B (8:07)

You might have heard of this thing called the equal time rule. Okay? It's an old FCC rule that applies only to radio and broadcast television, not cable or streaming, that says if a show has a candidate on during an election, they have to have all that candidate's opponents on as well. It's the FCC's most time honored rule right after no nipples at the Super Bowl. There's long been an exception for this rule, an exception for news interviews and talk show interviews with politicians. Now that's crucial. How else were voters supposed to know back in 92 that Bill Clinton sucked at saxophone? But on January 21st of this year, a letter was released by FCC chairman and smug bowling pin Brendan Carr. In this letter, Carr said he was thinking about dropping the exception for talk shows because he said some of them were motivated by partisan purposes. Well, sir, you're chairman of the fcc, so fccu.

A (9:10)

Okay, so by the way, Brendan Carr is right. Stephen Colbert obviously is motivated by partisan purposes. When was the last time he had a major Republican guest? When can you name it? Truly? When has he invited on a major Republican guest or and treated that person? By the way, if he did with the same sort of kid gloves with which he treats Democrats every day on the Stephen Colbert show is basically an ad for some Democrat or other. It is just Ms. Now, but with some bad jokes. Well, CBS responded by saying the Late show was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Representative James Talarico. The show has provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal time rule for two other candidates, including Representative Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled. The Late show decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal time options. So first Colbert and team sort of tried to retell the lie that they would not allow that the FCC had overtly banned CBS from airing the interview. That is not true. Then he tried to retell the lie that CBS banned the interview with Talarico because what they were afraid of Talarico and they, they were saying that if he aired it with Talarico, then presumably he would also have to have on a Republican like a John Cornyn or a Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate race. That is not what the equal time rule says. They're in the middle of a primary season. He would have had to had on another Democrat, Representative Jasmine Crockett. And the Late show itself, like the producers, decided not to promote that interview on the air because then they would have to do the same for other Democrats. For what it's worth, for what it's worth, Tell Rico is basically just straight Pete Buttigieg. That is his entire shtick down to the Pastor Pete routine. So one of the most irritating facets of the Pete Buttigieg for president campaign, if you can remember back that far, since every day in American politics is now charted in dog years, if you remember the Pete Buttigieg presidential run. The thing that irritated me most is when he would cite the Bible to say completely non biblical things where he would suddenly turn into your world's worst Sunday school teacher explaining to you that the Bible has nothing to say about issues ranging from same sex marriage to abortion and that basically it's just a social justice document drafted by the Democratic National Committee. Well, now James Talarico is doing the same exact thing. He's out there claiming that you're a bad Christian if you believe that, for example, same sex marriage is non biblical. For the record, same sex marriage is non biblical. There are many books of the Bible that reference this, not least of which is Leviticus. But here is James Talarico trying to do the Pastor Pete routine.

B (11:51)

Jesus gave us two commandments, love God and love neighbor. And there was no exception to that second commandment, love thy neighbor, regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation or immigration status or religious affiliation. And it's why I have fought so hard for the separation of church and state in the state capitol in Texas.

A (12:15)

