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- [00:00]
Ben Shapiro
President Trump is headed to China in two days. Now, according to the legacy media, President Trump is in a weak position, has no cards to play. The Chinese have the upper hand. This is total crap. President Trump has spent a decade totally reshifting the global power map. China is in trouble and President Trump is heading into the summit in a power position on every front. Go back 10 years. Everyone said that China would be dominant 10 years ago. Wrong. Well, today, America's critics, the left and the woke right, which is basically the new left, they say that America should cede global power to multipolarity, which means China and Russia. That's not just stupid. It makes them useful idiots for one of the world's worst regimes. President Trump has reshuffled the global order even more in America's favor. In a second, we'll get to the real story, how China is in serious trouble, how America is rising. Plus, we'll talk to the acting labor secretary about some new economic numbers. We'll get some pretty egregious jokes at the roast of Kevin Hart. And we will discuss whether indeed Elliot Page is playing Achilles in Christopher Nolan's new flick. And where did Ellen Page go? Why is she still missing? This is the Ben Shapiro Show. So, as you know, this week President Trump is headed to China to meet with the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. According to Reuters, the president and Jinping are set to discuss Iran, Taiwan, artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons as they weigh extending a critical minerals deal, according to US Officials who have been previewing Trump's two day visit to China this week. Now, according to some sources, China is actually overconfident. They believe that they have the upper hand. Zhang Zhuanghuang was a global health expert specializing in China, wrote for the New York Times over the weekend. As Beijing prepares for President Trump's visit this week, I see a dangerous new overconfidence taking hold in my native country based on misplaced notions of American decline. I fear it is fueling a sense of intransigence that is making Chinese leaders more willing to weaponize their nation's power and less likely to back down in future confrontations with the United States. The belief is partly a defense mechanism to help Chinese people cope with their own problems. A slowing economy, a collapsing property market, high unemployment, in a widespread sense of uncertainty. Now, again, one of the things that's happening here is that people in China are being allowed to see by the Chinese government coverage of what's happening in America. And because that coverage is very often negative about America, that is ramping up The Chinese government's perception of strength. It turns out that what we say to one another here in the United States has a massive outsized impact abroad. This is why you will see members of the woke, right, appearing on Iranian television and clips or on Russian television in clips. It is true that when you say things that are untrue about the United States and when you spread the idea that America is on her last legs, that's actually quite good for America's enemies. And as you can see, both China and Russia are trying to claim that the new status of planet Earth ought to be multipolarity. And what they mean by multipolarity is the same thing that is meant by Hasan Piker or Tucker Carlson. The idea is America must cede global power. So, so Vladimir Putin, who again is a war criminal here, he was suggesting that multipolarity must be based on the UN Charter. Again, the idea of the use of the UN Charter, which is paid for by the United States, we are the chief foundational lodestar of the United Nations. The idea that the UN ought to be a club in the hands of Russia and China is insane. Here was Putin at the Victory Day celebration.
- [03:28]
Vladimir Putin
The multipolar architecture of today must be based on the charter of the United nations organization in its fullness and its entirety. The security must be equal and indivisible and cultural diversity and ethnic diversity of the planet must be taken into consideration. And the nations must have the right to determine their own future.
- [03:55]
Ben Shapiro
So again, the idea that Russia cares about nations determining their own future while they're attempting to destroy Ukraine wholesale is pretty astonishing. Meanwhile, their buddies in the sort of European slash Canadian world are helping them out. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney is calling for global cooperation based on common values and interests. Now I'm just wondering what those common values and interests would be with say Russia and China. Because he has been reorienting Canada away from the United States in the aftermath of the trade war with the US and toward China. Here's Mark Carney again calling for a sort of multipolarity.
- [04:28]
Mark Carney
We're making this progress in part because we've recognized in some cases before others the degree to which in the new world sovereignty requires more than a country just being able to feed fuel and defend itself. As important as that is, it requires access to those critical minerals, to space based communications, to sovereign cloud AI payment systems, clean energy and vaccines. And all of that demands partnership. And there's no one stop shop for that partnership. We need a variable geometry, a dense web of partnerships across those core strategic capabilities and issues, drawing on common values and interests, because it's those common values and interests that will assure alignment and respect to those agreements.
- [05:17]
Ben Shapiro
So many common values and interests with, say, China and Russia that, of course, he was saying at the center for American progress, a liberal think tank outlet. Now, president Trump is headed over to China, and you're being told by our beloved legacy media that president Trump is somehow in a weak position. Multipolarity is happening wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. China is in the weakest global position it has been in at least a couple of decades. Go back one decade to the Obama administration. So in September 2015, Obama and Xi jinping had a joint event at the white House urging u. S. China cooperation. Here is president Obama talking about China way back when. Greater prosperity and greater security. That's what American and Chinese cooperation can deliver. And that's why I want to say again, the United States welcomes the rise
- [06:03]
Benjamin Netanyahu
of a China that has peaceful, stable,
- [06:07]
Ben Shapiro
prosperous, and a responsible player in global affairs. And I'm committed to expanding our cooperation even as we address disagreements candidly and constructively. Now, again, the idea from Barack Obama was that China would be a global partner with us. We would work with them in the same way that he wanted Iran to be a global partner or Russia to be a global partner. President Trump, you may remember when he was running back in 2016, his language with regard to China was a little different than that of Barack Obama. Here he was in 2016 running for
- [06:38]
Donald Trump
president when the Chinese traders come in and they come in 20 at a time, they come in all the way. But when the Chinese come in and they want to make great trade deals and they make the best trade deals, and not anymore when I'm there. We turn it around, folks. We turn it around. We have a $500 billion deficit, trade deficit with China. We're going to turn it around. And we have the cards. Don't forget, we're like the piggy bank that's being robbed. We have the cards. We have a lot of power with China. When China doesn't want to fix the problem in North Korea, we say, sorry, folks, you got to fix the problem because we can't continue to allow China to rape our country. And that's what they're doing.
