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- [00:00]
Ben Shapiro
Theft is virtue. Stealing is altruism. Murder might be excusable. Burn it all down. These are the principles of the radical left. And that radical left is increasingly embraced by the mainstream Democratic Party. Today we're going to talk about a podcaster named Hassan Piker. You may have heard of him. And the collapse of the moderate faction of the Democratic Party into total mewling cowardice. And remember, folks, we are just a couple of elections away from those radical leftists taking power, which means true existential threat to the United States of America. Plus, we will get to the question of whether God is non binary. We'll explore Iran's bold strategy of mocking the president and whether the Trump administration ought to bail out Spirit Airlines. This is the Ben Shapiro Show. Hey, so you may have heard of Hassan Piker. There have been a thousand New York Times profiles of this guy. He's associated with pretty much all. All the major left wing Democrats. He's a podcaster, of course. He has a. He's a Twitch streamer. He's also monstrously evil. He advocates publicly in favor of hatred of America. There's not a terrorist group, an anti American, anti Israel terrorist group he doesn't support. He has advocated for violence against his opponents. And the mainstream left loves him. I think that's because they think that he is bro coded, meaning that he works out a lot and he speaks the way that your friends from high school might after they read the Communist Manifesto and smoked a little bit of pot. Also, he zaps his dog. Also, he's a socialist who is really, really, really rich. So again, hypocrisy does not matter to these folks, not one iota. When you speak of limousine liberals, this dude is a mansion Marxist. He is not a limousine liberal. He's a mansion Marxist. How much money is he? I mean, he's worth millions and millions of dollars is the answer to that particular question. According to the Washington Post, there was a massive Twitch hack some years ago in 2021, and it found that since 2019, between 2019 and 2021, he'd been paid almost $3 million from his streaming on Twitch. And of course, he has a really terrific mansion in Los Angeles. He purchased it in 2021 for a little under $3 million, apparently. I mean, look at. That's a nice place. That is a nice place. Apparently. It's about 3,800 square feet in Brentwood, I believe, somewhere in the nicer area of la. And of course, he is also willing to travel to Cuba, a communist hellhole where the average Annual income is something like $150. He's happy to travel there to party it up and explain why he should have air conditioning in his nice five star hotel. But everyone else is just enjoying the weather outside, having a great time. His outfits that he was wearing around over there, well it turns out that they were costing maybe four times the annual income of a normal Cuban $690 shirt from a brand called Glass Cypress. Hideous shirt by the way. Really, really truly ugly. And also in that same image, he is wearing a ring from Cartier that costs $1,480. And he is also wearing a Cartier sunglasses that cost $1,300. Remember folks, he is a good Marxist and he represents certain principles on the far left wing. That America is evil, that private property is inherently bad, that violence is often justified and as a sort of self defense mechanism so he can do whatever the hell he wants. No principles of morality must be adhered to as long as you are fighting the system. It turns out that not only do the ends of of Marxist anarchism justify the means, they justify literally any behavior so long as you are aligned with the ends. So you can have a really nice mansion, you can wear a fourteen hundred dollar Cartier ring and thirteen hundred dollars Cartier sunglasses in Cuba with all of the poors. So long as you say that you are in favor of communism. Now here's the thing, what we are watching right now in the left, the rise of this radical leftist nonsense. And again, he is not unique. We'll get to his connections inside the Democratic Party in a moment because they are thoroughgoing. The legacy media love him. The New York Times are trying to turn Hasan Piker into a totally mainstream figure. And inside the Democratic Party they are succeeding. But what we're watching right now with the Democratic Party is beyond woke. Remember the idea that intersectional Wokeism was the way of the future for Democrats? That's not quite where we are. We are well beyond it. When people on the right say woke is dead. WOKE may have died, but it's been replaced by something else and that is something older. Third Worldism. Third Worldism is the philosophy that basically every country on earth that is poor is poor because of the West. That the solution to that is to tear down the west from the inside. That global redistributionism, destruction of private property and violence are all justified by the evils of the Western system. That's not something new, that something is quite old. Again, it's just revolutionary left wing violence being now rebuttaled as progressive Democratic Politics by Chenk Uyghur's Nepo Baby. It is the mainstreaming of Beider Meinhof ideology. So back in the 1970s, there's something called the Bider Meinhof gang. They're also called the Red Army Faction. They were communists and their whole goal was to tear down the world of capitalism on behalf of Marxism. And they routinely quoted people like Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Gramsci. They called for revolution. Ulrike Meinhoff was a left wing radical journalist who founded the group. Famously said, quote, protest is when I say, this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure that what does not please me occurs no more. And resistance, of course, is good. Protest is enough. You need resistance. Well, that manifested itself in actual violence, like actual terrorism by the Bider Meinhof group. Again, they were Marxist in orientation. They'd been influenced by radical race riots in the United States by, for example, the Black Panthers and in the United States that were allied with terrorist groups and radicals all over the globe. Ulrike Meinhof actually wrote an essay defending the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists. This sound familiar? All these same people defending Hamas's massacre of Jews on October 7, defending Hezbollah, which of course he has done. Hasan Piker. Stephen Oust, who wrote a book on the Bider Meinhof gang, he pointed out that a poll at the time that they were active showed that a quarter of west Germans under 40 felt sympathy for the gang. One tenth said they would hide a gang member from the police. And prominent intellectuals spoke up for the gang's righteousness. When the gang started robbing banks, Newscast compared its members to Bonnie and Clyde. Okay, so again, this is nothing new. There is an impulse in human beings that when they do not like the system, they believe it justifies violence and theft of property and evil and terrorism. And Hasan Piker is just one of these types. He's just one of these types. I mean, first of all, he has spoken routinely. We've played clips of him on the show routinely talking about violence against his political opponents. But he has now done an interview with the New York Times in which he was interviewed by one Gia Tolentino and one Nadia Spiegelman. And there he talked about stealing. He explained that he fully endorses cool crimes like robbing banks and stealing artifacts. That's cool, that the crime is cool. Here is this truly despicable piece of. Would you steal from the Louvre?
