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- [00:00]
Ben Shapiro
Here's a topic most people avoid planning for the inevitable Death comes for all of us. That doesn't mean you have to leave chaos in your wake. Our sponsor, Trust and Wills online estate planning helps you get your affairs in order. If you've got kids, if you own a home, if you're caring for aging parents, it's time to think about estate planning. You're not alone in putting this off. 43% of Americans admit they haven't gotten around to making a will yet. We all procrastinate, even on the important stuff. The good news Trust and Will lets you create an estate plan in about 30 minutes. And even if you're not sure where to start, their online platform guides you through every step. You can get one on one help from attorneys in your state if you need it. Worried about the cost or think you don't have enough assets? Everyone has something worth passing on. Trust and Will believes estate planning should be accessible to everyone. So they've made it affordable today and valuable when it matters tomorrow. Don't wait until it's too late. Protect your loved ones today, tomorrow and beyond with Trust and Will, the most trusted name in online estate planning. Head on over to trustandwill.com Shapiro get 20% off that's that's trustandwill.com Shapiro get your 20% off trustandwill.com Shapiro that's trustandwill.com to get your 20% off. Let's be honest, buying seafood can feel like a gamble. That's why I want to tell you about our sponsor, Wild Alaskan Co. The easiest way to get wild caught perfectly portioned seafood delivered straight to your door. Not only is it convenient, it's also delicious. Wild Alaskan company is 100% wild caught. Never farm fish. That means no antibiotics, no GMOs, no additives, no just real fish. Producer Phil he's been ordering from them and he says that it is much better than, you know, the junk that he's getting over at the store. Because of their process, it's frozen right off the boat to lock in all that amazing flavor and texture. Plus, every order supports sustainable fishing practices in Alaska so you can feel great about what you're eating. They also offer 100% money back guarantee on your first box. If you're not satisfied, they'll refund you no questions asked. Not all fish are the same. Get seafood you can trust. Head on over to wild alaskan.com Shapiro for 35 bucks off your first box of premium wild caught seafood. That's wild alaskan.com Shapiro get 35 bucks off your very first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode of the Ben Shapiro Show. Again, head on over to wildalaskin.com Shapiro for 35 bucks off. Yes, the rumors are true. Jonathan Majors, the massive movie star, is joining a Daily Wire production. I'll have all the details for you in just one moment. Plus, is action about to break out over Iran and Zoram Hamdani visits the Oval Office again. First, your reminder. Then after dark tonight, 7:30pm Eastern. You're not going to want to miss. Well, I was pausing so you could read my mind, but you can. Well, Oz Perlman sure can. You don't want to miss it. It really is kind of crazy. Also, Savvy loses her job almost by telling me things I didn't want to know about Dolly Parton. And we talk about my lifelong dream of dispensing gasoline from my fingers. None of that makes sense. Well, it's not supposed to. That's why we do Ben After Dark to do things that make no sense. So 7:30pm tonight. Well, yes, we here at the Daily Wire are doing the things that other companies won't do. Particularly we are playing in the cultural space. We are interested in winning in the cultural space. You've seen us do this over and over and over again and we are doing it again. There were rumors yesterday that the Daily Wire is working with the formal Marvel action star Jonathan Majors to make a brand new action movie. Those rumors are true and we are ecstatic about this. Jonathan Majors is unbelievably talented. Now there are a bunch of people on Twitter, particularly on the left, who are very upset about this. And let's be clear, they are not upset because Jonathan Majors was canceled back in 2023 over what was at best a pretty empty conviction. That is not why they are upset today. The reason they're upset today is because they don't want anyone in the right working with actually talented stars. They don't want that happening and that's why we are doing it. So for those who are concerned about Jonathan Majors, his past and all that, Harry Levin over at TMZ had a good rundown on the case. Here's what he had to say.
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Unidentified Male Commentator
Congratulations to Jonathan Majors. He is back shooting movies. He is shooting a movie in South Carolina right now. This is after a four year kind of not self imposed hiatus, you know, after the trial with his ex girlfriend. I'm gonna say it again. Jonathan Majors got screwed by Hollywood because he Won that trial. If you remember, his ex girlfriend said that Jonathan had assaulted her in a vehicle, inside a vehicle, in the backseat. I think it was an Uber. And you know, when he. When they got in the car, you see him kind of push her in. They didn't prosecute him for the little pushing in. That was not what this case was about. It was about whether he assaulted her inside the vehicle. The jury voted unanimously, not guilty, that he did not do it. This is after the Uber driver testified, others testified, and the jury said it didn't happen. They convicted him because he did kind of push her into the cabin. That's never why. Not at all why he was prosecuted. He won that case. But Hollywood is so skittish that they basically banished him. He's back and he's a big star. And I gotta say, I always thought that Hollywood screwed him. And so he is back shooting this movie. It's really interesting. He's shooting it with the Daily Wire, is producing it. And they have produced other movies where people have been kind of in similar situations. Gina Carano, they did a movie with her, the Daily Wires, a conservative outlet. And I think that it's not an accident that the Daily Wire is one of the producers of this film. I think there is kind of a reaction.
