Loading summary
Transcript109 lines
- [00:00]
Ben Shapiro
Personal responsibility. That used to be something that most Americans believed in. Actually, by the polling data, most Americans still do, but pretty much nobody in our political class does. Because the most seductive line in American politics is, it's not your fault. In just a second, I'm going to explain why our national debt is out of control, inflation is rampant, and there's no end in sight. And I'm going to do it with one clip. Plus, we'll get to Gavin Newsom's ex mistress grabbing the spotlight and trying to revivify me too. Lindsey Graham's funeral and Rosie o' Donnell singing about President Trump's dingling. Yeah, I know. This is the Ben Shapiro Show. Okay, so I'm gonna play you a clip. This clip says, I think, most of the things you need to know about our current politics. Actually. Now, this clip isn't really political. It's a clip from Caleb Hammer, who's a financial host whose main job consists in looking at people making terrible, terrible decisions on both a life and fiscal level and telling them not to do it. But this clip, I think, says a lot about our current political moment. Here is the clip for those who can't see. It is him as well as his co host reacting to a woman demonstrating what she bought with her EBT card. Marshmallow brother. It is a multiple packs of Chips Ahoy. What could you put Tortillas.
- [01:23]
Caleb Hammer
Oh, my.
- [01:24]
John Fetterman
Holy.
- [01:26]
Caleb Hammer
Okay, those. Box of cookies. I've never seen three of them. That's crazy. And then she had to get the fruity Pebble. She had to get the. What was it?
- [01:35]
Ben Shapiro
Tortillas?
- [01:36]
Caleb Hammer
No, the fruity. What?
- [01:38]
Lyndon Blake
Fruit Loops.
- [01:40]
Caleb Hammer
But she got the ones with marshmallows. That sounds so good. Oh, my goodness. You're the fattest woman.
- [01:51]
Ben Shapiro
Sounds so good. Two blocks of mild cheddar cheese. Two bags of meatballs.
- [01:56]
Rosie O'Donnell
Oh.
- [01:58]
Caleb Hammer
Oh, my.
- [01:59]
Ben Shapiro
French onion dip. I got two gallons of milk.
- [02:01]
Caleb Hammer
There's tons of French onion dip.
- [02:04]
John Fetterman
Oh, no.
- [02:05]
Caleb Hammer
Excuse me.
- [02:06]
Ben Shapiro
I got three of them.
- [02:07]
Donald Trump
Three.
- [02:09]
Caleb Hammer
The tubs of that French onion dip. How do you think they're paying for this? This is expensive. This has to be EBT because they're both disabled. Wait, no, no.
- [02:18]
Ben Shapiro
You've never seen.
- [02:19]
Caleb Hammer
You've never seen it. Every single time they're waddling. No, no. Every single waddler is on disability.
- [02:24]
Ben Shapiro
Are they carts?
- [02:25]
Caleb Hammer
Are they cart people? Yes, 100%. And they're all on disability and they're paying for all this on their disability.
- [02:34]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, here is the thing. The reason that Caleb Hammer is going nuts here is because, you know, I Think a lot of people have the same reaction. The common sensical reaction, what you eat, what you get at the supermarket is your decision. Which means that if you choose to buy and eat crap and are therefore more unhealthy, it is your fault. But when I say it that way, it gets really controversial. Now here's the thing. It really shouldn't be. I didn't say that it's easy to eat healthy. It absolutely is not. We can all drop a few pounds. I am no exception to this rule. It's true for everyone. And eating healthy is hard and it's annoying. Making your kids eat healthy is even harder because your kids constantly want the stuff that tastes good. And it's easier to give your kids pizza than it is to insist that they eat the healthy food. But again, these are decisions that are up to free people in a free country. But here's the thing. No politician will ever say that to you. Not a single one. Instead, they will tell you that the reason that you've been eating unhealthy and the reason that you're overweight and the reason that you are in fact more unhealthy, it must be because food is expensive. And therefore we need government run grocery stores subsidized by the taxpayer. That's really the reason. Here is Zoran Mamdani doing this routine. A couple of days ago, in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, no New Yorker should have to worry about being able to afford to feed their family. Now again, New Yorkers do not have to worry about feeding their families. We have snap, we have ebt, we have all sorts of government programs. It is true that food is more expensive than it was just a few years ago. But by any historical standard, food in the United States is not expensive. It is not. According to the Bureau of Labor statistics and the USDA, in the early 1900s, families were spending roughly 40% of their income on food. Today, the average household in the United States will spend under 10% of its disposable income on food. People today spend roughly an equal amount on groceries as they do on restaurants on average. Now again, if you, if you look at just what we are spending, the answer is we are spending less on food than pretty much any time for any society in human history. Now again, that does not mean that food isn't more expensive than it was just a couple of years ago. It absolutely is. Inflation has a cost and you can spot it every time you go to the grocery store. The average price paid to Domestic producers for food jumped 30% between 2021 and 2023. And since then, grocery prices have continued to climb, albeit at a slower rate under President Trump. But the solution to that is not government subsidized food. In fact, government subsidies typically make things more expensive. And here is a chart, maybe the chart that matters most when it comes to government policy, demonstrating the effect on prices when you dump money into the, into items, when you subsidize them using the federal government. And what you see is all the areas where the government does, does not subsidize, say TVs, toys, computer software, cell phone services, clothing. The price has dropped fairly radically over time. However, in the areas where the government subsidizes the most, say hospital services or college tuition or child care and nursery school or medical care services, massive spikes over the course of the last 25 years. Now, again, why am I bringing this up? Because this is a matter of whether we consider it your responsibility. And again, those are the words that no one in politics will say in America, your responsibility. The idea is that everything is everybody's responsibility. In fact, everything is nobody's responsibility. It's not everybody's responsibility. It's the government's responsibility. But let us be clear, this idea that Zoran Mamdani needs to locate grocery stores within a certain distance because you just can't get to a grocery store in Manhattan