute to her. She died while she was living in Cuba because she was in exile since she was on the FBI's most wanted list, having escaped prison in 1979 after being convicted of the first degree murder of a New Jersey state trooper. And that was after of course she had joined the so called Black Liberation army that engaged in a campaign of guerrilla activities against the United States government ranging from bank hold ups to murdering drug dealers and police. Here is Ayanna Pressley openly praising Assata Shakur.

Rev. Al Sharpton (16:11)

I'm going to do a little call and response. One of my favorite in the words of Assata Shakur. So I will say it and you respond and repeat it back. It is our duty to fight for our freedom.

Ben Shapiro (16:24)

It is our duty to fight for our freedom.

Rev. Al Sharpton (16:27)

It is our duty to win.

Ben Shapiro (16:28)

It is our duty to Win.

Rev. Al Sharpton (16:31)

We must love each other and support each other.

Ben Shapiro (16:33)

We must love each other and support each other.

Rev. Al Sharpton (16:37)

We have nothing to lose but our champions.

Ben Shapiro (16:42)

I mean, apparently you have your independence to lose as you speak like a robot. The words that Ayanna Pressley dictates to you while praising, you know, a person who actively killed a member of American law enforcement. Pretty impressive stuff. Meanwhile, again, other major Democrats continue to trot out the exact same inflammatory language that's been carved into bullets. Now, remember that into the casing, the shell casing of one of the bullets that was going to be aimed at Charlie Kirk was the phrase, hey, fascist, catch. That's not stopping Democrats from continuing to use that sort of language. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California over the weekend put out via his press office, Stephen Miller is a fascist, all capital letters. Because he's still doing this annoying routine where he pretends that he's like President Trump. And then Randy Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, she says that actually it's her job to fight fascism. That's what she's doing. She's not. She's not fighting the American taxpayer on behalf of teachers who want to teach less and do a bad job with your children. She's actually fighting fascism.

Teacher or Education Advocate (17:43)

What's clear to me is that people don't know what fascism is. They don't know what authoritarian is. So what they see is they think we're just being, or people, when they use a term, are just being political. We want critical thinking for not only adults, but for our kids. And what I wanted to do here is not only do a warning, but also what is the antidote? HBCUs are the antidote. Public education done well is the antidote. When teachers in classrooms are trying to create a safe and welcoming environment, that's the antidote to political violence. Let them have the resources and the supports to do those kind of things. And what's the biggest antidote? Kids really understanding and discerning fact from fiction. Them understanding, as the founders asked us to do, to actually make education the, the foundation stone of this country.

Ben Shapiro (18:39)