- [07:22]
Ben Shapiro
I have to say, it is astonishing how. How well president Trump has held up. There are all of these before and after photos from every president where it shows a president going into office, looks all young and vibrant, and eight years later, he looks as though death is upon him, President Trump is identical. He looks the same as he did in 2016. It's unbelievable. He's the only person in America who's not aging. In any case, things are not going amazing for China in the Trump era. See, here is the thing. China is an awful, terrible, autocratic, economically fascist one party state. And they've had serious systemic problems for years, decades even. Now those problems have been masked over the course of the last three decades or so by China's movement from a totally closed economy in the 1970s to an economy that actually engaged with world markets that moved from communism at home into a sort of mercantilism. Under the predecessors to Xi Jinping, Zhang Jimen and Hu Jintao, they actually moved from full on communism toward again embrace of global markets. Even if their businesses were structured top down in China, that growth itself masked China's massive internal problems. Now, there are always moronic economists here in the west who are in love with the idea of a mercantilist centralized state, meaning a centralized state that directs where private monies should be spent and then determines what kind of trade deals can be made. Everything is government sponsored, everything is government subsidized, everything is government regulated. And, and a lot of economists love this stuff because it gives them the illusion of control. And over the course of sort of capitalism versus mercantilism, there's always been a group of economists who sort of love this model. Back in the 1930s, there were economists in the United States who were very jealous of the Nazi, German and Italian fascist models because they were capable of mobilizing on broad scale. Now both those economies were very weak. One of the things that drove Germany toward war in the late 30s is the fact that they had driven up extraordinary foreign debt because they were spending all of their money on military industrial rebuilding. But again, it was true of the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 60s, this idea that the Soviet Union was going to bury us. And it's true now of China. But China is not the economic powerhouse we are making it out to be. Now they can direct their economy in a few different directions with serious power and they can take whatever they have of their economy and they can cobble it together and they can punch in one direction. So for example, if they want to generate except extraordinary levels of power, they can build lots of nuclear plants or they can dig for coal and they don't care about the environmental effects. So they can really outproduce us in terms of energy and they have been. Or they can build some new cars. That are pretty competitive by stealing and adapting Western technology, which they do. But let us be real. The Chinese economy is not truly competitive with the American economy in any serious sense. Their products are not better than ours. Their services are not better than ours. Their economy is not better than ours. Their. Not even close. Not even close. Again, it is just a misnomer. The reality is that China's nominal GDP per capita and probably is lower than this is like $15,000 a year. $15,000 a year. They have the same GDP per capita as Kazakhstan, the United States. Our nominal GDP per capita. Right. We're all suffering. It's just terrible. Our economy's. We hear this all the time. Right now our nominal GDP per capita is $95,000 a year. The average American. Right. If you just take the GDP and divide it by the number of Americans, our economy is like seven times the size of the Chinese economy on a per capita basis. Their growth rates are always lies, they're always exaggerated. All right, coming up, we'll get to all the reasons why China has serious systemic problems. First, at some point, Americans collectively decided paying 80 or 90 bucks a month for wireless service was kind of normal wireless. Why? Seriously, like why your phone bill now looks like a car payment? Because three giant companies figured out they could keep raising prices and most people would never bother switching. Meanwhile, PureTalk is offering unlimited high speed data for 34.99amonth. That's not an introductory gimmick. That's the actual price. What's interesting is the same unlimited plan used to cost 55 bucks. Pure talk lowered it because they are moving in the opposite direction from those big wireless companies. More value, lower prices. Imagine that. So if you looked at Pure Talk before and you passed, it's worth looking again. Modern phone bills, they're going up and up and up. You need some sort of degree or claude in order to understand what the hell is going on with your phone bill. And people always ask the same question, does it actually work as well? The answer is yes. The coverage is strong. Call clarity is excellent. The service works the way you would expect your phone service to work. And if you're skeptical, fine, just try it for 30 days. No contract, no cancellation fees. You're not trapped. Switching takes about 10 minutes. If you need help, you get a US based customer service team that actually answers the phone and speaks English, which in 2026 apparently qualifies as a luxury experience. Head over to PureTalk.com Shapiro get unlimited high speed data for 34.99amonth. That's PureTalk.com Shapiro stop overpaying. Switch to Pure Talk, America's wireless company today. A couple of years ago, I cut a YouTube video explaining China's problems A couple of years ago. I like saying I told you so. So I'm just going to I told you so. And if you'd watched the video, you would have Known they have five main problems. 1. Demographics. Huge demographic problem in China. It's an old country with no kids at all. Here is some of that video I cut a couple of years ago. A healthy demographic chart in terms of age looks something like a pyramid. Most of the citizens will be young. A solid number will be middle aged, and at the very top, the fewest will be elderly. Even in 2000, the warning signs were clear in China. You can see the dramatic lack of people in the nine and below group that did not change. So here's what that same chart looks like by 2020. Look how the vast bulk of the population is now over the age of 30. According to the Chinese government itself, the one child policy prevented 400 million births. China's population has already peaked. It's now dropping. The question is, as the population ages in a heavily Marxist system, who's going to pay the bills? Again, if you'd listened a couple of years ago, you'd be ahead of the curve, which is usually true of this show. Okay, reason number two, that the Chinese economy is a problem, that it is not, in fact, totally competitive is they lack innovation. So they can build these gigantic labs and they can force a bunch of people into those labs. But when you don't have free markets, the system of free markets allows for better products and services because of competition. You want to know why every major AI company is located in the United States? Because they're all competing with each other. In fact, many of them are located a few blocks from one another in Silicon Valley. And that is not atypical in a free market economy. Because you have a business, the business starts off, it starts making a profit. Another business has I can do that better and they jump in. But what if the state decides which businesses should win and which ones should lose? As I said again in that video a couple of years ago, innovation is not the chief part of the Chinese economy. Instead, it's just ramming things through, producing things in bulk. Right now, the entire Chinese economy is reliant on producing things at scale, undercutting foreign markets and stealing technology. As the young working population declines, producing things at scale becomes a lot more difficult. Cheap labor goes away. Then There is the problem of innovation. It turns out when you nationalize all innovation, you kill it. The solution is you rob everybody else of their IP and then you try to recreate it. Some reports suggest that Chinese IP found theft cost the United States alone up to $600 billion per year. And again, that's what they did with Deepseek. They basically robbed a bunch of IP from the United States and they tried to get chips they weren't allowed access to and hooked those all up. Does that mean they could outcompete us in a true competitive market? The answer is no. Reason number three that China has a problem is everybody pretends that China doesn't have a serious debt problem. They hide their debt problem by stealing money from their citizens. China. China has a massive debt problem. Again, this is from my video a couple of years ago explaining the country's debt to GDP ratio is at least 159%. That is 60% higher than the global rate. According to the S and P Global Ratings, the nation's total stock of corporate, household and government debt is now over 300% of GDP. It comprises 15% of all debt globally. According to the Institute of International Finance. Because Chinese banks are owned by the state, their decision making is rooted in government interests rather than profitability. That