is not true. The distance between Mamdani's East Harlem city owned grocery store and the local Costco is less than a mile. Here is the sad and real truth about life. People make choices and sometimes those choices are good and very often those choices are not. There have been studies on whether in fact people are eating unhealthy because of so called food deserts. For a long time there was this theory that impoverished areas people didn't eat kale because kale was unavailable because there was no local Whole Foods. And it turns out there's no local Whole Foods in impoverished areas because people in impoverished areas don't want to spend money on kale. It's a reverse correlation according to the University of Chicago. They did a study a couple of years ago and what they found is that so called food deserts, areas where you don't have a gigantic supermarket or grocery store with fresh produce, has no meaningful effect on eating habits. Exposing low income households to the same products and prices as those in high income households reduces nutritional inequality by only 9%. The remaining 91% of the nutrition gap is driven by difference in what shoppers prefer to buy. According to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper published recently. Households in food desert zip codes buy almost 90% of their groceries from supermarkets the same as wealthier households. It's just that wealthier households, according to the study, tend to place a higher value on healthy foods and nutrients. Poorer households tend to value unhealthy ones. Low income households are willing to pay more for sugar and saturated fats, whereas high income households tend to want to pay more for veggies and fruits, for example. And there's a reason for this. According to the LA Times, an overwhelming majority of the wealthy parents told me they routinely said no to requests for junk food in 96% of high income families. At least one parent reported that regularly declined such requests. Parents from poor families, however, almost always said yes to junk food. Only 13% of low income families had a parent that reported regularly declining their kids requests. See again, here's the thing. Junk food tastes good. It tastes great. I love it. Sour. Mike and Ikes. The best food ever created. Incredible. But then again, it's my decision to destroy my digestive system. It would be my fault. Now, I know the left wants to make this into a race thing, but in fact this is a race neutral thing. White Appalachia has very high rates of obesity and the same thing is true in inner city black communities. It doesn't have to be a class thing. It is a class thing in the sense that poor income households tend to eat less healthy food. But the reality is that healthy food remains affordable in the United States. In fact, it kind of costs the same overall as unhealthy food. So for example, I checked it out. You could get healthy food for a family of four at Aldi's for a week. You'd have to shop hard, but you could do it for a little over a hundred bucks. That would include things like whole chicken and ground beef and eggs, potatoes, milk, cheese, yogurt, rice, pasta, oats, etc, and that's a pain in the butt. It's a pain in the butt. It's expensive by historical comparison, but it is not prohibitive. And again, if you were to buy a meal plan for that same family, afford for a week things like frozen pizza or frozen chicken nuggets, hot dogs and buns, sugary cereal, Mac and cheese, soda, ice cream, the works. It would probably cost you in the same neighborhood. We all have choices and that's what that Caleb Hammer video is showing. And it's why I think everybody who watches the video reacts in kind of the same way. Why isn't that lady just Buying something healthy. She obviously needs to eat something healthy. Why is she buying that? But here's the thing. No politician will say this. The left is fully invested in the idea that every bad decision is the result of societal consequence. Right? That is the Marxist theory at work. The reason that lady is making bad decisions about her food is because capitalism has caused her to make bad decisions about her food. And if we had a Marxist redistributionist structure, she would have been brought up to eat only the healthiest foods. Now, the reality is that people under Marxism tend to be skinnier than people under capitalism, mainly because they're starving to death. But it is also true that people make decisions. The left suggests that every decision is, in fact, a societal or governmental decision. Unfortunately, this is also bled over to the right. Take, for example, the evolution of the vice president. This is a really kind of telling evolution, and it says something about the broader right because it's not restricted to the vice president, of course. So back in 2016, the Vice President wrote a book called Hillbilly Elegy. And in Hillbilly Elegy, he talks about eating habits. He says that when he was in the Marines, he changed his perspective on eating because he was grabbing dessert while at boot camp, and a drill instructor yelled at him, quote, you really need that cake, don't you, Fat? And he says that experience pushed him to reconsider his eating habits. He writes that he began asking questions he never asked before, like, quote, is there added sugar? Does this meat have a lot of saturated fat? How much salt? He says in Hillbilly Elegy that the greasy fried food from his mama's table, that was his grandmother, Everything was fried. Lusts appeal to him after that shift. He says in Apple, quote, we eat Pillsbury cinnamon rolls for breakfast, Taco Bell for lunch, and McDonald's for dinner. We rarely cook, even though it's cheaper and better for the body and soul. So that was a fairly typical conservative perspective, that you can make choices that better your life. Nutrition, finance, career, like all over your life. But now things have changed because it's become popular in America to suggest that no decision is your own. Well, that was J.D. vance's perspective on eating habits back during his hillbilly elegy days. As we'll see in a moment, things have radically changed for the vice president. But I'm going to tell you something that has not change, and it's not going to change. The reality is the government, as we've been talking about, going to keep spending money. They're going to inflate the dollar. It's a thing that's just going to keep happening because all the systemic factors aim in this particular direction. And this is exactly why I've partnered with Golden Crest Metals. They're a boutique precious metals firm built on transparent pricing, liquid products and straightforward service. When you call, you're talking to somebody who actually knows the business, not somebody reading from a sales script. They focus on widely recognized gold and silver bullion and premium coins