Ep. 2434 - Candace Goes To Russia!

Summary

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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2434 – Candace Goes To Russia!
Date: May 29, 2026
Host: Ben Shapiro (The Daily Wire)

Episode Overview

This episode of The Ben Shapiro Show critically examines Candace Owens' highly publicized trip to Russia. Ben Shapiro frames the discussion around the idea of “ideological subversion” and the growing sympathy for authoritarian regimes among some conservative and progressive American figures. Shapiro weaves in historical context, current events, and recent social media controversies to argue that both left- and right-wing influencers are being ideologically co-opted by America's global adversaries, particularly Russia and China. The episode also explores themes of demoralization, polarization, and how foreign states exploit and exacerbate divisions within the United States.

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Main Discussion Points

1. Candace Owens’ 'Vacation' to Russia

Timestamps: ~02:05–05:47

• Ben Shapiro critiques Candace Owens’ announcement that she’s taking her family to St. Petersburg, noting the odd timing and location:

  “Candace Owens is headed on vacation to Russia. It’s kind of a weird choice. Most people head to Hawaii or … Montana. She is headed over to St. Petersburg.” (02:05)

• He implies the trip aligns ideologically with Candace’s anti-American, conspiratorial worldview.

• Shapiro alleges that Candace is not just vacationing, but attending the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF):

  “She’s not going there for the fishing. Reporter Ryan Morrow reported on X that Candace is actually attending and speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum alongside Vladimir Putin, Alexander Dugin … and other members of the Russian government and intel community.” (05:47)

• Owens’ own words defending trip:

  “I’ve been wanting to go to St. Petersburg for a very, very long time … just to see some of those cathedrals and churches ... So I’ll be off air for an entire week. I can’t wait for the headlines. People saying I guess I’m funded by Iran and Russia and probably Pakistan. Obviously not true. My husband's been to Russia quite a few times because he fishes.” (03:32–04:04, Candace Owens)

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2. “Ideological Subversion” & Russia’s Influence Ops

Timestamps: 08:54–21:17

• Shapiro draws connections between US right-wing influencers (Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson) and Russian messaging, arguing their rhetoric provides cultural and informational cover for adversaries.

• Tucker Carlson’s Russia Sympathies:

  “Has Putin ever called me a racist? … Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business … Is he making fentanyl? … Does he eat dogs? … And the answer to all of them is no. Vladimir Putin didn’t do any of that. So why does permanent Washington hate him so much?” (08:54, Tucker Carlson)

  • Shapiro critiques Tucker’s “tourist awe” at basic Russian amenities:

    “He literally went over to Russia and was astonished at things you can see at your local Aldi’s or at Target.” (11:02)

• Motivation & Consequences:

  “What actually is Candace doing in Russia? She’s not going there for the fishing… The St. Petersburg Forum is, quote, a known hub for Russian intel. Leaked docs show its panels serve as recruitment pipelines for foreign collaborators.” (05:47)

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3. Theory of Ideological Subversion (Yuri Bezmenov Reference)

Timestamps: 15:50–17:36

• Shapiro cites KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov, outlining four stages:
  • Demoralization
  • Destabilization
  • Crisis
  • Normalization
• Bezmenov’s words:

  “To change the perception of reality of every American … despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions … It’s a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided in four basic stages, the first one being demoralization. It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation.” (15:50, Yuri Bezmenov)

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4. Russian Ideologues & Western Fellow Travelers

Timestamps: 17:36–25:43

• The show examines the influence of Alexander Dugin (aka “Putin’s Brain”) and his calls for fomenting division within the US:

  “[Dugin] wrote … ‘It is especially important to bring geopolitical turmoil into the US domestic reality by encouraging all kinds of separatism, various ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements of extremist, racist and sectarian groups that destabilize internal political processes in the United States.’” (19:30, quoting Dugin)

• Dugin advocates for alliances with American right-wing isolationists to weaken US influence.
• Shapiro points to the synergy between Russian propagandists and US media personalities (Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, MTG).

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5. Christianity, “Traditional Values,” and Russian Soft Power

Timestamps: 22:42–27:35

• Shapiro highlights the narrative—spread by Dugin, Carlson, and others—that Russia is a Christian bulwark against Western decadence.
• Tucker Carlson on Dugin:

  “Alexander Dugin is a 62 year old Russian academic philosopher … famous worldwide as ‘Putin’s brain,’ but he is not a political figure here in Russia.” (22:42, Tucker Carlson)

• Dugin on Putin:

  “Putin … contradict[s] to global progressist agenda … restore[s] traditional values, sovereignty of the state, Christianity.” (24:07, Alexander Dugin)

• Shapiro debunks the myth:

  “Russia is one of the most secular countries in all of the world … their total fertility rate … 1.4. Well below replacement rates, one of the lowest in the West … Russia is spreading lies, but they happen to be woke, right? Lies.” (25:43, Ben Shapiro)

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6. Multipolarity, Demoralization, and the “Woke Right”

Timestamps: 27:23–28:54

• Tucker Carlson contrasts capitalism and feudalism:

  “Feudalism is so much better than what we have now because at least in feudalism, the leader is vested in the prosperity of the people he rules.” (27:23, Tucker Carlson)

• Chorus with Dugin:

  “There’s the downfall of the Western unipolarity and the rise of the multipolarity.” (27:52, Alexander Dugin)

• Shapiro’s summary:

  “If you can’t spot the op, that’s because you’re the mark, you are the target. What these folks wish for you to do is agree with them that America sucks and is bad and that Russia and China and Iran ought to have more global power. That is literally the goal.” (28:54, Ben Shapiro)

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7. The Chinese Parallel: Demoralization on the Left

Timestamps: 29:50–36:04

• Shapiro argues that China, like Russia, sponsors American division but recruits from the left.
• Hasan Piker’s Maoist sympathies:

  “I don’t have any sort of patriotism in my heart for … America, but just in general, I’m not like a very … I care about people.” (32:27, Hasan Piker)
  “Class consciousness is the number one problem in this country.” (34:16, Hasan Piker)

• Shapiro positions both left- and right-wing American influencers as “demoralization agents” for foreign adversaries.

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8. Current Political Climate: Extremes on Right & Left

Timestamps: 42:22–48:45

• Shapiro spotlights progressive candidates who tear down the US system.
• Abdul El Sayed on billionaires:

  “I would like to see US tax billionaires at 7% of their wealth because … you tax a billionaire 7, 8%. You know what they still are? Billionaires.” (42:56, Abdul El Sayed)

• Graham Platner’s anti-establishment framing and military service narrative examined and critiqued.

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9. The Local Lens: Los Angeles & The Appeal for Principle Over Party

Timestamps: 54:30–57:56

• Spencer Pratt, LA Mayor candidate:

  “I’m a registered Republican, but my supporters are all Democrats because Los Angeles is all Democrats. … The mayor is not supposed to represent a party.” (54:30, Spencer Pratt)

• Critique of Karen Bass for far-left views and background; Shapiro notes party loyalty persists even as voters disagree with policy results.

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10. Satirical Interlude: “Aliens.gov”

Timestamps: 57:56–60:56

• Shapiro reviews the Trump campaign’s “aliens.gov” troll, using sci-fi branding to draw attention to illegal immigration.