I'm sorry. When Democrats tried to retail their own religiosity on the basis of Jesus apparently was a post religious figure who's in favor of secular humanism. I may not be a New Testament expert, but it seems to me that Jesus was in his human form a Jew growing up under biblical law. And that Jesus then as the creator of Christianity, proceeded to suggest that people ought to follow the precepts of Christianity rather exclusively. I feel like it's a rather non controversial take on the Bible. But the shtick that Democrats do where they have, they can't just say, listen, they don't do the old school Bill Clinton routine. It's amazing how far Democrats have moved in my lifetime. Democrats used to do this routine where they would say, sure, the Bible says that abortion is bad, that Christianity says abortion is bad, longstanding several thousand years old doctrine that abortion is not a good and that same sex marriage is not a thing and that homosexual activity is a sin. Right. Like these are long standing religious traditions, but we have separation of church and state. And so in terms of public policy, I don't make public policy on the basis of biblical law because this is not a theocracy. That used to be the Democratic stance, which I think is weak when it comes to trying to make peace with Christians, but at least is arguable. The new Democratic stance that the Bible is somehow a document that greenlights same sex marriage and encourages abortion. And that if you truly were a Christian, you would, you would be in favor of all these things. When Talarico says love thy neighbor means love thy neighbor regardless of immigration status or sexual orientation. What? When the Bible says that, what it means is that you are supposed to love thy neighbor as thyself, but you are not supposed to love his sin. In fact, you are not supposed to place a stumbling block in front of the blind. Another biblical injunction which is commonly presumed to mean that you are not supposed to allow your neighbor to go without redress if he is sinning, you're supposed to warn him. That is a biblical injunction to warn your neighbor if he is sinning. But again, it's all about the virtue signaling for the Democrats. And so back to CBS again, what's happening at CBS right now is an attempt to basically scuttle the ownership change at CBS and also to go after Bari Weiss at CBS News. It is all a virtue signaling point. It has nothing to do with reality. Democratic lawmakers, for their part, are suggesting they're now going to investigate cbs. Representative Darren Soto of Florida accused Brendan Carr of blocking Democratic candidates as part of his reign on unlawful censorship, vowing a reckoning is coming and including an investigation of this outrage by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Woohoo. The vaunted House Energy and Commerce Committee. An investigation. By the way, it just shows you what Democrats are going to do with Congress if they happen to win in 2026, which is shut everything down. I mean, basically it's going to be investigations out the wazoo. Nothing will happen ever again. Meanwhile, Anderson Cooper is doing the same routine. So he is leaving 60 minutes. He actually was given an offer by CBS News to remain, but apparently he is turning that down. You would assume the reason he's turning that down is his sort of a soft slap at Barry Weiss and her takeover of CBS News. He put out a statement, quote. Being a correspondent at 60 Minutes has been one of the highlights of my career. I got to tell amazing stories and work with some of the best producers, editors and camera crews in the business. For nearly 20 years I've been able to balance my jobs at CNN and cbs. But I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible while they want to spend time with me. So I, I imagine that sometime in the near future he will come out with his ringing critique of Barry Weiss and, and the Ellisons. And it is all about the virtue signaling for the Democrats. It is not about reality. Speaking of which, Dave Chappelle has become increasingly unfunny. Which is sad to say because Dave Chappelle is unbelievably talented. If you watch some of his earlier specials, he's an amazing storyteller. I'm not sure that there, there has ever been a comedian who has as good a just a pure storyteller as Dave Chappelle. But increasingly he's sort of just steering into left wing wokeness and, and jokes that are predicated on the idea that he is a rebel for saying things that are essentially in the DNC charter. Well, over the last 48 hours, Dave Chappelle decided that it would be worthwhile to lay flowers at a memorial for anti ice activist Alex Preddy. He visited the Alex Preddy Memorial over in Minnesota. Did Dave Chappelle There we go. Cameras are following him. A lot of cameras there. There he is. Deliver hours. Now, of course, he's doing this for the cameras. Dave Chappelle. Clearly, when you're a person as famous as Dave Chappelle, you are doing this for a reason. And. And the goal here, of course, is to serve as a critique of the Trump administration and their immigration policy. So why is he doing that? The answer, of course, is to signal. It is a virtue. Signal to his liberal audience that he is one of them. He not the first comedian who had been sort of given a soft treatment by the right. Who has done this. Bill Burr, of course, has done this repeatedly. Bill Burr made the fatal career mistake of becoming somewhat popular on the right to center right, and then he decided he had to swivel hard left in order to show all of his friends where he really stood. Chappelle is doing some of the same stuff. The reason I find this hypocritical and ridiculous, of course, is that when it comes to, say, immigration issues, Dave Chappelle standing up against ICE for tossing illegal immigrants. Kind of a fascinating take from a Dude who in 2022, quite famously rebelled against his HOA because they were going to build some affordable housing in the general area. He showed up at a village council meeting in Ohio to protest the construction of a residential community on a 52 acre plot just north of his house and proceeded to basically yell at everybody at the city council. So you Want to see NIMBYism in action? NIMBYism in action is illegal immigration, broad scale. I should stop enforcing it. But never should you ever build affordable housing within general eyesight of my home. Dave Chappelle attended a public hearing in the Ohio Village he lives in to oppose a housing development plan. So at the meeting, Dave threatened to pull a restaurant and comedy club he plans to build in the town of Yellow Springs if the proposal, which included affordable housing, went through. Let's watch.

C (18:45)

Can I believe you would make me audition for you?

A (18:48)

You look like clowns. I am not bluffing.

C (18:52)

I will take it all off the table. That's all. Thank you.

A (18:58)