that trade in liquid markets. No private label products, no gimmicks, no hidden markups, and when you're ready to sell, there are no buyback fees. The company was founded by Rich Jacoby after spending two decades in the industry watching honest people get taken advantage of. His mission was simple, fair pricing, real service and no games. If you've been thinking about adding precious metals to your portfolio or you've been curious about rolling over part of an IRA into physical gold or silver, it's worth having that conversation. Right now. Listeners can receive up to 25 grand in free silver on qualifying purchases, along with a free investor kit and portfolio review. No obligation. Visit GoldenCrestMetals.comBen call 888-429-3999 or text Ben to medals. That's 638257. Again, visit GoldenCrestMetals.com Ben to get started so now the Vice President has a new book out and again I read political memoirs because it kind of tells you something about the person writing so the Vice president writes in his book Communion. Quote I was the first in my family to attend a four year college and Ohio State immediately changed me into a college boy. Shortly after matriculating, I drove home for a weekend to visit my family. My nieces and nephew complained about not having anything for breakfast besides cereal. I raised this with my sister like an arrogant jerk. You know that stuff is like pure sugar, right? They should have other options. My sister rightly took offense and we didn't talk for a week. Many other things like this popped up, demonstrating the ways in which I had unconsciously absorbed the biases of of America's educated class. I was becoming detached from the culture that had made me who I was. Now again, I'm curious. Was it somehow less true now that it's bad to continuously feed your kids Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes? It is not healthy to to feed that. Now again, how he chooses to interact with his family is one thing, but it's also not even the real story. According to his first autobiography, his mind shift with regard to eating didn't come at Ohio State. It wasn't a college kid thing, it was a boot camp thing. When his instructor said stop being fat and he stopped being fat and realized he should pay attention to his food. Trying to turn this into a class warfare issue is scoring cheap political points. But again, I'm not trying to pick on the vice president. This is so much of our politics, right and left. It's why the national debt is never going to go down, ever, ever, ever. Because no one will ever say the thing. In a free society, in a country where your vote is about your choice, so is most of your life. And if we have a society where your choices don't matter and we pretend they don't exist and everything is society's fault, nothing is your fault. And then it's society's job and the government's job to fix it. But here's the thing. No matter how much government you throw out these problems, you can't fix personal choice this way. You can't fix personal choice this way. When Michelle Obama tried this with school lunches, I don't know if you recall this going back far enough. Michelle Obama, the wife of Barack Obama, if you go back far enough, she tried to fix the school lunches. So she pointed out correctly, by the way, that the school lunches were generally non nutritious. And so she decided she was going to put together school lunches that were more nutritious. And you know what happened? The kids tossed out everything, all of it. Because it turns out the government can't fix all your problems. It can't fix the problem of decision making. Here is a video from the time of kids reviewing Michelle Obama's approved school lunches. I do bring lunch every day.
- [15:22]
Donald Trump
You do?
- [15:23]
John Fetterman
Why?
- [15:24]
Ben Shapiro
Because I hate the school lunches. Lunchables snack pack. I got it from my parents. My parents. I don't really like the old school lunch food that much. Yeah, I brought like chicken nuggets and then like Kool Aid a couple years
- [15:50]
Lyndon Blake
ago back kids were so intrigued by
- [15:53]
Ben Shapiro
the hot dogs cause when they dropped
- [15:55]
Lyndon Blake
them on the table, they bounced around a little. One of my friends named Abby, she
- [16:01]
Ben Shapiro
watched a hot dog and you know, they're really rubbery and she saw it wiggle. So again, what actually ended up happening is the kids were basically dumping everything they didn't want but refuse to accept that again, choices are choices. This is, by the way, the reason why parents should give their kids food to bring to school. Okay. But the result of a sort of attitude which is that nothing is your fault. That has results. Three results, specifically. One, the radical expansion of government. Because if you don't take responsibility for your life, then somebody has to take responsibility for your life, and the government has to expand, either by subsidizing you or bossing you around or both. Second, we treat the actual normal things that the government should be doing as secondary and the stuff that we personally should be doing as primary functions of the government. This is how you end up with the idiotic take that the government should spend not on defense, but should be spending on whatever the social program of the day is. And you end up with financial illiteracy, of course. So back to Caleb Hammer here. He was talking with a member of the political left who was saying, we spend more money on bombs than social programs in the country, which is absolutely false. But that is your perception. If you believe that the government's job is not to do defense, but it is to take care of all the aspects of your life. Be patriotic. When we're spending more money on bombs than we are for, like, social justice or, like, social programs.
- [17:28]
Caleb Hammer
We spend 50% of the federal spending on social programs.
- [17:32]
Rosie O'Donnell
Like what?
- [17:33]
Caleb Hammer
Social programs? Medicare, Medicaid, mandatory spending, SNAP benefits, veteran benefits.
- [17:37]
Ben Shapiro
You mean the SNAP benefits that people just got taken away from them?
- [17:39]
Caleb Hammer
You think everyone just got taken off snap?
- [17:42]
Rosie O'Donnell
Most people.
- [17:42]
Caleb Hammer
Everyone. You think the majority just got taken off SNAP? Our military spending is 10 to 20%.
- [17:48]
Ben Shapiro
And that bombs.
- [17:48]
Caleb Hammer
You're freaking out about 10 to 20%. It's egregious. We spend 50% on social programs.
- [17:52]
Ben Shapiro
I'm a military kid and I can tell you that shit is not needed.
- [17:55]
Caleb Hammer
Girl, you literally just got the information that you were just wrong, and yet you're still doubling down. We don't spend the majority on bombs.
- [18:02]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, maybe it's not the majority, but it's.