means they're probably carrying trillions of dollars in bad loans. Okay, reason number four, they got a problem. We're always hearing about the Chinese military. And yes, of course they have a gigantic nuclear arsenal, but technologically speaking, they are way behind the United States. Now maybe they're able to pick it up, but not if they're also lagging in AI. This is why we need to win the AI race. Because basically the only thing that can solve Chinese demographic problems, productivity problems and military problems is winning the AI race. This is why it's so stupid. When you see people from left to the woke right making the case that AI in the United States needs to be set back, it's nuts. That's crazy. You're handing global power to the Chinese. You're constantly hearing about China's gigantic army. Well, they got some problems. Again, here's from my video. China's two million man army is indeed huge. But manpower isn't everything. As we saw in the Ukraine war. Like Russia, the Chinese military isn't up to snuff. China relies on older, less sophisticated ships, according to the RAND Corporation. What's more, China doesn't yet have the capacity to project deep water power. They have a lot of boats in their navy and their navy is effective in coastal zones, but they have no capacity to project power beyond those zones. So the Chinese navy is largely a brown water navy, meaning internal waterways, or a green water navy, meaning the Taiwan Strait immediate areas right off their coast. They do not have a serious blue water navy, meaning they can't project power all the way to, say, the Strait of Hormuz in any really serious way. And then finally, of course, China's entire governmental system is built around lack of competition. It is built around being closed to ideas. And you'll always see there's always a class of morons who will claim that centralized control, whether economically or politically, is better. Thomas Friedman, of course, is one of these people. But here's the problem with Chinese centralized control. It turns out that you can't get innovation, you can't get building, you can't get the thriving, you can't get any of it. Again, here's from that video a couple of years ago, which if you'd watched it a couple of years ago, you'd be pretty well informed as to what's happening. While fools like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times write that, quote, china's one party autocracy can impose the important policies needed to move a society forward. The reality is the reverse. Because the dictatorship is the be all, end all. It can't allow the freedom and innovation necessary to grow the country and fix its problem. So here's the thing. President Trump knows all of this and he has been spending the last 10 years putting the screws to China. It is the through line on his foreign policy. People look at Trump's foreign policy. Say, what's he doing in Iran? I don't understand. What's he doing in Venezuela? I don't understand. What's he doing with regard to Japan? I don't know. All of this is oriented at China, all of it. Now, President Trump is opportunistic in foreign policy terms. He waits for an opportunity to arise and then he takes advantage of it. But let us be clear. Venezuela represented between 4 and 5% of total Chinese oil imports before we captured Nicolas Maduro. That is now down to basically zero. And not only that, Venezuela acted as a go between for China and Iran. They don't anymore. In 2023, 10 to 15% of Chinese entire oil supply came from Iran. Guess what? They are not getting now? Any of that. Saudi Arabia provides something like 14 to 15% of oil to China. That is why China has been trying to woo Saudi Arabia. But is that going to be successful? Well, they've alienated the UAE. The UAE provides 6 to 7% of their total oil supply. And UAE Contra, Saudi is moving away, away from China. UAE is moving toward America. UAE is moving toward Israel. UAE, by the way, being far smarter in their approach to foreign policy than Saudi. Right now, Saudi is trying to split the baby. Being half American, half Chinese is not going to work. UAE already broke from opec. People missed what a huge development this is. Opec, which again was a gigantic cartel designed to restrict oil supply coming from the Middle east. Uae, Saudi, they were all a part of it. UAE said no, we're not doing that anymore. We're now going to produce oil how we want to produce oil. And they're going to take those oil winnings and they're going to invest them in tech, in military, industrial, in cooperation with Israel rather than opposition they to Israel. If Saudi goes the way of China, they will be on the wrong side of this particular battle. Now a lot has changed. Democrats today even concede that China is a geopolitical opponent of the United States. This has become a pretty bipartisan issue. And the effect on China has been again, very, very, very bad. Their nominal GDP is $15,000 per capita. That is way behind the United States. Way, way, way behind the United States. They've even been having to abandon some of their biggest initiatives. So you remember a dozen years ago they were talking about this thing called Belt and Road. This is their big thing, Belt and Road. Belt and Road was an initiative, or what they called the Silk Road Initiative. It was designed to basically create massive debt traps for countries. They would give them free money. The money was not free. It'd be attached to constraints. Those countries which were poor would take the loans and then Beijing would basically foreclose on the loans and take control of property in strategic areas and all the rest. And countries were joining up because, hey, free money. But it turns out that countries have been leaving the Belt and Road Initiative. And even Chinese investment in Belt and Road has been dropping pretty precipitously. According to the Institute of International Studies in Australia, Panama, Italy, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, all of them have been moving away from the Belt and Road Initiative. According to that Institute, Panama's withdrawal exemplifies this dynamic. Following US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's visit and warnings regarding Chinese influence over the Panama Canal, Panama chose not to renew its Memorandum of Understanding with the Belt and Road Initiative, a decision celebrated by Washington. According to foundation for Defense of Democracy, China has quietly begun to pull the plug on BRI infrastructure spending. China's overseas development financing shrunk from a high of more than $80 billion in new funding in 2016 to around $5 billion in 2021. In Africa, the numbers are particularly stark. They dropped from $30 billion in 2016 to $1 billion last year. And again, a huge part of this also is because China totally screwed all of planet Earth with the COVID pandemic. All right, coming up, President Trump is going to be discussing a wide variety of issues with Xi Jinping in China. We'll go through all of those, plus we'll be getting to the worst joke I have ever heard, I think, from Pete Davidson. First, there's apparently no piece of personal information anymore that somebody somewhere is not trying to monetize Your browsing history, your searches, your shopping habits, your location data, probably the exact moment you gave up and ordered takeout at 11:30 at night. Here's the crazy part. Most people barely even realize this is happening. Modern surveillance is huge. You have people who are following you around and checking all of your data, but actually, it's just your Internet service provider. This is why I use ExpressVPN. With ExpressVPN, 100% of your online activity travels through secure, encrypted tunnels. So what you do online stays private, not visible to data brokers, big tech companies, or even your Internet provider. It also hides your IP address, which is basically the identifying number attached to your online activity. And let me be clear, this is not about being shady. It's about privacy. There is a big difference. No, I do not think that your giant corporate friends should know every single thing you do all the time or that hackers should be able to access your information. More and more of life happens online now. Banking, shopping, communication, work. Well, you need to protect all that. It's your Data. Right now, ExpressVPN is at its lowest price ever. Just 3,49amonth, less than 12 cents a day. My subscribers can get an extra four months when you use my special link. Head over to ExpressVPN.com Ben. Get four extra months of ExpressVPN. That's E x P R E-S VPN.com Ben, what is the president likely to address with Xi Jinping when he heads on over to China? Well, four issues are on the table. AI, Iran, the global economy, and Taiwan. So on AI, first thing to understand, we are dominating them on AI. I understand that a lot of people are looking at things like deep seek, where they kind of surprise us and saying, well, now China is on the verge of beating us. They are not every major AI company is an American AI company. All of them anthropic. Xai, obviously. OpenAI, Gemini. These are. These are all major perplexity. Every single major American company in AI is a world leader in AI. That is not true in China. So what are they relying upon? They're now relying upon their friends abroad, people like Bernie Sanders who try to shut down AI. This is why it is incredibly dangerous. Really, really