Sponsor Announcer (10:20)

Grand Canyon University Our Sponsor it's an affordable private Christian university based in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona. It's one of the largest universities in the country. Praised for its culture of community and impact, GCU integrates the free market system, a welcoming Christian worldview, and free and open discourse into 369 academic programs with with over 300 online join a nationwide community of learners redefining online education through GCU's 100% online MBA degree program. Learn ethical entrepreneurship and scale your business to serve your community. In addition to federal grants and aid, GCU's online students receive nearly $161 million in institutional scholarships in 2024. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University Private Christian affordable visit gcu.edu myoffer to see the scholarships you may qualify for again. So many universities right now are bilking people, they are just taking them for a ride. They are teaching kids terrible values. That is not the case at Grand Canyon University. Go get a great degree at Grand Canyon University, Private Christian and Affordable. Visit gcu Edu My offer and see the scholarships you might qualify for. Also, getting a big variety of whole food ingredients into my diet. It's it's really key, especially with the constant work travel. Our sponsor, Balance of Nature's Whole Health System makes it simple. Their convenient blend of fruits and veggies and easy to take capsules is kosher and ensures I'm getting essential nutrients every day without the hassle of prep work or meal planning. It's an effortless way to support my wellness goals while managing that busy on the go lifestyle. Balance of Nature's Whole Health System supplements are incredibly versatile, easy to work into your daily routine. The fiber and spice supplement blends smoothly into your favorite drinks. It adds a warm aromatic depth from its spice blend and if you prefer, you can even open up the fruits and veggies capsules and mix the powder directly into a smoothie or sprinkle it over your meals. What makes these supplements special is they're packed with 47 ingredients from 100% real whole fruits, vegetables, spices, fibers, everything from psyllium, husk and flaxseed to cinnamon, turmeric, mango, pineapple, wild blueberry, shiitake mushroom, spinach, kale, cayenne pepper and so much more. It's a simple way to give your body the nutrition it needs every single day. I take Balance of Nature with me on the road. It makes nutrition really easy for me. New and existing customers can get 50% off the whole health system for life with this limited time offer. Go to balance of nature.com to claim the offer.

Ben Shapiro (12:27)

