Ep. 2429 - Luigi Mangione and the Left's Murder Fantasy

Summary

The Ben Shapiro Show – Episode 2429

"Luigi Mangione and the Left's Murder Fantasy"
Date: May 19, 2026
Host: Ben Shapiro (The Daily Wire)
Main Guests: Gad Saad, Brent Scher

---

Episode Overview

This episode takes a deep dive into the troubling normalization of political violence in America, centering on the high-profile Luigi Mangione trial, where the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has become a divisive symbol. Ben Shapiro critiques what he sees as a “permission structure” for violence emerging from the left, examining legal, cultural, and political factors that, in his view, foster justification for acts like Mangione’s. The episode also covers major segments on the fractious Kentucky GOP primary involving Thomas Massie, a recent shooting at an Islamic center in San Diego, and cultural commentary on influencer Alex Cooper’s shift from promiscuous persona to “conservative-coded” domesticity.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Society’s Green Light for Political Violence

• Ben opens by contextualizing Luigi Mangione’s alleged murder of Brian Thompson as symptomatic of a larger trend (00:00).
  • He argues that when political violence is excused or glorified—by supporters, leftist activists, or lenient judges—it becomes normalized and thus more frequent.
  • “You subsidize it, you get more of it.” – Ben Shapiro (00:25)
• Legal Update:
  • The trial sees evidence both admitted and suppressed due to constitutionality questions regarding search and seizure laws at the time of Mangione’s arrest (01:30).
  • Shapiro strongly criticizes exclusionary rules and protections for defendants, arguing these “let criminals off the hook.”
  • “So much of our criminal justice system has been twisted in favor of the perpetrator and against the victims.” – Ben Shapiro (06:25)

2. The “Social Murder” Narrative & Leftist Rhetoric

• Historical context:
  • Shapiro discusses the roots of blaming systemic “social murder” on private sector actors, referencing Occupy Wall Street and growing radicalization (07:00).
  • Introduces Zoran Mamdani and leftist rhetoric about state intervention as the only solution.
• Notable Quote:
  • “The most terrifying words are actually: 'I worked all day and can't feed my family.' ... We are going to use the power of government to lower prices.” – Zoran Mamdani (09:48)

Soundbytes of Radicalism:

• Shapiro plays audio of Mangione supporters, “Mangionistas,” who openly condone the murder and liken insurance CEOs to terrorists.
  • “He’s responsible for more deaths than Osama Bin Laden... Americans celebrated when Bin Laden was killed.” – Ashley Rojas or Lena Weisbrot (12:21)
• Shapiro’s reaction:
  • “This is psychotic stuff… Brian Thompson by being the CEO of a major insurance company was somehow like Osama Bin Laden.” (12:59)
  • “They literally liked the murder and his kids... are better off without him.” (14:04)
• Mainstream Endorsement:
  • Hasan Piker calls the healthcare system “systemic social murder,” suggesting violence against its leaders can be rationalized.
    • “Americans are very black and white on this issue, and yet... I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place.” – Hasan Piker (14:56)

3. Conversation: Suicidal Empathy & Harmful Compassion (w/ Gad Saad)

Timestamps: 17:06 – 24:32

• Gad Saad introduces the idea of “suicidal empathy”—where excessive compassion leads people (or societies) to self-destructive policies (17:06).
  • “Empathy is a wonderful virtue... but too much… toward the wrong targets, you end up with suicidal empathy.” – Gad Saad (17:34)
• Shapiro expands the concept to “homicidal empathy”—whereoutgroup empathy leads to justifying violence against the “oppressors.” (19:39)
  • “Your empathy with that group is so strong you join them in their murderous ideas.” – Ben Shapiro (19:40)
• Ethical Frameworks:
  • Saad distinguishes between absolute (deontological) and consequence-based (consequentialist) ethics to explain such rationalizations (20:32).
    • “It's okay to murder that guy, because otherwise the world would be much darker. It's a very, very dangerous way to think.” – Gad Saad (20:43)
• The Root: Empathy or Envy?
  • Shapiro suggests that hatred/envy often masquerades as empathy, driving revolutionary fervor more than genuine compassion (21:12).
  • Saad: “Communists don’t say, ‘We’re going to confiscate your private property because we’re mean.’ They invoke this idea that it’s inherently unfair...” (22:05)
• How to Combat Suicidal Empathy:
  • Saad recommends evaluating who is persuadable, cautioning there’s no “magic recipe” to cure moral absolutism around empathy (23:41).

4. San Diego Islamic Center Shooting: The Dangers of Extremism

(24:34 – 27:06)

• Ben covers a mass shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego by two alleged Nazis (24:34).
  • Notes that political violence is not the exclusive domain of any economic class, nor inherently caused by poverty.
  • Highlights that “Nazi cosplay online is not a victimless issue”; glorification leads to real-world threats.
• [Notable Quote] “Nazism bad, right?... This is not a very difficult moral.” – Ben Shapiro (27:06)
• Argues U.S. media “mislabels” Nazism as purely right-wing, noting its roots as a centralized, collectivist state ideology and its adoption by extremists across the spectrum.

5. The Kentucky GOP Primary: Trump vs. Massie & the Role of Conspiracism

(33:57 – 52:59)

• Thomas Massie:
  • An incumbent known for conspiratorial positions, currently in a tough primary against Trump-backed Ed Gallerin.
  • Faces criticism for associating with conspiracy theorists and figures with Nazi or anti-Israel sympathies.
  • Accuses “Israel buying seats in Congress,” widely dismissed as conspiratorial and antisemitic (35:05).
• Critics and Defense:
  • Support from far-left figures and contrarians (“strange new respect”) often follows Republicans who parrot leftist, anti-establishment narratives.
  • Republican officials (JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller) say the core issue is Massie’s repeated obstruction of Trump’s legislative priorities (39:07, 39:55, 40:29).
• Grassroots Analysis (with Brent Scher):
  • District is staunchly pro-Trump; Massie’s campaign is focused on claiming he’s “the real Trump guy” even as Trump actively opposes him (45:37–52:08).
  • Reality on the ground is that Israel isn’t a pivotal voter issue; it’s more about party loyalty and Trump alignment.
  • Massie's alliance with figures like Cenk Uyghur, Ro Khanna, and Medea Benjamin suggests a post-Congress media career rather than an earnest reelection campaign.

6. Pop Culture Commentary: Alex Cooper’s Evolution & the Left’s Luxury Beliefs

(57:14 – 61:50)

• Ben critiques Alex Cooper, host of "Call Her Daddy,” for the dissonance between the “liberated,” promiscuous lifestyle she previously encouraged and her present embrace of marriage and motherhood (57:14).
  • Notable Quote: "When you see a pregnant woman who is happy, this is now a conservative coded image... the left has made a big deal out of the idea that pregnancy is not something to be happy about." – Ben Shapiro (56:52)
• Features clips of Cooper encouraging casual sex—contrasting with her recent conservative-coded maternity announcement.
  • “I had a past when I was with them. I didn't know my husband existed.” – Alex Cooper (61:20)
  • Shapiro: “If the end of your romantic journey is marriage and kids, these are terrible pieces of advice.” (60:01)
• Ben invokes Rob Henderson’s “luxury beliefs," arguing that progressive icons often advocate behaviors they don’t ultimately adopt themselves.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Ben Shapiro: “A society that greenlights political violence by essentially arguing... that these systems you don't like are murderous systems, and thus people who participate... must be murdered.” (00:52)
• Ashley Rojas/Lena Weisbrot: “He's responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden.” (12:21)
• 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.” (14:56)
• Gad Saad: “If I have no empathy, I'm likely to be a psychopath. If I have too much empathy... you end up with suicidal empathy.” (17:34)
• Ben Shapiro: “It's empathy for one group leads to murderous hatred of another group.” (19:39)
• JD Vance: “Voting against the party on every single issue… that's the problem Thomas has had.” (39:07)

