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- [00:00]
Rachel Maddow
Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the Briefing with Jen Psaki and more Voices you know and trust. Ms. NOW is your source for news, opinion and the world. Our name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress and the truth that you've relied on for decades. We'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions and explain how it impacts you. Ms. Now. Same mission, new name. Learn more at Ms. Now. A message from McAfee wondering why the post office is texting you? Or why you owe thousands of dollars in toll fees because someone's trying to scam you? The good news? McAfee can help with McAfee's award winning scam Detection it's easy to tell what's real and what's fake over text in your inbox and online. If they're fa, you want a free gift. Seriously, if they're faking it, they're not making it past us. Get award winning scam detection today. Mcafee.com keepitreal.
- [01:02]
Ben Shapiro
Hello friends. Guess who? That's right, it is I, the Replacer. Once again, I've been called on so you can play the new Call of Duty Black Ops 7 with three expansive modes, 18 multiplayer maps, and the tastiest zombie gameplay you've ever frickin seen.
- [01:23]
Call of Duty Black Ops 7 available now. Rated M for Mature as more Epstein files drop Some of the biggest conspiracy theorists are ensnared in the scandal itself. Plus, we get to Marjorie Taylor Greene rebelling against the President of the United States and the stock market taking a tumble. What comes next? First, tomorrow night, join me, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles and Andrew Claven for a new live episode of Friendly Fire. Get there early because right before the show starts, we are announcing the winners of our Lifetime Membership Sweepstakes. If you downloaded the Daily Wire plus app and hit follow under my profile, make sure you're here because I might be calling your name right before the show begins. Each ofUS has one lifetime membership to give away Tomorrow night. You'll hear all four winners announced before we go live at 7pm Eastern. After that, we get straight into the discussions, the arguments, the stories dominating the news cycle. Do not miss Friendly fire tomorrow at 7pm Eastern on Daily Wire Plus. Well, there's something very fishy about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. And no, of course I'm not talking about just the scandal itself, which of course remains incredibly fishy. We don't know where Jeffrey Epstein got his gigantic oodles of money in the first place we don't know whom he was trafficking to, if anyone besides himself. We don't know a lot of things about Jeffrey Epstein. But what I mean here is that the response to Jeffrey Epstein has been quite fascinating. Many of the figures who have been largely associated with the question asking about Jeffrey Epstein, it turns out that some of them are, in fact, associates of Jeffrey Epstein. And this is where things start to get weird in conspiracy land, because conspiracy land suggests that there are the people who are in on it, and then there are the people who are outside attempting to crack the code on the conspiracy. But when you are talking about a hoax, and here we're not saying that everything associated with Jeffrey Epstein is a hoax, I'm talking about the political op directed at President Trump specifically regarding Jeffrey Epstein. One of the ways you can tell when people are quote, unquote, in on the hoax is when they themselves were close associates of the person at issue. And now they've decided to try and weaponize that same person as a weapon against the people who they are targeting. Case in point, Steve Bannon. So, Steve Bannon, I've known Steve for a very, very long time. It's currently 2025, I believe. I first met Steve in 2012. So I've known Steve for 13 years or so. And, you know, I knew him back when he was at Breitbart, and I was at Breitbart as well. And we'll say that he's not the easiest human being, to put it mildly. Steve Bannon has a long history of attempting to associate himself with more powerful people, glomming onto them, and then sort of making his way up the chain. So a bit of career background on Steve Bannon, at least politically. He made a documentary about then Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann after that documentary was made. He then used that as a sort of entree card to make a documentary about Sarah Palin. After that documentary was made, he then used that as an entree card to make a documentary about Andrew Breitbart. He used that documentary in order to become a prominent person at Breitbart itself when Andrew, unfortunately, passed away. And then he used that position in order to leverage a position for himself in the first Trump administration. He, of course, ended up being ousted by the first Trump administration. President Trump called him Sloppy Steve, rather famously. He then went through a period in the wilderness where he was associating with some rather shady figures. He ended up doing a very short stint of jail time. And now, of course, he has his show, the War Room, where the media call him up routinely for quasi leaks because I'm not sure how really empowered his access is to the administration. But they're constantly using him, the media, as a sort of window into the dark side of the Trump administration, which is, of course, something that Steve really loves. Now, the reason that Steve has become an issue is because Steve, along with many other people who are attempting to wrest control of the MAGA movement away from President Trump. Their assumption is that President Trump is, in the waning days of his political power, that President Trump is, Is now close to being, if he is not already, a lame duck. And that means that the future of the Republican Party is going to be fought in an internecine war, and that's going to involve a war of all, against all people who have different perspectives on foreign policy, different perspectives on economics. And Steve believes, presumably, that he is going to have a heavy voice in deciding the future of the MAGA movement without President Trump. Now, let me be clear. There is no MAGA movement without President Trump. It does not exist. President Trump is maga. President Trump, as I have said before, is sui generis. It is. It is the President of the United States who decides the direction of maga. And every attempt, every attempt to intellectualize or philosophize President Trump to turn his impulses, to turn his instincts into a coherent political program, those have all failed. Because, again, the President holds a bunch of different conflicting thoughts at the same time. And then he tends to come down on the side of pragmatic populism. And by this, I mean that he will try things, and if they don't work, he will then move away from them. He is not ideological. And so any attempt to peg President Trump to a quote, unquote, MAGA ideology is destined to fail. Because President Trump could at one point articulate a version of MAGA in which support for Ukraine is bad. And then when Russia is intransigent, he could articulate a version of MAGA in which support for Ukraine is good. Just to take an obvious example, he could do the same thing with support for particular business people he can flip on a dime. Because President Trump, again, is not just the leader of maga, he is the definition of maga. There is no MAGA aside from President Trump. He's very much like Barack Obama in this way. Barack Obama was able to kind of gloss over all of the various divisions inside the Democratic Party without necessarily