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- [00:00]
Ben Shapiro
Hassan Piker grew up in Istanbul, Turkey. Zoran Mandani spent his early childhood in Uganda and South Africa. Ilhan Omar grew up in Somalia. These people hate America. They should love it. They hate it. Clearly they're all from the Third World. All of these are major political figures on the left. In fact, realistically, they are the new leading core of the Democratic Party. We have been importing the people who hate our country and wish to destroy it. We who believe in Third Worldism, the philosophy that all the problems of all the Third World can be laid at the feet of us here in the West. But there's more. The people in the Democratic Party elite who apparently believe that the west owes it to the Third World to destroy itself, or who see the Third Worldists as fellow travelers helping them to accomplish that goal. Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez. Ezra Klein in the New York Times, the Pod Save America Bros. These people could cast out the radicals. They could fight them in favor of a conversation with those of us who love America. Instead, they choose to side with those who despise the country in order to defeat us. Anybody who is remotely center or right. Today it's time to talk about the seemingly irreversible slide of the Democratic Party toward deep radicalism that will destroy the country. But to understand that, we have to understand the existential crisis facing our civilization. The threat is now coming from inside the house. I'll explain in just a moment. Plus, we'll get to the latest on Iran, insider trading on Venezuela and Megyn Kelly's new take on a dude who admits to having sex with a 16 year old when he was 30. This is the Ben Shapiro Show. So for the past 24 hours or so, the Internet has been on fire with that Hassan Piker interview that we played yesterday. Again, for those who don't know, I Hasan Piker is a popular Twitch streamer who's been featured on pretty much every major left wing podcast over the past few months. He's been on the COVID of the New York Times, I believe multiple times. He's constantly being profiled by major legacy media. He's the it boy of radical Third worldism. He is a. He is a mansion Marxist and he is the kind of guy who full on defends terror groups like Hamas. This is with Pod Save America and Jon Favreau.
- [02:13]
Hasan Piker
So my question is, when you say Hamas is a thousand times better, do you actually mean that or is that a rhetorical move or like a solidarity signal? Like what? I mean, it's all of the above. I do mean it. I think it's a rhetorical move because it frustrates a lot of people. I've also said I'm a harm reduction voter. I'm a lesser evil voter and therefore I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.
- [02:36]
Ben Shapiro
Again, that's just evil. Now Hasan Piker grew up in Istanbul. Rich as in like dressage horse rich. There he was on his pony and then he came to the United States and he is very rich here as well. He has a mansion, he has nice jewelry. He's also the kind of person who believes that violence against political opposition is totally appropriate. It's as radical as radical can be. Defends Mao, the whole deal.
- [03:02]
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 opponent's guts on there, ok. You need to be gutting them. You need to be shanking these and letting their, letting their intestines just ride on stage. You have 1950s Soviet era building blocks next to the Gucci store. If there was more in, if there was ever a country that represented the synthesis, the things that I enjoy so much personally,
- [04:10]
Ben Shapiro
what a delightful human being. And of course all of that led up to this interview that he did on the opinions podcast with the New York Times where he explained that actually Americans get why United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered by Luigi Mangione.
- [04:27]
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 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 from, 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, pain that the private health care system had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place.
- [05:33]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, so this well, quaffed terror supporting Marxist piece of trash. He also suggested that he is pro stealing as he likes, the theft and again being treated with all the available sympathy and joy by the New York Times.
- [05:51]
Hasan Piker
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.
- [06:40]
Ben Shapiro
Again, stealing is good. Terrorism is good. Hatred of America is good. So Hasan Piker grew up in Istanbul and then he came back to the United States where he was originally born in order to cosplay communism and burn it all down. But Hassan Piker is emblematic of a far deeper problem because the left is mainstreaming him actively, just as they have mainstreamed and praised Zormadani and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed. The future of the Democratic Party is radical Third Worldism. Now they moved over from wokeness to radical Third Worldism. So wokeness, which of course we are all familiar with, was basically at its essence the idea that all inequality of result is inequity in the system. That if there's a difference in result, if somebody ends up poor and somebody ends up rich, it's because the system itself is evil and discriminatory. And we know who are the people in charge because they're the ones who, who are successful. Third Worldism is basically that same idea, but internationally. So the idea is that all inequality globally is the result of Western exploitation. The west is successful. Third World countries are unsuccessful. The only reason that is is because the west must have exploited the Third world already. Coming up, I want to talk about where this Third Worldism is beginning. Why are we importing millions of people who hate America into America and into the west more broadly? Plus, we'll get to a very strange take from our friend Megyn Kelly. First, let's just be honest for a second. Paying 70, 80 or 90 bucks a month for wireless is weird. It doesn't make sense. It's bloated pricing from companies that assume you won't bother to look elsewhere. Meanwhile, my wireless company, Pure Talk, is offering unlimited high speed data for just 34.99amonth. That's not a gimmick, that's the actual price. And here's what's really interesting. 