---

Important Timestamps

• 00:00–06:30: Opening Monologue; Mangione trial update and Ben's critique of the criminal justice system
• 09:48: Zoran Mamdani reinterprets Reagan, advocating for state intervention
• 12:21–14:04: “Mangionistas” rationalize and celebrate political murder
• 14:56: Hasan Piker describes “social murder” in mainstream terms
• 17:06–24:32: Ben Shapiro interviews Gad Saad on suicidal/homicidal empathy
• 24:34–27:06: San Diego mosque shooting coverage; discussion on extremism and responsibility
• 33:57–52:59: Kentucky GOP Primary breakdown; Massie’s controversies; Brent Scher on local sentiment
• 56:52–61:50: Pop culture and personal responsibility: Alex Cooper's journey analyzed

---

Conclusion

In a fast-paced, wide-ranging episode, Ben Shapiro threads together the Luigi Mangione case with broader concerns of leftist radicalism, moral confusion, and the fragile state of public discourse. His guests, notably Gad Saad, offer a philosophical framework for understanding dangerous empathy, while coverage of Massie's doomed campaign and cultural touchstones like Alex Cooper serve to illustrate the wider theme: when society blurs the lines between compassion, envy, and ideology, extreme ideas—and even violence—become more palatable and more common.

---

For listeners concerned about the politicization of violence, misapplications of empathy, or the murky motivations behind populist and radical movements, this episode delivers an impassioned—and unapologetically conservative—analysis.

Transcript

[Ben Shapiro]

Political violence is a growing problem in America. Why? Well, because it's being celebrated by a lot of people. It's being helped out by liberal minded judges, populist politicians, the absolute insanity of social media. That's why alleged CEO killer Luigi Mangione is cleaning up in the courts and in the media. And why his alleged murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is only the beginning of our political violence problem. Plus, we'll get to the most hotly fought GOP primary in recent memory in Kentucky, starring gadfly and conspiracist Thomas Massie, a shooting at an Islamic center in San Diego, and why the call her daddy lady is suddenly cosplaying conservatism. This is the Ben Shapiro Show. A society that green lights political violence is likely to see more of it. You subsidize it, you get more of it. The Luigi Mangion case, which of course sprang up now about a year ago when Luigi Mangione allegedly shot to death. UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson then went on a gigantic sort of media spree. He ran all over the country and people were trying to find out who he was, and. And he had a whole fan base that emerged. All of that leads to more political violence. A society that greenlights political violence by essentially arguing, number one, that these systems you don't like are murderous systems, and thus people who participate in those systems must be murdered. Any society that greenlights that is just greenlighting political violence. And then when you have liberal systems that are set up to let criminals off the hook, it gets even worse. So there's a big trial update for Luigi Mangione. Yesterday, a judge ruled that while the murder weapon was admissible at the trial, a bunch of other evidence was suppressed. So a New York judge has now ruled that some key evidence that was seized from his backpack during his arrest at a Pennsylvania McDonald's is. Is inadmissible at trial. Some of it can still be shown to jurors. The decision is a little bit complex. It is also not particularly well founded. So essentially, the evidence that's been ruled admissible includes the gun, a 3D printed silencer, and a red notebook that allegedly contains a bunch of damning writing. The evidence to be suppressed, however, includes a phone Man Jones passport, loaded magazines, a wallet, and a computer chip. The judge in this particular case said he agreed with the defense argument that the search of Mangione's backpack at McDonald's without reading him his rights was unconstitutional because it had been moved away from arm's reach. So why? Well, New York law is super duper duper weird. Hey. First of all, it's unclear why New York law should be applied even though the entire search happened in Pennsylvania. The judge wrote, quote, defendant is being tried in New York for a crime that occurred in New York. Under these circumstances, it is clear that New York is the forum state and that New York has a paramount interest in the application of the law. Suppression issues, procedural issues, and evidentiary issues are governed by the law of the forum state. Okay, that's super duper weird. It really is. It's strange. And the reason it's strange is if he'd been caught in California, why exactly would the cops in California have to know New York law in order to properly do their job? Well, in any case, New York's laws on this sort of stuff are insane. First of all, the federal law with regard to search and seizure is totally crazy. Under a case called Mapp vs Ohio, which is one of these critical criminal law cases you learn in law school. Year one, Mapp versus Ohio established the so called exclusionary rules. So believe it or not, for the vast majority of American history, if there was an illegal search and seizure, somebody broke into your house, the cops broke into your house, and they found evidence of a crime, that evidence was still admissible in court. The cop might be punished, there might be a lawsuit against the cop. But Mapp versus Ohio established the so called exclusionary rule which said that if your fourth Amendment rights are violated, then we can't even use the evidence in court. Now the reason this is particularly stupid is because it is penalizing the general public for the failures of the cops. So the cops fail to to fully follow the fourth Amendment. And now criminals have to be let out on the street unless they quote, unquote, read you your rights. I know we all take this for granted now because we've watched a bunch of episodes of Law and Order, but it really is quite stupid the idea that you have to be read your Miranda rights. Again, another ridiculous case. Somebody has to inform you of your right not to self incriminate, for example. Otherwise we'll take the evidence and throw it out of court. Really, really, really dumb. And means that lots more criminals get off and end up on the streets. Well, in this particular case, New York law goes even further. New York law has something called the exigency exception. Okay, so what that means is that you are allowed to search somebody without a warrant or without any warning if there's threat of exigent danger. Right? There's imminent danger. There's a guy who's running away from you, and he's firing a gun at you. You tackle him and you search his pockets, and you come up with drugs. So that would be the exigent circumstance in this particular case. They say that the property must be within the suspect's immediate control or grabbable area. But the backpack was moved away from him to a table about nine feet away, at which point it was now no longer in his control, and so they therefore could not search it without having the evidence excluded. However, later, they also searched the backpack after they had seized all the property and they had a proper warrant and they had already read him his rights. The officers didn't search the backpack itself at McDonald's, so they did have sort of an independent source. And so typically, under the law, even if there's a Fourth Amendment violation, if there's an independent source of the information, then you're still allowed to use it. So let's say, for example, that you're arrested before somebody reads you your Miranda rights. You immediately blurt out that you did the crime. You haven't been informed of your rights. You just blurt out that you did the crime. That may be inadmissible, but after they read your rights, if you repeat that, it's now admissible. So I'm unclear as to why some of this evidence is being thrown out. But the bottom line is that so much of our criminal justice system has been twisted in favor of the perpetrator and against the victims. That that is part and parcel of a broader effort over the course of the last 70 or 80 years in American law to grant outsized rights to perpetrators as opposed to defending the general public from those perpetrators. But that's not the really big issue here. The really big issue when it comes to Luigi Mangione, of course, is the fact that he has a lot of supporters. There's been an entire permission structure that's been set up largely by the left that says, if you don't like the systems of American life, those systems are intractable, they're unchangeable, and people who participate in the systems are guilty. Now, this is nothing new. I'm old enough to remember, because I am more than 15 years old, I'm old enough to remember the Occupy Wall street protests. Occupy Wall street was a movement that came up in the aftermath of The Great Recession, 2009, 2010. And there are a group of people on the left who, instead of protesting the government's involvement with Wall street, decided to protest Wall street itself. The idea was that Wall street was inherently evil. Now that was a completely misdirected use of mental and emotional resources. Because after all, the members of Wall street are not answerable to the general public. They're operating in the private sphere. If you wish to protest public policy, we have a whole city called Washington D.C. where federal public policy gets made. But that's not what the left is protesting. They're not protesting government involvement in industry. They're not protesting government's heavy hand. They're protesting that government they say is actually not doing enough to be involved. They are protesting the existence of the private sector itself. And so if they don't like the systems, they blame members of the private sector for participating in those systems. And you can see this throughout left wing politics. In soft version, you see it in Zoran Mamdani saying ridiculous and insane things about the nature of how the world should work. Alrighty. Coming up, we'll get into the left's agenda, their permission structure for violence. Plus Gad Sad will join the show and we'll get into the Thomas Massie primary in Kentucky. A ton of stuff still coming up. First, I'm glad that we took the risk of starting the Daily Wire because hey, business is rough and you need to take risks in order to get started. But this also means that you need the best service providers. Our sponsor Shopify is one of them. Shopify is the E commerce platform powering millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all E commerce in the United States, including our very own daily Wire shop. With hundreds of ready to use templates, you can build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines and even enhance your product photography so you can accelerate your efficiency. Maybe you already know you have a good product, but you need help getting the word out. Shopify helps you find your customers with easy to run email and social media campaigns, making it feel like you have a marketing team behind you. You can tackle all those important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics without juggling multiple websites or platforms. And if you ever get stuck, Shopify's award winning 247 customer support is always around to help. Plus that iconic purple shop pay button. It's not just recognizable, it is the best converting checkout on planet Earth and that means more sales for you. If you've ever bought something from the DW shop, that means that you were using Shopify. Why not be on the other end of it and use it for your own business. It's time to turn those what ifs into into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com Shapiro head on over to shopify.com Shapiro that's shopify.com Shapiro so Zor Momdani, the New York City mayor who again is wonderfully clear about exactly what it is that he believes. I mean, I, I will give him points for clarity. Yesterday, Momdani was doing an event and he was talking about Reagan's move. Most terrifying words in the English language, right? The most terrifying words Reagan said were, I'm from the government, I'm here to help. Mamdani says, no, no, no, no. The most terrifying words in the English language come when the government is not involved. You need more government involvement. It's the private sector that has everything wrong. Here is Zoramdani modifying the Reagan nine most terrifying words.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Standing here this morning, I cannot help but think of the words of our 40th president, Ronald Reagan. He famously said the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. It's a good quote, but I disagree. I think nine more terrifying words are actually, I worked all day and can't feed my family. We are going to use the power of government to lower prices and make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table. When government understands its purpose as serving the very working people that it has left behind time and again, it can make a difference in the most pressing struggles facing our city today.