  “It’s loading. With the whole typewriter thing and everything, it’s like an episode of X Files. They walk among us. For 60 years, the US government has kept a closely guarded secret. Aliens have been walking among us…” (57:56–58:32, Ben Shapiro reading website)

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11. Spotlight: Gene Therapy for Rare Disease

Timestamps: 62:29–70:03

• Interview with Katherine Illingworth about her son’s rare condition (CMT4C) and the struggle to get gene therapy funded and approved.
• Quotes:

  “Our pediatrician first told us, well, you’re holding him too much. … Finally … sent to a neurologist … she instantly had a nurse swab his cheek for a genetic test. Ten days later, we had a diagnosis.” (62:40, Katherine Illingworth) “If you want to go and help, go check it out right now at geneforgeorge.org.” (69:48, Ben Shapiro)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ideological solidarity:

  “I’m not saying the Tucker and Candaces are working for Russia. I’m saying they agree with them. They agree with America’s enemies.” (25:43, Ben Shapiro)

• On spotting demoralization ops:

  “If you can’t spot the op, that’s because you’re the mark, you are the target.” (28:54, Ben Shapiro)

• Tucker Carlson’s irony:

  “He literally went over to Russia and was astonished at things you can see at your local Aldi’s or at Target.” (11:02, Ben Shapiro)

• Hasan Piker’s lack of patriotism:

  “I don’t have any sort of patriotism in my heart for any … for America, but just in general...” (32:27, Hasan Piker)

• On Dugin’s strategy:

  “‘It is especially important to bring geopolitical turmoil into the US domestic reality … supporting all kinds of separatism, various ethnic, social and racial conflicts …’” (19:30, Shapiro paraphrasing Dugin)

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Key Takeaways

• Foreign adversaries, primarily Russia and China, exploit existing societal rifts and seek “fellow travelers” among American influencers to demoralize, destabilize, and divide the US.
• Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are highlighted as carrying water for the Russian worldview, not necessarily as paid agents but as ideological allies.
• Shapiro uses the concept of “ideological subversion” (Yuri Bezmenov) as a framework to explain the current polarization and distrust in American institutions.
• Similar demoralization plays exist on the left, with figures like Hasan Piker normalizing anti-American, Marxist views.
• The theme of the episode is an urgent call for discernment: Americans must recognize when they’re susceptible to foreign propaganda and hold both left and right influencers accountable when they echo America’s adversaries.

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Important Segments (Timestamps)

• 02:05 – Candace Owens' Russia trip and the backlash
• 05:47 – Candace’s real purpose: speaking at SPIEF
• 08:54 – Tucker Carlson’s pro-Putin commentary
• 15:50 – Yuri Bezmenov: Four stages of subversion
• 19:30 – Alexander Dugin’s playbook for destabilizing America
• 25:43 – Debunking “Russia-as-Christian-bulwark” myth
• 27:23 – Multipolarity and the woke right echoing Russian rhetoric
• 32:27 – Hasan Piker’s anti-American statements
• 42:22 – The Hard Left in Democratic primaries (Abdul El Sayed, Graham Platner)
• 54:30 – Spencer Pratt: LA mayoral race as proof of American dissatisfaction with elites
• 62:29 – Interview on rare disease therapy and challenges in biotech (Katherine Illingworth)

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Tone and Style

• Sharp-tongued, satirical, and combative, especially toward political and media opponents.
• Shapiro’s style mixes snark, rapid-fire analysis, and historical references with deep skepticism toward both left- and right-wing populism when it echoes adversarial narratives.

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For Listeners: Why This Matters

If you haven’t listened to the episode, this summary gives you a comprehensive guide to Shapiro’s argument: that both ideological extremes in America are being exploited by foreign actors to destabilize the country from within, and that “Candace Goes To Russia!” is not just a quirky headline but part of a wider, deeply consequential story about propaganda, division, and the real threats facing American society in 2026.

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Transcript

[Ben Shapiro]

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[Ben Shapiro]

Candace Owens is headed on vacation to Russia. It's kind of a weird choice. Most people head to Hawaii or maybe to The Caribbean or hell, to Montana. She is headed over to St. Petersburg. Wait, who else has headed over to Russia in the recent past? Oh, yeah, and who else has been promoting the ideas of Vladimir Putin and his government, a government that seeks the destruction of America's power in the world? Well, I like that one and maybe also like that one. And also probably. Yeah, that one too. Yes, something is going on and it's been going on for a while. That thing is called ideological subversion and it's an actual threat to the United States of America. This is the Ben Shapiro Show. So we all know that Candace Owens hates a lot of things like the truth, basic scientific knowledge, proper pronunciation of words, Charlie Kirk's widow, and naturally the Jews. But undergirding all of that is a conspiratorial, anti American worldview. You see, as we'll get to, Candace really does not like America and neither do her ideological allies. And that is why she is headed on over to Russia to visit her friends, her ideological handlers and sponsors over in Russia. It's not why she said she's headed to Russia, but here she was on her show explaining that she is headed on over to Russia for the fishing.

[Candace Owens]

I'm going to be off air next week. Next week I'm actually going to St. Petersburg. I'm so excited for that. I've been wanting, I have been wanting to go to St. Petersburg for a very, very long time, just as a Christian in general, just to see some of those cathedrals and churches. And we're finally making it happen in family trip. So that's happening. So I'll be off air for an entire week. I can't wait for the headlines. People saying, I guess I'm funded by Iran and Russia and probably Pakistan. Obviously not true. My husband's been to Russia quite a few times because he fishes.

[Ben Shapiro]

For the fishing. For the fishing. Now, I'm not saying that Candace is funded by all these governments. I'm saying that she has ideological solidarity with those governments because, see, here's the thing. Our current status with Russia, not great. Obviously, St. Petersburg itself has been under Ukrainian attack recently. And not just that the United States government has a problem with the Russian government. The State Department currently says that Americans should not travel to Russia for literally any reason. Quote, US Citizens are at risk due to terrorism, unrest, wrongful detention and other threats. US Citizens in Russia should leave immediately. One of the reasons, by the way, is because they say that the Russian, Russian Embassy, the American Embassy in Russia will not be able to help you if you Go over there and you get in trouble with the Russian government. In fact, Scott Bessant, the Treasury Secretary, pointed out that the United States has severe sanctions on Russia right now for a reason.

[Scott Bessant]

Biden administration put on very, what I would call mild, mild sanctions because they were worried about gasoline prices going up into an election. It would be the an unstatesmanlike sanctions that probably the worst national security adviser in the history of the country, Jake Sullivan, in an act of bravery on his way out the door in January, they raised the sanction level on behalf of the Trump administration that we let those in situ. They are when we took office. They have. Fast forward to October and President Trump instructed me to sanction the two largest Russian oil companies, Luke Oil and Rossnapped, which we did. No other government has done that. So no one has done more sanctions than the Trump administration on Russian oil.

[Ben Shapiro]

Now listen, I get that there are a lot of people out there who think, okay, fine, famous rich person goes to any country they want like Russia. No, no, no risk there. My security team would not let me travel to Russia because there's a pretty high likelihood that I would be wrongly arrested or maybe some sort of polonium would be put in my tea or something. Candace Owens traipses in as did of course Tucker Carlson. No problem. And there's a reason for that and that is because they are useful idiots for the Russian regime. They agree with the Russian regime that America is terrible and morally deficient. They agree that American power in the world is evil. Now again, I know a lot of people are speculating that people like a Candace or like a Tucker, what happened to them, it must have been they were paid off. But I don't think that's the case. I will grant them their sincerity. I think they honestly believe all the terrible things they're saying. So do the Russians. So what actually is Candace doing in Russia? She's not going there for the fishing. Reporter Ryan Morrow reported on X that Candace is actually attending and speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum alongside Vladimir Putin, Alexander Dugin, who we'll get to in a moment, sort of known as Putin's Brain, the great theorist of Russian supremacism and other members of the Russian government and intel community. According to Mauro, he reports that the St. Petersburg Forum is, quote, a known hub for Russian intel. Leaked docs show its panels serve as recruitment pipelines for foreign collaborators. Top goals include state directed soft power programs. As Moro reports, SPIF is a hotspot for Russian intelligence. The moderator for Candace's panel person named Maria Sittel is sanctioned by the EU for her involvement in Russia's hybrid warfare, which targets European audiences with information manipulation. Her co panelist, a person named Alexander Zharov, is sanctioned by the United States because he's one of the most powerful propagandists for the Russian government. Another co panelist is sanctioned by the United States and is the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament, the Duma. Others who are joining Candace, according to the reporter Ryan Morrow at SPIF in Russia, are Andrei Bezrokov, who was arrested as a deep cover Russian spy in the United States in 2010. He literally inspired the show, the Americans. And also Scott Ritter, the former UN inspector and convicted pedophile who is currently under FBI investigation for acting as a foreign agent of Russia. Now, of course, none of this should be a shock. You'll recall that recently Candace Owens interviewed Hunter Biden. Very warm interview, very, very strange. And after her interview, Laura Loomer correctly reports that Russia Today, which is the Russian state media, posted 17 separate clips of Candace's interview with Hunter Biden, which of course is not a shock because she is an ideological ally. They do the same thing with Tucker Carlson. And Tucker is another one of these Russian allies pretty obviously and pretty clearly. I mean, he's been spending years at this point just parroting whatever Russia's perspective on the world is like over and over and over again. In 2022, it was actually widely reported that the Kremlin had issued a memo saying, quote, it is essential to use as much as possible of broadcast of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson. That's going back to 2022. There's a reason for that. Here was Tucker in 2022.