So, yes, that one. I mean, NIMBYism at its finest. But unfortunately, this has become the essence of the Democratic Party. From any again, the media to celebrity culture, to the party itself. Celebrity culture. By the way, Spike Lee made a fool of himself. One of the most overrated directors in modern American history, Spike Lee, he went to the Intuit Dome in Southern California for the NBA All Star Game, and he decided that he was going to wear a Pro Palestinian look. A shirt that was based on the Palestinian kafia, as well as a purse, which I'm sure would be well received in. In the Gaza Strip. A purse, a man purse with a strap with the Palestinian flag upon it. Why did he do that? Well, the reason that he did that is because for the first time, an Israeli player actually made the All Star Game. A guy named Denny Abdia, who plays for the Portland Trailblazers. And so Spike Lee was obviously. I mean, what a schmuck. Seriously, a dude from a country that you're not fond of makes an All Star Game and you decide that you have to protest it. But this is who the Democrats are now, Spike Lee, if he is going to spend his time critiquing other countries, maybe he should spend some time in some of the worst parts of the world. So he could be a little bit more grateful for Western civilization. But while he's traveling to those terrible parts of the world, perhaps he should protect his Internet activity the way you should when you travel with, you know what I'm going to say. ExpressVPN. See, here's the thing. When you go all over the world, you actually don't know who's on your network. If the WI fi is secure, you, if the government is watching your data. That's why I take privacy seriously and why I use our sponsor, ExpressVPN. It's fast, it's reliable, it keeps my information safe. ExpressVPN is the app I trust to protect my privacy online, period. It reroutes your Internet connection so nobody, not your WI fi admin, not your service provider, not even government agencies can spy on what it is that you are doing. Obviously, I travel a lot. When I'm out of town, I have to use public WI fi. I'm using like hotel WI fi and I don't know who's on that network. So I'm using ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN encrypts 100% of your data, your logins, credit cards, all of it. So hackers are completely out of luck. And here's the thing, it is the only VPN that I actually recommend because I use it. It's ranked number one by the Verge and CNET. You can use it on up to 14 devices at once. That means your whole family is protected. Right now, you can get ExpressVPN for just 3,49amonth. That's less than 12 cents a day. And my listeners can get an additional four months of service. When you use my link@expressvpn.com Ben that's E x p r e s s vpn.com Ben for four additional months of service with ExpressVPN. I keep saying this on a broad level, but it happens to be true. So the New York Times just did a focus group on the Democratic Party among Democrats and people were asked, what word would you use to describe the Democratic Party? People said, sold out, Afraid, paralyzed. So the focus group was 13 Democratic voters. And according to the New York Times, participants in our group weren't unclear about what the party stands for, the greater good and the protection of civil rights. But many also expressed dissatisfaction with a lack of resolve this past year during shutdown fights, as well as more broadly, even recognizing that there isn't always much Democrats can do out of power. People wanted more action and more aggression, especially if and when Democrats take power again. In particular, they wanted candidates who were young, progressive, and from a more modest or working class background with clear and simple messages. As for the Democrats who are standing out to these people, Jasmine Crockett, Pete Buttigieg, Zoran Mandani, Gavin Newsom, many of them are ones who have made a point in appearing in combative media environments. So bottom line is what Democrats want at this point, what the Democratic base wants at this point is people who shout at the walls. They want people who virtue signal. Whenever you spot an uptick in the supply of a product, you should also look for an uptick in the demand for that product. And the reason that you are seeing performative outrage from Democrats across the spectrum in the elected sphere and in celebrity culture is because they feel that this is what the people want from them. Democratic voters are frustrated with the dominance of President Trump, and so they are interested in politicians who are going to channel that anger and that outrage, apparently in the dumbest possible ways. Not only that, it turns out that the people who are outrage programmed are the ones who are going to vote in primaries and fund a lot of the Democratic projects, which is why the Democratic Party systemically has a problem where it can't moderate. Alicia Nieves has a piece over at Compact magazine called why the Democratic Party Can't Moderate, and she points out that the Democratic Party structurally has a major problem. Quote, because the state Democratic Party does not centralize candidate funding, candidates must build their own donor networks. That means seeking support from national progressive organizations and PACs that have the resources to fill the gap. To access this funding, my candidate and I spent hours completing detailed questionnaires that functioned as ideological purity tests. The answers determined whether we would receive Money and how much. It also required us to place their organizational logos on the campaign's websites and display their form endorsement on social media channels. This meant adopting positions and messaging crafted by outside groups, often centered on abortion rights, LGBTQ plus issues, or national cultural debates that were not the dominant concerns of district voters. Our district, writes Alicia Nieves, covering large portions of San Antonio's south side, home to a working class, socially conservative Hispanic population that was focused on jobs, public safety, and affordability. This is a major problem for the Democrats, by the way. It's a problem for the Republicans too, as I think will become apparent in coming years. The truth is that the political parties have never been weaker. And because they are weak, you have outside interest groups that are basically dictating the speed and tenor which, with which positions are adopted. And that's how you have normally fringe players like, say, Zoran Mandani becoming mayor of New York. Your Zoran Mandani update, by the way. Democrats very warm on Zoran Mandani these days. Well, he has just announced a $127 billion budget proposal. $127 billion. So how exactly is he going to pay for all that? You know where this is going? You know where it's going. Yep. He's going to raise your taxes.

B (24:57)

These are the kinds of reserves that what we would rather do is ensure that they remain as they are so that the city can be on firm financial footing. However, in order to get to this point of closing the gap on both this fiscal year and the next fiscal year, we are forced to raid the rainy day fund, the retiree Health Benefits Trust Reserve, and to increase property taxes across these other years.