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Hasan Piker
Yes.
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Ben Shapiro
I would not be logistically capable of executing such a fact, but would I cheer on every news story of people that I See, doing it, absolutely absolute.
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Hasan Piker
Yeah, I think it's cool. We got to get back to cool crimes like that, like, you know, bank robberies, right? Stealing, stealing priceless artifacts, things of that nature. I feel like that's way cooler than the 7000th new cryptocurrency scheme that people are engaging in.
- [08:07]
Ben Shapiro
What a despicable human being. He also went on to suggest that you should steal from corporations. In fact, your stealing is factored into their bottom line and like, they have a breakage policy. So you should just be the breakage policy, says Hasan Piker. I mean, when you actively advocate for Violations of basic 10 Commandments type stuff like thou shalt not steal. No, you should steal because truly the corporations are stealing from you. You should do violence because they're doing social violence to you. Here was Hasan Piker saying he is
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Hasan Piker
pro stealing as I'm, I'm pro stealing from big corporations because, you know, they, they steal quite a bit more from their own workers. However, one thing that might even help your ethical dilemma is, is the fact that the automated process that they design, these companies know will increase, shrink, right? So it's, it's actually factored in. The lemons that you stole are factored into the bottom line of these mega corporations, regardless. And they still end up having increased profit margins because they no longer have to pay the cashiers that they used to hire, as opposed to this automated system knowing full well that people are still going to be able to steal, still steal a lot more efficiently, as a matter of fact, through the automated process.
- [09:32]
Ben Shapiro
So because you go to Target and there's an automated checkout counter, you should steal because they know you're gonna do it. So stealing is now okay. In fact, it's good, it's an act of good for you to steal. Of course, he then says he would not suggest stealing from taxpayer funding grocery stores in New York City because their workers would be unionized. They're on the right side of his political divide. By the way, his fandom of theft goes beyond that. He was asked specifically what's one thing he should be okay? And he said intellectual property theft, which is quite. Again, it's despicable. This is just despicable stuff. And the fact that this person is being mainstreamed by the Democratic, and he is, he's being totally mainstreamed by the Democratic Party shows you what the Democratic Party has become a full scale destructive force in American life. You've mainstreamed this, this nonsense. You are standing in favor. It is an evil. Stealing from people is evil. You should not. The fact that we have to say this, the fact that we have to say that a corporation charging you for a product at a price that you wish to pay is not theft. But you stealing that product is in fact theft. You know, like basic human morality. The fact we even have to repeat that shows where we are in American life. Here's Hasan Piker saying you should steal. You should be able to steal IP intellectual property.
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Hasan Piker
Yeah, no, I'm, I'm pro piracy all the way, like across the board. Would you pirate a car? Yes. You know, if you could. If what would pirate a car? If it's just a classic thing back in the day, the, the government funded anti piracy initiatives would be like, would you steal a car? Yeah, sure, if I get away with it. If it was as easy as, you know, pirating ip, I would do it.
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Ben Shapiro
Stealing is. Stealing's great. Why not pirate it? The answer, by the way, is that no one will make movies if you just pirate their ip. No one will make things if you just steal those things. And of course, this all culminates in Hasan Piker's justification of murder. That's what he is doing. He's not in favor of murder, you see, but he totally understands why UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered. He wouldn't himself be in favor of murder, cuz that's even beyond stealing, like one of the ten Commandments. Like, okay, but like two, I don't know. Okay, but also, wasn't the real murderer Brian Thompson, wasn't he the real murderer? Says Hassan Piker
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Hasan Piker
Engels wrote about the concept of social murder. And Brian Thompson as the UnitedHealthcare CEO, was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder. The systematized forms of violence, the, the structural violence of poverty, the, the for profit paywalled system of, of health care in this country. And the consequences of that are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths. And that was a fascinating story for me because Americans are very draconian about crime and punishment. They're very black and white on this issue. And yet, because of the pervasive pain that the private healthcare system had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place.
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Ben Shapiro
Permission structures for murder. Permission structures for murder. Of course I understand why people were so okay with a man being murdered. Because of course it's just social violence. If you're the head of an insurance company, it's social violence. And in fact, if you're, you know, working in the capital markets that's also social violence. And turns out everything Hasan Piker doesn't like is social violence. And social violence justifies real violence, actual violence. Obviously it excuses it. He can pretend he's not excusing it as much as he wants. That's of course exactly what he is doing. That's exactly what of course he has no problem doing. That in general. Here's some of his greatest hits.