- [05:39]
Ben Shapiro
Well, yes, there is a reaction. And this isn't the first time that we have worked to un. Cancel someone who is improperly canceled. Obviously, Gina Carano being an obvious example after she was canceled by Disney for the great crime of. Of tweeting something that they didn't like. And now, obviously Disney has had to back off of that position and said that they will work with Gina again. Again, Gina's about to do a fight on Netflix. So congrats to Gina there. There have been other people that we've worked with in this vein. Roseanne Barr works with us on Bertram. So we're proud to be working with Jonathan. Not just that, folks. This movie that we are producing with Jonathan, it is going to explode brains. It is truly going. I wish I could tell you more about it. I really wish for. I could tell you more about what we are doing here, what this movie is going. We will have updates for you over the course of coming months. But it is audacious and it is radical and it is unbelievable. And so, yes, that is something that Daily Wire is doing. We are very excited to announce that we're working with Jonathan Majors. This, by the way, is why we need your support as subscribers, is so that we can go do this sort of stuff. If you don't like these the left wing woke nonsense that you see constantly spewed from Hollywood, then we're the place to go to fight that. Please join us to do all of that over at dailywire plus.com well you know what else we like here at Dailywire? Companies that actually like you. Companies that actually like your viewpoint. One of those is our longtime sponsors over at Pure Talk. Pure Talk is great. Their service is the best. They have the same wireless network as the big guys, the same tower network. And that means you get great coverage. At 25 bucks a month for unlimited talk text, plenty of data, Pure Talk savings continue every day. Think about it. The cost of one or two meals versus the hundreds the big wireless charges families every month. There's no reason wireless service needs to be super expensive. What makes Pure Talk different goes beyond just price. They're an American wireless company that actively supports our veterans and invests in a US based customer service team. So when you call, you're speaking with someone right here at home who can actually help you. I use Peer Talk all the time. My entire team basically uses PeerTalk. They have great coverage and again, I care a lot about the calls that I make. I want the best cell phone service and I want the best price and I want a company that likes my priorities. That's Pure Talk. Enjoy that superior 5G coverage without the inflated price. 25 bucks a month for talk text, plenty of data. What are you waiting for? Go to PureTalk.com/Shapiro. You'll get 50% off your very first month of coverage. Again, that's pure talk.comshapiro to make that switch on over to Pure Talk. And meanwhile, in other entertainment news, Netflix has now backed out of its bid for Warner Brothers. This was a very hotly fought bid for Warner Brothers. Paramount is now set to pick it up, according to the Hollywood Reporter. In a stunning twist, Netflix is declining to raise its bid for Warner Brothers, positioning David Ellison's Paramount as the winner in the battle for the fabled studio. Netflix Co CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters released a statement Thursday outlining their decision, saying the deal is no longer financially attractive and that it was always nice to have at the right price, but not a must have at any price. Netflix's stock actually went up in the aftermath of them announcing that they were dropping their bid. Obviously what had originally happened is that Warner Brothers had accepted Netflix's bid and turned down Paramount's bid. And then Paramount kept upping its bid to the point where finally there was no way for Warner Brothers to refuse the bid. Apparently, they're leveraging up in order to execute this bid. The. The price that they are seeking is extraordinary. I mean, this is a very, very high price. Paramount's latest proposal was for $31 per share, which is unbelievable. It had a number of other sweeteners, including a ticking fee payable to shareholders equal to $0.25 per quarter beginning after September 30, 2027, as well as a $7 billion regulatory termination if the transaction doesn't close. So that means that they're going to shell out $7 billion if this thing somehow falls apart. Paramount even agreed to pay the $2.8 billion termination fee that Warner Brothers would be required to pay to Netflix to terminate the existing merger agreement. Now, there are people on the left who are very upset about this too, because the way that it works, apparently on the left is that they must have total cultural dominance in every sphere or they get very upset for the same reason. The left is not upset that we are working with Jonathan Majors because they're very upset at Jonathan Majors. They're upset because of us. That's why. Okay, this is the same sort of thing. They're very upset because if Hollywood had said, listen, Jonathan Majors did what he was supposed to do, he did his court ordered counseling and all the rest, and now we're bringing him back as Kang the Conqueror in Marvel, everybody would have gone, oh, that's nice, that's good. But because it's us, that's the thing they're upset about. They don't want people who are not radically of the left playing in their spaces. They don't like it at all. Which is precisely why we are doing it. You can see the same sentiment now being applied to the Ellisons picking up Warner Brothers. So Jim Acosta, who. Ladies, find you a man who loves you like Jim Acosta loves Jim Acosta, the former CNN reporter. He put out a statement, quote, as I've been warning America now has state compromised media. When 60 Minutes or CNN is in trouble, we're all in trouble. Trump has cracked the code in how to hurt the press. Free speech is now at risk. Maga. Corporations must not control the news, Support independent media. And so, first of all, let me just point out that the very cozy hand in glove relationship between the government and various news outlets, it was very, very, very cozy during Joe Biden. So much so that they basically covered up the fact that he was no longer functional in the brain. The relationship between Barack Obama and press outlets like CNN at The time was unbelievably warm. They never asked him tough questions. We all know this. So. So the sudden shock of, oh my God. Somebody who disagrees with us politically sometimes might own a network that I used to work at. Whoa. Oh no. What are we going to do? Get over it, Manud. Let's be real. CNN is not going to radically change its programming. And again, you've seen the left go insane over