First off, I should break the omerte here and just be a little bit clear the notion that people in our industry are close friends. Like we all take holiday breaks with each and go to each other's kids graduations and stuff. It's generally untrue. Some people do that. Most of us don't. We see each other at conferences and we talk on the phone and all the rest. We're business colleagues. But even if it were true that other public figures were our best friends, our very best friends, that does not relieve us of our duty to speak out of principle and not to cover up evil or shy away from addressing it out of friendship. So no, tucker carlson, it is not an excuse to go silent on candace's targeting of tp usa. Or to mirror her bull lines of questioning because you love Candace personally. The same holds true of Megyn Kelly, a person I consider a friend. Characterizing Candace as a young mother and thus shying away from committed condemning her actions or fibbing about them. That is a non starter. Meghan Markle is a young mother. Ilhan Omar is a young mother. That doesn't matter. And when Meghan said this week, my goal and my job here is to try to understand, yes, where Candace is coming from on this and says she sees no purpose in inserting herself quote into this. On one side that is a moral and logical absurdity. There is only one moral side here. Erica Kirk's side. You know, the side of the widow with two children whose husband was shot live on camera in front of all of us. Friendship with the person accusing TP USA of a cover up of Charlie's murder is no excuse for cowardice. Third, and relatedly, we have a duty to take responsibility for what we say and do. If we hire awful people, we're responsible for that. I have some experience there, as you might suspect. That means that if we offer a guest for your viewing, we owe it to you to ask the kinds of questions that actually get at the truth. If we agree with a guest, that's fine, but we should own it. So, for example, if you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi loving, anti American piece of refuge like Nick Flag Fuentes, You know the Nick Fuentes who said that the Vice President of the United States is a, quote, fat gay race traitor married to a jeet. The person who said that Charlie Kirk was a, quote, retarded idiot. The person who said, and pardon my language here, it's his quote, that he, quote, took Turning Point USA and f ed it. And that's why it's filled with gripers. If you have that person on your show and you proceed to glaze him, you ought to own it. There is a reason that Charlie Kirk despised Nick Fuentes and indeed even chided Dinesh d' Souza for debating him. He knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll and that building him up is an act of moral imbecility. And that is precisely what Tucker Carlson did. He built Nick Fuentes up and he ought to take responsibility for that. Just as he ought to take responsibility for glazing pornographer and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate, or for mainstreaming fake historian and pseudo Nazi apologist Daryl Cooper as America's best and most honest popular historian. Hosts are indeed responsible for the guests they choose and the questions they ask those guests. Fourth, because we have a duty to truth, we also have a duty to provide you with evidence of the claims that we make. Emotive accusations, conspiracy theories, and just asking questions, that's lazy and stupid and misleading. None of them are a substitute for truth. None of them are a substitute for evidence. So when Candace Owens says, I don't know, no, but I know that is retarded. And we are all more retarded for having heard it. When Steve Bannon, for example, accuses his foreign policy opponents of loyalty to a foreign country, he's not actually making an argument based in evidence. He's simply maligning people that he disagrees with. Which is indeed par for the course from a man who was once a PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein. Check the record. Our duty to provide you evidence means we actually have to do much more than just ask questions. Just asking questions is something my 5 year old does, and it's really cute when it comes from my five year old. But when grown men and women spend their days just asking questions without, you know, seeking answers. They are lying to you. In fact, they're doing something even worse. They are ceding distrust in the world around you, and they are enervating you in the process. So, for example, if many speakers, including Tucker Carlson and others, get on stage here at TPUSA and claim, without proper evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was running a Mossad rape ring being covered up by the Trump administration, they are not actually uncovering a conspiracy or effectuating a solution. They are claiming a special provenance to information they won't let you see, which builds their power and leaves you with none. They are also implicating in their speculation actual human beings, good human beings, like Kash Patel and Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi and, yes, the President of the United States, even if they're too cowardly to say President Trump's name. And that means you won't trust those good people in the future. You haven't gotten smarter. You've just been manipulated. When forced to demonstrate their evidence, these same people will often refuse to provide it. They'll claim ignorance. They'll pretend they're outside the system and they don't have access to actual information. You know, they're just asking questions. But many of these same people have direct pipelines to informational sources. So, for example, if Tucker wants answers to his questions about, say, Jeffrey Epstein, he could call the Vice President of the United States. He's quite close with him. But he won't, because that might undermine the empty speculation. None of this means there aren't actual, real conspiracies in the world. Of course there are. But actual conspiracies require actual evidence. Yes, there was a Russiagate conspiracy, and we know the names of the people involved and what they did. We know Hillary Clinton and Fusion gps and James Comey and Loretta lynch and Adam Schiff. We know all of those people. Yes, there was a COVID 19 conspiracy. We know that Anthony Fauci worked to shut down alternative solutions from people like Jay Bhattacharya. But when people posit a conspiracy and then provide you no evidence, they are doing you a fundamental disservice, and they are making you stupider in the process. Finally, because it is our job to make the lives of our audience better, that's really. Our job is to give you more information to make your lives better. We have a duty to propose solutions. That's why we have to talk about our problems in order to find the solutions. That's what politics was supposed to be about, after all, finding Solutions to our common problems. If we speak endlessly about the problems we face without ever positing a solution other than wrecking the system or centralizing power in a cult like figure, we are not finding solutions. We are merely making problems worse. Just asking questions, positing vague conspiracies, raving like Alex Jones about the secret confederacies that control your life. None of it makes your life better. None of it. In fact, it makes your life markedly worse. That's because if you truly come to believe that nothing in your life is in your control, you can't even take control of your own life. You despair of your ability to change your own circumstances. And then you fail. And you must not fail. Because here is the most fundamental truth of all in the United States, for all of its problems, many of which, a huge number of which are real and serious, the United States is still the greatest country in the history of planet Earth. We have the greatest constitution ever devised by man. We have the greatest founding philosophy ever put to paper in the Declaration of Independence. In this country, you can make of yourself what you will. And if there are true obstacles standing in your way, we can all work together to remove them. That, by the way, is the essence of conservatism. That we live in a world created by God with a logic and a rationale. That we as human beings were created in God's image, as it says in the book of Genesis, with creative capacity and the power to choose. And that in a free country of limited government and defined powers, with property rights and equality under law, our destiny is in our hands. And that we all have a duty to make the most of that historic opportunity. Anyone, anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is lying to you. And they are making your life worse in the process. Now, that lie may feel good in the moment. It may excuse us from taking the corrective action we can take on a personal level to fix our lives. It might give us someone else to blame for our own failures. But in the end, the lie kills not just your future, but the country that we've been given. So for those of us who talk for a living, that's our job. To discuss America's problems with truth and with evidence. To provide possible solutions and to encourage Americans to succeed and make great decisions. We who speak to people on a regular basis, who have a microphone and an audience, we have duties to you. The duty to speak the truth. The duty to speak from principle, not personal feeling. The duty to take responsibility for our own actions. The duty to provide you with evidence to do more than conspiracize or just ask questions. And the duty to posit real solutions. And if we fail in those duties, you shouldn't listen to us. But you have duties too. Far more important duties. Duties to God and to yourself and to your families. The duty to do the best for yourself and your family and your country with the abilities that God gave you. The duty to be grateful for this extraordinary country. The duty to celebrate what we've all been given and to fight to preserve it. All of that, every bit of that, begins with truth. We owe you that quest for truth. You owe yourselves that quest for truth. And true victory only, only comes through truth. Thanks so much. Happy to take a couple questions.