a cohesive program. Now, Obama was much more intellectually consistent and ideological in his approach than Donald Trump has been. But all attempts to sort of boil Trump down into a philosophical or ideological package which can then be transferred over to another candidate, whether that candidate is J.D. vance or whether it is Ted Cruz or whether it is Steve Bannon or whether it is somebody else. That is bound to fail because President Trump is too big for that. You can't just take what he is, sort of shrink wrap it, put it in an ideological box and and then hands it over to the next guy. So one of the things that C. Bannon has been trying to do for years is claim that he's sort of the intellectual mover and shaker behind maga, which of course is really silly. It's really silly. There is no shadow president to President Trump. There is no one who is defining his program except for President Trump. The reason I bring this up is because Steve Bannon, among many other people, being opposed to some elements of Trump's agenda and trying to run a sort of bizarre op inside the Republican Party to remove support from Trump and move it over to his version of maga. He, among other people, has been quite vocal about the so called Epstein scandal. He's been very vocal about this. He's talked about it a lot. Well, it turns out again that so much of what is happening right now is just fibery. According to the UK Guardian, hundreds of texts over almost a year show MAGA influencer Steve Bannon and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein workshopping legal and media strategies to protect Epstein from the legal and publicity quagmire that enveloped him in the last year of his life. The texts released by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday show that as early as June 2018, the pair were devising responses to the gathering storm of public outrage about Epstein's criminal history, his favorable treatment by the justice system, and his friendships with powerful figures in business, politics and academia. Remember, that's 2018. 2018. That is 10 years after Jeffrey Epstein's first conviction, after the controversial plea deal that he cut with Alex Acosta. That's ten years later. Okay, we're not talking about Donald Trump hobnobbing with Jeffrey Epstein in the late 90s. We're not talking about going to parties with Jeffrey Epstein in Mar a Lago in 2004. We are talking about 10 years after it was obvious to everyone that Jeffrey Epstein was in fact a pedophile. That 10 years after that he was acting not just as a sort of friend, but as a confidant and as a PR advisor. Which says something about somebody. If you are acting as a confidant and PR advisor to a convicted sex offender like Jeffrey Epstein, who is well known to be into underage girls, if that is. I don't know what that says about you or why you should have any level of authority in any future Republican Party. This seems to me quite damning. The texts released by the House Oversight Committee show as early as 2018, the pair were devising responses to the gathering storm of public outrage about Epstein's criminal history, his favorable treatment by the justice system, and his friendships with powerful figures in business, politics and academia. Bannon conspiratorially described the renewed scrutiny of Epstein as a sophisticated op, and over time he counseled Epstein in his adversarial responses to media outlets, the justice system and his victims. All the while, both men were also strategizing how best to promote Bannon's right wing populist agenda the political fortunes of its standard bearer, Donald Trump Bannon's identity in the threads, according to the Guardian cited in this reporting, is clear from contextual clues, including his documented activities at the time, details of his business and media pursuits, and other disclosures. In one document, the senator's phone number is not redacted. It's the same number linked to Bannon in a legal case against Trump adviser Roger Stone. The men were discussing Epstein's problems even before he came to broader public awareness as a notorious sex criminal without connections to the Trump administration. Bannon left the Trump White House in late summer 2017, and by 2018 he was hanging out and texting with Jeffrey Epstein about how to rehab Jeffrey Epstein. On June 22, 2018, days after Jeffrey Epstein had been the focus of an anti Trump protest at a Trump speech, the men began discussing the scandal that was beginning to loom over Epstein. At first they treated it as a publicity problem, with Bannon seeing it as an orchestrated campaign. Bannon asked Epstein, who is running this op on you? Something serious going on? Epstein replied, first to protest at Clinton and then at Trump. Lots of people very angry at our friendship. Bannon responded, it's an op, dude. I do this for a living. The pieces that are dropping are deeply researched, adding, this is sophisticated op. On December 18, an unknown correspondent tried to reassure Epstein, writing, quote, it will all blow over. They're really just trying to take down Trump and doing whatever they can to do that. Epstein responded, yes, thanks. It's wild because I am the one able to take him down. In early February 2019, Bannon opened an exchange on the developing story by linking to an item at the controversial news site Zero Hedge that quoted then Republican Senator Ben Sasse on the matter. And he asked Bannon on advice for how to respond. Continue to ignore attack op ed. Not my skill set, Bannon said. That drives it a week. Okay, so again, they were having these back and forths in which he was attempting to guide Epstein. And we know for a fact that there are hours and hours of tape between Epstein and Bannon that have not yet been released. Which is strange, is it not? Bannon said. Should it be an interview format? Interviewed by or just me speaking to the camera? Humor, apology. How did I get rich topics. That's Epstein asking Bannon for advice. They spoke frequently on the phone, apparently. Again, what does this mean? It means that certain people are less trustworthy than others in political media. And the fact that Steve Bannon has spent again, his entire career trying to find more powerful people to quote, unquote, advise and glom onto in order to advance his own agenda. And that didn't even stop at the doorway of Jeffrey Epstein. It says something about him and about his attempts to hijack the MAGA movement beyond President Trump. Alrighty. Coming up, more on the Epstein op. And it really is at this point an op led by many of the people who are literally involved with Jeffrey Epstein. Plus will be joined by Scott Jennings, who has a brand new book out. First, are you aware of House Bill Section 702? It extends the rights of government agencies to legally monitor American citizens without requiring a warrant. Congress just renewed it for another couple of years. While we should demand better privacy protections from our government, it's important to take steps to protect yourself in the meantime. One significant way your privacy is compromised is through your browsing history. 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So here, for example, was Steve Bannon over the summer at tpusa when everybody else was also promoting these conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein, intelligence agencies and all the rest. Here's Jeffrey Epstein's friend and quasi fixer Steve Bannon doing the exact same thing. Epstein is a key that picks the lock on so many things. Not just individuals, but also institutions, intelligence institutions, foreign governments, and who's work and who is working with him on our.