[Ben Shapiro]

Again, the entire left wing thought structure is that failures are attributable to the private sector. So if you are a person who's in the private sector and you're paying somebody a wage that they wish to accept from you, you are therefore responsible for all the problems of their life. Government is the fix. Government is always and forever the fix. And so, for example, if you don't like the health care system, it is not that the health care system in the United States is heavily regulated and heavily subsidized. All of which is true. The United States health care system is a mess. But one of the reasons it is a mess, the biggest reason it is a mess, is because of the heavy hand of government involved in everything. But according to the left, the people involved in the private sector are bad. The people involved in the public sector are good. And this creates a phenomenon that they like to call social murder, which justifies violence. So if, for example, you are, Brian Thompson, a Father, a person who raised himself up from not particularly wonderful economic circumstances in his youth to become the head of United Health, one of the biggest insurers in America. And if it turns out that you operate within the law and that the law itself is flawed, but you operate within it, you are responsible for death and thus you may deserve to die. So yesterday, outside of the trial of Luigi Mangione, some self proclaimed mangionistas named Abro Rios, Ashley Rojas and Lena Weisbrot showed off passes that they had received according to the New York Post from Mayor Zoran Mamdani's administration. They got press passes apparently for their content following the Mangione trial. But they're pretty clear, these so called reporters about their beliefs about Mangione, which is that he was justified in murdering allegedly Brian Thompson. Here are Rojas and Weisbrot making that case.

[Ashley Rojas or Lena Weisbrot]

If you guys are okay with someone like Brian Thompson being around and that being a part of our society, that's more about you as a person because you look absolutely monstrous defending someone like that who participates in social murder. That's what we social murder. He's responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden. And I remember Americans celebrating when Osama Bin Laden was killed. It's not like we don't understand heroic violence or like when violence is good. There's a, that's like as American as America gets.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean now again, this is psychotic stuff. Brian Thompson responsible for more deaths than Osama Bin Laden because he ran an insurance company. And that insurance company sometimes denied claims and if you believe that they were unjustifiably denying your claim then you would take them to court. Again, this isn't to say that our systems are wonderful when it comes to health insurance. Again, health insurance largely at this point is simply health coverage because it turns out that you are not insuring against the possibility of future risk. You are very often covering people who have conditions you know about in advance. But that's to get into the complexities of the system. The idea that Brian Thompson by being the CEO of a major insurance company was somehow like Osama Bin Laden who literally ordered the flying of planes into buildings in New York is psychotic. But is an increasingly popular view with people on the left who again believe that the private sector is responsible for all of the ills of society and that all the systems that they don't like are run by people who are attempting to do things like murder. Here Ashley Roas and Weisbrot again saying that they actually liked Brian Thompson's murder.

[Ashley Rojas or Lena Weisbrot]

I What? I suck? I don't give a. His children are better off without him. They need to learn to not be like their dad and enjoy the blood money.

[Brent Scher]

Kids

[Ben Shapiro]

was that.

[Ashley Rojas or Lena Weisbrot]

What was that?

[Ben Shapiro]

I didn't get that, what you said.

[Ashley Rojas or Lena Weisbrot]

I'm standing on business. I don't give a. Fine, millions of Americans. I liked it,

[Ben Shapiro]

okay? These people are saying they literally liked the murder and his kids, Brian Thompson's kids are better off without him. Now lest you think that I'm just nut picking here, I'm just taking some nuts off the tree and then pointing them out. Hasan Piker was talking about, quote unquote, social murder with regard to Mangione to the New York Times like a couple of weeks ago. And this guy is considered a mainstream political commentator by the left up to and including people like Ezra Klein and Jon Favreau. Again, this was with the New York Times, him saying the same kind of

[Hasan Piker]

nonsense Engels wrote about the concept of social murder. And Brian Thompson as the United Healthcare CEO was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder. The systematized forms of violence, the structural violence of poverty, the for profit paywalled system of healthcare in this country. And the consequences of that are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths. And that was a fascinating story for me because Americans are very draconian about crime and punishment. They're very black and white on this issue. And yet because of the pervasive pain that the private health care system had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place.

[Ben Shapiro]

If you want more political violence in the United States, the left will bring it to you. They will bring it to you. There's a reason why a quarter of young people on the left totally approve of political violence because it is part and parcel of the system of thought that they have built up. When you start treating private sector activity as quote, unquote, social murder, because it has externalities that you don't like. But meanwhile, the government regulatory systems that drive that activity are somehow good. And what you actually need is top down government tyrannical control. So if you're a member of the government, you are never answerable to the American public. But if you are a member of the private sector, you're answerable in terms of possibly being murdered because people like Hasan Piker are talking about how you have committed social murder. It's a form of self defense to murder CEOs at this point. And then you wonder why people are increasingly being shot over politics. This would be the reason joining me on the line is Gad Saad. He's a Lebanese Canadian evolutionary behavioral scientist and professor of marketing. And he has a brand new book out called Suicidal Empathy, which of course is a massive bestseller. Gad, thanks so much for the time, really appreciate it.

[Gad Saad]

Oh, good to be with you, man.

[Ben Shapiro]

So let's talk about this concept, suicidal empathy. Obviously I've mentioned it on the show before. Basically the idea seems to be that your levels of empathy at a, at a certain point may lead you to do things that actively harm you because you care so much, you care so much about people who actively hate you that you're willing to do things that end up putting you in harm's way. When maybe you can explain where this concept comes from, how you came up with it.