Sponsor Announcer (23:45)

America is approaching its 250th birthday. It should be a time of celebration. But did you know only 41% of Gen Z say they are actually proud to be American? Why is that number not 100%? We need to fix that fast. Thankfully, there's no organization better positioned to educate young people about the true history of this country than Prageru. For years, young Americans have been fed a steady diet of misinformation, taught to believe this country is racist, sexist and bigoted. Prageru is correcting the record. They tell the whole story, the good and the bad, but always with accuracy and appreciation for the patriots who sacrificed everything to create the greatest country in human history. Through powerful storytelling, engaging videos and family friendly resources, Prageru is reaching the next generation. Millions of young people are finally hearing a message that inspires pride, not shame. And here's something you need to know. While plenty of nonprofits line up for government money, Prageru refused it. Even when partnering with the White House, they will not let the government fund their message. That's why they rely on patriotic Americans like you. I've worked with Prageru. I've seen what they do. If we're going to win the fight for the next generation, we need Prageru well funded. Right now, every dollar you give to Prageru will be triple match, which means every dollar you give will have three times the impact. Go to prager u.com dw during the triple match and make your gift today. That's prageru.com DW hi, my name is Jenna.

Turning Point USA Student Member (25:01)

I'm one of the co presidents of the Turning Point chapter at jmu. I have a question. How do you balance telling the truth with delivery and speaking to people who disagree with you?

Ben Shapiro (25:12)

So I think obviously the truth comes first. We ought to be polite, but the truth comes first. And if you can tell the truth in a politician, that's the best way to do it. But sometimes people perceive truth as impolite. That's just the way of the world. You know, I rather famously have said that facts don't care about your feelings, and that happens to be true, you know, when you, when you engage in a conversation. I've said this to a lot of people. When you engage in a conversation, it's very important to sort of determine the end of the conversation. If it's going to be impossible to tell somebody the truth in a productive way, you probably shouldn't engage in that kind of conversation, and you should make that judgment ahead of time. But truth always has to take precedence over politeness. If the two come into conflict, particularly if you're talking publicly, as we all do for a living. I'm not talking about. You're talking to your kid and they bring you a macaroni painting and they're like, is it good or not? You're like, no, this is terrible. And you stuff it in the trash. It is terrible. But, you know, say that it's good. Then later you kind of put that. I understand. But when we're talking about politics and policy, obviously the truth has to come first. Because if we can't agree on fundamental facts, there's no possibility for solutions.