dangerous. When you see people in American politics trying to shut down the development of AI. Again, responsible regulation is one thing, but the sort of populist drive toward AI, bad AI data centers, bad. Shut down the AI. If you want to cede power to China, that's a great way to do it. There's a reason why Bernie was joined by a bunch of Chinese cutouts at the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance in order to talk about AI. Here is Bernie Sanders standing with the Chinese. Bottom line. What I believe and what I suspect that most people in the United States, China, and around the world believe is that we need international cooperation between the nations of the world to prevent the possibility of a cataclysmic development. We need to cooperate. We need dialogue. Do you really believe that the Chinese give two damns about safety and AI? This is a country that keeps millions of people in concentration camps. You think that they care deeply about human rights with regard to AI? Totally nuts. And China, by the way, is stealing our tech. Like, at scale. According to the American Spectator, last month, the White House accused Beijing of industrial scale theft of know how from American AI labs. Meanwhile, US Prosecutors claim to have busted an international smuggling ring that funneled advanced chips worth billions of dollars to China in defiance of sanctions. The CCP is also stepping up efforts to protect China's own AI innovation, blocking a $2 billion takeover by Meta of a Chinese AI startup called Manus for good measure. The authorities then banned the founders of Manus from leaving the country. They're also engaging in something called distillation. Distillation involves the creation of thousands of fake accounts for the targeted AI chatbot or tool, with the accounts working together to extract information. So, for example, Anthropic said it had detected some 24,000 fraudulent accounts, which had generated more than 16 million exchanges with its powerful cloud chatbot. It accused leading Chinese labs of being behind the campaign in order to acquire powerful capabilities in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost. Again, they are stealing tech. That is what they are doing. Which is why even Jensen Huang over at Nvidia, who wants to be able to sell sort of lower level chips to the Chinese says that Nvidia is not going to be selling top of the line here. He was at the Milken Institute global conference last week.
- [26:11]
Tony Hinchcliffe
Should they have the latest and greatest chips?
- [26:13]
Keith Sonderling
No, we have the right. The United States. We're an American company. United States has the right to make sure that. And we're delighted by that and we're huge supporters of it, that the United States has the first, the most and the best. But simultaneously, all American companies should compete globally because remember, in the final analysis, we're trying to maximize exports. We're trying to maximize American exports.
- [26:41]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so again, we are winning. We are winning. So what should President Trump do with regard to AI? He certainly shouldn't make concessions to the Chinese on AI. We're dominating them. And President Trump is not going to make concessions on AI. We need to continue dominating the Chinese for military reasons, for economic reasons. Okay, now Iran, so again, there's been an idea here that China somehow is winning with regard to this. China is the big loser, the biggest loser with regard to, to the Iran situation. I mean, Iran is the biggest loser, obviously, but China is the second biggest loser because remember, 10 to 15% of their oil was coming from Iran. They want the Iranian regime to stand, but at the same time, Iran is blocking oil that is mainly going to China. 54% of all Chinese oil imports are coming from the Middle east and a huge percentage of that ain't going out. Like, we don't have a supply problem in the United States, we have a price problem in the United States. China has a supply problem because so much of their oil is coming from the Middle east in the first place. So President Trump actually does have tremendous leverage with China with regard to Iran. According to the Financial Times, President Trump will urge Xi Jinping to curb China's support for Iran when the leaders meet in Beijing. According to one US Official. He said Trump would resume the previous discussions with Xi about China's support for Iran and Russia, including providing them with dual use components and potential arms exports. And again, the idea that America has no cards to play is insane. You want to, by the way, you want to end China's support for Iran. Very, very easy. A couple of bombing runs and China's support for Iran is over. Just destroy their energy facilities and there is nothing left for China to care about in Iran. You think that China cares about the Islamists in Iran? They love them. They may like that they're kind of vaguely anti American or wildly anti American, but they certainly don't like the idea that revolutionary Islamic is somehow going to take over planet Earth. They're interning a million Muslims right now in China. The only reason they care about Iran is because of the oil resources. So if we decided to really put the screws to China, all we would have to do is bomb Kharg island and destroy their energy facilities in Iran. And suddenly China switches sides because all China cares about at that point is freeing up the Iraqi oil, freeing up the Saudi oil, freeing up the UAE's oil, Qatar's oil. Meanwhile, America, by cracking down on Iran's economic machine, has cracked down on China as well. According to Zineb Reboa, who's a research fellow with the Hudson Institute center for Peace and Security in the Middle east, we have been systematically degrading China's financial machine in Iran. Quote. First, Beijing built the financial plumbing, developing methods for shadow banking, obscuring the origins of Iranian crude, rotating ship identities, layering payments through third country intermediaries. Second, its teapot refinery sector absorbed most of Iran's oil exports to China. Third, Xi used Iran as a rehearsal space, refining evasion techniques he intended to deploy on a far greater scale if Washington decided to directly pressure China. However, we have now unleashed Operation Economic Fury and it's cracking down on all of these things. What appears to be a pressure campaign against the IRGC and another against Beijing's financial architecture is in fact, a single operation. And President Trump is not wavering here. I mean, it isn't. It's an amazing thing. I've said it before. President Trump is doing the single most politically courageous thing I have ever seen. Because again, it is always a risky game to get involved in foreign policy that involves kinetic action. That's particularly true in the Middle East. And President Trump has the cojones to actually stay the course. So Iran keeps trying to drag this out. But one of the things you should notice about what Iran is doing, Iran keeps trying to fire on ships. The reason they're firing on ships is because the worst case scenario for Iran basically goes like this. The worst. The worst thing that could happen for Iran is the United States decides to destroy its energy supply. We destroy their energy supply. And basically they're the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They can lie there with no arms and no legs. That's about all they can do if we destroy their energy supplies. But the second worst thing for them is the maintenance of the blockade. And so they're trying to draw America into some sort of kinetic action that does not end with the United States blowing up their oil facilities because they would rather fight than allow the United States to continue to choke off their oil supply to and fro. So President Trump put out a statement after Iran's latest useless proposal in which he said, Iran has been playing games with the United States and the rest of the world for 47 years. Delay, delay, delay. And then finally had paid her. When Barack Hussein Obama became president, he was not only good to them, he was great, actually going to their side. Jettisoning Israel and all other allies. True. And giving Iran a major and very powerful new lease on life. Hundreds of billions of dollars, $1.7 billion in green cash flown into Tehran was handed to them on a silver platter. Every bank in D.C. virginia and Maryland was emptied out. It was so much money that when it arrived, the Iranian thugs had no idea what to do with it. They had never seen money like this and never will again. It was taken off their plane in suitcases and satchels. And the Iranians couldn't believe their luck. They finally found the greatest sucker of all of them in the form of a weak and stupid American president. He was a disaster as our leader, but not as bad as sleepy Joe Biden. For 47 years, the Iranians have been tapping us along, keeping us waiting, killing our people with their roadside bombs, destroying protests recently wiping out 42,000 innocent unarmed protesters and laughing at our now great again country. They will be laughing no longer. President Trump. Meanwhile, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, he appeared on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan. He says there are lots of ways we can end Iran's nuclear program.