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Hasan Piker
Any kind of Zionist tendency should be treated in the same way as being a rabid neo Nazi. Hezbollah is a, is a paramilitary organization that is also a part of the Lebanese parliament. Do we like them or no? I think as a resistance group they're pretty successful against Israel. I don't have any sort of patriotism in my heart for any. Yeah, for America. But just in general liberals, you need to be showing your opponents guts on there, ok? You need to be gutting them. You need to be shanking these and letting their intestines just ride on stage. You have 1950s Soviet era building blocks next to the Gucci store. If there was more, if there was ever a country that represented the synthesis the, the, the, the things that I enjoy so much personally, that guy, that's
- [14:52]
Ben Shapiro
the one they're mainstreaming. And by the way, his ideology is already mainstream. It is. I mean here he is with his ideological buddy, his ideological twin, Zoran Mamdani on his show. And then of course he's been on with other ideological friends like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Again, these are all of his friends. And by the way, Zoram Hamdani is the same ideologically as Hasan Piker. They are exactly the same. Nothing Hasan Piker says is radically different from anything Zoran Mamdani says. And Zormadani is now the mayor of New York. Here is Zoran Mamdani and you might notice his language is pretty reminiscent actually of Hasan Piker's language. Here are some of Mamdani's greatest hits. How many more New Yorkers will you contain? How many more New Yorkers without towing. Do you believe in the First Amendment?
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Zoran Mamdani
We will redirect city funds from corporate supermarkets to city owned grocery stores whose mission is lower prices. But we will not be ashamed of using government to fight for the many, not simply the few. If ICE does not have a judicial warrant signed by a judge, you have the right to say I do not consent to entry and the right to keep your door closed. We, we will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck. It's been laced by the idf.
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Ben Shapiro
Do you still believe in democratic socialism? Do you still think it can be effective? I believe in it even more than
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Zoran Mamdani
I did the day before.
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Ben Shapiro
That's just smarmy Hasan piker right there. Okay, and here just a couple of days ago was Barack Obama hanging out with Mamdani and singing to the kiddies. Okay, this is a picture of the former President of the United States and the so called ideological thought leader of the Democratic Party sitting with Zoram Hamdani. This is all fully mainstreamed in the Democratic Party. There are some jazz hands, the jazz hands of theft and excuse making for terrorism and murder. Really, really strong stuff here from the Democratic Party party. All righty folks. Coming up we will get to the other radical Democrats who are taking over the party, why that's happening, how it's happening, and all the rest. Plus updates on Iran and Democrats trying to defund ICE First Getting a wide variety of whole food ingredients into my diet is a priority for me, especially because I travel a lot. Our sponsor, Balance of Nature's Whole Health System, makes it simple. 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The companies behind Those beverages, Coke, Dr. Pepper, Pepsi, they've always made them right here in the United States. So there's been a lot of talk about bringing jobs back, but America's beverage companies never left in the first place. These are American companies making American products with American workers. And in America's hometowns, 275,000 men and women across all 50 states who show up every day, do the work and help keep this country moving. We're talking good paying jobs, the kind of jobs that people raise a family on. For more than 100 years, these companies have been part of the American story. They're still here, they're still investing, and they are still building. Learn more about how they're keeping america strong@wedeliverforamerica.org Again, that's we Deliver for America, American Beverage, we deliver for America.org, the same companies that have been keeping America strong and providing you the stuff that you drink, they're still doing it today. We deliver for America.org to learn more. And again, it is throughout the Democratic Party now, Hasan Piker, Bernie Sanders, they have campaigned together and it has bled down all the way to the AOC level. Here is AOC. She's talking about how the DOJ is now investigating UnitedHealthcare stealing from Medicare. Now the thing that she is actually talking about, so you understand how she's lying, the thing she is talking about is an antitrust probe from February 2024. And the investigation specifically pertained to Medicare Advantage plans. Those plans are designed so that the government pays more if a patient has a severe health condition. So if you diagnose more conditions, then the insurance company is paid more, Right? The Medicare enrollee is paid for more if the more health conditions you document. So if doctors under United Health's corporate umbrella were up coding or over documenting diagnoses, then the United Health's medical Medicare plans become more lucrative. That is a, that is a perverse incentive designed by government. And the fact is the Biden antitrust case was about UnitedHealth being a dominant player in the space. But the real problem, and this is why when you hear Hasan Piker talk about United Healthcare and they're creating social violence or whatever nonsense term he wants to use to justify murder, whenever you hear him Say that understand the system under which UnitedHealth works is a heavily regulated, heavily subsidized, federal government driven system. But here is AOC, of course, going after UnitedHealth the other day. And she, of course, a fellow traveler with Hassan Piker. They think the same things. They campaign together, the whole deal.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)
The Department of Justice has a criminal case open on UnitedHealthcare for stealing money from Medicare. And we're in a time where all of our health care is getting defunded, people are committing crimes and people are getting denied their health insurance. People are getting denied surgeries, medicines, prescriptions are super expensive. And this administration is responding, responsible for it and rewarding them for it. And we have to bring it to a stop. Like these companies that are running Medicare Advantage are stealing from people. And we need to be honest about it. And we have to. It's got to come to an end.
- [21:44]
Ben Shapiro
Okay? And by the way, where does all this end? For them? It ends with, wait for it, communist centralization of power. This is why Representative Pramila Jayapal, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, she says that actually what we should be emulating in the area of health care is the apparently non socially violent state of Cuba with regard to their remarkable health care system.
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Pramila Jayapal
Cuba has a remarkable public health system. Lowest infant mortality, maternal mortality, sort of the opposite of what the United States has. Higher life expectancy. Higher life expectancy. Early cancer diagnosis, Right. They until the blockade happened and over the course of the embargo, 60 year embargo, illegal embargo, they were actually detecting cancer. 70% of cancer cases were detected in stage 0 or 1. Now today that's flipped to 70% in stage 3 because they have not been able to invest in their public health system.