- [18:03]
Caleb Hammer
Well, it's not even close to the majority. It's not even a quarter.
- [18:05]
Ben Shapiro
It's far too much.
- [18:07]
Caleb Hammer
Okay, you could advocate for that, but that all of a sudden, it doesn't mean. You just said we don't spend anything on social. That's where, like, more than half of our money goes. What are you talking about?
- [18:14]
Ben Shapiro
I think it needs to be more.
- [18:15]
Caleb Hammer
As usual, you're uninformed about everything.
- [18:18]
Ben Shapiro
I think it needs to be more.
- [18:19]
Caleb Hammer
And then you're just not patriotic. What do you mean? We spend more than, like, anyone.
- [18:23]
Ben Shapiro
And again, the point that she's making, and it is indicative of an underlying problem, right? This is a couple that he's having on. It's like $5,000 in debt. When you believe that it's the government's job to take care of all your problems, this is what you end up with. That the government should not take care of our national defense. That we should be short on interceptors so that we can spend more on snap. Here's the reality, by the way, when you consider all of the government's social programs with all of the heavily incentivized private benefits, like for example, employer funded health care and 401k matches and tax credits. The OECD, as the organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranks the United States the number one global spender on social programs. Our net total spending, when you combine both the public safety net and private benefits, ranks us at number two behind France per capita. So the second thing, right again, there are three things that result from this mindset thing. Number one is that the government radically expands and never stops expanding. Second, we start putting focus on the government not doing its core functions and doing all these other things that are not its core functions. And third, and most importantly, we become worse people because nothing is ever our fault. Personal responsibility withers, governmental control increases. It is a very, very short road from I have no agency to I can take whatever I want from the government because it's not my fault. Anyway, one more clip from Caleb Hammer that proves the point here. He was talking to a couple that earns six figures or close to six figures, stealing government assistance and SNAP and feeling no guilt about it whatsoever.
- [19:48]
Caleb Hammer
You get food stamps on top of that, plus Medicaid, so. Oh, I hate everything. That is the way we have set this up. Yeah, yeah, we're dependents.
- [19:59]
Ben Shapiro
The entire 200 billion yearly SNAP budget is the problem, but not the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of subsidies that go to corporations. But yes, the little guys can.
- [20:09]
Caleb Hammer
Well, subsidies isn't money going to them typically. Subsidies is usually, usually it's tax benefits. So it's money they're not giving.
- [20:16]
Donald Trump
Right.
- [20:16]
Caleb Hammer
Food stamps is still money going out.
- [20:18]
Donald Trump
Right.
- [20:18]
Caleb Hammer
So it is different. You can't compare them one to one.
- [20:21]
Ben Shapiro
It's not one to one.
- [20:22]
Caleb Hammer
Well then you just made the one to one to example. No. And you know those subsidies are usually set up in place for them to build like a corporate a campus. So they employ more people usually fine,
- [20:32]
John Fetterman
to a certain degree.
- [20:32]
Caleb Hammer
It still puts more money in the system because they bring in more employees. They have to pay payroll taxes on that on both ends. So. So talking about at least what you
- [20:41]
Ben Shapiro
have, oil and gas, let's use oil and gas for an example. How much Revenue did they generate and how much of that revenue was profit? You're telling me that they deserve a $700 billion deduction or subsidy or whatever you want to call it to grow their business? When you make that much money, you can't fund your own business advancement.
- [20:58]
Caleb Hammer
I don't know about necessarily deserve, but I would still rather have money go to something that does create jobs which actually provides a benefit.
- [21:05]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, the SNAP program can only
- [21:06]
Caleb Hammer
buy food than people who literally do nothing can only buy ass and just get, get.
- [21:11]
Ben Shapiro
SNAP can only buy food.
- [21:12]
Caleb Hammer
She also gets Medicaid and she gets the child tax.
- [21:14]
John Fetterman
Oh, no.
- [21:17]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so again, this mentality sells. This mentality sells. It does. The most, the most high ROI sale in politics is, it's not your fault, I'll take care of it for you. But here's the thing. It's never going to work. They won't take care of it for you. You want to know why people keep moving party to party, swiveling from side to side, wildly, crazily. Because it turns out that if people promise you the world, they will come up short. The government cannot make up for the failures of personal decision making. And by the way, social institutions wither when you get rid of this stuff. Personal responsibility withers. Now again, the American people don't even support this stuff. The American people don't like it. There's a brand new Manhattan Institute poll that we talked about a little bit yesterday talking about support for SNAP work requirements. And it turns out that a broad majority of Americans strongly or somewhat support SNAP work requirements. They believe that people should actually work if they want some benefits. And when it comes to state responsibility for snap payment errors, for example, it turns out that 55 of all voters believe that states that have waste in the food stamps program should be required to cover part of the cost of, of that waste that the federal government should have, should not have to pick that up. But here's the thing. On an individual level, people tend to buy this stuff because it tells us. We all want to hear that, right? We all want to hear it's not your fault the government has this. We've got this. That's what politicians will say. And by we, we mean the government. And by it, we mean unending national debt and the withering of our social institutions and of personal virtue. That is where this is going to. Personal responsibility is withering. You want unending national debt, you want unending inflation? You want a failing system? Get rid of the basic idea of human nature that the founding fathers believed in the founding Fathers believed that we all had choices in front of us, good choices and bad choices. And because we all had the capacity for evil and the capacity for good, they said we needed checks and balances and we needed constitutionally protected freedoms because they believed that the capacity for choice was our highest human calling, that that was the thing that mattered more than anything. Because if you're not exercising your choice in pursuit of the good, then what are you here on this planet for? But that's not actually the direction our culture is moving. And that's particularly true in the online world, where again, the online world incentivizes bad behavior, it incentivizes attention seeking, and it tells you over and over what you want to hear. Virality is based on what you want to hear. What do people want to hear more than anything? They want to hear their own. Decisions are not their fault, it's somebody else's fault. This is why Pope Leo again, I have my equibbles with Pope Leo politically, but when it comes to central values here, he happens to be correct. Here he is saying, you know, you might want to engage in some virtue again.