Audience Member Questioner (26:19)

Thank you for being here. Ben, you cited during your speech truth as the most important tenet of American conservatism. Why, therefore, did you call irrelevant the Israeli attack in 1967 on the USS Liberty with left dozens of American servicemen dead and hundreds wounded.

Ben Shapiro (26:44)

So what I actually said is that if we're looking at modern Israeli American relations, looking at an attack that happened mistakenly by multiple Navy reports, multiple Israeli reports, and all available evidence, and using that attack in order to undermine today's relations between Israel and America, that's irrelevant. As irrelevant as would be to cite a piece of evidence from World War II or from 1776 to define America's relations with, for example, Great Britain or Germany today. That does not mean that the attack wasn't horrible for the Americans involved, that it wasn't bloody and terrible. The Israeli government paid reparations to the people who were killed. If you look at the actual military record of what happened on the USS Liberty, it was clearly a mistaken and tragic attack. The people who frequently cite the USS Liberty, however, are not talking about the specifics of the USS Liberty. I suspect that the vast majority of people who bring this up are doing so in order to suggest that Israel deliberately attacked an American ship because Israel deliberately wants to harm America is connected generally with a larger point. I wonder if that's your point.

Audience Member Questioner (27:45)

If the truth matters, then the Israeli government must be held accountable for that attack. The American flag was flying, flying on that ship. You do not mistake an American ship for a foreign one when our flag is flying.

Ben Shapiro (28:01)

So we can spend the rest of the time talking about the specifics of the US Liberty attack, or you can actually go look at the naval investigations that were done. Multiple naval investigations that were done. The reality is that people were flying Mirage planes for the Israeli military at the time. The USS Liberty was sailing in an area where it had essentially gone off grid. The Israeli military mistook it for an Egyptian ship. They thought it was shelling all Arish, which happened not to be true. In the initial attack. The American flag was knocked down and then the attack went on for about 90 minutes. And then as soon you can hear this, by the way, on the tapes of the Israeli pilots talking to each other, as soon as they realize that it's an American ship, they call off the attack. They speed a ship to try and help the USS Liberty. There have been multiple unfortunate friendly fire incidents between allied forces, including for example in the Gulf War where US Forces were responsible for for killing about nine British troops during the Gulf War. It's an unfortunate reality of war. But you're not answering my question, which is what is your broader agenda in asking the question? Because I suspect that your question is not limited to your specific ire over an incident that happened in 1967.

Audience Member Questioner (29:07)

I think we should question any foreign country's relationship with our government.

Ben Shapiro (29:11)

That's totally fine, but I'm just wondering.

Audience Member Questioner (29:13)

Why you serve American interests.

Ben Shapiro (29:15)

Again, I'm perfectly fine with questioning any country's relationship with the United States, but again, I'm wondering what your motivation is in bringing up a six decade old attack as though it is the number one issue in assessing the relationship between Israel and the United States today.

Audience Member Questioner (29:31)

Well, many problems persist to this day. But it's interesting that you say six decades old incident when there are many people in this audience who are alive for that attack, as if this is something that's irrelevant.

Ben Shapiro (29:44)

No, it's just not particularly relevant to assessing the relationship between the United States and Israel today in the same way that in 1967 there are a wide variety of countries with which the United States had different relations. Okay, it's clear you're not going to actually answer the question, so I'm happy to move to this One.

Turning Point USA Student Member (30:08)

Unfortunately, this will be the last question. Hi, my name is Natasha and I'm a TPUSA chapter member at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. So my question is just with the divide in the conservative movement right now, what is your suggestion as to how young people can kind of come together and bridge that divide and just, you know, bring unity right now?