[Tucker Carlson]

Before that happens, it might be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious, what is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs? These are fair questions and the answer to all of them is no. Vladimir Putin didn't do any of that. So why does permanent Washington hate him so much? If you've been watching the news, you know that Putin is having a border dispute with a nation called Ukraine.

[Ben Shapiro]

So permanent Washington hates Putin. This again, Tucker, back When he was on Fox News. This is why when people say, what happened to Tucker? The answer is nothing happened to Tucker. Tucker always believed these things. He just had people in seats above him at Fox, preventing him from going fully off the rails. And so the Tucker you're seeing today is in fact the real Tucker. And Russia loves that real Tucker because he agrees with them, obviously, which is why Tucker in 2024, headed on over to Russia and praised the magic of their Russian operated shopping carts. Because the man's never been to an Aldi's. He is one of the most silver spoon people in America. Astonished by the workings of basic grocery stores.

[Tucker Carlson]

So a long standing feature, maybe the longest standing feature of Cold War propaganda in the west was the Soviet grocery store. No products, no choices, shoddily made things. And it wasn't actually propaganda. It was real. And you can look up the pictures on the Internet if you want. So we thought it would be interesting to take a look at a contemporary, modern day 2024 Russian grocery store two years into sanctions. Here we go.

[Hasan Piker]

All right.

[Tucker Carlson]

Here we go. So I guess you put in 10 rubles here and you get it back when you put the cart back. So it's free.

[Ben Shapiro]

Free.

[Tucker Carlson]

But there's an incentive to return it and not just bring it to your homeless encampment. Okay, this is the grocery cart escalator.

[Ben Shapiro]

I still can't believe this didn't end his credibility in the conservative movement, where the wheels don't. I mean, it's just insane to me. He literally went over to Russia and was astonished at things that you can see at your local Aldi's or at Target. Like, this is this silver spoon. Walter Durante. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. In just a second, we'll get into why all of this is happening and also why is it important? Why should you care? And you really, really should. It's a threat to the country. First, remember when you were younger and sleep felt kind of optional? You could stay up way too late, eat trash, survive on caffeine, somehow wake up the next morning ready to function like a normal human. Now, one bad night of sleep follows you around for two days like an unpaid debt. The quality of your sleep setup matters an awful lot more than people realize. That's one reason Helix has become such a popular mattress brand. 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They don't have that kind of power. They didn't rig the 2016 election or some nonsense like that. And a lot of the institutional distrust that Americans have right now is earned Russiagate or the government's response to Covid or the Black Lives Matter scam, or the COVID up of Joe Biden's mental incompetence. A lot of blame to go around for institutional distrust. But here's the thing. Our enemies, Russia, China, Iran, they wait for vulnerability in the United States and then they exacerbate divides and they exploit them. Here's how the world works through the lens of actual legitimate influence operations. These are real things. They've been going on for decades. There's a guy named Yuri Besmanov who's a Soviet informant and KGB operative. He defected to the United States in the early 70s. In the 1984 interview that's become pretty famous online titled Deception was my Job, Bezmanov laid out the four stages of what he called ideological subversion that were created by radical Soviet Marxists to indoctrinate and weaken nations from within and then destroy them. Listen to how he lays out the

[Yuri Bezmenov]

operation here to change the perception of reality of every American to to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country. It's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided in four basic stages, the first one being demoralization. It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years which requires to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxism, Leninism, ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism. The result, the result. You can see most of the people who graduated in 60s dropouts or half baked intellectuals are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, educational system. You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind. Even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.

[Ben Shapiro]

Now demoralization, as Bezenhaus spells it out, is followed by stage two, which is destabilization. Destabilization is where basically you create the preconditions for stage three, which is a crisis like a breakdown. And then stage four is normalization of the new set of values. So right now we are still in the late stages of stage one demoralization. We have, we had several generations of indoctrination at the highest levels in America into anti Americanism. And that destabilization requires friends, it requires ideological allies. Now we could hit destabilization any moment. All it takes is a little push and we're in crisis. Maybe there's economic downturn, maybe there's foreign chaos, but right now our enemies are as they always have. And remember, Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent. Our enemies are laser focused on demoralizing us. And Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon and Alex Jones, all the people that Russia has been openly using and allying with, these are demoralization agents. They are doing the work. Russia needs them and is using them. And they're not shy about this. So Alexander Dugin has been mentioned several times on the show Reminder. He's widely known as Vladimir Putin's Brain, is sort of an in house philosopher for Vladimir Putin. He's appeared himself on a wide variety of the woke right shows ranging from Tucker to Alex Jones. He actually got his start as the co founder of something called the National Bolshevik Party, which was essentially a fascist party calling for restored Russian empire and centralized economics. Well, while he was working, while with that group in 1997, he wrote a book called Foundations of Geopolitics. That book was then apparently used as a textbook at the General Staff Academy in Russia. So this became part of their actual policy. I Want to read you a quote from that book Foundations of geopolitics in 1997 by Alexander Dugan and you see if you can't spot what's going on. Quote. It is especially important to bring geopolitical turmoil into the US domestic reality by encouraging all kinds of separatism, various ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements of extremist, racist and sectarian groups that destabilize internal political processes in the United States. At the same time, it makes sense to support isolationist tendencies in US politics, the theses of those often right wing Republican circles that believe the US should confine itself to its domestic problems. This state of affairs is highly advantageous to Russia, even if isolationism is carried out within the original Monroe Doctrine wording. That is, if the US limits its influence to two Americas, this does not mean Eurasia, meaning Russia should give up on destabilizing the Latin American world by seeking to remove certain regions from US control. All levels of geopolitical pressure on the United States must be engaged simultaneously. He is talking about demoralization. That's what he's talking about. Find allies who are stumping for America to be weaker in the world, actively generate tension, actively generate sectarianism in American politics, actively pit Americans against one another and find friends on the right wing side of the aisle to help foment all of that. And the good news for Russia is that in the era of the Internet, when there really are no reliable fact checkers, when the wave of information that Bezmanov talks about is unstoppable, there's just so much conflicting stuff out there. It's very difficult for anyone who is not deeply in this stuff to find the truth. It's a perfect environment for the spreading of this kind of demoralization and chaos. And you can see who the friends are. There was Alex Jones not all that long ago talking with Dugan and rediscovering what it meant to be American, how great it was to be America because of Russia. Russia. We need to be more like Russia, actually.

[Alexander Dugin]

And let's be clear, you were writing this 30 years ago and your ideas got picked up and so a lot of right wingers said, no, Russia is not really becoming traditionalist or Christian. That's fake. No, it's real. Everybody's seen it now in action. Everybody else has the same desire. It's not that we're adopting Russian propaganda. We're adopting who we already were and rediscovering who we are together. And it's just a Wonderful thing because they intended to have Western civilization and Christianity buried. But it, but by taking us to the edge of oblivion it actually made us realize how precious it was. Because you don't know what you lost until it's gone. Is that what you're saying?

So we need to, to, to rethink and revise the Western modernity. That modernity, modernity was absolutely wrong because it has abandoned the Christianity.

[Ben Shapiro]

Modernity was a mistake. Russia as leader of the Christian world, which by the way is an absurdity as we'll see. This is repeated constantly by the woke right influencer class who are totally aligned with the Russian government on all of this. I mean here is Tucker Carlson not all that long ago doing an interview with Alexander Dugan and painting him as a victim of censorship and a non regime aligned philosopher. And you know, just a true, a true story sort of platonic figure.