- [24:06]
John Fetterman
Is it really possible to have joy in such difficult circumstances? We might ask. It is only possible if our life is founded upon our relationship with God as a loving father. The joy St. Francis was speaking of cannot be found through electronic devices. Spending hours in front of a screen, endlessly scrolling on social media every day, these activities often waste precious time. They could be used for moments of silent prayer, of cultivating authentic friendships, spending quality time with family, learning more about our faith, studying or playing sports.
- [24:53]
Ben Shapiro
So again, he's not wrong about this. You know, getting re involved in your life, making decisions, is it good for you, it's good for your family, it's good for your community, and it's good for the government. Otherwise, what you end up with is unending government. If the alternative to freedom is tyranny, and if freedom is built on the idea that your decisions are your own, then when you give up your decision making power and say the government ought to take care of everything, tyranny is usually what follows. We will get to a story of lack of personal responsibility. It also concerns Gavin Newsom in a moment. But as we have been talking about, eating healthy is really, really hard to do. Okay? It's really important and it's your choice. But when we're talking about choices, that doesn't mean that every choice makes it easy. Okay? When it comes to packing lunches or, or trying to figure out what to eat or cramming those fruits and veggies in your diet every that's actually hard. Well, there's this is the reason I like Balance of Nature. You got to do what you got to do to stay healthy. I'm pretty skeptical of products that promise to solve all your health problems with a magical ingredient. Balance of Nature doesn't do that. It's simply real fruits and veggies. Whole foods that are carefully dehydrated and put into capsules. That's it. No gimmicks, no mystery ingredients, and no trendy buzzwords. I take those fruits and veggies capsules as part of my morning routine. They're an easy way to stay more consistent, even on the days when my schedule gets away from me. Those freeze dried snacks, they become a favorite around our national office. Check saying something because there are a lot of snack options available around there. Back to school season is a good time to reset your routine. If getting more fruits and veggies is part of that plan, Balance of Nature makes it a whole lot easier. Head on over to balance of nature.com use promo code Shapiro for an additional 10% off any subscription. That's balance of nature.com promo code Shapiro for an additional 10 percent off your subscription. When we talk about the social consequences of a consequence free and choice free society, this brings us to a bizarre, strange story from Vanity Fair written by a woman named Ruby Rippy. This woman had an affair with Gavin Newsom way back when. This exploded outward a couple of decades ago. 20 years ago. So this woman was originally married to a Newsome staffer while he was the mayor. And then he started knocking boots with her. And now she has a long story in Vanity Fair in which again, the attempts to escape responsibility for your own bad decision making. It's pretty wild, the entire structures of thought that we've built on top of all of this. So she writes in Vanity Fair about how she faced her demons but lost her voice. And now she's ready to share her story. So here is how it all went down, according to the person with whom Gavin Newsome had this affair. 2004 quote Remember, she's married and she has a newborn child. One night we all meet at a Mexican restaurant on Lombard Street. Warm tortilla chips, limes, margaritas, sweating in glasses as the waiter takes orders, I feel the mayor looking at me. I glance up across the table back at him. As if caught off guard. He reacts, pointing at me. Hey, you look really good, he says. You've lost all your pregnancy weight. There's an awkward laugh. I reach for another chip and stare at my husband's margarita, the salt rim catching the light. I want it, but I'm in another self enforced stretch of sobriety. So I sit in my hands and wait it out. After that, I start paying closer attention. She says to what I wear Chanel makeup, a yellow silk dress fitted at the waist, pink patent leather heels. At senior staff meetings we sit in a semicircle facing his enormous oak desk, 12 foot high, velvet curtains drawn tight, casting the room in a private glow. I feel important. Okay, so this story is not about how Gavin Newsom is a good guy. He really, really, really is not. Okay, but there is a punchline here that is kind of astonishing. So basically she decides that she doesn't like her life. She has an alcohol problem and she ends up in an affair with Gavin Newsom. Right? And she admits in this article that it was totally consensual. Quote the boundaries begin to disintegrate. I linger in doorways, position myself within his sight line. At events, he holds the doors, waiting for me to pass. First the texts shift from work to something else. I manufacture reasons to be near him. The choreography becomes obvious. People notice as the performance unfolds in plain sight. I start measuring my days by how close it is to 5 or 6 when I can start drinking. And then she. He, she says, we meet, we drink, there's sex. But it isn't the point. The point is proximity. To power, to being chosen, to feeling newly visible, no longer muted by pregnancy, by new motherhood, by the strain of white knuckling, long stretches of sobriety. It isn't love. It isn't romance. It's intoxication. And then, of course, they break up and she uses cocaine and all the rest of the okay, now. She ends up telling her husband. But she says this. Here's her conclusion. Quote Me Too is still more than a decade away, but the arguments are already forming. I hear every explanation. None absolves me. Yes, the drinking mattered. So did my arrogance, the belief that consequences were for other people. I was not confused or naive. I was a grown woman who made choices that hurt someone I loved. I am the culprit. Still, the me too reckoning exposed what I had missed. And here's the punchline. Power does not need to coerce. It only needs to exist. The responsibility to hold the line belongs to