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Ben Shapiro
We need to be like Cuba. You understand? You understand? Hasan Piker's philosophy is the mainstream philosophy increasingly of the Democratic Party. How does this infiltration take place? Well, the truth is that it really starts with fake empathy. So Rob Henderson has a really good piece over at the Wall Street Journal. Obviously he works also with our friends over at Manhattan Institute, and he points out that there's a newly published paper by Samuel Pratt at ucla. They built what they called a words can harm scale, which was a survey asking people how much they agree with statements like I could be left emotionally scarred by something I read. And the first finding from this study was that that belief is stable. Meaning that people who believed it two weeks ago still believe it today. That I could be left emotionally scarred by something I read. Who holds that view? People who are higher in the belief that words can harm tend to be young, female, non white, politically liberal. They rated themselves as higher in intellectual humility, empathy, moral grandstanding, and the belief in the importance of silencing others. They also exhibited lower emotional stability and a greater tendency to see themselves as victims in everyday conflict. Moreover, they report higher levels of anxiety and depression. So, in other words, the two women who are interviewing Hasan Piker from the New York Times there seem to fit squarely within this model. And the takeaway here is that good motives, you know, empathy can have some pretty mixed effects. The finding here is that the most empathetic people support the least tolerant policies. Of course, because you believe that if you're empathetic, you understand why somebody bad did the bad thing and it must be somebody else's fault. And that ends with the kind of tyranny that is being espoused by people like Hasan Piker and like Zormandani and all of the rest. You can see this in action pretty much every day. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. For example, there was a California gubernatorial debate the other night, and Katie Porter, who is going to lose, she's out there claiming that basically we ought to leave homeless people on the street, essentially because it turns out that homeless people work. Homeless people are working. Now, that's not true. It's not true, but here we go.
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Katie Porter
If you were in my class, Mr. Hilton, you would learn in my bankruptcy and consumer protection class that the majority of homeless people in California are actually working. They're not just people on the streets. It's not just people with mental illness or people with drug or substance use problems. It's also families who are fleeing, intimate partner and domestic violence. It's people who are double and tripled up. It's people who are living in their cars. On our college campuses. Homelessness comes in a lot of different forms. And if we don't see the whole problem, if we demonize them from one perspective, we'll never be able to solve this problem.
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Ben Shapiro
Okay? And the solution to the problem that is promoted by people like the Katie Porters of the world is of course, more government funding to let people stay on the streets and wallow in their own filth. And that is the democratic policy empathy leading to horrible policy. By the way, she happens to be wrong on the fact it is not true that the vast majority of homeless people are working. There was a CBS News 2020 survey on the homeless population of LA and it found that nearly 47% were found to have worked within four years of becoming homeless, only 19% had done any work in the calendar quarter they became homeless. A 2017 survey in San Francisco found that only 13% of homeless people were working part or full time. Why? Because it turns out actually a shockingly high percentage of homeless people have mental illness or are regular drug abusers. That is the reality. And it's not empathetic to leave people like that on the streets to wallow in their own feces. It's actually quite terrible to people. So here is the question. How did all of this happen? Right? How is it that a fringe viewpoint, a viewpoint that I think most Americans, when they hear it, they think that it's being facetious or that it's just crazy. People openly advocating theft, people openly excusing full scale murder. How exactly does that become a mainstream swath of the Democratic party? The answer is what the scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb called renormalization. Here's how renormalization works. If you have an intransigent minority of people who refuse to abide by the rules, they can get everybody else to abide by their rules. So he gives the example of, let's say you have a family of four and you have like two parents, a son and a daughter, and the daughter only eats organic. So when it comes time to make dinner, mom now has a choice. She can either cook two meals, one for the non organic family members and one for her daughter, or she can cook one meal with only organic ingredients. So it's easier, it's less fuss, you just cook one meal. So that's renormalization of the family unit. Now everybody is doing what the daughter is, only 25% of the family wants to do. And then you can extend that out. Now the family which only eats organic now, they decide to go to a barbecue attended by three other families, and now the host has to make the same choice that mom did, and the host does the same thing. You know, we don't want to offend this family. It's just easier to renormalize toward organic food. The renormalization, creating a new normal gets broader and broader just because there was one intransigent person in the beginning. Now there are limits to that. If the demand made by the intransigent person is something super duper crazy, people just might say no. But the process applies in politics the same way that it does in life. So for example, Taleb says, you think that just because some fringe party only has the support of 10% of the population, that their candidate will always get 10% of the votes. He says no, those baseline voters should be classified as inflexible. They'll always vote for their faction. But some flexible voters can also vote for the extremists. And those are the people you have to watch out for. You have to watch out for the allies. Meaning Hasan Piker is a crazy radical, but he's not the actual threat to the country. The threat to the country is all of the people who will side with him. That's the actual threat. There's a physicist named Serge Galam. He has posited that in some cases, it takes about 20% of a population to support an extreme view in order to cause radical renormalization. And there is an easy way to do it. He says that what you do is you activate what he calls frozen prejudices at the risk of appearing intolerant or a moderate to a broad majority while still maintaining a solid core base. So what you do is you start with a motivated core group. You don't worry about alienating people, and then you appeal to the prejudices of vulnerable groups, and they join you. You make the choice binary. So what you do is you say, the system sucks. It's terrible. I will never travel with the system. Stealing is good. Violence is fine. Terrorism, all