So do the things that she wants or you are a fascist. And if you don't do what she wants, then you're fomenting violence. It's these sorts of arguments that actually create the permission structures for violence, of course. And those permission structures find their apex at the New York Times. I have to say, the New York Times is such. It is such a horribly edited newspaper. And I say this advisedly. There are people at the New York Times, with whom I politically disagree very strongly, but I like personally, Ezra Klein is one of those people. I recently did a very long interview with Ezra Klein. We sat down, we disagreed on nearly everything, but it was very conciliatory. It was really interesting. We held our positions, but it was. It was sort of a fascinating clarification. The New York Times, however, has spent pretty much every day since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, with the exception of Ezra's work over there, really pushing that permission structure for violence. And over the weekend they truly outdid themselves. Really outdid themselves. In a minute, we'll get to more from the New York Times. Nicole Hannah Jones makes her grand return to the pages of her Alma material. Plus, the New York Times now praising Marjorie Taylor Greene. And we'll get to the latest talks regarding Gaza. We'll also get to the government shutdown A lot going on in the news today. First, with the holidays just around the corner, companies are getting ready for their busiest time of the year by looking for all sorts of extra help. It's not just retail these days. You'll find businesses searching for people to work at winter festivals, wrap gifts, help with big events, manage deliveries, even step in as personal shoppers. There's a real need for anyone with handy skills, event experience, or special licenses, since these roles aren't always easy to fill when demand spikes. Whether you're hiring for one of those roles or any other role, the best way to find the perfect match for your role is on Zip Recruiter. Right now. You can try it for free@ziprecruiter.com Daily Wire as a business owner, I can really appreciate how ZipRecruiter's technology quickly matches job postings with qualified candidates so you're not wasting days sifting through the wrong applications. Plus, you can instantly see how many people in your area are actually qualified for a position. That helps you make hiring decisions a lot faster. You can even reach out to top candidates directly from their resume database, making the recruitment process smoother and more efficient. Let Zip Recruiter find the right people for your roles, seasonal or otherwise. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the very first day. And right now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com DailyWire Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com Daily Wire ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire. Also, you know, I found that when it comes to updating your home, those details, they make all the difference. Maybe you thought about upgrading those window treatments, but it's kind of a hassle. Usually it just isn't worth it. All that waiting around for designer sky high quote, then trying to coordinate installation. It's a pain in the butt. Well, that's why I want to tell you about blinds.com blinds.com totally changed my outlook on home updates. Instead of waiting around for appointments, you can actually browse their huge selection. Even talk to an expert from the comfort of your own home. If you want somebody to measure it and install it for you, they'll do it. Prefer to do it yourself. Well, you can do that too. Have expert support every step of the way. Their samples show up fast. Free. Picking the perfect color or texture is simple. Whether you're looking for bamboo shades, classic shutters, or even outdoor options for the patio, they've got you covered. All for a price that beats the showroom every single time. Best part, no stress. Just a simple process with a 100% satisfaction guarantee from the folks who've been doing this for 29 years and have covered over 25 million windows. Right now, blinds.com is giving our listeners an exclusive 50 bucks off. When you spend 500 bucks or more. Just use promo code shapiro at checkout limited time offer rules and restrictions apply. See blinds.com for details. So you just have to understand that the New York Times as a newspaper is perhaps the chief purveyor of this permission structure. Right after Charlie died, they had not one, but two separate pieces concerning Hassan Piker, the twitch streamer who is more than warm to terrorist violence. They had one piece that was an obit for Charlie by Hasan Piker, basically blaming capitalism for Charlie's death. And then they had a profile of Hasan Piker as though he was a some sort of great exemplar of moral debate, anti violent debate, which is insane. I mean, the man has, as we've covered on the show over and over and over, endorsed the use of violence. In fact, here he wasn't all that long ago singing Bella Chow. Bella Chow is a revolutionary song that was literally carved again into one of the bullets that was next to the gun used to kill Charlie Kirk. He knows precisely what he's doing. First of all, can't sing, but but also knows precisely what he's doing. He's not doing that for fun. He's doing that because there is a tacit and not so tacit endorsement of violence by members of the left. Well, over the weekend, the New York Times decided it was time that there'd been too much Tolerance for opposing views. In the New York Times, that had to stop. And so they called forth the Halley's comet of stupidity. They appear upon the horizon once every few years. They emerge from their cozy sinecures. Being paid much money to do virtually nothing by the New York Times and by other elite publications, they trotted out Ta Nehisi Codes. Any society that treats Ta Nehisi Coates as a public intellectual is a society that. That truly deserves whatever happens to it. Because Ta Nehisi Coates is not only a purple writer, he is an awful thinker. So they tried out Ta Nehisi Coates and they also tried out Nicole Hannah Jones, who is back from the intellectual dead. She hasn't written anything for years, but she's still on the New York Times payroll. First, Ezra had on at Taasi Coates to essentially chide him for the great sin of. Of being upset over Charlie's death. Taasi Coates, who literally just wrote a book, essentially creating the case for why terrorists are fine against Israel, calling Israel an apartheid state, likening Israel to the Jim Crow south, not mentioning a single time Palestinian terrorism. Ta Nehisi Coates, the same person who has over and over and over again made light of terrorism, including 9 11. He wrote in his book between the World and Me, about sitting on top of an apartment building, watching the towers as they burn and feeling nothing. Stoned out of his mind. Ta Nehisi Coates, a perfect person for the New York Times to bring in as a sort of voice of morality. And what was he upset about? He was upset that Ezra Klein had written a couple of columns in which he treated Charlie Kirk as a good example of people trying to debate issues. So Ta Nehisi put out this interview with Ezra Klein. And Ezra Klein says to him in the interview, quote, after that happened, I thought about me, I thought about you, I thought about all kinds of people I know. So I do think there's something about when violence takes hold, there's something about it that begins to breach our lines. That's part of my reaction too. He said, I worry that we are already in a cycle of political violence, of memetic violence. I think about Nancy Pelosi, I think about Josh Shapiro, I think about the near assassination of Trump. Ta Nehisi Coates's reply was, quote, I think all of that is understandable. But was silence not an option? But was silence not an option? So you're supposed to say silent when a major political commentator on the other side of the aisle is shot to death. While debating issues, according to Ta Nehisi Coates, because he thought the wrong things. Because he thought the wrong things. And then Ta Nehisi Coates just does his usual routine about how America is a deeply evil and racist place. And then he mischaracterizes Charlie's positions over and over and over again, calling Charlie a racist, lying about what Charlie had to say and suggesting that Charlie made the debate worse. Ta Coates didn't make the debate worse by suggesting over and over and over that America was deeply racist, unfixable, terrible. So terrible he had to run out of the country while simultaneously writing comic books for DC Comics. Knows Charlie, who's really the problem, according to Ta Nehisi Coates, the great morality police of the New York Times, who has to step in to make sure that Charlie Kirk is not in any way praised after his murder. Solid stuff there from Ta Nehisi Coates. But that wasn't all. On the same day that happened, the New York Times printed a discovered essay by Nikole Hannah Jones. I say, I say discovered because again, her essays only come out once every at this point, 10 years. The 1619 