- [15:38]
Scott Jennings
Intelligence apparatus and in our government.
- [15:41]
Ben Shapiro
Now in fact, that's not even restricted to Steve Bannon. We are now finding out, for example that Stacy Plaskett, the US Virgin island non voting delegate who's a Democrat was messaging with Epstein in February 2019 while a hearing into Trump was ongoing. And she even asked Epstein for guidance. In one message, according to the Washington Post, her office confirmed to the paper that she had received texts from Epstein. Again, these sort of relationships that people had with Jeffrey Epstein, it's quite fascinating. He's on both sides of the aisle, obviously, and there is something dishonest about you having a close personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, and then turning around and spouting conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein that you could yourself easily weigh in on. Pretty fascinating. Now Democrats are trying to use the Epstein situation as a way to harm President Trump, trying to hurt President Trump. Chuck Schumer, the very endangered Senate Minority leader who may be facing. He's going to retire. I mean, he's not going to run for reelection. Here he is suggesting that President Trump is hiding something.
- [16:49]
Scott Jennings
Just, I guess a question that's out there. Why wouldn't they have been released the last four years when President Biden was in office?
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Ben Shapiro
Well, that's the question every American is asking. Not every American, but so many Americans are asking, what the hell is he hiding? Why doesn't he want them released? When you don't want something like this released? When even a whole lot of Republicans are calling for the release, his own party members, people ask the question, what's he hiding? Okay, but this raises a question for Democrats, which is, what are Democrats hiding? So one reporter asked the House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, who, as we'll get to in a minute, is going to face a primary challenger himself. The Democratic Party is coming apart at the seams. A reporter asked him, why exactly should Americans trust Democrats on Epstein when Democrats like Stacy Plaskett were texting Jeffrey Epstein?
- [17:35]
Rachel Maddow
Why should Americans trust you and House Democrats on the Jeffrey Epstein files when one of your. Congresswoman Plaskett was found to be texting.
- [17:45]
Ben Shapiro
With Jeffrey Epstein during a hearing, getting.
- [17:48]
Rachel Maddow
Information from him, using that in her.
- [17:50]
Ben Shapiro
Questioning during a congressional hearing.
- [17:52]
Rachel Maddow
And at one point he tells her, good job.
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Democratic Politician (possibly Hakeem Jeffries or similar)
This is a bipartisan effort to make sure that consistent with what the survivors have requested, that this full and complete transparency and every single predator who may be in those Justice Department files doesn't escape accountability.
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Ben Shapiro
Okay, so one of the things I noticed is you not answering the question, House Minority Leader, and the finger wagging about how you're. You're Full transparency. Fascinating. Just. Just fascinating. Meanwhile, speaking of full transparency, President Trump said yesterday that he would sign a bill to release the Epstein files here.
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He was explaining, so I'm for any. I don't. They could do whatever they want. So we'll give them everything.
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Sure.
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I would let that. Let the Senate look at it, let anybody look at it, but don't talk about it too much, because honestly, I don't want to take it away from us. It's really a Democrat problem. The Democrats were Epstein's friends.
- [18:53]
So he then continued along these lines. The President, he said, you know, the reason why I don't want to talk about this because it's a distraction from the things that are going on in actual Americans lives.
- [19:03]
All I want is I want for people to recognize a great job that I've done on pricing, on affordability, because we brought prices way down, but they go way lower on energy, on ending eight wars and another one coming pretty soon. I believe we've done a great job, and I hate to see that deflect from the great job we've done.
- [19:29]
Okay, so, you know, the President of the United States, right there, again, he is not wrong. And he's also not wrong that there is, in fact, a coalition of people who wish to take him down and degrade his presidency. And that spans from the left to the right. So, for example, Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, he's now claiming that Trump chickened out. Okay, well, I mean, you can't really have it both ways here. Either President Trump desperately wanted to avoid transparency, or he's perfectly willing to do transparency, but he's doing the thing he wants. You call him a chicken. That's kind of a weird take.
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Democratic Politician (possibly Hakeem Jeffries or similar)
Donald Trump appears to have chickened out on the Epstein scandal. He's caved. It's a complete and total surrender. Because as Democrats, we made clear from the very beginning the survivors and the American people deserve full and complete transparency as it relates to the lives that were ruined by Jeffrey Epstein, who was a monster and all of those folks who were dealing with him.
- [20:32]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so there he is saying Trump chickened out. Okay, so he's attacking Trump on Epstein, and guess who else is. Thomas Massie, of course. And the reason Thomas Massie is attacking Trump on Epstein is not because Thomas Massie is so deep in the weeds on Epstein and cares deeply about. I mean, he's right next to Ro Khanna. Come on. Ro Khanna, the Democratic Congressman from California who despises the President of the United States. The reason they're holding hands is not because they are so deeply ensconced in the Epstein case. It's because Massie doesn't like many of the things that Trump is doing as president, which is why Trump wants him primaried. Here is Thomas Massie trying to claim credit for all of this. What do you make of the president's reversal? How do you see it?
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Thomas Massie
Well, he got tired of us winning and he decided to join us. Look, they could have done this four months ago and instead they fought us every bit of the way. Now they want to be on our side. We'll accept their support. But we're, you know, a little bit suspicious of this sudden turn of events. So we'll keep an eye on things. We're worried that maybe they'll try to muck it up in the Senate.
- [21:37]
Ben Shapiro
Again. Look at the coalition here. Just look at the coalition here. And there's a reason that CNN is now praising Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie Taylor Greene was a joke and remains a joke today. The attempt to turn Marjorie Taylor Greene into some sort of honest, great intellect is like the perfect example of how strange new respect is earned simply by attacking President Trump. That's all. It's like amazing. Here is CNN's Dana Bash praising Marjorie Taylor Greene. Yeah. Remarkable interview and just a sea change.