Ben Shapiro (30:38)

So again, I think that unity has to be reliant on first principles. No one would ask conservatives to unite with radical trans activists because that would be silly. And so we first have to decide what are the principles that we hold in common and then actually determine who are our allies in that particular fight. Now, again, the coalition may shift depending on the issue. That's kind of a normal thing in politics. Sometimes you're going to have different allies than you have with regard to other issues. But when it comes to how young people ought to decide what they believe, that's the thing I most care about. Because if I'm talking about the long term trends of America, not merely the coalitions of the moment which break and reform and reform and break constantly, right? George W. Bush's coalition was obviously not Donald Trump's coalition. And Donald Trump. Trump's coalition is not going to be J.D. vance's coalition, meaning every politician has their own coalition. That's the nature of electoral politics. What I'm more concerned about is the trajectory of how people think and what people think. And so before determining how to unify with others, you should first decide what are the things that are important to you, what are your fundamental values? And then you should find people who agree with those fundamental values. Because the problem is if you don't, then when push comes to shove, things come apart pretty quickly. Take one more.

Turning Point USA Student Member (31:51)

Hi Ben, big fan of yours and so stuff. And I'm currently a college sophomore and my university just started a chapter and it got approved. So just for your advice, how can we spread conservatism on campus and any hate or anything like that, just combat that. And what would your be? Words of encouragement.

Ben Shapiro (32:19)

I mean, my words of encouragement are look at Charlie Kirk, right? That's the word of encouragement. Charlie was your age when he started doing this. Again, I referenced earlier that I met Charlie when he was 18 years old. It was actually at David Horowitz Freedom Center Conference and Charlie was going around trying to meet donors. And I saw this really nerdy, tall, gangly kid walking around trying to meet people. And I started introducing Charlie to a few of his sort of original donors. And by the way, in the first conversation With Charlie. I've said this before, but it's true. Charlie walked away and I turned my friend, Jeremy Boreing, I said, that dude's going to be the head of the RNC one day. Because Charlie was just that much of a go getter. And it turns out that he was a lot bigger than that. I think that everyone has the potential to do that. Not everybody has the same exact skill set. And you have to find the skill set that best suits you. Maybe you're great at debate. Charlie was great at debate. Actually, what's fascinating about Charlie is that Charlie made himself great at debate. I knew Charlie when he wasn't great at debate, and then I knew Charlie when he was great at debate. He actually cultivated a skill set. It was really impressive and cool to watch him do that. That's something you can do too. So again, if Charlie can do that, a raw kid out of high school, no college degree, and build the most powerful conservative organization in America, then you can do it too, because that's what America is all about. You're an American, Go do it. Thank you so much.

Fictional Character in Dramatic Scene (33:36)

What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God? Is that who you think I was alone with? Maradin?

Ben Shapiro (33:52)

I knew your father. I am yet convinced that he was.

Fictional Character in Dramatic Scene (33:55)

Not of this world. All men know of the great Taliesin, who are my father, that the gods should war for my soul.

Ben Shapiro (34:06)

Princess Garris, savior of our people.

Fictional Character in Dramatic Scene (34:12)

I know what the bull God offered you. I was offered the same. And there is a new power at work in the world. I've seen it. A God who sacrifices what he loves for us. We are each given only one life, singer. No, we're given another. I learned of Yazu the Christ, and I have become his follower.

Ben Shapiro (34:37)

He's waiting on a miracle, and I think you can give him one. Trust in Yaesu.

Fictional Character in Dramatic Scene (34:42)

He is the only hope for men like us. Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the Great Light. Great light, Great darkness. Such things mattered to me then. What matters to you now, Mistress of lies? You, nephew. The sword of a high king. How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield? So, clinging to the promises of a God who has abandoned you. I cannot take up that sword again. You know what you must do. Great Light, forgive. The time has come to be reborn.