Barry Weiss taking over CBS News. Barry Weiss is not a flaming right winger. I know Barry. I'm friends with Barry. That's ridiculous. Barry is pretty much dead center. Barry is not some sort of radical right wing voice. The attempt to turn her into one is a reactionary response to the fact that the left has had complete monopolistic dominance in these spaces for a super long time. And now that is ending. And that ending is a very, very good thing. What's the actual outcome going to be in terms of Paramount now being in charge of HBO or in charge of cnn? We don't know yet. We'll have to see how all of that plays out. And frankly, were it I. The amount that is being paid out for Warner Brothers seems exorbitant to me. The sales price is. It's insane. It's like $111 billion. That's a lot of money. I feel like I could make a lot of content for $111 billion. But they wanted the IP. They wanted particularly things like the Harry Potter IP and the Batman IP and. And all the rest of. Do I think that Netflix is in serious trouble now? No, I don't. Do I think that Paramount is better off? We'll have to see. But the actual resistance to the thing, the reason people are angry once again has nothing to do. Nothing to do with the sort of idea that entertainment is somehow going to be made worse by all of this. They're just angry that someone that they disagree with politically made a move. That's all. Well, speaking of people making moves, apparently in California, it has now been decided that it is worthwhile for a registered sex offender to run for city council. This is a move, I guess the end of the road for. For Democratic politicians is to normalize sex offenses as some sort of resistance against the paternalistic state. Okay. Renee Campos, a Fresno native, requires you register as a sex offender. Has now announced plans to run for District 7 seat on the Fresno City Council. He was charged in 2018 with possession of child sex abuse material. Um, here's the explanation. I believe Fresno deserves leaders that are honest from the very beginning, not the end. So going into this, I am putting my life out there. So I say let's choose somebody outside the box, somebody who knows the system from inside out. Because me, I've experienced the laws that we are trying to reform right now. Well, I mean, that's a hell of an argument. So you experienced the law because you were convicted of child sex abuse, material possession, so now you should make the law. Okay, okay. But of course, California is indeed a crazy place. Which brings us to Gavin Newsom. So Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, he is constantly trying to swim in every pond simultaneously. Gavin Newsom has more political positions than the Kama Sutra. Gavin Newsom has taken every position it is possible to take. When I do a podcast with Gavin Newsom, then he tries to play moderate on a wild variety of issues, but when he is in left wing circles, then all of a sudden he is left of Karl Marx. So yesterday the governor of California said that California was born of genocide. This is so tiring. It's so tiring. Guys, just be normal. Just be somebody somewhere, some please on the left, on the right, like, can we all just be normal a little bit? Like a little normal, please. I know it's a lot to ask in our crazed social media era and an era when the nuttiest people control the primaries, but like, seriously, some normality, like just a little. Here's Gavin Newsom explaining that he runs a genocide state or something.
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Unidentified Male Commentator 2
I begin the book talking about looking out over the American river where Eureka, Eureka was yelled, yelled and yellow gold. And how, you know, we were born of genocide in California. We talk. I try to paint, you know, picture that is about California, it's about America, it's my family, it's the journey. And so I do think there's aspects of this that people can connect to in a, in a very meaningful way, I hope.
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Ben Shapiro
Oh boy. I mean, by the way, there was not a genocide. That, that is not. That is not a thing. Disease is not a genocide. What. What killed an enormous part of the population of Native Americans in the United States was not violent war. It was actual disease. Disease, not purposefully spread like in a concentration camp is not a genocide. Again, Gavin Newsom told me right out, he doesn't even know the definition of the word genocide. This is like two months ago. What is your opinion of this?
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Unidentified Male Commentator 2
My opinion is I understand the tendency for people to make that, to assert that. Why, on the basis of the images and the proportionality doesn't mean genocide. No, no. And by the way, I agree with you.
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Ben Shapiro
And international. And I'm not. Doesn't mean that if you kill my child and I then kill seven criminals that I've been disproportionate.
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Unidentified Male Commentator 2
I'm not disagreeing with you. But I think the. But I understand that tendency on the basis of. Of trying to reconcile the proportionate nature of how the war was ultimately conducted and the devastation.
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Ben Shapiro
I have a question. Why do you feel the need to create a permission structure for that sort of stuff? Meaning it's not true. Why not just say it's not true?
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Unidentified Male Commentator 2
Yeah, look, I don't know the definition and I don't know the legal threshold. That's not my opinion. So I don't share that opinion as it relates to genocide. I do not agree with that notion.
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Ben Shapiro
Okay, so he doesn't know what a genocide is. But also California is built on genocide or some such nonsense. Why can't people just be normal? Just be normal. Just tell the truth and be normal. I will say that Gavin Newsom is better than the other Democrats who are running because he's more Clintonian than anything else. He's super. He's super squirrely on pretty much every issue, which I will admit is better than the ideological rigor that is usually demanded inside the Democratic Party. Someone who's perfectly consistent. Representative Ayanna Pressley, and she represents a huge chunk of the Democratic Party, at least in her ideology. And she says that ice, like the KKK, cannot be reformed. Someone who's been calling for the defunding and abolishing of it since 2018. It cannot be reformed. This is not about training, in my opinion. This is not about new standards or protocols.