- [22:07]
From what we've seen. In some ways, some of the rhetoric she was saying was sound. Joe Biden of there's more that unites us than divides us.
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That is not the sort of rhetoric we are used to hearing from President.
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Trump and the MAGA base.
- [22:23]
Again, like it's so ridiculous. What happened is that Marjorie Taylor Greene did an interview where she apologized for her toxic language. No one believes this. No one with half a brain believes this. But you're looking for a rationale for glazing Marjorie Taylor Greene because she opposes the president. Now, it is that simple. It is. That's how much. So Jamie Raskin, who was a participant in the impeachment trial for President Trump on the Democratic side, Congressman from Maryland, says Marjorie Taylor Greene should join the Democratic Party. Now, we are a big tent. We must be a huge, vast tent. I say this is a party that's got room for Marjorie Taylor Greene if she wants to come over. Okay, okay, fine, fine. Again, it is, it is indicative of what's actually happening. The Epstein thing, particularly from the right, is just a way to undermine the president's agenda. It really is. Because no one on the right truly believes that the president of the United States is complicit in a child sex trafficking cover up. If you're on the right and you believe, if you believe that, you should just say it out loud. You really should I noticed the cowardice of people who are softly making this claim. They never mentioned Trump's name at least credit to Massey he'll at least say Trump's name. I mean I think he's wrong and I think his priorities are screwed up but at least he'll say that the quiet part out loud. All these other people like ah, President Trump, people around Trump. Somebody is manipulating the Epstein somebody again. The same people who are fellow traveling with Steve Bannon, a literal advisor to Jeffrey Epstein complaining about President Trump. I think maybe you guys have another agenda. Alrighty. Coming up, we're going to be joined by Scott Jennings. Plus we'll talk about the AI bubble. Is that about to burst? 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Check them out at gcu.edu/my offer and see the scholarships you might qualify for. Joining me on the line is Scott Jennings. He of course is a senior political contributor at cnn, host of the Scott Jennings show on Salem Radio, and he's the author of the brand new book A Revolution of Common Sense, How Donald Trump Stormed Washington and Fought for Western Civilization that is out today. Scott, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.
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Scott Jennings
Ben, thanks for having me on. Good to see you.
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Ben Shapiro
So let's talk about your brand new book. Obviously, President Trump has been under a lot of fire recently. That is happening from both the right and the left. But the reality is that he is the transformative figure of our period. No question. So what caused you to write this book?
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Scott Jennings
Well, when I was listening to his inaugural address, he used the phrase a revolution of common sense and I thought that would make a great title for a book. When I pitched him on it in February, I told him I thought he revolutionized political campaigning and at that point, you know, he had hit the ground running with 200 executive orders. I mean, they had really smashed Washington before it ever got out of bed. And I said, I think you're revolutionizing governing. It's the most active presidency since FDR. And I said, I think 100 people are going to write a book crapping on you and somebody who likes you and voted for you ought to write a book about it and about how Middle America is absorbing what you're doing. And he bought it and we worked together on it, interviewed the cabinet, a lot of his staff and spent some time with him. It was an eye opening experience Now.
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Ben Shapiro
Scott, one of the things that I find fascinating about President Trump, and I've been talking about this a lot, is that when people say MAGA is an ideological program, that's not true. President Trump is maga and he is unbelievably pragmatic. He tends to take the 70 position on pretty much every 70, 30 issue. And what that means is that he ends up, oddly, being a moderate in a world of polarized politics. That's what happened in the last election cycle. While the media want to portray him as some sort of wild eyed fanatic, the reality is that they are significantly more fanatical in their politics than President Trump is in his day to day politics.
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Scott Jennings
Yeah, look, he would describe his decision making is just trying to take the common sense issue. Now, he would also say, and I've asked him before, do you consider yourself to be a conservative? And he said, yeah, but you know, most of the time conservative is common sense. But I'm trying to do the common sense thing on most issues. So in the book, you know, I write about DEI issues, I write about his taking on the transgender cult out there. I write about the straws, the paper straws. I mean, I was in the Oval Office today, he banned the paper straws. I mean, he sort of picks things out that are common sense, 80, 20, that annoy people that are culturally significant, and he is not afraid to go after it. And the last four years under Biden, we were sort of all walking around being forced to accept things that we knew were nonsense, but everybody was too afraid, I guess, out in the, the institutional world to say it. Trump comes in and takes the wet blanket off of America. And part of his political magic is just saying what everyone else is already thinking, but they're too afraid to do it. He does it for them.
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Ben Shapiro
Scott, one of the things that's been very weird to watch is obviously we're now seeing people inside the Republican Party acting as though the President is a lame duck. He is not, in fact, a lame duck. He still has three years left of his actual presidency. But there is this bizarre attempt by some to wrest away what they think is, quote, unquote, the legacy of MAGA from President Trump, as though MAGA exists apart. And aside from President Trump, what do you make of it?
- [29:25]
Scott Jennings
Well, what I make of it is that the isolationists in the Republican Party who have always wanted Trump to be a pure isolationist, but who are sorely disappointed in it, are trying to move away from him or trying to destabilize his presidency I trace it all back to the decision to strike Iran. When that happened, you had a number of people who've been in his orbit, who've been claiming to be his supporters, who were urging him not to do it. He defied them. And ever since that moment, they've been picking at him. They've been trying to destabilize him. They've been opposing him. Take Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance. You go back to the summer, she's opposed him on that stuff in the Middle East. Now she is opposing him on deportation. She runs off to the View to criticize him. And so what I see are the pure isolationists who are disappointed with Trump trying to separate him from his people. I think it's a fool's errand, truthfully. Trump is as popular with his base today as he's ever been. And of course, when these things happen, the media always tries to, you know, they want to argue. Finally, Donald Trump's losing his base. Finally, he's, you know, a lame duck, as you say. Of course, none of this is true. It's complete and total nonsense. He's the strongest political figure, the strongest party boss we've had in modern American politics, and that's not changed today.