[Gad Saad]

Exactly. So look, empathy is a wonderful virtue to possess. We are a social species. For you and I, Ben, to have a meaningful conversation, I need to put myself in your mind and vice versa. That's called cognitive empathy or theory of mind. But Aristotle explained to us several millennia ago in his Nicomachean ethics, everything in moderation. Too little of something is not good, too much of something is not good. And much of life is about finding that sweet spot. And that exact principle applies to empathy. If I have no empathy, I'm likely to be a psychopath. If I have too much empathy, if, if empathy hyperactivates in the wrong situations toward the wrong targets, you end up with suicidal empathy.

[Ben Shapiro]

So yeah, this manifests in a bunch of ways. Most obviously, it manifests as you talk about in your book with sort of an open immigration protocol on the part of the West. People care so much and they're so empathetic to people outside the west that they say, come on in, you know, enjoy all of the benefits, all of the goodies. We don't vet people, they come in, they take advantage of our civilization. And that's how you end up with hundreds of thousands of people marching for Hamas on the streets in London.

[Gad Saad]

Exactly right. So in my previous book, in the Parasitic Mind, I talk about how many parasitic ideas can hijack our ability to reason. So take for example, cultural relativism, which is a parasitic idea. It basically says that you're not allowed to draw any negative pejorative judgments of other people's cultural beliefs, religious beliefs and so on. So if they wish to engage in honor killings, shut up, racist. If they wish to engage in female genital mutilation of five year old girls, shut up, racist. So that then renders you impotent when you're standing there deciding on what type of immigration policy you should have. You then argue in a suicidally empathetic way that it is wrong for you to argue that not all immigrants are equally likely to assimilate within the American ethnic ethos. Everybody should have a chance. And therefore your inability to discriminate between one set of cultural values and another leads to the disaster we see today.

[Ben Shapiro]

So, Gad, I have a concept that I've posited before when I'm talking about your idea, extending it a little bit further, which is this concept that I've called homicidal empathy, which is basically the idea that you empathize with a group of people and your empathy with that group of people is so strong that you yourself join them in their murderous ideas. And, and I think you see this an enormous amount in the West. We were talking a moment ago about the people who are sympathetic to Luigi Mangione. And so their basic idea is, and Hasan Piker has said this, that he is so empathetic toward people who have suffered under the American healthcare system that actually the people who are running that system, the people who are in the insurance companies, those people are guilty of what he calls social murder. So his empathy for people who are supposed victims of the insurance system is so strong that actually it's probably okay to murder health care CEOs, because that's also coming from empathy. It's empathy for one group leads to murderous hatred of another group. Right.

[Gad Saad]

And here, I mean, we can invoke the Ten Commandments that say, it's a deontological rule. You cannot murder someone. Deontological ethics is absolute statements.

[Brent Scher]

It's.

[Gad Saad]

It's never okay to lie would be the ontological statement if you were to say it's okay to lie to spare someone's feelings. That's a consequentialist statement. So the ones who, as you say, are suffering from homicidal empathy are applying a consequentialist ethic to murder. It's okay to murder that guy, because otherwise the world would be much darker. So therefore murder is allowed for that guy. It's a very, very dangerous way to think.

[Ben Shapiro]

So, Gad, in your book, Suicidal Empathy, obviously, I think you're taking a pretty kind view of many of the people who dislike Western civilization. And so I wonder if you think that the empathy is really sort of the biggest problem here, or do we actually have something that. That's happening in the United States, in Europe, that may be even deeper, which is not even that this is driven by by empathy. People may want to flatter themselves and believe that it's driven by empathy, but actually what it's driven by is envy and actually dislike and hatred of particular groups, particularly people who are successful or civilizations that are more successful. And so it may not be that, for example, left wingers in Europe and in the United States want mass migration because they're so sympathetic to what Third Worlders are claiming. It may be that they actually want to bring people in because they themselves hate the civilization and believe that the civilization is bad. Are the revolutionaries, in other words, being driven by empathy, or are they being driven by envy that is masquerading as empathy?

[Gad Saad]

I mean, I think it's a bit of both. So take, for example, communism, right? The idea is that it is inherently existentially unfair that some of us make a lot more money than others. And so here comes the empathetic overlords who are going to equalize income distribution. So it may be that they have other nefarious reasons, including pathological envy, but it is instantiated through an appeal to envy, right? I mean, communists don't say, we're going to confiscate your private property because we're mean. They invoke this idea that, you know, it's inherently unfair that person A has less than person B. Let me take from person B redistributed via an appeal to empathy.

[Ben Shapiro]

So let's talk about solutions here. Obviously, very, very difficult to convince someone out of what they believe is a moral virtue. A lot of people believe that empathy itself is a moral virtue. And as you say, not in a sort of moderate way. The more empathetic you are, the better a person you are. And so when you're confronting someone politically, when you're talking about politics and public policy and you say, listen, the empathy that you're expressing right now is not. Is not actually ending up with good public policy that helps the greatest number of people. It's actually ending up with some pretty horrible results. You're speaking in a language that people don't actually believe. You mentioned deontological ethics versus consequentialist ethics. For a lot of people who speak in terms of empathy, they actually are speaking in the language of deontological ethics. They think that more empathy equals good. And so it's very hard to shake that by pointing to consequentialism. How do you argue people out of the idea that their empathy is some sort of absolute good?

[Gad Saad]

That's a great question. And depending on which side of the bed I wake up on, I'm either optimistic that it can be resolved or I'm pessimistic and it becomes an intractable problem. One of the things that I've become quite adept at doing is when I'm engaging an interlocutor, I gauge whether they are flippable or not. And if I think that the light of reason can enter them, I continue my engagement. Otherwise, I walk away. There is really no magic recipe, Ben. You really have have to get people to have the administration of the mind vaccine to them. And hopefully this book is one small step in trying to declutter people's minds. But it is a very difficult problem.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, that's Gad said his book is Suicidal Empathy. You can go pick it up right now. It's a huge bestseller. Gad, thanks so much for the time. Really appreciate it.

[Gad Saad]

Thank you, Ben. Cheers.

[Ben Shapiro]

A mass shooting at a mosque in San Diego, the Islamic center of San Diego, when two shooters who were openly Nazis apparently decided to shoot a bunch of people. Three people who were innocent shot. Two people died. Who were the shooters? They shot themselves, apparently inside a BMW. Which again goes to show you the idea that political violence and crime are driven by people who are underclass, right? People who are forgotten, the poor. Very often it's not true. Very often when it comes to political violence, political violence is driven largely by people who are upper middle class. Actually, Luigi Mangion was not poor. He grew up as privileged as it's possible to be in the United States. It sounds like these two shooters, same sort of thing. According to the New York Post, anti Islamic writings were found in the suspect's vehicle. Hate speech was written on the firearms used in the shooting. According to a source, a shotgun and gas can with an SS sticker on the side with were located at the scene where the gunman's bodies were discovered. So again, media are labeling this right wing violence. It's Nazi violence. People who obviously were, I would assume, radicalized online. Because I don't, I don't think that in San Diego it's a hotbed of Nazi activity. Traditionally speaking. My guess would be, and again, it's speculative that these are people who found common cause in online communities. I'm sure we'll find this out with others who mimic Nazi cosplay. This is why the Nazi cosplay online is not a victimless issue. It turns out that when you emulate Hitlerian nonsense and glorify it, crazy people might latch onto that and then go and do violence. Not a shock. It's a permission structure for violence. I mean, you are literally justifying one of the most violent movements ever to have existed on planet Earth. The head of the Islamic Center, San Diego, a person named Taha Hussain, said it's outrageous to target a place of worship, which of course is true, is