A (25:20)

So remember that time that he said he was gonna reduce the rents? So he's going to reduce the rents by increasing the rents. Because guess what happens when you increase property taxes? What do you think happens? That's right. The rents go up. Yes. Well done. Once again, Democratic Socialists of America, you've done it. You've lowered the prices by raising the prices. By the way, how much money is he spending? Well, by way of contrast, in 2001, Rudy Giuliani's budget was $38.5 billion, and his revenue was $38.5 billion. Fast forward to 2014 under communist Bill de Blasio. The budget was $72.7 billion. Revenue is $73 billion. Eric Adams dramatically increased the budget. $118 billion. Revenue, $119 billion as of 2025. And now Mamdani is raising it again $127 billion. His revenue projected creates a 5.4 billion dollar gap. So how's he going to fix that supposed crisis again? A crisis that exists only in because of his insane overspending a property tax hike on everybody and forcing the state to fill in the gap if they don't want to see the property taxes hiked. So he's basically trying to blackmail the state government to push a wealth tax in order to avoid him property taxing everybody in New York. Congrats to New Yorkers. You have done a wonderful job of absolutely screwing yourselves. Just well, well done. Truly well done. The 9.5% property tax hike would affect all owners and indirectly all renters. He also announced that he would be drawing down his rainy day fund and his retiree health trust. Oh, you geniuses, you. You've done it again. People get what they deserve in politics and, and New York City is no exception. Joining me on the line is Jason Riley. He's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. His new book, the Affirmative Action Myth why Blacks Don't Need Racial Preferences to Succeed, is available right now. Jason, thanks so much for the time. Really appreciate it.

C (27:13)

Thanks for having me.

A (27:15)

So obviously, Jesse Jackson passed away. Over the course of the last couple of days, his, his legacy has been treated as an unvarnished good, mostly by, by the legacy media. There's some on the right who have obviously been critical of his legacy. You've been following Jesse Jackson and his career for a very long time. What do you make of Jesse Jackson? Obviously, we're trying to be respectful because the man just passed away. But what was his legacy?

C (27:40)

Well, it's complicated, Ben, because it starts out in the 1960s. He's one of the youngest allies of Martin Luther King, and that's really how he got his start. And then, of course, you have the years in which he ran for president. 1984, 1988. And he did inspire a lot of black people to become more politically engaged. I was in high school and in 1988, and I recall a lot of black friends who volunteered for his campaign and so forth and were very excited to see a viable black presidential candidate. But the reason his legacy is so complicated, Ben, is because after that he really turned to what I'd have to call racial hustling. And that is his other legacy. He began an organization that essentially went around shaking down businesses in particular and Wall street businesses, especially for money. They would pay him to go away. He would criticize them until they paid up, and then he would go away and move on to the next company. And he became a very wealthy man doing this over the years, over the decades. And that, unfortunately, is one of his legacies. And the reason it's unfortunate is because when one of the most prominent black people in the country is known as a shakedown artist, it's not particularly helpful to other blacks in terms of their image among other people in the country. And that is what I think is one of the reasons his legacy is so complicated.

A (29:17)

And he had been a controversial, obviously, even in the circles that Martin Luther King traveled in from very early on, because he had been telling stories out of school about how he had been the person cradling Martin Luther King when he died after he'd been shot, it turned out that he was actually downstairs and he wasn't. He was in the building. But. But he wasn't actually the person who was cradling Martin Luther King at the time. That was a big controversy at the time when he was the person in charge of Operation Breadbasket, which was a program that was started by Martin Luther King Jr. In order to achieve more minority hiring with businesses that heretofore had not been hiring enough black people. Were allegations that there was some financial impropriety there. And of course, he also brought Al Sharpton to. To the public scene in 1969 when he. When he actually hired him to direct Operation Breadbasket. So. So there have been some. Some questions about Jesse Jackson going back a pretty long time.

C (30:06)