- [30:37]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah. One of the things that, again, is fascinating is the attempt to sidetrack him with things like the Epstein scandal, which supposedly is about President Trump. And again, it is such an obvious op by so many of his political opponents to elevate this. When the Biden administration had full access to all of these files for four years, if, if they wanted to release some bad information about President Trump from the files, there's no doubt that absolutely would have happened and that the President of the United States at the time, Joe Biden, would have actually had the power to do that. They had no scruples about, you know, his tax returns leaking into public view. For example. It is amazing to me that there are so many members on the Republican side of the aisle who really are attempting to undermine his presidency, but by focusing in on Epstein, and again, this idea that there's something deep and dark hiding in the Epstein files, and that's what President Trump is bothered about. I mean, you spent time with him, he's been saying, and people I've talked to who are very close with him have been saying no. The real reason he doesn't really want all that out there is not because he is anti transparency. It's because he doesn't feel like talking about dumb crap in the middle of a presidency that is still very active.
- [31:37]
Scott Jennings
That's 100% correct. This issue is still not anywhere near the most important issue for the American people. A he knows it, baby. You know, look, there is some governing responsibility here. I mean, you've got to. Let's just pretend you've got some boxes of documents sitting here. People's names appear in those documents who may not have done a thing wrong. All of a sudden you dump this out on the street. Now people are implicated in something who've not been charged with a crime, who haven't done anything wrong at all. I think that's a valid concern. But the bottom line is Democrats are constantly looking for things to tie him up, run out the clock on his presidency. They did it in the first term, and this is obviously what they're trying to do with this in the second term. So now they're all going to vote for it. And fine. I'll tell you, the left may regret going down this road. I mean, what have we learned so far? We've learned a Democrat member of Congress, Stacey Plaskett, was being programmed to say things in committee hearings by Jeffrey Epstein. We've learned that Larry Summers was soliciting dating advice from Jeffrey Epstein. He's now having to step back from public life. There may be a number of figures on the left here who get ensnared in embarrassing situations here or worse, but I don't think it's going to be Donald Trump at all.
- [32:42]
Ben Shapiro
Well, Scott, having spent so much time with the president, what do you think his top priorities need to be in the run up to the midterm elections? Obviously, affordability is on everybody's mind. He has spelled out a few kind of ideas that he's thrown out there. The truth is that some of this is just not in his hands because, you know, beyond things like not passing gigantic inflationary bills, there's not much that's in any president's hands. Actually, with regard to the general overall global economy. What do you think the president needs to focus on?
- [33:06]
Scott Jennings
Well, I mean, look, the thing that dictates outcomes in elections is almost always the economy. And so, you know, to the extent that he's already put in motion his economic policies, you know, making permanent the tax cuts, deregulation, energy production, which, by the way, has lowered gas prices. It was $5 under Biden. We're approaching $2 under Trump. That's absolutely true. But part of the issue is now selling it and saying my policies will lead to this better trajectory for the United States. So some of it, I think, is just focus. And what do you spend your time on and attention on giving the American people the feeling that you're in touch with what they're feeling in their daily life? He's a great salesman and so, you know, up until now I think he's been somewhat of a foreign policy president, which may shock a lot of people. He's had a ton of foreign policy success in the run up to a midterm. I would just run around the country. They hired him in the first place because he's a businessman and they trust him to make correct economic decisions. I think he's made good economic decisions so far. He just now needs to go explain why he's got the trajectory correct and he cannot let the Democrats get away from this affordability debate scot free here. I mean, these people took prices to the moon under Joe Biden and now they want to lecture him about normalizing rates of inflation. It's kind of crazy. You can't memory hole that four year period where prices went to the moon. It's not like prices are going to go back to 2017 levels. But the rates of inflation here, I mean, it's laughable to hear a Democrat criticize him on grocery prices or anything else after what they did to the country. And I think reminding voters of that is a critical issue.
- [34:39]
Ben Shapiro
What's Scott Jennings? His brand new book is A Revolution of Common Sense. How Donald Trump Stormed Washington and Fought for Western Civilization. And of course you can watch him on cnn, particularly on Abby Phillip, shall we say battling with the left. Scott, thanks so much for the time. Really appreciate it.
- [34:53]
Scott Jennings
Thanks, Ben.
- [34:55]
Ben Shapiro
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- [37:56]
Sundar Pichai
Given the potential of this technology, the excitement is very rational. It's also true when we go through these investment cycles, there are moments we overshoot collectively as an industry. We can look back at the Internet right now. There was clearly a lot of excess investment. But none of us would question whether the Internet was profound or did it drive a lot of impact. It's fundamentally changed how we work digitally as a society. I expect AI to be the same. So I think it's both rational and there. There are elements of irrationality through a moment like this.