good. And I'm never moving from that position. And then you go to, say, a supposedly marginalized group, and you say, hey, you can either side with me, the person rebelling against the system, or you can side with the system that is victimizing you. That's the binary choice. And it turns out a bunch of pseudo moderates will join on, intimidated by you. They'll say, what? Yeah, sure, he believes some crazy things, but we're on the same page on the bigger thing. Sure, they believe some crazy about Hezbollah, and. And sure, they're kind of justifying murder, but on the really important thing, like whether the healthcare system is failing us, he's right. He's just too passionate, but he's right. And that's how you take over an entire party. All right, in just a second, we'll get to the manifestation of this takeover of the Democratic Party by the radicals. A supposedly moderate Democrat booed off stage at a Michigan Senate Democratic primary event. Pretty incredible stuff. First, right now, women are facing unexpected pregnancies, and they are bombarded with pressure and fear before they even have a chance to hear the truth. That's why I stand with our sponsor, Preborn. At every Preborn Network clinic, a woman is welcomed and given a free ultrasound in that moment, she sees her baby for the first time. And when she hears that heartbeat, it's undeniable. That's not a clump of cells. That is a life. Now, obviously, every child is a blessing. And when you see your child on an ultrasound for the first time, it is life changing. It is life altering. It is fulfillment itself. Well, a lot of women don't even know that, but preborn makes sure they do. At preborn, women are offered something the abortion industry will never give. Real support. You can make a difference for generations to come. For just 28 bucks, you can sponsor one ultrasound. Or with a donation of 140 bucks, you can provide five ultrasounds truly are life changing. Every dollar donated saves lives in a world that too often denies it. To donate, dial £250. Say keyword baby. That's £250, baby. Or visit preborn.comBen Again, that's preborn.comBen. preborn.comBen or dial £250 and say keyword baby. You can see this playing out, by the way, in real time in the Michigan Democratic primary. It's a fascinating primary. There are basically three candidates in that Michigan Senate Democratic primary. The first candidate is Abdul El Sayed. We played clips of him on the show. He is a Hasan Piker. They've campaigned together. He is a radical Islamist Marxist. That is what he is. He is somebody who refuses to condemn terrorist groups. He is. He is somebody who says that Israel and Hamas are exactly the same. He doesn't actually mean that he thinks Hamas is superior to Israel, but he is like full scale, insanely radical, pro terrorism, the whole deal. And he right now is probably the front runner to win the Democratic primary. A person who is tied with him is a woman named Mallory McMarrow. So what she does is she condemns Hasan Piker and she says he's extreme and El Sayed shouldn't campaign. But then she mirrors a lot of his positions. She basically says, yeah, I don't like Hasan Piker. I don't like the things that he says. But in reality, many of the kind of broader points he's making, those are kind of true. So she will go along with the lie that Israel committed a genocide because she is trying to make hay with the Abdul El Sayed voters. And then coming in third right now is Haley Stevens, who is a moderate progressive Democrat. Now again, by any stretch of the imagination, she is a normal, very, very left person. But. But she also was supported by aipac, mainly because her opponent is somebody who is radically anti Israel. And so there are a lot of pro Israel people who would rattle. She's not. She's not an. Israel should be disestablished. Israel committed genocide. Israel should be wiped off the map. Democrat, which I guess is now the minority position among Democrats. So much so that at the Michigan Democratic Convention last week, she was literally booed off the stage. She couldn't finish her speech. She's a sitting congresswoman right now. What I did for Michigan when I
- [33:02]
Unknown caller or guest (possibly a commentator or caller)
served as chief of staff on the US Auto Rescue alongside the great men
- [33:08]
Ben Shapiro
and women of the uaw, she was basically booed off the stage for the crime of not being radical enough. The Democratic Party is eating this up. They are. They are moving in this direction. This is. Even the ones who are masquerading as moderate are not, in fact, moderate. James Talarico, who again is being trotted out by Joe. Joe Rogan, said he'd vote for James Talarico for president, which is pretty insane, pretty crazy. Well, James Talarico is now saying that putting the Ten Commandments in Texas schools is a form of theocracy. No, it isn't. No one says that you must actually become a practicing Jew or an observant Christian in order to go to Texas school. Taking the foundational text of Western civilization, the Ten Commandments, and putting it on the wall in a Texas school is not, in fact, theocracy. By the way, having a Christmas pageant in a public school is also not theocracy. When I went to public school when I was a kid, I was in the Christmas pageant. So was my younger sister, who's now married to a rabbi. But one of the reasons, by the way, we might want to put the Ten Commandments in Texas schools or in public schools in general, is because it says a couple of things that now seem in controversy. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's property. There are at least three commandments that Democrats are very much against these days, apparently. Here's James Talarico, pseudo moderate.
- [34:37]
James Talarico
I'm called to love all of my neighbors the way I love myself. That includes my Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, agnostic, and atheist neighbors. I don't want anyone forcing their religion down my throats. I certainly don't want the government forcing a religion down my throat. And so why would I do that to any of my neighbors in the Texas House of Representatives? I have been a vocal critic of Christian nationalism. I'm a Christian, but I know that the most dangerous form of government is theocracy, because the only thing worse than a tyrant is a tyrant who thinks they're on a mission from God.
- [35:18]
Ben Shapiro
Again, the idea that putting the Ten Commandments in Texas schools is full scale theocracy is totally insane. Of course it comes from the same person, the pseudo Christian. I say pseudo Christian because it seems to me that every Christian that I know. And again, I'll let Christians speak for themselves here. It seems to me that if you say that you believe in Jesus as a Christian and then you proceed to overthrow every single principle that he stood for while misciting the New Testament, that doesn't seem like amazing practice. Here's James Talarico explaining to Jake Tapper on CNN that God is non binary, which is just. Can we say category error. I feel like it's a bit of a category error. You mean God does not have a gender does not mean God is non binary? That God is trapped between being a man and a woman? What the hell are you talking about? What are you even talking about? God is trans. That's where we are now. Slow clap for the Democrat who's obviously a very, very religious Christian.