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So to understand this philosophy more thoroughly, you need to look at this rap song that is now becoming incredibly popular on the Internet. It's actually a rap song that is I believe in. I'm not sure which language this is. It was written by a Syrian born artist named Siba who Al Khayyami and she is rapping here. I'll read you the subtitles because she is a Syrian born artist who lives in Germany. Just falsify our origins. Separate our loved ones and slaughter our children. Take our blood for granted. Demonize our revolutionaries. Steal our knowledge. Keep our people oblivious. Torture our spirits. Denounce us our rights. Colonize our countries. Appoint our rulers. Appropriate our goods and burn down our trees. But. But who would you be without us? Bomb our roofs, make us out as liars and watch our pains and belittle our agony. Ignore our tears and close our eyes. Mutilate our faces and deny our feelings. Destroy our dreams. Objectify our bodies and darken our skies and kill our peace. We will keep standing still, Our love stands in us. But who would you be without us? You would not be without us. You will not be without us. And then it goes along these lines and the video for those who can't see is this very angry young woman who is marching, you know, with, with bare sleeves and then behind her are marching a bunch of other people from what appear to be various countries that are clearly not Germany, I assume largely third world countries, many of them Muslim countries. Some of them are wearing keffiyehs and all the rest of it. So why is that important? Well, because this is in its essence what we have imported. We in the west, we have imported people who hate our guts. And then there are a group of people in the United States who hate the systems who have allied with those people in order to create a mass movement. That is what is happening with people like Hassan Piker and people like Rashida Tlaib and people like Ilhan Omar and people like Zoran Mamdani. There's a writer named Zineb Raboya over at the Hudson Institute who has a great piece called the Decolonial Delusion. And here is what she says. She says what began as a framework for analyzing colonial legacies has ossified into a secular theology. In Western universities, NGOs and activist spaces. It no longer questions power as it replaces thought with posture. History is flattened into morality and politics reduced to grievance. The appeal of decolonial ideology is often strongest among diaspora communities in the West. Second and third generation Arabs and North Africans, caught between inherited identity and modern liberal norms often adopt decolonialism as a moral anchor. It offers instant purpose, social legitimacy, and a ready made narrative of justice. So again, the basic idea here is that the reason that other countries suffer is because the west owes them something, the west did something wrong to them. And therefore, if you are living in the west and you realize that the west is pretty great and pretty prosperous, but you feel alienated because your parents are from somewhere else, you blame your parents problems on the west that took them in and you blame colonialism and colonization. Now the reality is this is a great example of how insane this philosophy is. This particular rapper, again, this person named Siba Al Khayyami, she is from Syria apparently, and she is in Germany. Syria, where was never colonized by Germany ever. And in fact, if you're gonna talk about the colonization history of Syria, you can talk about Islamic colonization of Syria. Syria, of course, used to be a Christian country long before it was a Muslim country. So then it was colonized by Muslims and then the Ottoman Empire controlled it for 400 years and then France controlled Syria for 26 years. So that's the only western country to control Syria. Syria. In the last millennium, the Assad regime controlled Syria for twice as long as France did. So Europe was not even the predominant player with regard to Syria. The Ottoman Empire was the Assad regime was. And of course, what did Germany do with regard to Syria? You may have noticed that in that entire description of Syrian history, Germany never came up. Germany just took in multiple millions of Syrian immigrants and migrants during the Syrian civil war. So this person's family, or she, all of them, they entered Germany because Germany under Angela Merkel, decided to import a bunch of Third World refugees out of some sort of misplaced sense of guilt, I suppose. And again, that sense of guilt is. It is misplaced. The narrative that is told by the Third Worldists is false, far too simplistic. The reality is that colonization has been a routine part of human history. It is not merely done by the West. Islamic colonization took over the entire Middle east, still controls large swaths of Africa, moved into Europe. There are all sorts of colonization efforts. And even with regard to European colonization, the reality is that European colonization had very real human costs. But also, it is worthwhile noting that that the institutions set up by colonizers in these areas mean that they are more prosperous. In fact, the countries that retained British institutions in particular are the most prosperous countries in Africa. And the ones that reject those British institutions, those Western institutions completely fail. To take an example, Zimbabwe used to be controlled by Britain. It had 90 years of British colonization and it completely collapsed. Why? Because they decided to basically get rid of all of those institutions and rule as a dictatorship. Not only that colonization. European colonization is responsible for the end of slavery in the areas where there is no slavery. And it is responsible for the institution of systems of things like private property. So the innate colonization and decolonial sort of philosophy itself is wrong. But put that aside, something worse happened. The philosophy was spread largely by Marxist educational institutions, but also by terrorist groups. In a lot of these areas that ended up taking power, the philosophy was spread that the west is responsible for all the problems here. The west is responsible for every problem in Syria, for every problem in Iraq, for every problem in South Africa, where? Or Uganda or Turkey. Right. The idea is that all the problems all over the world are the responsibility of the West. And then we decided that we should import all of those people. So some 6 to 7% of the German population today is Muslim, including over 10% of the population of Berlin. Again, that Syrian rapper is from Frankfurt. Something like 9 to 10% of the entire French population is now Muslim, including 15% of Paris. Remember, leftists in the west greeted it as a triumph when France pulled out of Algeria. So France colonized Algeria, and something like 10 to 13% of the population of Algeria was actual pied Noirs, meaning French citizens. And when Algeria went independent in 1962 and France gave up the ghosts there, all of those French people were forced out. Over a million people left and went back to France. Now, about 13% of the Muslim population of the population of France is Muslim. So the same population percentage wise, that was French in Algeria is now Muslim in