- [38:38]
Ben Shapiro
Now, again, it'll be interesting. I mean, even he is sort of saying it right, that there, there's a lot of bubble here. And that's not just him and Sam Altman of OpenAI, which is the company that may be the, the center of the bubble because OpenAI is privately traded. And so that means there are a lot of deals that are happening with OpenAI in which companies are essentially lending OpenAI money to buy chips on the other side, or they're investing in OpenAI and then OpenAI is using that money in order to buy chips from Nvidia, and then Nvidia is lending more money to OpenAI and all the rest. Well, all the way back in August, he suggested that we may be in a bubble. Quote, when bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth. Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes. And again, that seems rational to me. But one of the key indicators that maybe we're in a bubble is that the institutional investors seem to be divesting themselves of stock in places like Nvidia. That is true, apparently, for Peter Thiel. Report yesterday that Peter Thiel is dumping his stake in Nvidia. Peter is, of course, an incredibly smart human being, and so you'd be well advised to follow his trading strategy rather than being the guy who's picking up the stock from Peter Thiel. Apparently they sold off their entire stake in Nvidia during the third quarter. Their fund sold around 537,000 shares in the AI chip front runner in the quarter, that stake would have been worth around $100 million. Now again, that's not like a giant chunk of Nvidia stock. Nvidia is the highest valued company on planet Earth right now in the trillions of dollars. But it is an indicator. You sell when you think the market's high. You don't sell when you think it's going to keep going up. Meanwhile, over at Calshe, one of our sponsors, the worries about the Federal Reserve deciding not to cut rates further. Basically, I think there's enough liquidity in the economy, as I've been saying. I'm of the opinion the Fed is not going to cut rates in December because they're looking at this, the inflation is still too high. There are not problems with obtaining liquidity. There's a problem of what to do with the liquidity. Right now, the calcium market suggests 52% of people are saying that the Fed will maintain its current rate. 49% of people are saying they will cut the rates. That is a dramatic jump from November 12, when almost 75% of people were saying that they were going to cut the rates and only a quarter of people were saying they weren't going to cut the rates. So something is changing, and something is changing pretty quickly here. Now, meanwhile, this is only exacerbating concerns about affordability, because if people feel as though what's coming around the bend here is nothing good and they're already paying too much money, they're worried about what comes next. President Trump is out there touting his economic record. Yesterday he was saying that the investments are coming in fast and furious. He did this at the McDonald's Impact Summit, where he opened, by the way, with a great joke about how a fry cook has become president, because of course, he had that very famous photo shoot where he was in the back room at a McDonald's cooking up the fries. Here he was yesterday talking about his economic strategy.
- [41:40]
We have over $17 trillion being invested in our country in nine months. It's now just about ready to crack. 18. And by the end of one year, we will have about 20 to 21 trillion dollars invested in our country. That's more by 10 times the highest amount of ever invested in any country ever before. And it's largely because of tariffs.
- [42:08]
Okay, now I disagree. Okay, I disagree. You can have a bunch of companies that come in and say they're going to put billions of dollars into the American economy and make big statements at the, at the Oval Office about it. If that money never materializes, or if it only materializes over the course of years, or, as is the case, they're already planning to make those investments and now they're just announcing it publicly. That doesn't change the trajectory of the economy. The economy has worked better under President Trump than it did under Joe Biden for a few very simple reasons. One, the tax rates are consistent. They are not changing. Two, regulations are coming down. Those would be the big reasons. It is not because of the tariffs. The President was touting his tax cuts. The big problem with him touting the tax cuts is that while it's great that we maintain the same tax rates in the one big beautiful bill, that didn't fundamentally change the underlying substructure. There was uncertainty in the economy about whether taxes were going to go up. But once they just stayed where they were, that isn't actually quote, unquote, a tax break. It's a continuation of his very successful first term policy in lowering taxes.
- [43:13]
While Democrats wanted to give Americans the largest tax hike in history, in July, I proudly gave you the largest tax cuts in American history and signed the one big beautiful bill. I could caught the great big beautiful bill into law that includes no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors. That is a big deal.
- [43:37]
Okay, now again, he's not wrong. It is a big deal. But does it fundamentally change the underlying systems in the United States to the extent that you're going to get more investment and more innovation, or does it just maintain what was and at the same time that you're maintaining what was, which is a good thing. If you throw a bunch of sand into the gears with the tariffs, what you end up doing is creating confusion. And so people are taking the money that they have and they are stacking it. Again, it is not a coincidence that they are stacking their money, particularly in the markets at the upper end of the market, in areas that are significantly less subject to tariff regulations. Like tech. Like tech. The underlying fundamentals of companies that are, for example, manufacturing or service industry companies that require inputs from other countries, a lot of those companies don't know what's coming next and that maintain that continues to be a problem. Now President Trump is trying a bunch of short term band aids. This is always a bad indicator for an administration. When administrations have to rely upon short term band aids, they got a problem. Here's the President teasing the idea of giving $2,000 tariff rebates to people ahead of the midterms. Again, this, this, these sorts of like short term juiced stimulus packages, they tend to increase inflation and they don't really change people's overall lives for the better in any significant way. In even the midterm.
- [44:55]
Taking in hundreds of millions of dollars in tariff money, we're going to be issuing dividends later on, some, somewhere prior to, you know, probably in the middle of next year, a little bit later than that of thousands of dollars for individuals of moderate income, middle income. We're going to pay down debt. You know, we have a lot of money from tariffs. If we didn't have tariffs, this nation would be in serious trouble.
- [45:21]
Now, if you actually want to help Americans right now, particularly on, for example, student debt, where Americans took out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt, largely subsidized by the federal government, and now they can't pay it back. Joe Biden tried to do student debt relief. He tried to basically just say, you don't have to pay anything back from now on. And again, that's a form of stimulus. It also creates a, an incentive trap, a disincentive for people to actually pay back their loans and all the rest. There has been some talk about shifting the burden of payments over to the colleges rather than to the taxpayer, basically saying that if people default, the colleges have to eat it. If those colleges have been handing out crappy degrees, which, yeah, I'm kind of fond of, that I'd be interested in legislative solutions regarding that, at least on a going forward basis. But the reality is, what the markets are looking for, as always, is simply some level of consistency, some level of consistency, some level of sustainability. And all these short term band aids are very unlikely to achieve that sort of thing. Meanwhile, President Trump can count on the Democrats continuing to be as crazy as humanly possible. Graham Platner, who is the Nazi tattooed candidate from Maine, who is essentially a cradle socialist, masquerading as a man of the people, as so many Democrats are here, he was suggesting that if the Democrats gain control of government, they should pack the Supreme Court and change the systems of government. And the reason that Trump was elected is not just because of Trump. It's also because the Democrats have gone crazy.