project was a long time ago and she's a terrible example again of a public intellectual. She's a person who, when she was criticized for her historical inaccuracies in her awful project, the 1619 Project, which was a gigantic propaganda attempt by the New York Times to recast all of American history as the outgrowth of slavery, when she was criticized by actual historians, you know, people who are not even of the right, people like Gordon Wood or Sean Wylance, she came out and basically said, well, they're all white, aren't they? She also bragged people, people said that, that the riots that happened in 2020 could be called the 1619 riots. And she cheered that she thought it was good. The permission structures for violence on the left are quite real and they are quite pervasive. And her essay about Charlie is egregiously terrible. Quote, the day Charlie Kirk was killed, Dominic Durant's 11 year old daughter came home from her middle school in Tulsa, Oklahoma and told her father that her friends had been very upset about his death and that they felt she should be upset too. I'm sad, she said, tears in her eyes. Durant struggled how to respond. He too had been appalled by the act of violence. But his young daughter did not know much about Kirk and he worried she would look him up on YouTube and come across the many ugly assertions the right wing activists had made about black Americans like them. For instance, Kirk had claimed that four prominent and successful black women who all went to Ivy League universities, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the former first lady, Michelle Obama, TV host Joy Ann Reid, and former Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, did not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously and had to go steal a white person's slot. He'd argued that black America is poorer, more murderous, more dangerous than when black people were living under Jim Crow. Durant did not want his daughter thinking that because her friends were grieving him, that the things Kirk had claimed were acceptable or right. Durant said, quote, I think I said it's natural to be sad. I don't want you to change your opinion about being sad, but I'm explaining to you, the gentleman who just got shot was under the impression that you, as a young black woman, don't have the brain processing power. So I'm explaining to you to let you know what he said was wrong and not true. Charlie never said that. He literally never said that. What Charlie said is that if you are an affirmative action admitt, the tacit admission there is that you couldn't make it without affirmative action points. And then he pointed out that Katanji Brown Jackson was put in place for affirmative action reasons and has not exactly performed well on the Supreme Court, for example. But he never said anything like, all black women don't have brain processing. That that's ridiculous. Charlie would never say that and did never say that. But the entire piece by Nikole Hannah Jones is just a complete mischaracterization of Charlie's positions in order to minimize the tragedy of his death. Quote, As a Christian, Durant also felt he had to address Kirk's version of Christianity, which condemned and disparaged people who are gay and transgender. Kirk once posted, the pride and trans movements have always been about grooming kids. Well, actually, if you read the entire tweet, here is what the actual tweet says. Quote. Trans actor Elliot Page, formerly known as Ellen, explains that queer stuff is no longer niche because 30% of young people are now LGBTQ. The pride and trans movements have always been about grooming kids. They call it normalizing. They cannot procreate, so they recruit and now they're bragging about it. Okay, that doesn't mean grooming kids isn't like to rape them. That is not what he's talking about. He means that there's a social contagion with regards to things like trans, which, by the way, is statistically true. This intolerance was not reflective of Durant's own understanding of Jesus or the gospel, nor the faith his family practiced. I reminded her not to be a hypocritical Christian, he said. I told her, you know the good book, the Bible says you judge man as he lived, not as he died. Well, I mean, I mean, put aside the fact that the anti biblical explanation of sexuality that is put forth by the left truly does not accord with the words of either the Old Testament or the New Testament. Again, this entire piece is designed to mischaracterize Charlie's beliefs so as to suggest that the laments for Charlie are undeserved. That is the entire idea. She essentially tries to call Charlie a white supremacist. She quotes another left wing activist to suggest that Kirk engaged in rhetoric of Christian white nationalism and that it has moved to the center of the Republican identity. This is what the New York Times is pushing again, that Charlie and all conservatives are a threat, like an open and evil threat and so laments for their deaths. Can't you just remain silent in the word of Ta Nehisi Coates? Or do they really deserve the kind of sadness that people are are pouring out upon them? According to Nicole Hannah Jones, the New York Times, again, it remains just a repository of crap. Is an awful, awful publication, by the way, if you didn't think it was awful enough. The New York Times hates President Trump so much that all it took to get them to write a good piece about Marjorie Taylor Greene, a person with the intelligence of a turn up, is her turning on President Trump. That's all it took. It's truly amazing. They're now writing, they're writing odes, they're writing payans to Marjorie Taylor Greene now, quote, green straying from Trump reflects an emerging MAGA split. The right wing Republican congresswoman from Georgia has grown disillusioned with her own party and with President Trump and is increasingly willing to say so. Wow. Strange new respect for the New York Times for Marjorie Taylor Greene. Can't imagine why they're doing that. Can't imagine. By the way, Marjorie Taylor Greene over the weekend once again suggested that she was going to be killed by nefarious forces because of her focus on Epstein and Israel. Quote, I am not suicidal and one of the happiest, healthiest people you will meet. I have full faith in God and Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. As a sinner, I'm only saved through his grace and mercy. With that said, if something happens to me, I ask you all to find out which foreign government or Powerful people would take heinous actions to stop the information from coming out, not only about this issue, but because of the truth that I have been speaking. The people understand what I'm saying. Well, certainly the commenters did. All the commenters were posting anti Semitic memes underneath her words. Obviously. But don't worry. Her crazy, her specific brand of crazy is now acceptable, according to the New York Times. Again, horseshoe theory operating at full volume here. The New York Times says Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, the right wing Republican from Georgia, did not appreciate being threatened by the White House over her backing for a bill ordering the release of the Epstein files. So after a Trump official put out the word that doing so would be viewed as a very hostile act, she called the top West Wing aide to push back. I told them, you didn't get me elected. I do not work for you. I work for my district, she recounted recently during a wide ranging interview in her office on Capitol Hill. We aren't supposed to just be whipped on our votes because they're telling us what to do with this scary threat or saying we'll primary you or that we won't get invited to White House events. Me, personally, I don't care. Ms. Green went on. She's literally only a nationally famous person because Donald Trump picked her out of a lineup. That is the reason. Because the left decided to attack her for all of her dumb old tweets and then the right decided to defend her, including President Trump himself. That is the reason she is famous. Otherwise she would be just one of 435 Congress people that nobody had ever heard of. Quote, Ms. Green is no longer a team player for Republicans in Congress and she is no longer seen as a joke. Wow, strange new respect. All it took was her horseshoe theorying around to the anti Semitic left and holding hands with them and suddenly the New York Times is writing stop pieces about her. What an amazing publication. I can't imagine why extremist violence is on the rise thanks to publications like the New York Times. Really solid stuff right there. All right. Meanwhile, in other news over in New York, the Zoran Mamdani campaign continues to truck along. Eric Adams has finally, far too late, dropped out of the race again. When you, when you look at Poly Market, he's still the heavy fake favorite mom Donnie to win the New York mayoral election. And Adams dropping out really did not affect things very much. Mom is still about an 85% favorite to win. Eric Adams was running in the low double digits here. In any case, here he was dropping out of the race Yesterday. Far too late.