Oh, yes, absolutely. And you're right, it starts right there with the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis, where Ralph Abernathy, another lieutenant of and really mentor of Martin Luther King, disputed Jesse Jackson' what happened on that day. So it does go back a long ways. He was someone who was known as a self aggrandizer, a big self promoter. And you mentioned Al Sharpton and some others there. And that's another part of his legacy. I say that Jesse Jackson was one of the leading figures in what became a sort of racial grievance industry in this country. Sharpton also epitomized this. They made a lot of money blaming all black problems on white people, on white racism, and really doing things that help themselves personally rather than blacks broadly, as King had. I mean, it's easy to tell you what Martin Luther King's legacy is. I mean, it's the Civil Rights act of 1964. It's the Voting Rights act of 1965. But what is Sharpton's legacy? What is Jesse Jackson's legacy? That's much Much more difficult. The other thing that Jackson epitomized is really all that went wrong with the civil rights leadership starting in the 1960s. King and his generation was all about colorblindness. It was about equal opportunity. Jackson transformed this into racial preferences. Special treatment. Not equal treatment, special treatment. And in doing so, black civil rights leaders lost a lot of allies that they previously had. Jewish organizations among them, had been side by side marching with kings and so forth. But when the shift moved to special treatment instead of equal treatment, a lot of these former allies says, we can no longer stand with you on this. And Jackson was part of that generation that led that shift in emphasis. And it's unfortunate, because what Jackson and others thought was necessary was more black political power per se, particularly after the Voting Rights act passed. They thought that all of these racial gaps in this country would be closed. And if we could just get more of our own people in office, more black elected officials. That was part of his presidential run. That was also part of Obama's presidential run later. And we found out today, we know from experience that the problems that ail the black community are not necessarily gonna be solved by a black president or by more black elected officials. We've had black people running large cities with large black populations for decades now. But if you look at, you know, Marion Barry's Washington, D.C. or Coleman Young's Detroit, or Sharpe James Newark, or David Dinkins, New York, and on and on and on, what you see in many cases is the black poor becoming more impoverished on the watch of these black mayors and governors and senators and congressmen and so forth. So that is not necessarily what is going to fix what ails the black community. I've long said that black people need much more a black man in the home than they do a black man in the White House. And I think Obama's presidency proved that to be the case. But what really got that ball running, I think, was Jesse Jackson's runs for president back in the 1980s, where he put out there this idea that what black people really need is more black political power in this country, and that will solve these problems.

A (33:36)

One of the things that really is sort of fascinating about Jackson's career and the transformations politically that you're mentioning is that, you know, running as a person who wanted sort of economic redistributionism, which is something that obviously MLK Jr. Was very much in favor of, right. Those of us who are on the right love the individualistic message of MLK Jr. But we're not necessarily fond of his idea of how much Government should intervene in the economy. But that was transformed by people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton into, as you mentioned, a sort of racial grievance industry. And that manifested itself in Jackson and in Sharpton in a fair bit of anti Jewish baiting that happened largely in the 1980s and early 1990s. Famously, Jesse Jackson was caught on tape in 1984 using slurs with regard to New York, with regard to Jews. And you mentioned the sort of distancing that happened between the Jewish community and the black community as a result. And I think one of the things that's fascinating about our modern politics is how the Democratic Party seems to have almost embraced the grievance based politics of a Jesse Jackson circa 1984 or 1988 over the redistributionism that was actually preached by many of the civil rights leaders in the 1960s. They moved away from the sort of class based argument that was being made on the left by a lot of racial civil rights leaders and they moved toward a more race based consciousness that has now infused the entire Democratic Party and really torn apart the country in some pretty dark ways.

C (34:56)

Absolutely. And as I say, your Jacksons and Sharpton's led the charge here and it's been very lucrative. I think that's one of the reasons it's been sustained for so long. You can make a very good living in this country if you are a black person who goes around blaming all problems in the black community on white people. Black politicians use this to get people to the polls. You know, Jim Crow, 2.0, voter ID laws, it's all the same. Nothing's changed. That's been the message coming out of the black left for a long, long time. I'm, you know, more optimistic that it's starting to work less. And I don't think that it has the resonance that it once did. Even organizations like Black Lives Matter, I think have lost a lot of credibility with the general public by playing from the songbook that was written largely by the Jesse Jacksons out there. So I'm optimistic that it isn't working as well. You're right, it is divisive. And also it doesn't help black people broadly. I mean, what the civil rights leadership needed to focus on after those tremendous gains. The Civil Rights act of 64 and the Voting Rights act of 65 were preparing the black underclass in particular to take advantage of these opportunities. That means developing attitudes that are conducive to upward mobility in terms of attitudes towards school, attitudes towards the rule of law and crime, attitudes towards marriage. And raising children and so forth. These are sort of cultural transformations that had to take place. And instead, I think the black community and the black leadership, I should say in particular, took their eye off the ball and started pulling all of their eggs in this basket of seeking more political power per se as the answer to these problems. And we've learned the hard way that that was simply the wrong way to go.

A (36:50)

That is Jason Riley, senior fellow at Manhattan Institute and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Go check out his book, the Affirmative Action Myth why Blacks Don't Need Racial Preferences to Succeed. Jason, thanks so much for the time and the insight.

C (37:01)

Thank you.

A (37:03)

Meanwhile, again, because the Democratic Party is dominated by radicals, they can't disconnect from their own radicalism on immigration either. You've seen them try to make some moves toward this, saying that President Trump is right about closing the border, that Joe Biden went too far and all the rest. But the reality is that when forced to the mat, Democrats will always come out in favor of sanctuary cities and soft on the border policies. Philadelphia Mayor Sherrelle Parker was asked a basic question yesterday about sanctuary cities. She couldn't even answer that.

B (37:30)

What does the term sanctuary city mean to you? Mayor.

C (37:34)

What I want to tell you about Philadelphia, and this is extremely important that you, Claudia Vargas, have been provided an answer to the question question that you just asked from our city solicitor, Philadelphia. That means the chief lawyer for the city of Philadelphia, Renee Garcia, is our city solicitor. And what we are, the term we use to describe our city is that we are a welcoming city.