[Taha Hussain]

extremely outrageous to target a place of worship. Our Islamic center is a place of worship. People come to the Islamic center to pray, to celebrate, to learn. Not only Muslims, but we have people from all walks of life. Just this morning, earlier, a group of people, non Muslims, coming just to learn about our faith and our cultures. So this is something that we have never expected.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, so I think the moral of the story, Nazism bad, right? I mean, this is not a very difficult moral. Nazism bad. Now again, the media are trying to play all of this as quote, unquote, right wing violence, that these, these youngsters must have been some sort of right wing Republicans or something. We don't know yet what they politically identified as, except for the Nazi writings. But typically this is what the media do whenever there is an act of white supremacism or Nazi violence. That means that it's right wing. Well, here's the problem with that. Nazism as a movement was actually in American terms, a left wing movement about centralized government and about racial supremacy and all the rest of it. And it turns out that today's Nazis are pretty wide spanning, politically speaking. I mean, after all, you have a guy with a Nazi tattoo running for the Senate in Maine as a Democrat. You have all of the Nazi supporters of today, people who support Hamas, which is effectively identical to Nazism in its approach toward Jews, for example, and the collective fans of Hamas, one of them will be a Senate Democrat candidate in Michigan. So it turns out again, Nazism is not a right wing phenomenon in that sense. And it turns out the right has actually been attempting to expel those who are Nazi adjacent from the party, with some exceptions on the woke right who have been trying to embrace many of those people. President Trump has obviously been trying to do all of that already. Coming up, it is a hotly fought primary involving Thomas Massie and a Trump endorsed candidate because Trump of course, wants Massie gone. We'll get to all of that. Plus a report from Brent Scher, our editor in chief on the ground in the district, first adult life, pretty stressful, especially when you're having car issues. You don't need one of those. But it happens. We've all been there. That small crack in the windshield, the screeching brakes, ignoring it all for months on end. And then of Course, three days later, you're standing in a repair shop hearing a sentence that begins with, well, unfortunately. So here's the thing. Cars have become unbelievably expensive to fix. Even relatively normal fixes can suddenly cost thousands of bucks. And somehow it always seems to happen at the worst possible time. This happens. It's happened before to me. It happens to everybody. This is why companies like Car Shield make a lot of sense. Car Shield offers vehicle protection plans that help cover expensive repairs before they completely destroy your budget. One reason people like it is it's built around convenience as well. They offer 24. 7 roadside assistance, towing and rental car options, which matters because car problems are stressful enough without also trying to figure out how to get home afterward. Car Shield also works with ACE certified mechanics and repair shops around the country. Their plans are month to month with low deductibles designed to make surprise repairs a little less financially painful. And honestly, peace of mind matters with this stuff. Most people depend on their cars constantly commuting, family trips, errands, work, school pickups, and a breakdown never arrives at a convenient moment. Kire Shield has been doing this for more than 20 years now, protects millions of vehicles, and has built a pretty strong reputation with customers over time. The road is calling. Make sure your car is ready to answer. Right now, Car Shield is offering our listeners 20% off with the code SHAPIRO at carshield.com/shapiro. Protect your vehicle from the unexpected before the first big repair bill hits. Join the millions protected by Car Shield. Head on over to carshield.com Shapiro and use code SHAPIRO now for 20% off. Also, as I said yesterday on the show, AI is going to become one of the defining technologies of this generation. The productivity gains are real. The economic implications are huge. Strategically, the US Cannot afford to lose that race to China. But there's a serious question everybody should be asking. Who controls all the data that feeds the systems? Because AI becomes exponentially more powerful when paired with massive behavioral profiles built from years of online activity. Every search, every website visit, every purchase, every political opinion, every medical question. Modern technology companies collect enormous amounts of that information already. And once those systems mature, the incentives to use that data become very obvious. Insurance companies assessing risk, employers evaluating candidates, advertisers predicting behavior, political actors who try to influence voters. The technology itself is neutral, but the incentives are not. That is one reason I use ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN encrypts online activity and routes it through secure servers so Internet providers, data brokers and third parties can't easily monitor what websites you visit or what apps you use. ExpressVPN also hides your IP address, one of the primary ways data brokers identify and track users online. And despite the technology behind it being sophisticated, using it is incredibly simple. One click and it works across phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, smart TVs, basically every device connected to the Internet. Because embracing technological innovation doesn't require surrendering the expectation of privacy, Right now you can get ExpressVPN at just3.49amonth. That's the VPN that is ranked number one by the experts at the Verge and CNET for less than 12 cents a day. Don't wait until it's too late. Use my special link. Get four extra months of ExpressVPN's privacy protection. Just head on over to expressvpn.comBen that's a price as low as 349 four extra months of service. Head on over to expresvpn.comBen it turns out that it is not good for people on the right or on the left to hang out with Nazis to hug Nazis. It's a bad thing. I think it should be an easy one actually. Well, apparently it's not so easy. Which brings us to Thomas Massie. He's the Kentucky Congressman who is now in a political battle in his district. That battle really doesn't have to do very much with sort of his wild conspiracism or his associations with people with Nazi sympathies. Although both of those things are true right now according to the Cal Markets and Calshi, of course a sponsor Massey is is unlikely to win. According to the Cal Markets, he's in a primary against a guy named Ed Gallerin. Ed Gallerin is a former Navy seal. According to Cal Markets, pretty consistently Gallerine is at about 55% shot of winning Massey at 46% or so. When I mentioned the Nazi associations again, Thomas Massie is not being particularly shy right now. He has embraced pretty much every conspiracy theory about Israel and Jews that it is possible to embrace at this point. I mean here he was literally a couple of days ago with well known Holocaust denier Ryan Mata is at one of his rallies. The dude is literally, he's hugging a dude who is literally wearing a sweatshirt that says on it American Reich, which is a move that's kind of strange. Also, it is not a surprise that Massey's friends are all of the most conspiratorial anti Israel people on planet earth. That would include Chenk Uyghur who put out a Tweet. If Representative Thomas Massie loses tomorrow, the Republicans will become Israel's party. It's about Israel, by the way. It's not about Israel. I'll explain in a moment. Republicans will give them as much of our money as possible and go to war for them whenever they ask. Israel 100% control the GOP because every member will be scared to death of opposing them. Now, again, the reason why Massie is in hot water here has nothing to do with his stance with regard to Israel. It has everything to do with his stance with regard to conspiratorial nonsense about Jeffrey Epstein and the fact that he has voted against a wide variety of President Trump's priorities in Congress. He's sort of a Ron Paul figure who votes against large priorities of the Republican Party, which has ticked off President Trump pretty extraordinarily. Massey is trying this dumb routine. Massie himself is out there saying that Israel is trying to buy his seat in Congress. Again, my dude, like this. This tactic is one of the dumbest tactics. I just have to say. It's such an incredibly. It's a tactic made for stupid people. The reality is that people who are pro Israel do not like Thomas Massie because Thomas Massie has engaged in every conspiracy theory it is possible to engage in and has made common cause with the most anti Israel people. That's true, but the reason that Thomas Massie is actually in trouble is because the Trump administration has decided to oppose him on the basis of completely other issues. And so the usual game that is now played right now on the right in the very podcast to stand, right, the game that is played is there will be a critique that has nothing to do with Israel. And the first thing you do is you claim that it's about Israel in an attempt to gin up the crazier part of the Republican base. Well, here is Thomas Massie doing precisely that.

[Thomas Massie]

I'm walking to an airplane to rejoin the most expensive congressional race in U.S. history.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Tell us about that.