France. But that's somehow considered a good thing because it's the reverse colonization. Something like 6 to 7% of the UK's population, including 15% of the population of London, is Muslim. Somewhere between 10 and 15% of the entire voting base of the Labour Party in the UK is Muslim. Which explains why the Labour Party is what the Labour Party is in large part in the United States. Much closer to home. There are about four and a half million Muslims in the United States. That is up from 1.1 million in the year 2000. So a 400% increase. That includes over 10% of the population of New York. As many Muslims as Jews live in New York City, which is why Zahra Mandani is now mayor of New York. Now, many of those people, many of those Muslims are undoubtedly decent citizens, but how many of them sympathize with the decolonial ideology of somebody like Siba Al Khayyami? How many of them agree with that rap song? Well, according to the polls, the answer is a lot. There's one recent poll that came out, it showed the question was, is in Britain how many British Muslims believe AL Qaeda planned? 9, 11. The answer, 4%. Does that sound like a de radicalized population that loves the West? Another poll at the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre a decade ago showed that 2/3 of French Muslims wanted Charlie Hebdo prosecuted for cartoons of Muhammad. Does that sound like a philosophy that is in keeping with French standards of speech today? Some 57% of American Muslims believe that October 7th was at least somewhat justified. You know, we can pretend to weigh these ideological conflicts. It doesn't make them disappear. We've imported a lot of people who do not like Western civilization, again, that doesn't mean all Muslims in the west don't like Western civilization. I know a lot of Muslims who do. But the notion that importing millions of Muslims from third world countries or people from other cultures that don't appreciate Western civilization, that somehow this would be a good idea, that's idiocy. So that raises the question of why the west imported all of this in the first place. And the answer is that there are a bunch of people in the west, homegrown who believe that our civilization is inherently guilty and ought to be torn down. They tend toward the Marxist left. The Marxist left believes of course, that America was founded in sin, that America's foreign policy and the west foreign policy more broadly has been about exploitation and evil. A really good example of this, again, almost a pure example of this, is the French existentialist and Marxist Jean Paul Sartre. So he wrote the foreword to one of the most important anti colonial books of the 20th century about the French occupation of Algeria. It's a book called Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon. So Sartre wrote the introduction to that. And Sartre argued that the west was fundamentally evil and cruel. And he agreed that European civilization should be destroyed, that the Third Worldists were right and the only way for Europe to appease the gods of justice was to destroy itself. Quote, we are all complicit in a thousand year old oppression. You know well enough that we are exploiters. Our precious sets of values begin to mold. On closer scrutiny you won't see one that isn't stained by with blood. Sartre argued that we actually needed to import people from the third world to destroy us. It's our turn to tread the path step by step which leads down to native level. To become natives altogether, our soil must be occupied by a formerly colonized people and we must starve of hunger again. The Marxists of the left love this stuff. They are into this stuff. Suicide is the answer. Western values are evil and they have to be destroyed. So in the United States, this is the coalition that's taking over the Democratic Party. The Third world is themselves. People like the Zoran Mamdanis, people like the Hassan bikers and their fellow travelers. And their fellow travelers. That is the idea. So this is what the Democratic Party is now trying. Wokeness didn't really work on Americans. We didn't like that sort of thing. So now they're trying a different version of Wokeness, a different flavor of wokeness. Third Worldism, which is basically the same poison poured into a slightly different bottle. So less Stacey Abrams and more Zoran Mandani. And the Democratic Party is handing the party directly over to these people. That is what is happening right now. Ezra Klein is a supposed moderate again. Ezra has been on my podcast. I've been on his. He is a supposed Democratic moderate. He wrote a book called Abundance, which was about how the Democratic Party needed to embrace deregulation in certain areas and efficacy of government. And now he's out there defending Hasan Piker, calling him Not a Jew hater, apparently. He says, I have deep disagreements with Piker, but he isn't a Jew hater. I don't know. I have a feeling that people who say that they would take Hamas over Israel, I have a feeling that they're kind. They definitely buy into conspiracy theories about Jews, that is for sure. If you are siding with the actual genocidal anti Jewish group over Israel, I have a feeling that maybe, maybe you might cross that line into Jew hater. Just going to put that out there. And you out there proclaiming that you hate anti Semitism. You just love Hamas. Yeah, I'm going to go no on that one. I'm going to go no on that. Really? It's sort of like saying, listen, I love black people. Black people are just wonderful. They're great. I just happen to love the kkk. Like, if that. I don't. The answer there is no. The answer there is no. Jon Favreau of POD Save America again, they have him on and then he's like, well, no, he's not. Jessica, you think he's a leader in the Democrat. Yes, I do think he's a leader in the Democratic Party because you let him get away with this stuff. You let him get away with this stuff. So why is the Democratic Party doing this? Well, again, some are doing this because they are actual Marxists and they're happy to fellow travel with Third Worldism as a front for their destructive goals. And again, there's a long history of that. Marxists in Africa worked along with the Third Worldists to fight the West. And then there are other Democrats who just hate the right so much that they will find any ally and they will side with those people and they will treat any Democrat who works with Republicans, or at least any Democrat who doesn't want to burn every single thing down as a traitor. So Jennifer Welch, who, for the love of my. I will never understand how Jennifer Welch people listen to this, but here she was. She's a podcaster, for those who don't know, a relatively popular podcaster, from what I understand. She says that Chuck Schumer and Jeffries and Hakeem Jeffries, the Senate Minority Leader and the House Minority Leader are fascist collaborators.