- [32:08]
Chris Wright
The nuclear expertise in the United States is within my department.
- [32:12]
Ben Shapiro
They are ready.
- [32:13]
Chris Wright
They've been monitoring what's happening in Iran and they've been involved in the dialogues about how would we handle this material, where would we take it, what would we do with it. But that is a critical thing. Iran has nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60%. So close to weapons grade, way higher than any potential commercial use of it. They've lied all along that it's for a civil nuclear program, it's for their own energy. It was never about that. It was always about weapons. And the world just can't live with a nuclear armed Iran. We need to remove the, the nuclear material from Iran and end their enrichment activities to produce more of it. There's many ways that that can be achieved, but that must be achieved.
- [32:59]
Ben Shapiro
One of the chief ways that that can be achieved, by the way, is again destroying their, their actual energy facilities. And they don't have the money to pursue nuclear weapons. All their scientists are dead. The top levels of the IRGC are dead and they will run out of money to pay their boys. Well, this is having a major impact. It is having a major impact in Iran. Again. What you are hearing from the legacy media that Iran can last for years like this. No, they absolutely cannot. When they run out of money and people start starving, things are going to get rough for the Iranian regime and they know it. We'll get to more on what's going on in Iran, plus we will get into the latest on the economy. Labor Secretary will stop by first. One thing everybody learns eventually is that a resume can still sound impressive and tell you almost nothing. Some people interview extremely well. They know all the right buzzwords, they've memorized the corporate vocabulary, synergy, leadership, results driven. And then day one arrives and suddenly nobody can find them on slack for six hours. Hiring the right people matters an awful lot, which is one reason the Daily Wire uses Zip Recruiter. What makes ZipRecruiter useful is speed and filtering. Their matching technology helps surface qualified candidates quickly. The screening questions help narrow down who actually fits the role. Before you waste time going through hundreds of applications, you can also see right away how many qualified people are available in your area. It makes the whole hiring process more efficient. Honestly, when you find talented people who are genuinely excited about the work, everything just runs better. This is why ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter will get a quality candidate within the very first day. Try it for free today@ziprecruiter.com Daily Wire Again, that ZipRecruiter.com Daily Wire ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire, which is why we use them. Ziprecruiter.com Daily Wireless according to the New York Times, an Iranian government official, Khalam Hossein Muhammadi, estimated that the war has caused the loss of 1 million jobs and the direct and indirect unemployment of 2 million people. That was reported by an actual regime outlet. Mehdi Bastanchi, head of the country's Coordination Council of Industries, a body that liaises between companies and the government, said Iran's industrial sector was going through a contraction that would affect as many as 3.5 million workers. Iran is in serious, serious trouble. Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu. He did an interview with 60 Minutes, his first major American interview since the beginning of the war, over the weekend, and he pointed out that a lot has been accomplished. But America and Israel would still have to deal with Iran's nuclear materials.
- [35:22]
Benjamin Netanyahu
It's not over because there's still nuclear material, enriched uranium that has to be taken out of Iran. There's still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled. There are still proxies that Iran supports. There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce. Now we've degraded a lot of it, but all of that is still there and there's work to be done.
- [35:47]
Ben Shapiro
President Trump, this war cannot end until
- [35:49]
Benjamin Netanyahu
all those things are eliminated. Well, certainly we want to get the nuclear material out. We certainly want to get the enrichment sites dismantled. We've curbed a lot, we've degraded a lot of the missile production sites. But the agreement should cover all these areas, including the proxies. Can it end with, as President Trump has led now, a blockade and economic pressure on them to do it with non military means? Fine, if it can be accomplished, why not? But if not, both the United States and Israel, we both agree, President Trump and I, that if necessary we can re engage them militarily if it's necessary.
- [36:29]
Ben Shapiro
Prime Minister Netanyahu, by the way, also added that a lot of Arab countries have been strengthening alliances with Israel. That is absolutely true. That is 100% true. And China's support for Iran has not resulted in greater support for China, but in less support for China in the region.
- [36:47]
Benjamin Netanyahu
I now see the possibility of the expansion of those agreements and the expansion and the deepening of the agreements we do have to alliances with Arab states of the kind that we never even dreamed of. And that's the result of the change in the relative power of Israel. The fact that we face down this neighborhood bully, this killer is regime in Iran that's brought quite a few of the Arab countries closer together with Israel and that's good for peace. I'm hearing the fact from Arab countries which I won't get into, who say all of them. No, but some of them, and I never heard that before, let's strengthen our alliance with Israel because that in fact deters Iran. Let's strengthen our alliance with Israel because we can work on up our defenses as a result of it. Let's strengthen our alliance with Israel because we can do amazing things with Israel.
- [37:44]
Ben Shapiro
Now worth noting that in this interview Netanyahu said that his goal is you draw American aid to Israel down to zero. So for all those people who are claiming that Netanyahu wants to increase American aid to Israel over time and spend more American taxpayer dollars in Israel and there's a very strong case that the memo of understanding between Israel and the United States actually benefits the United States. Number one, it all goes back to our military industrial complex. That's the reality. It goes to our defense contractors. Number two, we get access to Israeli military tech. And number three, for better or for worse, the United States is frequently yanking the chain of the Israelis when they're in the middle of aggressive military action based on that mou. So Netanyahu wants to cut it off. It's why President Trump said, what are you doing? I don't want to cut it off. In any case, here is Netanyahu on 60 Minutes.
- [38:29]
Benjamin Netanyahu
Do you believe it's time for the state of Israel to re examine and possibly reset its financial relationship to the United States, meaning what the United States provides to Israel on an annual basis? Absolutely. And I've said this to President Trump, I've said it to our own people. Their jaws dropped. But I said, look, what do you mean? What are you saying? I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have because we receive $3.8 billion a year. And I think that it's time that we wean ourselves from the remaining military support. Can you give me a timetable? I said, let's start now and do it over the next next decade, over the next 10 years. But I want to start now. I don't want to wait for the next Congress. I want to start now.