[Thomas Massie]

Yeah, well, it's a referendum, really. Unfortunately, it's turned into whether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress. And what they found out is my seats really expensive. They probably, when this is over, will have spent $20 million.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, I mean, very expensive for him as well. And also the idea that Israel is not spending money in Thomas Massie's district. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, aipac is all American Christians and Jews who fund is illegal for the state of Israel to spend money in elections in the United States, just as it's illegal for China or Qatar to do the same thing. So that's again conspiratorial hogwash. It is worth noting, as Dana Lash points out, that many of his biggest donations are coming from people who are pro Hamas. One of his top donors, according to Dana, is the Jordanian born Mahrukh family, who just happen to be huge donors of pro Hamas Democrats. The Kiani family Trust, led by Iranian born Joe Kiani, gave $100,000 to a Massey super pack. Kiani has long been active in supporting Democrats. He hosted President Biden in 2024 in his California home. And so Democrats are coming out to support Massie. He's about to be the beneficiary of strange new respect Ro Khanna, who again is as left as it's possible to get and who joined Thomas Massie in his conspiracy theorizing over Jeffrey Epstein. The idea from both Massie and Khanna is that President Trump has been engaged in this massive cover up of child sex trafficking because he himself was complicit. Again, that's something that Massie himself has said he and Kana joined forces in order to force into the public view unverified and unverifiable nonsense coming into the FBI like tip calls that made no sense. Well, here's Ro Khanna putting up a tweet in support of Thomas Massie. I will just say if the far left is supporting a Republican candidate, there's usually a reason for that. Ro Khanna put out a tweet, quote, thomas Massie is a man of character. He's the type of congressman our founders envision. I hope his constituents will see the courage, independence and sincere love of country he brings to the job. He is also endorsed by the co founder of Code Pink, who is a nutjob herself, Medea Benjamin. She put out a tweet endorsing Massie. That is not because she enjoys his small government stylings. Quote, I'm so glad Representative Massey is ahead in the polls in Kentucky despite Trump's rants against him. I don't agree with Massie on many domestic issues, but his positions on foreign policy and the Epstein files are terrific. And of course Candace Owens, who took a break from reading Der Shermer, she says, totally agreed. Conservatives should support Massie because he is one of the few who practices America first beyond just preaching it. The New York Times opinion is also coming out in favor of him again. He's getting the strange new respect. He's one of a dying breed in Congress. America needs him now more than ever. The strange new respect coming from all the same people. Mtg Marjorie Taylor Greene, ousted from Congress for her own conspiratorial nonsense and uselessness. She also urged people to get out in Kentucky. And of course, Tucker Carlson put out a statement suggesting that Massie has refused to go along with the White House's abandonment of the America first principles that got the President elected. So, again, the idea is that it's because he's an isolationist. But here's the thing. Massey's been an isolationist his entire career. I mean, like a full scale isolationist, like, cut all foreign aid to everyone, lower military spending, like, wholesale. That is not the thing that has put him in trouble here. The thing that has put him in trouble is, number one, that he decided to rant conspiratorially for legitimately a year and a half about the Epstein files, which he had no interest in until President Trump was reelected. And two, he decided to oppose every one of President Trump's major legislative proposals. And it's not me saying that. It is members of the administration saying that. Here was JD Vance again. JD Vance. You'd be hard pressed to say that JD Vance is a foreign policy hawk who is strongly pro Israel. But here is JD Vance going after Massie in October 2025,

[JD Vance]

voting against the party on every single issue. You're eventually going to make too many enemies. And that is the problem that Thomas has had. It's not one issue, it's not three or four issues. It's that every time that we've needed Thomas for a vote, he has been completely unwilling to provide it. That is why the President of the United States has trained his ire on Thomas Massie. It's because we can never count on him for some of the most difficult votes. I wish that that weren't the case. I say that as somebody who's known Thomas well before I got into politics. But politics is politics. And when you always vote against the party, you can't expect the party to actually back you.

[Ben Shapiro]

Pete Hegshead, the Secretary of Defense, actually went to a Gal Rhein event and he explained that Massie has been engaged in constant obstruction.

[Pete Hegseth]

Because after you've led men in life and death situations, the games that are played inside the Beltway start looking pretty small. Now, contrast that with what we've gotten from Tom Massie. At some point, being against everything becomes an excuse for accomplishing nothing. At some point, constant obstruction is not leadership. It's just commentary. It's obstruction.

[Ben Shapiro]

And Stephen Miller, top adviser to the President, he put out an entire video explaining Massey's voting record. Again, that is the reason why Trump is ticked at Massey.

[Stephen Miller]

The single most important issue affecting the future of our country is ending the mass third world invasion of America and reversing that invasion. And on the most important issue, on the most important vote, on the most important bill, on the most important day, Tom Massey sided with every House Democrat, every Senate Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer against President Trump, against the American people and against you and your family. When the time came to vote for President Trump's signature border security and immigration enforcement bill, the bill to provide record funding for ICE and border patrol and mass deportation, Tom Massie voted no. Tom Massie voted to kill the bill. Tom Massie sided with the House and Senate Democrats over the sovereignty of this republic. He voted against Trump. He voted against the American people. He voted against you. He voted to kill the most important bill of his career.

[Ben Shapiro]

And again, Massie has been lying in his district. He's been putting out ads in his district suggesting that he is strongly pro Trump and he's a big Trump fan. Well, then why is Trump actually the one calling the shots here? In terms of the campaign against Massey, again, Massie has been engaged in a strange new respect crusade. Strange new respect is the phenomenon that attaches to Republicans who start mimicking Democrat talking points. If you start being a conspiratorial anti Republican, it doesn't matter what else you believe, they will start granting you strange new respect. This is how Marjorie Taylor Greene, a person with not two neurons to rub together somehow has become beloved of the left. Just say those same things over and over and they will love you. Well, Massie started getting the strange new respect when he started mulling over Epstein. So here is Thomas Massie in November 2025 accusing President Trump of an Epstein cover up based on nothing.

[Thomas Massie]

This might be a big smokescreen, these investigations to open a bunch of them to as a last ditch effort to prevent the release of the Epstein files.

[Pete Hegseth]

I mean, it is extraordinary to hear him demand an investigation and mention Democrats only mention his political opponents. But you're saying he doesn't really, may not really even want any investigation. He wants to prevent the release. Why does he want to prevent this? What is he, what is he afraid of?

[Thomas Massie]

You know, I've never said that these files will implicate Donald Trump, and I really don't think that they will. I think he's trying to protect a bunch of rich and powerful friends, billionaires, donors, partners to his campaign, friends in his social circles and that's my operating theory on why he's trying so hard to keep these files closed.

[Ben Shapiro]

Massie went into. You know, every single rabbit hole is possible to go into with regard to Epstein. And there's a reason why nutcases like Chank and Media Benjamin are praising Massie today. I have a basic rule of thumb. If it turns out the entire left is defending you, like the entire left without qualification is defending you. The hardest left, most crazy people probably you, should not be in Congress representing the Republican Party. Are you coming up? Brent Scher will join us from the road. He's in the district and he will explain what's happening on the ground. Plus that call her Daddy Lady. You know, there's that lady who does the podcast all about how she has sex with lots of people and everybody should well, now she's pregnant and happily married, so the rules apparently apply to her. If you took her advice, it didn't go so well for you. First, you know it's very difficult to get your business properly insured. It's just not easy. You need one platform for payroll and then another for HR and another for accounting, another for benefits, and then one for compliance, and then one for insurance. All of those have their own login, their own terminology, their own stack of documents nobody fully understands. Again, understanding insurance for a business is really, really difficult. You might be undercover, you might be over covered. Well, this is why you need Super Sure. Super sure basically acts as a centralized business insurance platform, what they call a super agency. Instead of juggling multiple brokers and scattered policies, businesses can manage coverage through one brokerage relationship with one coordinated system. And honestly, one of the smarter features they offer is something called fine print Fact, which translates complicated policy language into plain English so business owners can actually understand what's covered, what isn't, and where there may be gaps. Because one of the worst business experiences is discovering that you misunderstood your coverage after something goes wrong. Super sure also centralizes policies, certificates and documents and into one insurance vault. It reduces repetitive applications and provides year round account management instead of only appearing at renewal time. In a world where businesses are increasingly overwhelmed by operational complexity, simplifying infrastructure actually matters an awful lot right now. You can go to super sure.com, get a full report on your current policies with no obligation. Find out if you're overinsured, underinsured somewhere in between. Head over to super sure.com one super agency, one powerful platform. All your policies in one place paid for by Super Sure Insurance Agency LLC, a licensed insurance agency. Well, joining us online is Brent Sh, of course, is editor in chief of the Daily Wire, and he's been spending time on the ground in this district. Brent, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.