- [23:16]
Megyn Kelly
And basically you have a bunch of dirty cops in the Oval Office right now, and the entire executive branch is a crime syndicate. And Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries should be building the biggest opposition to this. And oftentimes they appear more like fascist collaborators than they do a full blown opposition to it. So there's no. Attaboy. From me to Chuck Schumer.
- [23:41]
Ben Shapiro
Again, fascist collab. This is how you end up with the Third World is running the. Running your party. Because if the idea is you prefer the revolutionaries who burn everything down to the pretty left wing Democrats who just aren't burning everything down, well, then you end up with the crazies in charge. So the big question for the Democratic Party, can the moderates actually fight back? Very, very unlikely. This is why the future of the Democratic Party. I've been saying it for a long time, it is the Bernie Sanders Marxist left hand in hand with the Ilhan Omar Rashida Tlaib Islamist left. That is, that is the coalition and that is the leadership base of the coalition. Why? Well, because if you're a Democrat, you cannot be half in and half out. You can't be a party so extreme that you say for fully a decade, boys are girls and Trump is Hitler, and then say that your solution is to gradually win elections and effectuate larger government spending programs. It doesn't, it doesn't work that way. You can't simultaneously say that America is at existential threat and also we're going to abide by all the rules of the road. You can't. You can't really do that. This is why Hakeem Jeffries has no answer to a basic question. Why? Why do kids. Some kid asked him, why do Democrats have such poor approval ratings? And Jeffries couldn't give the answer. Now, the answer is, because they are way too radical. They're perceived as way too radical by the American public on key questions, and at the same time, they're perceived as moderate by their own radicals. And so everyone sort of hates them. That's the answer. But he has no idea how to answer the question. Got a question there. Why do voters view Democrats so poorly? Did your dad give you that question? It's a great question in that. I'm gonna have words with you after this, Montreal. Listen, I think that we exist in an era right now where the American people are understandably frustrated with institutions. Okay, well, he is. That last part there is. Right. But Democrats, instead of standing up for institutions and then working with Republicans to fight against the radicals, have decided that they are going to make room for the radicals because that is the jet fuel in their airplane. Again, you can't say for a decade that Donald Trump is Hitler and that boys are girls and that America is systemically racist and irredeemably racist and then turn around and pretend that it has no impact. You can't do that. It is not possible. So Democrats are embracing total radicalism. So how are they gonna get away with this and still win? We'll get into that. Plus Iran and a strange take from Megyn Kelly. First, here is the thing. If you own a business, you probably have no idea how many brokers it actually takes to insure it. And that's a problem. 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Head over to super sure.com Shapiro One super agency, one powerful platform. All your policies in one place. Go to super sure.comshapiro that's super sure.comshapiro paid for by Super Sure Insurance Agency LLC, a licensed insurance agency. So the question becomes now, how do Democrats sell this radicalism as non radicalism? Because again, if you ask the vast majority of Americans, do they like Hasan Piker? The answer is no. Do they? Do they like his views? No, they think it's crazy. How do they sell this? Well, they lie about it. They're two faced. So the key to not alienating Americans is to lie about your own radicalism. So this is Zoran Mandani, right? You slap on the smarmy face and you leave these screaming in Tom Homan's face, Zor Momdani in the background. That is to get all of the people out in the primaries. And then when you get to the general, then you start pretending they were actually some sort of moderate. That's when you grin into the camera, right? If you're Zoram Hamdani, you say that the NYPD is laced, its boot is laced by the idf. But then when it comes time to actually interview, you say, no, no, no, I hate anti Semitism. I Just. I just don't like Israel. That's the game that you play. Barack Obama was. Was the best practitioner of this game, by the way. And this is why so many Americans felt gaslight gaslit by by Barack Obama, because they were. Barack Obama would go out there and he would say, there are no red states, there are no blue states, just the United States. And then he would literally go. His first major speech after he was elected, he would literally go to Cairo for his first major speech in Egypt, a speech titled A New Beginning. And he would talk about how America and the west more broadly were deeply guilty for all the problems of the third world. And this guy was the president. So this is nothing new. We're just watching a new and more radical iteration publicly of what the kind of stuff that Barack Obama was doing very early on in his administration. Here he was in Egypt in 2009.