- [46:52]
Scott Jennings
We're going to have to start treating.
- [46:53]
Bill Maher
The Supreme Court like the political action wing that it has become of conservative. It is not functioning as a constitutional body. And I firmly believe if we held Supreme Court justices to the same standard that we hold other federal judges, There is a compelling case for the impeachment and removal of at least two citizens.
- [47:15]
Ben Shapiro
So, I mean, if they campaign on this, then Republicans actually do have a better shot in the midterms. The more crazy Democrats go, the more Republicans have a better shot. Speaking of which, Hakeem Jeffries is now apparently going to face a primary challenger. There's no one left enough for the Democratic party at this point, according to Breitbart, a Brooklyn City Councilman known for his ties to progressive movements has formally launched a campaign committee to challenge House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in the 2026 Democrat primary, mounting a rare intraparty bid against one of the highest ranking Democrats in Congress. On Monday, November 17, the FEC received a new statement of organization for a campaign committee titled Chi OSI for Congress. The filing confirms that Chi Ose, a 27 year old Brooklyn councilman, intends to run in New York's 8th congressional district. He recently rejoined the DSA. OC openly identifies as queer and has reportedly told political allies he plans to run during the 2026 midterms. He is a Zoran Mamdani acolyte. Mamdani apparently discouraged OC from running. He's afraid that that's going to rip open the sort of gap that exists between TSA and the traditional Democratic Party. Apparently again, he is an emissary of the radical left, and the radical left continues to eat the Democratic Party piecemeal. Meanwhile, mainstream Democrats are having some staffing problems, apparently Senator Tammy Duckworth's office, according to Breitbart, has now fired a staffer who is accused of pretending to be an attorney to free an illegal immigrant from ICE custody, according to a report. Fox News's Bill Milligan shared a letter that Duckworth directed at Todd Lyons, the acting director of ice. In that letter, Duckworth explained she was responding to Lyons's Nov. 12 letter regarding interactions between her now former staffer and ICE officials, and she added that her office has terminated the employment of the staffer. But these are the kinds of people who are staffing up some of the congressional offices or people who masquerade as lawyers in order to apparently violate the law. Now, speaking of people Democratic staffers violating the law, according to the New York Post, alleged Chinese mole Linda sun brazenly forged then lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul's signature in glowing missives sent to dignitaries from the Henan province in China, according to feds and documents presented at her bombshell trial. Jurors in Brooklyn federal court were shown copies of letters purportedly sent by Hochul on March 26, 2018, inviting a six member delegation from the province in central China to a meeting with then Governor Andrew Cuomo. But the signatures were forged, apparently by this person who was allegedly a Chinese spy. Sun was serving as Cuomo's Director of Asian American affairs and forged the governor's then number two Hochul signature several times that year in an attempt to curry favor with Chinese officials and our government is honeycomb. There are a lot of people in the precincts of government who are working for the Chinese government. That is just a reality. It's an unfortunate reality, but it is indeed a reality. And that spans apparently coast to coast from New York to California. Meanwhile, again, the, the, the question of, of which party is going to act in the interests of sanity remains an open one. So Democrats continue to fail to acknowledge that their radical wing is going to hurt them. Bill Maher had an interesting episode of Club Random with Patton Oswald, the comedian and the voice of the rat from Ratatouille about the facts on left wing extremism. Here's what it sounded like.
- [50:32]
Bill Maher
That's not what we started to teach, which was that every baby is, I don't know, let's not even put it on the birth certificate. That's what they wanted.
- [50:41]
Ben Shapiro
Were we teaching that?
- [50:42]
Bill Maher
Yes.
- [50:43]
Ben Shapiro
When were we teaching that?
- [50:44]
Bill Maher
Teaching it. It was a law here in California, see.
- [50:47]
Ben Shapiro
To teach what?
- [50:48]
Bill Maher
Don't put sex on the birth certificate. We'll see. Now we've passed that period now where.
- [50:57]
Ben Shapiro
I'm sorry, I don't remember that.
- [50:58]
Bill Maher
I mean, I know because it doesn't get in the blue sky bubble.
- [51:01]
Ben Shapiro
Wait a minute. I'm not just a blue sky.
- [51:04]
Bill Maher
I really think that's a lot of it, is that some of this stuff doesn't get in to everybody's media.
- [51:10]
Ben Shapiro
He is right about that. But the fact that so many Democrats are unwilling to acknowledge that remains the problem. Sunny Hostin is one of those Democrats here. She was on the View yesterday suggesting that Trump's victory just demonstrates that Americans are racist and sexist.
- [51:22]
Sunny Hostin
This is a country based on racism and slavery and founding it, founded in it, there is systemic racism and misogyny and misogyny. And there are people that no one, I've never met anyone that raises their hand and says I am racist. However, there are people that seem to be able to look the other way when it comes to racism. So you have a president who trafficked, traffics in misogyny, who traffics in xenophobia, who traffics in sexism, and won. And he won and won against a black woman. So don't tell me that this country is ready for a black woman. Don't tell me this country is ready for a woman.