[Brent Scher]

Yeah.

Hi, Ben. How are you?

[Ben Shapiro]

You know, hanging in. So tell me about the district. What is the breakdown of the district? Obviously, very competitive race. Massie had been largely popular inside his district before this race. You've been on the ground. What are you seeing?

[Brent Scher]

Yeah, I drove through the whole district yesterday, and look, this is one of the most pro Trump districts in America. It went by for Trump by, I think, 35 or 40 points last. Last election cycle in the presidential. And what we're seeing now is obviously, it's Thomas Massie versus Ed Gallerin, but it's more of the whole Trump administration and Trump political machine versus Thomas Massie, who they're labeling an obstructionist and who has been, you know, just really one of the more difficult members to deal with in the House. And, yeah, when we were there, we went to a Thomas Massie event in his hometown last night in Vanceburg. Vanceburg, Kentucky. And it's a pretty big crowd. It's hundreds of people. And in a small district like this, in really, really small towns, that's actually a big turnout, and they're very confident. We talked to some Massey voters yesterday who said the only way they're going to lose is because the other side cheats. And I was like, I thought it was the Democrats who cheat, and they just think anybody who's running against them. The only way that you could beat this grassroots Thomas Massie podcast support is if you have, you know, mass cheating.

[Ben Shapiro]

So meanwhile, on the Ed. Gal Ryan side of the aisle, it's really fascinating. It's like they're running two separate races. Gal Ryan and the. And the Trump administration are talking about Massey not voting in favor of their priorities. Maybe they'll bring up Massie and his sort of bizarre quest to make everything about Jeffrey Epstein along with Ro Khanna. But I'm wondering, from the Ed Gallerin perspective, it seems like very little Israel talk, but from the Massey perspective, nothing but Israel talk. It seems like.

[Brent Scher]

Yeah, I mean, according to Thomas Massie, he is running this campaign against Israel, and the only reason it's competitive is because Israel has dropped all this money against him. Obviously, that's not true. It's Jewish Americans who have dropped money against him because his policies are antithetical to anything a Jewish American would care about in this country. But the message from the Trump administration is this is the guy who's making it hard to pass the Trump agenda. We've been talking about this a lot, but Trump and Republicans only have a few seat majority in the House of Representatives. And when you have one member who they view as an attention seeker and somebody who's, you know, makes a big deal out of opposing things that they need to do to pass through the House of Representatives, that's how they are framing Thomas Massie from the Trump campaign, from Pete Hegseth, who was there yesterday, from Stephen Miller, who posted a long video criticizing Thomas Massie last night. They are talking about him obstructing the Trump agenda that is popular with all Trump voters. And I mean, I think the most telling sign that Massie's in trouble in Kentucky is that even though he's running this race against Donald Trump, all of his ads are tying him to Donald Trump. He's not running ads to the mass public in the district talking about the Epstein files or his view on the Israel war. He's talking about how he supports Trump's agenda. And he's actually the real Trump supporter. He's more MAGA than Donald Trump. Donald Trump happens to be pretty good at winning these primary elections. And I just don't think it's gonna work out for Thomas Massey.

[Ben Shapiro]

You know, Brent, that last point is, the one that really is telling, is that it is sort of fascinating how Massey is unwilling to go up directly against Trump even though Trump is going directly up against Massie. The truth is that Massey has been attacking Trump incessantly for about the last year and a half. It started with the Epstein files of it claiming that President Trump was hiding the Epstein files, was engaged in some sort of deep, dark conspiracy. And President Trump decided that he'd had enough of it, basically, and that he was gonna go up against Massey. And Massie is humping his leg. I mean, Massie is in this district putting up ads saying that he is the. He's the Trump guy and putting up pictures of himself with Trump. Meanwhile, Trump is over there saying, dude, I want nothing to do with you. In fact, I want you out of Congress. And so Massey has to come up with some sort of misdirect as to why it is that the guy whose leg he is humping doesn't want to be part of his campaign, in fact is actively campaigning against him. And the way that Massie has come up with a way to square that circle is by saying, actually, it's not even about Trump. It's not about Trump. Trump is not opposing me, really. It's people Manipulating Trump who are opposing me. Really, it's the nefarious Israelis who are manipulating President Trump, which is a pretty astonishing way of doing a campaign. And we'll see if it works out for him.

[Brent Scher]

Yeah. And I mean, I'll just say we drove through district yesterday and every Ed Gallerin sign has Donald Trump's name just about as big as El Galrain on the street signs over there. And I'll just say the amount of ads that are on TV supporting Ed Gowran, his name recognition has probably gone from zero to a lot in just a few months. And all the polling, it's hard to really assess what's going to happen here because, look, there has never been a competitive primary here, and there's definitely never been a competitive primary with dozens of millions of dollars dumped in. So for anybody who thinks that they're going to know what this electorate looks like or can do a poll that is going to accurately assess who's going to turn out for this, they're lying to you. A lot of the polls have Thomas Massie losing by eight to 10 points. I've seen some having him down in the double digits. But again, it's going to be interesting because this is new territory because of just how unique this primary challenge is.

[Ben Shapiro]

Brent, one of the things that I think is fascinating about this is you pointed out that the TV ads, if you just watch the TV and you just looked at the Internet, these are two completely different races. If you look at the tv, basically you have Gal Ryan saying, I'm Trump's guy, and Trump saying, Ed Gallerain is my guy, and Massey saying, no, no, no, no, I'm Trump's guy. And that's all the TV is about, the tv. I mean, how many ads on the TV are really about Israel? Probably very few. But when it comes to the online conversation, the entire thing is about Israel and AIPAC money and about how actually Thomas Massie is being screwed by and the nefarious Jews and all this kind of stuff. It is completely removed from the reality that most people in the district are actually seeing on their TVs. Just shows you how the online world is totally different from the rest of reality.

[Brent Scher]

Yeah.

And I'd also say that it seems like Thomas Massie is kind of buying into that. Yesterday he did an interview with Cenk Uyghur from the Young Turks. I like, do not think that that is the best way to reach voters of Kentucky's 4th district. You have podcasters who are really popular on that, you know, horseshoe, right? Segment of the country. Again, this is not how you reach a mass audience in Kentucky. 4 It's probably through local news hits and a lot of events across the the district. Seems like he's almost preparing for a post Congress career more than actually to win this election today. But again, he might win. It's going to be very close. Anybody who tells you it's not toss up is lying to you.

[Ben Shapiro]

That's Bren Sher. He's editor in chief of the Daily Wire. And obviously you should subscribe to Daily Wire for all of our coverage. We have people on the ground there. We have a big story happening in Ohio today about our fraud. Tons of stuff, our fraud investigation, tons of stuff that's been happening because of the reporting of the Daily Wire. Brent, thanks so much for the time. Really appreciate it.

[Brent Scher]

Thanks, Ben.