- [29:10]
Barack Obama
9, 11 was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims and a Cold war in which Muslim majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the west as hostile to the traditions of Islam.
- [30:13]
Ben Shapiro
Again, this is radicalism in a moderate bottle. And that is what Democrats are trying to sell. They're trying to sell Hasan Piker in a grinning Zorn Mandani bottle. They're trying to sell Ilhan Omar in an Alexander Ocasio Cortez bottle. That is the idea here. That is always so when we talk about do politics matter? Doesn't matter who you vote for? Yes, of course it does. Because the reality is the Democratic Party are giving into these people day by day by day. If you don't like the idea that politically motivated murder is okay, then maybe you should think about the party that is justifying politically motivated murder and massaging the people who are promoting it. Right? If you don't like the idea, then that just randomly stealing from places is okay, maybe you should question why more Democratic politicians aren't calling that out. Where are they? Why are they campaigning with people like Hasan Piker? I understand the temptation. Look, I get the temptation for people of the right people who are moderate. I get the temptation. It's just New York. Who cares? Hasan Piker, he's a podcast or whatever. Rashida Tlaib is just a congressperson from Michigan. Abdul Al Sayed, Maybe he'll be a senator from Michigan. But whatever these are, these are isis. Here's the thing. It starts off with a core. Every revolution starts with a core. And then if you have enough weak and venal people surrounding that core, you get a movement. And then if that movement takes over an entire party, you got a 50% shot that that thing runs the country. That's the problem. And so all of these people, these pseudo moderates, ranging from the Ezra Klein's to the Jon Favreau's. Where are you? Where are you? I don't blame Hasan Piker for being Hasan Piker or Zoran Mamdani for being Zoran Mamdani. I blame you for failing to stop the takeover of your party by this. Why is it, and we all know it, why is it that John Fetterman is more of an outcast from the Democratic Party at this point than Zormandani, Ilhan Omar or Hassan Baker? Why? I think we all know the answer because we know which direction that party is moving, and that is a disaster area for the country. All right, meanwhile, over in Iran, and there are a lot of questions to be asked, obviously about the war in Iran. What's the strategy? What are we doing over there? And all the rest. But I will say an enormous amount of the opposition to the war in Iran is not rooted in honest questions about strategy and tactics. A lot of it, particularly on the part of the left, is rooted in the idea that Iran is an innocent country that's being attacked, that Third world countries like Iran, they don't have any agency of their own, they don't have any goals of their own. The only reason that they are angry at us is because of Mohammad Mosaddegh not being the prime minister in 1953. That really, if it had not been for America and our interventionism in the Middle East, Iran would be totally great. Third Worldism, that's the reason for a lot of this on the right as well, by the way. And there's basically no difference between the viewpoints of Howard Zinn and John Mearsheimer. They're basically the same when it comes to American history and foreign policy. That is why, again, Tucker Carlson and Hassan Piker are holding hands here. Because Third Worldism exists on the part of some parts of the right side of the aisle as well. But the reality is that Americans are not on board with any of that Third worldism, as a general rule, they are not on board with it, which is why Democrats have to lie about it. There's a brand new poll out from Echelon Insights and it shows that Americans are willing to pay higher gas prices to achieve a set of outcomes. 49% say that they are very or somewhat willing to pay higher gas prices to stop Iran from having a nuclear program, or to set back the Iranian nuclear capabilities, or to degrade their military capabilities or to replace their leader with something more sympathetic. That is as opposed to 39% who say they're not very willing or not at all willing to have higher gas prices for any of those things. So a plurality of Americans again have their heads screwed on straight when it comes to American foreign policy. That is why President Trump says he put out a truth social saying, I have all the time in the world. And what Trump is doing here is actually quite smart. People are saying he extended the ceasefire cuz he's backing down again. The Iranians are trying to taunt him into military action again because they wish for the United States to light up with objection. That is their goal. What they are dying from right now, the Iranian government, is the blockade. The blockade is destroying them. The President is correct. He says, quote, I have all the time in the world, but Iran doesn't. The clock is ticking. Correct. Time is not on their side. A deal will only be made when it's appropriate and good for the United States of America, our allies, and in fact, the rest of the world. President Trump, he is correct about this. That is right. Time is on our side. It is not on the side of the Iranian mullahs. And the President has three more years to be president. How long does the Iranian economy have to hold up the irgc? Here is President Trump saying this. He says, don't rush me, gang on war with Iran.
- [35:19]
Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter
How long are you willing to wait until you get a response?
- [35:22]
Donald Trump
Don't rush me, Jeff. You know, guys like you, you want to say, oh, so we were in Vietnam like for 18 years. We were in Iraq for many, many years. We're in for all the. I don't like to say World War II because that was a biggie, but we were four and a half, almost five years in World War II. We were in the Korean War for seven years. I've been doing this for six weeks.