Eric Adams (34:52)

It has been my honor to be your mayor. And I'm proud to say that we took that victory four years ago and turned it into action. And yet, despite all we've achieved, I cannot continue my re election campaign. The constant media speculation about my future and the campaign finance board's decision to withhold millions of dollars have undermined my ability to raise the funds needed for a serious campaign. My fellow New Yorkers, this is your city. Its leaders work for you. I am one of you. My story is your story. I lived the struggle, but I never stopped loving this city. That is why I ran for mayor. To turn my pain into purpose. And I would keep fighting for the city, no matter what, from City hall or beyond. Because I am a New Yorker.

Ben Shapiro (35:58)

Oh boy. Well, glad he could stick around long enough to make sure that his successor is a communist. A communist with Islamist tendencies. That's really wonderful. Speaking of that communist, Mamdani says that the solution to affordable housing in New York will be for the city to buy up housing from private owners. Presumably he would do it through eminent domain or something and then make it city run. Because nothing has succeeded like city run housing. It's been working amazing for decades. We've never tried government housing before. It never results in slums. It never results in horrible living conditions, people abusing their housing. It's always just glorious. I mean, every place government housing has tried, it just works amazing. Well, speaking of public housing, I asked our sponsors and friends over at Comet, which is a project of perplexity, to tell me about the public housing failures of the 60s and 70s in the US just as a reminder, and here is what Comet says, Public housing in the United states during the 1960s and 70s is widely considered a policy failure because of a combination of social, economic and political factors that led to the decline of many developments and widespread negative outcomes for residents. Causes of public housing failure include chronic underfunding and federal disinvestment. Authorities often placed public housing projects in already impoverished, racially segregated neighborhoods, worsening poverty and social isolation. Government efforts to reduce construction costs resulted in buildings that suffered from poor design and insufficient maintenance projects. Strict eligibility rules evicted families that saw even modest financial improvement, concentrating the poorest and most vulnerable populations together while driving out stable working class tenants. And if you think none of this is going to happen, you're out of your mind. A lot of this is going to happen because as it turns out, if you try to keep costs down, you end up basically doing it on the cheap. And then the housing is crap. If you try to use it as a labor program, you end up paying way too much. And at that point, you're impoverishing the taxpayer. And if you have no standards as to who is living there, people end up wrecking the housing because they don't actually own the housing and they're not even responsible for what happens to the housing they live in. And so, as Comet points out, public housing projects became increasingly associated with crime, drugs, and gang activity as a result of concentrated poverty and lack of employment opportunities. Some of the biggest examples include the famous Pruitt ego Complex in St. Louis, Missouri. There are entire books that have been written about this complex. It's a disaster area. So I'm glad that New York has decided to do all this again. How could it go wrong? So Zaran Mamdani enthusiastically endorses it based on his longtime experience as a failed rapper. With a trust fund, we'll have to.