[Tucker Carlson]

Alexander Dugin is a 62 year old Russian academic philosopher. He spent his life in Moscow. He was an anti Soviet dissident as a young man and now he is famous the world over in the English language press anyway as quote, Putin's brain. But he is not a political figure here in Russia. He is once again a philosopher. And his ideas are deeply offensive to some people.

[Ben Shapiro]

They're the bad people is who. So Alexander Dugan is. Tucker says that Alexander Dugan is good. Right, okay. Dugan, by the west with Tucker says that actually the reason the west hates Vladimir Putin is not because he's an aggressive dictator, a former KGB agent who has fostered chaos and evil all over the world and is currently involved in the invasion of a sovereign country that has resulted in the deaths of, of at least half a million people. And meanwhile he's threatening other Eastern European countries as well, spreading chaos down into Africa, spreading chaos into the Middle East. Now the reason, according to Tucker and Dugan, that the west has a problem with Vladimir Putin is because actually Vladimir Putin is a true traditionalist. He's somebody who truly stands up for, I mean when he's not poisoning his enemies, that's what he's doing.

[Tucker Carlson]

80 odd years of defending Russia, they hated Russia. What was that? Why the change?

[Alexander Dugin]

I think that first of all Putin is traditional leader. So Putin, when he came to power from the very beginning, he started to extract our country Russia from the global influence. So he contradict to global progressist agenda. And these people who supported Soviet Union, they were progressists and they are now progressist. So they have felt that now they were dealing with someone who doesn't share this progressist agenda and who tried, and with success, to restore traditional values, sovereignty of the state, Christianity.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene, doing the same exact routine, she, of course, is an advocate for Russia as somehow a Christian bulwark. Here's Marjorie Taylor Greene, who could not spell Russia if spotted. Several of the letters should likely put an H in it somehow. In any case, here's Marjorie Taylor Greene.

[Katherine Illingworth]

This is a war on Christianity. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians. The Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that. They're not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it. Vladimir Putin has not said he wants to go march across Europe and take Europe.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, first of all, Vladimir Putin has in fact talked about the Eurasian Empire that needs to arise, friendly governments all across Western Europe that would be more allied with Russia than with the United States. As far as Russia as the great protector of Christianity, we should point out at this point that Russia is one of the most secular countries in all of the world. Its church attendance rate is somewhere between 6 and 14%. The Russian Orthodox Church works for the Russian government. They have cracked down on a wide variety of religious institutions, including Protestant institutions. And as far as their supposed social conservatism, Russia has one of the worst abortion rates on planet Earth. 45 per 1000 women every year. The United States is at 16.7. We have a horrible abortion problem in the United States, and Russia is almost triple that number. Their total fertility rate, by the way, this supposedly great restorer of Western civilization, their total fertility rate, meaning how many babies, women are having, 1.4. Well below replacement rates, one of the lowest in the West. So Russia is spreading lies, but they happen to be woke, right? Lies that cross paths across streams, Ghostbusters style, with the canvases, with the Tuckers. Their rhetoric is precisely the rhetoric of the so called woke, right? America is soulless. America's economy might be prosperous, but it's emptying out America of Christianity. Again, this coming from a country that literally has the government embedding with its own form of religion to crack down on other forms of religion. American capitalism is inferior to feudalism, right? All of this crosses streams with the Tucker and candidates. And I'm not saying the Tucker and candidates are working for Russia. I'm saying they agree with them. They agree with America's enemies. And here's Tucker saying capitalism is worse than feudalism.

[Tucker Carlson]

I mean, feudalism is so much better than what we have now because at least in feudalism, the leader is vested in the prosperity of the people he rules.

[Spencer Pratt]

Right?

[Tucker Carlson]

You Know if all your serfs die, you starve.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah, there's a, there's a true incentive

[Ben Shapiro]

to care for those people now. It's insane. It's all a demoralization op. It is all an operation to demoralize Americans, divide them from one another, make America believe that America is crap. So here are Tucker and Alexander Dugan just saying the multipolar thing again. They are on exactly the same page and that's for a reason.

[Alexander Dugin]

So there's the downfall of the Western unipolarity and the rise of the multipolarity.

[Tucker Carlson]

And so you're watching the end of the global American empire, the unipolar world. And so the death of the unipolar moment. And of course the institutions within

[Yuri Bezmenov]

the

[Tucker Carlson]

evangelical movement, American Protestant Christianity are going away, but they will be replaced by something better and purer.

[Alexander Dugin]

Are living in the crucial moment of this emergency of multipolarity, including Russia, China,

[Hasan Piker]

Iran and say it's time for, for

[Ben Shapiro]

a new world order where we are

[Hasan Piker]

partners in this relationship.

[Tucker Carlson]

I think that's the wisest possible advice and probably the only path that preserves civilization.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, folks, when I talk about this being a demoralization operation, that's because it is. And if you can't spot the op, that's because you're the mark, you are the target. What these folks wish for you to do is agree with them that America sucks and is bad and that Russia and China and Iran ought to have more global power. That is literally the goal. And I know a lot of people out there are shaking their heads, no, no, this isn't foreign driven. Then you need to answer the question what exactly Tucker Carlson was doing in Russia, why he's constantly parroting Russian talking points. You have to answer the question, if you're on the left, why Hasan Piker and the Chinese government are on exactly the same page. You have to answer the question as to why Candace Owens is quote, unquote, vacationing at a Russian government driven conference in St. Petersburg in the middle of a war with Ukraine where drones are being fired at St. Petersburg. Like, these are all questions that require answers and the answer is quite easy and understandable. And the Russians themselves have laid it out there in, in this particular case. So again, once you see what's going on, it's hard to unsee it. We just need people to actually, you know, open their eyes. The idea that America supports Nazis in Ukraine or supports quote, unquote, genocide in Israel, by the way, that propaganda point began with the Soviets in 1967. This idea that Zionism is a form of racism and anti Zionism is a form of anti colonialism. That was a Soviet propaganda point first put out in 1967 after the Six Day War in a Soviet attempt to win over Arab states. The idea that Iran isn't really our enemy actually, while they shout death to America, really, Iran could be our friend. Maybe they're good. The idea that the war on terrorism was just American imperialism and that Russia actually is our friend, that America is bad, that America is empty, that America has been taken over by child molesting elites, the so called Epstein class who all work for the Zionists, including Donald Trump. Candace Owens tweeting just a month ago, quote, the Iranian president tweets he is willing to sacrifice his own life for the people. Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice Charlie Kirk and is willing to sacrifice every American life and livelihood for greater Israel, who is the animal again? And all of this is a demoralization effort directed at undermining America. Direct. I mean there's no way to read this kind of stuff and listen to this kind of garbage, true garbage, baseless trash, without understanding the agenda. The biggest thing of course is that America must retreat from the world. That is the end goal. It's the end goal for Russia. It's the end goal for their ideological friends and allies. That America must retreat from the world, that we have to give way to a multipolar world order. That is what Russia and China desperately desire. It's what you're hearing every day from these people. That's the op. That's why Candace is going to Russia. It's why Tucker is friendly with Russia. It's why that is the point. Now there is a mirror image here. So if Russia requires the woke right to be its ideological fellow travelers, China uses the left to fellow travel. China uses the American left as a way to run its own demoralization OP in the United States. China is using its power in order to find allies who undermine the United States from within. This is what Hasan Piker does. Hasan Piker, who is now continuing his normalization campaign across American media. Just remember that Hasan Piker is in total solidarity with the Maoist government of China, the communist regime, the repressive, tyrannical communist regime that is responsible over its history for the killing of of at least 40 million human beings, probably significantly more. He was literally in China declaring he has no patriotism for America and somehow we're supposed to take his opinion seriously on America.

[Hasan Piker]

I don't have any sort of patriotism in my heart for any yeah, for America, but just in general, I'm not like a very, you know, I care about people.

[Ben Shapiro]

No patriotism in his heart. And then, of course, he was at Yale University, at the Yale Political Union, quoting Chairman Mao, one of the great mass murderers of history.