the one who holds it. That didn't happen. But I didn't stumble into the space left open. I saw a possibility and went for it. Both things are True. I'm responsible for what I did. Power does not distribute consequences evenly. Okay, here's the key. The key is the idea that this is a form of coercion. She had a fully consensual affair with Gavin Newsom. Again, gross. Gross by her. She's married and had a kid. Gross by him. She was married and had a kid. Also, this notion that because he was a powerful person, which is what drew her to him in the first place, as she admits that somehow this relieves her of some level of responsibility, or that Gavin Newsome is uniquely guilty for the sin because he was powerful, which was the draw to him. How about you just say I acted horribly? How about that? How about that? But again, there is something that undergirds this, and that is this perspective on life that everything value systems, Everything is the outgrowth of power. Everything is a reflection of power. The postmodernist author Michel Foucault, he argued that basically all structures are structures of power, and therefore racism is not racism. It's racism plus power. Terrorism isn't terrorism. Terrorists are powerless. That's why they're terrorists. So the only true terrorism has to be driven by Western powers. And apparently your responsibility for banging your boss while you're married is mitigated because he was powerful. We need a society in which blame and shame are things, again, we do, where your decisions are your own and you take full responsibility for those decisions. And we don't treat you as a victim. We don't treat you as though is some sort of get out of jail moral free card here. That doesn't exist. Until we go back to that, we're going to have a country that has some serious values problems, and that's going to bleed over into our politics. All right, the other big news of the day yesterday, the actual news was the Lindsay Graham funeral program. Yesterday, the Lindsey Graham funeral program did feature the Jerusalem cross. Now, we are told that the Jerusalem cross was some sort of Nazi image because Pete Hegseth has a tattoo of it. It, of course, does not. Sort of. All the luminaries showed up for it. Senator John Fetterman put on a suit for Graham's funeral as. As you would imagine. Here he was walking in. How is it to be in a suit for once?
- [32:10]
John Fetterman
I mean, normal, you know? What do you think?
- [32:13]
Ben Shapiro
I think it looks good. I like you in the hoodie, though.
- [32:17]
John Fetterman
Yeah, well, I mean, normal now. I see people now are wearing shorts now with suits, too. So maybe that's enough to really bring me over to the side full time.
- [32:28]
Ben Shapiro
Okay. Meanwhile, President Trump spoke at the funeral, and he talks about running against Lindsey Graham in 2016, and then how they became friendly.
- [32:36]
Donald Trump
As you remember, Lindsey and I did not exactly get off to the best of starts running against each other. Back in 2016, Lindsey said something rather nasty on his flight to becoming the next President of the United States. So naturally, I did something that I shouldn't have done. I shared his personal cell phone number with the millions of people that happened to be watching that particular day. As I made a speech, a very important speech, and I remember the number. 2022-if- anybody wants to give it a shot, his phone exploded. He said, I had that number for 20 years, his phone, totally. I don't know what he did with it, but it exploded. That was the beginning of a friendship, in a way. But it was Lindsey who had the last laugh, because while I blew up his phone, all for one day, we became great friends. And Lindsey did not stop following me for the next 10 years. It was not easy.
- [33:42]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, the President, honestly, his. His eulogy for Graham was one of his better moments. I thought that the President was obviously very warm towards Senator Graham. Here he was talking about Graham. It was very funny because obviously somebody else worked on his speech and he would kind of ad lib in the middle.
- [33:57]
Donald Trump
But no matter how heated things got in Washington, virtually everyone, Republican or Democrat, liked Lindsey. Well, not everybody, but it sounds good. Not everybody. He was a tough cookie. Okay, I have to be. I have to veer from this for a second. He was a tough cookie, Darlene, but he was beautiful.
- [34:21]
Ben Shapiro
Well, he obviously had a lot of warmth for Lindsey Graham. The President, Sean Hannity, who's also close friends with Lindsey Graham for years. He made a great point. So there are a lot of people who have tried to characterize Graham as, you know, he loved war. He just loved war. Even the President made a joke along these lines. Okay, nobody loves war. Unless you're a complete sicko, you don't love war. Lindsey Graham believed in a muscular American presence in the world and believed in some ways that I disagreed with in America's ability to shape conflict to its advantage. I disagreed sometimes on the manifestation of that. But Sean Hannity is right. Lindsey Graham wanted peace. He wanted lasting peace. And he understood that confronting America's enemies was very often the only way to achieve these.
- [35:01]
Donald Trump
Lindsey, he was often unfairly characterized as a warmonger. I've heard that false criticism a lot.
- [35:09]
Ben Shapiro
It's not true. The truth was the opposite.
- [35:13]
Donald Trump
Lindsey desperately wanted and talked to the President about a Lasting peace in the Middle East.
- [35:20]
Ben Shapiro
He wanted every region, every country in the region on that path to peace. That was Lindsey's dream. If people would only listen to what he had been saying. Now, members of the left decided that now is a great time because when, when is it not a good time to rip into Lindsey Graham? Stephanie Rule over at msnbc, Ms. Now, she kind of implied that Graham may be in hell, presumably for his support of President Trump.
- [35:50]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yeah, I'm guessing He and John McCain are having very complicated conversations right now.
- [35:54]
Donald Trump
Absolutely.
- [35:54]
Ben Shapiro
If they are in the same place.
- [35:55]
Donald Trump
Yeah, it's interesting.