- [52:08]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, one of the things here, it's just incredible. Democrats are going to continue to label the American people racist and sexist and all the rest, even though President Trump won huge numbers of women, huge numbers of minorities. Now, that doesn't mean those people are going to stay in the Republican camp forever. And this is the problem for Republicans. When you look at the future, when you look at 2028, the question is not who can maintain Trump's coalition. Every politician must have their own coalition. That's just the way politics works. No one is going to inherit all of Trump's voters. They'll inherit a large portion of Trump's voters if they're Republican, but not all of them. And you need more votes than President Trump won in this last election to win the next election, because the voter base grows in every single election by a few million votes. And so the question is, who can expand the coalition and how? That is the main thing that Republicans should be focused on when it comes to 2028 candidacies. Who can win? Who is capable of winning? Perhaps it's J.D. vance. Maybe it's someone else. We don't know yet. It's very, very early. One bad indicator for Republicans, Harry Enton, is pointing out that President Trump's poll numbers among Latinos have taken a serious nosedive. That is largely because of the coverage around immigration. Again, when the president said, support all the illegal immigrants, I never thought that he meant that literally. I don't think anyone thought that he meant that literally, because it was never going to happen. We weren't going to take 15 to 20 million illegal immigrants and simply deport them wholesale. What President Trump did, that's popular, when you break down his actual immigration policy, which is still one of his more popular policies, when you break down what he's actually doing is popular, but that's not the headline. Well, when we talk about winning the presidency in 2028, we should look back for a moment at how Republicans have done with the Latino Hispanic vote. So I asked our sponsors at Comet, a new web browser, by perplexity, to list the share of the Hispanic Latino vote won by each Republican presidential candidate since 1980 was based on exit poll and major media data. Reagan won 37% in 1980 and 34% in 1984. Now, again, it was easier to win with those percentages when the country was significantly less Hispanic Latino. The percentage that you need to win of that vote in order to win the presidency has gone up because there are more Hispanic and Latino voters as a percentage of the population now than there were in 1980. 1988, George H. W. Bush won at 30%. 1992, he won 25%. He lost Bob Dole in 1996, 21%. He lost 2000. George W. Bush won 35%. He won 2004, 44%. He won 2008. John McCain won 31%. He lost 2012. Mitt Romney won 27%. He lost 2016. President Trump won 28% and somehow pulled out that miracle victory. But he did lose the popular vote, obviously in 2020, he won 32% and he lost. And in 2024, he won somewhere between 42 and 46% and he won. So if you were to set some sort of benchmark here that doesn't really include the kind of fluky wins that Republicans achieved, 2000 and 2016 were both unbelievably close elections. Republicans ended up winning, but not very handily, and they clocked in somewhere between 32 and 28% somewhere in that neighborhood. If Republicans wish to win the presidency and they wish to do so relatively handily, they need to win at a minimum 37 to 40% of the Hispanic vote. It seems to me that that is pretty clear, probably higher. And so if Republicans start losing those votes in massive numbers because Democrats stop being quite so crazy on the social issues and they back off some of their nuttier positions on crime and they stop doing the DEI kind of nonsense with regard to, with regard to racial set asides and trans and blm, if Democrats move back toward normality, they will win a larger share of the Latino Hispanic vote. And Republicans are going to have to present something to Latinos and Hispanics in order to win. And again, that doesn't mean going soft on immigration. It just means actually enforcing the parts of immigration law that are the most popular to enforce. So right now what he has done is he has shut the southern border totally popular. There are very few people who object to this, including Democrats. And then there's deporting criminal illegal immigrants. Again, very few people object to that. And then there are the sort of large scale raids that are making a lot of press right now. And that apparently is alienating people. Here's Harry Anton explaining from cnn. What about the Latino vote overall? All right, how do Latinos feel about Donald Trump overall? Let's take a look here. This, I think, sort of gives the game away. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I mean, that is the phrase of the day. Trump's net approval rating among Latinos in early February. Again, he was just two points underwater. Look at where he is now. Late October, minus 34 points. 34 points underwater. A shift of 32 points. So again, this is something to keep an eye on if you're a Republican who wants Republicans to win in 2028. Obviously, you do have to keep your eye on the polls and on reality. Okay? Meanwhile, speaking of immigration, President Trump's immigration policy is now being adopted even by members of the left. Okay? That is the reality. And so if we are talking about the president's plummeting poll numbers with Latinos, one of the things that Republicans need to be pointing to again and again and again is that Democrats are just against deporting even criminal illegal immigrants. So North Carolina Governor Josh Stein, who is very upset that the ICE agents are working in Charlotte, he's out there claiming the agents are targeting and racially profiling.
- [57:33]
Democratic Politician (possibly Hakeem Jeffries or similar)
We've seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling and picking up random people in parking lots and off of our sidewalks, going after landscapers, simply decorating a Christmas tree in someone's front yard.
- [57:54]
Ben Shapiro
Okay? This right here is going to be the Democrat campaign. It's incumbent on President Trump and the administration to continue to show the faces of the criminal illegal immigrants that they are arresting and to publicize those extremely heavily. That's what they should be doing. Because here's the reality. Everybody with any shred of common sense knows that that's a good idea. Including, by the way, the U.K. according to the Wall Street Journal, the U.K. government on Monday announced an overhaul of its immigration policy to deter asylum seekers from arriving on British shores, the latest European nation to tighten rules. In response to to growing dissatisfaction from voters at levels of illegal immigration, the labor government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a suite of policies, including changing laws to make it easier to expel migrants, quadrupling the length of time they have to wait to become permanent residents to 20 years, and regularly reviewing whether their home countries have become safer and can take them back. Britain is also threatening countries mainly in Africa with restricting visas unless they accept illegal migrants and criminals back into their countries. So even Britain is now adopting the immigration policies of the President of the United States, which makes perfect sense because those are practical policies. That's the stuff that the Trump administration needs to be focusing on. And they can't allow the narrative to get away from them with, you know, colorful images about the suffering of Abuela being arrested in front of the Christmas tree. Alrighty. Coming up, we'll get to the latest in the Middle East, a major move by the Trump administration with the acquiescence of the United Nations. Actually, remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.
- [59:44]
And Doug Here we have the Limu.
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Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
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Ben Shapiro
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Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
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Ben Shapiro
It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
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Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera.
- [60:03]
Bill Maher
They see us.
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Ben Shapiro
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Ferry Unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates Excludes.
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Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
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Rachel Maddow
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