[Hasan Piker]

I am reminded, however, of some famous words spoken by a guy by the name of Mao Zedong. Speaking with a. An American journalist in 1946, Mao Zedong said, these all reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. Speaking of US imperialism, people seem to feel that it is terrifically strong. But it will be proved that the US reactionaries, like all reactionaries in history, do not have much strength in the United States. There are others who are really strong.

[Ben Shapiro]

The American people remember what Bezmanov said, right? Take over the universities, take over the institutions, start promoting demoralization efforts. That's the. And so Hasan Piker again, people in positions of power spend their days normalizing this guy. That's what they do now. He's a full scale Cartier communist who has endorsed political violence and they spend their days normalizing him. Here is Hasan Piker suggesting just yesterday that the number one problem in America is lack of class consciousness. Not poverty, not political dysfunction. Lack of class consciousness, says the Maoist wearing jewelry.

[Hasan Piker]

I'm a harm reduction voter. I'm a harm reduction believer. I guess to a certain degree I recognize that class consciousness is the number one problem in this country. We do not have class consciousness and we do not have political education. And without class consciousness and political education, you can't have organizing on the basis of class.

[Ben Shapiro]

And the normalization effort continues to pace. Trevor Noah again, another foreigner who comes here to criticize America. Trevor Noah is talking with Piker. And Piker just starts jabbering about how he had to overcome his fear after the murder of Charlie Kirk. Hasan Piker, a normalizer of American violence, American political violence, literally, interviewed with the New York Times and talked about basically why the CEO of a, of a health insurance company had it coming when he was murdered. He's sitting there pretending to be a victim here. I mean, this is pathetic stuff.

[Hasan Piker]

They want to create an environment of fear, an environment of tension that disrupts what I want to do. And I'm not going to give in to that. And I mean, I even said this after Charlie Kirk got assassinated. I was supposed to debate him two weeks after his assassination. Obviously it didn't happen, but one of the things that people kept asking me is like, do you have security? Are you Changing things. And for the first week or so, I had to cancel some of my public appearances. But shortly after that, I started going back out there, going out in public, going to protests again. And people kept saying, aren't you worried? And my answer always is the same. It's just, I can't let fear change what I want to do. I can't let fear influence my life in this way. So I choose not to think about it. Many of my friends think I'm insane.

[Ben Shapiro]

Let's be clear.

[Hasan Piker]

For that reason.

[Ben Shapiro]

The reason that Hasan Piker is not worried is because he is the one who has been fomenting permission structures for violence. People who don't like Hasan Piker are typically not all of this again. Whether it is people parroting Chinese propaganda or people who are actively doing the work of the Russian government, the impact is brain rot already coming up. What's going on with this demoralization ideology? We'll get into more of it. Plus aliens. Did the. Did the White House just reveal the presence of aliens? And James Talarico is saying that Americans are divided not between right and left, but between tops and bottoms. I have questions first. There are certain things that would be completely unacceptable in real life, but we have sort of accepted online. Imagine a stranger who followed you around every day and watched every store you entered and every book you picked up in every restaurant you ate at, and everything you looked at. And then they all wrote it down in a notebook and sold that notebook to hundreds of companies. Well, we'd call the cops, right? But online, that's just a normal business model. This is why I use ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN encrypts 100% of your online activity and routes it through secure servers. So what you do online stays private. It also hides your IP address, which is essentially the identifying number attached to your online activity. And it is kind of wild that all of this data on you is just in the hands of these corporations that monetize it. If you're not that interested in that or in hackers getting your information, well, now would be the time for you to grab Express vpn. More and more of your life is exposed unless you actively protect it. Right now, ExpressVPN is at its lowest price ever. 3. 49amonth, less than 12 cents a day. My subscribers can get an extra four months when you use my special link. Go to expressvpn.comBen get four extra months of ExpressVPN. 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But part of it is also because again, if your goal is to tear America apart, then what do you do? You take a unifying moment for America, like the assassination of Charlie, and you immediately begin attempting to rip it to shreds. Well, now it has become just part of the normal political discourse to go after Erica Kirk, who committed the great sin of being married to a man who was shot in the neck and murdered. That was her great sin. Well, Project Constitution put out a tweet saying Erica Kirk has a new boyfriend. She was spotted getting handsy with new Jewish boyfriend Blake Wynn, nephew of casino mogul Steve Wynn, at exclusive Beverly Hills hotel. I have now confirmed through two separate sources that Erica Kirk has already moved on and fast. Okay, well, it turns out that that is not True at all. Kirk's legal team accused him of making false and defamatory claims. I happen to know Blake. Blake is engaged to someone who is not Erica Kirk. It's all just crap. It's all just crap. But the attacks on Erica have been absolutely normalized. And the rise of political violence has been normalized as well. There was a simultaneous arrest of a 26 year old. He was charged with a third degree felony count for making a terroristic threat involving public fear of serious bodily injury or public disruption because he said he was going to bomb a TP USA event. Quote, death to Erica Kirk and every single speaker there. America will live on without these scum on this earth. Every Christian nationalist shall perish in the bombing that will take place at every single turning point rally and event. And when it feels like things are falling apart, the conditions for falling apart. There's no question they're here. The conditions for America falling apart. Economic concerns, a very broken social fabric. Institutions that have largely failed. But our enemies are taking advantage of that. And they are using people who are allies of their own ideologies in order to do so. That is the entire demoralization effort. First it's demoralization and then it's destabilization and then it's crisis. That is what is happening right now. Now the demoralization ideology has infected the entire Democratic party. You don't have to go to Hasan Piker. You can find actual Democratic nominees who continue to push the exact same talking points over and over and over that tear America apart. So over in Michigan, Democrats are about to nominate for to the Senate a man named Abdul El Sayed. We've talked about him on the program. Abdul Al Sayed is a terror supporter. He literally would refuse to say that it was good that Ayatollah Khomeini was dead because he was afraid he would alienate his base fellow terrorist supporters. Presumably Abdul Al Sayed is very likely to win specifically because he is so radical in this Democratic primary. There was a debate last night between Mallory McMarrow, Haley Stevens and Abdul El Sayed. All of them far left. Haley Stevens is the least far left of them, which is to say that she is slightly to the left of Mao. In any case, Abdul El Sayed, he says that billionaires don't make jobs. We need a 7% wealth tax. This is where the Democratic Party is going as a party. They're just steering further and further to the left.

[Abdul El Sayed]

We really think that excess money to billionaires makes jobs. Because if we really think that, then We've been trying it for a very long time and I will see that many more jobs. To me, I'd like to tax them the wealth. So we invest in the things that actually unlock human capital, like health care and good schools and functional infrastructure. If we think that billionaires make jobs with their money, I think we are going to continue to find ourselves in an economy where it's hard to make that first hundred thousand and way easier to make that next billion. I would like to see US tax billionaires at 7% of their wealth because here's the thing, you tax a billionaire 7, 8%. You know what they still are, Nolan?

[Ben Shapiro]

Billion still a billionaire.

[Abdul El Sayed]

Kids, kids, kids, kids. Kids are going to be rich. I think our kids can get to

[Scott Bessant]

go to the school.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay. This of course is idiocy. The idea that billionaires do not make jobs neglects the fact that a huge percentage of Americans are employed because of companies that have made people billionaires. That's how people become billionaires. They don't steal money. They make the money by participating in voluntary transactions in the United States. But the real thing from El Sayed is dinging the quote unquote establishment on the right and left again. This horseshoe of people who hate the country is quite real. When he's ripping the establishment. I know the establishment has come to mean too many things. It's a, it's what we call a semantically overloaded term. Establishment. Does establishment mean kind of go along to get along Republicans who cave too often to the left? Or does establishment mean just in the realm of the rational people who don't agree with the Chinese government or the Russian government or the Iranian government? Well, here is Abdul Al Sayed doing his routine.