- [35:47]
Ben Shapiro
Again, he is not wrong. And CENTCOM put up an image of the blockade showing that the United States has been stopping 30 plus vessels. The majority of those vessels have complied with US directions. Most of the ones that were turned around have been oil tankers. The President says, listen, I'm holding out for an actual good deal. He says, I could make a deal right this very instant. But he wants it to be a lasting deal. Again. What we're watching right now from President Trump, I've said it before, I'll say it again, is an act of true political courage. Yes, it is a political risk because democracies tend not to favor conflict, even if that conflict heads off a further conflict. It's one of the problems that democracies have generally. Winston Churchill talks about this at the beginning of his History of World War II when he's describing what led from World War I to World War II. He says, Listen, if the democracies had held the line between World War I and World War II, there wouldn't have been a World War II. Very difficult in democracies to get people to put aside short term interest in favor of long term interest. The President is trying to do that and that takes actual courage.
- [36:48]
Megyn Kelly
Here he was yesterday, weeks that the US now has been involved with Iran. You had initially said it would be four to six weeks.
- [36:55]
Donald Trump
Well, I hope that. But I also took a little break. I gave them a break. And remember this. I want to make the best deal I could make a deal right now. Do you know that if I left right now, we had a tremendous success. It would take them 20 years to rebuild. But I don't want to do that. I want to have it everlasting.
- [37:16]
Ben Shapiro
He is right. And he points out that the leadership there is already fracturing. So President Trump put out a statement on Truth Social. He says Iran doesn't even know who their leader is, which is correct, actually. He says Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is. They just don't know. The infighting is between the hardliners who have been losing badly on the battlefield, and the moderates, who are not very moderate at all, but gaining respect. It's crazy. We have total control over the Strait of Hormuz. No ship can enter or leave without the approval of the United States Navy. It is sealed up tight until such time as Iran is able to make a deal. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Now the Iranians are trying to claim the opposite. Abbas Arahi, who is the foreign minister of Iran, put out a statement saying, no, no, no, no, it's not true. Iranians are all united more than ever before. Mm, mm, mm, mm. Not true. Mohammad Khaliboff, who is the speaker of Parliament and an IRGC cutout, he put out a tweet saying the same thing. He says, in Iran, there are no radicals or moderates. We are all Iranian and revolutionary. And with the iron unity of the nation and government, and with complete obedience to the supreme leader of the revolution, we will make the aggressor criminal regret his actions. One God, one leader, one nation, one path. Okay, so there's only one problem. It's not really true. There is massive conflict inside the Iranian regime, according to the New York Times. The New York Times, interviewed on the basis of anonymity, six senior officials, two former officials, two IRGC members, a senior cleric, three individuals who know Moshtaba Khamenei well, nine individuals with ties to the irgc. And the New York Times reports that Ayatollah Khamenei is a complete figurehead, that he's been badly hurt, that he's been communicating with the IRGC via courier. Handwritten messages. One leg was operated on three times. He's waiting a prosthetic. He had surgery on one hand. He's slowly regaining function. His face and lips have been severely burned, which is why you haven't seen a picture of him at all. And he is not in charge. The IRGC is in charge. According to the New York Times, the elected president and his cabinet have been sidelined and told to focus only on domestic affairs, like providing a steady flow of food and fuel and to make sure the country is functioning, according to knowledgeable officials. The Foreign Minister, Abbas Arahi, has been marginalized in the negotiations he led with the United States before the war. Instead, Mohammed Khaliba, who is a cutout for the irgc, has taken the lead instead. So again, the IRGC is in charge. The question is for how long and when they can't pay their folks, do things start to hit the end of the road for them? Meanwhile, the president has been continuing to broker a ceasefire in Lebanon. So Hezbollah has been harassing Israel for legitimately decades. At this point, firing thousands of rockets into the north of Israel. Population of northern Israel was for two years not living in their homes. And so Israel, over the course of the Iran war, also went into Lebanon to clean Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. And then a ceasefire was declared brokered by President Trump. The President put out a statement yesterday saying that the United States will work with Lebanon to help it protect itself from Hezbollah. The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will be extended by three weeks. I look forward in the near future to hosting the Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, and the President of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun. Now, the reality, of course, is that the Lebanese government is insanely weak. They've never been able to disarm Hezbollah. So the reality will be Israel disarming Hezbollah with presumably the help of the Lebanese government. That's the only way a deal actually works Here. President Trump was asked about whether Iran would have to stop funding Hezbollah as part of any deal. He said yes. He says there's a good chance of a deal between Israel and Lebanon. Here was the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, who says that Israel would like peace with Lebanon and vice versa.