Zoran Mamdani (38:30)

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 universal using our wealth to build beautiful, high quality social housing projects that 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.

Ben Shapiro (39:02)

Yes, we do have history to guide us. This crap fails every time in stripe. Do it, do it in New York. See how it works out for you. By the way, I know multiple real estate investors in New York who are very, very close to getting into deals to do more development in New York. And they all pulled out in the last three to four months because they know that Mamdani is gonna make that nearly impossible now. So, again, well done, Eric Adams, for sticking around just long enough to ensure that almost certainly Zor Momdani will end up being the mayor of New York. And again, congratulations to the people of New York who, you know, I suppose you like the 60s and 70s so much, you just wanted to do it again. It's just that much fun for you. All right, already. Coming up, the President of the United States is meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. They're trying to work out sort of the final form of. Of an offer to Hamas to end the Gaza war. We'll get to all those details. First, let's be honest. Traditional phone systems weren't built for how businesses actually work. Today, when you miss a call, you're not just missing a conversation. You are losing business. Quo, formerly Open phone, is the modern alternative. It's designed to help you work smarter, build stronger relationships, and never miss an opportunity. If you're tired of juggling multiple phones or being chained to a landline, Quo is exactly what your business needs. As the number one business phone system, Quo streamlines all your customer communications through a simple app on your phone or computer, meaning you can literally run your business from anywhere. What's really smart about it is how your entire team can share one number and collaborate on calls and texts like they're working from a shared inbox, which keeps response times lightning fast and customers genuinely happy. But here's where it gets interesting. Quo's built in AI does the heavy lifting by automatically logging calls, creating summaries, even automating your next steps. Their AI agent can actually answer calls, qualify leads, and even root customers to the right team member so you never have to worry about leaving your customers hanging even after hours. Whether you're flying solo or you're leading a growing team, Quo keeps everyone connected while helping you deliver those standout customer experiences that make all the difference. It's no wonder over 90,000 businesses are already using it. Get started for free. Plus get 20% off your first 6 months@quo.com Ben that's Q U O.com Ben if you have existing numbers with another service quo, we'll port them over at no extra charge. Quo no missed calls, no missed customers. Also, you know what I hate? Running outta something I actually need and then scrambling to reorder it. Especially when it comes to health. Because consistency is a difference maker. Which is why I signed up as a Balance of nature preferred customer. Every 28 days, my supplements just show up at the door without me lifting a finger. No Ms. Days. No. Oh, crap, I forgot to reorder. It's just automatic, so it's consistent. And when it's consistent, it actually sticks. Here's what got my attention. As a preferred customer, you're always getting the best price Balance of Nature offers. Always the that's as low as it gets. Every single order. Your wallet will notice the difference. Guaranteed. And get this, shipping is completely free every single month. No tracking numbers to stress about, no extra fees. Balance of Nature handles all of that for you. But here's the best part. You get paired with your own personal health coach, not a chatbot like an actual human who checks in with you, helps you stay on track and looks at your whole picture. I use Balance of nature particularly when I'm on the road because it's hard to stay healthy and eat healthy. When you're on the road, pop it in those smoothies. Good to go. Why pay more when you don't have to? It saves you money, time and hassle. You don't have to plan ahead because your routine plans itself. Go to balance of nature.com use promo code SHAPIRO for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus get that free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balance of nature.com promo code Shapiro balance of nature.com promo code shapiro meanwhile, on the economic front, the President of the United States is scheduled to host last ditch talks to avoid a government shutdown on Monday. The Republicans are pledging a clean CR like a seven week extension of the clean current spending levels. And Democrats, for no reason that anybody can really discern, are now talking about shutting down the government. They they want additional spending because we're not spending enough money apparently. I mean that is despite our nearly $40 trillion national debt. According to the Wall Street Journal, a White House meeting is scheduled for Monday ahead of an expected redo of a Senate vote that will determine whether Congress will keep the government funded beyond Tuesday. House Republicans passed a bill this month that would fund the government into late November and add millions for security for lawmakers and other officials. Democrats blocked that measure and then they want bipartisan negotiations on health care funding. So it's unclear exactly what Democrats are aiming for. They want more money for Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire. Apparently both Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader and Senate Majority Leader Thune have said that any resolutions the standoff would likely involve some sort of negotiation over Obamacare credits. John Thune says the ball is in Democrats court. Like all we are doing is just extending current spending levels here. Is the government going to shut down this week?