[Abdul El Sayed]

We're here at Mackinac island, just a couple steps away. You've got the porch where corporate lobbyists are cutting deals with corporate backed politicians to figure out how to pick as much meat off the bones of Michigan as possible. You're right. I want to tax billionaires their wealth. You are right. I want to stand with unions. And you are absolutely right that I think we should be enforcing antitrust policy that allows big corporations to collude together to raise our prices. And the thing about it is this. The conversation that needs to be had isn't just the one that we have with the 99 other senators or the folks in Congress or even a president. It's the conversation we have with the 350 million people who elect all of us. And I think we have an opportunity to actually find like minded opportunities With Republicans who understand that their people too are getting picked apart. I've been to 96 cities now, and no matter where I go, people say the same thing. It just shouldn't be this hard. And the reason it's this hard is because you've got two establishments, one on the right, one on the left, who play the same game. And that game has to be opposed by going right to the people and bringing our democracy back.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, so again, the, the, the pitch that he is making is, what if we unite with the people who have grievance against the United States on all sides? That is, in the end, the pitch. And this is the Democratic Party, new rising tide. Graham Platner, who is the main Democratic Senate candidate, is very much of the same ilk. He is a ridiculous figure. I mean, the fact that they decided to nominate Rolf the dog from the Muppets, but with a Nazi tattoo is pretty insane. But he spends all day ripping into Ken Griffin. Why? Well, because Ken Griffin donated to Susan Collins. Now, what's hilarious about this is that Ken Griffin is not exactly a flaming right winger. Ken Griffin might at best be called a moderate Republican maybe, okay? And supporting Susan Collins is not exactly supporting a flame throwing right winger. Susan Collins is the most moderate member of the Senate by far. But here's Platner attacking Ken Griffin for his great sin.

[Graham Platner]

This is Ken Griffin. He made $50 billion running a hedge fund. Susan Collins has voted to cut Ken Griffin's taxes at least four times. Under my tax plan, Ken Griffin would pay roughly $4 billion more in taxes per year. So it's not surprising that two hours ago, we found out in a filing that Ken Griffin has given Susan Collins's super PAC $2.5 million. He has billions of dollars at stake here. If he succeeds in helping buy her this election, it would be one of the best investments of his life. So if you're sick of the attack ads, the negativity, the bull, you know who to blame. One of the richest men in the world and a campaign finance system that allows men like him to buy elections. I think it's obvious to almost everyone that this should be illegal. But as long as establishment politicians like Susan Collins stay in office, that's not gonna happen.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, I'm just gonna point out that if you're talking about BS artists, Graham Plattner is BS artists of all beyond. He didn't know it was a Nazi tattoo. You see, not only that he was a victim, he was a victim when he volunteered for the military. So he's been claiming that it's Susan Collins's fault he was sent to Iraq, which is weird because he literally volunteered for the military and forewent college in order to do so because he wanted to go fight. He said that in interviews. Well, Susan Collins points that out. Platner says that you sent him to war, but in fact he enlisted twice.

[Professor Jacob]

What is your comment on that?

[Katherine Illingworth]

Well, first of all, he not only enlisted twice after the war was started, but he also went to work for a security company, a controversial one named Blackwater, after his term in the service was over. So I respect anyone who steps forward to see serve their country, but the fact is that was Platner's decision to serve. He was not drafted.

[Ben Shapiro]

And again, Platner's whole shtick here is that America is an evil force in the world. And apparently that makes him a victim. He says that sure, he volunteered, but Susan Collins abused his willingness to serve. Yeah, he's a victim for volunteering for a thing. Tough guy. Here we go.

[Graham Platner]

Now, all these years later, instead of acknowledging that she was wrong, she's decided that she's gonna blame those of us who in her late teens and early 20s signed up to serve our country, that somehow it's our fault that she and establishment politicians like her wanted to abuse our willingness to serve, to go send us off to fight in stupid, stupid wars that did nothing but make some people very, very rich at the expense of American taxpayer dollars.

[Ben Shapiro]

You volunteered after the war began, dude. It's just. It's just pathetic. And this idea that he stands up for the troops is such nonsense. It's just crap. He is the John Kerry of 2026 coming back and pretending that he is pro military when in effect he just wants to become more famous off the back of military people he slandered. Speaking of which, there's a soldier who was slandered by Graham Platin. That's an op ed in the Wall street journal today. Quote, Mr. Platner presents himself as a savior for working class Americans while his background screams the opposite. And his offensive comments about fellow veterans, including me, speak poorly of his character. The tough talking Marine veteran struts around in a Carhartt jacket and jeans. But recent reporting relays he comes from a prestigious family where he had access to an elite private school education and a lifestyle of privilege, flannel shirt and all. Grand platter is Tim Walls on steroids. An entitled brat who campaigns with socialist Bernie Sanders. A real man by the lights of the Democratic Party. He presents himself as relatable to working class Americans in reality says this soldier, he's a typical elitist who believes blue collar, hardworking, salt of the earth rural Americans are stupid and racist. That is absolutely correct. Graham Platner is a fake. He's a fake. You know, masquerading is a real bad, real man. But you know who is a real man? Pavel. Which is why you need to check out his latest episode of Be a Man with Me this weekend. Here's a sneak peek.

[Hasan Piker]

My name is Pawel and Be a Man with me.

[Ben Shapiro]

After 16 hour drive we made it to Corpus Christi, Texas and today we're going to spend some time with Halo

[Hasan Piker]

flight team non profit volunteer founded Air Ambulance in translation. They fly cool helicopters and rescue people. Today they are going to give me some hands on experience being a helicopter paramedic so that I can learn how

[Ben Shapiro]

a real man supports people in need. Colte, I know nobody loves you, but do you want me to call someone?

[O]

No.

[Ben Shapiro]

Ok, just leave me here.

[O]

I'd just rather die at this point.

[Ben Shapiro]

Speaking of Senate candidates, we do have to comment here about yet another ridiculous figure, James Talarico. So James Talarico, I do not know what he is running for. I do not know what he is doing, what he is running for. He is running obviously for Senate in Texas as a Democrat. It is a quixotic run and Democrats are going to waste a lot of money in that race. A few things. One, every clip that comes up of him from the past is worse than the last one. I mean here he was in 2019 saying that the American flag, Jesus and the cross had been co opted.

[Hasan Piker]

I often think when reclaiming symbols, I think about the American flag. I think the Confederate flag is a symbol of treason and terrorism. But the American flag is such a complicated symbol for most of us and in many ways, like Jesus, like the cross, it's been co opted and in some ways its true meaning has been betrayed.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, this guy for Texas and you want to talk tone deaf. So Talarico, you have to think that this is on purpose, but I don't think it's actually on purpose. I just think that he's impossibly bad at this. James Tallarico is somehow the less masculine version of Pete Buttigieg. It's really astonishing. So there have been a lot of jokes, speculation about James Talarico's sexuality. He's 37 and unmarried now. He is suddenly getting married apparently. In any case, that speculation was not helped yesterday when it came out that he put out a mailer that reads, quote, the biggest divide in this country is not left versus right. It's top versus bottom. Unfortunate wording. Unfortunate wording. I do not know how many Texans wish to identify as James Talarico would as a bottom, but I. It's a move. I don't understand that. Does he not understand what he's saying? Like, is. Does he not understand how words work? Maybe that's what. By the way, this is not an error. He's been saying this stuff at rallies. And here he was when he launched his campaign again, talking about the tops versus the bottoms, which sounds like a terrible Thursday night at a gay bar.

[Hasan Piker]

The biggest divide in our country is

[Ben Shapiro]

not left versus right. It's top versus bottom.

[Hasan Piker]

Billionaires want us looking left and right at each other so that we're not

[Ben Shapiro]

looking up at them. Tops versus bottoms. From James Tallarico. It's a bold campaign strategy. A bold campaign strategy. We'll see how it works out for him. Okay. At a certain point, I do think that Americans are gonna get tired of all of this. I do. I think that President Trump was, in large part a backlash to the sort of insanity and demoralization that has been foisted upon the country. And then, of course, all of that has exacerbated in the wake of his victory, particularly because the right has decided to. At least a fraction. A splinter portion of the right has decided to fully come out of the woodwork as anti America. But I do think Americans are tiring of this, particularly in areas where they've been dominated and governed by people who do not like basic American principles like rule of law and equal justice before the law and private property. So Spencer Pratt is running a hell of a campaign for LA mayor. Very media friendly, very good at this. He was on Fox and Friends yesterday, and here he was talking about the fact that while he's a registered Republican, his supporters are virtually all Democrats.