- [36:22]
James Talarico
But I don't think it's controversial theologically. Most Christians would acknowledge that God is beyond gender. In fact, the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians said that in Christ there is neither male nor female. And so if someone's got a problem with that statement, they shouldn't take it up with me. They should take it up with the Apostle Paul.
- [36:44]
Ben Shapiro
Well, I'm pretty sure that the Apostle Paul would not have described God as non binary because that's a nonsensical term as applied to God. Also a nonsensical term as applied to human beings, by the way. But the Democrats are so radical at this point. They are so radical at this point, truly. So the President has been pushing forward a reconciliation bill to reopen DHS and ice. The President endorsed that yesterday. He said Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senator Lindsey Graham have taken a critical first step to passing another reconciliation bill to fund our great Border Patrol and ICE agents. The radical left Democrats and their so called leader crying Chuck Schumer, one of the most incompetent senators in American history, will try to offer amendments during this process to divide Republicans. Republicans must stick together and unify to get this done and to keep America safe. Okay, so meanwhile Democrats continue to stand in the way of just funding ICE and Border Patrol Senator Tina Smith, she is out there saying that actually Congress should fund everything except ICE and Border Patrol.
- [37:47]
Senator Tina Smith
What we have achieved is Our unified vote to fund everything in the Department of Homeland Security except for these illegal agencies in Customs and Border Patrol and ice. And again, I want to remind everybody who's listening to this that what we wanted was to put some basic common sense guardrails on how these agents have been acting to stop the worst of the abuses like we saw in my home state of Minnesota. And we weren't able to even get our Republican colleagues to agree to that. So we might not have power in Congress, but we are not power Congress to carry forward what we believe is the best thing for this country.
- [38:28]
Ben Shapiro
Again, they're not asking for policy changes that are moderate in scope and orientation. What they're asking for is to defund the agencies that make sure that the border is closed and that illegal immigration is actually penalized. Senator Alyssa Slotkin from Michigan, she's doing the same. She compared ICE agents to redcoats.
- [38:49]
Abigail Spanberger
When people turned on the TV and saw these things happening with their own eyes, they understood it as something that ran completely contrary to who we are as a people and certainly spit in the face of how we became a nation in the first place. The rebellion that our American forefathers launched not too far north of here because an oppressive government, because of an oppressive regime that was using brutal tactics in the streets and in people's homes.
- [39:21]
Ben Shapiro
Yes, ICE is just like the British Red Coats. Exactly. Nailed it. Meanwhile, Congressman Ro Khanna, again a charter member of the extraordinary Hasan Piker Radicalism Caucus, he says that we need to tear ICE all the way down.
- [39:37]
James Talarico
Not another dollar needs to go to ice. They have abused American citizens. They have abused immigrants who are law abiding and creating jobs here. We need to actually tear down the agency and start again, have a immigration agency under the Justice Department.
- [39:55]
Ben Shapiro
Again, this is where Democrats are. When I said that the radicals have eaten the face of the Democratic Party. That is correct. That is absolutely right. Now there are still some who are trying to play at halvesies. So back in January, I was on Gavin Newsom's podcast and I got him to suggests that he actually cooperates with ice. Actually, he wants to work with ice. This is again the governor of California.
- [40:16]
Gavin Newsom
That's exactly what they do in California. And we have over 10,000 that I've cooperated with since I've been governor of California. We work very directly with ICE as it relates to cdcr, state prison. California has cooperated with more ICE transfers probably than any other state in the country. And I vetoed multiple pieces of legislation that have come from my legislature to stop the ability for the state of California to do that. So when it comes to the issues of violent criminals, when it comes to felons, people that are being released from the largest state system in the United States of America, California cooperates with ice.
- [40:51]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, but why is it then? What makes it a sanctuary state? And didn't have, like, a great answer to that one. I mean, what makes it a sanctuary state? Because basically what it's saying is that California does not have to cooperate with ice, and in fact, in local areas should not cooperate with ice. He's talking about the transfer from prison to ice, but at the same exact time that he's talking about the magic of that. It turns out that according to our friends Chris Rufo and Susan Crabtree over at City Journal, Governor Newsom has granted approximately $1 billion of government funding to an army of nonprofits that have encouraged unchecked numbers of migrants to enter the country, fought deportation orders in the courts, and led street protests against ICE. That includes apparently more than $250 million to Catholic Charities, another $85 million to Jewish Family Services, $12 million to Centro Legal de la Raza, $23 million to the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, and more. Al Otolado, a nonprofit that has been awarded more than $2 million from California since Newsom took office, helps migrants enter the United States, hence the group's name. To the other side. The Democratic Party is deeply radical, incredibly, incredibly radical at this point. Now, Democrats are going to use whatever means they have at their disposal, obviously, to gain power and then enact their radical principles. They were celebrating yesterday over the redistricting effort in Virginia, which of course disenfranchised something like 40% of the population of Virginia since it was a 55, 45 Democrat state. And now the congressional districts will be split 10 to 1 in favor of the Democrats. By the way, we should point out here that Abigail Spanberger, who campaigned as. When we say that the moderates are being erased in the Democratic Party, I mean, many of the people who campaign as moderates just flip. Abigail Spanberger campaigned as a moderate, and here is what she had to say about redistricting Virginia less than one year ago.