[Ben Shapiro]

Alrighty. Meanwhile, in the polls, in the congressional generic polls, Republicans right now are getting shellacked. They're getting shellacked obviously because of affordability issues. According to a brand new New York Times Siena College poll, 50% of people now back the Democrats. 39% of people say they would pick the Republican. That is largely because of affordability issues. It's because the gas prices are up. It's because inflation is up. Now here's the thing. There are not that many competitive districts up for election this time because of the redistricting. According to the New York Times, all 435 seats of course are up in November. But a fewer than a tenth of those races are likely to be competitive. Presidential candidates won about 28% of congressional districts with fewer than 10 percentage points in 2008. In 2024 that decreased to 20%. So again, the number of competitive districts is going down very, very, very significantly. So it is possible that even if Democrats outrun Republicans because of the redistricting, Republicans don't lose as many seats as they otherwise would. But obviously affordability remains a major issue for Republicans. President Trump is trying to do things on affordability. One of those things is that he has been pushing the so called Trump Rx website which is a way of being able to find generic drugs at cost. He is doing that campaign across the aisle with Mark Cuban who's been obviously extraordinarily critical of the President. Here was Cuban at the White House talking with Trump.

[Mark Cuban]

I think other than you, I've been the biggest proponent of TrumpRx.com and the reason for that is Republicans want cheaper drugs, Independents want cheaper drugs, Democrats want cheaper drugs. And together I think we're going to do something Special. What makes cost plus Drugs different is that when you click through Trump RX to our site, not only will you see a great price, but you'll see our actual cost and that we only mark it up 15%. And what makes this incredible, Mr. President, all the volume and all the people that are going to come from the site, as our volumes go up, our costs go down, which means we'll be ending up charging less to people over a period of time again.

[Ben Shapiro]

One of the things that's kind of phenomenal about President Trump is that for all the crap that he takes from people, he is willing to work with them if they are willing to work with him. Mark Cuban has been ripping him up and down for years at this point. If Trump thinks he can get something done with Cuban, then he will. Now, Trump did make a joke about Cuban endorsing Kamala Harris.

[Pete Hegseth]

It's pretty remarkable seeing you and Mark

[Alex Cooper]

Cuban up there and the fact that

[Pete Hegseth]

obviously Mark endorsed Kamala Harris back in 2020.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, he made a mistake. It was a big mistake. Now, one of the ways, by the way, that you're going to be able to bring down prices overall is in fact AI, because AI is going to make things more productive. Ken Griffin, who's been ripped up and down by socialists like Zaramdani for the great crime of investing. Well, well, he is pointing out that if you actually want to bring prices down, you have to increase productivity. And one great way to increase productivity is through AI efficiency. He's pointing out how good the AI is getting. And it really is. It's pretty extraordinary.

[Brent Scher]

It has been really interesting to watch, to be blunt, work that we would usually do with people with Masters and PhDs in Finance over the course of weeks or months being done by AI agents over the course of hours or days. So these are not mid tier white collar jobs. These are like extraordinarily high skilled jobs.

[Ben Shapiro]

Being.

[Brent Scher]

I'm going to pick a world being automated by agency. And I gotta tell you, I went home one Friday actually fairly depressed by this because you could just see how this was going to have such a dramatic impact on society.

[Ben Shapiro]

Right, but the dramatic impact on society is going to be that everyone is now going to be an expert in finance as opposed to just Ken Griffin. And that's going to mean that prices go down. It's going to mean that efficiencies go up. All right. Meanwhile, on the cultural front, the big cultural story of the last week has been the announcement by a woman named Alex Cooper, who is most famous for a show Called Call her daddy. That is where she has dumb political conversations with Kamala Harris, but also talks about promiscuity and how wonderful it is. Well, she put out an image of herself pregnant, and it's a nice image. It's her holding her belly, and she's there with her husband. Now this normally, if she were wearing an entire shirt and not just revealing her belly, this normally would have been a sort of conservative coded image. Whenever you see a. This is how far the left has moved. When you see a pregnant woman who is happy, this is now a conservative coded image. That's because the left has made a big deal out of the idea that pregnancy is not something to be happy about. It's generally something that inhibits your life in some serious way. Like, if you were just to see this image without any context at all, you would assume that this was actually some sort of patriarchal, terrible, conservative image. A happy woman holding her pregnant stomach with her husband right there with his hand on her leg. Obviously, that must be some form of sexism. Now, what makes this all very rich is that Alex Cooper, of course, has spent her entire career promoting social liberalism. Totally at odds with the nature of these pictures. Because here's the thing. If you want this image to be part of your life, if you're a woman and you would like this image to be part of your future, there is a way to do that. You get married, you get happily married, and then you get pregnant. I know those are two things that the left has decided are actually bad. Pregnancy is some sort of burden on a woman, and marriage is a patriarchal institution. But as per our usual rules, as per what Rob Henderson calls the luxury beliefs of the left, they hold beliefs that they don't actually behave in accordance with. And here is Alex Cooper talking about how you should have sex with people on the first date if you want to not have that picture. A great way to do that is for women to have sex with dudes on the first date.

[Alex Cooper]

And maybe I was just a little, you know. But I do believe I had it right on this one. When people on TikTok are saying, no kissing. No kissing on a first date. No, I completely disagree with you. I complete. How about this? Also note, no kissing on a first date. Well, sometimes I them on the first day. How about that one? TikTok, the first kiss at the end of the day is seriously what they write movies about and songs and books, okay? And what I dream about, because it's one of the most exciting, romantic human experiences that you can Possibly have. You do not need to be denying yourself pleasure to prove some arbitrary point. To be like, did you kiss him? You're like. They're like, good girl, good girl. Get your lips in there.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, she's wearing a sweatshirt that says unwell while she's saying this. And I kind of agree with the sweatshirt. First of all, a first kiss doesn't have to happen on the first date. It turns out you could have it later. And if you are making out with people or having sex with them on the first date, that is a very, very bad recipe, ladies, for getting married to those guys. Statistically speaking, that is not how it works. There's an old phrase that goes something like this. Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free? It sounds kind of sick, it sounds kind of cynical, but it also happens to be true on a generic level. And then she talks about having a body count and how that's how it's actually great to have a body count. Meaning, like, sleep with lots of guys. Again, if your. If your intended endpoint, right, if the photo that you want at the end of your romantic journey is you as a woman pregnant with your husband, these are terrible pieces of advice that she is giving you. It turns out that the best way to be married and pregnant is to not sleep with everyone in sight. That is a. Again, this is not me speculating. This is the statistical evidence. There's excellent social science data to back the point that I am making here. This has nothing to do with just my moral precepts, which, again, I think are true. It has to do with practical, real world advice. She is giving you bad advice. This is bad advice.

[Alex Cooper]

I feel like every single girl has a list of the guys she's ever been with. Like, how fun. I just think it's so fun. Like, I think mine. I have mine written in a book somewhere. And then I also think I have one in my notes app. It's fun, you know, It's a fun little conversation starter when you're with your girls and you're like, wait, how many? Wait, what? It's fun. It's life. Okay? I remember the men that have been inside of me. And I have a husband, and that's okay. Like, I. I had a past when I was with them. I didn't know my husband existed.

[Ben Shapiro]

I have a question. Does her husband think that that was like a wonderful thing? How's she going to talk to her kids about this and that kid that's inside her right now? How's she going to talk about that. Of course, Alex Cooper is also as pro abortion as it's possible to be. And so that always makes these sorts of photos ironic. Bottom line is this. If the end of the journey, every comedy in Shakespeare ends with a wedding, there's a reason for that. Because the romantic journey is supposed to end with marriage and having kids. That is the nature of humanity. You want to talk about human nature and what reality looks like? That's what reality looks like, and that's what reality should look like. And so giving bad advice to ladies is not a great way to do your business. It really is not. And it's sad. If people follow that advice, they're much less likely to end up with the happy ever after photo that you get from Alex Cooper there. You're much better off listening to Jordan Peterson about human relationships if you want that photo at the end of the of your romantic journey. Alrighty, folks. Coming up, we'll get into the latest on Iran. But remember, as the show continues, you actually have to be a member. So go check out membership right now. Become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.