[Spencer Pratt]

I'm a registered Republican, but my supporters are all Democrats because Los Angeles is all Democrats. All the people financing me are Democrats. All the meetings I take every day are Democrats. Democrats are very angry with what happened in Los Angeles. They were fed a bunch of lies by Mayor Bass, who said she was going to literally solve homelessness. She was going to do all these things she didn't do. So they. All of the people that put her actually in office are now behind me. So it's a nonpartisan race. There's no letter next to either of our names because the mayor is not supposed to represent a party. They're supposed to make sure your moms are safe. Your houses don't burn down and your tax money is going to your infrastructure, not to fund drug addicts. So thankfully, I have Republicans that love me, I have Democrats that love me, I have Independents love me. Even some socialists messaged me and they're like, hey, don't be so mean to us. We like you too. I'm like, sorry, I don't mess with socialists.

[Ben Shapiro]

Spencer Pratt, by the way, also pointed out, and this is true, I used to live in la. That LA is pretty fantastic if you decide not to let the drug addicts take over all of the streets.

[Spencer Pratt]

So that woman has had, I think, almost five years she's been. These people see that I am saying why they left. So they're trying to get me elected so they can move back. That's what people are missing. These are actually former Angelenos that got forced out of this city that Mayor Bass has destroyed. And that's why they're donating, because they want me to be mayor so they can move back. Because LA is incredible when you don't let drug addicts take over the street and make moms and kids scared to go to parks or the school.

[Ben Shapiro]

And he is right about all that. Again, this does tie into a baseline anti Americanism. And Karen Bass is a far left person, specifically because she does not like basic American principles, as he pointed out. It was reported in 1983. Plaintiff Karen Bass, according to a 1973 intelligence document provided to the LA Times, quote, traveled to Cuba with six contingents of Venceramo's Brigade. The brigade trains revolutionary prone Americans in terrorist tactics and guerrilla warfare while claiming to harvest sugarcane. Bass was characterized as a brigade leader returned from Cuba to the United States bringing back propaganda literature. I mean, that's awkward. Hilariously, liberals in LA admit that they agree with Pratt, but then they say they're going to vote for Karen Bass anyway because, you know, party over principle.

[O]

So then you get a guy who was on a reality show, who's on a lot of reality shows, his profession is to be the screaming jerk on reality shows. And his house burns down. And even though he had no private insurance on his house and doesn't believe in climate change, he is understandably upset about his house burning down. And since he's a moderately famous person, he gets attention. He's on the news, he's on social media, and for the first time in his life, people are agreeing with what he has to say. It's hard not to agree with what he has to say. He's angry about the same problems A lot of people here are angry about does he have solutions to those problems? No, but at least he's acknowledging that they are problems. So then this angry reality show star who grew up wealthy and popular and is not very wealthy or popular anymore, really starts to enjoy the attention. He starts to think, you know, I should be mayor, which is a statement that should make everyone laugh. But not everyone is laughing. Not everyone sees this as a joke.

[Ben Shapiro]

Again, Jimmy Kimmel backed Zoran Mamdani, who is really, really not qualified to be mayor of Los Angeles, so. And does Spencer Pratt have a shot if he makes it past the primaries? He actually does. It'll be really fascinating to watch what happens out in my old hometown of la. Meanwhile, the White House got pretty pranky yesterday. They launched something called aliens.gov. sadly, for UFO X accounts and also for Matt Walsh, it is not disclosure. It's not Area 51. It is not, in fact, the mothership finally landing. Turns out it's an immigration website with a full sci fi branding campaign. So naturally, the Internet does what the Internet does. It went totally crazy. So I actually haven't checked out the site yet, but my producers told me I ought to. So we're doing it now. Let's head over to aliens.gov. here it is. It's loading. With the whole typewriter thing and everything, it's like an episode of X Files. They walk among us. For 60 years, the US government has kept a closely guarded secret. Aliens have been walking among us, living in our neighborhoods, and interacting with us in our daily lives. They've shopped in the same stores, attended the same classes as our children, and lived seemingly normal human existences. With one exception. They do not belong here. Millions arrived under the COVID of darkness and embedded themselves directly into our society. Countless presidents, congressmen, and senior officials knew exactly what was happening. Instead of protecting American citizens as the website, they chose to cover it up and even accelerate the invasion until one man finally had the courage to tell the truth. Bold, unapologetic, unafraid. President Trump was the first to call out the real danger aliens pose to every American family, every community, and the future of our nation. The truth is no longer out there. It is right here, right now. Okay, and then if you keep scrolling, then it tells you top secret. It's not a click through 312,900, let's see, 3,129,613 encounters. And it is an alien arrest map. And of course, it is an illegal immigrant arrest map. So you can see here countries of origin Criminal charges. Miami, Florida. And it says total arrest 6003. And you can actually click anywhere it looks like in the United States and figure out where the arrests are happening. It breaks down, you know, pretty granularly where a lot of these arrests are happening. And it's kind of shocking because, of course, you would expect a gigantic circle in LA and instead you see 5199. Why is that? That is because specifically these are cities that are not working with federal government. What the map really shows is who's working with the feds and who is not. And so Dallas, Texas, definitely working with the feds. Right. Conroe, Texas, definitely working with the feds. Oklahoma, definitely working with the feds. And then if you expand outward, this map, what you see is, look at all those arrests and where they're happening. Huge, huge arrests happening across the south, particularly in red areas. Why is that? That is specifically because of the red state governors who are participating with ice.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right.

[Ben Shapiro]

The minute that you head on up to, you know, Minnesota, for example, you see the circle start to get a lot smaller because the state is just not cooperating very much with eyes. Listen, it's a funny troll. I appreciate the troll. I also appreciate the president sort of dunking on alien conspiracy theorists. I think that's kind of funny. So that is where we are now. This is what we've come to. The memory. The memory is strong with this one, that is for sure. Well, it's time for the Maha segment of the week, sponsored by our friends over at Balance of Nature. And today we are joined on the line by Katherine Illingworth. She's the mother of a young boy named George who's diagnosed with a rare neurodegenerative disease called CMT4C. Doctors brushed off the concerns for a long time. They finally got a diagnosis. And now her family is fighting to bring a promising gene therapy from the lab to kids like George via the biotech company that she has co founded called Kylix Bio. By the way, you may remember her from Jordan Peterson's parenting show, where his advice transformed how Katherine and her husband, Greer, approach parenting and marriage in the middle of this struggle. So just recently, RFK Jr. Posted about his push to unleash American biotech. Cutting red tape, accelerating cures. And as we'll discuss in a moment, that's exactly what the Illingworths need. The science is there. The bureaucracy and funding delays are a continuing problem. So the big question, as always, where do cures come from? Is it from government or is it from Private business. So we'll talk about their journey and hope for a cure in just one moment. So, Katherine, welcome. Thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.

[Katherine Illingworth]

Of course. Happy to be here.

[Ben Shapiro]

So why don't we start by talking about your son's diagnosis. What was the journey to that diagnosis like? Obviously, rare conditions, very difficult to diagnose. So how did that work?

[Katherine Illingworth]

So I started noticing symptoms around my son's first birthday when he was learning to walk. He pulled a stand right on schedule, but couldn't walk independently. Six months went by, eight months went by, and our pediatrician first told us, well, you're holding him too much. He needs to exercise more. So thought, okay. Then we got started sending us to specialists, orthopedist. His bones were perfect. Physical therapists. It just looked like low muscle tone. Finally, when he was four years old. So three years later, we finally got sent to a neurologist, and she took one look at the shape of his feet and instantly had a nurse swab his cheek for a genetic test. Ten days later, we had a diagnosis.

[Ben Shapiro]

And what is the diagnosis? What is the condition? And was it treatable? What's the situation?