A (38:12)

Now it's a welcoming city. A welcoming city for the drug addicts down in Kensington, by the way, which is just go view the episode that we did, divided states of Biden, where he went to Kensington, which sort of an outlying area of Philadelphia. They're doing an amazing job being welcoming and it's not going amazing. Contrast that with the adult in the room. Marco Rubio, Secretary Rubio. He was asked about throwing people out of the country who are undermining American interests. And he said, yeah, those people should go.

D (38:41)

I've said this repeatedly. I don't know why it's so hard for some to comprehend it. So let me repeat it again. A visa. No one's entitled to a visa. There is no constitutional right to a visa. Okay. A visa is a permission to enter our country as a visitor, if you enter our country as a visitor and as a visitor in our country, be it a student, a tourist, a journalist, whatever you want to be, and you undertake activities that are against the national interest, the national security of the United States. We will take away your visa. In fact, if we knew you were going to do it, we probably wouldn't have given you your visa.

A (39:14)

Yep, yep. It turns out that adult governance is the thing that is necessary. Adult governance would be a really, really good thing. Speaking of which, the Trump administration right now is not in good order with the American people. Okay, those are just the polls. I regret to inform you that the President is not polling particularly well right now. His approval ratings are not good. I wish they were. They are not. His job approval rating, according to Real Clear Polling, right now is clocking in on average at probably the lowest point of either presidency. He's down at about the 40% range. The latest polls from Morning Consult have him down at 43% with 55% disapproving. Reuters Ipsos has him at 3,860, which is a terrible split, obviously. The Economist YouGov has him at minus 12. These are not good numbers. And I've suggested before that I think one of the reasons his numbers are not good is because the people who are out there representing him will not give us a break. All Americans want is adult governance. They're looking at the Democratic Party. They still see a party of open borders. They still see a party of Stephen Colbert. They still see a party that is promoting the idea that men can be women. They refuse to let that stuff go. And so all they're asking from the Trump administration is good, steady policymaking that makes their lives better. In other words, a quieter administration. I bring this up because even the stuff that's kind of like dumb online, who cares stuff, it does shape how you think about people. It just does. And if the sort of clown act by members of the Trump administration goes over well on X to the brains of people who have. Have broken brains, largely. X is a place of broken brains. That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to speak to the rest of America. So two things can be true at once. One, stuff that's really funny happens on X every single day. And two, that is not the way you program an administration. If you are looking for broad scale popularity and success, being too online is a problem. So this brings us to an ad that was put out yesterday by the RFK Maha Department of Health and Human Services. And again, listen, I understand it's meant to be funny. And, and to a certain extent I think that it's. I mean, it's very memeable. It was obviously meant to be cheesy. This isn't a rip completely with regard to RFK Jr. Or Kid Rock or even the social media team. This is. This would be good social media if we were not talking about the Secretary of Health and Human Services, but here we go. So for those who can't see, they are apparently at some sort of club. And it says rock Out Workout with some very cheesy VHS graphics and eagles and such. And then Kid Rock decides to take off his shirt, which I'm not sure anybody needed. And. And then you have rfk, who's about to go do the same, and here of RFK doing some bicep curls. And then you have. And then you have both him and Kid Rock doing some tricep extensions. And then you have them both in the sauna with Kid Rock doing push ups in the background. And then both of them riding an exercise genie from, like, 1982 in your grandmother's basement. And then you have RFK in jeans getting into an ice bath in jeans. He's apparently a Tobias Fiumke, never nude. And then he says, where's Kid Rock? And Kid Rock is in The Jacuzzi and RFK Jr. Is looking at him skeptically. And there's Kid Rock. And now they're gonna play pickleball. And then they are drinking whole milk. It does a body good. Drinking whole milk and going in ice baths with their jeans. And then it says, make America healthy again. Now, again, is that the sort of thing that is programmed to go viral? Sure. Is it funny? Sure. I mean, I laughed when I first saw it. I laughed. And it's meant to be poking fun at itself and all the rest of it. That's fine. However, if you wish to be seen as a serious administration and not as a joke, then this sort of thing is not super duper helpful. It just isn't. And the biggest problem for President Trump and the Trump administration is that the policy has been 90% good and the rollout has been 85% bad. And that's a huge problem. It just is. Now, to be fair to rfk, RFK has the highest approval ratings of pretty much any cabinet secretary, mainly because he's focused on things that people actually care about, like human health. With that said, it does speak to a fundamental lack of seriousness that sometimes characterizes the administration, ranging from Kristi Noem at the Department of Homeland Security to Pam Bondi in the AG's office. Again, there are two parties in this country, and Democrats being bad at their jobs and being unpopular does not mean that they won't win an election. It doesn't. You look at the generic congressional ballot. Right now, Democrats are up solidly in the generic congressional ballot with all of the problems I have stated about them, with their radicalism, with their lack of a program, with their unpopularity. The latest Economist YouGov poll has Democrats up 7 in the generic congressional ballot. Now again, maybe we can listen, we can cheerlead, we can pretend along, we can suggest the polls mean nothing, or we could try to course correct. And I think that as conservatives, it would be a worthwhile idea to course correct if you don't want to see Democrats in control of Congress. It's a very narrow Congress in the first place. Right now. Joining me online is Buck Sexton. Of course, you know him from the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show, nationally syndicated all across the country, and the host of the podcast Buck Brief where he discusses the news. He now has a brand new book out. It is called Manufacturing Delusion have Left uses brainwashing, indoctrination and propaganda against you. Buck, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. And congrats on the book.