- [35:58]
Ben Shapiro
If they are in the same place. Tiresome Cenk Uyghur, who hated Lindsey Graham nearly as much as he hates America. He put out a tweet quote, here's my eulogy to Lindsey Graham. You were a murderous pig. Even among the warmongers in D.C. you stood out for the glee. You took in the deaths of so many you orchestrated. You'll be missed by no one outside of Israel and defense contractors. I hope Israel releases the tapes anyway. Of course, his idea is that Israel must have had tapes blackmailing Lindsey Graham. Just vile human being. Truly a vile person. The United States Senate is going to vote on a Russia sanctions bill in tribute to Graham. It is well deserved. The President did meet with Vladimir Zelensky, the President of Ukraine yesterday apparently went very well. He also met with the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. Apparently that went well as well. The President, you know, the reality is that the thing Lindsey Graham understood better than pretty much anyone in American politics is the nature of our enemies. Lindsey Graham understood that Russia is America's enemy. Lindsey Graham understood that Iran, which by the way, fired missiles at America's bases in Jordan last night, that Iran is our enemy. And that it turns out you might not be able to have nice talks with our enemies that result in things you might need to actually try to box them in and fight them economically, diplomatically, as a last resort, militarily. That was the good thing about Lindsey Graham. And if Republicans forget it, along with the Democrats, this country is in serious, serious trouble. Meanwhile, by the way, speaking of the Democrats, John Fetterman, who again wore a suit, he has been, what a breath of fresh air he has been with regard to the DSA crazies, the nut jobs inside the Democratic Party. He was on CNBC yesterday and he was calling out the Democratic Socialists of America. By the way, the new candidate for governor in Wisconsin is very, very likely to be a Democratic Socialist of America acolyte and part time bartender. Which, I mean, you could have guessed from the, from the earlier description. Here is Senator Fetterman for every Democrat,
- [37:52]
John Fetterman
both here in our caucus or anyone nationally. If we were successful to eliminate the filibuster, imagine what the last 18 months would have been in terms of the policies enacted. Because it know Democrats, we haven't stopped any kinds of thing. Really, the only thing that has was the filibuster. And now on our side now we have more and more crazies. You know, the dsa, the abolish the border, abolish the prison, abolish the Senate. You know, crazy. No, they're at the gate here in my party. And I would warn people, the kind of extremism now that's, you know, incredibly dangerous.
- [38:36]
Ben Shapiro
Fetterman went on to point out that if elected to the Senate, Abdul El Sayed, the Michigan Senate candidate who really kind of likes terrorism, that he would end up heading the pro Hamas party.
- [38:49]
John Fetterman
But this guy is really the Pontiac Platner, and now he's really running to be, be the head of our emerging pro Hamas wing here in the Port Party.
- [39:02]
Ben Shapiro
Well, again, credit to Senator Fetterman for calling all of that out in a way that other Democrats will not. Kathy Hochul. I mean, God, it's just gotta be incredible to be a Democrat who must be eager to be taxed. Kathy Hochul. Her press office released a meme of LeBron James. LeBron James just signed with the Philadelphia 76ers, but he's going to be living in New York City and then commuting to play for the Sixers because who the hell wants to live in, in Philadelphia? I guess he's going to commute daily from New York City to Philadelphia via helicopter. Kathy Hochul's office then put out a tweet that said la pied a terre, like instead of LeBron, le pied a terre, because it's the second house. They can't wait to tax him. Man, what a great place New York must be where they can't wait to tax you. Welcome to the state. We cannot wait to grab your money. What a party you Democrats have constructed. Truly, truly awe inspiring in its vision. Meanwhile, Rosie o', Donnell, she was in Ireland. Speaking of petit terror lady, she was in Ireland and then she came back, which is unfortunate. Well, now she has decided that we all need to hear her rewritings of the lyrics to the wizard of Oz to so that she can talk about the President's penis. Yeah, you. I had to hear it. So that means you also had to hear it.
- [40:18]
Rosie O'Donnell
His Approval rate is 30. His diaper's always dirty I think the guy's ins Da da da da da da da he ain't no stable genius Got a teeny tiny but he doesn't have a brain the reflecting pool is green his reasons were obscene it's him we all do blame he grew a magic ear Stole billions in a year Cause he doesn't have a brain Oh, I can't tell you why some people think he's smart all he does is lie and cheat and steal and, and he's asleep when meeting starts he still dreams that he is Putin While our country he is looting on humanity A stainless steel he does is cause us trauma Cause he'll never be Obama Cause he doesn't have a brain. I hope you enjoy that, Donald. That's for you. A tick tock. You don't.
- [41:36]
Ben Shapiro
I can't believe that Michael Moore made that video. That was, that was terrifying. I mean, tone deaf. She, she's not. Yip Harburg. Yip Harberg is the original lyric author of the wizard of Oz. That, that was not good. That was not good. It was, it was poorly sung. The lyrics were, were bad. She didn't get to talk about the president's genitalia, which is, which is great. She, she is a delight. I can't imagine why the president going all the way back. I think that, you know what we need? We, we need a throwback President Trump response to Rosie o'. Donnell. You've called women you don't like fat
- [42:09]
Rosie O'Donnell
pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.
- [42:14]
Ben Shapiro
Your Twitter account only Rosie o'.
- [42:16]
Donald Trump
Donnell.
- [42:18]
Ben Shapiro
No, it wasn't. All right, well, meanwhile, in much darker cultural news, a pretty horrifying tick side. She was on tick tock. And that's horrifying. But there's a much more horrifying Tick Tock story. Joining us online is Lyndon Blake. She's host of that's so Criminal here at the Daily Wire, and she's the person who covers sort of all things cultural and criminal that maybe I've been missing here on the show. There is a story that has gone completely viral that is an extraordinary and horrifying story about a TikTok influencer named Sarah Gilson, who's also known apparently as Sarah Duffy. And Lynn is going to fill me in on that one. Lyndon, explain to me what's going on here. Okay.