- [39:28]
Ben Shapiro
So when it comes to what President Trump's going to talk about with China on Iran, United States has all the cards with China. Remember, they are way more dependent on that region than we are at this point. And the United States can do many things that make the pain very, very bad for China in the region. Okay. Third issue is Taiwan. So of course, China would love to grab Taiwan. And there's been a lot of loose talk, I would say, about the idea that the United States is going to change the status quo on Taiwan. Highly unlikely. Highly unlikely. The United States has always taken a strategically ambiguous position with regard to Taiwan. We constantly are saying that Taiwan is its own polity, but at the same time, there's one China policy, which is that Taiwan theoretically is a part of China. All the rest of it. Okay. We've never been clear that Taiwan is its own country, for example, because we're afraid that if we say that, then China will try to invade Taiwan. According to the Taipei Times, Taipei will be watching for any sign that Trump has unnerved partners with his transactional approach. To alliances could soften or reframe long standing US Policy on Taiwan. Again, I think that that is unlikely. I think it is likely that the president will continue to maintain current American positioning with regard to Taiwan. And worth noting because of the new relationship between Japan and the United States. And obviously we have a very good relationship with Japan. We have for decades at this point. But the brand new leadership in Japan is extremely aggressive in its defense of its territorial rights and wants to ensure that Taiwan does not fall into the clutches of China and is rebuilding militarily. We're going to have allies in the region who can help us out when it comes to the defense of Taiwan in the future. So likely nothing will change with regard to Taiwan. And finally, they will discuss the economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, discussions will focus largely on trade issues, namely the Chinese purchases of American agricultural goods, energy products and aerospace technologies like Boeing airplanes. The leaders will also discuss establishing a U. S. China Board of Trade that would consider how the countries can trade goods that aren't related to national security. Now, again, China's economy is a lot weaker than people tend to think it is. They're stealing a lot from us. Probably there'll be some papering over of those differences. The reality again is that when it comes to the economic battle between China and the United States, we have the upper hand and it ain't particularly close. Joining me on the line is Keith Sonderling. He's the acting US Secretary of Labor. Secretary Sonderling, thanks so much for the time. Really appreciate it.
- [41:49]
Keith Sonderling
Thanks for having me.
- [41:52]
Ben Shapiro
So, obviously, very solid jobs report coming out late last week suggesting 115,000 jobs added across various sectors. And the Trump administration has done a pretty great job of ensuring that the jobs that are being added are in the private sector versus just adding jobs in the public sector. I can talk about sort of the labor balance under President Trump versus President Biden.
- [42:13]
Keith Sonderling
Yeah, and that's a really great point you, you made. And two things. But before I get to that, it's really important to note that once again President Trump continues to prove the doubters wrong. Just this past jobs report, 94% of the economists that Bloomberg surveyed thought the jobs would come in around 65,000 the number and it was nearly double that the month before. The same thing, the month of four was actually revised upwards from 178,000 to 185,000. But when President Trump ran, he committed to. Right. Sizing the federal government and getting jobs back in the private sector, which is the exact opposite of what the Biden administration. Did you know their job numbers were going up? Because they were just continuing to hire in the federal government and have a bloated federal government. So we're pleased to report that the federal government is at its smallest size since 1966, and that saves taxpayers over $40 billion a year. And what's exciting about this job report, it continues to show the private sector is growing, but growing in the right places. Construction is up, and that's something that the President has really been pushing on. As we see manufacturing coming back, as we see so many different industries coming back, we're seeing the correlating construction jobs that leading into the manufacturing jobs. So that's what we look at. The private sector. The is booming, exactly what President Trump promised.
- [43:35]
Ben Shapiro
So let's talk about why Americans are kind of dyspeptic about the economy. Obviously, they've got some heartburn. The polling shows that Americans think the economy is moving in the wrong direction, which, statistically speaking, is not true. It seems like there are a couple of factors that are obviously playing in here. One of them is the uncertainty about gas prices. Obviously, gas prices are up since the beginning of the Iran war. So why don't we start with that one? I've been making the case on the show that of course, gas prices are up during the Iran war, and then they will go wildly down once the Iran war is over, because either you will see some sort of behavior change in Iran or regime change in Iran, which will open up gas markets there. Also, one of the things people are not noticing is that UAE just broke out of opec, which means that they're no longer going to be cartelized in terms of actually being part of a gigantic cartel that restricts oil output. And so the price is dropping pretty precipitously when this is all over. That seems like a pretty sure thing.
- [44:25]
Keith Sonderling
Absolutely. And the President has been very clear. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, period. So, you know, the correlating gas price issue that we're seeing, it's coming down. Last week, Brent crude oil went down by a great percentage. And we're going to continue to see gas prices coming down. It is temporary. But a metric we look at at the Department of Labor really, for the workforce is that wages continue to wage increase, continues to beat inflation. And I think that should give American confidence that that they're earning more than any inflationary temporary gains related to the conflict in Iran. And you said it best. These prices are coming down. They'll continue to come down. It's temporary. And any of the economic numbers that have changed related to that are temporary and will continue to decrease. So that is not something that people should worry about. People should worry about job opportunities and job opportunities for Americans and industries that have left and have been pushed, pushed out of the United States coming back. You know, this past month we've seen historic investments, Eli Lilly $4.5 billion into Indiana, General Motors, $830 million for plants in Michigan and Ohio. And that's what matters to the American workers. High paid, high skilled jobs that left, they're coming back.
- [45:43]
Ben Shapiro
One of the other areas that a lot of Americans are uncertain about is of course, artificial intelligence. So people don't know very much about it. A lot of people are using it on their phones or using it in their businesses. But you can see that there's sort of an inverse proportion between the number of people who are using it, which is very high, and the, and the fears about it, which are also very, very high, confidence in it, very low. You know, a lot of people are worried that they're going to lose their jobs to a guy. The evidence is precisely the opposite. So far, in fact, you've seen extraordinary job gains in, for example, construction of AI data centers. You're seeing job gains in a lot of these AI related industries. What do you make of Americans being worried about AI?
- [46:19]
Keith Sonderling
Well, that's a key initiative of ours here at the Department of Labor to make sure that not only Americans have the baseline skills and understanding of what these tools can and can't do, but really to dive into what AI's impact on the workforce is. Right now, so much of the narrative being out there, whether it's related to layoffs or whether it's related to these tools being built that may replace your job. That's really driven by the outside. And what we're trying to do here is work, work with private sector partners, work with tech companies, work with industry who's interested in these products, who's developing these products and really make sure that the American workers have those skills so they feel comfortable working side by side with AI and not fearing that it's going to be their robot replacement. So we have an initiative here both on the AI literacy side, not just for the current workforce, but future generations of workers working with the Department of of Education to make sure that AI literacy gets into the Pre K through 12 education, working with our state workforce partners who we give a lot of money to to train the workforce. We believe that every job is going to have an AI component to it, whether you're in construction, whether you're a lawyer or really any industries. And we're really pushing on the states when we give them federal dollars to do workforce training, that they have an AI literacy component to it. So the current generation and the next generation of American workers are, are entering that job with the baseline skills they need and they won't have that fear.