Senator John Thune (43:29)

Leader Thune Totally up to the Democrats. This is the ball is in their court. There is a bill sitting at the desk in the Senate right now. We could pick it up today and pass it. That has been passed by the House that will be signed into law by the president to keep the government open. So this decision in my judgment at this point in time is up to a handful of Democrats. We need eight Democrats to pass it through the Senate. Something that 13 times when the Democrats had the majority over the last four years and President Biden was in the White House, Republicans helped Democrats do so.

Ben Shapiro (44:05)

That is also being said by Speaker Johnson who Says the real goal here is to somehow increase payments for health care for illegal immigrants, which isn't even legal in the first place.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (44:14)

It is illegal for illegal aliens to receive health care paid for by hardworking American taxpayers. But they're making the demand to change that. They want to add that back in. That's one of Chuck Schumer's primary demands, to keep the government open. And we're not going to do that. The American people didn't vote for us to do that. We're trying to clean up the system. So what they're demanding they know is outrageous. They know it's far better beyond the pale. And look, I challenge anybody listening to us. Jake, go pull this up. You will see there is nothing partisan in what we have passed and presented to the Senate. Chuck Schumer is doing this for one reason. He is trying to get cover from the far left base of his party because they've been hammering him for not fighting Trump. So he's going to try to show that he's fighting Trump, but he has absolutely no logical basis for doing so.

Ben Shapiro (45:02)

Here. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who's already overridden by the House majority, he says, no, no, no, no. This is just about meeting the needs of the American people because we need a shutdown or something.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (45:13)

We are always of the view that we need to fund the government and make sure that the services that the American people rely upon can continue to be received. And also that we stand by our federal civil servants. We've seen since January 20th mass firings already taking place by the Trump administration in the absence of government shutdown. The because this is what they've determined to do, hurt everyday Americans. We consistently have made the point we want to find a bipartisan path forward and reach a spending agreement with our Republican colleagues that actually meets the needs of the American people, but that also addresses the Republican health care crisis that is harming everyday Americans all across the country.

Ben Shapiro (46:00)

Well, you know, good luck with this argument. If Democrats shut down the government here, they're the ones who are going to own it. And frankly, Republicans are like, fine, you want to do that? We'll fire a bunch of people. We'll use the opportunity for a government shutdown, not just to temporarily furlough workers. If we can get away with it, we'll fire people. Don't threaten us with a good dime. Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip, he says exactly that.

Steve Scalise (46:18)

Well, I haven't seen the full details, but if you go back to Covid, Martha, President Biden dramatically expanded mushroom the size of the federal government, supposedly to deal with COVID Well, Covid is over. And yet many of those federal agencies are still 20 or 30% larger than they were before COVID And so there's been a need for a right sizing of the federal government for a long time. President Trump's talked about that with Doge and other things he's doing to try to save waste, fraud and abuse in government. And I think everybody knows there are billions and tens of billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse that still needs to be rooted out. We got to some of that, but there's more that needs to be done.

Ben Shapiro (47:00)