- [42:57]
Lyndon Blake
You remember that Netflix documentary trend that you actually did a couple of weeks ago? It has been such a viral trend, mainly because they've been funny. They have been Poking fun in a certain situation or some type of mundane situation in your life. And Sarah Gilson, a day after she got an emergency protective order against her husband, Sean Duffy, she decided to do this Netflix trend. Except she didn't go for a funny angle. She went for a pretty dark angle and was very vulnerable and said, prepping for my Netflix documentary where I expose my soon to be ex husband of being a pedophile, basically. So you see that on your TikTok feed, obviously you're like, what you start following goes viral. Well, shortly after that, she wound up dead at the hands of her husband, Sean Duffy. There is horrible dispatch calls out there where you can hear a woman screaming, then there's a gunshot her on dispatch. You can hear the shot that killed. And it's so disturbing because investigators say that Sean Duffy killed Sarah then turned the gun on himself. And it just, it just makes you so mad because this was not just a random coincidence where Sarah just trying to start like drama on TikTok with her husband. No, she was getting a protective order from him because a girl and her parents on this little girl's basketball team a couple weeks earlier went to the police station in Oklahoma where this all happened and said that Sean Duffy inappropriately touched the girl and kissed her at this basketball tournament. Now, Sean Duffy was a basketball coach, coach little girls. And it, it, it just makes you sick because there were signs there where this could have been prevented, but it ended in a horrible tragedy. We're digging really deep into their past on that. So criminal. And we'll have a full episode out later this week. But basically you have this 43 year old woman, a TikTok influencer. She likes to sell jewelry and sell bags. She had two teenage kids, a son and a daughter from her first marriage, now dead. And now her kids have to grow up without their mother. Now, her first husband, Lyle Landers, he has done interviews on multiple platforms this week talking about how he is trying to warn Sarah for the last five years to get away from Sean Duffy. And he said that he had some type of control over her. Just a really sad situation. And obviously right now the story is blowing up all over the Internet because even before this tragedy happened, that Netflix documentary Trend video was blowing up because it was so shocking and people were actually googling the court cases and following up with her court appearances. It's just a horrible, horrible situation.
- [45:58]
Ben Shapiro
So, Lyndon, were there criminal charges that were in the offing for her husband before this happened? How far had that investigation gone into the accusations of inappropriate touching of minors, of pedophilia and all the rest when she actually sat down and did this.
- [46:16]
Lyndon Blake
So this is interesting. I said, this is in Oklahoma, and Sean Duffy was a member of the O Sage tribe. This is an Indian country area. And because of that, his case left the jurisdiction of where the initial complaint was filed, and it went to the U.S. attorney's office. And this was all a very. It basically just delayed the situation. And that's why you had some time there before Sarah necessarily found out that this has gone on with her husband. But even before that, there's reports that they've had issues that he filed for bankruptcy two years before. And I will say this, and a lot of times in these murder suicide cases that you follow, it's like the husband is always going through something and then just takes it out on the wife. Two years earlier, you had Sean Duffy allegedly file for bankruptcy. So money troubles were happening. He was accused of inappropriately touching a little girl. Another coach is the person that actually told that little girl's parents at the basketball tournament that it happened. And then when his wife, who already had a platform, is trying to take ownership of her story, is what you want to say. I mean, she wasn't trying to make light of it, but she was like, oh, this is. I'm an influencer. This is a popular trend. I'm going to put my spin on it. And then it goes viral. And what Deshaun Duffy do, instead of taking ownership for his mistakes, he kills her and then kills himself because he's a coward,
- [47:50]
Ben Shapiro
obviously. Tremendous act of evil. And it intersects with the social media sphere because obviously the reality of social media means that he knew that she was posting this. This already went viral. And presumably that was the trigger that spurred him to do all of this. Just a reminder that what happens on social media is not, in fact, private. It has a large audience and spillover effects that are. That are pretty scary.
- [48:12]
Lyndon Blake
Yeah. And to add to that, they were known online as kind of the Duffs, as this happy couple. And it's like, oh, of course you can guess it. This happy couple online that seems like they have it all together, actually doesn't have it together. And it's just. We talked about this before, Ben, how social media is a wonderful thing, but also a horrible thing. And this case right now is showcasing the worst parts of social media, where a woman online seemed to be fine, but in reality, even years prior, she had filed restraining orders trying to get away from Duffy. But then she never showed up for that hearing. So then that case was dismissed. And it's one of those situations where you need to really, really listen to the person and they may be under some type of control. But just know if you think something's off about a certain situation, follow your gut and follow up on that. Because I know that her first husband, Lyle Landers, that she had a wonderful relationship with, he is reeling from this right now and now is going to raise their kids alone. And I you just know he feels this, this weight of this as someone that tried and tried and tried to get her to walk away, but in the end he couldn't.
- [49:28]
Ben Shapiro
That's Lyndon Blake. You can check out. That's so Criminal over at Daily Wire. She covers all of these breaking criminal stories. Lyndon, thanks so much for the time. Thanks for the coverage.
- [49:36]
Lyndon Blake
Thanks, Ben.
- [49:38]
Ben Shapiro
Alrighty, folks. You think the show is over?
- [49:39]
Rosie O'Donnell
Wrong.
- [49:40]
Ben Shapiro
You are. If you're a Daily Wire member, you get even more analysis, more news coverage and access to the mailbag. Right now, we are going to be answering your questions. If you're not a member, become member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.
- [49:58]
John Fetterman
Sam.