- [47:46]
Ben Shapiro
And Secretary Sonderling, there's been a lot of focus on the president heading over to China this week. The president has completely reset the table over the course of his two presidencies. Now, with regard to China, people tend to forget that the Obama administration was treating China as not only a rising power, but somebody we should be sharing geopolitical power with, pursuing a sort of multipolarity. With regard to China. The president of the United States has, since his very earliest days campaigning, pointed out that China is a geopolitical opponent of the United States and has refused to allow them to take advantage of us. What are you looking for to the president to do with regard to his summit this week with Xi Jinping over in China?
- [48:22]
Keith Sonderling
Well, I'm very confident that the president will do the right thing when he's over there. You know, he went there during his first term, which was a very successful visit. And I know they're very much, he's very much looking forward to going this turn. But what's important for us here at the Department of Labor when it comes to that geopolitical conversation is bringing back those industries that have left. And that's what the president does wherever he goes throughout the country and throughout the world. When he negotiates with foreign leaders, when he talks to foreign countries, companies, his main focus is getting industry back in the United States to get American workers those high skilled, high paying jobs. So I have full, full confidence when, when he's over there or wherever he is in the world, he will always be advocating for American businesses and American workers. And that's what I look forward to seeing from his trip.
- [49:11]
Ben Shapiro
Well, Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sunderling. Secretary, thanks so much for the time. Really appreciate it.
- [49:16]
Keith Sonderling
Thanks for having me.
- [49:18]
Ben Shapiro
Meanwhile, many of the people who have been claiming that America ought to give up global power in favor of multipolarity, well, they've been saying we ought to do so in favor of right. Russia, right? You've heard this from Tucker Carlson of the Woke, right, or the New Left. You've been hearing this from people like the Hasan Pikers of the world. There's this horseshoe of people who think that America ought to give up power to the Russians well, over the weekend, President Trump announced that the leaders of Russia and Ukraine had agreed to his request for a three day ceasefire. It wasn't really very ceasefire y, shall we say? According to the Kyiv Post, despite that high profile humanitarian ceasefire, the Ukrainian general staff reported 147 combat engagements. On the truce's opening day. Russian forces reportedly launched over 7,000 kamikaze drones and conducted 2,000 shelling attacks, resulting in civilian deaths in the Kharkiv and Dnipropestrovsk regions. Combat was very intense. Ukrainian forces reported the neutralization of some 840 soldiers in 75 artillery systems. Okay, so we should point out at this point, why in the world would we concede power to the Russians? Why they're abjectly clearly opposed to American interests. This is another area, by the way, where President Trump's actual action versus his rhetoric. They've not been the same. The President has wanted an off ramp on Russia, Ukraine for a while. But you may notice the President is openly talking about moving troops out of Germany. He's not talking about bringing those troops home. He's talking about moving military bases east to Poland. He's talking about taking troops from Italy and moving them into Poland, into Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, you know, like up on Russia's borders to stop them from getting aggressive. And we should point out here that Russia, this war has been a disaster for Russia. A disaster. Clearly, Russian fatalities in this war estimates suggest somewhere between 275,000 and 325,000 dead since February 2022. About 100,000 to 140,000 dead on the Ukrainian side. It's like a 2 to 1, maybe even 3 to 1 ratio of dead Russians versus dead Ukrainians. But I mean, those numbers are mind boggling, truly mind boggling. By way of contrast, the number of soldiers that Russia has lost in the current war against Ukraine is larger than the total number of American soldiers lost during all of World War II. That's crazy. Well, Vladimir Putin says that Ukraine conflict will come to an end after the west failed to crush Russia. Wait, I seem to remember that the goal here was for Russia to crush Ukraine, not for the west to crush Russia. Here is Putin.
- [51:52]
Vladimir Putin
I believe that it is coming to an end, but nevertheless, that was a serious thing to do. So the question is, why did it happen? Because they expected to crush Russia to destroy the statehood within a few months, but they failed.
- [52:09]
Ben Shapiro
Again, the reversal of history here is insane. The declared goal of the Russians was to crush Ukraine and replace the leadership they tried to invade Kyiv on. Literally the first day of the war. The goal of the west was never to crush Russia. It was not possible. Russia has nuclear weapons. They have failed in Ukraine and they continue to fail in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Putin claims the globalists. The globalists are attempting to war against Russia and just speaking all the favorite buzzwords of the woke right and the left.
- [52:41]
Vladimir Putin
It's a globalist, globalist wing of the Western elites and they are the ones who wage the war against us with the hands of the Ukrainians.
- [52:55]
Ben Shapiro
Again, the idea of giving up global power to the Russians is totally insane. It's ridiculous. And no, anyone worth their salt should not be talking about this. If somebody says that we should do that, this is because they are being quite stupid. Ok, on over to the cultural front. So over the weekend, Netflix held a roast of the comedian Kevin Hart. It got a little rough. It got a little rough. Some of these jokes were pretty rough. Now, again, the jokes of the Tom Brady roast, also quite rough. But this was rough in a totally different way because frankly, most of the rough jokes were not at the expense of Kevin Hart or kind of the expense of others. Pete Davidson, for no reason that I can discern, told one of the roughest jokes I can remember about Charlie Kirk. Here's what that sounded like. Tony reminds me of Charlie Kirk and that he's definitely been on camera letting a guy unload in his throat.
- [53:49]
Keith Sonderling
Ah,
- [53:54]
Ben Shapiro
Pete Davidson, man. Well, the coke has done its work with Pete Davidson. That is. That is a horrible joke on about eight different fronts. That is a horrible joke. Wow. You know, I gotta say, I'm not here to scold people for telling jokes. I making a gay oral sex joke and a Charlie Kirk being shot to death joke in the same joke. That is. That's a new low. I'm not sure that I've ever heard a joke quite as bad as that joke right there. And nobody's saying that you can't hire Pete Davidson for your. For your wedding party or something. I can't watch his truly overrated films. But I will say that's pretty. That's pretty egregious stuff right there. Not good. Not good at all. Tony Hinchcliffe, the person who he was going after right there, he told a different joke, this one about George Floyd. Again, this is pretty rough stuff here.
- [54:57]
Keith Sonderling
You've done good though, Kevin. The black community is so proud of you. Right now, George Floyd is looking up at us all laughing so hard that he can't breathe.