- [40:55]
Secretary Stairubio
Thank you, Mr. President, for your hospitality, for bringing Israel and Lebanon together here in the Oval Office. Israel wants peace with Lebanon, and Israel wants security for its citizens. We're united with the Lebanese government wanting to rid the country of this malign influence called Hezbollah. Now that, Mr. President, under your leadership, Iran has been so degraded, the possibility of degrading Hezbollah and liberating Lebanon from their occupation is real. So we hope that together, under your leadership, we can formalize peace between Israel and Lebanon in the very near future.
- [41:35]
Ben Shapiro
Secretary Stairubio, who was there at that meeting as well, he said that both of these countries are being victimized by the same terrorist organization, which of course is true.
- [41:43]
Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter
The President wanted to be personally involved, and I'm glad he was, because it made it possible to get this extension, and it gives everybody time to continue to work on what's going to be a permanent peace between two countries that want to be at peace. Both are victimized by the same terrorist organization, a terrorist organization that no doubt has victimized Israel, but has also victimized the people of Lebanon. The people of Lebanon deserve to live in a country that's peaceful and prosperous. They have an opportunity. They have a history of that. And what's standing in the way is an organization that operates, a terrorist organization that operates within their national territory. That needs to be. That threat needs to be eliminated. And so thank you, Mr. President, for this gathering today and for convening and being a key part of it. And it spies this time to continue to work. I'm very optimistic that in a few weeks we'll be even closer to the kind of permanent peace that the people of Israel and Lebanon deserve.
- [42:33]
Ben Shapiro
I do have to say one of the most astonishing things about the online discourse surrounding, for example, Israel and Christianity is the complete unwillingness to ever mention what Lebanon was. Lebanon was a Christian country that was taken over in large part by the Palestine Liberation Organization and used as a base to launch attacks and then was taken over by Iran and Hezbollah. And many of the people who hate Israel and claim that Israel is anti Christian literally are defending groups that turned Lebanon from a Christian paradise into a complete hellhole. Great job, guys. Well done. Well, meanwhile, there's been a lot of consternation about insider trading on betting markets, on futures markets. Apparently one dude made $37,000 on poly market by making a weather bet. And that what he did is he bet that temperature would rise to a certain degree. And then he took a hairdryer and went over to one of the temperature measuring devices and hit it with a hairdryer so as to raise the temperature. Kind of smart, I guess. So here is some video of this. You can see him, he's approaching this temperature monitor and hitting it with the hairdryer, the portable hairdryer, so as to raise the temperature a little bit. He checks to make sure that the temperature rose so he can collect his winnings. He put in $2,000. He walked away with a profit of nearly 2,37,000. Now the censor has a security guard and the guy is in the wind. So, you know, points human beings, very resourceful when it comes to skipping over the rules. That is the sort of version of this that doesn't matter. Then there's the version of this that does matter. According to the Wall Street Journal, Gannon Ken Van Dyke was charged in Manhattan federal court with commodity and wire fraud. According to the doj, apparently he's a master sergeant with US Army Special Forces and he misused information about the operation to grab Nicolas Maduro to make, well time bets on polymarket that Maduro would lose power by the end of January. He took part in the planning and execution of the mission. He received a classified briefing on December 8. He spends about 33 grand in long shot contracts that netted him a profit of $409,000. Kalshee, by the way, has announced that they have fined and suspended three congressional candidates for betting on their own races. President Trump was asked about this. He said he's not happy with it.
- [45:01]
Donald Trump
Against his team, that would be no good. But he bet on his own team. I'll look into it. Yeah. There are also bets though that are
- [45:07]
Megyn Kelly
being placed as well on the Iran conflict too. And there have been some trackings where people suspect that there's insider training happening on these predictions markets around the core. Are you.
- [45:18]
Donald Trump
Well, you know, the whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a Casino and you look at what's going on all over the world, in Europe and every place they're doing these betting things. I was never much in favor of it. I don't like it conceptually, but it is what it is. No, I think that I'm not happy with any of that stuff. But they have all these different sites of predictive markets. It's a crazy world. It's a much different world than it was.
- [45:46]
Secretary Stairubio
Please.
- [45:49]
Ben Shapiro
Well, you know the world of online, it is not the real world. And if you get caught up in it, you might end up in jail. Well, speaking of the world of the online, obviously I've been at odds with Megyn Kelly. We were friends at one point and she objected to me calling her out for continuing. Like still eight months later to pretend that Candace Owens is not doing anything wrong by attacking Erica Kirk, she instead lies and say that I'm telling her something about Israel or something. Which is weird cuz that's not what I'm talking about. In any case, Megan B. Clowned herself yesterday because he had. She had on Russell Brand. Now Russell Brand was a guest on this show in March 2023. I believe that was before there were widespread allegations of him in engaging in pretty significant sexual misconduct. Well back in September 2023, which is when a lot of these allegations came up, Megan had some things to say about Russell Brand. In fact, here, here she was in September of 2023 saying that she would condemn Russell Brand if the allegations were true.