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Harmony Dhillon
If the KKK cannot be reformed, then I certainly cannot be because this is
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Ben Shapiro
just another group of masked white militia. Oh, boy. Oh boy. So, yeah, again, this is. This is the heart of the Democratic Party. We're finding that out anew over in Texas where Jasmine Crockett is running against James Talarico. So James Talarico was supposed to be new Beto o'. Rourke. He was going to be the hot new Democrat running in Texas who's going to defeat the Republicans and walk away with the Senate seat. And a lot of elite coastal money was pouring into James Talarico. He was appearing on late night television. He was sort of a straight Pete Buttigieg. And it turns out that actually in the Democratic primaries in Texas, the person leading is certifiable nut job Jasmine Crockett, who has spent her career cosplaying as a sort of low rent demagogic Politician switching her accent, speaking differently, using extraordinarily evocative language. Well, right now, according to a brand new poll, the Texas Tribune reporting, Crockett has garnered the support of 56% of voters. Talarico is stuck at 44%. She has a massive advantage with black voters. She has 87% support with Black voters. Talarico only has a narrow advantage with white voters. He only wins them by six. Hispanic voters are a virtual toss up, with Crockett leading by four points. That same poll, by the way, shows Attorney General Ken Paxton and John Cornyn running neck and neck. Paxton's at 36, corner at 34. There will likely be a runoff because the way that it works in Texas is that if nobody hits 50%, there's a runoff between the top two candidates. Jasmine Crockett, Man, Democrats are so. This is so crazy. Just stop being crazy. Why are you all being crazy? I mean, seriously, better for Republicans if Jasmine Crockett's the nominee. So I guess I'm not complaining. But I am a little complaining because I would like for both major parties to stop nominating and electing nut jobs to high office. That would be awesome. Seriously, how do you know that this is going poorly? Cardi B. Is out there stumping for Jasmine Crockett here. She was. All right, man. Listen up, y'. All. Early primary voting is happening right now in Texas, and we need Jasmine Crockett to win. She is running for U.S. senate. And if you want somebody that's going to fight for your right, if you want somebody to fight for your community, if you want somebody that's going to go up there and represent you and represent your issues, please vote for my sister, Jasmine Crockett. Because one thing about it, she's gonna fight her best. She's gonna fight whoever she has to. So your voice and your problems could be heard. Vote right now. This counts so much. Vote right now. Well, if it seems as though Cardi B. Is unbalanced, it's because she is a little unbalanced. But I mean, like, physically. I don't mean mentally unbalanced. She might be that, but. But she is actually physically unbalanced. I mean, a couple of clips of her recently falling over. I. I assume due to disproportionality. I love that. Then she has to. She has to play it into more pornographic action. She falls off the chair and immediately starts acting even more pornographic than normal. I mean, that follows close upon an incident just a few weeks ago in which she tried to get all up on a robot and then fell over. So I guess AI for the win here. She was giving a lap dance to a robot, the photographers, and boom. Oh, down she goes. Down she goes. The robot made an aggressive move on her. Our politics are so everyone's. Everything is healthy. Everything is going perfectly well. Well, over at the Oval Office, it seems to me that the President should not be normalizing people on the left who are, in fact, radicals. And yet the president did precisely that yesterday in New York City, taking happy pictures with Zoran Mamdani, our Marxist stealth jihadist supporting mayor of New York. Mamdani keeps visiting, and as long as he is nice to Trump, Trump is nice to him. This is the very basic rule with President Trump. I do not think it is a good rule, but it happens to be the reality. Mayor Mamdani went there. He put out a tweet saying, I had a productive meeting with President Trump this afternoon. I'm looking forward to building more housing in New York City. So how exactly did Mamdani woo Trump? He brought him a fake newspaper that said, I'm not even kidding you. He brought him a fake newspaper juxtaposed to a real one. So there was a newspaper, the New York Daily News, back during the Ford era, the Gerald Ford era. There's a headline that said, Ford to city, Drop dead. That's when he rejected aid to New York. So now Mamdani brought a fake New York Daily News headline that said, Trump to city, let's build. And there's Trump grinning with it. My dude. Mr. President, I support you. I think you've done an enormous lot of good. Please do not be suckered by the silliness of Zoramdani. Please be. Don't do it. Please don't do it. It's ridiculous. Because it's not just that. Mamdani is now announcing that President Trump will provide $21 billion in federal grants for a long stalled project that would involve building 12,000 affordable apartments and an entirely new neighborhood on top of Sunnyside Yards in Queens. It's not just that he pitched Trump on that. So your federal taxpayer dollars now go to subsidize Zoran Mamdani's agenda in New York City, which I do not think is a good idea. I don't understand why my. I'm paying a lot of taxes to the federal government. I don't know why I'm paying for Zoran Mamdani's affordable housing proposals in New York City. No, you want to do it in New York, Go for it yourself. That's your problem. That is not the problem of taxpayers living in other parts of the country. This is why federalism exists. And the president doing that because he got handed a headline by zormadani. I'm no on that. But it's not just that. The president also then bent over backwards to please Mamdani over a Columbia student named Elmina Agajeva who was detained by ice and he put out a statement. Just got off the phone with President Trump. In our meeting earlier, I shared my concerns about Columbia student Elmina Agajeva who was detained by ICE this morning. He has just informed me she will be released immediately. This is not the way that law and order works. If she violated the law, she should be deported. If she did not violate the law, she should not be deported. This sort of bizarre picking and choosing who should be deported and who shouldn't based on personal like and dislike. Yeah, it's, it's strange. It's a, it's a strange thing. And, and somehow supercharging Zor Momdani's popularity back home. That, that, that is, that is a fail. By the way. New York still being run like trash. Yesterday, Manhattan DA dropped a charge against a New Yorker who is assaulting police officers by throwing snowballs at them. Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolence association, told reporters that the purported snowball fight was an attack on the uniform these police officers wear every day. Doesn't matter the day dropped it. Meanwhile, workers in New York are getting paid $45 an hour. $45 an hour to shovel snow. So what do you see in the video of them shoveling snow? Nine dudes surrounding one snowball and shoveling one snowball. Look at this. Look at this. You just got a bunch of people standing around doing the worst shoveling I have ever seen. You mean if you pay city workers $45 an hour to shovel, they're going to slow walk their shoveling? Who, who would have known? Who, who could have ever predicted such a thing? The government is great at overpaying for bloated bureaucratic nonsense and wasting your money. Don't. Don't humor that. Please don't humor that. Meanwhile, I've spoken about the craziness of the left quite a lot. The craziness of the right is no less bothersome to me. I want to give some credit to our own Matt Walsh, who yesterday went after Candace Owens. Candace Owens, of course, has been spreading complete poppycock, nonsense, trash about Erica Kirk since shortly after Erica Kirk's husband was murdered in front of all of us. I've talked about this extensively. I've been calling it out extensively for months. Matt Walsh did an entire episode yesterday that is totally worth the listen in which he broke down Candace's bizarro world conspiracy theories about Erica Kirk here was Matt taking this on.