E (45:00)

Oh man, Ben, thank you so much for having me. Great to see you.

A (45:05)

So let's talk about the subject of your book, how people engage in mass delusion, which seems more and more common these days. Obviously, you're a former CIA analyst and so you've looked into how movements, co op, people's brains, what are the sort of tactics that we ought to look for and what are some of the historical parallels.

E (45:22)

So, no, it's so important, Ben. I take the position, it's actually a thesis in the opening of the book that mass delusion and mass hysteria, these are, and you can consider them to be essentially the same thing. It's the biggest threat that we face as human beings today. It's actually not, as you know, climate change, it's not these things that we're led to believe are going to tear us all apart and we're all going to starve to death or any of these things. It's actually human beings going insane in, in crowds and then only regaining their senses one by one as, as Mackey wrote a long time ago. So when I was in the CIA, I was in the counterterrorism center for much of the time. I actually moved around a little bit. And so we dealt with radicalization. And so I opened the book in a place where it was my first CIA mission, which was in Nigeria, which I had never really talked about before because at the time it was definitely classified because we were Looking for what seemed to be the opening phase of radicalization in a part of that country that would eventually become Boko Haram. Right. I mean, that's the short version of the much longer story. And so that was my first experience personally with being in a place where we were trying to track almost like a virus of the mind radicalization. And I realized as I went through some other missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, dealing with jihadist, I mean, very specifically jihadist radicalization, that there's also. There's a playbook. There are similarities. And if you go back to really the origins of mind control as something of not just a science, but a political science, something practiced by regimes, you go to the people that did it in the most extreme way. Stalin, the Soviets, Maoist China. And there are variations on a theme, if you will. So I break it down into conditioning, sort of Pavlovian conditioning. And then I get into something called menticide, which is actually from a psychiatrist who debriefed Nazis in the Second World War. And he was Dutch, his name was Juice Meerloo, talking about the breakdown process. And then I get into brainwashing, which I know you have a great book, Ben. I read it years ago, Brainwashed about Hollywood. But the. The brainwashing process as it was practiced and very kind of industrialized and mechanically and specifically in Maoist China. Then some cult stuff with indoctrination. And then we get into just propaganda, which is more media AI, how this is all going to change the future. So I kind of take it. It's not meant to be necessarily historical as a timeline, but it becomes that because that's the. The origins of. And the. The progression of mind control. But the reason I care about it is because of COVID and because of what. And because of people thinking that BLM needs to be marching in the streets because thousands and thousands of black men are killed on, like, these are crazy ideas. And I know you're dealing with this on your show all the time, that are mainstream. In fact, they're mandatory belief among Democrats.

A (48:20)

So what are the most common tactics that you're seeing? I mean, obviously you're tracing the history of this sort of thing in a variety of tactics that have been used in order to create these sorts of delusions. What are the most common tactics that you're seeing these days? What are the ones that you're a common citizen. You're just spending a little bit of time on X, but you're not immersed. But you should look out for this sort of stuff because you can get sucked in.

E (48:38)

Oh, well, well, there's, for example, I mentioned menticide, so mind killing from. From Meerloo. And he's. He's sort of the. The. The Godfather, if you will, of that school of analysis for mind control. Because, again, there's. There's a lot of crossover with, really approaches to these things and with brainwashing. There's. Robert Lifton did a whole series of studies on how they broke down and then reprogrammed the minds of people in Maoist China, Cultural revolution. You know that history very well. But attack tactics, specifically, for example, in menticide confusion and degradation. And I take that to the transgender issue today, where so much of this is rooted in confusing, of course, the individual who is the, you know, the transgender person, but also everyone around them. How are you allowed to speak about this? What really is this issue? Is it an issue? Is it only an issue because we're talking about it? I mean, you've seen this so many times. This happens. It's. It's not happening. It's only happening a little bit. It's a good thing that it's happening. These are all tactics of confusion in the public discourse that are meant to undermine people's ability, I think, to see through. And this is really, truly out of the playbook, to see through what's going on. And then degradation. So confusion and degradation. Degradation meaning say that a man can. Or say that a woman can have a penis. I mean, say things that are fundamentally obviously untrue, even if you don't believe it. Being forced to mouth the preferred slogans of the regime has the effect of undermining your ability to resist mind control. Undermining being kind of brought into the mass hysteria led herd. And so that's. Those are two very specific ones within this, The. The menticide framework. And then in brainwashing, another one, for example, false confession. Then, as you know, and this was used by the Soviets too, one of the things they love to do is the bend the bend the knee. Like, did you, you know, you dead named somebody? And again, on the transgender thing, you can do this on a whole ra of things, or, you know, you said something that was in some way racially offensive that you didn't mean to you for a time, were supposed to go out and profess how deeply sorry you were to everybody, even if you didn't think you did anything wrong. Because again, that is degrading and undermining and part of the process of rewiring your thinking and changing your thinking. So that you'll fall within this, this framework that they're building of. This is how you think about it. This is how you act.