- [46:53]
Megyn Kelly
Before they rush to defend somebody like this, they need to pause and think about their own honor code and their daughters and their wives and their sisters. Because if you can't do it for yourself, if you could just remove your own skin from the game, think about your daughter. That's who I think about. I don't give a whether Russell Brand actually sexually assaulted in this instance or that. I mean I care. But what I'm trying to say is I don't care whether it's true. I'm done. If he had sex with a 16 year old when he was 31, I'm done. I'm not his fan. I am perfectly comfortable condemning that full force. I have a 12 year old daughter. Any man comes near her in four years who's 31 years old and we are going to have a serious problem that goes well beyond his demonetization on YouTube. That's wrong. And anybody with 2 cents in between their ears knows it's wrong. It went on allegedly for three months. Months. If the whole thing's A lie. We should find out. If he admits to just that alone, it's over. And I don't care how many sponsors he loses,
- [48:02]
Ben Shapiro
okay? At that same time, she said that the right was being morally hypocritical for not disowning him.
- [48:11]
Megyn Kelly
We don't need him. In fact, he's a hindrance. And think about the message that you're sending to young women, young women who might be thinking about leaning conservative or voting Republican. Do you think this is a good recruiting method? After all of the years that we've been through where the Republican brand has been so damaged, do you think they're wanting to sign up with a brand where it's like, hey, as I'm now seeing Online, she was 16. What about her culpability? Oh, my God, shut up. If that's your position, I can't even engage in a good faith argument with you. She was a minor. She was a child. To even equate the two on this scale is an absurdity. That shows you, if you're making the argument, probably have some skeleton in your closet that you don't want me to know about. So I want more men like you to say, guys, we don't need every willing soldier on this team, even if he happens to be a massive celebrity and has 6 million YouTube followers. Because what I'm seeing is too many conservatives who are supposed to eschew celebrity. And we're supposed to be, you know, the ones who are like, no, we're not into the celebrity culture. Fawn over this guy. Because every time one of these guys deigns to look their way or say something they like, they're like, oh, he likes me. Oh, he had me on. Or oh, he's on my side. Would you grow up? We don't care about Russell Brand. We care about message. We care about truth. We used to care about honor. Let's not lose that when we need it most.
- [49:42]
Ben Shapiro
Strange. Fast forward a couple of years, you know, to like yesterday. And guess who was on Megan's show. It was Russell Brand. He's pumping a new book that he's publishing via Tucker Carlson all about his conversion to Christianity, which has, you know, been interestingly timed as all the prosecutions come up. And here was Megyn Kelly. You know, she's face to face with the guy, and he literally talks about sleeping with that 16 year old when he was 30. And, hmm,
- [50:17]
Russell Brand
behold, in Europe and in the United Kingdom, where I'm from, the age of consent is 16. And I did sleep with a 16 year old. When I was 30. But when I was 30, I was a very different person. I was a lot younger and I was an immature 30 year old. Consensual sex, actually, with a variety of people, when there is a strong power differential, as there is when you're a famous man that has the ability to attract women that I had at that time, I think involves exploitation. I think it is exploitative. I recognize that my sexual conduct in the past was selfish and I didn't. I did not apply enough consideration, barely any, I suppose, really, to how that sex was affecting other people.
- [51:12]
Ben Shapiro
Megan seems very accepting of this. So. Okay, okay. Probably it's just, you know, consistency of principle and not click whoring. Probably it's that as it has been the whole time. All righty. Well, moving on to more important matters. The economy continues to concern Americans. Gallup has a poll out talking about America's economic confidence. Right now it's dropping pretty significantly. When it comes to confidence rates, it has dropped to 38% negative. Essentially, the plus minus is 38% negative. Now, again, this isn't historically low. It's the lowest that it's been since probably the beginning of 2024. And that is because of the spike in the gas prices, and it is because of uncertainty about AI and all the rest of it. I will say that I'm amused by people like Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, complaining about high gas prices. So I was in California last week, and one of the things I noticed is that the difference in gas price between Florida and where I was in Los Angeles was something like $3 a gallon. That is not because of Iran. That is because of the regulatory environment in California that makes it almost impossible to provide gas to the population at scale, at an affordable price. But here is Gavin Newsom complaining about Trump and Iran, not his own policies. The price spikes in this state are
- [52:37]
Donald Trump
directly attributable to the actions of the
- [52:39]
Ben Shapiro
President of the United States. And the President of the United States need to be held to account not only to those actions and the consequences of it, but he needs to end this war and he needs to address the growing crisis at the pump that he has exacerbated. Now, again, we should point out here that California has the highest gas prices in the United States. That boutique state taxes and environmental fees amount to something like a buck 20 to a buck 50 a gallon. That some 360 energy companies have left California since 2018 alone. That includes Chevron. Tesla moved to Austin in 2021. Oracle moved to Austin in 2020 refineries are closing all over the state. So, yeah, I mean, when Democrats complain about high gas prices and then simultaneously undercut the entire energy market, it's a little bit. A little bit awkward. Alrighty, folks. Coming up, we'll jump into your questions. In order for you to actually have your questions answered, you have to become part of the group, become part of the club, become a member. Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. Sam.