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Unidentified Male Commentator 2
There isn't enough evidence to justify dragging her into a police precinct, much less charging her with a crime, much less convicting her. There isn't any evidence, actual positive evidence, that Erica has committed any crime or covered up any crime or had any involvement in any crime to include, especially the crime of murdering her husband. And that's why, although the innuendos about Erica may be compelling fodder for YouTube videos, they would not be compelling to a grand jury or a prosecutor or a judge. If you took everything that's been said about Erica or implied and tried to present it as evidence in a court of law, you would be laughed out of the room. There's no case here. There's no evidence of anything. Now, these attacks on Erica by Candace and by everyone else engaged in this campaign are wrong, deeply, desperately wrong. Wrong morally and factually. They are wrong morally because they are wrong factually.
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Ben Shapiro
Hey, I don't understand why it's hard for others to say the same thing. Matt, of course, saying the obvious here, but we live in an era where saying the obvious requires some measure of actual courage. Walsh continued by saying, of course Erica didn't do this. Stop with this nonsense.
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Unidentified Male Commentator 2
The point is that Erica didn't do any of that. There is no evidence that she did any of that. No evidence at all, period. Defaming anybody with untrue accusations is. Is very bad. But defaming a widow, the grieving wife of a man that we all say we loved and admired, is unspeakably, horrifically bad.
- [28:50]
Ben Shapiro
And then, as Matt pointed out, and as I have been pointing out for months and months and months at this point, the fact is that we know who killed Charlie Kirk. And the entire right has been misdirected from talking about, for example, trans act of violence because of the rabbit hole stupidity of a conspiratorial right that is eating itself alive.
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Unidentified Male Commentator 2
Even if you don't like how she acts, the pants she wears, her facial expressions, anything else, you have no actual evidence based reason to think that she is guilty of committing any crime. And if she isn't guilty of a crime, then all you're doing is nitpicking a widow, which is every bit like critiquing the color of somebody's nail polish while you watch them drown in the ocean and make no attempt to help. Yes, maybe she made an odd choice of nail polish that day. She's also drowning. And that would seem to be the more salient fact. And it's interesting to me to note that Tyler Robinson is not subjected to even a fraction of the public scrutiny, even though all of the evidence, literally all of the evidence points to him. There is no evidence connecting Erica to the crime. All of it, all of the evidence we do have, every bit of it connects Tyler Robinson to it. And yet for some reason, he's not the subject of public scorn.
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Ben Shapiro
That, of course, is exactly right. And so I would urge others who have been conspicuously silent, many others, to do the obvious here. We'll see if they take up the call or whether they continue to be gigantic cucks on behalf of conspiratorial nonsense. Well, meanwhile, in international news, the US Embassy has now informed its staffers that they may leave the country. They may consider leaving the country of Israel, the reason being the possibility of an impending U.S. strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities and other facilities. The negotiations apparently aren't going that well, which, of course, is no surprise at all. The United States made several demands of the Iranians on the nuclear front. They demanded that Iran dismantle its facilities for building nuclear weapons. They demanded that Iran ship out its enriched uranium. And they demanded a forever pledge, basically an enforceable forever pledge not to build nuclear weapons. And Iran said no to all those things. That was, by the way, the short list of things that the United States should have been asking for. Apparently, the negotiations did not include negotiations over ballistic missile development, did not include negotiations over the treatment of protesters, which, by the way, you will recall, that is the thing that led this off. Again, one of the most hysterical things that I'm seeing right now are commentators, many on the right, many on the left as well, who are doing this routine where they're saying that somehow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is talking Donald Trump into a war. Okay, let us be clear about the timeline here. Last year, Israel unilaterally went after Iran, completely destroyed its air defense resources and did tremendous damage to IRGC facilities and leadership capacity in Iran. And then the United States, at the last minute in Operation Midnight Hammer, authorized by President Trump, flew a single B2 sortie over a nuclear facility and blew it up in Fordo. That is what happened. So what let off this round, you may recall, if you have a memory longer than that of a goldfish, what actually led this off is that just a few Weeks ago, there were massive protests inside Iran against the government. Not a lot of Jews in those protests, not a lot of Israelis in those protests. Just gigantic millions of people protesting against the Iranian regime. And you might recall the President of the United States making a public statement that people should stay out in the streets. Help is on the way. And then you may recall that the Iranian government shot to death some 32,000 people in the streets. And that put the President of the United States in a little bit of a box. Because if you say help is on the way and you encourage people to go into the streets to protest a regime, and then those people get blown away, well, it might make you look a little weak if you don't do anything about that. And President Trump does not like to look weak. The President of the United States would much prefer that the United States be strong on the world stage, that people respect our power and our power of deterrence. And the president historically has understood this. And so the president began mobilizing military resources into the Middle East. And in fact, he considered a straightaway strike on the Iranians. And according to contemporaneous reports, the Israeli government told the United States, don't just do a pinprick strike. That doesn't mean anything, because all that does is draw return fire for no apparent gain. So either go big or go home. That was the advice, which seems to me given by anyone to be good advice, because hitting a camel in the ass with a tomahawk doesn't do anything. We watched Barack Obama do it during his administration, and it achieved literally nothing. In some cases, it was counterproductive. So the United States military was deployed at scale to the region. And President Trump simultaneously deployed negotiators, his top negotiators, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, to the Middle east to try to negotiate in Geneva, actually, with the Iranians. And he promised over and over and over to the Iranians that a deal was forthcoming, a deal was awaiting. He said this last year, too. He's been trying this for over a year, that he wants a deal. He would