- [42:49]
Abigail Spanberger
Short answer is no. Certainly Virginia, by constitutional amendment, has a new redistricting effort that was put in place and first utilized after the the in the 2021 redistricting. Certainly I've been watching with interest what other states are doing, but I have no plans to redistrict Virginia.
- [43:11]
Ben Shapiro
She was lying. As it turns out, she was lying. And again, There's a reason why her approval ratings in Virginia have tanked. You campaign is a moderate. You govern as a left winger. Eventually the American people may reject you, but it's pretty dangerous when one of the parties has been taken over full scale by its radicals. Meanwhile, on the foreign front, President Trump continues to sort of allow things to percolate. So in order to understand what he's doing, the biggest thing you have to understand is that Iran is losing tons and tons of money. The blockade right now, which will not continue indefinitely, that blockade is destroying Iran's capacity. Destroying it. Miyad Maleki of the foundation for Defense of Democracies points out, pre war Iran earned about $45.7 billion from oil annually. Oil and gas together account for 65 to 75% of Iran's total export revenue and roughly 25% of its GDP. If you lose oil and the blockade also cuts petrochemicals and all other Gulf coast routed exports, that's not a 10% GDP hit alone, but a wipeout of the entire hard currency earnings base. Also, 70% of steel production capacity has been destroyed. 85% of petrochemical export capacity is offline. The total direct damage done to Iran in 45 days is 38 to 48% of their entire pre war GDP. And it's getting worse every single day. Every single day, Iran is losing 400 to $500 million in oil export revenue. So the Iranians think time is on their side because the pressure will force the Trump administration to cave. I'm not sure why time would be on their side since, again, it's a very, very impoverished country and they're making themselves ever poorer. Well, President Trump last night put out a statement saying that he had succeeded in staying the execution of eight Iranian women. He had called on Iran as a sign of good faith not to execute eight Iranian women. And he said, I've been informed that the eight women protesters who are going to be executed tonight in Iran will no longer be killed. Four will be released immediately. Four will be sentenced to one month in prison. I very much appreciate that Iran and its leaders respected my request. Okay, so Iran is. If Iran really wants this war to continue, then why are they doing that? And the answer is that they are doing that because they are trying to get Trump back to the table. They are trying to squirrel him out of his actual red lines by offering sort of small olive branches. Caroline Lovett at the White House says that that the United States is still awaiting Iran's response with regard to negotiation.
- [45:39]
Caroline Lovett
Then let's level set on where we are. As you all saw yesterday, President Trump announced an extension of the cease fire. He's maintaining and generously offering a bit of flexibility to a regime who has been completely tarnished because of Operation Epic Fury is very. There's obviously a lot of internal division. This is a battle between the pragmatists and the hardliners and our Iran right now. And the president wants a unified response. And so as we await that response, there's a ceasefire with the military and kinetic strikes. But Operation Economic Fury continues. And the effective and successful naval blockade continues as well of ships and vessels that are moving to and from Iranian ports. We are completely strangling their economy through this blockade. They're, they're losing $500 million a day. The Kharg island is completely full. They can't move oil in and out. They can't even pay their own people as a result of this economic leverage that President Trump has inflicted over them.
- [46:38]
Ben Shapiro
She's correct about that. She also adds, Caroline Levitt, that what Iran is saying publicly is very different from what they are saying privately to the administration.
- [46:45]
Caroline Lovett
You guys all see a lot of different messaging coming out of Iran, a lot of different rhetoric in language from them. I would caution you to take anything that they say at face value. What we've seen is that what they say publicly is much different than what they concede to the United States and our negotiating team privately. I've said that repeatedly to all of you in the news media, and you should take our word for that.
- [47:08]
Ben Shapiro
Now, meanwhile, the IRGC is attempting to pursue what would probably be classified as small scale military actions in order to demonstrate that they are not totally defenestrated. So they put out some agit props showing their speedboats seizing vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, which is a thing that happened over the course of the last 24 hours. There are a couple of ships that were attacked and stopped by the irgc. They said they collected tolls from these ships. And then they released tapes of the IRGC speedboats seizing vessels that are kind of floating aimlessly in the Strait of Hormuz. You can see the speedboats doing that. The President responded to this, by the way, by saying that we'll probably start shooting those small boats, particularly the ones that are dropping mines. We obviously should be doing that. Clearly we should be destroying their speedboats that are harassing shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. He said, I've ordered the United States Navy to shoot and kill any boat, small boats though, they may Be that is putting mines in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz. There is no hesitation. Additionally, our minesweepers are clearing the strait right now. I'm ordering that activity to continue, but at a tripled up level. We should also be blowing their speedboats out of the water if they're going to stop shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, because that of course, is a military action. The President has not been doing that, presumably because he wants this quote, unquote ceasefire to continue. He figures that they are going to give before he does, considering the tremendous loss of money that their economy is basically grinding to a complete and utter halt. Well, the Iranians do have one capacity and that is to appeal to all of their friends in media to do propaganda on their behalf. So CNN did a full scale propaganda report on behalf of the IRGC about Iran putting together Lego videos. I'm not kidding. This is one of the things Iran does. They have put together videos showing the war as sort of LEGO battles. And so CNN decided they're gonna do a full story speaking to the creators behind Iranian Lego style videos. Just doing propaganda work on behalf of Iran. Cnn. Great job, guys. You're doing great.
- [49:09]
CNN reporter or narrator
If you're on the Internet, you've likely seen these highly popular Iranian Lego style videos.
- [49:15]
Ben Shapiro
Run back to your crib.
- [49:17]
Zoran Mamdani
You ain't safe on these blocks.
- [49:18]
Ben Shapiro
Get lost, Goldilocks.