- [55:10]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah. Also. Also a rough joke. Also rough joke. Now again, controversy surrounding George Floyd's Death, you know, these roasts. These roasts. I will say that if you go back and you watch the old sort of Don Rickles roast, nothing remotely like this, the quality of our roasts has degraded pretty significantly. It's pretty, you know, know, dirty joke and death joke after dirty joke and death joke. Not, not, not a fan. Okay. Meanwhile, in other cultural news. Okay, so you may have heard this story that Elliot Page, who, again, Ellen Page, has been missing for years. At this point, I don't know what happened to Ellen Page. Ellen Page was good in Juno and then was good in Inception and then just disappeared from the face of the earth. And at the same exact time that Ellen Page disappeared from the face of the earth, there was another person named Elliot Page who seemed to be Ellen Page's distant relation. Bears a striking resemblance to Ellen Page, but with shorter hair. Still looks female, but apparently has a prosthetic set of genitals and no breasts. In any case, Ellen Page is gone. Elliot Page is now going to be in Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey. Now, listen, I'm a gigantic Christopher Nolan fanboys. Y' all know, I love his movies. The only one of his movies I do not love is Tenant. All the others I love in varying degrees. So there was a report that went out online. The report suggests that Elliot Page was going to be playing Achilles. Like, you know, Brad Pitt Achilles in Troy in 2004. Brad Pitt played Achilles. So you'd be degrading from Brad Pitt, kind of uber masculine, heavily muscled Brad Pitt in 2004, to Elliot Page, a woman cosplaying as a male as Achilles. There's only one problem with this story. It has been confirmed by no one. It has been confirmed by no one. So we know that Elliot Page is in the cast list. I would be rather surprised if Elliot Page were playing Achilles in the Odyssey. That would be kind of surprising to me. Now, there may be other problems with the Odyssey. It turns out that the translation that Nolan used for the Odyssey is a translation by a woman who, shall we say, is strange in her interpretation of the text. It's not the Robert Fagel's translation. It's a newer translation that is a lot more colloquial and that removes some of the implications of the text, apparently. So that may be a problem, but. And the entire Internet went nuts with this thing, like, totally crazy. It was a huge trending topic. Elliot Page's Achilles. This is crazy. Do we have any evidence at all that Elliot Page is actually playing Achilles? I see no evidence at all other than an online tweet from Poly Market or something. If you still want to help us find Ellen Page, we do have T shirts available that will remind everybody that she is missing. They are available at the daily wire shop. By the way, I'm not even sure at this point that it's been confirmed that Lupita Yong' o is playing Helen. Right? That was the big rumor a few months ago. And frankly, I say I don't really care that much about that one because I understand Diane Kruger played Helen in the original 2004 Troy. Also, Diane Kruger is German, and Germans don't look exactly like Greeks in this time period that we're talking about. So, you know, there are some differentiations, but big biggest thing when it comes to these movies. The rumor mill is so strong. The rumor mill is so strong. And it happens all over. It happens in politics. You'll see a rumor that goes out there. It's totally unsubstantiated. It becomes the biggest viral thing on the Internet for a day. You see it happen in Hollywood. Folks, please use your prefrontal cortex. Just wait. Just wait for five seconds to see if the story is confirmed before you decide to jump all in on this sort of stuff. Okay, back to some more serious news. So America 250 is approaching. Very exciting stuff, except for Democrats who are divided between whether to rip the founders or proclaim that they were communist revolutionaries. So Alexander Ocasio Cortez is trying to grab hold of that American flag by claiming that actually the American founders were Marxists of some sort at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago. My goodness, she brought the average IQ at UChicago down by at least 20 points here.
- [59:25]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time. And we are declaring independence from such an extreme marriage of wealth and power and the state that the voices of everyday people did not exist.
- [59:52]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, I have some bad news for her. The Founding Fathers were pretty rich, comparatively speaking, and also rebelling against the expropriation of property by the government. That's literally the thing they were rebelling against. So there's that. But, you know, you don't have to be bright to be in democratic politics. Apparently you don't even have to be particularly well versed in order to teach history. At Boston College. There's a woman named Heather Cox Richardson. She has the top politics substack newsletter in the country, something like 3 million subscribers. And here she was in conversation with one David Rubenstein on C Span talking about the Founding Fathers.
- [60:27]
Tony Hinchcliffe
Oh, I think he Couldn't have written it unless he was a slave owner. Which sounds weird, but that's the very contradiction at the heart of who we are as Americans. When those men looked out at their fields full of enslaved people and said, we are all created equal, they were writing out of we all. The people that didn't look like them, didn't see, sound like them, didn't have the same kind of money they did. And by getting rid of the vast majority of humanity, women, people of color, black Americans and so on, they could say, oh yeah, we're all created equal. But the genius of our age, from their declaration of that to the present, and I hope beyond, is recognizing that those principles, even though they had limits on them, don't have to have limits on them for us. And that's exactly what happened. As soon as the Declaration comes out, you have people like Phillis Wheatley, the black poet from Boston, writing to an indigenous preacher saying, those are great principles and we feel the same way. And that's what we've been doing ever since. That's what America is.
- [61:33]
Ben Shapiro
And her idea is that Thomas Jefferson didn't know what he was writing about when he said all men are created equal. That is a complete flattening of Thomas Jefferson as a political character. Yes, Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder. And yes, Thomas Jefferson also, particularly in this period, was fully aware of the conflict between his own slaveholding and the principles of the Declaration. This idea that the founders had to write out vast swaths of humanity to come up with, all men are created equal. That is not correct. That is not correct. Just because they didn't live up to the principles they were articulating does not mean they did not understand the principles they were articulating. They definitely, definitely did. All you have to do is read the letters of Washington and Jefferson and Adams to understand that that is the case. The reality is, of course, that for the left, the goal is to fundamentally change America. This has been true for a very, very long time in the United States. Barack Obama suggested back in 2008 he wanted to fundamentally change the country. AOC is saying that too. See, I don't want to fundamentally change the underlying principles of America. It's a pretty good place. That's not true of members of the left.
- [62:33]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
They assume that my ambition is positional. They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat. And my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, Senate House seats, elected officials come and go. But Sen. Single payer health care is forever. A living wage is forever. Workers rights are forever, women's rights, all of that.
- [63:14]
Ben Shapiro
I love that she pretends that she's not ambitious. She's literally gonna run for the Senate in New York or president after being one of the least qualified people ever to enter the United States Congress. So slow clap for America. It's an amazing place. All right, coming up, will jump into the left's complete failure to govern, whether we are talking about Seattle or Los Angeles. Pretty astonishing stuff. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro Checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.