rather do a deal than do a bombing. And the Iranians keep saying no, because to be fair to the evil and horrifying Iranian regime, they themselves are in a box. They are weak. If they give up their nuclear aspirations and their support of terror proxy groups all over the region, they might have to focus for half a second on helping their people, but they don't want to help their people. The most extraordinary and astounding thing about the Iranian regime is that at any, literally any moment, like right now, as we speak, the Iranian regime could say publicly, we're shipping all the nuclear material out of the country. We're shutting down our nuclear facilities. We're stopping our support of terrorism. Let us reenter the world economy and. And build up our economy and give people the freedom to live their lives to a certain extent necessary to economically prosper. And you could still be an Islamic State hellhole, but you would be integrated into the. Into the family of nations, so to speak, because there are countries that are very much like that. I name Pakistan here as one example. So you absolutely could do something like that if you're. But they don't want to do that because that would require them to actually run the country even half decently. They're not going to do that. And so their choice is between continuing to foster chaos in the region or to go down the toilet. Those are their two choices. And it seems they've kind of chosen both. They and their proxies chose to launch an existential war against the state of Israel, and they lost. They got their asses kicked. And now they're hurting. They're hurting economically. The Iranian real is trading to the US dollar at 0.00 United States dollars, rounded, literally. It has no value. None, Zero value. It would take, I kid you not, one million Iranian rials. One million Iranian rials now equal 76 cents. That's how worthless their currency is. The Iranian government has been incapable of procuring water for Tehran. Before this latest round of protests, they were talking about shifting the capital of their entire country out of Tehran because they could not get water to Tehran. So this whole notion that President Trump is being pressured by Israel into going to war for Israel, it was President Trump who made the decision to call out the Iranian regime. President Trump has been perfectly consistent for, for his entire political life that not only should the Iranian government not have weapons of mass destruction like nuclear facilities, but also that the Iranian government should not be supporting terrorism. And by the way, it would be a boon for the world for the Iranian regime to go away. And the people who seem to be standing somehow for the Iranian regime, do you really think that Donald Trump is going to get us involved in a land war in Iran for hundreds of thousands of troops are sitting on the ground? Do you really think that's the thing that President Trump is going to do? Don't be stupid. But people are being deliberately stupid, and not just that they're being cowardly. I'm seeing many of the critics of the Trump administration doing this routine where they say, well, Trump may not have a choice. He may not have a choice. He's being forced in. Forced into it by whom? He's the most powerful man on planet Earth in charge of the most powerful military in the history of mankind. Forced by whom precisely? What is he? Some sort of dullard who can't make his own decisions, who's being directed by malicious outside forces?
- [37:45]
Unidentified Male Commentator 2
Hmm?
- [37:47]
Ben Shapiro
You pathetic clowns. Seriously pathetic clownery from people on the left who are saying this, from people on the right who are saying this. It's just clownish nonsense. The President will make whatever decision he makes. I may agree with it, I may disagree with it, but it's the President who's going to be making that decision, not anybody else. In any case, this weekend may be a timeline for action. As the New York Times is reporting, the United States Embassy in Jerusalem has told its workers they may leave Israel and warn them that if they want to, it's vital they do so immediately. Mike Huckabee, the ambassador to Israel, put out a statement to the staffers saying that those wishing to leave should do so today. I assume that's because airspace may be closed because maybe difficult to get in and out of the airport. He said in the email that the embassy's move will likely result in high demand for airline seats. Focus on getting a seat to any place from which you can then continue travel to D.C. but the first priority will be getting expeditiously out of the country. Klm, the Dutch airline, has already suspended service to Israel. The reason being not that Israel is going to launch the first strike. They may, they may not. But because if the United States does strike inside Iran, Iran may activate all of its missiles and fire a barrage toward Israel, towards Saudi, towards try to basically do as much damage as possible on the way out. That is the speculation. That's what the Iranians have been threatening as well. Of course, they threatened the same thing during the 12 Day War last year, and that didn't end up being much of anything at all in terms of its retaliatory capacity. So obviously we'll have to see how all of this plays out. What I would say about people who again, keep making the case that somehow Donald Trump is being manipulated by outside forces is why do you have such a lack of basic respect for the decision making capacity of the President? Again, I may disagree with the President or I may agree with the President, but he's the guy making the calls and you guys are just too cowardly to say that. You disagree with the president and so instead you throw it on somebody else, which is really sad sack crap, honestly. Well, one of the oddities of our modern American politics and really Western politics is that certain things happen and you don't know who did them. Like, normally when a political crime occurs, it's pretty obvious who the culprit is, right? If somebody spray paints a statue of George Washington with genocidal maniac, you know, it's somebody on the left, typically speaking. But there are certain things that happen in politics where the horseshoe is so strong between the right and left that you literally don't know who did it. I give you as an example, what's happening in Britain right now. So there's a very famous statue of Winston Churchill in Britain and it was spray painted with the words stop the genocide, Zionist war criminal, Free Palestine. They just absolutely defaced. And it must have taken a while. I'm not sure where the bobbies were when all this happened. Globalized. The intifada with the Hamas symbol on it. Never again. Is now the reason that I mock when I say I don't know who did this. Obviously it's some sort of pro Hamas protester and that's who did it. But I mean, we have been told by people on the right that Winston Churchill is the actual villain of World War II and that he was a Zionist genocidal maniac by people purportedly on the right. See, here's the thing. When you come to hate the history of the west, whether you pretend to be on the right or whether you are actually on the left, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because it's bad for your civilization. It's bad for your civilization. Winston Churchill is a hero of Western civilization because he saved Great Britain from the Nazis. And yes, that was a good thing because the Nazis kind of