- [49:21]
CNN reporter or narrator
Published almost daily, these detailed videos with American and Western cultural references have taken the world by storm. Turns out Explosive media is a small team of gen Z creators, 18 to 25 years old. They say they all reside in Iran and most have never left the country. Their spokesperson, who requested anonymity, said the initial goal of these videos was to show the outside world what Iranians are like, educated, culturally relevant and funny.
- [49:53]
Anonymous Iranian spokesperson
We know that the west has a bad perception of us. They don't know us at all. We wanted to break down this wall of censorship. We wanted to say that we're funny, funnier than you even, we understand culture and the arts and we are incredibly educated. We know and understand your American culture well. You don't unfortunately know as much about our culture.
- [50:15]
Ben Shapiro
So that's just CNN doing full scale soft focus stories on Iranian propaganda on behalf of the worst regime on planet Earth. Great job, cnn. You're doing great. Meanwhile, Iran, they seem to think that their best strategy here is to mock the President. We'll see how that works out for them. It is indeed a bold strategy. They put together an AI video mocking President Trump for what? Not attacking them. We are having very Great negotiations with Iran.
- [50:51]
Zoran Mamdani
If Iran doesn't come to negotiate with,
- [50:53]
Ben Shapiro
going to bomb them 2,000 years later. So where are the Iranians?
- [51:02]
Zoran Mamdani
This is from Iran.
- [51:05]
Ben Shapiro
The AI is not very good. All right, then I will extend the ceasefire at Pakistan's request. I mean, my goodness. So I have a question. Iran's putting out videos mocking Trump. Why are they doing that? What would be the interest? The only reason. The only reason to do that is because what Iran does not want, what they don't want is for the President to just continue the blockade. That's the reason you put up that video. Think about the logic of this. They're putting out a video mocking Trump for extending the ceasefire that supposedly Iran likes and wants. But clearly they don't like the ceasefire because the ceasefire is basically a time where their economy is collapsing and they can't even show that they are, quote, unquote, fighting back against a violent enemy. I mean, Iran isn't. They have a problem. They have a real problem here. But they will always have the love of people like Representative Ted Lieu of California, who says that the United States is going to lose any prolonged conflict. We're only the most powerful military force in human history. We are going to have a problem.
- [52:20]
Ted Lieu
Any prolonged conflict that the United States has, the United States will lose. And that is because we will run out of munitions. In this unconstitutional war in Iran, based on new media reporting, the United States has already expended 50% of of our THAAD interceptor missiles, 50% of our Patriot missiles, and 30% of our Tomahawk missiles. And this is only about a month and a half. And so China, Russia are looking at this, knowing they can just stockpile up on drones and ballistic missiles, and every few months, the United States will run out of munitions to defend against that. A Patriot missile costs between four and $4.5 million. An Iranian drone costs about 30 to $50,000. It's like shooting Ferraris at Frisbees.
- [53:16]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, there's only one problem with that, which is that we are not actually using Patriot missiles to shoot down most of these drones. Most of them are being shot down by our planes in the air. So there's that as well. But again, undermining American morale is the goal here. That is the entire purpose of this particular exercise. And, you know, they'll always have people like Sunny Hostin over at the View. This line that is constantly used, that what is being spent in the Middle east is somehow depriving Americans of healthcare here is so stupid. You know how much money we spend on healthcare in the United States. Legitimately. Trillions of dollars on healthcare in the United States. If you don't like the war, just say you don't like the war. But don't pretend that you're suddenly fiscally responsible and that you just wanna spend the money on butter, not on guns. It's such nonsense. It's just low IQ trash.
- [54:08]
Unknown caller or guest (possibly a commentator or caller)
I just read that this war is estimated to have already cost us $50 billion. $50 billion, which is more money than this country has spent since World War II. And then in 2027, this president is asking for $1.5 billion trillion dollars for defense, which would be more money spent in modern history on war.
- [54:32]
Ben Shapiro
Why don't they just get rid of him? Arrest.
- [54:34]
Unknown caller or guest (possibly a commentator or caller)
Unbelievable. I think what the American people want is good health. They want. Right? They want good health care. They want good education, they want good housing.
- [54:43]
Ben Shapiro
It's idiocracy. We're just living in idiocracy now. It's so tiring. It's so tiring. These people are so stupid. Truly dumb. Okay, Congress appropriated more than $800 billion for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere since 2001. And that is exclusive, by the way of other military spending, because we spend in this country something like 800 billion to a trillion dollars every year on our defense. It's just. But again, stupidity is the order of the day. Speaking of stupidity and moral idiocy, we'll bring it all the way back home. Cenk Uyghur's nephew is Hasan Piker. Chenk Uyghur is the original Hasan Piker, but fatter and less fashionable. And Chenk Uyghur is making common cause, as you know. Now with Tucker Carlson. They're hugging each other tight in the night. Chenk Uyghur put out a statement after Tucker Carlson said that he regrets having backed President Trump, mainly because it seems that Tucker assumed that President Trump was an isolationist, anti American, multipolarity fan the way he is. So Chenk Uyghur is now coming out in defense of his friend. I'm a little disgusted by the lack of grace some people on our side are showing. People like Tucker Carlson for not only opposing Trump, but apologizing for supporting him. They definitely don't speak for Muslim Americans who are grateful for our new allies. Aw, that's so nice. Wow. Well, at least this bromance is finally being consummated. That's the important thing. Alrighty, folks. The show continues right now for our members, and we're going to get to your questions. As always, become a member. Use code Shapiro Checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click the link in the description and join us.