A (51:08)

So the book is manufacturing delusion, Buck. What. What's the best way for people to stand up to this sort of stuff? Because we are inundated now through our phones more than any time probably in human history with these sorts of tactics. You don't even know they're. They're being used against you. And in a time where institutional trust is really low, it becomes actually extremely easy for people to fall into beliefs and delusions because an anti establishment orientation, which. Which very often is. Is proper, can. Can be directed in some pretty negative ways.

E (51:36)

Well, that's absolutely true. You're seeing this with the rise of, and I would say, Ben, an expectation that you, you know, meaning anyone who's following events believes whatever the conspiracy theory of the moment may be, in fact, you cannot be trusted in the online discourse these days unless you're somebody who goes, oh, that crazy conspiracy, that's got to be true, right? As long as it's anti establishment or in some way like breaking from whatever the. The dominant paradigm may be. And I think a lot of people are taking advantage of this. Political movements, podcasters, a whole range of folks are deciding that their move right now is to take a point of view that is just contrary to fact, but somehow, because it is subversive, it's inherently more honest, or they present it as inherently more honest. And you mentioned also, and the defense against this, when you see the way that technology is moving so rapidly right now, such that people are able to create more and more effective deep fakes, whatever you want to call them, and to use those to shift the narrative. We're going to get to a point, Ben, very soon, if we're not already there, where people will just say, oh no, that's AI. And you'll say, well, no, it's not. Well, maybe it is. Right. And these are all subtle ways to try to shape narratives toward things that are. That are false. And in terms of the defense of this, because that's something very important. I thought about the whole time, like why, why didn't I. Why didn't you. Why didn't so many people just fall hook, line and sinker for Covid stuff, for example, or some of the COVID stuff, you know, Fauci on masks and all this other nonsense that ended up happening. And it's. You just have to not live by lies to borrow from souls and Eatson. Every time someone's lying to you or lying about something or wants you to lie, you have to just say no, there's a problem here. And if you take that mindset in, whether it's someone pushing a conspiracy theory on you or trying to get you to mouth the preferred slogans of the regime, whether it's on transgender issues or climate change or Black Lives Matter or whatever it may be, Trump worked with Russia to hack into the voting machines in 2020. These are all or 2016. These are all crazy ideas that have caught on dramatically in certain quarters. The second that someone is lying to, you have to recognize that there's a problem. There's no good, I'm lying to you for your own benefit stuff when it comes to these large narratives and these understandings the world around us. So but it's going to get harder. And I'm very honest about that in the book. It's going to get more and more difficult. And I think that this is something that people hopefully that's why they'll get the book. They'll see because again, I break down in each chapter, there's specifics about the tactics, the repetition, the things that are done. Fire hose of falsehood. I mean, there's a whole book, right? So people can go see how I lay these things out. But I think also familiarity with them, Ben, is a very useful part of the defense against falling into this kind of thought reform, as the Maoists would call it, or brainwashing, as I think we, we call it much more readily here.

A (54:41)

Well, the book, again, is Manufacturing Delusion. The author is Buck Sexton. Buck, thanks so much for stopping by. And again, congrats on the book.

E (54:47)

Thanks so much, Ben. Good to see you.

A (54:49)

All righty, folks. Coming up, the show continues for our members. We'll get to a federal judge who is now suggesting that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, you remember that guy, cannot be re detained by immigration authorities. Rogue judges doing their worst. Meanwhile, President Trump mobilizing more resources to the Middle east to face down Iran. We'll get to all of that in a moment, but you can only see that if you're a member. So head on over to Daily Wire plus right now. Become a member and use Coach Spiro checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. Okay.

E (55:20)

I wish you.

B (55:23)

You love.

A (55:33)

No, not even close. 2, 3, whatever. You know what? 2, 3, 4.

C (55:46)

I cannot believe we're back here again.

A (55:47)

Ben. If the Ben Shapiro shows Mom. And Ben After Dark is a cool mom, you know, like irresponsible.

E (56:15)

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