sucked. They were pretty terrible. Also, Winston Churchill happened to be an ardent opponent of Bolshevism. Going going back to his earliest days in Parliament, he actually attempted to mobilize Western military response to the rise of the Reds in Russia. Denigrating Winston Churchill, which has become habit on the left, but also is becoming increasingly habit on the right, is just another example of how the brain rot that has set in across our politics. It's truly pathetic. Truly, truly pathetic. And I don't care how you label people. If somebody is talking to you and they start jabbering to you about how Winston Churchill was the bad guy and is a Zionist war criminal, I don't care if they pretend that they are, quote, unquote, conservative, or if they actually are on the left, they're full of. And you pretending to give them the time of day because they're, quote, unquote, an ally means that you're the sucker in the room. It's that simple. A civilization that denigrates its own heroes on behalf of third worldist foreign ideologies is a civilization doomed to failure. And the fact, again, that you have people on the horseshoe right and the left holding hands on this sort of stuff is an indicator of just how far our civilization is falling and falling right quickly. Meanwhile, people who spend an awful lot of time criticizing the Trump administration without ever, you know, mentioning Trump, they always said he's being manipulated from the outside. How could, how could advisors. How could outside. For they ignore the actual things the Trump administration is doing. You know, the people who work for President Trump. Joining me on the line right now is the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the doj, Harmony Dhillon. The Trump administration has announced that they are going after the University of California for hostile work environment based on violation of the Civil Rights act of 1964 as applied to Jewish students. Harmony, thanks so much for the time. Appreciate it.
- [43:08]
Harmony Dhillon
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Ben.
- [43:12]
Ben Shapiro
So why don't you explain for those who missed it, number one, what the Civil Rights act of 64 says with regard to hostile work environment, and number two, what exactly University of California did to earn the ire of the Justice Department?
- [43:25]
Harmony Dhillon
Well, there's a 80 page complaint and I, you know, it's linked to our, to our press release. It's just a litany of terrible acts that have occurred over a space of years. And basically we're talking about employment discrimination here and University of California at Los Angeles and in my opinion, some of the other UC campuses as well. But we're specifically focused on UCLA over a period of years has allowed antisemitic harassment by employees, by staff, and without really punishing that. And so faculty, employees of the university have had to labor under these conditions where there are swastikas that are painted on their stuff and anti Semitic slurs. And the lack of discipline is something that creates a hostile work environment under Title vii. And so that's what we're going after here in this case. No employee should have to suffer from the types of harassment that existed here. And this law protects people on the basis of race, on the basis of sex, on the basis of national origin, veteran status and other criteria. But religious discrimination is one of the big aspects of that. And so we're just applying well established law here. And I don't think there's any question that UCLA failed in its duties.
- [44:50]
Ben Shapiro
Harmony. One of the things that kind of is astonishing is how inconsistent the various sides of the political aisle are on these questions. So on the left, they will claim that if there is anti black harassment on campus, then the Civil Rights act should obviously be enforced. That is not allowed under the Civil Rights Act. However, the minute that it's Jews who are sort of in question, then all of the enforcement mechanisms magically go away and get shoved under some other rubric. Is that what the University of California was doing here?
- [45:17]
Harmony Dhillon
Well, absolutely. They were equivocating and making excuses. And basically, I think if you really were to psychoanalyze what's going on here, there has been a elevation of the sort of protected status of people who are hostile to Jews and kind of lionizing them as if they, because they champion a political cause that's in vogue, it gives them a free pass. And so the university administrators, I'm not saying they were necessarily themselves anti Semitic. They were just cowed and afraid to go after a sort of protected category. And you make a very good point, Ben. When you're a favored class in our culture, the mere microaggressions and the use of language that most of us would find pretty normal. But if you're looking for offense that's protected in the workplace and employees are required to go through this indoctrination and we have to sit through these videos, I had to do it here at the Department of Justice about using the correct language and not offending your coworkers. And yet this is a big blind spot that occurred here. A total lack of enforcement on the religious front. And so we won't stand for it at the doj. And I think we're putting schools on notice that this is not going to be tolerated. This is a very lengthy investigation that we have been going through for years. And I also want to add that before we filed this complaint, we had a lot of criticism in the press. I think the LA Times did a hit piece on us and said that we were trying to concoct a case where there wasn't one. I think you can read the complaint and see that this is an extremely strong case.
- [47:04]
Ben Shapiro
So harmony. Meanwhile, on other fronts, the administration has announced that they're going to be cracking down in significant ways on things like Medicaid and Medicare fraud, public welfare fraud. The vice President is leading that effort. I assume that he is working hand in glove with the doj, in order to track down people who are actually participating in this, what sort of efforts is the DOJ expending it, cracking down on fraud?
- [47:25]
Harmony Dhillon
We have significant efforts here. First of all, we have a new Assistant Attorney General slot that is specifically focused on this type of government benefits fraud. And you know, we're ginning up that effort. But even before that, in the major cities, particularly where we have a lot of this type of fraud, my friend Bill LeSailie in Los Angeles, who's the first assistant United States Attorney there, was the President's nominee for that position. He's been focused on this and has gone on to bust and bring some significant prosecutions with respect to theft of these government resources. And this happens wherever you have a lot of billions of dollars of money sloshing around and poor control. As you're seeing this, you're seeing it in D.C. you're seeing it, I'm sure you're going to see it in all the major cities in the United States. We've had years of lax enforcement in this regard. And again, sort of the pet projects of the left and the sort of preferred classes are running these homeless projects, these food projects, these after school projects, these school projects, and that's where the money is being looted from these medical, Medicaid, I mean, there's just. The fraud is myriad. And I'm, I'm glad to see such a coordinated effort here in this building to root it out.