Now, again, what's truly amazing about this is the Democrats really don't have any sort of political leg to stand on here. Americans are not clamoring for a government shutdown. And it's not as though Democrats have a long standing history of shutting down the government in order to avoid further spending. They're now shutting down the government in order to achieve even bigger spending. This is, this is idiocy. Who is the constituency for this outside of the far left? The answer is it doesn't really exist. But Democrats are just scoring own goals at an incredibly rapid rate. The same holds true with regard to the doj. So right now, Democrats could make a plausible argument, in fact, a highly plausible argument, in my opinion, that the attempt by the Justice Department to go after James Comey is misguided. That, that actually there's not enough material there to go after James Comey on legal grounds. Now, listen, I, I don't think that that is going to be like, an incredibly fertile field to so, because, frankly, most Americans don't like James Comey. They think that he's a big weirdo. He's a big, gangly weirdo. He's a big, weird giant Frankenstein monster who's ready to jump out from behind curtains and sort of create bizarre seashell mosaics and such and wander around lonely in the forest trying to find Bigfoot. Nobody, nobody's shedding a lot of tears for James Comey. With that said, is that an amazing look for the Trump administration to pretty openly say they're targeting James Comey? And now for the president to say he's also targeting Adam Schiff, because most Americans aren't real fond of that. And the details here are not incredible to the ear. According to the Wall Street Journal, when Lindsey Halligan secured the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey this past week, it marked the pinnacle of her rise in President Trump's Orbit from an insurance lawyer to the person he has entrusted with the sensitive task of deploying the law to punish a longtime enemy. Last Saturday, Trump appointed Halligan to lead the U.S. attorney's office in Eastern Virginia, where her predecessor had resigned under pressure to prosecute Trump's adversaries. With the help of a small team at the FBI and limited assistance from other lawyers in the office wary of their new boss, she secured an indictment of Comey on Thursday. So, apparently Heligan presented the case herself, which is not particularly typical. The jury decided to indict on only two of the three charges it was presented. Now, that's saying a lot about the weakness of a case, because the. The old saying about a grand jury is you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. So if you bring three charges and the grand jury says no to one of them, that is one thing. Then the judge told Lindsey Halligan she had two documents before her that were inconsistent with one another. One document contained only two of the charges. The other document had all three. Halligan learned of her appointment to the new role last Saturday evening, around the time Trump posted a message on social media expressing his frustration with the DOJ's failure to prosecute. So basically appointed her five minutes later, she pushed forward with the. With the indictment. The grand jury didn't give her everything she wanted, and a lot of lawyers out there are saying it's pretty weak days. Okay, so Democrats, theoretically could. Could make some hay here. Are they going to. It's gonna be difficult. It's gonna be difficult because, frankly, they allowed the DOJ to become a political tool under Joe Biden, and they celebrated it at the time. So when Chuck Schumer now says he has no faith in the Justice Department, it's like, dude, you were there the whole time. You were there for Eric Holder, calling himself Barack Obama's wingman, and you were there for Loretta lynch on the tarmac with the Clintons. And you were there while Joe Biden was using his power to go after his chief political opponent, the man who preceded him and then replaced him. Now, here's Chuck Schumer complaining. I have no faith in Donald Trump's judicial system. He has turned this judicial system to be his own political, political fighter. Do what he wants politically so that he tells them to go after people he doesn't like. He tells them to exonerate people that he likes. So many people are getting pardoned and this and that. He has turned this Justice Department into his own political watchdog. It's Horrible. Okay, well, you know, again, I would take that a little more seriously if you had not spent years blowing out your own credibility. Along these lines, Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota, she says, well, this whole prosecution of Comey is about revenge, not the law. Which sort of begs a question. Revenge for what? What is he revenging himself? Oh, do you mean that he's revenging himself for the time that you guys used the DOJ to go after him? Would that be that. Would that be the thing you're saying right now?

Former Prosecutor or Legal Analyst (51:25)

What. I see this as a former prosecutor myself. This is weaponizing the Justice Department, basically. Taking a career prosecutor who was recommended by the Republican governor of the state of Virginia, clearly has Republican roots, who made a decision based on the evidence over a period of months, made a decision, then he's pushed out, forced out, so that the president can install his own aide into the job. When I questioned Attorney General Bondi during her confirmation hearing, she assured me that politics would not play a role, that they would make independent decisions. That is not what this is. This is a vengeance prosecution. It is not about the law.

Ben Shapiro (52:13)