[Katherine Illingworth]

So his condition is a variant of cmt, which stands for Charcot Marie Tooth disease. Those are the three scientists who discovered it. And these are peripheral neuropathies. So in his case, it's an autosomal recessive genetic disorder. So he inherited a damaged copy of the same gene from both of his parents, from me and my husband. So that means that he does not express enough of the protein that creates the myelin sheath on the peripheral nerves. So that means that he will just experience progressive degeneration of those peripheral nerves every day for his entire life. So kids with this condition lose their ability to walk independently sometime between puberty and age 30. I mean, I know some adults that are still walking. I also know a 9 year old with this who's fully wheelchair bound with significant loss of function in the hands. So it starts in the periphery of the body and sort of creeps inward over time every day for your whole life. So is it treatable? Yes and no. Scientifically, absolutely. But as far as anything available currently on the marketplace, there was nothing. So when we got the diagnosis, our neurologist told us, take heart. There's been a ton of innovation in this space in the past decade, but the drug that you need has likely already been invented, but is stuck in what she called the valley of death, which is where promising science just doesn't ever advance to first in human trials. Because nobody steps up to fund the phase one trial.

[Ben Shapiro]

So where do things stand right now? You found a potential gene therapy. How does that get greenlit? Well, what are the steps that you need in order to help provide a care for your son?

[Katherine Illingworth]

So when we got the diagnosis, there was actually already an entire trial program designed by the nonprofit patient advocacy group called the CMT Association. I mean, they already had had a pre IND meeting with the fda, which is where they had proposed a notional trial design. The FDA said, great, if you can fund this, it looks good to us. And then they turned back to the families, the parents of the kids with this condition, and said, all right, your move, families. We need $6.7 million to fund this program. So a handful of families got to work. So there was a little traction when we got our diagnosis, but I knew that this needed our full effort because that's a huge amount of money. So I was finishing a PhD at the time, left my PhD program to fundraise full time, and then started a TikTok campaign that went surprisingly successfully. So we raised enough to pay our first bill, which was manufacturing a batch of the drugs for a toxic psychology study. That was about a $700,000 bill. But I knew that if after I had sort of rung my network dry of all of the donations that they were going to make. And your followers, Ben, actually were really supportive of that. You retweeted our fundraiser once. That created just an absolute influx of donations from your people, for which we were very grateful. But I knew that this strategy wasn't going to take us all the way, so I actually decided to create a parallel for profit pathway. So. So we still have the nonprofit path where people can donate, but now I actually founded Kylix Bio, our biotech company, and we got an exclusive global license to the drug and are able to also raise investment capital as well. So creating the parallel for profit path, there were two motivations, the first of which was faster capital. The second of which was control over what happens to the program, and then also the ability to take ownership over all of the data so that we could package it for approval and make it a desirable acquisition for larger biotech and pharma to go commercialize it after we had good data from the phase one.

[Ben Shapiro]

So where do things stand right now? What is the sort of status of that project? And has the administration been helpful in terms of trying to cut through some of the red tape?

[Katherine Illingworth]

Yeah, that's a great question. So right now we are manufacturing for that toxicology study. We'll start that study in the winter, which is they basically create an identical version for the clinical materials and then they inject them into rats, see if the rats have any adverse safety reactions. Once we have all of that data, then we're in a position where we can actually propose, we can file the ind the investigational new drug, which is full FDA permission to go ahead with the trial. So we're targeting a trial start date in about early 2028 is about when we'll make it into the clinic. Now, as far as what is happening on the regulatory side, this has been just a transformative year in rare disease policy. So RFK and his team have said everything that the rare disease drug development world has been wanting to hear for decades. He's proposed new approval pathways, flexibility around trial design, flexibility around the kind of data that's required to prove efficacy. Especially because rare disease populations are so small, you know, they can't prove efficacy the way they can in a trial where they can recruit hundreds or thousands of participants over many years. So they've made a series of announcements that, you know, if they, they demonstrate consistency on applying those announcements, and if those pathways become real, it will be transformative for rare disease. So we'll see in the coming months and years if everything that they're announcing actually does transform the regulatory path for rare disease.

[Ben Shapiro]

So how can people help? Obviously, you're still fundraising. Your company is raising money as well. Well, what's the best way people can help you help, George?

[Katherine Illingworth]

So the best way people can help is, of course, contributing to our fundraiser. As you said, every dollar just goes directly towards paying our drug development costs. So it's the paying the direct invoices for manufacturing safety studies and then eventually our trial. So philanthropic gifts are so important. And I also would say anytime you scroll past any fundraiser that has a child's name in it, it's very likely that someone else is fundraising for a clinical program as well. And the more I just don't scroll past them. When I was fundraising on TikTok, every time I opened the app, the algorithm knew that I was posting about rare disease fundraising. So I don't see anything else when I open social media anymore. And this problem is so much bigger than people know. I mean, they say that Rare disease impacts 1 in 10Americans, but there are so many different rare diseases. There's almost 10,000 of them. We know that they're all siloed into tiny little groups that can't really help each other very efficiently. So the more of these that are Making it in front of the FDA that are getting into the clinic, the more we'll be able to create a consistent, cohesive plan that incentivizes investment in this space and just gets these existing treatments into children.

[Ben Shapiro]

If you want to go and help, go check it out right [e-mail] Every dollar is useful, every dollar is necessary. And you can help kids like [e-mail] Katherine, thanks so much for what you're doing and thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

[Katherine Illingworth]

Thanks so much, Ben.

[Ben Shapiro]

Meanwhile, it's time to check the mail with our friends over at Pure Talk. Professor Jacob in Tennessee apparently has a question. So let's check it out.

[Professor Jacob]

Hey Ben, this is Professor Jacob from the Michael Null Show. One thing that I've always respected about you is that you love Star wars like I do. And I say that even knowing I have to ignore your heretical claim that Empire Strikes Back is better than Revenge of the Sith.

[Ben Shapiro]

Like.

[Professor Jacob]

Like what? Anyway, my question is, do you think the Star wars brand is repairable? We saw massive changes from companies like Bud Light and Target because of conservative backlash to their woke nonsense. So do you ever see a post George Lucas Lucasfilm reverting back to like, you know, good Star Wars? You know, they've taken loss after loss with like the feminist sequels, the acolytes, communist, lesbian, space witches, etc, you know, I'm kind of black pilled and I don't want to be because I'm a big fan of the franchise and I'm hoping you can share some optimism. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. But yeah, that's my question. Also, you need to go watch the new mall Shadow Lord show if you haven't already because it's actually peak and I'm very impressed by it. Thanks.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay. I've also heard that the Mall show is, is really, really good. Former producer Zach was a big fan of that show as well and he actually texted me to tell me that. I've also heard that it's, it's good and going to be good for my, my two oldest kids. So I'm excited about that. Yes, it can be fixed. It can be fixed. The way that it can be fixed is to bring on people who actually love classic Star Wars. What they should do is at Disneyland, they should go right back to the original characters. No one wants to see Kylo Ren at Disneyland. They want to see Vader. Nobody really wants to see people whose names I can't even remember right now. I Literally don't remember the names of the people. Rey. No, no one wants to see Rey. People want to see Princess Leia and they want to see Luke and they want to see Han. That's the reality. And all the nostalgia is still there. I mean, Professor Jacob is significantly younger than I am and he has nostalgia for old style Star Wars. So what we actually need to do is go back, recast all of the original characters and then just pick up the story after Return of the Jedi or shift on over to a different time in the sort of Star wars universe and restart with some cool, interesting characters. And there have been some good attempts at it, right? Andor is great. Andor is excellent. So it's not as though they don't know how to make a good Star wars property. They do. They just have to either go back to what made the series great originally, which is good versus evil, actual moral stances, and also just classic adventure tropes, or they need to, you know, move into. If they want to do heavier and more complex, then Andor does that. Andor. Andor is basically the John Lecrae novel, except in space. It's pretty cool. Alrighty, head over to PureTalk.com Shapiro again, that's PureTalk.com Shapiro. And switch on over to America's wireless company, Pure Talk. And we thank Pure Talk for their sponsorship of the show, as always. Alrighty, folks, as we continue, we are going to jump into some things I like and things I hate. It's a Friday and let's go into the weekend. A positive note, maybe a little bit of a negative note, but in order to see all that, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, what are you doing already? Like, the time has come, gang. We've been doing this for a long time. Just join up already and become part of the team. Use code Shapiro checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. Sam.