- [48:49]
Ben Shapiro
Well, that is Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, Harmony. Dylan. Harmony, thanks so much for your hard work and appreciate the time.
- [48:55]
Harmony Dhillon
Thanks for having me, Ben.
- [48:57]
Ben Shapiro
Well, as every good lawyer like Harmony Dillon knows the first rule of lawyering, don't ask questions to which you do not know the answers. And this is why, in my opinion, as I suggested a couple of days ago, it was a stupid idea to invite Secretary of of State, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee over Jeffrey Epstein. Why did I think that was dumb? Because if you don't have her dead to rights, if you don't have the capacity to ask questions that are likely to elicit serious information, what you'll end up doing is boosting her. What you will end up doing is be clowning it yourself. And what you will end up doing is opening the door to when Democrats take Congress in November, as is highly likely to happen according to the polls. And if that were to happen, I guarantee you Howard Lutnick will be sitting in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearings. I promise You. Donald Trump will be called. He'll then refuse. We'll have a constitutional battle. It'll be lots of fun. Democrats were itching for this. This is an own goal, gang. Don't ask dumb questions if you don't know the answers to the question. So Hillary had her prepared testimony, and she said the committee justified its subpoena to me based on its assumptions that I have information regarding the investigations into the criminal activities of Jeffrey Epstein and Gal Maxwell. Let me be as clear as I can. I do not. As I stated in my sworn declaration on January 13, I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein. I never flew on his plane or visited his island homes or offices. I have nothing to add to that. Like every decent person, I've been horrified by what we have learned about their crimes. It's unfathomable that Mr. Epstein initially got a slap on the wrist in 2008, which allowed him to continue his predatory practices for another decade. Mr. Chairman, your investigation is supposed to be assessing the federal government's handling of the investigations and prosecutions of Epstein and his crimes. You subpoenaed eight law enforcement officials, all of whom ran the DOJ or directed the FBI when Epstein's crimes were investigated and prosecuted. Of those eight, only one appeared before the committee. Five of the six former AGs were allowed to submit brief statements saying they had no information to provide. You have held zero public hearings, refused to allow the media to attend them, including today, despite espousing the need for transparency on dozens of occasions. Again, I'm sorry she outplayed you. She did. This was dumb. It was dumb. Here's Hillary Clinton yesterday saying she didn't really know Jeffrey Epstein. Now, again, you can say that you don't believe her. That's fine, okay? But you know who did know Jeffrey Epstein? Because we know that he knew Jeffrey Epstein. Donald Trump. But you know who wasn't guilty of malign activity with Jeffrey Epstein also? Donald Trump. This is why having a nice common standard for everybody seems to me the best way to solve these sorts of issues, like if there's evidence for things, then we should pursue them, and if there's not evidence for things, then we probably should not. And if you're going to do house subpoenas of people because they are famous and because you don't like them, then you shouldn't be surprised when it swings around like a boomerang and clocks you on the other side of the head, which is what is going to happen here. I'm Telling you it's what's going to happen next, politically speaking. Here was Hillary Clinton yesterday. I don't know how many times I
- [51:48]
Harmony Dhillon
had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein. I never went to his island, I never went to his homes, I never went to his offices. So it's on the record numerous times.
- [52:02]
Ben Shapiro
And then she explained that she was asked questions about UFOs and Pizzagate. Again, if you don't want to appear like clowns, then don't do clown stuff thing like really, really just political mouth. I think Hillary Clinton is awful. I think she's terrible. I think she's one of the worst politicians in modern American history. Don't do clownish things if you don't want clownish answers.
- [52:24]
Harmony Dhillon
It then got at the end quite unusual because I started being asked about UFOs and a series of questions about Pizzagate, one of the most vile, bogus conspiracy theories that was propagated on the Internet, that that was serving as the basis of a member's questions to me.
- [52:52]
Ben Shapiro
Meanwhile, as you can see, Democrats very excited about this, actually, they know it's an own goal. So a Democratic representative then got up and explained that the Oversight Committee now has the ability to call Trump. I want to also add that this committee has now set a new precedent
- [53:10]
Unidentified Male Commentator 2
about talking to presidents and former presidents. And we're demanding immediately that we ask President Trump to testify in front of our committee and be deposed in front of Oversight, Republicans and Democrats.
- [53:25]
Ben Shapiro
And that should happen immediately.
- [53:26]
Unidentified Male Commentator 2
He is the person that appears almost more than anyone else in the committee. And it needs to happen right now.
- [53:34]
Ben Shapiro
Again, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. We'll see where it goes from here. Alrighty, guys. Coming up, we are going to get to AI in conflict with the Defense Department. Anthropic is now kind of at war with the Department of War. We'll explain what's going on first. In order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, now's the time, guys. Use Code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. Legal sent this list of everything we're not allowed to do in season two. We're gonna do all of it.
- [54:05]
Harmony Dhillon
We've got games, more celebrity guests, and
- [54:08]
Ben Shapiro
yes, the mailbag is somehow worse. If you thought season one was extra, season two, we're doubling down.
- [54:13]
Harmony Dhillon
We're not supposed to be doing this.
- [54:15]
Ben Shapiro
Exactly. Ben After Dark, Season 2, streaming on daily Wire Plaza.
- [54:30]
Unidentified Male Commentator
It.