And again, the question becomes revenge for what? Revenge for what? If you didn't speak out while the DOJ was targeting Donald Trump and while Russiagate was going on, you're touting the magic of Russiagate. It's very difficult now to turn around and claim that what Trump is doing is unprecedented and terrifying. What's good for the goose has to be good for the gander in order for any of this to work. Okay. Meanwhile, on foreign policy, the President of the United States is slated to hold talks with Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu. Today, there have been major negotiations over an offer to Hamas to essentially end the Gaza war. Now, essentially, the people who are negotiating right now are negotiating with themselves. They have no idea what Hamas is going to say. Qatar has been rewriting the proposals. Egypt has been rewriting the proposals. Other Arab countries are involved in the proposals. The United States is involved. Israel is involved. It appears that the United States and Israel are now sort of on the same page. The presidents of the United States put out a statement saying that talks appear to be nearing their end, that the war was in its final stages. Now, again, President Trump has been very optimistic about a number of possible deals over the course of his second presidency, ranging from Russia, Ukraine, to deals having to do with Iran. So it would not be a shock if this all fell apart, because Hamas has no interest actually in surrendering the hostages. The original draft of the 21 point document shared by the United States with a handful of Arab and Muslim countries earlier this week on the UN General assembly sidelines. The the plan is fairly controversial. It is significantly looser on Hamas in the Gaza Strip than Israelis would probably like. With that said, it does put the onus on Hamas to release the hostages and the onus on the temporary government to change its constituency so that Hamas isn't running the blaze. The 21 point plan not to go through the whole thing includes provisions like Gaza will be a de radicalized terror free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors. Which sounds great in theory. The question is how you make that happen in practice. If Israel and Hamas agree to the proposal, the war will immediately end, with the IDF halting all operations and gradually withdrawing from the Strip. Within 48 hours of Israel publicly accepting the deal, all living and deceased hostages would be returned. Once the hostages returned, Israel would free several hundred Palestinian security prisoners serving life sentences. That means murderers and terrorists. Again, that's not the United States's fault. That's Israel's fault. Israel has a bizarre view with regard to hostages, which is that basically any price ought to be paid for hostages. Again, you have to understand the the emotional empathy that Israelis have for hostages and their families, which has been crippling the country since October 7th and well before. But it is a bad war fighting strategy. What let all of this off in the first place was an idiotic deal pursued by then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get an IDF soldier named Gilad shalit back for 1,000 Hamas terrorists, including Yechie Sinwar, the architect of October 7. So this sort of math is always bad. Nonetheless, once the hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful coexistence will be granted amnesty, while members who wish to leave the Strip will be granted safe passage to receiving countries. Now, I don't even know how you commit to peaceful coexistence. If you're a Hamas member, all that means, presumably, is that you lie and you say that you are now willing to what, live in peace with everybody else? And if Israel isn't there to police the place, how exactly are you stopped from, you know, rearming aid? As soon as the agreement is reached, aid would surge into the Strip. It rates no lower than the benchmark set in the January 2025 hostage deal, including 600 trucks of aid per day, along with rehab of critical infrastructure and the entry of equipment for removing rubble. And aid would be distributed by the un, which means they would go directly back to Hamas. Obviously, now it's possible the Gaza Humanitarian foundation, which is a joint American Israeli operation, which is not handing aid to Hamas, would be involved in. But having the UN involved basically means that a lot of this money and material could flow back to Hamas. Gaza would be administered by a temporary transitional government of Palestinian technocrats who will be responsible providing day to day services for the people of the Strip. The committee will be supervised by a new international body established by the US in consultation with Arab and European partners. It will establish a framework for funding the redevelopment of Gaza until the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program. Well, good luck to that. The Palestinian Authority is deeply corrupt. It, it still retains a form of pay for slay, meaning they pay people to kill Jews. The Palestinian Authority doesn't really even handle security in the so called west bank anymore. It's a disaster area. The Palestinian Authority is in a state of full scale collapse in Judea and Samaria. But I guess the idea is that the PA is going to somehow handle the Gaza Strip and then an economic zone would be established. Now again, some of this is unobjectionable, some of this is really bad planning because I can recall a time when Israel made an international commitment to pull out from the Gaza Strip, have no military forces in the Gaza Strip, hand over running of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority, European aid would flow in, some American oversight would take place. It was called 2005, Israel did it, Hamas took over within a year and then used it as a terror base. So Israel can't afford that right now, obviously. Now with that said, it's very doubtful any of this comes to fruition because I really, really, really doubt that Hamas is, is going to take Israel up on any of this. Anything that even titularly gets rid of Hamas as the ruling party in Gaza is unlikely to be accepted by Hamas. Hamas is running out of running room here. With that said, apparently one of the conditions of the deal here is that if Hamas does not accept the deal, Qatar will expel Hamas leadership from the country. Hamas leadership knows that once it's expelled from the country, it's kind of fair game for Israel to kill them. Apparently some of the other provisions that would create pressure on Hamas, that the biggest thing that's happening right now is that Israel is being extraordinarily successful in its campaign in Gaza City. You remember all of the run up to Rafa earlier March 2024 or so, all eyes on Rafa. Israel's gonna commit genocide in Rafah. And then it turns out that Israel did an impeccable job of clearing the city of civilians and taking out the terrorists with minimal loss of life. You recall that? Well, the same thing seems to be happening in Gaza city, where over 800,000 Palestinian civilians have already evacuated, despite the fact that Hamas is trying to shoot people as they leave. So that military victory in Gaza City seems to be the end of the war, no matter how you slice it, whether there is a deal or not, even if the hostages are not back, it is very likely at that point. The United States and Israel say the war has effectively ended. Military counterinsurgency has now begun. Those operations will continue until the release or the or the freeing of the hostages by the idf. Benjamin Netanyahu last night appeared on Fox News where he praised President Trump for his efforts. Well, we're working on it, Jackie. It's not been finalized yet, but we're working with President Trump's team actually as we speak. And I hope we can make it a go because we want to free our hostages. We want to get rid of Hamas rule and have them disarmed, Gaza demilitarized and new future set up for Gazans and Israelis alike and for the whole region. So obviously, there's a lot of optimism today. We'll see very, very soon whether that optimism is justified based on Hamas reaction to all of this. Alrighty, folks, the show continues for our members right now. In just a moment, we'll get to China and Russia. Russia continues to slam Ukraine and America's policy seems to be changing pretty radically in response. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not 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.